

# Orchid in the Void

Copyright 2018 Steve Whitting

Published by Steve Whitting at Smashwords

Cover art by Steve Whitting

ISBN 9780463728604

_Orchid in the Void_ is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Smashwords Edition License Notes

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this author.

# Acknowledgements

This book is dedicated to my late father, Jack Whitting, who encouraged me, to my high school English teacher, Mr. Thomas, who inspired me, to my loving wife, Cheryl, who supported my endeavor and tolerated my many absent hours when I was typing away on my laptop, to my daughter, April, who amazes me with her seemingly unending abilities, and to my dark muse, who whispers in my ear when I have writer's block.

# Part I.

CHAPTER 1

can·dle \ 'kandl\ noun 1. a space vessel that lifts off and lands vertically on its tail 2. a rocket 3. a cylindrical mass of tallow or wax containing a loosely twisted linen or cotton wick that is burned to give light.

* * *

The short version of this little narrative goes something like this: My long-absent father passed away and left me a serious load of bitcreds[1]. My 'best friend' John offered his sincerest condolences on my loss and then promptly insisted we go out and celebrate my newfound wealth. I got really, _really_ drunk and don't remember anything that happened afterward, but apparently I had a busy night.

I woke up with a monster hangover to the noise of metal banging on metal and what sounded like John swearing. I didn't know what time it was or where I was. There was an odd flowery smell and I could see curving walls with what looked like conduit and wires snaking along them. I was in a bunk and there was a dark-haired girl next to me. From what I could tell, she was good-looking and we were both naked. Okay, so maybe things weren't so bad after all.

She opened her brown eyes, smiled at me and lazily slurred, "Good mornin', Captain." Then she passed out again.

Uh, I'm not a 'captain' of anything. I write space opera for a living. If you've ever watched _Out to the Void_ , then you've probably seen some of my stuff. I'm listed as 'Peter Soñador' in the credits, but most people just call me 'Pete'. Admittedly it's not my best work, but between the editors and the censors it gets a fair amount of 'polishing'. At least my material is somewhat grounded in reality since I always bounce my ideas off of John, who grew up on Ganymede and is an 'unemployed spacer'. More on that later.

"Rise-n-shine!" echoed John's voice from out of my field of vision. "We're burnin' daylight and there's a lot o' fixin' to do if this ol' candle's ever gonna be space-worthy again."

Now I'm really confused. I hear footsteps clanking on decking and then John is standing beside my bunk with a grin on his face. His favorite and well-worn _'Real Spacers Drink Beer'_ tee-shirt that I'd once given him as a gag gift was all grimy and sweaty.

"Good mornin' sleepy heads," John said a little too loudly and cheerfully for my pounding head.

"John, where the 'eff am I?" I muttered.

"You're on board _Orchid_ ," he replied matter-of-factly.

"Ah, what's _Orchid_? And please don't talk so loud."

"The candle you bought at the auction last night."

"What . . . you mean I bought a _space ship_? Uh, how much did I spend?"

"Well, you had enough left over for quite a few rounds for the crowd at the Black Hole afterward. You're real popular with the other spacers right now."

As my great-grandmother used to say, _"¡Pero qué puta mierda!"_ [2] I just totally 'effed up and spent my entire inheritance on a used candle that apparently needed repairs and multiple rounds of drinks for people I don't know at a less-than-reputable drinking establishment.

"John," I asked slowly, " _Why_ the 'eff did I buy a candle?"

"Well, you was always sayin' you wished you could 'live the life' instead of just writin' about it. You was sayin' that again last night, so I took you to the auction and you bought yourself a used transport. She wouldn't have been my first choice, but I've been lookin' her over and she's not such a bad little candle. Needs some work, but between Cat and me, we ought to be able to fix her up just fine."

I'm unpleasantly reminded of an old saying, _"Be careful what you wish for, because it may come true."_

"Who's Cat?" I asked John.

" _She's_ Cat," John said as he pointed at the sleeping brown-skinned girl beside me. "She's the genius mechanic you hired at the Black Hole last night."

Like I said, I obviously had a _very_ busy night.

John fetched my clothes and helped me to my feet. Cat or whatever-her-name-was rolled over and started snoring. Some 'genius mechanic' I'd hired.

After I'd finished puking my guts out, John proceeded to give me the grand tour of my 'new' candle from bridge to cargo hold while explaining _Orchid_ 's various attributes along the way. I wished I wasn't feeling like death warmed-over so that I might have better appreciated what all he was telling me. According to John, _Orchid_ was a knock-off of a General Astronautics _Triplanetary_ -class transport. She flew on water and was cheap to operate and maintain. He thought she'd been manufactured at least 50 years ago on Mars or maybe one of the big asteroids, so some of her tech wasn't exactly the latest. John said that wasn't such a bad thing at all because a candle like her was easy to fix using scrounged and improvised parts. I supposed that he should know.

"What's that flowery smell?" I asked.

"I'm guessin' it's from the orchids," said John. "Story is that the former crew had orchids growin' all over the candle. Auctioneer said they were those 'horny orchids' from Penitence – you know - the Jovian prison moon? Anyway, they was s'posed to have all been cleaned out before the auction."

"Horny orchids?"

"They call 'em the Night Goddess. They was a terraformin' accident. Word is that they make gals so horny that they'll sex with just about anythin' with a pole, so the Commonwealth banned 'em. That just made everybody want 'em even more."

"This candle smuggled them?"

"Crew didn't mean to. They was just a bunch of gals escaped from Penitence who done brought 'em along when they stole the candle. That's how the story goes anyhow."

Can this get any worse? Now I'm the owner of a candle with a checkered past.

"Wait a minute. If this candle was stolen, then why didn't the Space Guard recover it?" I asked.

"They did, but it needed fixin' up and anyways it was obsolete, so they just let it go to auction.

"So, are those 'horny orchids' why Cat ended up in the sack with me?" I asked as I felt what little was left of my self-esteem draining away.

"Nah, she seemed to be mighty smitten with you before we ever boarded _Orchid_." John replied. "She was a bit likkered-up by then, though."

[1] Common slang for Interplanetary Monetary Unit (I.M.U.)

[2] Spanish curse equivalent to, "What the hell?"

CHAPTER 2

It had been almost three months since the crew of the newly-christened transport Orchid had escaped from Penitence. They were lucky that Orchid was the space station's only deep space transport and that the station's orbital taxis lacked the delta-v[3] to intercept the fleeing vessel. Once they'd outrun the pursuing taxi, they'd altered their course for neighboring Ganymede. They'd spent the better part of a month on the frozen moon making various modifications to their ship. DJ and Tinker had managed to corrupt the transport's transponder signal so that any Space Guard patrol candle would (hopefully) not immediately recognize Orchid as being stolen from the Penitence space station. They'd scraped-off the candle's old markings and then used red paint that they'd appropriated from the guard tower to emblazon 'Orchid' on the side of the transport below the cargo hatch. DJ hoped that with hundreds of other transports like theirs navigating the void, the Space Guard would have a hard time finding a 'needle in a haystack'.

Some of the supplies they'd acquired from the guard tower were traded on Ganymede for food and clothing. During the roughly two years they'd been stuck in the prison camp on Penitence, DJ and her crew had gotten used to running around 'butt naked' and as a consequence preferred going nude shipboard. Parading around in your birthday suit wasn't normally socially acceptable dirtside or when there were passengers aboard, so they'd had to acquire suitable clothing for those occasions. Their 'borrowed' prison guard uniforms weren't exactly welcomed on the moons of the outer planets and would have probably gotten them arrested if they were boarded by the Space Guard, so they'd combined homespun from Ganymede with various uniform parts to create suitable 'spacer's garb' for those instances when clothing was necessary.

When it came to the day-to-day running of the ship, DJ and Marla worked together quite well. DJ knew she'd been elected captain because of her popularity and that Marla's military experience probably made her the better leader, but Marla recognized that DJ's outgoing personality and natural charisma made her the better 'front man'. Besides, in addition to being first mate Marla had appointed herself head of ship's security.

_As far as the rest of the crew was concerned, Prissy's piloting skills were a little rusty (if they'd ever been that good at all) and Tinker's impressive knowledge of things mechanical was mostly intuitive and self-taught. Julie on the other hand was a damn good cook and professed to have graduated fourth in her class from the prestigious_  Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts _. However, DJ did find it a bit disconcerting that their cook claimed her unfaithful husband had accidentally died of 'food poisoning'._

The one position that they still needed to fill was that of ship's medic/doctor, which was presently desirable and would become essential if they were going to carry passengers. DJ was less worried about carrying passengers and more concerned about avoiding the Space Guard and any strangers who might be connected to the Commonwealth - or willing to turn them in for a reward. Orchid provided them with shelter – they just needed bitcreds for food, fuel and other expendables. That meant they'd either have to haul freight to pay the bills or do something less legal to keep flyin' . . .

* * *

_Orchid_ shuttered like the candle was about to fall apart as we climbed up through Mars' thin atmosphere. I've ridden on shuttles up to Phobosport before and was accustomed to the occasional bumpy ride, but this was a teeth-rattling, white-knuckle, piss-your-pants experience that had me thinking we were all going to die any second now. Between the roar of the rocket motor and the scream of the air rushing over our hull, I could barely hear myself think let alone enjoy the 'launch music' John was playing over the intercom. Lights flashed erratically on the archaic-looking control panel in front of me and I was sure that they were telling me something bad was happening.

I glanced over at John, who was seated in the pilot's seat. He had a huge grin on his face like a kid who was having the time of his life riding a T-Rex in a sim at his birthday party.

"Yeah, she's a good ol' candle!" he shouted happily over the din. "You done well pickin' her out!"

"I don't remember picking her out!" I yelled. Then I realized that I didn't need to shout because it was suddenly quiet. The sky outside the front viewports was black and I could see Mars' horizon curving below us.

"We've done busted out of the atmosphere," announced John. "Should be smooth sailin' from here on out."

" _Should be?"_ he said. I wasn't so optimistic. In fact, I was just shy of terrified. I was travelling through a lethal combination of hard vacuum and radiation in a patched-together candle that from all appearances mustn't have been much more advanced than the rockets our ancestors had first ventured into space in centuries ago. Yet John had assured me during the better part of the week while we were making repairs to _Orchid_ that wires and plumbing were more dependable and a lot easier to fix in a jam than hi-tech virtual nano-whatevers. He claimed that you could repair a candle like this out in the Oort Cloud using duratape and parts scrounged from a washing machine. I hoped that I never had to find out if that was true or not.

A few moments later the motor cut out and we were in orbit. And weightless. _Did I mention that I positively hate free fall?_

"This ol' candle ain't got a bottomless fuel tank," John explained, apparently sensing my discomfort at being weightless. "We'll only be in orbit a few minutes while we line up for our burn, then you'll have your precious gravity back."

"Is it that obvious that I don't feel so well," I croaked, feeling rather embarrassed.

"You're looking a pale shade of green there, Pete. Might want to pop a nausatab before you start hurlin'. Cleanin' up vomit in free fall ain't no fun."

The pill worked quickly, and within a minute the stomach-churning sensation of falling was replaced by one of almost indifferent calm. I found myself actually enjoying being able to un-strap and float around the cabin. I gazed out one of the viewports at the ruddy red globe that was my home. Vast swatches of pale and darker green representing hybrid pine forests and lichen blooms covered her surface, slowly transforming the planet's thin atmosphere into one that would eventually be breathable. Mars was a big planet, and terraforming it was taking a lot longer than it had on some of the small moons.

Interplanetary war had been both a setback and beneficial to terraforming efforts. The 'planet-killer' nuke that had devastated a good chunk of a hemisphere had liberated a large amount of subsurface water that now formed a vast, shallow frozen sea which would be one day be liquid once Mars warmed up. Scattered here and there were tiny, gleaming bubbles that marked the domed cities dotting the human race's new home world.

I was leaving it all for a life in the void.

"Hold on, it's time to light 'er up again," John announced after a few minutes. Abruptly our rocket motor kicked in, slinging _Orchid_ out of Mars orbit and onto a trajectory that would take us to the distant Jovian satellites and our destination, Ganymede. This time, the artificial gravity produced by our gentle acceleration felt less than Mars' normal gravity rather than the invisible-person-sitting-on-your-chest feeling I'd experienced during our lift-off. I wondered why nobody had figured out how to make artificial gravity that you could turn on or off with a switch like in _Out to the Void_.

Cat scrutinized her display and informed us that we were 'all systems go'. I thought that would have been a good thing to know _before_ we lifted off, but John just gave her a thumbs-up and returned to his controls. _Hey, what do I know?_ I just write space opera for a living, after all. Or at least I used to. Now I'm the 'captain' of an independent transport headed for the Jovian moon Ganymede with a scrounged cargo of thrift store sundries that Lo Phat assured us would make us all wealthy when they were resold. I was wealthy once for a few hours, but then I bought this candle.

It seems that Lo Phat is our new 'partner'. He floated the money we needed for our speculative cargo, since John and I were flat broke. Cat had managed to restore _Orchid_ to a 'space worthy' condition using what little cash John and I had between us and parts she'd scrounged from a local salvage yard, but that left nothing for purchasing supplies or goods to trade. John claimed that he knew Lo from previous dealings and had bumped into him during our night of celebrations at the Black Hole. Lo had several things that John determined made him an asset to our crew: money, a nose for a good deal, and a rather pressing need to leave Mars due to an apparent 'misunderstanding' involving a recent business deal that, as he put it, 'went off course'.

Lo came with a 'bonus'. He'd brought along his daughter Tuesday, who served as his personal body guard and assistant. According to Lo, Tuesday was highly proficient in the martial arts as well as legal and financial matters and would prove to be an asset in our business dealings. I'd suggested to John that she couldn't be too proficient or Lo wouldn't have had to leave Mars in such a hurry, but he just scowled at me.

