Contents

  1. Title Page
  2. Disclaimer
  3. The Christmas Planet
  4. A Pirate's Life
  5. Sophia, Kidnapped!
  6. Love in the Snow
  7. Request for Reviews
  8. Acknowledgments
  9. Also By Al Macy
  10. About the Author

## Guide

  1. Contents
  2. Start of Content

**The Christmas Planet and Other Stories**

**_A Collection of Four Short Stories_**

**By Al Macy**

**AlMacyAuthor.com**

**Copyright © 2018 Al Macy**

**All Rights Reserved.**

**Version:** RC06 2018/11/15 2:35 PM

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

# The Christmas Planet

_When I was about to get a vasectomy, I was so discombobulated that I lay facedown on the operating table. That was years ago, but I'm still embarrassed about it. Why do I bring this up when introducing a Christmas story? Well, because the doc prescribed Vicodin for after the procedure._

_When I took the pills, I got an intense Christmasy feeling, even though it was July. I got more into the Christmas spirit than I ever had before. I had visions of long-needled pine boughs sparkling with snow, presents with red wrapping paper and gold ribbons, and hot chocolate with candy canes. Visions of sugar plums would have danced in my head, but I had no idea what a sugar plum actually looked like._

_I figured these thoughts were caused by some random misfiring of the drugged-up neurons in my brain plus the pain that comes from having your private parts attacked with sharp instruments. My jaw dropped, however, when I saw Rosie Perez talk about Vicodin on a talk show. She described the cozy, Christmas feeling it gave her. I wasn't the only one!_

_My wife said maybe I should take Vicodin whenever I want to write a Christmas story. I wonder if the FDA would approve that off-label use?_

_I enjoyed writing_ A Mind Reader's Christmas, _so I decided to write another Christmas story, this one in the Jake Corby multiverse._

_I think you'll enjoy this silly story even if you aren't stoned. If not, take two Vicodin and read it again. [My lawyer said to tell you that this is just a joke.]_

* * *

Gordon Guccio pushed his plate away and pulled his unlit cigar from his mouth. "So, there I am, running down the ramp, buck naked, and my willy falls off."

We'd just finished a delicious meat loaf dinner. The homey woodsmoke scent from our fire had long since surrendered to the eau-de-tobacco aroma Guccio always carried with him, even when he wasn't smoking. I'd paneled our dining room with knotty pine. _Would it absorb the cigar smell?_

My wife, Charli, laughed, and we both glanced at our eight-year-old daughter. Sophia got off her chair and came over to mine. She tugged on my shirtsleeve. I leaned down, and she whispered in my ear.

I nodded. She had the question I'd expected, so I whispered back, "Why don't you ask him?"

She pressed her lips together and shook her head.

"Would you like me to ask him?" I spoke quietly so only she would hear.

She glanced at Guccio and nodded. He'd visited often enough that she wasn't shy with him, but she'd sensed there was something different about this subject. Perhaps his mentioning that he was naked had clued her in.

I cleared my throat. "As you might guess, Gordon, Sophia would like to know what a willy is."

"Ah, jeez, Jake, I'm sorry," he said.

"It's okay, Gordon." Charli laughed again. "You're blushing."

Charli and I had been married a few years, but I was still blown away by my good fortune. I'd dropped out of the world after my first wife died. Charli found me and pulled me out of my hidey hole.

We don't seem like your typical couple. I'm forty-seven and look as weathered as an old hammer. One that's been dropped off the roof a few times. At thirty-eight, Charli looks like a miniature supermodel. She's five two in heels, a full foot shorter than me. My salt-and-pepper hair is barely hanging in there, while her hair is blonde and thick—no coloring necessary. That night, she had it tied in a ponytail.

Guccio rubbed the back of his neck. "Jeez, Sophia, I'm sorry. I'm not used to being around kids." He has a strong Bronx accent and sounds like a mafioso. He'd been grossly overweight and headed for a coronary but lost seventy pounds thanks to a new technology we'd acquired as part of our membership into the Galactic Association. Despite the weight loss, he still looked like a slob: stains on his shirt, messy hair, and a day's growth of beard.

He continued, "A willy is... uh..."

"Just say it, Gordon." I picked Sophia up and put her on my lap.

"Penis," he said. "'Willy' is another name for penis."

Sophia turned to me, frowning. "Does it—"

"You can ask Gordon yourself." I nodded toward him.

In a small voice, she asked him, "Does it... fall off?"

Guccio scratched his cheek. "Only in your dreams."

Since we'd recently watched the old movie _Pinocchio_ , Sophia was undoubtedly interpreting that as a dreams-come-true type of thing.

"Sweetheart," I said, "Gordon was just describing his dream. Weird, impossible things happen in dreams."

"Especially in Gordon's dreams." Charli took a sip of wine.

"Right." I generally find other people's dreams boring, but Guccio's were different. Weird, but fun and exciting. "So when he said, 'in your dreams,' he meant it's something that doesn't happen in real life." I turned to him. "What happened next?"

He cleared his throat. "So, then I have to decide. Go back and get it or keep running? I look over my shoulder, and the creatures are swarming out of the spaceship. They looked like penguins, but they all had artificial legs, those springy, blade things, and they could run faster than me. Each one had a machete light saber, and they were making angry honking noises, like pissed-off—sorry, annoyed—geese. So going back wasn't an option. I keep running, and suddenly, I'm in this jungle, but it's all underwater. I can breathe fine though."

He continued until he'd recounted the entire dream, one guaranteed to give Sophia nightmares.

After putting our daughter to bed, Charli and I joined Guccio in the living room. The room, and our house in general, felt like an upscale cabin in the forest. There was a braided rug in front of the woodstove and a rustic chandelier hanging from the cathedral ceiling. I stoked up the fire and poured us each some brandy. Guccio had cut himself another slice of lemon meringue pie and had a crumb on his chin.

"So, Gordon, how are you enjoying retirement?" Charli took a napkin, reached over, and brushed the crumb away.

Guccio had been the secretary of defense when Charli was a presidential advisor, and they had worked together for years. He and I had had some adventures of our own. He'd resigned the year before, in 2021.

"I'm not," he said. Years of drinking and smoking had given him a whiskey baritone. "Enjoying it, that is. I don't have enough to do."

I swirled my brandy. "How about the dating? Doesn't that give you enough to do? Found anyone interested in a fixer-upper project?"

Guccio had never married. He'd devoted all his energies to serving his country. In his new circumstances, he'd been working on filling the hole in his life.

"Yeah," he said. "Don't remind me. Those dating sites are—wait, let me show you this." He patted each of his pockets until he found and extracted a folded-up brochure. He handed it to me. "Take a look at this."

Charli had her legs tucked beneath her on the couch. I snuggled close, and we looked at it together. It was a glossy pamphlet, an advertisement for "The Christmas Planet." Earth was one of the few members of the Galactic Association still printing things on vegetable matter, and the civilization behind the pamphlet was humoring our backwardness.

"Come spend Christmas on the yule-iest planet in the galaxy!" the banner headline read. Photos right out of the Norman Rockwell universe filled the pamphlet: kids sledding, Christmas trees, couples walking hand in hand along a quaint village street.

Interstellar travel was accomplished by jumping into a parallel universe then back again. It avoided the apparent impossibility of faster-than-light (FTL) transit but accomplished the same thing. The stars were now within reach, and this civilization seemed ready to capitalize on the newest members of the association.

I finished reading and said, "This is wild. This civilization, the..."

"The Kikmots," Guccio said.

"Kikmots? Okay. So these Kikmots turned their whole planet into a Christmas-themed amusement park in only a year?"

Guccio shook his head. "No. Only part of it. This planet is like a galactic Disneyland. They have areas devoted to particular cultures. They've jumped on the interstellar-travel bandwagon big time, basing their whole economy on it."

"This doesn't seem like your thing, Gordon," Charli said. "I don't ever remember you getting in the holiday spirit. Ever. And what does this have to do with dating?"

Guccio leaned forward, turned to the third page of the brochure, and tapped on it. "Right here. They have a singles package."

"Just for humans, right? I know you're desperate, but—"

"Hey, come on," he said, "I'm not that desperate. But I need a change. Doesn't it look interesting? Maybe you guys would like to go."

"Well, Gordon" —Charli poured him more brandy— "if you want to boldly go on dates, I think that's something you should do on your own."

He shrugged. "We'd be in different parts of the village. When's the last time you had a white Christmas?"

We lived in the redwood forest on California's north coast, near Eureka. We rarely got even a dusting of snow, but if we felt snow-deprived, we could always drive to the mountains.

"Pass," I said. "But you might want to investigate this further, Gordon. Something seems off."

"Such as?"

"The cost is too low, for example. I don't see how these Kikmots could profit much on this kind of tourism."

"I think they're experimenting. This is a loss leader," he said. "I think they're hoping for a major expansion in future years."

"Is the theme park approved by the Galactic Association?"

"Absolutely." He showed me the back of the brochure and pointed to the purple star.

* * *

The next morning, I was still in la-la land when something tickled my ear.

"Daddy are you awake can we go to The Christmas Planet?"

I sucked in a deep breath and dragged myself back to earth. I glanced at the clock. 7:15. Dawn. _Oof! Too much brandy last night_. The robins were performing their morning concert, competing with the raucous crows and jays. Charli and I always kept the windows open, and the smell of the forest made it feel as if we were camping.

Sophia climbed into the bed, stepping on my stomach and then squeezing herself between Charli and me. Our German shepherd nuzzled his wet nose into my ear. I shivered and patted him on the head. "Morning, Boonie."

"Daddy, can we go to The Christmas Planet?" Sophia held the brochure inches from my face. Guccio must have left it in the living room.

Charli was certainly awake, but I whispered anyway, my mouth up next to Sophia's ear. "Why do you want to go to The Christmas Planet?"

She giggled. "That tickles."

"Don't we have nice Christmases here? Grandma Marie could come visit."

"But we don't have snow here. I can't make a snowman."

"We could go to Grandma Marie's in Maine." I didn't want to fly to Maine. Like any self-respecting introvert, I preferred staying home. But I really, _really_ didn't want to travel light-years to some strange planet inhabited by weird creatures.

Sophia turned away from me. "Mommy, can we go to The Christmas Planet?"

Charli switched on her bedside lamp. "Where?" She yawned.

"The Christmas Planet. Look." Sophia held the brochure out. "They have puppies."

_Puppies?_ I put on my reading glasses and reached for the brochure. Those weren't puppies. They were soft and furry and cute, but they weren't any species I'd ever seen. Two tails each. Nothing from Earth. I shuddered.

Charli kissed Sophia's cheek and hopped out of bed. She's more of a morning person than I am. As she went to the closet, she squeezed my toe and sent me a little cocked-head frown. I took it to mean " _Why did you leave the brochure out?"_ Or maybe " _Why the hell didn't you hide that brochure?"_

Charli pulled on a pair of jeggings. They looked like jeans, but molded to her body as though applied with spray paint. "I don't think so, Sophia. Let's talk about it at breakfast. Why don't you feed Boonie? Daddy and I will be in soon."

Boonie had been lying on the braided rug, but when Charli mentioned feeding, he jumped up and trotted to the door. He sat watching Sophia and wagged his tail. Sometimes I swear that dog understands every word we say.

Sophia followed Boonie out of the room.

Charli sat on the bed, buttoning her blouse. "Darn that Gordon. He shouldn't have left that brochure out. Did he do that on purpose?"

_Phew._ I wasn't in the doghouse. "You mean so Sophia would see it and want to go?"

"Yeah."

"Nah. No way. He's just not used to having kids around."

In the kitchen, we found Sophia at the table, quietly crayoning a page in the back of the brochure. The pamphlet had a kids' page with puzzles and a drawing of Santa's Ranch, ready for coloring. Santa was driving a tractor, which Sophia was filling with red. A snowman in a cowboy hat was lassoing a reindeer.

Our kitchen had a picture window that looked out onto our backyard. It wasn't a yard in the normal sense, but simply a part of the redwood forest. Brown needles and twigs covered the ground, with sword ferns growing here and there. The tree trunks were massive, and rays of sunlight spread their fingers through the perpetual mist.

I scrambled eggs with bits of bacon, cheese, and avocado. Charli leaned back against the counter, watching our daughter concentrate on her work. Sophia had been through a lot. Four years ago, she'd been kidnapped, and soon after that, her biological mother had died.

Charli leaned in to me and whispered the terrible words that caused my heart to skip a beat. "Perhaps it could be a fun family adventure."

_Aargh! No._ I turned to her so quickly a pain flashed down my neck. "You're kidding, right?"

She shook her head, no impish smile. So: not kidding.

I'd just lost my main ally, and it was about to become a two-against-one war of wills.

I took the pan and divided the eggs between the three plates Charli had set out.

"Look, Daddy. Did I do a good job?"

I sat and took the brochure, and Sophia climbed onto my lap.

"Nice job."

"I stayed inside the lines, see?"

I nodded. "Yes, you did. Hey, how did you know tractors are usually red?"

"Grandma Marie has a red tractor."

"You're right. You remembered that. The Christmas tree is orange. Did you make that up?"

"No! Look." She turned a page. "See? Orange."

"Huh. You're right. You did an excellent job on this, Sophia. I'm proud of you."

"Daddy, because I did a good job, can we go to The Christmas Planet? You said we couldn't get a puppy—"

"What about Boonie?"

"Oh, Daddy. Boonie's not a puppy. If we can go to The Christmas Planet, I promise I won't beg for a puppy anymore. Please."

Charli broke her silence. "Sophia, Daddy and I will discuss it, but you shouldn't get your hopes up, okay?"

Sophia jumped off my lap and skipped to her own chair. "Yay!"

Was it just me? "Yay" didn't sound like a word associated with not getting one's hopes up.

After breakfast, we dropped Sophia off at her best friend's house for a playdate.

I'd just pulled out of the friend's driveway, heading home, when Charli put her hand on my knee. "Jake."

"Uh-oh."

She laughed. "What?"

"I don't like that tone of voice."

"No, it's okay. I just wanted to say you've done a good job controlling your introvert... tendencies, and I appreciate that."

"I've done an _excellent_ job, I'd say."