So here we all were, hurtling through interplanetary space toward distant Ganymede with a cargo of 'luxury items' that was supposedly worth more than its weight in gold on the frontier moon. I hoped that was true since institutional-grade toilet paper isn't all that heavy.

Cat leaned over my seat, put her lips close to me ear and softly whispered, "See you later, Captain." The she turned and scampered off the bridge.

"She's sweet on you," said John grinning.

"It's _got_ to be the 'effin orchids," I replied. I'm not bad looking, but I'm no media personality either. I usually walk or ride my bicycle rather than take a cab or the train, so I suppose I'm in better-than-average shape. Women usually don't come on to me, though.

"Maybe it was the booze back at the Black Hole initially, but there's something else going on here," I added.

"Pete, there _ain't_ no horny orchids left on this candle," John said shaking his head emphatically. "Customs done scanned her from nose to stern and then irradiated her. The auctioneer told me that she was so sterile when they was done that you could've eaten of her deck."

"They could have missed parts. You told me _Orchid_ has passive shielding in case the power plant goes down. Besides, we can still _smell_ them."

"You got me there. I s'pose they could be growin' inside the air scrubbers, but so what?" It ain't like they's hurtin' anything."

"You're not the one suffering from sleep deprivation," I replied dryly.

[3] Velocity change, pronounced "delta-vee".

CHAPTER 3

DJ didn't know when or even how she'd been drugged, she only cared that she woke-up in one of the cages with a monster headache. The cages had been arranged in a semi-circle where she could see the rest of her crew similarly caged. Mr. Marx was seated in a folding chair in the center and standing beside him with a triumphant smirk on her face was . . . Boss! She gleefully laughed at the crew's predicament and taunted them with descriptions of the awful punishments that awaited them once they returned to Penitence. Then she asked Mr. Marx to fulfill his end of the bargain and remove her exploding collar. Mr. Marx told her that the special removal tool was in a package waiting for her in his hotel room. He told Boss he would join her shortly as she waddled as fast as she could to the cargo basket and down into Heinlein City's night air. A few minutes later he pushed a button on a small remote control and DJ heard a familiar 'pop' followed by confused shouts and a woman's scream in the distance. Then Mr. Marx informed the crew that they had two choices: they could work for him and get paid honest wages; or they could live out the rest of their short, miserable lives doing hard time on Penitence. Under other circumstances DJ might have argued the terms, but this one seemed like a no-brainer.

In short order Mr. Marx – a.k.a. 'Kid' - released the crew from their cages and then took them back to his hotel for a private, after-hours 'no-hard-feelin's' gourmet dinner that made-up for the early less-pleasant events of the evening. Over a selection of after-dinner craft beers that included expensive Rare Earth dark ales, Kid informed them that he'd recruited Boss to help him locate DJ and her companions but didn't trust Boss as far as he could piss. Boss had been released into Kid's custody under the strict condition that she'd be eliminated once her usefulness was at an end. Kid insisted that he wasn't the cold-blooded killin' type, but he'd recognized that Boss only cared about herself and would have turned them all over to the Commonwealth if she got half a chance. Boss had known too much about DJ and her crew, so Kid simply gave her what was coming to her anyway.

In retrospect, DJ decided that everything had seemed 'righter' under the influence of the alcohol she'd consumed. Even still, Kid's offer really was too good not to pass up and DJ figured she could overlook their new patron's subterfuge as long as the he kept the bitcreds comin' and the Commonwealth goin' away.

* * *

Ganymede was a natural choice for our first speculative trading venture. Being a distant Jovian satellite, inexpensive everyday Martian items such as toothpaste and shaving cream were considered luxuries there. We'd also brought along staples such as flour, salt, sugar, some basic lo-tech tools and a few inexpensive higher-tech goodies. Our goal was to trade our stuff for gold, silver and other precious metals that were abundant on Ganymede and mined by the locals. Ganymede came with another plus: We could refuel for free by siphoning snow into our fuel tank.

Nine years ago, a restless young miner named John Tanner had traded a small satchel of gold nuggets for a ride off Ganymede on an independent transport much like ours. He'd quickly taken a liking to the spacer's life and stayed with the candle, learning the ropes and working his way up to a seat on the bridge. He had fast reflexes and a natural instinct for navigating and earned himself a reputation as a skilled pilot. Then something had 'gone off course' as he put it and he found himself stranded and jobless on Mars. John never told me what happened, but I suspect the glass eye he wears may have had something to do with it.

When I met John, he was doing odd jobs at Olympus Spaceport, Mars' largest spaceport. I was a fledging freelance writer who knew only slightly more than the average person about space travel and was looking to add authenticity to the scripts I was pedaling. Despite being down-on-his-luck, John was a friendly, cheerful man who was all-too-willing to share his knowledge and experiences with me for a beer or two. I would pitch my ideas to him and he'd tell me what would really work and what wouldn't. I credit my becoming a regular contributing writer on _Out to the Void_ to his helpful assistance. John and I soon became best friends and then roommates.

Now John was coming home to Ganymede as the pilot of the independent transport _Orchid_ and my business partner. I wondered what his people would think of him. John didn't seem concerned and in fact set us down on a flat stretch of ice just outside his old settlement. He reasoned that this would make us more welcome on clannish Ganymede where communities spring up around claims and tend to be very close-knit and suspicious of outsiders.

John had been stingy with our fuel, so it had taken us over a week to reach Ganymede. I'd used the time to read up on our destination, and Ganymede's odd origins were interesting. The moon had a liquid iron core which gave it a protective magnetic field, a gravitational pull only slightly less than Luna's, and a crust of 'dirty ice' and silicates 100 kilometers thick that surrounded a deep ocean of salt water. It was the 'dirty ice' which attracted attention after early expeditions discovered that the crust was littered with anomalous metallic nodules consisting of gold, silver, platinum and other precious metals. This made Ganymede a prime candidate for mining, except that robotic mining machinery tended to break down very quickly in the super-cold environment which made large scale exploitation uneconomical. Terraforming was promptly initiated, and massive fusion-powered, water-cracking oxygen generators provided a breathable oxygen atmosphere and warmed the moon from a frigid -157C to a survivable -35C. Then the Interplanetary War broke out and plans to further terraform the moon were abandoned.

After the war there had been several attempts to finish terraforming the moon, none of which were particularly well-financed and had fallen short of succeeding. The result was a partially terraformed world with a thin but breathable atmosphere where the temperature never got above freezing. The harsh conditions dissuaded further large-scale attempts at mining, leaving the settlers to eke out a living on their individual claims.

We'd landed in a blizzard, which John informed us was 'normal weather'. When the cargo bay doors opened the in-rushing air was so cold that I felt like I couldn't catch my breath for a few moments. I've never felt cold like this before. It was a good thing we'd all bought heated snowsuits before we left Mars.

A few dozen locals had already assembled just beyond our landing gear. They stood there silent and motionless, bundled against the cold holding flashlights and lanterns, intermittently obscured by the gusts of blowing snow. John motioned for me to accompany him and we rode down on the cargo basket, which was already covered with a thin layer of snow. We reached the ground and John raised and waved his hand in greeting.

"Hello folks, I'm John Tanner!" he shouted. "I'm the son of Barry and Circe Tanner. I've come with my friends and we've brung along gifts for you and plentiful goods for trade!"

"I remember you, Johnny!" shouted a voice from the crowd. A moment later a short, stocky man pushed his way to the front and extended his elbow.

"Ezra Betters," he said as he touched John's elbow[4]. "I'm your cousin and I was your pappy's friend when you was just knee-high."

"I'm your cousin Jerry Lee," said another man stepping forward. Within a few moments, about a half-dozen relatives and family friends had stepped forward.

One person slowly stepped forward and stood in front of John. He didn't extend his elbow, but simply said, "Hello big brother."

John hesitated for a second as if he'd lost his voice, then he finally replied, "Hello Paul".

"Never thought I'd ever see you again," Paul said. His voice was a flat monotone.

"Where's Pap and Mom and George and Ringo?" John asked.

"They's all dead, John. Cave-in got Pap and George and Ringo seven years ago. Mom passed away the following year. Would've got word to you if we'd known where you was."

"I'm . . . sorry," John muttered and hung his head.

"Well, you's home now and that's all that matters," interjected Ezra. "C'mon, let's get inside and we can all get re-acquainted."

With the ice apparently broken (figuratively speaking), we were escorted through the blowing snow drifts to the settlement's cavernous central structure that served as the town hall and village tavern. Once inside we followed the local's lead and stripped off our snow suits, hanging them on hooks that lined the walls that were adorned with hand-painted portraits of what we were informed depicted the 'gone-but-never-forgotten' members of the clan. We were motioned to seats near the head of a long metal table at the front of the great room and were subsequently served large mugs of steaming hot liquid that John informed us was a locally brewed concoction typically consumed after a hard day in the mines. Sacks of black mineral briquettes were added to long fire pits on three sides of the hall and stoked to roaring blazes. Spits were loaded with great rolls of rabbit meat. Our arrival was apparently a cause for celebration.

"It seems the prodigal son has returned," I half-jokingly suggested to John, but he didn't say anything. He seemed uncharacteristically nervous, as if the recent encounter with his younger brother had un-nerved him.

The banquet lasted for hours and culminated with dancing to music played on fiddles and guitars. Despite living an isolated existence on the frozen moon, the locals apparently listened to contemporary music because the band played a few polkas and line dances that were popular on Mars. The _H &D Stomp_ was a particular favorite and was played multiple times. When they struck up _Night Fever_ , Cat and I joined in and our footwork earned approving nods and smiles from the other dancers. _Okay, so maybe they were actually laughing at us because I'm a lousy dancer unless I've had a few beers, and then I'm still lousy only I don't realize it._

The festivities abruptly ended, and the locals began to bundle up for the trip back to their homes through the frigid night. Paul and several other men who composed the clan's village council motioned for us to linger.

"You said that you had goods to trade," said Paul. "Tomorrow's a work day, so we'll finish up our dickerin' now if that's alright."

"No problem with that, right Captain?" John said turning to me.

"Uh . . . sure, why not?" I answered. _What else was I supposed to say under the circumstances?_ "If you'd like to come aboard, then you can view our cargo and see what you want to trade for."

About 30 minutes later we were all standing in _Orchid's_ cargo hold, staring at neatly sorted rows of . . . stuff. Lo had anticipated the impending transaction, and he and Tuesday had cleverly arranged our cargo for ease of viewing and product selection. At this point the village's 'selection committee', consisting of Paul, a stern-faced middle-aged woman and two muscular looking men, went to work. They diligently scoured the rows of goods, whispering to one another but picking up nothing. Then, just when I thought that our trip out here was a complete bust, they suddenly began grabbing certain items and placing them on the empty pallets that Lo had staged near the cargo hatch. I was surprised at some of the things that weren't being selected, but I was glad that other items were flying off the stacks. (Who would have ever thought that pick axes wouldn't sell in a frontier mining settlement?) The packets of recreational simtabs that Lo had brought along all sold out, but I suppose if you spend your life digging through ice that the vivid memory of a tropical vacation on old Earth must be pretty attractive. I never have understood the desire to have a false 'feel good' memory, even if the effects are supposedly benign.

Another half-hour later the pallets were full, and Lo, Tuesday, Paul, and the middle-aged woman began to discuss our compensation while John and I stood by and watched. Their negotiations went on for quite a while and became rather heated at times. At one point, Lo stamped his foot angrily and the woman threw up her hands in frustration. Just when I thought the deal was going to burn up on re-entry, elbows were touched, and Paul and another man left to retrieve our payment.

"That wasn't so bad," I whispered to John who just nodded blankly in response. Something was obviously bothering him, but I couldn't guess what it was.

We waited a long time for Paul and the other man to return, but they finally staggered up to the cargo basket with obviously heavy sacks slung over their shoulders immediately followed by a smaller man of slender build and a larger companion. Several more villagers carrying lanterns and flashlights leading a pair of large mining sleds pulled by a small tractor brought up the rear, the sleds having been used to transport our payment and intended to retrieve their newly purchased goods. It took two trips to raise all of the men and their sacks up to the cargo bay. The heavy sacks were deposited on the floor of the cargo deck, and Lo motioned for John and me to examine their contents.

The sacks were filled with shiny gold nuggets. Enough to make all of us filthy rich!

"There's just one more matter to settle, then we're all done here," announced Paul catching his breath. "As is our custom, my brother John was dutifully bound to be betrothed to a fine young woman when she came of age. He forsook his rightful obligation to his clan and vamoosed with a satchel of gold that weren't his to take that were her dowry. That cowardly and selfish act left it to me and the rest of our family to shelter and provide for the poor unsoiled gal until he either returned and married her proper or was declared rightfully dead after 10 years. Bein' as how I am the only other livin' member of our family I have dutifully continued to shelter and protect her honor. This most unfortunate situation has deprived me of my own right to take a wife. That is to say . . . until now."

While Paul had been speaking, the two men who'd followed him up the cargo ramp had pulled back the hoods of their parkas. One was an older, grim-faced man with a gray beard and round spectacles. The other wasn't a man at all, but an attractive young woman with pale skin, bright blue eyes, full lips and shoulder length blonde hair.

"John Tanner," announced the bearded man in a booming voice, "In accordance with our ancient and most sacred laws, you are hereby commanded to lawfully wed and take to bed in our presence this very night the maid Ellie Forsyth to whom your troth was pledged or be condemned to death on the spot so that she may be free to marry another man. How chose ye?"

For a few uncomfortably long moments, the only thing to be heard was the unceasing howling of the wind outside our candle. Then the villagers drew their guns. Guns as in slug throwers that will put a hole clear through you and not stunners. They meant business.

"I guess I'm gettin' myself married tonight," John stuttered.