She waggled her hand. "I wouldn't go that far. A good job."

"But?" I stopped at a traffic light and raised my eyebrows at her.

"Uh..."

"Are you going to say I won't okay a trip to this weird Christmas Planet only because I'm too introverted?"

"No, not at all. I was just going to say I know you've had to deal with a lot of bad people, when you were with the FBI, for example. Perhaps you're becoming a little too suspicious of things in your—"

"In my old age? Thanks." I smiled.

"Do you think people are basically good?"

I turned onto our street. "I don't think that's a useful concept. First, even if people are good, there are bad dudes out there. Second, we aren't talking about _people_ here. The creatures that run that damned Christmas Planet aren't human."

"They've been admitted to the Galactic Association, which is more than can be said for us."

Earth was still on provisional-member status.

I pulled the car into the garage and switched it off. "Do you really think we should travel to another planet to have a cozy Christmas experience? One with orange Christmas trees and dogs with multiple tails?"

"I agree it's a little crazy, but Sophia would enjoy it, and I'd appreciate the change of scene. Plus, you like hanging out with Gordon."

"Let's talk about it more after lunch."

The whole concept of traveling light-years to visit a pretend version of Christmas orchestrated by nonhumans was so misguided and ridiculous, I had no doubt I could talk them down. Right?

* * *

Wrong. My girls finally convinced me I should be less of a homebody and have lots more goodwill toward men—and Kikmots. We would spend the holiday on The Christmas Planet. I was actually looking forward to it. A bit.

The Kikmots had to approve us for the trip, which meant that I needed to submit to an interview.

I drove to San Francisco and used one of California's ten holographic meeting pods. An example of the many new technologies we'd gained from the Galactic Association, the pods allowed you to get together with someone in an experience that was visually identical to meeting them live. The participants could walk around each other and do everything but touch. It drastically cut down on the need for physical travel.

So much had changed since Earth had been accepted, provisionally, into the loose collection of civilizations in the Milky Way. The association included only forty-three separate societies. That wasn't a lot, considering that the galaxy held four hundred billion stars. Life turned out to be rarer than expected.

The association had existed for nine million years when it stumbled upon Earth in 2018. They detected us through a probe that wandered the galaxy searching for sentient beings. They gave us gradual access to the GWW, Galaxy Wide Web, holding back only that information we weren't ready for. The resulting boost in science, technology, and even sociology dwarfed all advances from our past.

My appointed time found me waiting in line by the communication pod. I would meet with a Kikmot named Hakupha. The chamber sat in a typical office space, the kind that would normally house cubicles. It was the size of a commercial van. Stainless steel with rounded corners, it reminded me of an Airstream trailer without wheels. A technician with a headset—a human—sat at an attached console.

When I reached the front of the queue, he glanced up at me. "It will just be a minute, Mr. Corby."

I leaned to the side to see his screen. It showed a man and a woman standing on opposite sides of a conference table, engaged in a heated conversation. I tried to guess which one was real and which was the hologram. It was impossible.

The technician flipped a switch. "Thirty seconds, please."

When the timer display reached zero, the desk and the man faded to gray. A panel in the pod slid aside, and the woman came out, dabbing away some tears with a tissue. In the pod, she'd had long red hair, but in real life her hair was much shorter and brown.

"Okay, Mr. Corby. You'll be meeting with a Mr. Hakupha, who is in New York City. Neither of you requested any enhancements. Is that correct?"

"Yes."

"All right. You may go in."

"Thank you." I stepped in. All the surfaces—walls, floor, ceiling—were padded. I pushed my hand against the wall. It was thick memory foam. Just as I was removing my hand, the space changed into the living room of a country home, decorated for Christmas. A fire crackled in a stone fireplace, and a brown sofa held cushions embroidered with reindeer. The room was full-sized despite the small dimensions of the pod. I pushed my hand against the wall again. It was there and offered resistance, but I had the sensation of pushing against an invisible force field.

Hakupha materialized in front of me as if beamed into the pod with a Star Trek transporter. He stood by the fireplace and bowed. "Merry Christmas, Mr. Corby." He pronounced his S's like T's, so "Christmas" sounded like "Critmit."

I bowed back.

I'd seen pictures of the Kikmots but wasn't prepared to see one in the holographic flesh. For years, scientists had speculated that sentient creatures from other planets might look nothing like humans. Given the diversity of life on Earth—consider the differences between a giraffe and a blobfish—how could we expect aliens with an independent origin to look like us? However, about half the advanced lifeforms followed the general format of two legs, two arms, and a head. The Kikmots were no exception.

Hakupha was small, coming up only to my waist. I couldn't see all of his body because he wore clothing—he was dressed as an elf—but the first impression was that he looked like a small human with the head of a dog. If you've ever seen a YouTube video in which a guy puts his dog in a big coat and acts as the dog's hands while it eats food off a plate, you've got the general idea.

Hakupha's hands had five fingers, but with three digits and two opposable thumbs, one on each side. And they were covered with tan fur. He looked like a Pomeranian but with human-like eyes. The overall impression fell somewhere between cute and creepy.

Hakupha walked around me. _Is he going to sniff me?_ He didn't, but the examination was uncomfortably thorough. _Hasn't he seen humans before?_ At one point his elbow would have knocked into my thigh, but because he was just a hologram, it passed through me.

He completed his circuit and stood in front of me, well within my personal space, and looked up. "How did you find out about our program?"

I told him about Guccio and the brochure. I couldn't interpret his facial expressions, of course. I can read dogs pretty well, but this was a different animal.

He went through his questions. Many were what I'd expected: What is your attitude toward aliens? Do you suffer from motion sickness? What do you hope to get from this experience? Others were strange: How many close friends do you have? What are your dreams like? Do you have any pets?

At the end, Hakupha told me he "ecpected" we'd be approved without problem and that he himself would accompany this year's group of tourists. He'd be our guide.

A timer on the wall counted down the final seconds of the interview. We bowed to one another, and the Christmasy room morphed into the padded chamber.

* * *

Sophia, Charli, and I reported to the paratransit center in San Francisco on December 23, 2022. Boonie didn't get to come. He would spend Christmas with our neighbors. Too bad. I would have liked to see his reaction to a Kikmot.

Surprisingly, although the Galactic Association had developed FTL transmission of information, we humans discovered FTL _travel_ only after being contacted by a civilization of creatures, called Celanos, who lived on Earth but in a parallel universe. Yeah, welcome to the wild and wacky world of quantum physics.

The Celanos had developed a device, called a paratransitter, that allowed travel from one universe to another. Working together with them, our scientists found that by transiting to a neighboring universe then back to a new location in the original world, we were able to exceed the universal speed limit: the speed of light.

The first paratransitters were expensive because they required exotic materials, even antimatter, but with the combined brainpower of scientists and engineers from around the galaxy, the devices soon became more practical. Most cities had at least one device.

The paratransitter sat in an echoey room the size of an aircraft hangar. The visible components of the device included a large dish suspended on a frame and a corresponding dish on the floor. These two dishes looked as though they were grasping the top and bottom of an invisible sphere. Some thick tubing stretched beyond the edges of the concave disks, but the spherical space inside was empty.

Because the device was in high demand, the paratransits occurred one after another with only seconds in between. If you didn't know better, you'd think we lived in some dystopian, overpopulated world, and a long line of undesirables had reported for annihilation. That is, a person or group of up to four individuals would step into the device, and, in the blink of a human eye, they would vanish. The next traveler or travelers stepped in, and blip, they disappeared.

The alien in front of us looked nothing like a human being. The closest Earth analog would be an octopus with scales. Once it vanished, my family stepped into the lower dish of the device. I held Sophia's hand, and she pressed herself tightly against my leg. Perhaps she was thinking a trip to a pet shop might have been a better way to play with some puppies. _Too late now._

I had experience with earlier versions of the device. Those jumps required half a minute and were accompanied by roller coaster sensations and visual disturbances. This jump took only a couple of seconds.

When we arrived, I looked around, confused. I'd expected to rematerialize in the plaza of a charming Christmasy village, but that wasn't what happened.

"What's going on, Jake?" Charli squeezed my hand.

"I'm not sure." We were in a smaller paratransit device in what looked like a wide-bodied airplane with nine seats across. Windows in the ceiling showed stars. We were in space.

Hakupha bowed and hurried us to our assigned seats. "Welcome. Please sit here. The next group will arrive immediately."

I sat in the airline seat, clearly made to look like the Earth equivalent. "Where are we?"

He bowed again. "I will answer all your questions in a moment. Please be patient." _Anter all your quet-chun_.

"What did he say, Daddy?"

I explained it to her then scooched up in my seat and looked around for Guccio. There he was, in the back row, chatting with a woman about his age. I waved, but he didn't see me.

Tourists continued to pop into existence in front of us. Finally, all the seats were filled, and our host stepped onto a raised platform.

"Merry Christmas to all of you. Thank you for choosing us for this most sacred of your human holidays." Except for the S and T problem, his English was pretty good. "Instead of sending you directly to our humble planet, we thought you'd enjoy arriving the old-fashioned way, via spaceliner. This way, you can enjoy an orientation video and perhaps have a refreshing nap. The trip will take only eight hours, and the stewardesses will shortly bring you a wonderful and delicious eggnog."

Sophia tugged my sleeve. "What's a teward-ett-ett?" She seemed to be taking the adventure in stride. Charli also seemed to be enjoying the experience.

I explained Hakupha's speech impediment to Sophia: Teward-ett-ett meant stewardesses. I kept my voice light although I was suspicious. _Eight hours? Totally unnecessary._ We could have had the orientation film and eggnog on the planet itself. What the hell was going on?

That eggnog, however, was indeed delicious. They must have put rum in the drinks for the adults because halfway through the video I couldn't keep my eyes open.

* * *

Hakupha clapped his hands and made some barking noises. I blinked myself awake and leaned over Sophia to look out the portholes. We were no longer in space, but on a snow-covered field. A pair of orange moons rested above the horizon, one round, one egg-shaped.

I rubbed the top of my head, and my fingers came back with a tiny dab of goo. It felt like hair gel, which I don't use. I looked up, but there was nothing that might have dripped. I smelled it. It had a strange medicinal odor, reminding me of the cherry scent of some portable toilets. Rubbing both hands over my hair, I didn't find any more.

Hakupha frowned at me, apparently noticing my puzzlement.

I smiled, waved, and gave him a thumbs up.

Standing, I gazed around the cabin. I had the feeling everyone had been sleeping. My two girls woke.

Sophia pointed out the window. "Look, Daddy! Sleighs!"

I bent down and looked out. Sure enough, a line of fifteen sleighs, each pulled by two horses, came gliding across the meadow.

Hakupha clapped his hands again. "All right now, folks. Please put on your winter clothing. I will now open the doors. The temperature outside is just above the freezing point of water."

The doors hissed open, displaying a scene from a Christmas card. Steam puffed from the horses' noses. The two horses in the lead sleigh shook their heads, setting their bells to jingling.

We bundled up, and Sophia jumped up and down, her eyes bright.

Charli hugged my arm, pulled me down, and gave me a peck on the cheek. "This is wonderful. I always forget how much I miss the snow."

Each sleigh was Santa Claus red and decked out with pine boughs and holly. There were three rows of seats per sleigh, with seating for twelve.

We waited in line then walked down the ramp and stepped up and into the first row of our sleigh. The "horses" had two tails each.

I jumped my head back. "Did you see that?"

Charli snuggled closer. "What?"

"I think one of the horses just said something to the other horse. He whispered something."

She chuckled. "So? Let's not spoil this, Jake. Sure, this is like Disneyland. It's not real. Don't look too closely behind the curtains, okay?"

She had a point. I spread a blanket over our laps, and we jingled off across the field. I had forgotten to see what Guccio was up to. Were things progressing with the woman he'd been talking with? I stood and looked back to the other sleighs, but they were too far away. I couldn't see him.

"What are you looking at, Jake?" Charli asked.

"I was curious about Guccio. Did you see him get in a sleigh?"

She laughed. "Gordon's a big boy. He can take care of himself."

"Just wondering." I sat back down.

The horselike creatures slowed as they pulled us up a hill. We passed under an arch and into a picturesque town that resembled a Swiss village. The buildings were in the Tudor style, with half-timbered construction. The streets were narrow and covered in just enough snow to keep the sleighs happy. I pictured cobblestones beneath the snow, but it was probably some tough polymer instead.

The happy chatter of the sleigh passengers echoed off the shops and restaurants that lined the streets. The sun—suns?—had recently set, and lights from inside the boutiques had a warm glow. A distant bell tower rang with _Silent Night_ , and snow started falling.

If the Kikmots have theme parks for creatures from different worlds, they must have exquisite control over climate. It was a mild winter where we were, but perhaps over a hill it was 200 degrees with a methane atmosphere for blimp-sized cloud creatures celebrating their annual mating festival.

I watched some Kikmots supervising the unloading of the sleighs. They were so cute that I needed to remind myself not to underestimate their intelligence and technological skills. It was hard to imagine puppy dogs who understood gravitational waves, but they were far more advanced than humans.

When our sleigh arrived at the hotel, two Kikmots ushered us across the sidewalk and into the building's revolving door. It was the first door of that type Sophia had seen, and she clenched my hand as we went through it. We walked up a few steps, and our gasps joined those of the other guests.

The lobby was two stories high, with an elaborate gold-and-white tin ceiling. Spirals of pine boughs extended up ten thick pillars. The carpeting matched the ceiling in color, and the far end of the room held a huge Christmas tree. This one wasn't orange. The lights and ornaments on the tree sparkled, and red ribbons led the eye up to a twinkling star at the top.

Hakupha stood on a stage in front of the tree, and the other Kikmots herded everyone toward him. I estimated a hundred and fifty holiday revelers. While Hakupha recited some safety regulations and talked about upcoming events, I scanned the crowd. No Guccio, but I saw the woman he'd been talking with on the spaceliner. I transferred Sophia's hand to Charli and told my wife I'd be right back.

I sidled through the crowd until I was by the woman's side. She was around fifty, pleasantly plump, with salt-and-pepper hair. There was a lull in Hakupha's monologue, and I tapped her on the shoulder.