My mind was racing as the scene unfolded before me and I asked myself what my fictional alter-ego in _Out to the Void_ , the dashing and ever-resourceful Captain Jack Parsec, would do if his loyal First Mate, Roger Starkey, was about to be forced into a wedding at gunpoint. I recalled a similar situation back in Episode 26, in which the ship's brilliant young doctor had used an ancient Chinese herbal medicine to place Roger in a death-like trance. The primitive tribesmen who were about to sacrifice Roger to their volcano god for inadvertently spurning the advances of their chief's lovely young daughter released his apparently lifeless body back to the crew for burial in the void. Once they were safely off-planet, the doctor administered the antidote with only moments to spare and then they'd all had a good laugh while the credits rolled.

Now if _Orchid_ just had a ship's doctor with an ancient Chinese herbal medicine capable of temporarily placing John in a death-like trance, we might be able to pull off such an escape. Problem was that _Orchid_ didn't have a doctor on board and they insisted on cremating their dead on perpetually frozen Ganymede.

[4] A greeting where two people bump elbows rather than shake hands. This greeting became popular during the avian flu scare of 2006, the 2009 swine flu outbreak, and the Ebola outbreak of 2014 when health officials supported its use to reduce the spread of infection. The elbow touch officially replaced the handshake as a universal greeting after the orange flu pandemic.

CHAPTER 4

Candles appear phallic because of the laws of physics and aerodynamics. It's all about reduced frontal area and control in an atmosphere. You could argue that the candle's phallic nature helps shape our attitudes about them. - Unknown

* * *

John was escorted by his appointed 'groomsmen' through the black and frigid night back to the town. Lo, Tuesday and I followed them, unsure of what to expect next.

The bearded guy had indicated that John's wedding would take place 'this very night'. Lo informed me that a 'night' on Ganymede isn't the same as a night on Mars because the moon is 'tidally locked' to Jupiter, meaning it always has one side facing its planet. Ganymede orbits Jupiter every 171 hours and as it passes behind (from the sun's perspective) the planet, it is in total darkness. So, there are long and irregular 'nights'. Bottom line was that it could be the equivalent of several Martian days before the ceremony, which meant we might still be able to rescue John from his obligatory matrimony.

Normally, John would have stayed at his family's home with his brother, Paul, until the wedding. Clan custom dictated that the perspective bride and groom not reside under the same roof until they were formally wed, and since Ellie was already living there under Paul's protection that meant John would have to stay in the equivalent of the town's jail until the ceremony. I had a sneaking suspicion that John's vindictive brother actually relished the thought of John sitting in a cold cell carved into the ice. Good thing the batteries in his heated snowsuit were good for at least 700 hours under normal use.

There wasn't anything for us to do, so we slogged our way through the blowing snowdrifts back to _Orchid_. Despite having Ezra's flashlight, we got lost and I had to rely on my 'face to find our way back to our candle.

Being descended from Earthers as we all were, the settlers on Ganymede still operated on a twenty-four-hour day/night cycle, regardless of whether it was actually day or night. I guess if your work days are spent tunneling through the ice with a thermal drill it doesn't really matter if it is dark or light at the surface. So, eleven hours after John was put in jail for safe keeping, his cousin Ezra Betters showed up to escort us to the wedding ceremony. As his friends and crewmates, we were expected to attend. Okay, make that _obligated_. Cat, Lo, Tuesday and I all quickly donned our heated snowsuits and followed flashlight wielding Ezra through the darkness and perpetual snowstorm to the town hall.

I've never been a fan of weddings. They're too much like funerals. You're 'celebrating' the end of a phase of your life, which in one situation involves being no longer free to come and go as you please and in the other means you've stopped breathing on a permanent basis. Alcohol served afterward made the events tolerable. The warm stuff that we'd consumed at last night's celebration was fairly potent, and I hoped there'd be more of that after the ceremony.

When we arrived at the town hall, we were greeted by a remarkable sight. The entire village had crowded the hall which had been arranged with rows of folding chairs bisected by a central isle which lead to an altar at the front. The clothing worn by the wedding guests was most peculiar. The men mostly wore buttoned shirts with high collars. The women's attire varied from something resembling swimwear to shorts and skirts. There were lots of sunglasses. I'm not an expert on historical Earther fashion, but if I had to guess it was probably twentieth century garb.

John was standing next to the altar, flanked by Ezra, who was serving as his best man, and his appointed groomsmen. All wore matching bejeweled white jumpsuits with upturned collars. The bearded guy stood beside the altar dressed in an archaic looking costume consisting of shinny black shoes, pink socks, gray metallic slacks and topcoat, and a pink buttoned shirt.

"All rise for the King!" he shouted.

Everyone stood up, so we followed suit.

The 'King' made his appearance. He had dark hair, sideburns, and wore sunglasses. He was dressed in a bejeweled white jumpsuit and a short cape with metallic gold lining. Everyone cheered and applauded as he walked toward the altar.

"Thank you. Thank you very much," he said. His voice was at once mellow, smooth, and commanding. It sounded vaguely familiar.

"It's Elvis," Lo whispered to me. "John's clan members are apparently devout Elvisians."

Elvisians, as in members of the Church or Elvis, one of the few surviving religions of old Earth. They followed the sacred sayings of Elvis the King, whose priests are supposedly possessed by his immortal essence and become him when 'in character'. I'd read somewhere that to become a priest, you had to look, speak, move, and of course sound like the ancient performer, so I wasn't convinced that the 'possession' wasn't more than a clever impersonation.

"Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to witness before clan and friends the exchange of solemn vows between Ellie Forsyth and John Tanner," Elvis announced. "If there be any suspicious minds present in the audience, you better shout out now or just shut the 'eff up forever – 'cause their hot plasma love won't wait."

Nobody said anything, so 'Elvis' continued.

"Ellie Forsyth, please repeat after me baby. It only took one orbit to get trapped by you, and now my desires came true, you big hunka hunka hot plasma love! I thought you were nothin' but a hunting canine, howlin' all the time, but now I know you're my plush toy. So, kiss me at high delta-v and love me tender for I can't help falling in love with you."

"LOVE ME TENDER!" shouted the congregation in unison.

Ellie did her best to repeat the vows, only messing up by switching 'quick' and 'tender' which elicited scattered laughs from the crowd and a smile from Elvis.

Elvis turned to John and said, "John Tanner, don't be cruel and repeat after me: It took a determined woman to make me king of the whole Sol System. I thought you were the ice giant in disguise, but you turned out to be my custom android love 'bot. I used to live in the cave down the end of a lonely ice tunnel, but now it's Viva Las Vegas 'cause I need your love tonight."

"VIVA LAS VEGAS!" the congregation shouted joyfully in unison.

John was very nervous and totally muffed his lines, but Elvis just shook his head and told him it was, "Close enough".

"Do you, John Tanner, take Ellie Forsyth to be your wife, and do you promise to love her tender?"

"I do," John mumbled.

"Do you, Ellie Forsyth, take John Tanner to be your husband, and do you promise to love him tender?"

"I do," Ellie said in a voice barely above a whisper.

"Please take this cryogenic moment to exchange your tokens of love," Elvis said to John and Ellie.

John nervously placed a gold wedding ring – apparently supplied by Paul - on Ellie's fourth finger on her left hand. Ellie responded similarly.

"By the powers vested in me, I now pronounce you husband and wife, but remember there's no return to sender in this life," Elvis said. "You may now kiss your ever lovin' cousin."

John and Ellie awkwardly embraced and hurried kissed each other. I could tell this was an uncomfortable moment for both of them.

"Please join me in welcoming Mr. and Mrs. John Tanner. Folks, this has got me all shook up!"

"WE'RE ALL SHOOK UP, TOO!" responded the congregation.

Elvis abruptly broke into the ancient ballad, _Love Me Tender._ The melody and lyrics were hauntingly beautiful. I found that I was getting 'all shook up' listening to his song.

His performance concluded, Elvis took a bow, waved to the congregation, and exited the hall to a hail of cheers and whistles from the crowd.

"Elvis has left the building!" the bearded guy announced.

"HE HAS LEFT THE BUILDING INDEED! RAMEN!" the congregation responded.

The congregation spontaneously broke into a song that Lo whispered to me was what they referred to as a 'hymn', or sacred music.

Elvis is alive! Let his fans sing.

His stage stands ready under Vegas lights.

Let Ed Sullivan with praises ring.

His 'Love Me Tender' shall never die.

"Those who would witness the consecration of the newlyweds' vows may now retire to the blinds," instructed the bearded guy.

As John and Ellie were spirited out of the hall, I turned to Lo.

"Blinds? Is he talking about what I _think_ he's talking about?" I asked.

"Has your vivid imagination conjured a live sex show where the audience remains incognito?" Lo replied.

I guessed we'd be passing on that. John was going to have enough trouble rising to the occasion as it is.

CHAPTER 5

Deejah and Marsha were busy loading the cargo basket when Kid walked up to them escorting a stranger. She was short and busty and carried what looked a doctor's bag tightly clasped in her manacled hands. Kid was carrying her flight bag, which he dropped on the ground in front of Deejah.

" _Cap'n Deejah, this here's your new doctor," he announced. "Name's Katie Gulch, but she answers to Puddles."_

" _Why Puddles?" asked Marsha._

" _I reckon its 'cause she tends to leave little puddles when she's startled," Kid explained._

" _I have a bladder control problem," Puddles mumbled and blushed scarlet._

" _Why is she handcuffed?" Deejah asked._

" _She's wanted for defaulting on her student loan," replied Kid. "Medical school ain't cheap and she's been on the lam for several months. Anyway, the reward money for her ain't all that great and I figure she'll do more good on your candle than she will on a prison farm. She's yours if you want her."_

" _We'll take her," answered Deejah. Kid nodded and unlocked Puddles' handcuffs._

" _Clear skies," he said as he turned and walked away._

" _C'mon, we're getting ready to lift," said Deejah. "Have you ever been out to the void before?"_

" _I rode on a passenger ship when I went to medical school and another time coming here," Puddles replied._

" _Well, you can watch from the bridge," Deejah explained as they rode the basket up to the cargo hold. "Prissy thinks she's some hot-shot pilot and her lift-offs aren't exactly the smoothest."_

They reached the bridge to find Prissy in the pilot's seat – stark naked – and Puddles involuntarily wet herself at the sight. Deejah realized that she'd neglected to warn their newest crewmember about their little 'custom'.

" _We're all used to wearing just our birthday suits shipboard," she explained to Puddles. "I hope that doesn't bother you too much."_

" _Ah . . . do I have to go naked too?" Puddles asked timidly._

" _No, but this old candle's cooling system can't quite keep up with all the heat the rocket motor and everything else puts out, so it gets severely tropical in here. You might change your mind after awhile."_

Puddles didn't change her mind right away, although she did jettison her pantsuit and shoes in short order. She finally discarded her 'skimpies'[5] two weeks out, which was about the same time that she and Jewels started bunking together. Puddles never would have dreamed she'd ever find herself sexually attracted to another woman or run around a candle naked, but on board Orchid it all seemed perfectly natural. She wondered why her libido had seemingly gone suborbital, but as long as she got to share a bunk with Jewels it didn't seem to matter.

Puddles loved the potted orchids that were all over the candle. Deejah remarked that they'd named their candle after the fragrant wildflower and it had become their mascot.

" _Orchids grow wild and free – just like us," Deejah explained._

* * *

"I can't believe that's _all_ that's left," said John dejectedly. He was staring along with Lo and I at the not-so-large sack of gold nuggets in the middle of the big table in _Orchid's_ galley that was left over after we'd given the rest back to the villagers to secure his freedom. It turned out that not only had John's people expected him to fulfill his obligation to marry Ellie, but they'd insisted on him remaining behind to work in the mines and raise a family as was his duty to his community. The problem with that scenario was that we'd have all been marooned on Ganymede since John was presently the only one of us who could fly _Orchid._ This had created a conundrum for the villagers. Being a 'fair and righteous people', they couldn't hold us against our will in good conscious. After some lengthy deliberations they decided that John could leave and take his bride with him, but the bulk of our gold must remain behind to ensure that we would return them to Ganymede once we'd found another pilot. In turn, they'd given us a small bag of gold nuggets as a gesture of good faith.

John had absolutely no intention of spending the rest his life tunneling through ice and raising a brood of little miners on a place where you could freeze to death quickly on a 'warm' day, so now we were essentially back to square one on our path to wealth.

"I guess you didn't see that one coming," Lo remarked to John. The tone in his voice was one of bitter sarcasm.

"I never thought that would've happened," John said defensively. "I figured I'd been gone long 'nuff that Ellie would've been married off to somebody else by now. Paul was just all bitter 'bout me leaving him to carry the load. If George or Mom had been there they'd have made him see differently."

"It's all water under the proverbial bridge," I interjected as I stood up. "We still have a little gold for our troubles and some leftover cargo that we can probably sell on Rhea or maybe on Titan."

"Titan," said Lo. "They have little worth trading for on Rhea."

"John?"

"Uh, Lo's probably right."

"Okay, then Titan it is," I said trying to sound like I was actually in command and not just a captain in name only. Then it finally dawned on me that I really was the captain of an independent transport and not just along for the ride.

I knew something about Saturn's largest moon from the research I'd done for an unsold _Out to the Void_ script. Titan had been one of the Sol System's earliest successful terraforming efforts. With a dense mostly nitrogen atmosphere and a 0.14g[6] surface gravity, Titan was practically ready-made for terraforming. Like Ganymede, Titan had been a frigid moon that required significant warming and oxygen to make it suitable for human habitation. The efforts involved using designer microbes to eliminate the moon's organonitrogen haze and increase the greenhouse effect. Warming up the moon released huge amounts of methane which were harvested and sold for fuel. The profits funded the construction of a vast network of massive fusion power plants and catalytic converters which produced oxygen also eventually warmed the surface temperature in from -179ºC to an average 16ºC. The liquid methane lakes were long gone, but there were still plenty of heavier and highly valuable petrochemicals to harvest. That drew more investment, as well as plenty of colonists.

Colonists with disposable income to spend on 'exotic and unusual off-world goods' (including several leftover cases of institutional-grade toilet paper). At least that's what we all were hoping.

[5] Popular minimalist style undergarments.

[6] gravity or gravitation. Pronounced "gee". One g is equivalent to Earth normal gravity. 1g acceleration is 9.80665 meters per second per second or 32.1740 feet per second per second.

CHAPTER 6

To the untrained eye, the 'Night Goddess' was just another variety of orchid. Like all plants and animals in the Void, the flower originated long ago on the Earth and was introduced to the Jovian moon Io during terraforming. Although the newly terraformed moon developed a lush ecosystem, un-expectedly high carbon dioxide and water vapor levels resulted in oppressive heat and humidity that made only the extreme northern and southernmost latitudes (barely) habitable. However, the Commonwealth soon found a suitable use for the 'steam bath' moon and Io became the penal colony called Penitence.

The Night Goddess flourished on Penitence, but - like many other plants introduced into a new environment - underwent a subtle mutation. The flower's pungent fragrance became a potent aphrodisiac for human females – a property that puzzled the prison guards who observed unusually heightened sexual activity among the female convicts. It wasn't until after a female botanist studying the orchid went into an uncontrollable sexual frenzy and attempted to rape a male co-worker that the mutant flower's secret was finally discovered. The Night Goddess was placed on the Commonwealth's Restricted Plant Registry, which made it illegal to transport off Penitence except for tightly-controlled medical research. Still, word of the 'horny flower' eventually leaked out . . .

* * *

Ellie turned out to be a good addition to our crew. She proved to be a highly intelligent and self-reliant young woman who could prepare a meal with whatever was available, mend clothing with a needle and thread and had a wealth of knowledge of home remedies that could cure headaches, reduce fevers and sooth an upset stomach. She had a mind like a sponge and was a fast learner. She could be blunt and simple-minded in her ways and speech as many who dwell on the outer moons tend to be, but I don't think she ever meant to do any harm or hurt anyone's feelings.

John, on the other hand, seemed to have lost his enthusiasm for the spacer's life since his obligatory wedding. He'd become increasingly lethargic and forgetful, which is dangerous when you're piloting a candle through the void. This necessitated my having to have a frank discussion with him in private on the bridge one day that, while less than immediately productive, was at least enlightening.

"It's Ellie!" he'd protested. "All she wants to do is sex all night and I can't take it anymore. I gotta get me some sleep or I swear I'm gonna die!"

"Don't you think it's just because she's – how did you put it to me – oh, yeah, _sweet on you_?" I replied with obvious sarcasm.

"All right, you win. It's the 'effin orchids."

" _Orchids?_ Hmmmmm. I seem to recall you insisting just a week or two ago that weren't any orchids left on this candle."

"That's what the auctioneer tol' me," John said sullenly. You was right there with me when he said it, too."

"You'll have to excuse me. It seems I was sufficiently intoxicated by then that I have absolutely no 'effin clue what all he told us. Care to enlighten me on anything else he said that might be important?"

After a long pause, John said, "You probably ain't gonna like it."

"Try me."

John sighed heavily and stared out the forward viewports at the void. After a few moments, he said, "The auctioneer said this candle was cursed and that's why you got such a good deal on her."

I laughed. "Cursed? Oh, come on John! Do you think I believe in curses? Give me an 'effin break!"

"I ain't the superstitious type," he replied rather defensively. "I didn't believe it neither, but the pieces is all startin' to fit."

"What pieces? What are you talking about?" I demanded.

John flipped a switch on the control panel and then stood up. "Let's go to the galley," he said. "I'm feelin' a bit thirsty."

Everyone else was asleep and aside from the familiar noises made by the candle's various systems, all was quiet. When we got to the galley he grabbed two sippy boxes of beer from out of the cooler and handed one to me. We sat down at the table and John took a long sip. I followed his example and then he proceeded to tell me a very strange tale.

CHAPTER 7

Kid held the almost empty sippy box to his mouth and allowed just enough water to moisten his parched throat to pass his lips. He'd managed to make that sippy box last for a day and a half, but the effects of dehydration were starting to take their toll. Despite his extreme hunger and thirst, he dared not leave the bridge. Even though they'd stopped screaming and pounding on the hatch, he knew that they we just waiting for him on the other side. They still looked human, but he knew that they were animals driven insane with uncontrollable lust by their long-term exposure to the orchids. He'd combed the candle from stem to stern and tossed ever last plant he could find into the airlock, hoping that once they were gone the effects would wear-off. Unfortunately, his desperate actions seemed to have amounted to 'too little, too late' and he'd been forced to barricade himself on the bridge. He'd no time to prepare for this stand-off and his hastily grabbed rations had been exhausted days ago.

A 'mayday' call was a non-starter, since it would just as likely summon a pirate as it would the Space Guard, if anyone. A pirate would at best offer no assistance and at worst leave him dead or stranded without fuel. The Space Guard would take a very dim view of the 'merchandise' in Orchid's cargo bay, and Kid had no desire to spend the next twenty years on a prison farm on sweltering Penitence. He was on his own in this.

Being gang-raped by a half-dozen not-at-all physically unattractive naked women was probably some dude's favorite jerk-off fantasy, but for Kid it had become a living nightmare. He knew if they reached him that they would kill him in their mindless attempts to satisfy their out-of-control sexual urges.

Kid glanced out the viewport at tiny disk that had just been a point of light a scant few hours ago. That steadily growing disk was Mars, and if he could just hold out until he reached it then his friend Ali Kahn would help him. He hated to sell out his favorite gals to the notorious brothel owner, but they weren't the same gals he'd met a few months ago. Anyway, they'd be better off in a brothel than being vivisected in some supercorp's research facility.

* * *

"So, let me get this straight," I said as I downed the last of my beer. "The crew eventually went crazy from breathing the recycled orchid fumes for months?"

"Yup," said John.

"And you think that this may be happening again?"

"The thought has crossed my mind a time or two."

"Well, Cat hasn't been keeping me awake at night lately," I replied. "Do you think she's developed a resistance to the orchids?"

"Cat and Tuesday sure seem to be spendin' a lot of time together. Maybe they're servicin' each other? I dunno, but I think we still better do _somethin'_ before it's too late," said John.

"Okay, so what exactly did you have in mind?" I asked. If the orchids had somehow survived 'cleansing' and were growing in a hidden and possibly inaccessible area of our candle, then eradicating them could be a problem. John had suggested that they might be growing inside the air scrubbers, but unless the 'effin things could live without any light then I didn't think that would be possible. Then again, they were _mutant_ orchids. What if they didn't require sunlight? They were called the _Night Goddess_ after all, a moniker that implied a preference for the dark. That seemed crazy, but if it was true then what was their food supply?

"Well, I thought about us suitin' up, ventin' all our air and lettin' a couple hours of hard vacuum do the job," John suggested. "We'd probably want to be real close to someplace with air when we done that so we could land and replace our air supply afterward."

"Wouldn't venting our air be kind of hard on the candle?" I asked.

"Nah. She can take a couple hours without messin' up anything. I wouldn't go longer than that."

"What if the orchids don't need air?" I asked.

"Most livin' things need some air unless they's some kinda germ, Pete. I don't think them orchids can grow without air or they'd be floatin' all over the void."

Our conversation lapsed and we both just sat there silently staring at our empty sippy boxes.

"Did the auctioneer happen to tell you what became of the crew after they went crazy?" I finally asked.

"He said one of 'em got herself caught after they landed and is in a nut house back in Sagan City," John said. "Nobody knows what happened to the others. Why'd you wanna know?"

"Just curious," I said as I got up and moved over to the cooler to fetch two more beers. "Anyway, I think that we ought to try your air dumping idea when we get close to Titan. I'd rather not see our female crewmembers turned into homicidal nymphomaniacs if we can help it."

Dumping _Orchid's_ air wasn't as simple as overriding the safeties so that both the inner and outer airlock doors were open at the same time like on _Out to the Void_. All the other safeties that controlled the air-tight compartment hatches as well as the valves on the air-re-circulating system had to be overridden. Anything that couldn't be exposed to a hard vacuum had to be stored in an air-tight locker or container. That included anything that might explode, boil or not remain intact without air - otherwise you'd have a colossal mess to clean-up afterward. Anything that could become airborne and sucked out of the airlock had to be secured as well. Fortunately, _Orchid_ was like any other candle and designed for emergency decompression. It was just all the stuff she was carrying that had to be protected.

It took us several days to get the candle ready, but then we weren't working on it all the time. We waited until we were in orbit over Titan before we dumped our air in case something didn't go smoothly and we had to get where it was breathable in a hurry. We were all suited up and strapped in when John opened the airlock doors. He didn't open them all the way, but cracked them and let out some air, then opened them a little wider as the internal pressure steadily dropped. He kept this up until both doors were wide open and all of our air was vented. I didn't see anything flying around as the air got sucked out, so I guessed that we did a decent job of securing everything. Well, almost. An unnoticed ketchup packet made a mess down in the galley, but we didn't find out about that until later.

We all waited for a couple of hours and let the empty void work its purifying magic on _Orchid_. All of the candle's systems were still working, so we could move around more or less normally except that space suits aren't the easiest things to try to work in. We just loitered around until Ellie's visor unexpectedly fogged-up and John decided that it was time to close the airlock doors. We re-pressurized the candle using reserve air from the tank, then broke orbit and headed for the planet's surface. John put us down on a flat stretch of ground just outside the refinery town of New Houston. There was an actual spaceport at Heinlein City, but that was the better part of an hour away by train and Lo said that the city dwellers were a lot less likely to be interested in our cargo than the folks in the remote refinery town.

While Lo and Tuesday arranged our un-sold cargo for viewing just beyond the base of our landing gear, the rest of us set about putting _Orchid_ back to normal. Lo said that he didn't want a bunch of strangers riding the basket up and down to view our merchandise in the cargo hold. The sale proved to be less formalized than the one on Ganymede, with individuals or small groups coming up and bartering for a few items at a time. Then a local shopkeeper arrived and angrily told us to get out because we were wrecking his business. Lo managed to calm him down and offered him a deal on the remainder of our stock. They must have haggled for about 20 minutes before finally touching elbows. Lo said later that he'd hoped one of the local merchants would show up and try to buy us out, so I guess that was his plan all along.

We had successfully succeeded in selling all of our cargo (except for the darn pick axes), acquiring some refined hydrocarbon products to sell for a tidy profit back on Mars, and had managing to make a profit (albeit nothing we could all retire on) for all our troubles. Not bad for our first trip out to the void.

Too bad we didn't get to keep it.

CHAPTER 8

_Whenever Man, in the fulfillment of his destiny, ventures beyond his previous bounds, there are self-seeking, unscrupulous men who will stand in the way. Sometimes cloaking themselves in pseudo-righteousness, sometimes honestly dishonest, these men still have the same end in mind, riches._ – Marc Miller

* * *

The void – what they once called 'outer space' - is vast beyond human comprehension. So incredibly vast and empty that the odds of meeting another candle in flight are truly astronomical in the literal sense. That is, unless such a rendezvous is carefully planned in advance. Both vessels have to match course and relatively velocity – you don't just zoom up to another candle and dock like they do in the earlier episodes of _Out to the Void_. If such a meeting is undesired by one vessel, a simple velocity change can prevent docking.

On the other hand, when you get a message from an Interplanetary Commonwealth Space Guard patrol vessel instructing you to, "Cut your thrust and prepare to be boarded for inspection", its best to comply – unless you want to be vaporized. Lo and Tuesday assured John and me that we had nothing to worry about. Our licenses and permits were in order, our manifest complete and accurate, and our cargo perfectly legal.

I knew something wasn't right when the boarding party exited the air lock and entered the cabin. Although they were dressed in the familiar armored spacesuits bearing the Space Guard insignia, two of them carried recoilless auto-rifles rather than the traditional stunners. Slug throwers are taboo aboard a candle unless you intend to inflect lethal damage. As they swam toward us their fluid, precise movements suggested that they'd spent hundreds of hours in freefall. They flanked a third person who drew a pistol from his holster and pointed it at us.

"Cooperate and you will not be harmed!" barked a woman's harsh, authoritarian voice. "We represent Pluto's Children, and we only require that you surrender your cargo and some of your reaction mass.

_Reaction mass._ Fancy term used by scientific and military types for what we commonly called plain ol' 'fuel'. The stuff that got accelerated by your rocket motor out of your candle's rear end that made you go forward. On most candles that was water, which was mostly plentiful and fairly cheap depending on where you were in the Sol System. Whoever these guys were, they must have some sort of a military background.

"Easy there friend," John said calmly. "Take whatever you want but don't hurt nobody."

I saw Tuesday studying the pirates like a cat getting ready to pounce. I made eye contact with her and shook my head, "no". The last thing I needed was a kung fu fight in freefall that could end with our candle being shot full of holes and us all winding up dead.

I recalled how in Episode 47 of _Out to the Void_ , Captain Jack Parsec employed a clever magic trick to distract the space pirates while his loyal first mate, Roger Starkey, used his mini-stun ray disguised as a pen to subdue them. Problem was I didn't know any magic tricks and none of my crew had a mini-stun ray disguised as a pen. Not much help there. Better to comply – at least we might live through this.

Three more armored spacesuit-wearing pirates boarded us, then they went to quickly work with discipline and efficiency that indicated this wasn't the first time they'd pulled this stunt. Within twenty minutes they'd transferred our cargo containers to their candle and then they sucked most of our water out of our fuel tank. Before they left they disabled our radio so that we couldn't call for help. Then they left. Ironically, they left the 'effin pick axes behind.

As soon as the pirates left, John and Cat went to work assessing the damage and taking inventory. John cursed when he determined they'd siphoned off most of our fuel, leaving us just enough to decelerate. That meant we were stuck on our current trajectory coasting through the void. If we used our remaining fuel to accelerate or alter our course, then we wouldn't have enough to decelerate again.