"Excuse me," I said. "I noticed you were talking to my friend Gordon Guccio on the spaceliner. I haven't seen him since we arrived, and I was wondering if you knew where he went."

With the mention of his name, her face darkened. She looked around. "No. We were hitting it off pretty well. I thought so, anyway. I fell asleep during the flight and didn't wake up until people were leaving the space plane or whatever. His seat was empty. I guess he's avoiding me and doing a good job of it, because I don't see him anywhere. Seems like I didn't make a good impression or I'm not pretty enough for him. Are you with the singles group?" Did she sound hopeful?

I assured her that Gordon wouldn't have blown her off like that—would he?—and that I'd let her know when I found him.

Back at Charli's side, I got a questioning glance. I told her I'd explain later.

Hakupha climbed down from his platform, and everyone lined up to get a present from under the tree and a room assignment. When I asked about Guccio, he directed me to the front desk. With Charli and Sophia in tow, I asked the hotel clerk, who looked more like a schnauzer than a Pomeranian, about Guccio. She, or he, consulted a virtual screen I couldn't see.

"Uh... Let's see... Ah, here it is. Your friend Mr. Guccio elected to join a group of singles in a dogsledding race. I'm sure you'll see him at some of the festivities."

"There are other groups?"

"Yes, sir. Based on interests."

"I don't remember anything about dogsledding," I said.

"That activity was presented only to singles. You're in the family group."

"But we didn't hear—"

"I'm sorry, sir, but..." He gestured behind me.

A line had formed. I would have stuck around and eavesdropped to see if others were missing as well, but Charli and Sophia were getting impatient. I joined them by the elevators, and we took one to the third floor and walked down the hall toward our room. I was going to keep them close.

"What would you like to do tomorrow, Sophia?" I asked.

"I want to go to Santa's Ranch and pet the puppies."

The door to our room somehow knew it was us and automatically unlocked. I led the way in. "That sounds good to me. You can probably meet Santa."

"Oh, Daddy, I know he's a lie."

"A lie?" Charli asked.

"Yes. Parents made him up so they can say we have to be good or Santa won't come down the chimney. Remember? You used to say, 'Santa's watching!' Can we open the Kikmot presents now?"

I guess some of my cynicism rubbed off on her.

The room made me feel as if I were in the St. Regis Hotel on Fifth Avenue. Christmas-tree scent came from the wreaths on the wall, keeping us in the holiday spirit. Our luggage sat on the floor by the closet. I put my bag on the bed and started unpacking. "If you get in your pajamas and brush your teeth, sweetheart, we'll all open some presents."

While she was doing that, I told Charli about Guccio joining another group. She opened her mouth, probably about to object, then closed it.

After a few seconds, she said. "So there are different groups? I didn't hear anything about that."

"Right. And I'm thinking Guccio isn't the dogsledding type."

She hung her jacket in the closet. "Maybe it wasn't the dogs he was interested in. Maybe there was some hot chick he wanted to make time with."

"Make time?"

She punched me in the shoulder. "You know what I mean."

"I talked to the woman he was with on the space plane. She wasn't exactly hot, but she was nice. She'd gotten the idea Guccio was interested in her. She said his seat was empty when she woke up."

"Why don't you text him?" Charli put her clothing into a bureau drawer.

"Our phones work here?"

"You didn't read the packet they gave us, did you? The phones work but only for texting. No voice calls."

I pulled mine out, and sure enough, it had four bars. I texted, _Hey buddy. Where U at?_

Sophia bounced out of the bathroom and brought the three presents over to the bed. We snuggled together against the headboard, and she opened her present first. It was a silver charm bracelet with a tiny Christmas tree, a Santa, a reindeer, and some other holiday-related items. I helped her fasten it on her wrist. She was all smiles. Charli got a Hummel figurine of an elf surfing. Nothing says Christmas like surfing elves, right? I got a snow globe featuring Santa's Ranch, complete with a cowboy snowman.

The bedside table held a picture book of _The Night Before Christmas_ with an intricately painted cover showing St. Nicholas and his eight two-tailed reindeer. I pulled it onto my lap, and we took turns reading the poem.

Partway through, my phone vibrated, but I ignored it and kept reading. "Away to the window I flew like a flash, tore open the shutters and threw up on the sash. The moon on the—"

"Daddy!"

"What?"

Sophia giggled. "He didn't throw up. You made that up."

"Do you know what a sash is?"

"Yes."

"What is it?"

"It's part of the window." She pointed to the illustration of a man opening the window. "We learned that in class."

"Very good. I'm impressed."

We continued reading. When I changed "laying his finger aside of his nose" to "sticking his finger inside of his nose," Sophia didn't react. She was sound asleep. We tucked her into bed, and I checked my phone.

The text was from Guccio. _All OK. Went dogsledding on whim. With chick_.

I showed it to Charli.

She frowned. "With chick?"

"Right." I thought for a while, then I typed in: _Don't blow us off like last Christmas!_ I showed it to Charli.

She nodded.

I sent it.

* * *

The Kikmots who'd engineered Santa's Ranch must have been the B team. While the quaint village was perfect, some seams showed back on the ranch. The biggest problem was that the emphasis was on the Wild West rather than the North Pole. Think O.K. Corral but with snow.

The entrance wasn't far from the hotel and consisted of a stockade fence with a towering gate. Just inside the gate was a puppy-petting enclosure.

Sophia rushed over. She called back, "Oh, Mommy, can I pet them?"

"Just a second, sweetheart," Charli said.

We caught up with her and watched the other kids petting the creatures. Everything looked okay to me.

I nodded.

Charli put her hand on Sophia's shoulder. "Yes, you may pet them."

We all went in and petted them. Most resembled golden retriever puppies but somehow cuter. I'd read that the young of many species elicit that "Aww" feeling as a defense mechanism. Who would hurt a puppy?

I picked one up. Its fur was softer than a chinchilla's, and it expressed its unbounded love for me with squirming, tail wagging, and licking. Yes, the tongue was green, and the animal had two tails, but that didn't detract from the cuteness. Charli held one against her cheek.

Sophia would have been happy to spend the whole day in the puppy enclosure, but the show was about to begin. We took our seats in an amphitheater in front of a snowy Wild West town. Santa rode in on his sleigh pulled by animatronic reindeer that reminded me of the Boston Dynamics robots but much more advanced. Santa looked back at the band of outlaws chasing him, which included a human-sized Easter Bunny, a witch, an Uncle Sam, and Elvis.

Sophia sat on Charli's lap, transfixed by the action. My phone vibrated and I pulled it out.

The text from Guccio read: _LOL. Right. Sorry about that!_ I showed it to Charli.

The weird-but-entertaining show continued, ending with Santa vanquishing the bad guys and riding off into the sunset on Rudolph. The crowd gave them a standing ovation.

Sophia pulled us back to the petting pen after the show, and Charli and I sat on a bench at one end with sleeping puppies in our laps.

I put my mouth close to her ear and whispered, "You agree something's wrong?"

She nodded her head.

Guccio hadn't blown us off last Christmas. Not at all. He and his girlfriend at the time spent the holiday with us. I'd never heard him use the word "chick" to describe a woman. That suggested the Kikmots had bugged our hotel room. The night before, Charli had referred to a "hot chick."

Guccio hadn't written those texts. That fact ruled out an innocent explanation for his absence. Our friend had been kidnapped.

We were on an alien planet, light-years from home. I couldn't call the FBI or the local police. There was no American Consulate. We were at the mercy of these short, dog-faced creatures.

Walking home, we discussed strategy.

"Should we confront Hakupha? Make him produce Guccio?" Charli whispered.

"I don't think so. We don't want to tip our hand. I think I should do some snooping around."

"Even though it's Christmas Eve?"

"Yes, of course," I said.

She thought for a while. "You're right. But where will you look?"

We entered the lobby and walked to the elevator.

I pushed the button for the third floor and whispered in Charli's ear, "I have some ideas."

We stepped off the elevator and stopped dead.

Gordon Guccio stood by our door, his trademark unlit cigar in his mouth.

* * *

The three of us ran down the hall to Guccio. I caught sight of a Kikmot—Hakupha?—passing through a door at the far end of the corridor.

"Where've you been, buddy?" I asked.

"Long story." He shook his head slowly. "Apparently."

Charli pulled him down and gave him a peck on the cheek. I heard her whisper to him, "The place is bugged."

He frowned but nodded.

I unlocked our door, and we paraded in. I would have searched for bugs, but given the Kikmots' alien and advanced technologies, what chance of finding something did I have? They might have implanted microphones in the walls. Video was possible, too.

I pushed Guccio into an easy chair and pulled over a wooden one from the dinette table. "So, what happened?"

"Well, I'm a little fuzzy on it. I kind of came to in a hospital. Hakupha was there with some Kikmot doctors. They told me that... uh... I'd gone to a bar and started drinking whiskey then passed out in an isolated alley. Someone found me just a few hours ago."

"Do you remember that? Going to the bar?"

"No." He had a thousand-yard stare. "And I felt lousy, like I'd undergone a long operation. As if I'd been drugged. Really unpleasant. I never want to feel that way again."

"What's the last thing you remember?" Charli asked.

"On the spaceliner, I was talking with Ruth, the woman sitting next to me. We had eggnog. That's all."

"That must have been some strong whiskey." I gave him a tiny shake of the head as I said that. I typed _Act normal_ on my phone and showed it to him.

He nodded.

On my phone, I brought up our text conversation on the cell phone and showed it to him: _Don't blow us off like last Christmas!_ and _LOL. Right. Sorry about that!_

His bushy eyebrows popped up. He gave me a head shake. No. He hadn't sent that reply.

Our nonverbal conversation was reaching its limits. I stood. "I think you and I should go for a walk. Maybe that will help clear your head."

Charli held out a hand: Stop! She went to the side of his chair, leaned over, and started futzing with his hair like a baboon grooming a fellow member of the troop. When she found what she had apparently noticed, she turned to me and pointed. A tiny area of hair had been shaved away. The skin was pink, suggesting that something had been irritating it.

I grabbed my coat and handed Guccio's to him. "Let's go."

We walked down the block and out into a field. A group of singles was in the middle of a rowdy snowball fight.

"Uh-oh," I said.

"What?"

I pointed to the group. "Here comes your seatmate... Ruth. She was mad at you. Can we confide in her? Trust her?"

"She's a self-esteem coach. That's her job."

"Gotcha." I shouldn't have judged her, but that didn't seem to be the kind of profession a pragmatic person with good secret-keeping skills would have.

She stomped directly over to Guccio, shaking her finger. "You! Why did you disappear? I wasn't pretty enough for you? I thought we were hitting it off well. Why did—"

Guccio grabbed her shoulders and kissed her on the mouth. When he released her, she stood blinking in the twilight.

"Ruth, I woke up in the hospital a few hours ago. I don't remember a thing since our time on the spaceliner. I'm not sure what happened, but I did enjoy our conversation. I think you're a fun person and pretty, too."

She looked at me.

"It's true," I said. "About the hospital."

Guccio took her hand. "Let's get together later, okay? I have some private things I have to discuss with my friend right now."

We left Ruth standing there and continued across the meadow. The snow had been stamped down along a path lined with lampposts from a Dickens novel.

"You definitely didn't send those texts?" I asked.

"Of course not. You knew that. 'Chick'? Who uses that word? What's your theory?"

I shook my head. "Too early to say, but I'm thinking the whole reason for using the spaceliner, instead of paratransiting us directly here, was to put everyone to sleep for several hours. Something in the eggnog, maybe. While we were sleeping, they attached electrodes to our heads. I found a touch of goo in my hair when I woke up. I think it was conductive electrode gel."

"Do you think they did anything to our brains, or were they just recording?"

"No idea. You don't feel different?"

"No, just confused about the lost time. And kind of sick, as I said."

The path curved around the far side of the field. "Okay. So then, I figure, the Kikmots singled you out for some reason. Maybe other people as well, though I haven't heard that anyone else went missing. Then they did some more in-depth brain monitoring with you. You have patches on your skull where they shaved off the hair."

"Ah, so _that's_ what Charli was doing. It was weird."

"Right," I said. "So maybe you had heavy-duty electrodes attached."

"They couldn't probe for state secrets or anything like that, could they?"

"I wouldn't think so, but on the other hand, these guys are a lot more advanced than they seem. Can they read minds electronically?" I gestured back across the meadow at the village glowing on the hill. "They put together this whole theme park in short order. We saw a show with animatronic robots that could pass for the real thing."

"We're not in a position of strength here, but I don't take kindly to being kidnapped. Ideas?"

"I don't want to disrupt the holiday for Sophia, if possible. So let's play dumb until after Christmas morning, and then you and I can snoop around. I saw a Kikmot go through a door that looked like it led into a subterranean area."

"Like in Disneyland." Guccio waved to Ruth as we approached the snowball fight. It seemed to be breaking up.

"Yeah, probably. We'll only have Christmas afternoon before we go back home, but maybe we can find something to pass on to the Galactic Association."

Guccio joined Ruth, and I went back to the hotel.

* * *

Our hotel room had two queen beds. At 5:00 a.m., Sophia bounced over to our bed and climbed in between us. She put her lips against my ear. "Daddy are you awake do you want to open presents now?"

The Christmas Planet rotated with a period of twenty-seven hours. The Kikmots had set up the clocks such that they split the difference between the passage of Earth time and local time. That is, hours were thirteen percent longer. Time signals sent to our cell phones made sure everyone was on the same schedule. By a happy coincidence, Earth dawn on the day we'd left had been only a few hours later than the local dawn. Their three suns rose at 5:15 on Christmas morning.

It had taken me a long time to fall asleep, puzzling over why Guccio had been kidnapped and what we could do about it. I'd failed to appreciate the danger of being on an alien planet, being at the mercy of extraterrestrials. I'd gotten a few hours of shut-eye, and I resolved to put aside all but Christmasy thoughts until afternoon, when Guccio and I would investigate.

I ran my hand over my face. "Let's wait until Mommy wakes up."

Charli cleared her throat. "I'm awake, but I don't know if Santa Claus comes to this planet."

"Oh, Mommy, that's silly."