Cat spent several hours frantically trying to fix our radio before she finally gave up and broke down, sobbing. I'd never seen her cry before.

"We're so totally 'effed!" Cat wailed. Tuesday put her arms around her and tried to calm her.

" _Jao Gao![7]_ Our 'faces don't work either," Tuesday grumbled as she attempted to connect.

"They probably took out our high-gain," suggested John. "We ain't talkin' to nobody out here without it."

"What about the radios in our space suits?" I asked. "Couldn't we use them to call for help?"

"Their range is too short," Cat said regaining her composure. "Nobody would hear us unless we get close to them."

"They surely did a number on us," John said grimly.

"If they weren't the Space Guard, then how'd they ever find us out here?"

"They either hacked our flight plan somehow or had someone at the spaceport on their payroll that provided it to 'em. They had our transponder code and that candle of theirs probably had a military-grade sensor suite that found us once they got within a few hundred thousand kilometers."

"Okay, so what are our options," I asked. "We were on course for Mars when we cut our motor. We should still be on course, right?"

"Yeah, 'cept Mars won't be there by the time we get there," John explained as he pulled up our trajectory on the navigational display. "See, now we're just coastin' along in a long 'liptical orbit. We'll pass Jupiter's orbit, only it won't be there neither. Same with Mars."

"Will we ever get close to anything?"

John's hands manipulated the display, and then he laughed.

"Yeah, we'll get close to Saturn again in a few thousand years. Course we'll all be dead by then."

"Makes me wish I'd bought a candle with hibernators."

"You'll never get me in one of those. Some people never wake up," was John's reply.

I looked dejectedly at the display. It showed our predicted orbit around the Sun, a long period ellipse. I saw where we crossed the planet's orbits, only as John indicated they wouldn't be there when our orbits intersected. Then I noticed another ellipse that intersected ours and asked John what it was.

"Oh, that's just a comet," he said.

"Uh, but doesn't it look like we're going to run into it?"

John swore again.

"Looks like we'll meet up in 'bout forty-two days," he said dejectedly. "We can use what's left of our fuel to keep from collidin', but that's about it."

"Wait . . . do we have enough fuel to _land_ on it?" I said excitedly.

"Uh, yeah," John said with a puzzled look on his face. "But what good would that do us?"

"Aren't comets mostly water?"

Suddenly John got a huge grin on his face. He impulsively hugged me, sending us both tumbling across the cabin and bouncing off the opposite wall. Tuesday had the composure to grab my ankle while holding on to one of the numerous padded handrails installed around the cabin to assist in maneuvering in freefall and stopped our tumbling.

"You're a 'effin genius, Pete!" he shouted and laughed. "We can use the comet's ice to refuel!"

"How you going to get it in our fuel tank," Cat asked.

"We can use the refueling hose to suck up the water as the Sun melts the ice on the head," John replied.

"Nice try, but it won't work," Cat said shaking her head emphatically from side to side. "The ice won't stay in liquid phase long enough to siphon – it sublimates almost immediately in a vacuum when it gets enough sunlight. Anyway, you can't siphon in a vacuum – you can't create negative pressure where there isn't any pressure to begin with.

"Is there any other way to get water into the tank?" I asked.

Cat paused looking thoughtful. "We might be able to shove ice chunks through the maintenance hatch into the tank," she suggested.

The maintenance hatch was basically a 'manhole' on the top of the fuel tank. It was there to facilitate repairs and – if you used dirty water – cleaning. Cat told me that to get to it you had to go through another access hatch in the floor of the cargo bay into the crawlspace that ran between the air scrubbers and the reserve air and potable water tanks. The opening to the tank was just big enough for a person in a space suit to fit through, which meant we could shove fair sized chunks of ice through it.

"How do we get the ice to melt once it's in the tank," I asked. I knew the tank was insulated to prevent our water/fuel from either freezing or boiling.

"The tank has an active thermal control blanket around it," Cat explained. "It keeps the water from freezing by heating it by tapping the power plant when we're out beyond the Belt and cooling it using the radiators when we're closer to the Sun." All we have to do is turn up the thermostat and it will melt the ice.

We had a plan, now we just had to make it work. Landing on a comet wasn't the easiest thing, but it had been done before by robot probes hundreds of years ago and later by crewed expeditions. The primitive rocket motors they had back then didn't have anywhere near _Orchid's_ (modest by modern standards) thousand kilometers-per-second delta-v and they still managed it. Comets were commonly used in terraforming and harvesting water from them was routine, but I didn't recall any instance when a candle actually _refueled_ by landing on a comet and dumping ice mined from it directly into the fuel tank.

I hadn't even used that gimmick in _Out to the Void_!

We spent the next forty-two days working out the details of how we would extract the ice from the comet and get it into our fuel tank, and then what we would do next. We had enough food left on board to make it for another two months with a bit of rationing. Water and air weren't a concern – our rocket motor's power plant had enough helium-3 to last us for many decades, and as long as we had power the air scrubbers and water purification machinery would work. We just had to get enough ice into the tank to get us back to civilization. The pirates hadn't found our gold, so we could hopefully top off our fuel tank, re-stock our expendables and still have enough left over to purchase some goods for speculative trade – if we could reach the right destination. A few days before our rendezvous with the comet, I held a meeting with my crew to discuss our options.

"The easiest place for us to get to is gonna be Luna, but water there is a tad bit expensive nowadays," said John. "If we get enough ice in our tank then we can just head back to Mars. We don't have to land - we could just dock at Phobos."

"Phobos is too pricey," interjected Lo. "Everything is marked up three or four hundred percent. Luna is much better. Much lower margins. Or just land on Mars."

"That'd almost be like startin' over," John replied.

"Many Earth expatriates live on Luna and they love their gold," interjected Tuesday.

"If we can get enough water in our tank then we wouldn't have to refuel on Luna, would we?" I asked.

"Captain's got a good point," said Cat.

"Your call," said John looking at me.

"Let's get the ice in the tank first, then we'll decide," I replied.

Ellie approached me after the meeting with a worried expression on her face. She'd been distraught ever since the pirates had boarded us, and she wasn't a fan of weightlessness.

"Captain Pete, may I please have a word with you?" she asked timidly.

"Uh, sure. What's up Ellie?"

"Are we going to die?" she asked hesitantly.

I hesitated and then I smiled reassuringly and replied.

"No. We'll all die someday, but not this time. We've got a good plan and I believe it will work."

"Thank you," she said and then left.

I sat alone in the galley, my feet hooked habitually under the bar on the underside of the table to keep myself from inadvertently floating off. I missed the sensation of gravity, even if it was only fake low-gravity produced by our candle's acceleration in 'cruise mode'. I hoped I'd feel it again.

[7] Mandarin Chinese expression for "What a mess!" or "Not good!"

CHAPTER 9

Day 42 arrived almost anticlimactically. _Almost._ We'd rehearsed the steps of our rendezvous dozens of times, but the real thing can always have stuff thrown in that you didn't anticipate. I hadn't counted on our course taking us through the comet's tail. It was like being in a snowstorm in space with occasional thumps from larger pieces of ice hitting our hull. It didn't seem to unnerve John too much, although I suppose he was as worried as I was about the possibility of a boulder-sized hunk of ice striking us and doing some serious damage to _Orchid_ because he retracted our wing-like radiators before we hit the comet's tail.

On our current trajectory we overshot the comet's head, which we'd counted on. John flipped us around and brought our rocket motor on line, matching our velocity with that of the comet. Then he turned _Orchid_ back around, extended our landing gear, and used our maneuvering thrusters to push us slowly back towards the comet's head. At least the comet wasn't tumbling, so landing shouldn't be too difficult if we could find a reasonably smooth spot near the terminator where light met dark.

For the better part of an hour we gradually closed with the comet until we finally made contact with a jarring thud and bounced. John used our maneuvering thrusters to gently nudge us back down and we bounced again. On the third try we finally settled onto the comet.

So far, so good. John, Lo and I suited-up while Cat and Tuesday went to work on removing the maintenance hatch. Ellie stationed herself by one of the windows in the crew compartment so that she could keep an eye on us. We rode the cargo basket down to the comet's surface and then tethered ourselves to one of _Orchid's_ landing legs. The comet's gravitational pull was so weak that a misstep could launch you into the void.

"Now I'm glad these darn things didn't sell," John said as he raised his pick axe.

Our first problem occurred when John swung his pick axe to bust out a hunk of ice and both he and the ice went flying. The tether kept him from floating off, but our precious ice kept going.

It took us several tries, but we finally worked out a system where John would swing his pick axe, I would grab the ice and Lo would haul us both back down. The brittle ice proved to be easy to break and the chunks were fair sized, but the process took longer than we'd anticipated.

"At this rate it's going to take us days to get enough ice," I remarked.

Tuesday's voice came over our helmet radios with less-than-good news. Cat was having trouble removing the fasteners that held the maintenance hatch in place. She'd already gone through two battery packs and only managed to remove three nuts.

"We might as well knock-off for now," John suggested. "There ain't no point in diggin' more ice until we can get the lid to the fuel tank open."

We rode the basket back up to the cargo bay. Lo wasn't hanging on to the rail and almost floated off when the basket stopped.

By the time John removed his spacesuit, Cat had managed to remove four more fasteners. It took her and John another half hour and a fair amount of cursing to finish removing all the fasteners. Somehow, John smashed his thumb when they were pulling up on the hatch and there was more cursing. I decided that it would be a good time to break for lunch and we all retreated to the galley.

Ellie served us all lunch, which consisted of ready-to-eat prepackaged 'freefall meals' since anything else would be too messy to eat in the comet's meager g. We discussed our next moves as we ate in the galley.

"The ice will start to melt as soon as we bring it aboard," I said. "We'll need to get it into the fuel tank fast. It should settle to the bottom and not float around the tank."

"We should probably keep the tank cold so that the ice doesn't melt," Cat suggested.

"Why?" "We want it to melt, don't we?" I asked.

"Not when we're adding more ice to it. In this ultra-low g, the water will splash up and out of the hatch when we drop more ice into the tank."

I hadn't thought of that.

We decided on a 'bucket brigade' strategy: John, Lo and I would dig up the ice, load it into the basket, and then close the basket's cover so it wouldn't float back out. Tuesday would wait in the cargo bay, unload the basket and toss the ice hunks to Ellie who'd be waiting by the access hatch in the floor of the cargo bay. Ellie would then pass it through the crawl space to Cat, who would toss it through the maintenance hatch into the fuel tank.

It worked fine - at least until Ellie heaved the first chunk of ice towards Cat. She misjudged her throw, and Cat had to duck to avoid being hit. The ice chunk hit the top of the fuel tank behind her and exploded into small fragments which bounced back and showered Cat with ice.

"Sorry," Ellie said meekly. "Are you okay?"

Cat brushed the ice off and just laughed.

We worked in shifts, methodically mining the ice and transferring it to our fuel tank. Gradually the tank began to fill. The bottom was soon covered, and the ice began to accumulate until the tank was a quarter full, and then a third.

The tank was slightly over half-full of ice when Cat noticed that the deck didn't seem level any longer. She relayed this information down to us, prompting John to hurriedly examine our landing gear. He noticed that the feet on the sunny side of the candle had noticeably sunk into the comet's surface.

"We got to get off this snowball fast," he said urgently. We immediately abandoned our digging and returned to _Orchid_. Cat and Ellie already had the maintenance hatch back in place and were starting to torque down the fasteners by the time we exited the airlock. It took only a fraction of the time to secure the hatch compared to what it had taken to remove it. Cat turned up the thermostat on the tank to accelerate the melting.

I felt us tilt again.

"We need to lift-off now!" I shouted to John. "If we topple then we'll never leave!"

"Captain, the ice is nowhere near melted," Cat said to me. "If we fire up the motor now and a piece of ice gets jammed in the fuel pump intake then we're totally effed'!"

"Hold on!" John shouted back as he reached the bridge and dove into the pilot's seat. "I'm gonna use the maneuvering thrusters to shove us off."

There was a gentle lurch as _Orchid_ slowly rose away from the surface of the comet.

"Won't we eventually fall back?" I asked.

"Yup, but I should be able to keep us hangin' up here long enough for the ice to melt." John replied.

"Escape velocity can't be very much at all here," Cat suggested. "You may be able to boost us clear with another long burst."

"I guess it's worth a try," I said.

John nodded and flicked on the maneuvering thrusters again. He counted to five and then cut them off.

"I don't want to use up all our gas," he said.

"Looks like we're pulling away," I said as I watched the comet gradually fall behind on the display.

"Even if we didn't break free we've bought us at least a few days," Cat suggested. "By then the ice will have melted and we can start our rocket motor."

Over the next few days we continued to pull away from the comet, albeit ever so slowly. By now we were less concerned about falling back as we were about the temperature inside _Orchid_. With the fuel tank's thermal blanket heated up to melt the ice, our candle's aging environmental control system was having trouble keeping up and it had become uncomfortably warm inside. By day four we were all running around in our skimpies and still sweating. Ellie was particularly affected since she was accustomed to the normally below-freezing temperatures on Ganymede and passed out.

"I believe that she is suffering from heat exhaustion," Tuesday suggested.

"We've gotta cool this ol' candle down," said John worriedly as he checked his unconscious wife's pulse. "If that ice ain't melted by now it ain't ever gonna melt!"

Cat checked the internal temperature and pressure readings on our fuel tank and proclaimed that we were good to go.

"Let's light up this candle," I told John.

"Roger that," he said as we strapped ourselves into our seats on the bridge.

Tuesday and Lo maneuvered Ellie into her bunk and strapped her down, then they crawled into their bunks.

"We are ready down here!" Lo shouted.

John's fingers danced over the control display. "Course plotted and ready for burn in three, two, one . . ."

As our rocket motor roared to life and _Orchid_ began to accelerate, I felt a familiar and much welcome sensation that I'd missed for six weeks – artificial gravity. Even with half a tank of fuel, we could easily reach Luna in just a few days.

That is, assuming nothing else went wrong.

CHAPTER 10

"It's busted."

"What do you mean," I asked.

"I mean it is busted, Captain. It is broken and requires repairing," Cat explained impatiently.

"How did it break?"

"We ran un-distilled comet water through it. The water had some hard dirt in it and it fouled the pump."

"It got us here okay."

"Just barely. John said the motor was sputtering before we sat down."

"Can you fix it?"

"I'll have to pull it and rebuild it," she said dejectedly. "I'll need some parts. It'll probably take a week, maybe a few days if I'm lucky. Good thing for us these old Magnaflo R22s are as common as drunks at the Black Hole."

"I guess we could all use some time dirtside," I replied. Luna wasn't such a bad place for shore leave. It was a lot like Mars, only the g was less. Its cities were under giant pressurized domes that covered entire craters. John had set us down at Neil Armstrong Spaceport, which was located roughly midway between Kepleropolis and Copernicus City.

Our landing had been rather eventful, and we'd made the news stream. We weren't able to contact traffic control as we approached, and it was only when Tuesday's recorded distress call that we'd been repeatedly transmitting over a spacesuit radio was finally intercepted that the Space Guard corvette that was closing with us on an attack vector altered course. We were boarded, searched, questioned and only then instructed to land at Neil Armstrong Spaceport. After that there had been more questioning, but our consistent stories – and _Orchid's_ transponder record – confirmed our story. Afterward, Lieutenant Commander La Rue of the Lunar Wing of the Space Guard personally complimented us on our bravery and our resourcefulness.

"We could use more people like you in the Guard," we told me as he extended his elbow to touch mine.

We were celebrities, albeit briefly. Fame here is a very fleeting thing, often forgotten in a few hours.

Since we were going to be stuck here for a several days – and the food at the spaceport restaurants wasn't the best – John, Ellie, Lo, Tuesday and I all decided to take the monorail into Copernicus City. Ellie had never seen a real city before, and John figured taking her there would make up for his lack of a wedding present or a real honeymoon. Cat stayed behind, indicating that she was going to visit the salvage yard and see what she could scrounge for parts.

Ten minutes later we disembarked our monorail pod at Adams Station, then took a taxi to a gold dealer John had looked up. We sold our gold to a cherub-faced man for a tidy profit and then divided the bitcreds among us. John decided to take Ellie shopping at a real 'brick-n-mortar' store, since all she'd had for a wardrobe since leaving Ganymede consisted of the homespun clothing she'd brought with her and the hand-me-down jumpsuits that Cat had given her that fit her rather snuggly across her chest.

Copernicus City was laid out like many of the large lunar cities with the old, original part having been constructed in the crater wall and extending underground. The newer portion was located in the central part of the crater and resembled the cities of old Earth with towering glass spires, some extending over five kilometers into the sky. A vast park with pristine shallow lakes and gigantic trees completely surrounded the central city and extended to the base of the crater rim. Ellie had never seen anything so wonderful before and cried when she saw it.

"It so beautiful," she said to John hugging him. "Visiting spacers often told tell us tales about Luna and Mars, but I had no idea they were like this!"

John took Ellie into the central city to a trendy boutique, where their recent celebrity status earned his beautiful young wife 'preferential treatment'. He made the point of telling the staff that this was their long-delayed honeymoon and he wanted the best for her. After having Ellie stand nude in a private 360-degree scanner than analyzed her body dimensions, they produced a form-fitting garment that looked like it was painted on her when she put it on and changed colors with her moods.

"It's the latest fashion!" giggled the pink-haired salesclerk in the iridescent body suit. "The fabric is made from a special material spun by genetically engineered spiders. It's virtually indestructible and never needs cleaning."

"It's beautiful," Ellie said as she gazed at herself in the 3D mirror. "But . . . I feel like I'm naked."

"Oh, we wouldn't suggest it to you if it wasn't appropriate for you," the clerk assured her. "Not many women can wear one of these and look as fabulous as you do."

Ellie blushed, and the suit turned bright red.

"Only the best for my blushing bride," said John as he eagerly paid the clerk.

Later on, John and Ellie rejoined us at Chez Paris, an exclusive restaurant that the Lieutenant Commander La Rue had arranged for us to dine at. Ellie looked rather frazzled, but her metallic burnt umber body suit was stunning. John explained that she'd had a frightening experience when one of the large, predatory mobile 'faces that roamed the walls of the central city buildings had chased her. It had apparently recognized her from the recent news stream and had slithered after her along the walls like a snake, trying to show her ads for items and services it had determined she needed. Prior to that, they'd been having a good time.

With everyone was finally seated, our waitress, who had herself sculpted to resemble a 'cat woman' even down to the purr in her voice, recited their specials and asked for our drink orders. I asked what beers they served and was informed that they had over 8,600 different brands from all over the Sol System, including a generous assortment of local craft beers.

As we all enjoying our drinks, I noticed that Ellie's body suit was steadily changing colors. The more alcohol she consumed, the lighter colored her suit became. That's when I put two-and-two together,

"Do you know what sort of body suit you bought for Ellie?" I asked John.

"Yeah," he replied grinning. "Store keeper said it changes colors with her moods. Kinda on the pricey side, but she's worth it."

"Did you happen to tell them you were newlyweds by any chance?"

"Uh, I s'pose I said that we was on our honeymoon."

"John ol' buddy, she's wearing a _mood suit_ ," I explained in hushed tones. "Do you know what color it changes to when she's . . . ah, sexually aroused?"

"Uh, you mean when she's horny? You got me there."

"Try transparent. As in you can see _everything_."

John gave me a horrified look and swore under his breath.

"Relax, you didn't know," I told him. I leaned over to Lo, who was sitting on my other side, and quietly explained the situation to him. I thought he was going to laugh at first, but then he turned to Tuesday and had a hushed conversation with her in Mandarin.

"Oh, Ms. Ellie," Tuesday announced. "As soon as we are finished dining, I would be most honored to take you shopping again to contribute to your wardrobe. Your current attire is most strikingly beautiful, but you need more functional clothing for casual everyday wear."

"Another shopping trip? Oh, y'all are so sweet! Thank you!" Ellie said teary eyed as her mood suit's color changed to a sunny yellow.

"Hey, don't keep her out too late," John urged. "We're takin' the Tranquility Base tour tomorrow mornin' and I don't want her to be too tired."

"Take her to a real store in the crater rim that sells normal clothing and not this ridiculous sexbait stuff," Lo whispered to Tuesday.

"Yes father," she replied.

CHAPTER 11

" _It is as unrealistic to assume that some social trends will continue as it is to assume that they won't." –_ Austin Bedloe

* * *

Nine courses and three-and-a-half hours later, Tuesday and Ellie left Chez Paris and took a cab out to a shopping mall in the crater rim. As in most major lunar cities, the businesses here never closed. It didn't take them too long to find a real store that sold 'normal' clothing, and Tuesday helped Ellie pick out some jumpsuits that were attractive, functional and _didn't_ change color. The problem occurred when Ellie went to put on the garment.

"Ms. Tuesday," she called from the changing room. "Could you come here please?"

Tuesday went into the changing room. Ellie was still wearing her mood suit.

"I don't know how to take this off," she said, obviously embarrassed.

"How did you put it on?" Tuesday asked her.

"The clerk had me step into it. It opened in the front and she just slid her finger along the seam and it closed."

"Did you try doing what she did in reverse?"

"Yes, but it doesn't work."

Tuesday examined Ellie's mood suit. There was no sign of any seam anywhere.

'It's some kind of smart fabric," she said frowning.

"The clerk said it was almost indestructible and never needed to be washed. I've never heard such nonsense, but John liked it and I didn't want to disappoint him."

"Do you remember where he purchased it? I suspect that we'll have to return there and have the salesperson demonstrate how to remove it."

"Yes, I think I could find the store again," Ellie said. "It was a fancy shop for rich folks in Celestial Towers called _In the Mood_. They weren't going to let us in at first, but then they recognized us from the news stream."

Cab, slidewalk, elevator. In less than ten minutes they we at _In the Mood,_ only it was out of business. The store front was barricaded and a swarm of construction 'bots was furiously remodeling the space. A sign in front with a countdown clock proclaimed, "FANCY PANTS OPENING IN 00:43:19 . . . 00:43:18 . . . 00:43:17 . . ."

" _Jao Gao!"_ Tuesday swore.

"NOOOOOO!" Ellie screamed. Despite being in public, she tried to tear off her mood suit. The fabric reacted to her efforts by losing its elasticity and clinging to her tightly.

"Do not panic Ms. Ellie," Tuesday urged as she pulled her 'face out of her pocket and searched 'mood suit removal instructions'. Then she scowled.

"Ms. Ellie," she said hesitantly, "The store clerk who sold you your mood suit most seriously . . . ah, 'effed-up". "You were supposed to close your garment, not her. It is a security feature intended to prevent unwanted sexual encounters. Now only she can remove it. We must locate her."

"I don't even know her _name_ ," wailed Ellie. Her mood suit had turned a dark shade of blue.

"Please don't be so distraught. I will submit a request for the identities of former employees and we will identify the store clerk."

"How long will _that_ take, Tuesday?" Ellie asked urgently. "I need to pee really bad."

"Ms. Ellie, relieving yourself is no problem," Tuesday assured her. "According to the information I accessed on Solnet, this particular mood suit will accommodate your various bodily functions. Orifices will open when you need to urinate or defecate and then close. Mr. John must have paid a fortune for this suit."

Ellie was already hurrying toward the nearest restroom while Tuesday was still talking. She returned a few minutes later with an astonished look on her face.

"It worked," she said seemingly dazed. "A hole just opened up in the right place like you said when I squatted to pee."

"It appears that Mr. John purchased the top-of-the-line model for you. Did you know that you can take a bath or shower while wearing the suit? The individual fabric strands will separate to allow cleansing of the skin."

"I don't care 'bout taking bathes," Ellie snapped. "I just don't want to have to look like someone painted me from neck to toe anymore."

"Yes Ms. Ellie," Tuesday replied. She didn't have the heart to tell her what else her research had told her about Ellie's mood suit – particularly the randomly-triggered 'auto erotic stimulation' function.

Elevator, slidewalk, cab. Back to the crater rim. Tuesday quizzed Ellie about the salesclerk's appearance in transit, extracting details about her hair and eye color, height and body type that would make identifying her easier once she'd obtained the store's employee roster. They quickly located a walk-in store in the crater rim that catered to spacers and dirtside workers, and Tuesday purchased a half-dozen practical jumpsuits for Ellie that were suitable for wear both dirtside and in freefall. Lo messaged Tuesday as she was paying that they were all headed back to _Orchid_ because the hotels they'd investigated were either too pricey or booked and the bunks on the candle were as comfortable as a by-the-hour sleep pod and, more importantly, free.

"It is time for us to return to _Orchid_ ," she informed Ellie. "I am reasonably confident that our crewmates' collective intelligence will find a way to remove your mood suit."

"I sure hope so!" Ellie replied.

They hurried along the long, broad hallway that ran between the storefronts toward the cabstand. Although Copernicus City was a 'city that never sleeps', there were inter-shift periods where most people were either just waking up or going to bed and the active population was at ebb-tide. During these brief periods the city was largely deserted. _Almost._ They called it the 'witching hour' and it was a short interlude in the city's normal rhythm when the less savory elements of lunar society typically plied their trade and did their dirty deeds.

Three men emerged from the shadows and blocked their way to the cabstand. Tuesday sensed the two others who stepped in behind Ellie and herself.

"Ladies!" one of the three in front shouted. "Please don't be afraid. We represent rich miners in the Belt who desire companionship. Come with us and you'll live as queens in luxury beyond your wildest dreams!"

"No thanks," replied Tuesday as she sized-up their would-be abductors.

"Ah, now that's just too bad," their spokesman replied. "We'd prefer to do this the easy way."

"So would I," said Tuesday as she launched herself toward the three men facing her and Ellie. She utilized Luna's one-sixth g to her advantage, taking out two assailants with a lethal roundhouse kick before they knew what hit them. One of the two men behind Ellie charged Tuesday while the other grabbed Ellie. He got an unpleasant surprise. Ellie wasn't skilled in kung fu, but she'd been raised with four older brothers who liked to fight and wrestle. She frequently bested them, as she did her unfortunate assailant who quickly succumbed to a sleeper hold.

Suddenly, Ellie's body suit seemed to come alive, stiffening and forcing her to lie on her back with her legs together and her arms at her sides. She began to scream, but the fabric on her neck crawled up and over her jaw and tightly covered her mouth, effectively gagging her.

The suit had immobilized and silenced her. She was helpless. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Tuesday running toward her and then suddenly collapse as if she'd been struck by an invisible fist.

"If you want things done right, you do it yourself," she heard a vaguely familiar female voice say. Then Ellie heard her giggle. The pink-haired sales clerk from the now defunct _In the Mood_ boutique approached and stood over her, holding a stunner.

"Hello pretty newlywed," she said to Ellie. "Remember me? You're the perfect companion for one of my clients, and I simply couldn't let you go. In a few weeks you'll have a new master . . . er, _husband_ , and you'll live happily ever after with him on your very own private asteroid. You'll have access to riches and conveniences beyond your wildest dreams. All you'll have to do is keep him happy and satisfied but judging by your looks that won't be too difficult."

"MMMMMMMMMPPPHHH!" Ellie replied wild-eyed.

"Shhhh, it's okay. In time you'll thank me for this."

"Boss, what about the other girl?" asked an unfamiliar male voice.

"Leave her. After seeing what she did to you idiots, I doubt anyone in their right mind would want her. Anyway, we have our quota."