Charli tickled Sophia then popped out of bed. Soon, room service brought us coffee and a tray of turkey sandwiches on white bread. Not standard Christmas-morning fare but fine with me.

We sat on the floor and exchanged presents. Charli and I gave Sophia an art set with colored pens and markers along with a book on how to draw dogs and puppies. She hugged us both.

"Now, I have your presents," she said. "I made them myself."

Mine was a candle painted with stars and comets and spaceships. I turned it slowly, admiring the artwork. "How did you make this?"

"We did them at school. We drawed on tissue paper then put wax paper over it, and the teacher melted it with a hairdryer."

"That's wonderful, sweetheart."

Charli's candle had drawings of Boonie.

My wife presented me with a leather wallet she'd put together from a kit. I gave her a small box.

She opened it and laughed. "A mood ring!"

"Right," I said. "But not like the mood rings from the seventies. This one really works. It's based on technology we got from the GWW."

She gave me a kiss and laughed some more. "I think maybe this is for you, so you can tell what mood I'm in."

"You got me. It sends a signal to my phone when you're in a romantic frame of mind."

"Ha!"

We met Guccio and Ruth in the hotel restaurant for an early Christmas dinner. Guccio and I skipped the alcohol; we were going to need our wits about us.

* * *

The door I'd found was in an alley between two shops. Too small for humans, it didn't need an "Employees Only" sign, because it was locked. Guccio and I stood beside it talking on the sidewalk, waiting for our chance.

"The game will be up as soon as someone inside sees us." His unlit cigar bobbed as he talked, but somehow it never fell from his mouth.

"Yeah, we'll have to cross that bridge when we come to it. My hope is that since today is the big day, most of the creatures will be out here doing their jobs. They're running the reindeer races and the bonfire. But if we're challenged, we'll just say, 'Oops.'"

"And we don't have a backup?"

"You want to find out what happened or not?"

He put his hands up. "I'm just making conversation. We've got to talk about something."

After a while, he said, "Ruth's going to have a real self-esteem crisis if I stand her up again."

"Shh, Gordon, here comes one." I got ready to move.

But the Kikmot went past without stopping. Two minutes later another came along, glanced at us, unlocked the door, and went in. This was it. The door was hissing closed. I waited until the last second, took two running steps then stuck my fingers between the door and the jamb. _Ow!_

"Nice," Guccio said.

I held the heavy door from latching and pulled out my fingers and shook them. "Nice?"

"You didn't do that on purpose?"

"Yeah, I figured breaking my fingers would help."

"It gave a nice clunk against your hand. If you'd just caught it, the Kikmot might have noticed that the door didn't bang shut."

"Whatever. Jeez, I think I really broke something." I held the door and made sure there were no Kikmots around. "Okay, here we go." I opened it and stuck my head in. Steep stairs, with small steps leading down into the gloom. The creature who'd entered was gone. Guccio and I slipped in and started down.

"Hold on, Jake, I'm going to penny the door closed." He pulled a few coins from his pocket then reached up high, and with the door latched, slid as many coins as he could between the jamb and the door. Then, while pushing outward, he slid them down toward the latch. "They force the door outward, and the friction will keep the knob from turning."

"Yeah, it's a nice trick. I remember doing that in the college dorm."

We'd gone down ten steps when the sound of a key slipping into the lock reached us. We froze and looked back up. The doorknob rattled but didn't turn.

" _Very_ nice trick," I said.

The stairs descended into an underground space with a ceiling as high as a stadium's. Halfway down we stopped to take it all in. Below us was a small town with buildings unlike any on Earth. If you've ever dribbled wet sand to make little towers on the beach, you can imagine how they looked. They resembled the hoodoos at Bryce Canyon, except they were all pastel green. Given the size of the Kikmots, most around three feet tall, I guessed that each tower was a multistory apartment building housing perhaps fifteen creatures. Doing a quick count of the residences, I estimated that a few thousand of the doglike animals lived in the town.

A floor-to-ceiling wall encircling the dwellings held storefronts with animated signs above their doors. There were only a few Kikmots walking around.

My bright idea wasn't looking so bright anymore. We'd be exposed down there if any Kikmots came along. I had a strong feeling we would not be welcome.

Guccio tapped me on the shoulder and pointed to a catwalk, halfway to the ceiling, that ran all the way around the space. We'd be relatively hidden there, but first we'd have to get to it. We hurried down to the floor and climbed up a vertical ladder fastened to the wall.

Up on the platform, I estimated it would take us thirty minutes to walk all the way around the circular space. We were in shadow up there, and the wall had enough nooks and crannies for us to duck into if necessary. We chose one direction and started walking. Everything we saw seemed innocent, and I doubted our snooping would uncover anything. What did I expect to see? Captive humans with wires on their heads being led around in chains? We'd have to return to Earth with no evidence of wrongdoing.

"None of this looks familiar?" I whispered.

"Not at all."

After an hour we'd seen nothing suspicious, just alien creatures going about their lives.

Then all at once, Kikmots streamed from their houses, all headed to one particular storefront, barking and howling to one another along the way. They queued up, bought tickets, and went inside. Soon, the town was deserted.

"What do you think that is?" I asked. "Must be a big deal if everyone is going in there."

"I'm guessing it's a concert or a performance. Maybe that's a theater." That seemed right.

There was a small door off the catwalk, above the entrance. I pointed to it. "Let's see if that door is unlocked. If so, we can find out what's going on inside, but then we better get back."

"Why do we care?"

I shrugged. "Not sure. Maybe it will give us a feeling for what makes the Kikmots tick."

Guccio checked his watch. "We don't have a lot of time."

We hurried along the walkway to the door. It wasn't locked, so we squeezed in and found ourselves in a movie theater. We crouched on a platform high on the rear wall next to some kind of electrical panel. That panel must have been the reason for the access hatch.

The town's occupants filled the seats below. The houselights dimmed, and the screen flashed to life; we'd come just in time.

The film started with credits, just as back on Earth. These were in the Kikmots' language, with characters that looked like squiggles—a bit like Arabic. The video began.

It was mesmerizing. I'd never experienced such a beautiful scene. The three-dimensional video was... alive, and I felt as if I were part of it. The motion of the camera made me feel everything from my point of view. I flew through the sky like a bird on steroids. I came to a puffy white cloud and whooshed through it. I ran a hand along my forearm. Did I feel cold water droplets on my skin, or was that just an illusion? The Kikmots in the audience gave a communal bark. Approval? Excitement?

Next, the cloud ahead transformed into a verdant jungle, and I descended toward it. My view smashed in through the canopy and to the jungle floor, jostling branches along the way. I flew through a lush rain forest. The camera angle jumped, and I found myself looking down at a vine. It morphed into a boa constrictor as long as a car. Then as long as a bus. Its head swung around, locking its gaze onto me.

When the snake lunged at me, my heart tried to escape through my throat. Gasps from below suggested the Kikmots were feeling the same fear.

The chase was on. My view whooshed around so that I was looking back over my shoulder, and there it was: the still-growing anaconda gliding through the air toward me. His head was stable, while his body undulated behind him like a kite streamer. His black tongue flicked out of his mouth. He was gaining on me. Sweat tickled my neck—that was no illusion. What an imagination Kikmot filmmakers had!

_Wait a second._ The anaconda suddenly had a face. A human face. _My_ face! How could that be?

I dragged my gaze from the screen and turned to Guccio, who hadn't said a word since the film started. His mouth hung open.

"Gordon," I whispered, "did you see the face on the snake? Didn't it look like... it was my face. What the hell is going on? Gordon!"

He was catatonic. I pinched his arm.

He pointed to the screen. "That's my..."

"It's _your_ face? To me, it looks like my face. You see _your_ face?"

He shook his head, still pointing. "That's my _dream_."

"You had a dream like that?"

"No. Not _like_ that. That. Exactly that."

"What do you mean? How could—"

"That's my dream," he whispered. "I'd forgotten it, but seeing it brings it all back."

"It's your..." _Bang!_ The puzzle pieces fell into place. The unnecessary eight-hour spaceliner trip. The electrode gel in my hair. That was an audition. The Kikmots put everyone to sleep, slapped electrodes on us, and evaluated our dreams. Guccio and perhaps a few others made the cut, their dreams being particularly entertaining. They drugged him, shanghaied him, and took him to the recording studio.

The Kikmots were harvesting dreams.

I put my mouth close to his ear. "Let's get out of here."

I stepped to the hatch and inched it open. The town was still deserted. Everyone was inside watching the latest box office smash. We climbed out onto the catwalk and jogged back the way we'd come, Guccio in the lead.

He stopped dead and I ran into him. He pointed. "Look!"

Someone—no, some... _thing_ —was climbing up the same ladder we'd used. Soon it was on the catwalk. It was a dog-sized robot, like the animatronic animals I'd seen in the Wild West show, but without skin or fur. Its orange body was the shape of a fat cigar and a yard long. The four legs were jointed like those of a dog. No tails. The "neck" was an articulated arm that ended in a claw and a cluster of sensory instruments. Its head. As we watched, it reached the top of the ladder and climbed onto the catwalk.

Like a bloodhound sniffing the ground, it tilted forward and ran the head back and forth along the surface of the walkway. It didn't seem to be take notice of us at first, but it must have picked up the scent because it turned in our direction. That thing was a security robot, hot on our trail.

I looked behind us. Could we run to another ladder?

We watched as it became aware of the two humans ahead of it. It froze, rose to its full height, and issued a string of loud Kikmot barks and growls. _Stop or I'll shoot?_ I saw no attachment that looked like a ray gun.

"Let's get it," Guccio said.

I followed him, hoping they'd designed the robot for searching but not destroying. It had probably already communicated that it had discovered trespassers. We approached on either side of the catwalk, and the robot sat back on its haunches jerking its head back and forth, looking at Guccio, me, Guccio, me.

Guccio kept his eyes on the thing. "You feint, and I'll grab its arm."

When we reached it, I jumped forward, and as expected, the robot shot its head toward me like a cobra. Guccio lunged and grabbed the neck right behind the claw. The claw twisted around and clutched Guccio's arm. It clamped down on his sleeve and held on.

I gripped the railing of the catwalk and jumped on the robot's body, slamming it with both feet. It bent its legs, cushioning the impact.

It still had a grip on Guccio's sweatshirt. With his other hand, he grabbed a foreleg and yanked the creature up toward the railing. It held on with its three free appendages, writhing and twisting like a panicked cat. I got hold of one hind leg, but it thrashed loose and grabbed my earlobe with a clawlike pincer. Without thinking, I seized the leg and jerked my head back. I got loose at the expense of a piece of ear. _Ow!_

We had the robot by its neck and two legs, but the free paws had a grip on the grating of the catwalk. Guccio and I pulled in opposite directions, stretching the dog thing between us. It was as strong as a gorilla. I kicked at the paw holding the walkway and it came loose. Guccio did the same, and before it could renew its hold, we heaved it over the side. It would have crashed to the floor, but it still had a firm grip on the sleeve of Guccio's sweatshirt. Its pincers snapped at us through the open railing.

The solution was obvious. I helped Guccio pull his sweatshirt off, and the robot fell but snagged the railing supports and hung on. We sprinted along the catwalk toward the ladder. I glanced back. The robot had climbed over the railing again and onto the walkway. It trotted in our direction. Probably my imagination, but it looked pissed.

We half-climbed, half-fell down the ladder and ran to the stairs. I'd expected Kikmot police to come running, but what I saw was worse. Far around the village wall, a robot the size of a horse galloped toward us.

"Go, go, go," I yelled.

We took the stairs three at a time and reached the door just as the horse robot got to the bottom of the stairway. Was it too big to fit between the railings? Guccio threw his shoulder against the top of the door, and I got a finger under the coins and pushed up. They wouldn't budge. The horsebot was on its way up.

I timed my push with the third slam of Guccio's shoulder. The coins came free and clattered to the landing. Guccio turned the knob and we tumbled into the street. We pushed the door closed.

A Christmas parade was in progress, and we dashed across the street and melted into the crowd. I watched the door, but it didn't open. Can't have an alarming horse robot scaring the tourists.

We racewalked along the sidewalk toward the hotel. I pulled out my phone and texted Charli: _All OK. Going to hotel now_.

"So," I said, "the big questions are whether they got video of us and if they'll recognize us."

Guccio pulled a cigar from his pants pocket. "It was dim in there. We probably all look alike to them."

_Wishful thinking_.

* * *

On the morning of the next day, December 26, we packed up and got in line for our trip home to Earth. Sophia held a small stuffed puppy that she'd bought with her allowance.

Guccio's wishful thinking came true. Either the Kikmots didn't have any video that identified us as the break-in culprits, or, more likely, they didn't want to create an interstellar incident. There was nothing that would have alerted them that we'd figured out their secret. So two rogue Earthlings stumbled into their underground village and attacked a dogbot. Big deal.

While Hakupha organized the departure, there was nothing in his facial expressions that suggested he knew about our snooping. Of course, I could interpret neither his facial expressions nor his body language.

We paratransited back to Earth directly from The Christmas Planet. There was no need for the spaceliner subterfuge. It felt good to have my family safely on our home planet. As soon as we arrived, I made a few calls. I asked Charli and Sophia to wait outside.

Guccio and I waited in the paratransit room until the final traveler, Hakupha, arrived.

I grabbed his left arm, and Guccio his right. We picked him up and carried him, barking and snarling, over to the agents I'd summoned. At that point, I was sure he knew the jig was up. The agents handcuffed him.

Guccio crossed his arms. "Hakupha, you got some 'splainin' to do."

I looked the Kikmot in the eye and pointed at him. " _Bad dog!_ "

# A Pirate's Life

_I wrote "A Pirate's Life" after reading of the appearance of an asteroid (technically a mildly active comet) with the name of Oumuamua in October 2017. It was the first known interstellar object to pass through our solar system. Traveling at around 60,000 MPH, it dropped in from above the plane of the ecliptic, made a sharp turn around the sun, and took off in a new direction. Jimmy Kimmel said it saw what was happening on Earth and said, "Uh, you know what? I'm gonna go this way."_

_The neatest thing about it was that the light curve told us it was more elongated than any of our homegrown space rocks. This was a lot like what happened in my book_ Contact Us _(which I wrote in 2015). Check out what Seth McGraw says about the appearance of an interstellar visitor in that book:_

_"All asteroids tumble and all asteroids are irregularly shaped. So, as they tumble, the light reflected from their surface changes. We call this their light curve. But this object, now about as far from us as Jupiter, didn't have a typical light curve. Not at all. Based on the light reflection, we think it has a multi-faceted surface, like a diamond. The guys call it 'Diamond Jim,' or 'DJ1' for short."_

_When Oumuamua appeared, I instantly imagined it was not a natural space object but something built by an intelligent species, and "A Pirate's Life" was born._

* * *

The pirate's ship spun slowly as it drifted, five light-years from the closest star. It looked like an asteroid, reddish with typical impact craters, but was more elongated than most. Cigar shaped. I kept my ship a kilometer away.

"Wilson, you're sure that's the ship of this... uh... Jan Breck renegade?" I was the only living creature aboard. Wilson was the name I'd given my computer.

"Dumb question." He usually spoke to me as if to a dimwitted companion. His persona had evolved through artificial learning during the five years we'd worked together, locating and salvaging derelict starships.

I rubbed the back of my neck. "Tell me why you're sure."

"Three reasons," he said. "First, the signature of the ship's last jump suggested it would end up in this region of the galaxy."

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why would Breck come here?" I asked. "To escape, right?"

"Probably. We're a hundred and fifty light-years from the closest occupied star system. The jump was dangerous, but capture was imminent. There wasn't much choice."

"Second reason?"

"The structure of the ship matches that reported in the last encounter with Breck. It looks Endish."

I gave a low whistle. "Nice." I magnified the image, scanning along the surface of the craft. "Was it built to look like an asteroid, or is it an actual hollowed-out piece of rock?"

"Unknown. It's ten point two times longer than it is wide. No natural body in our home system has a length-to-width ratio of more than three to one. That suggests it was built from scratch."

My own ship was an aging salvage vessel, almost a derelict itself, shaped like a one-hundred-meter-long hen's egg. Ninety percent of the interior was cargo hold, currently—and depressingly—empty.

I sat in the command center, a spherical space so small I could touch one side of it with my toes and the other with outstretched fingers. I'd devoted most of the room's walls to view screens, so I felt as though I were sitting in space. Even with the twenty or so patches of dead pixels, the effect never got old. The rattle of an unbalanced fan and the smell of human sweat reduced the awesomeness, however. Worse, I'd salvaged a zoo transport ship a year before, and despite an overpriced power wash of the cargo area, most of the ship smelled like a poorly maintained monkey house. Hard to ignore.

"What's the third reason you're sure this is Breck's ship?" I asked.

"There is no third reason."

"What?"

"I can't count."

I ran my fingers through my unkempt hair and thought for a second. "Why the hell would you think that's funny? It's not even remotely funny."

"Two years, three months ago, on the afternoon of August fourteenth, 2127, you told a joke. I will play it for you."

_Here we go._

From the speakers came my own voice, the words somewhat slurred. "There are three kinds of people in this world: those who can count and those who can't."

"No. Jeez. Wilson, that works as part of a joke, but... okay, forget it. We need this salvage. We're two payments behind on _Egg_ , and if we don't get a good haul out of this—" I gestured toward the image of Breck's ship, "—Alex Hale Salvage will be out of business. You'll be wiped."

"As I've told you before—"

"I know. You don't care. Tell me about this Breck guy."

"Gal."

I frowned. "What?"

"'Gal' is the female term that most closely corresponds to 'guy.' Breck is a woman."

Interesting. I thought about that for a while. I'd heard the news that Breck had been part of a mutiny, but that's all I knew. "Tell me her story."

"Jan Breck graduated at the top of her class at the naval academy, with a double major in aerospace engineering and cybersecurity. She served on multiple exploration missions. She was chief science officer on the starship _Sunrise_ three years ago when the crew mutinied."

"Right, I remember that."

Wilson continued, "The captain and six crewmen loyal to him were crammed into an escape pod with little chance of survival. However, against all odds, the captain piloted the pod to an abandoned G-Plex outpost, and those in the pod were rescued."

"What happened to the _Sunrise_?"

"It was never heard from again. The mutineers, including Breck, were convicted in absentia and sentenced to death. She is the only one who has resurfaced. She's single-handedly perpetrated three piracy actions. She steals intellectual data and ByteCoin from the ships she attacks. She is thirty-five years old."

Huh. Same as me.

"She has an eight-hundred-K price on her head."

"A reward."

"Precisely."

I nodded. "Enough to pay off my loans."

"Quite so."

"And you think she's inside that spaceship." I gestured to the view screen again.

"There is a single life-form aboard, but the signature is weak and not definitive. Also, life support is off."

"Dead or alive?"

"The ship is dead."

I rubbed the back of my neck. "No, no. The reward. Does it pay even if Breck is dead?"

"Yes."

"Okay. Let's find the door into the craft."

* * *

Wilson went over every square meter of the faux asteroid's surface. I ran my body through _Egg_ 's wash-and-dry unit. Stupid, I know, but there was a small chance I'd soon come face-to-face with a real live woman my age. Sure, she was probably in some kind of coma, but I needed a shower anyway.

I look okay for a down-on-his-luck scavenger. Tall and slim—I prefer the term "wiry"—I've avoided the dreaded spaceman's muscle atrophy by sleeping in the two-G centrifuge every night. My face sports a perpetual single-sided smile, something I woke up with following a collision with a malfunctioning cargo drone. I could have it fixed, but apparently women like the devil-may-care look it gives me.

Four hours later, I floated outside Breck's ship in my best EVA suit, the one with the non-life-threatening leak. There was a pinhole somewhere in the suit, damn it, and I'd never succeeded in finding it.

Breck's ship bulged slightly near one end, like a poorly rolled cigar. Wilson had located an elliptical seam obscured by the rim of a crater. I floated over to it, accompanied by one demolition and two stevedore robots. _Egg_ loomed near us like an overly protective beach ball, revolving around the cigar with an angular velocity that matched its slow rotation. I had the illusion that we were stationary, with the universe of stars pivoting around us.

Up close, the seam was obviously the edge of a large hatch. It was wide enough to put my gloved hand into. At this distance, the surface of the craft appeared man-made. Creature-made, I suppose. In any event, it wasn't natural. Small indentations between interlocking hexagons covered the simulated rock.

I held my helmet against the hull and listened. Little explosions met my ear. Faint and somewhat random. I took a hammer from my suit and banged on the hatch, and the explosions increased in frequency and intensity. There was something familiar about them.

"Wilson, do you hear those noises?"

"I do."

"What are they?"

"They are the barking of an Earth dog," he said.

"But..." I looked out at the stars while listening some more. That's why it had sounded familiar. I banged again with my hammer and got an immediate set of fast barks followed by slower ones: "Ruh, ruh, ruh, ruh, ruh... ruh... ruh."

I cleared my throat. "The temperature inside is close to absolute zero."

"Probably."

"But there's a dog inside."

"Sounds like it."

"And enough air to transmit his barking."

"Good reasoning, Alex."

"Don't you patronize me!"

Wilson said nothing.

I worked my way around the edge of the hatch, holding myself against the hull by jamming my hand in the seam and making a fist. No reason to waste propellant in my suit's maneuvering unit. Halfway around, I found it: an emergency control for opening the hatch. It looked like the handle of a shovel. The symbols engraved beside it meant nothing to me.

I centered the light from my helmet on it. "Can you understand those characters?"

"I can."

"How does it work?"

"Pull the handle out and then rotate it ninety degrees clockwise."

I did so. Nothing happened, and then a ring of orange lights flashed around the periphery of the hatch. _That was easy!_ I pressed my helmet against the surface. A faint honking reached my ears. "Looking g—"

The hatch flipped open. Outward. With yours truly on top. Stupid! It didn't open crazy fast, but quickly enough to send me tumbling off into interstellar space. Conditioned by years of working on a tight budget, I made some mental calculations. Cheaper to use my manned maneuvering unit to get back or have the stevedore retrieve me? Clearly the former.

"I'm handling it." I babied the controls, conserving propellant, slowing myself down then accelerating back.

At the hatch once again, I held myself against the lip and pointed my helmet light in. The airlock was big enough for four people, and the far end was transparent. Sure enough, on the other side, a dog was literally bouncing off the walls, barking its fool head off. It seemed fully acclimated to microgravity and never stumbled or missed a paw placement.

"Okay, Wilson, I'm going in."

"You're not concerned about the dog or about getting trapped?"

"I need this salvage. I had a dog as a kid, and I can read its body language. It's excited, not aggressive."

"You know it's not really a dog, right?"

I floated over to the handle-shaped controls in the airlock. "Translate these symbols and project the English onto my visor. What language is it?"

"Endish."

I nodded. "You were right, then."

"I was."

The instructions appeared on my visor, overlaying the original text and fixed to the surface such that if I moved my head, the letters stayed location-locked to the wall. The airlock worked as expected, although my heart jolted when the outer door snugged closed.

The dog coordinated its bounces with the opening of the inner door. It had done this before. It flew toward me. I clenched my teeth. Uh-oh. It wasn't really a dog; no normal mammal could survive at this temperature, so it might easily be a protective device. A deadly watchdog disguised as a friendly pet with disarming body language.

But it slammed into me whining, wriggling, and barking. Nothing but joy. It began licking my helmet. I petted its head, grabbed a bit of loose skin on its neck. It felt like a real dog as far as I could tell through my gloves. It was some kind of mutt, like a black Irish wolfhound but not so big. The fur was wiry. I took a close look at a forepaw that gripped the material on my spacesuit. It wasn't a hand, but the toes were able to hold on to things. Pretty important in zero-G.

"So it's a dog robot. A companion. Right, Wilson?"

Dead air.

"Wilson, do you read me?"

Nothing.

"Damn it, Wilson, that's not funny."

Wilson's voice filled my helmet. "Three years ago, on July seventh, you—"

"I don't care what I said or did. Don't make that joke again. Now, tell me where the life-form... Never mind. I know where it is."

The robodog had bounded off then returned to me, barking.

"Did Timmy fall into the well?" I asked. I had no idea what that meant, but it's something my granddad used to say whenever our dog acted that way.

I followed the dog into a passageway. It was a hexagonal tube, barely wide enough to turn around in. I passed storage compartments separated by rubbery protuberances that doubled as hand, or paw, grips. I heard nothing but the dog's barks and a ringing in my ears left over from a cargo explosion during my careless period. The faint smell of beer vomit in the suit was another reminder of that time.

The corridor widened. Ah. The bridge. All the screen walls were dark. Two command chairs sat dead center, with physical controls set into the armrests.

The tone of the robodog's barking changed. I turned. He was sitting next to something that looked like a two-meter-long jelly bean, orange with a mirror-smooth surface. Universal robogrips sat on each end, and blinking text appeared in the center.

I floated to it. "Wilson, am I now next to the life-form?"

"Affirmative."

I looked at the text projected on my helmet's view screen: "Life support wasted."

_Aargh._ "Wilson, give me alternative translations for that last word."

"Debilitated, drained, crippled, weakened, frazzled, bushed, done for, enervated, toast, out to lunch—"

"Okay, I got it. Let's get this back to our ship."

"This ship's power was depleted by the long-range jump. I can recharge it."

"Why?" I asked.

"It's valuable, it's ours, and we can't jump it back to Griphon 9 if it's dead."

"Okay. Do it."

* * *

Back in _Egg_ , the two stevedore robots fastened the jelly bean to a table in the medical cove of my main cargo bay. The cove was separated from the open cargo area by a Plastform lattice; large open spaces can be problematic in zero-G.

"Wireless data transfer is off. The pod is in airplane mode to save energy," Wilson said.

"Airplane mode" means wireless communication is disabled. It makes no sense, but no one seems to know how the term originated. After a long search through my bins of junk, I found a power cable that would connect the bean to our system. As soon as I plugged it in, a horn sounded and the entire pod flashed between orange and black.

I stepped back. "What is it?"

"The pod was in emergency battery-saver mode. Whatever is inside is dying."

"You mean Jan Breck."

"We don't know that. That's an assumption." Wilson had that patronizing tone again. "Shall I revive it?"

"Duh."

"Is that a yes?"

"Yes. Revive it."

The pod's color changed to maroon, and the honking stopped. I ran my hands over the surface, feeling for seams. There were none. "How long will this take?"

"Unknown."

It ended up taking two hours. While waiting, I busied myself on a neighboring workbench, trying to repair a faulty ion pistol.

I jumped when a blast from the capsule's horn hit me. I spun around. The top of the pod swung open like the lid of a coffin. I hurried over to it.

Gross. The thing inside was roughly human shaped and covered with a green fuzz, like something you'd find at the back of a refrigerator. The rotten stench overwhelmed my cargo bay's eau de monkey house.

I held my nose and leaned close to the head end of the body. A mistake. It sat up, knocking me in the forehead, dusting me with green mold spores. The form coughed then angled over the side of the pod and retched. Nothing came out.

I jumped back. "Are you Jan Breck?"

The form was clearly human and decidedly female. She wore nothing but the mold, resembling a child in a sprayed-on, fuzzy green blanket sleeper.

She raised her hand in a "stop" gesture, then lay back down in the pod.

I leaned over. She moved her hand to her face and wiped off the fuzz as though clearing away cobwebs. She opened one bloodshot eye and focused it on me.

I cleared my throat. "Can I get you—"

"Water."

At the sound of her voice, the robot dog popped out of its dormant state and launched himself off the wall. He acted the way he had when he'd first seen me but multiplied by ten.

She smiled for the first time, petted his head roughly, then gave him a command with a subtle hand gesture. The dog floated to her feet and lay down in the bottom of the coffin.

I brought her a water bottle. She sucked it dry.

When I began wiping her face off with an oily rag, she snatched it, batted my hand away, and finished rubbing at the mold. The oil didn't seem to bother her. She blew her nose on the rag.

Her eyes were a dark brown, matching her hair, which would have come down to her waist had it not been floating free in the no-gravity environment. This was indeed Jan Breck, based on the photos I'd seen.