Ellie was lifted off the floor and carried a short distance back down the broad hallway to a service corridor, then down that to a maintenance shaft and then finally through a narrow, dimly lit utility tunnel into the bowels of the crater rim. She became very disoriented by their numerous turns and descents and had no idea where she was. Eventually they arrived at a long white-walled room devoid of decorations or furnishings except for an examination table and racks of stout shelves arranged along one wall that held . . . coffins.

At least they _looked_ sort of like coffins to her. She'd never seen a hibernator before.

A tall, skinny bald man with deeply sunken eye sockets wearing a dingy white coverall approached Ellie and instructed her captors to place her on the table. He took his 'face from a pocket and stretched it to tablet size, then scrolled through Ellie's stats from her scan in the boutique.

"An impressive catch Ghost," the tall man said to the pink-haired girl. "She'll fetch a hefty price at auction."

"She'd better be worth all the trouble," Ghost responded. "Her friend was some sort of kung fu freak and almost ruined everything."

The tall man leaned over Ellie and smiled.

"It's time for you to take a little nap cutie," he said to her. He reached behind her head and she felt a sharp pinch in her neck. The drug he'd administered began to take effect immediately and she felt very relaxed.

"Get her undressed and put her in the last hibernator," he said to Ghost.

Ghost slid her finger from Ellie's neck down between her breasts to her crotch. The immobilizing mood suit split open and she quickly stripped the garment off of Ellie's limp form. Ghost then motioned to one of her accomplices, and he scooped Ellie up like a frontier world rag doll and placed her in the open coffin-like enclosure. The lid closed, and Ellie found herself shrouded in total darkness. Then she felt the liquid rising around her. It was cold, _very_ cold. She'd been born in the cold and lived in the cold, but this was a new kind of cold. The liquid covered her, and she breathed it in.

And then she stopped feeling anything at all.

CHAPTER 12

We all suited-up in what must have been record time when we got the call. We bounded through Luna's one-sixth g to the terminal like frightened gazelles in the Sagan City Terrestrium back on Mars, covering the distance from _Orchid_ to the nearest airlock in less than two minutes. Spacesuits were quickly shucked and stashed in lockers and then it was slidewalk to monorail to cab to slidewalk all over again.

Tuesday was awake but still somewhat disoriented by the time we arrived at Copernicus City Central Hospital. She was sitting up on the edge of her bed answering the police detective's questions while a tall, dark-haired woman in a black Space Guard uniform attentively recorded her responses on her 'face.

The fact that the Space Guard was present gave me an uneasy feeling. They normally wouldn't be involved unless there was _interplanetary_ criminal activity involved, such as off-world smuggling or space piracy.

Tuesday saw us approaching and pointed at John. The detective and the Space Guard officer approached him.

"Mr. Tanner?" said the detective, "I'm Detective Shields of Copernicus City Police and this is Lieutenant Honda of the Space Guard. Can we please speak with you privately?"

"They's my crew," John said gestured toward us. "Anythin' you say to me they need to hear too."

"The detective hesitated, and then said, "We believe that your wife has been kidnapped, quite possibly by human traffickers."

I watched John's face turn white. I'd never seen him so distraught before. He was stunned and speechless.

"Detective Shields, why do you suspect human traffickers?" I asked.

"Mr. Tanner's wife isn't the first such kidnapping," he explained. There has been a rash of them lately, mostly targeting young, physically attractive women and men."

"I'm guessing the reason the Space Guard is involved is because this has happened elsewhere in the Sol System?"

"There was a similar string of kidnappings in Sagan City," said Lieutenant Honda.

I vaguely remembered hearing about the kidnappings before I left Mars, but with all the clutter in the news stream hadn't paid much attention.

"Don't you have _any_ clues?" John asked frantically. "You gotta know somethin' 'bout who did this!"

"Unfortunately, since this an ongoing investigation I'm not at liberty to share any more information with you at this time," Detective Shields answered. "I can assure you that we're working closely with the Space Guard and other local law enforcement agencies and are actively pursuing a number of leads."

" _They don't have anything solid to go on,"_ I thought.

The hospital released Tuesday, and we all took a monorail pod back to Neil Armstrong Spaceport. We listened to Detective Shields giving an interview on the news stream on our short ride, and he essential repeated verbatim what he'd told us. Lieutenant Honda silently stood by the detective on his left, while another familiar figure stood just to his right.

When asked about the likely origin of the kidnappers, Lieutenant Commander La Rue of the Lunar Wing of the Interplanetary Space Guard stated that they believed the human traffickers were operating from somewhere in the Belt but offered no further information.

"Well that certainly narrows it down," Cat commented with obvious sarcasm in her voice.

"There are no fewer than ten million asteroids as large as twenty-five kilometers in diameter," Tuesday added. "An asteroid much smaller than that would provide a suitable base, and there are hundreds of millions of those."

"Might as well have said they operate from a base in the void," Cat said dejectedly.

"Couldn't the Space Guard search just the flights departing for the Belt from Luna?" I asked.

"They already check manifests and conduct random inspections," said Lo. "They don't have enough personnel or 'bots to check _every_ candle that is headed for the Belt, and even if they did the kidnappers could be using a hand-off to avoid a search."

"What's a hand-off?"

"An 'undocumented' in-flight cargo transfer," explained Lo. "Let us suppose smuggler 'A' wants to deliver an illegal cargo from Luna to the Belt but wishes to avoid the likelihood of being searched prior to departure. He selects another destination, perhaps Phobos, and has partner 'B' waiting for him in a solar orbit. Smuggler A files a flight plan for Phobos and schedules his launch so that partner B can rendezvous with him. After Smuggler A is sufficiently under way, partner B matches course and speed. They dock and switch cargos. Partner B has a cargo matching smuggler A's falsified manifest. Smuggler A continues to Phobos, and partner B heads for the Belt with smuggler A's cargo."

"You seem to know something about smuggling,"

Lo hesitated and then smiled slyly. "Let us just say that I once facilitated the delivery of merchandise that was perfectly legal at its origin but unreasonably prohibited at its destination," he said.

"Could we not talk about this right now?" John said glumly.

We finished our ride back to the spaceport in silence.

When we got back to _Orchid_ , John took to his bunk almost immediately. I suppose he was emotionally and physically exhausted by recent events. Tuesday waited until he was asleep and then called the rest of us into the galley.

"I was able to provide descriptions of four of our attackers to the detective," she told us as we sat around the table. "I did not get a good look at Ellie's assailant or the girl who stunned me," but I believe that I know who she is."

"You told the police all this?" I asked.

"Yes."

"What did they say about it?"

"They did not offer a response other than to thank me for my assistance."

"How do you know who stunned you if you didn't see her clearly?" asked Cat.

"I observed her height and body type and deduced that she must have been the salesclerk from the boutique Ms. Ellie visited earlier based on the description she provided," Tuesday answered.

"Among her other useful attributes, Tuesday has a photographic memory," Lo explained proudly.

"There is additional evidence to suggest the salesclerk was an accomplice in Ms. Ellie's abduction," Tuesday continued. "The clerk sealed Ellie's body suit rather than have Ms. Ellie do it, meaning that she either lacked knowledge of the product she was selling or knew the outcome. The later seems most likely given that the mood suit behaved like a prisoner restraint garment and immobilized Ms. Ellie during the abduction. The salesclerk obviously intended to capture her all along."

"The boutique was open less than a lunar day," Tuesday added. "My research indicates that this duration is abnormally brief when compared to those of similar businesses in the central business district and suggests that they were solely in operation to select their targets for abduction. Their other victims were probably sold mood suits similar to Ms. Ellie's that allowed the kidnappers to track them and then immobilize them when the right opportunity presented itself."

"Did you tell the police all this, too?" I asked.

"Yes."

"And I'm guessing that their response wasn't much more than another nice thank you, right?"

"Yes."

"Sounds to me like the police may have been on to them, but they shut down just in time," I suggested.

"You may be correct Captain, but that suggests that the kidnappers had some advanced warning."

"They could have a mole," said Lo.

"They have _what_?" Cat asked.

"An archaic slang term for an individual within an agency's ranks who secretly provides sensitive information to the agency's adversary to the adversary's benefit," Tuesday said.

"An insider," Lo explained. "They could have someone on their payroll, probably with close ties to surveillance or intelligence who is tipping them off."

"I think you're all jumping to conclusions," Cat said shaking her head. "We don't _know_ for sure that the sales clerk is one of the kidnappers, or that there's a squirrel in the police.

" _Mole,"_ corrected Lo.

"That's a species that they never introduced on Mars," I commented.

" _Whatever,"_ Cat huffed. "Papa always told me when your rocket motor isn't working right you look for the simplest explanation first and then work from there. The sales clerk could have just been stupid, which is why the store closed."

"I guess we all got a bit carried away with our speculation, although I'm still inclined to trust Tuesday when it comes to the sales clerk being one of the kidnappers," I said.

"So, what do you suggest we do now?" Lo sighed.

"Depends on how close Cat is to having the fuel pump fixed," I replied looking at Cat.

"I need a few more days," she snapped back. "There's just one of me working on this old candle!"

"No problem," I said calmly. "Take your time and fix it right. We'll just stick around and see what happens. Maybe they'll catch the kidnappers in the meantime."

CHAPTER 13

"If they allowed real guns here, I'd be doin' target practice on you right 'bout now you sorry sonofabitch!" John shouted angrily over the radio at the lone figure standing on the lunar surface by _Orchid's_ landing gear. "You got some nerve showin' up here!"

"Now Johnny, is that any way to talk to an old friend?" the space-suited man responded. His voice sounded vaguely familiar to me, but I couldn't place where I'd heard it.

"I came here to make things between us right," he continued. "I know you got the raw end of the deal and I've always been sorry that I couldn't have done more for you, but that glass eye was all I could afford at the time."

"You cost me my job, Jason!" John shouted. "You cost me my 'effin livelihood! If it hadn't been for Pete here, I'd still be tryin' to scrape by doin' odd jobs at Olympus. So you can just carry your sorry ass outta here!"

"Johnny, just calm down and hear me out," Jason replied. "I heard about your wife being kidnapped on the stream and I came to help you get her back!"

"Oh, that's a good one!" John laughed.

" _At least he laughed for a change,"_ I thought _._

"So, the great Kid Marx knows where they took my wife?" John continued. "Hah! You think I'm stupid enough to fall for another one of your con jobs?"

My mind finally connected the dots. Jason was Kid Marx, the (in) famous bounty hunter and (ex) media celebrity.

"No Johnny, I don't," said Jason. "But I happen to know someone who most likely does and who'd be willing to help you find her. If we can just talk, I'll explain it all to you."

"John, we don't have anything to lose just for listening to what he has to say," I suggested. "If you don't like what you hear, you can always just kick him out of the airlock and let him figure out how to soft-land. A fall from here in one-sixth g shouldn't mess him up too badly if his suit doesn't puncture."

John seemed to like my suggestion and lowered the cargo basket so that Jason could come aboard.

The man who exited the airlock and doffed his spacesuit wasn't exactly the Kid Marx I recalled from the episodes I'd occasionally streamed to get some background fodder for my _Out to the Void_ scripts. His trademark flowing blond mane was graying and stringy. The ripped, muscular form that he'd frequently flaunted had apparently withered away. He'd either aged rather rapidly since the last episode of _The Adventures of Kid the Bounty Hunter_ or his image had been doctored. But his voice and 'cock-sure' attitude hadn't changed.

"Hello Johnny," he said extending his elbow grinning. "Good to see you again."

"I'll touch elbows with you after you've convinced me that I shouldn't just toss your sorry ass back out o' the airlock," John said.

"Who's your friend?" Jason asked as he looked me over.

"He's Pete," he said gesturing at me. "He's _Orchid's_ owner and captain. I just fly her."

"Pete Soñador," I said. I extended my elbow and touched Jason's to John's obvious disapproval.

"You wouldn't happen to also be the Peter Soñador from _Out to the Void_ by any chance? Jason asked.

"Yeah, that's me." I replied.

"Your stuff's pretty damn good, especially as of late. I suppose now I know why."

"Can we cut the chatter and get down to business?" John said impatiently.

"Sure, but I'm feeling kind of thirsty. I don't suppose you'd have any _beer_ on board?" Jason asked.

"Let's go to the galley where we can talk," I suggested. "We've got some cold Full Moon if you like hoppy ales."

"I'll never turn down a free beer," said Jason.

"That's fer sure," muttered John in disgust.

Alcohol has been a social lubricant for humans for over 10,000 years. It can help to calm an otherwise adversarial situation or have the opposite effect, depending on the circumstances. Luckily for me, calm more or less worked and I was able to get John to listen to Jason's sales pitch, which I suspected was loosened up as well.

"So, after you and I parted ways," Jason said to John, "I was in pretty bad shape socially and financially. Nobody was watching my 'cast and I got dumped by the major streamers. I started taking jobs that I normally wouldn't have taken just to get some bitcreds to live on. One gig hooked me up with the gals who used to fly this old candle. They were smart gals and they did a good job until the orchids growing all over the candle finally got to them and they went crazy and almost killed me."

" _Another piece of the puzzle,"_ I thought.

"I held on long enough to get us to Mars. I 'faced my buddy Ali Kahn and talked him in to taking them off my hands. He 'faced me a few weeks later to tell me that they were his most popular gals.

"Ali fronted me some bitcreds to get by, but it wasn't enough to fix _Orchid_ or hire a crew, so I just walked away from her. The Commonwealth found her and repo'd her not too long after that. When I was cleaning out my gear, I found something."

Jason reached into his pocket and withdrew a clear plastic envelope containing what looked like a small purple flower.

"That there's the Night Goddess," he said.

"You brought an 'effin horny orchid aboard our candle? _Are you crazy_?" John yelled.

"Cool your jets, Johnny boy. It's all sealed up and anyway it's dormant. The dang things are pretty amazing. They just need air and they'll survive fine. Water them and they grow like crazy. I've got few more of them stashed back at my hotel room."