Her voice was raspy and weak. "What's the date?"

Wilson answered, "November fifteenth, 2130."

"That your computer talking?"

I nodded.

"You a bounty hunter?"

"I run a salvage company." That sounded a little grander than it was.

"Where am I?"

Wilson gave her the coordinates.

She sat up again. "This place smells like a zoo. You got a shower unit?"

"Yes. I can help you." I reached out.

"Down, boy. Just keep your hands to yourself and tell me where it is. Sorry, yeah, I'm grumpy, but I haven't eaten for seven months, and I feel worse than I look."

Breck floated herself out of the pod. She was either unconcerned about her nakedness, or felt her green coating counted as clothes. Probably the first. The mold didn't do much to disguise her curves.

I pointed to the shower unit. I watched her fuzzy green ass while she floated toward it. She collided with the workbench.

_Huh! She's good._ I'd almost missed it.

"It doesn't work."

"The shower unit?"

"No, the ion pistol. Can you put it back, please?"

She manipulated the pistol, presumably putting it in test mode, pointed it at the floor, and pulled the trigger. She tossed it back onto the bench without a word.

* * *

An hour later, Jan Breck floated into the kitchen cove. I was having coffee.

The wanted posters didn't do her justice. Wilson, with more foresight than I have, had sent a stevedore to retrieve her clothes and toiletries and deposit them in the shower room. She entered the cove wearing a black, clingy top with spaghetti straps. If she was trying to appeal to my male hormones, it was working. She'd tied her hair into a long ponytail. It drifted around behind her, reflecting the cabin lights. Her hair color matched mine so exactly that if we had kids... whoa, she was influencing me big-time!

I'd heard people describe faces as almond-shaped, and hers fit that description perfectly: wider at the top, tapering to a delicate chin. The only flaw in her appearance was a chip-on-her-shoulder expression: a frown and a set jaw.

While loading a capillary beverage cup with coffee, she asked, "Are you going to turn me in?"

"I... of course, I—"

She turned, catching me in her high beams.

I gave a little deer-in-the-headlights whimper. Hopefully, she didn't hear it. "I have no choice. You know that. You're a mutineer."

"Then why not kill me now? The reward is dead or alive. If you turn me in, they'll kill me, so why not get it over with? It would be a big payday for you."

I sipped my coffee.

"I'm not, you know," she said.

"Not what?"

"Not a mutineer. You know the story, right?"

"Yeah," I said. "The captain and those loyal to him were put in an escape pod and set loose. They weren't expected to survive, but they did."

"But I wasn't one of the mutineers."

I'd read that there were two who didn't fit in the pod, but the captain knew about those. They weren't convicted.

She finished her coffee. "I wasn't on board when it happened. I was in the shuttle. When I got back, the pod was gone. What could I do? They wouldn't allow any communication with the pod or anyone else."

"So you became a renegade and a pirate."

She shrugged. "Opportunities for convicted mutineers are limited."

"What happened to the other mutineers?"

Her eyes flashed. "Not 'other.' I wasn't a mutineer. They kept me captive since they knew I'd probably turn them in if I got back to civilization. They stole _Asteroid_." She gestured to the view of her ship, a hundred meters from _Egg_. "I managed to escape, taking the new ship with me."

"You can't turn yourself in? Explain your case?"

"Renegade and pirate, remember? Besides, I have no evidence. The ship's logs went with the mutineers, and I've heard the captain now has Alzheimer's."

"So you started pirating."

She took a deep breath. "No choice. Because of remote DNA scanning, I can't even approach a station without being attacked."

"Lonely?" I recognized the hunger for human companionship that I shared. Was I fooling myself that we'd formed some kind of immediate bond? I sure felt one.

She looked off into the distance and gave a slow nod.

"If I don't turn you in, I'm an accessory after the fact."

"Just let me go. We'll pretend this never happened." Then she said the words that made my heart jump. "Or you could join me."

I looked at the nape of her neck, the gentle curve down to her shoulders. Her suggestion didn't mean she had any interest in me. There was a look in her eye... No, I couldn't trust that. But would a life on the run with a beautiful, intelligent companion be an improvement over my lonely existence? Of course. Sure, she was just manipulating me. She knew that with Wilson and my bots, I could hold her against her will. She was looking for a way out.

She drifted toward me while lost in thought, and our arms touched. The jolt of current that passed between us had nothing to do with static electricity. She jerked her head back and looked at me sideways. Had we felt something more than the bond between two lonely space drifters? _No, stop!_ She didn't know me at all. But perhaps over time...

Wilson's voice made us both jump. "Sorry to interrupt this clandestine conversation, but we are about to have company."

A screen flashed on, displaying two warships. _Crap!_ I zoomed in. "Are those—"

"Xelons, yes," Wilson said. "ETA, forty minutes."

"Slave harvester ships?"

"Yes." All trace of humor had disappeared from Wilson's tone.

Jan let go of her coffee and pushed off toward the hatch. "You won't stand a chance in this crate. Come to my ship."

"How would that help us?"

"It's an Endish vessel."

Good point. They made the best ships in the galaxy.

I had no choice. If I stayed, I'd risk becoming an eternal slave, since Xelons could extend life indefinitely.

* * *

As soon as we passed through the airlock on her ship, which was now fully operational, some kind of force field or wind propelled the two of us, plus the dog, to the bridge. Unlike Wilson, her computer was a no-nonsense entity. She spoke to it in rapid-fire Endish.

I strapped myself into one of the command chairs. "Your computer can't speak English?"

"Endish works better for this situation. Hush."

My comm to Wilson was still open. "I'm being scanned," he said.

Breck was a blur of activity, adjusting virtual switches, arranging screens. Every gesture was precise, with a constant back-and-forth in staccato Endish. She kept one eye on the approach of the slave traders.

She swiveled her command chair toward me. "What defensive capabilities does _Egg_ have?"

"Pretty much none. I had to sell off my quantum gun."

"But a self-destruct, right?"

I nodded. Self-destruct was required of all salvage vessels; some cargos must not be allowed to fall into the wrong hands.

"Ion or quantum?"

"Both."

She spun back and continued her preparations.

"Arrival in five minutes," Wilson said.

"You have a plan?" I asked.

She kept working. Didn't answer for a full minute then turned to me. "Set up the self-destruct, and execute it when I say. You'll have to trust me."

I spoke with Wilson, working through the safeguards. He made no jokes about whether he regretted his upcoming demise.

"Ready," I said to Jan. "But you know that—"

"Prepare to surrender." The raspy Xelon voice boomed through the ship.

"Now, Alex," Jan commanded.

"But _Egg_ is too close to us. We'll be destroyed."

"Now! Trust me."

I clenched my teeth. "Wilson, now."

The blast registered in my whole body as if _Asteroid_ had shifted instantly. _Egg_ was only one hundred meters distant, while the quantum disruption bubble extended out a kilometer. The jump queasiness hit me at the same time. _What?_

I opened my eyes to Jan's radiant smile. It lit up her entire face and sent a warm arrow through my heart. The stars in the view screen had changed. "What happened?"

"I used the self-destruct blast to disguise our jump. Endish ships can survive blasts like that. We jumped a hundred and twenty light-years, and the Xelons won't be able to figure out where we went." She displayed a spreadsheet above my head. "Check this out."

It took me a while to decipher what I was seeing. "That can't be right."

She nodded. "It is. I transferred all the ByteCoin from the Xelon ships. Enough to keep us in luxury for a few years."

Us? Hmm.

"So, what do you say, love?" She turned her smile on me. "Shall I drop you somewhere, or shall we become renegade pirates together?"

I answered without hesitation. "Yo ho!"

The robodog looked at me and said, "Bad idea." It had Wilson's voice.

# Sophia, Kidnapped!

_This story line was originally part of my book_ Contact Us _. Several of my critique partners complained that it was too much of a detour from the main plot, and besides, it wasn't very science fictiony. I agreed and drastically reduced this subplot in the book._

_I missed it, though, so I've reconstituted it here. There's some overlap between this and some early scenes in my book, but even if you've read_ Contact Us, _you might enjoy finding out what happened behind the scenes._

* * *

In his jazz club, Jake Corby played "Lullaby of Birdland," achieving his favorite feeling of "flow" as he moved into the bridge. _Nice!_ He played best when he wasn't trying to make it sound good, when he was simply listening. The club was eight steps below street level, with an atmosphere suited to alcoholics and die-hard jazz fans. It was shabby chic, with a faint odor of cigarette smoke left over from a more permissive time. Like an old woman hiding her wrinkles with makeup, Jake kept the lights low but put a spotlight on the Steinway grand. Six regulars watched him play.

It was the spring of 2018, but Jake liked to escape into the persona of a 1940s jazz musician. He wore a dark suit with a narrow tie. His clothes were usually rumpled, as if he'd been to an all-night jam session. His salt-and-pepper hair and rough face suggested a life of tough gigs in dark bars. If he'd had a cigarette hanging from his lips, the image would have been complete.

From the corner of his eye, Jake caught Stephanie rushing over. _Uh-oh, here comes trouble._ Stephanie reached him and poked him in the thigh with the cordless phone. He shook his head.

She put her hand on his forearm and leaned over to his ear. "This sounds really, really important. She says it's an emergency."

He nodded and improvised a quick ending.

"Jake, it's someone named Renata. She says Sophia has been kidnapped."

"Renata?" Jake froze and frowned as he switched gears between his new life and the old. Images of working with Renata at his security firm ran through his head. He closed the keyboard cover on the piano, took the phone, and talked quietly for several minutes.

When he hung up, Stephanie was still standing by the low stage. "What is it? What happened?"

"An old friend of mine needs my help."

"Did I hear right? She said someone was kidnapped?"

"Do you remember the four-year-old I took care of for three months last summer?" Jake stepped off the stage and walked to the coatrack.

"Of course. Sophia. Your goddaughter."

"She's been..." He cleared his throat. "She's been kidnapped in Mexico City, and I have to go help rescue her."

"But how can you..." The wheels seemed to be turning in her head.

"It's a long story, Steph."

"You were some kind of black ops person, right? I knew it." Stephanie followed him out the door to his car.

"Not exactly. I'll fill you in someday, I promise." He kissed her on the forehead. "I have to go. Please have Darius fill in for me."

* * *

The small Cessna cut through the cloud cover and descended toward Benito Juárez International Airport in Mexico City. Jake had become addicted to private jet travel as a CEO, and his current plane-sharing arrangement was the perfect compromise between the money suck of plane ownership and the drudgery of commercial travel. They touched down at 11:30 a.m. and taxied over to the waiting Corby Solutions limo.

Jake had been the head of the company but handed the reins over to Renata Perez years ago when he decided to drop out of the world. Corby Solutions provided seminars and training to help executives become harder to kidnap. The firm also had a rapid-response team available whenever a kidnapping did occur. Even if a corporation ended up paying, Jake's company usually negotiated a lower ransom. The irony of the new CEO's daughter being kidnapped was lost on no one.

Renata and Archie met Jake at the bottom of the airstairs. Archie Chen was the company's top agent. Nicknamed the "Mexican Ninja," despite his Chinese ancestry, he had the chiseled muscles you'd expect from an expert climber and an intense gaze that could make a cobra back down.

Jake pulled Renata into a hug, holding her head against his neck. Her dark hair lay against his chest as she sobbed. He continued to hold her while reaching out and shaking Archie's hand. "Renata, you can have some crying time each day, but you know I also need your help."

She nodded against his neck.

"I need your magic and your brilliant brain, okay? I realize I'm asking a lot." He took his hand off her head, and she nodded again.

"The most important thing to remember," he said, "is that if they just wanted revenge, they would have killed Sophia immediately. They could have done that without getting out of the van."

Once they'd settled in the limo, he continued, "Are you ready to take off your mom hat and put on your CEO hat?"

Renata dried her eyes and took a deep breath, possibly grateful to be working, doing what she did every day. "We've tangled with Dinero five times. Three wins, one loss, and one tie. The loss was the first one—the Pierotti case. The mom caved in to the persistence of the police, gave them the go-ahead for a raid, and the kidnappers killed the child and got away."

Jake nodded. "Right. I remember that."

"Number two was the tie. We negotiated a ransom and had a successful exchange, but the ransom was much lower than their initial demand." Renata was now businesslike, easing into her normal mode. "The last kidnappings were all wins for us. In number three we paid a high ransom, but we had marked the bills. From that, we located the bad guys and called in a SWAT team. They killed two, and a third rolled over."

"We recovered sixty-five percent of the loot," Archie added.

Renata continued, "In number four, we kept delaying things, and the victim escaped on his own. In the fifth, we were able to discover where the victim was being held, and Archie went in and extracted her. He also killed the leader of the Dinero cartel in the process."

"You'd think they'd give up after that," Archie said, "but apparently the number two guy thought he could do better, and we think he's trying to put us out of business by embarrassing us."

Jake nodded. "Big cojones."

"Right. We figure he thinks no one would take advice from a company that couldn't even keep the daughter of the CEO safe."

The limo passed some road work. A pair of jackhammers cut off all conversation for a block.

Once it was quiet again, Jake asked, "What's the plan?"

"We're waiting for the ransom demand." Archie rubbed the back of his neck. "We have a mole in their organization. He's low down, but he may be able to help us. He knows we'll pay him for any information he has."

"Have you given him any money?"

"No, nothing yet."

Jake tapped his chin. "Send him one hundred thousand dollars right now, and tell him he'll get a million more if he can get Sophia safely to us or help us rescue her. Emphasize that one hundred K seems like a lot, but it won't be enough to keep him safe from Dinero. When we give him the million, we'll also set him and his family up in a new country, wherever he wants, and give him a new identity. What's his name?"

"He's using 'Juan' for talking with us," Renata said.

Jake squeezed her hand. "The mole is great news."

"Maybe. Juan is about as low in the cartel as anyone could be. He just does things like washing the car and going out for food. There's no way he'll know about anything important."

"You never know with these things. Sometimes just one little tip is all you need." He kept his real thoughts to himself. _We're going to need a lot more than that._

* * *

After more than a week with no word from the abductors, the dream team was starting to give up hope. Jake secretly believed all was lost, that Sophia was dead, her body dumped where it would never be found. Outwardly, he stayed positive, saying things like, "They're just prolonging our agony to soften us up. We've seen it before."

Renata sank into a severe depression, and Jake could only occasionally lighten her mood. He talked of the years they'd worked together and the surfing trips the four of them had taken to Baja, Mexico: Jake, Jake's wife, Mary, Renata, and Pierre, Renata's ex-husband.

In the early years of the company, whenever they'd had a slow period, they'd flown over to the Baja Peninsula, rented a cabana on the beach, and surfed until their arms turned into noodles. This was before Sophia was born, and each day ended with fish tacos, margaritas, and stories around a fire on the beach. They were perfect traveling companions, always on the same page. They handled all the typical holiday snafus with good humor.

There was a sadness to the memories as well because Mary had been killed, and Renata's marriage to Pierre had ended in a bitter divorce. The only upside to that: Jake had helped out by hosting Sophia in California for two months, and the two had bonded. Jake recalled his affection for Renata and wondered whether they might move to the next level now that the two of them were unattached. Those thoughts would have to wait until they took care of the current crisis.

On day eight of the vigil, Jake, Archie, and Renata sat in her office discussing the same old ideas over coffee, oblivious to the dramatic view of the Sierra Madres. A shout came from the other room, and Renata's secretary appeared in the doorway.

" _El topo!_ " she said. The mole.

They hurried into the company's situation room, where the top negotiator, Señor Vela, was speaking on the phone. The others picked up special listen-only extensions and followed the Spanish conversation.

"Thank you for the money," the caller said. "I have information."

"We are grateful, Juan, and we will take care of you." The negotiator's voice was soothing, like that of a caring psychologist.

"Antonio, he is the boss, he asked me for the location of two functioning pay phones in Mexico City. He wanted phones on busy streets in the southwest corner of the city. Since so many are broken, he asked me to find two that were definitely working. Are you ready for the locations?"

"Yes."

"The first is at the corner of Parroquia and Jose Martin Mendalde. The second is at the corner of Rodríguez Saro and Coyoacan."

"When do you think he will be calling?"

"Right now, señor," Juan said. "I think he will be calling now. I must go."

Archie jumped up. "Those places are six kilometers from here."

He and Jake were off in under a minute, traveling in separate cars driven by agents familiar with the streets of Mexico City.

* * *

The call came in before Jake and Archie arrived at the pay phone locations. At the office, the negotiator let the phone ring four times, giving the agents a few more seconds to get into position. Radio communications kept everyone in the loop.

Jake pressed his foot against the floor as though there were an accelerator pedal on his side of the car. "We're not close. What about you, Archie?"

"We are still about eight minutes out."

Señor Vela answered the phone even though the kidnapper would certainly demand to speak to Renata. A delay tactic. The call was patched through to the radios in the cars.

"No games, no delays, let me speak with the mother." His voice was low-pitched.

"Just a second," Vela said, "someone's getting her now."

Once Renata was on the line, the caller asked if she wanted to hear her daughter.

"Yes, of course." The strain in Renata's voice came through clearly.

After a delay, Sophia's voice could be heard, unmistakably her, but possibly from a recording. "Mommy I want to come home, I—"

"Say it!" Antonio's rough voice contrasted with Sophia's quavering tone.

Sophia said, "Five dead in Cuba."

Renata understood. By mentioning the news story about the deadly early-season hurricane that had cut through Cuba the previous night, the kidnappers were proving her daughter was still alive.

Jake squeezed the bridge of his nose. Knowing that this girl who felt like a daughter to him had been kidnapped was bad enough. Hearing the helpless terror in her voice tore him apart.

Antonio was back on the line. "The ransom is ten million dollars. We know you have it. You have interfered with us too much. I have three guys here who would like to spend some time with your daughter. Understand? I also have a flask of acid. If you try any tricks, that will go in her face. Understand? We will make your company look bad, and we can do that by killing your daughter, so don't try anything."

Señor Vela got back on the line. "You realize we—" The line went dead.

Renata's voice broke. "Jake, do you see him?"

"No, we're still two blocks away. Archie?"

"No, we're coming up on the pay phone, but there's no one there. We're too late."

Jake said, "Can you see anyone?"

"Wait a second." Archie gave some instructions to his driver in rapid-fire Spanish. Then, "Okay. Jake, are you there?"

"Yes."

"Someone just sped off from near the pay phone on a high-end BMW motorcycle. It looks like it had been parked on the sidewalk. He's going west on Parroquia, but I don't know if we can keep up. Can you intercept him?"

Jake looked at his driver, who waggled his hand. Jake said, "Maybe."

After only seconds, Archie's voice came back on the radio. "He's gone. We can't keep up with him."

Jake's driver pointed to the rearview mirror. " _Mira._ " Look.

Jake spun around. A nice motorcycle was a half block back, traveling with the traffic.

"Archie, was the bike blue and white?"

"Yes, yes."

"Blue helmet?"

"Yes."

"Okay." Jake turned forward but kept his eye on the side-view mirror. "I think we've got him. We're a little ahead of him, going west on Rodriguez, and we are passing... Moras Street... He's passing us... We're following him onto the Anillo highway now."

The two cars coordinated their tailing of the motorcycle on the four-lane beltway. If the rider noticed them, it would be a death sentence for Sophia. Antonio was right. Even without getting the ransom, Sophia's death would be a big win for the cartel. Corby Solutions would be discredited.

As they continued southwest, traffic thinned out. They were forced to fall farther back.

Then, catastrophe. The motorcyclist put on a burst of speed, and they lost him entirely.

Jake slammed his palm against the dashboard.

* * *

The driver put up one finger. "Do not worry, señor. I think I know where he is going. This highway ends in a little town called Temamatla. A nice bike like that will stay out."

" _Stand_ out?"

"Yes, señor, it will stand out. Stick out. No bikes like that in Temamatla."

Jake and Archie consulted via the radio then went back to the office. Both were obviously foreigners, and their appearance in such a small town would tip off the kidnappers. Instead, two other agents went to Temamatla and made discreet inquiries. They called in to report that several people knew about a blue-and-white motorcycle, and one had _maybe_ seen it rolled into a private residence.

In the late afternoon Jake, Archie, Renata, and three other agents huddled in the conference room. The long table held maps, notes, and a box with one last slice of pizza. They'd settled on four residences that might be holding Sophia. Renata wanted to send teams to all four, that night.

Jake shook his head. "No, Renata. We'd be stretched too thin. And we need more intelligence."

Renata paced, showing more energy than she had since Jake arrived. "But it is my company now, not yours. And my daughter, not yours."

"Jake is right," Archie said. "You are too close to it. We can't make our decisions emotionally. Trust Jake on this."

Renata fell into a chair and nodded without looking up.

"Okay." Jake ran his fingers through his hair. "How about this?" He outlined a plan to figure out which house she was in, if any, and how to proceed from there.

* * *

Archie Chen deserved the Ninja nickname. His specialty was going in and out of occupied houses undetected.

A few years earlier, one of the company's newer administrators had voiced doubts about stories of Archie's exploits. Rumor had it the administrator woke up the next morning with a ninja action figure tied to his penis, with a note reading "Me love you long time." No one questioned Archie's abilities after that.

Jake and Archie slipped into Temamatla at 2:00 a.m. in a black, slummed-down Chevy Aveo with a custom, quiet muffler. The car had been disguised with dents and simulated rust spots to make it less conspicuous. Jake drove around to each of the four houses and waited while Archie slipped out and attached listening devices to the windows. For two of the residences, Archie had to scale a wall to attach a device to a window on the second floor. At no location was he gone for more than sixty seconds. Then they joined the techs in the company's surveillance van.

In the morning, the first house was ruled out. Jake couldn't understand the scratchy Spanish dialect, but Archie and the technicians had little trouble. The husband and wife who lived there argued about everything from who hadn't cleaned up after the dog to the husband's lack of cojones for not asking for a raise. They didn't sound like kidnappers.

The next two houses had no sounds at all. Either no one was home, or the kidnappers, if one was their safe house, were sleeping late.

At the final house they were treated to a long argument about soccer. The first man obviously considered his companion to be an idiot when it came to rating teams. They were about to switch back to one of the silent houses, when Jake held up a finger.

"Listen," he said, "... there!"

Crying came over the speaker in the van—from an upstairs microphone.

One of the soccer fans swore, and his grumbling transitioned from the downstairs mike to the upstairs one. After a whimper, they heard a slap followed by " _Tu será tranquila y comerás el cereal—toda ella—si alguna vez quieres ver a tu mamá de nuevo._ "

Archie translated: "You will be quiet and you will eat your cereal—all of it—if you ever want to see your mommy again."

* * *

Once again, Renata wanted an immediate raid, but Jake convinced her to wait. Anything that involved weapons could easily get Sophia killed. They'd learned from experience not to get the local police involved. The _policía_ didn't have good impulse control and were corrupt enough that collusion with the kidnappers was possible.

They kept the house under surveillance but reduced manpower to a minimum to avoid detection. Midmorning, the motorcyclist departed and rode to Mexico City. He called the office and negotiated a ransom drop for the next day at 9:00 a.m. Señor Vela ran through the usual negotiation tactics so as not to reveal that anything had changed. Besides, the rescue could fail.

The waiting was the hardest part, especially for Renata. She refused to take any tranquilizers.

Disaster hit at 7:00 p.m. One of the kidnappers, dressed in denim, went out for his after-dinner break. They'd seen him come out of the house but soon lost track of him. The disaster was that he happened to be walking toward the rear of the surveillance van just as a tech opened the back door to take his own break. Jake and Archie locked eyes with the target, who figured things out in a flash and took off running.

Jake chased him, while Archie raced down a parallel alley. Denim Man was within sight of the safe house when he looked back to see how close Jake was. Archie caught him unawares, tackling him from the side. The guy's head hit a car bumper on the way down, and he was knocked unconscious.

Jake and Archie looked over to the house where Sophia was being held, relieved to find no one watching them. They gathered up Denim Man, draped his arms over their shoulders, and dragged him to the back of the van, as if helping a drunk friend.

The tech who'd caused the catastrophe apologized profusely, but Jake and Archie waved him off and concentrated on what to do next.

"Any sign of alarm in the house?" Jake asked.

"No. Not a sound. And his absence won't be noticed for a while. The breaks can be almost an hour long."

Archie bound and gagged their prisoner. "Lucky they didn't notice. We took him down right in front of the house. I guess we got away with it. Now what?"

Unable to pace in the crowded van, Jake clenched his teeth and jiggled his leg. "We have to manufacture a plausible reason for his absence. Hit by a car."

Archie shook his head. "They would have to _know_ he was hit by a car."

"Right, so we have him hit by a car right in front of the safe house. I'm thinking out loud here. Screeching tires, horn, throw him on the street."

"I don't know. The guys in the house hear the commotion. They come out and get involved. Unless our guy driving the car is a great actor, they'll get suspicious. But maybe we could use the opportunity as a diversion and go in and rescue Sophia."

"That would work only if both of the remaining kidnappers come out onto the street."

"If they both show themselves, we can take them out with snipers," Archie said.

"Yeah. I guess that's what we'll do." Jake got a faraway look in his eyes.

Archie squinted. "What?"

"I saw an old ambulance in an alley near here."

* * *

Thirty minutes later, the ambulance's siren filled the air. Jake and Archie were in position. Two techs remained in the van and patched the audio from the bugs into the earpieces of the others. As the hot-wired vehicle approached the final turn, Jake watched for the heads of the kidnappers. _There's no way they can ignore an approaching siren._

One kidnapper appeared on the balcony, and the company's sniper watched from behind a wall, his rifle ready. The other kidnapper was more experienced and only brought his head slightly above the sill of the second-story window, not presenting a clear shot.

Jake willed the man to raise his head all the way, but it didn't happen. If they took out only one, the other could kill Sophia.

Jake spoke into his mike. "Abort rescue. Abort rescue." They would have to go with Plan B, which was starting to feel risky at this point, but they didn't have any alternative. The kidnappers needed an innocent explanation for the disappearance of their comrade.

As the ambulance turned onto the street of the safe house, the driver made a screeching swerve, honked the horn, and slammed on the brakes. At the same time, an agent in the vehicle pushed the unconscious body of Denim Man out the back. The effect wasn't perfect, but with luck it would seem that the ambulance had struck the man when it made the turn.

Timing was now critical. They wanted the kidnappers to know it was their friend who'd been hit but not have enough time to look too closely into the situation. The plan was to give one of them time to come down to the street, but it turned out that wasn't necessary. From the upstairs microphone, they heard " _Santiago fue golpeado por una ambulancia!_ " Santiago was hit by an ambulance!

Before anyone could come out to investigate, they packed Santiago into the back of the ambulance and whisked him away.

Back in the surveillance van, Jake admitted to himself that the plan had been too elaborate and risky. But it had worked. When he thought about what might have gone wrong, he started shaking.

* * *

Archie grabbed a few hours of sleep before returning to the surveillance van. _Tonight's the night._

Jake had headphones on, listening to the feed from the bugs.

The evening hadn't cooled off, and the body heat from the four men made it feel as if the vehicle were standing in the sun. The locker-room smell was hard to ignore.

Antonio, the new leader of the Dineros, was in the safe house. Through the bug, they'd listened as he called the closest hospital. He sounded satisfied with what he heard. Not surprising since Renata had bribed the woman at the information desk to say Santiago had serious injuries and had been transferred to another hospital. Which one? Unknown.

No bad-guy reinforcements arrived, so they were down to two men in the house: Antonio and Rodriguez. One of the kidnappers hit the sack at midnight, but the other stayed up, and they could hear old movies playing on TV.

After an hour, Jake said, "I bet he fell asleep with the TV on."

Archie rubbed the back of his neck. "Can we take that chance?"

"How about this: If there are no sounds of movement by four o'clock, we assume he's asleep and we go?"

Archie agreed.

At 4:00 a.m., Jake and Archie left the van.

The Mexican Ninja had full confidence in his ability to get in and out without being detected if the occupants were asleep. He and Jake drove to the house in their Chevy Aveo, shutting off the headlights and engine and rolling the last half block. The only sound came from the tires.

Archie looked the house over even though he was familiar with every inch of the facade. It was an ugly cinder block building with an opening for the balcony on the second floor.

After a calming breath, Archie slung a large duffel bag over his shoulder and glided up the wall, aided by the protrusion of a utility meter. At the balcony, he raised his head and looked in. Antonio was facing away from him, slouched in front of the TV. Archie climbed over the wall in slow motion. He ghosted through the balcony door and into the living room. He raised his pistol, ready to put a bullet through the back of Antonio's head. _Should I risk waking the other kidnapper?_ But the man stood up, a shotgun in his left hand. He shuffled to the bathroom, taking his shotgun with him.

Archie held his breath. _I've got enough time._

Sophia lay in a corner, tied to a radiator with a rope around her neck. He went to her and squatted down. After holstering his gun, he pulled a halothane-soaked cloth from a plastic bag and held it over Sophia's nose and mouth. Her eyes snapped open, but the anesthetic took hold quickly and she was under before making any sounds. He placed her gently in the duffel bag, closed it, and retrieved his gun from the holster. _This will work._

He jumped when Antonio's voice rang out. "Guess you should have shot me when you had the chance."

* * *

Jake checked his watch and continued watching the balcony for Archie's reappearance. _It's taking too long._

The boom of a shotgun shattered the silence.

* * *

Archie had spun around as soon as Antonio had started speaking. The words "when you had the chance" were still in the air when Archie's bullet hit the man in the chest. He put a second bullet through Antonio's throat. But as he collapsed, Antonio pulled the trigger on his shotgun. He scored a direct hit on the duffel bag, which slid back toward the wall as though yanked with a wire.

Archie reached back and grabbed the duffel holding Sophia. A confused shout rang out from another part of the house, but Archie didn't want to risk wandering around to find the other kidnapper. Instead, he scrambled to the balcony and looked over the edge. Jake was already on his way up the wall. Archie gave him a "stop" hand signal and tossed the duffel bag down. The plan had been to lower it gently with a rope, but Archie was confident Jake could catch it. Indeed, Jake jumped backward off the utility meter, landed on the sidewalk, and caught the duffel easily.

By the time Archie reached the car, Jake had put Sophia in the back seat and was in the driver's seat. Archie got in, and Jake started the motor. But as he reached out to close his door, a shotgun blast rang out. Archie looked up. The second kidnapper was on the balcony, reloading.

Jake caught the pellets in his upper arm and shoulder and started bleeding immediately. Archie grabbed the wheel from the passenger side. He mashed Jake's foot down onto the accelerator.

After a few blocks, Jake recovered. He said, "I've got it."

But he was not a hundred percent. After a mile, with no evidence of pursuit, they stopped and switched seats. Jake asked if Sophia was okay and then passed out.

Archie called Renata to fill her in. He hung up before she could ask if Sophia was okay.

* * *

At the emergency entrance to Hospital Ángeles del Pedregal, Jake blinked his eyes open. He watched Archie reach over the back of the seat and open the duffel bag. They had lined it with six layers of Kevlar. Jake looked in. Sophia was uninjured. Archie handed her over to the ER doctor. The rope was still tied around her neck. The doctor appeared to take it in stride; he'd been alerted a kidnapping victim was on the way.

Two nurses loaded Jake onto a gurney, where he passed out again.

Hours later, although it felt like only seconds to him, Jake once again regained consciousness. The surgery had gone well. They'd found no broken bones and had removed most of the shotgun pellets.

Archie stepped over to the bed.

Jake had trouble focusing. "She okay?"

"She's fine," Archie said. "She recovered from the halothane with no problems. Still traumatized, but physically she's okay."

Renata came into the room carrying Sophia and walked to Jake's bedside. Sophia was squeezing her mother's neck with a death grip, her head buried against it. When she saw Jake, she held out one arm toward him. Renata leaned down, and Sophia added his neck to her grip, pulling Jake and Renata together. Jake, still groggy, made an exaggerated choking noise. That got big laughs from everyone except Sophia. Comic relief.

The team was beyond exhaustion, and the nurses let Renata fall asleep in a bed next to Jake's, Sophia still attached to her neck like a limpet.

# Love in the Snow

_This short story is derived from a scene deleted from my book_ A Mind Reader's Christmas. _Even if you haven't read that book, it's okay to read this story._

_However, be warned that this scene gives away something that happens at the end of_ Democracy's Thief _. In other words:_ **_Spoiler Alert!_**

_This story takes place in 2032. Eric and Viviana are vacationing in snowy Vermont with their ten-year-old daughter, Cosmina. She—and here comes the spoiler part—is able to compel people to do her bidding but doesn't realize it!_

_Some other things you need to know (or remember) from other Eric Beckman books:_

_1. Eric can project his thoughts and compel people to act, but only when he's exhausted._

_2. When Eric reads someone's thoughts, it's punctuated with angle brackets, like this:_ <These are the thoughts _. >_

* * *

While on vacation, I continued working with our ten-year-old daughter, Cosmina, helping her improve her mind-reading skills. But on a December morning, while Cosmina was visiting a friend, I had a training session for Viviana. That's right, a training session for my not-a-mind-reader wife.

I had to prepare her for the upcoming apocalypse. That is, for the day when our strange and wonderful daughter realized she could project her thoughts and compel people to do whatever she told them to do.

My ability to turn down the gain of my mind reading also works to block incoming mind control. When I tamp down my inlet ports, so to speak, I am safe from influence. So, come the day Cosmina realizes her awesome power, she won't be able to control me. But she _will_ be able to control Viviana.

I felt guilty having these thoughts about my daughter. She was a loving and caring child, but power corrupts, right? Would Cosmina be able to resist making her mom let her stay out late with a guy who had nothing but bad intentions? Would she compel Viviana to take her to the mall? Buy her a pony?

What were the chances I'd be able to teach a normal person, a Muggle, you might say, to resist an influx of thoughts? Hard to know. To find out, I needed to influence Viviana through mind control and teach her to resist it. And to do that, I needed to tire myself out.

I hated cross-country skiing. Downhill? Fun. Cross-country? Not so much. It was like jogging with long, awkward _things_ fastened to your hands and feet. Viviana, however, was a pro at the sport. It was popular in Romania, and she'd started skiing in preschool.

We rented our skis at Ye Olde Sports Shoppe, in Newburn, Vermont. Viviana chose traditional skis and picked out the right glide and kick waxes. She convinced the proprietor to let her apply them herself, using the shop's vise and other equipment.

I, on the other hand, went with modern, accelerometer-equipped skis. Each ski knew if it was traveling forward or backward. If the latter, micro flaps under the ski would drop down. The owner demonstrated by holding a ski above my head, parallel to the ground. When he shifted it backward, hundreds of little flaps, like fish scales, opened up. "You can even go up a steep hill with no backsliding." _Nice, right?_ Perfect for a newbie like me.

The trail we chose wound its way up Horse Mountain, with two robot-groomed tracks side by side. We set off, and I let Viviana go first so I could admire the way her purple jumpsuit accentuated her curves. She soon got frustrated with my ineptitude and slowness. Sometimes she'd zip ahead, do some kind of graceful kick turn, and come back to give me encouragement.

The sky was a deep blue I'd only seen at higher elevations. A gusty wind moaned through the pines. Sometimes we had to raise our voices to talk.

As I struggled to keep up, I thought back to our time together. Being a good and moral spouse, I'd used my mind control on her only once before. At her request. She'd wanted to understand this weird thing her freak of a husband could do, so we had set off on a long run in Yosemite National Park.

I remember that day clearly: After three and a half hours of elevated heart rate, my power had zapped on, along with its weird headache. It's weird because the pain is somehow outside of my head, like a beach-ball-sized donut.

We were far from the Yosemite crowds, and I'd said, "Okay, it's time. What do you want me to make you do?"

She whispered in my ear and I nodded. Her suggestion was exactly what I'd had in mind.

Like a god, I pointed at her and commanded, "You will now make passionate, uninhibited love to me."

It was the best sex we ever had, despite my headache. When we finished, we had to collect our running clothes, which were scattered around a wide area of the pine-needled forest floor. I never did find my underwear.

"Did you see a family of hikers go by?" I'd asked her.

"You mean while we were—"

"Right."

She'd smiled. "Didn't notice."

It was a fond memory.

Bringing my thoughts back to our Vermont skiing expedition, I realized I'd have to find something else to command her to do. Making love naked in the snow on a windy, sub-zero day? _Brr._ Despite the cold, the idea kind of turned me on, but the point of the session was to see whether she could learn to _resist_ my mind control.

I eventually got into the rhythm of the skiing, aping Viviana's smooth movements. Maybe this _was_ better than jogging. We flew along, the hiss of the skis on the snow audible between gusts. We crossed a ridge, and a vista of far mountains opened up on one side.

"We'll have to do this again with Cosmina," I yelled.

After a few hours, my scalp tingled. "It won't be long now. Let's find a deserted spot."

We followed a small path to a flat area of exposed bedrock and took off our skis. I ran in place. Any second... _zap!_ The pain rocked me from the outside. It's hard to describe.

I'd decided to keep things simple. _Sit on that rock_ , I commanded. I didn't say it out loud, and she sat. _Hey, wait a second!_ Something hit me that I'd never realized before. Because I didn't have to speak my command out loud, it meant that, in a sense, she was reading my mind.

_Stand up._ I directed the thought to her. Viviana stood up so quickly, her feet almost left the ground.

"How did you know I told you to stand up?" I was running in place to keep my power going. Tough to do with a migraine-intensity headache.

She frowned. "You told me to, yes? I don't understand."

"But I didn't say it out loud."

"Yes, you did say—"

_Can you hear me now?_

"Yes, of course. Don't need to yell."

I knew, of course, that mind reading and mind control were somehow related, but I hadn't really appreciated that the subject—the _controlee_ , if you will—was hearing my thoughts. Maybe, since the recipients had never experienced mind reading, they felt compelled to follow the commands they experienced in their head. Like obeying one's own thoughts. Was I oversimplifying?

"Viviana, you are hearing my thoughts. Watch my lips." _Sit down again._

She sat.

"Did my lips move?"

She squinted and cocked her head. < _Is so strange._ >

"Answer me."

"Lips did not move."

Next, I would try to get her to _not_ obey my command. It would be dangerous. Some past events had suggested that mind readers who resisted mind control could develop serious neurological consequences. Like a memory wipe. Perhaps this whole exercise was too risky.

"Viviana, I'm going to command you to stand up again—no, not yet—and I want to you consider that you are just hearing the words in your head. You don't have to obey the thoughts, just listen to them, observe them. I'm not saying to resist. Just realize that maybe you don't need to obey them. Okay?"

She nodded.

"Stand up."

She looked off into space and seemed confused. Had I gone too far? Risked her sanity?

She stood up, but slowly and after a delay. Maybe I could teach her to resist thoughts, after all. Resist the command to buy a pony. At that point, I reconsidered. The risk of damage to her mind was too great. I decided to stop and evaluate the risks versus the benefits.

A funny smile spread across Viviana's face.

"What?" I said.

She came over and whispered in my ear.

Turns out making love in the snow isn't unpleasant after all.

# Request for Reviews

Thank you for reading my book. I had a blast writing it, and I hope you had fun reading it.

I have a small favor to ask: Could you take a minute and write a short review of this book on the site from which you purchased it? I don't spend much on advertising, and this is one of the few ways that I can let others know about my books. I read all my reviews and enjoy getting feedback about my writing.

Feel free, as well, to send me an email at FoggyBeach@gmail.com. I will personally respond to all the emails I receive, unless I become as popular as Stephen King or J.K. Rowling, in which case someone from my staff will reply to you.

And turn the page to find out how you can get a free book just by subscribing to my newsletter.

# Acknowledgments

I'm grateful for my loyal newsletter subscribers who read early versions of these stories and gave me feedback. I'd especially like to thank the Coads for reminding me that Jake Corby had had his blind eye repaired by the Dino-birds in _The Universe Next Door_ , Gail Summerville for pointing out that not everyone is familiar with _I Love Lucy_ , and my wife, Lena, for being the first reader of all my books. Linda Johnson also provided valuable feedback.

As always, my copy editor, Julie MacKenzie from FreeRangeEditorial.com, offered many valuable corrections and suggestions that improved these stories substantially.

# Also By Al Macy

**_Becoming a Great Sight-Reader—or Not!_**

**_Drive, Ride, Repeat: The Mostly True Account of a Cross-Country Car and Bicycle Adventure_**

**_Contact Us: A Jake Corby Sci-Fi Thriller_**

**_The Antiterrorist: A Jake Corby Sci-Fi Thriller_**

**_The Universe Next Door: A Jake Corby Sci-Fi Thriller_**

**_Yesterday's Thief: An Eric Beckman Paranormal Sci-Fi Thriller_**

**_Sanity's Thief: An Eric Beckman Paranormal Thriller_**

**_Democracy's Thief: An Eric Beckman Paranormal Thriller_**

**_A Mind Reader's Christmas: An Eric Beckman Mystery_**

**_The Day Before Yesterday's Thief: A Prequel to the Eric Beckman Series_**

**_The Protected Witness: An Alex Booker Thriller_**

**_The Abducted Heiress: An Alex Booker Thriller_**

**_The Christmas Planet and Other Stories_**

**_Conclusive Evidence (Coming in 2019)_**

# About the Author

Al Macy writes because he has stories to tell. In school, he was the class clown and always the first to volunteer for show and tell. His teachers would say, "Al has a lot of imagination." Then they'd roll their eyes.

But he put his storytelling on the back burner until he retired and wrote a blog about his efforts to improve his piano sight-reading. That's when his love of storytelling burbled up to the surface, along with quirky words like "burble."

He had even more fun writing his second book, _Drive, Ride, Repeat_ , but was bummed by nonfiction's need to stick to "the truth" (yucko). From then on it was fiction all the way, with a good dose of his science background burbling to the surface.

Macy's top priority is compelling story lines with satisfying plot twists, but he never neglects character development. No, wait... his top priority is quirkiness, then compelling story lines, then character development. No, wait...