"You do realize those things are highly illegal and that we could _all_ wind up indentured or stuck in a work camp on Penitence for you bringing that on board, don't you?" I said.

"Relax, Captain Pete. I'm not planning on getting into the orchid growing business or even hanging on to the few plants I've got. But I know my buddy Ali would pay a small fortune to get his hands on them because of the effect they have on a gal's libido," Jason replied and sipped his beer.

"Smelling the Night Goddess for a little while will make a gal horny, but it wears off in a day or two." Jason continued. "My gals were breathing a lot of orchids every day for months, so that's what finally turned them all into crazy nymphos. Keep a few plants in a whorehouse, and you've got lots of happy gals and happy customers.

"Pardon me for bein' stupid, but what does any of this have to do with findin' Ellie?" John asked impatiently.

"I was just getting to that," Jason said. "Ali makes a trip out to the Belt every so often and comes back with new gals. He told me one time he buys them from a big flesh peddler out on Market."

"I thought Market was just another wild conspiracy theory like the Commonwealth's secret faster-than-light drive or the ancient Martians," I said.

"Market is real, but only the people in the _club_ know how to get there."

"Ali is a member?"

"Let's just say he's got the right connections," Jason replied.

"How do you know fer sure Ellie's there?" John demanded.

"Like I said, I had to take on some jobs I wouldn't normally have taken just to keep the lights on. One of them got me a little too close to a very bad situation and I had to bail-out if I wanted to keep breathing, but I learned a few things that I might have been happier if I hadn't learned. Like for instance, the kidnapping ring that grabbed your wife operates out of Market. Several high-ranking officers in the Space Guard know about Market, and they conveniently make sure no patrols ever go near it. Same goes for some politicians. Follow the bitcreds and you won't believe who all is involved or how high-up this thing really goes."

"So, I'm trying to distill all this," I said to Jason. "You're telling us that Ellie was taken to Market, your friend Ali goes there to get new girls for his brothel, and you just happen to have an illegal orchid that he'd pay a fortune to get. It sounds to me like you're suggesting that Ali would help us get Ellie back in exchange for the orchids."

"Sounds like you got it all figured out," he said smiling at me.

"No offense, but it sounds like some bad space opera plot," I replied.

"Um. You mean like Episode 9 of _Out to the Void_? I thought that was one of your better early efforts. How does that saying go? Art imitates reality, or is it the other way around?"

" _Touché_ ," I said.

"I think I could use 'nother beer," muttered John.

"I think we all could," I replied.

CHAPTER 14

Getting to Market wasn't going to be easy. First, we had to fly back to Mars and Jason had to convince his friend Ali Kahn to 'go shopping'. Jason planned to sweeten the deal by offering both free transportation aboard _Orchid_ and the Night Goddess as payment for Ali's help. Fortunately for us, Mars was in a favorable position in its orbit and our flight to Mars only took a few days. We decided to save fuel by docking at Phobosport and taking a commuter shuttle down to Olympus. Jason 'faced Ali on the way down and told him he was dropping in for a visit.

Olympus Spaceport was a sprawling complex of blast pads, gantries, fueling hydrants, and low blockhouses that extended south of the towering extinct volcano that it was named after as far as the eye could see. It featured long runways for the commuter shuttles and aircraft. A high-speed maglev train shuttled back and forth between the spaceport and Sagan City hourly. In addition to the usual spaceport amenities, Olympus had its own town that the locals called 'Tunnel Town' that had grown organically outward from the spaceport and catered mostly to spacers, spaceport workers, and some less reputable types. Tunnel Town was located below ground and consisted of a hodgepodge of bars, greasy spoons, by-the-hour motels, convenience stores, and other niche businesses, some of which defied category. Tunnel Town had been John's home when I first met him, and I'd become acquainted with it to the extent that I knew which parts to avoid.

Only John and I accompanied Jason to the meeting with Ali. Ali's bar and brothel, Wet and Slippery, was conveniently located along the same broad tunnel not too far from the Black Hole where John and I had celebrated the night I'd bought _Orchid_ at auction. John said he had been to Ali's establishment a time or two but told me he preferred the Black Hole's atmosphere. Plus, the drinks were cheaper.

As we entered the bar, we passed an animated polychromatic sign that prominently displayed, 'HUMANS ONLY'.

"What's that all about," I asked Jason as we made our way to an empty table and sat down.

"A couple of years ago, a tramp freighter arrived from Ceres and the crew came to the bar," Jason explained. "Their mechanic was a smart ape and he tagged along. It wasn't a problem so long as they were all just drinking, but then they decided they wanted to get laid – including the monkey. None of the gals in the brothel wanted to have anything to do with him, and he got mad and started throwing things. It took three bouncers to get him out. Ali put the sign up after that."

"I wouldn't think an uplifted ape would be sexually attracted to a human," I said.

"When you make a monkey smart enough to think like a human, then it thinks it _is_ human," said Jason. "There are three things in this old Sol System I've absolutely no use for, and those are talking animals, smart 'bots, and mods."

"I don't know, the elf ears on that waitress over there aren't bad looking at all," I said.

"I'm not talking about a little plastic surgery," Jason explained. "I'm talking about wacked-out mods with wings and tails and claws and all kinds of unnatural stuff. You go out to the Belt and you'll see all sorts of freaks running around."

The waitress with elf ears approached our table and asked what she could get for us.

"We have an appointment to see Ali," Jason said. "Tell him Kid is here."

The waitress gave him a puzzled look, then left.

From looking around the bar's interior, it was apparent to me that Wet and Slippery was intended to appeal to spacers who were decidedly 'male hetro types' wanting to get drunk and get laid in no particular order. This wasn't a place you'd want to bring your wife or girlfriend on a date. The servers were all attractive, barely clothed young women, as were the bartenders. Prominent signs advertised a 'V.I.P. Club' that you could join for a one-time fee that granted you access to the Members' Only Lounge that featured 'erotic nude dancers', friendly personal servers, and other benefits, such as access to the brothel where you could sex with the girl of your choice in a virtually enhanced setting (for an additional fee).

I guess that, because of his name, my mind had conjured an image of Ali as being some tall, muscular, brown-skinned man with jet black hair and piercing dark eyes. I was shocked when a short (for a Martian) man with a pasty complexion and thinning red hair wearing a purple valor sport coat approached Jason and hugged him.

"Kid!" he shouted and smiled broadly. "It's good to see you again!"

Jason patted Ali on the back and introduced us.

"These are my friends and business partners," he said gesturing toward us. "This is Pete Soñador, captain of _Orchid_ , and that's John Tanner, our candle's pilot. I brought them along because they'll be in on our little venture.

"Yeah, you told me you had something lined up when you 'faced me." Ali replied. "Let's all go to my office where we can talk without having to shout."

We followed Ali back through the maze of tables and through a door behind the bar that lead into a short hallway. A door on the left led into Ali's spacious office, which featured a cluttered executive's desk with a padded office chair and several guest chairs. Ali motioned for us to have a seat and Jason launched into his sales pitch.

I watched Ali's body language like Lo had been teaching me to do, and the signals I was getting from him weren't giving me much optimism. Then Jason pulled the Night Goddess out of his pocket and placed it on the desk in front Ali. Ali's eyes grew as big as saucers and he almost fell out of his chair.

"Is that what I _think_ it is?" he asked hoarsely.

"Yes, that's a horny orchid," Jason replied.

"It looks dead."

"Just dormant. Give it some air and it'll come back to life. Water it and it will multiply like crazy. You can have it and a few others I've got stashed away if you agree to our deal."

Ali paused, stared at the orchid, and took a deep breath.

"Alright, I'll help you."

I was a bit surprised how quickly Ali agreed.

"I've been planning on making a trip out to Market anyway, so this just makes it all a lot easier," Ali continued. "I'll just buy John's wife along with a few other girls. It'll be business as usual."

"So, the girls who work at your establishment all came from Market," I asked.

"Most of them do," Ali explained and smiled. "I'll bet I know what you're thinking, Captain. You probably think I buy girls at auction and then force them into a life of sexual servitude. That's not how I operate. Before I purchase _any_ girl, I interview her. I paid a psychologist over at the university to help me come up with the questions I ask and how to phrase them. I watch their body language just like you've been watching mine."

"Guilty as charged," I admitted. "Was I that obvious?"

"I've probably had a lot more experience sizing people up than you," Ali replied still smiling. "Anyway, I explain to the girl what she will be expected to do for me and what I will do for her in return. If she doesn't like the deal, then I won't buy her."

"All of my girl's sign a contract," he continued. "They agree to work for me for three Martian years. They are provided with free food, shelter and medical care. The girls that work the front and the Member's Lounge get to keep their tips. The girl's that work in the brothel get a percentage of their fee. In addition, I invest a small percentage of the profits that they earn for me so that when their contracts are up, they walk out of here with a nice nest egg."

"But they're essentially indentured prostitutes in the meantime."

"Not really. Only the member governments of the Commonwealth can legally indenture someone. If a girl runs off, do you think her contract would hold up in court? Out in parts of the Belt maybe, but not here on Mars."

" _But you're still creating a demand for human trafficking,"_ I thought to myself.

But who was I to pass judgment? I'd just helped Jason smuggle some highly illegal orchids from Luna to Mars. I don't know how he ever got them passed the scanners, but I'll bet Lo probably had a hand in that.

There's an old saying, " _The ends don't justify the means."_ Only that doesn't seem to necessarily apply when the ends serve your own best interests.

CHAPTER 15

" _As long as the slave trader is regarded as a man acting illegally, but not guilty of an act reprehensible in its own nature, he will find the means of carrying on the traffic."- Anti-Slavery Reporter, January 1, 1877_

* * *

When Ellie turned six years old, her mother bought her a special present for her birthday. It was a doll that you could dress-up in different clothes that she'd bought from a merchant from off-world. It wasn't a rag doll like her old doll, but a realistic looking young woman with hair and facial features similar to hers. The doll came with only one set of clothing, but her mother had made her several other outfits that she could change her into, including a snowsuit like they all wore outside.

Ellie loved her mother's present. She proudly showed it off to her envious friends in the clear box it came in.

Now she felt like a dress-up doll. After reviving her, her captors had dressed her in a revealing, gauzy 'harem costume' and then forced her into a clear cylindrical cage. The cage fit her snuggly enough that she was forced to stand with her hands at her sides, only able to turn her head and shuffle her feet. Fortunately, wherever she was, the g was low enough that she could literally sleep standing up.

From her restricted field of view, she could see that she was in a very large, dimly-lit room of some sort. There were multiple rows of other similarly caged young women and men. All were dressed in different costumes that she'd overheard her captors say were intended to 'showcase their assets'. Some of the costumes she recognized, but others were bizarre. The young woman across from her was dressed in a skimpy halter and loin cloth made from some sort of animal hide. The muscular, bronzed-skin young man next to her wore only a metallic gold pouch that barely covered his privates. The pedestals beneath their cages all featured displays that included a price in large digits and other text that was too small for Ellie to read.

One thing was frighteningly apparent to Ellie. They were all 'on sale'.

Suddenly the light in the room grew bright and she heard music and the noise of many mingled voices. The walls of the cavernous room came alive with a panoramic scene that featured strange, ancient-looking buildings and clouds that moved. It looked real.

The shoppers made their way through the rows of display cages, examining the merchandise. Some moved normally, while others bounced clumsily in the low g. Spaghetti-armed free-fallers rode power chairs. Their clothing styles ranged from expensively-dressed business men and women to grubby coverall-wearing miners. There were a few oddly-dressed men who seemed to be having the most difficulty moving without bouncing. They were short and stocky with dark complexions and dressed in white robes that billowed in the low g. One of them paused in front of Ellie and, after eyeing her from head to toe, tapped something on his 'face and then moved on. Others looked at her, but then walked or bounced and bumbled passed.

Ellie had no idea of how many hours she stood on display, only that eventually the shoppers left, and the lights were dimmed again.

A short time later, she was released from her display cage and a pair of tall men escorted her into a private room with plush furnishings that included an ottoman on which sat the stocky, dark complexioned man who'd eyed her earlier. Another dark-complexioned man who appeared to be taller and slender of build stood to his right holding a 'face that had been stretched to tablet-size. The seated man said something to him in a language that Ellie didn't understand.

"Remove your clothing," the man holding the 'face told Ellie.

"No." Ellie told him defiantly.

The standing man shrugged and motioned to Ellie's escorts. They each grabbed one of Ellie's sleeves and yanked. Her flimsy harem costume fell away, leaving her standing naked between them. She blushed crimson and moved her hands to cover herself, only her escorts grabbed her arms and held her to prevent any show of modesty.

The man in the flowing robes got up slowly from the ottoman and moved toward her with deliberate, carefully placed steps to keep from bouncing in the low g. He stood in front of Ellie and smiled, then reached his hand out and abruptly groped her. Ellie gasped and grimaced. The robed man frowned and said something to the man holding the 'face that sounded as though he wasn't pleased. The response from the man holding the 'face sounded dismissive, as if the problem was of no concern.

Ellie's blood was boiling, and she'd had enough. She kicked violently upward with her right leg, striking the robed man hard in his crotch and sending him tumbling backwards. She kicked upward a second time into a back somersault, forcing her two escorts to release her to avoid being pulled off their feet. The many weeks she'd spent in freefall allowed her to move easily and surely in low g, and she spun around catlike in mid-air and hit the floor in a dead run for the door that lead back to the big room with the display cages.

She hadn't noticed that the man holding the 'face was carrying a stunner, and the blast caught her before she reached the door.

CHAPTER 16

We left Phobosport, having filed a flight plan for Vesta which happened to be in a less than favorable position in its orbit and would take us the better part of two weeks to get there given John's emphasis on conserving fuel. Two days out Ali instructed us to alter our course so that our orbit shifted from parabolic to hyperbolic. We were now headed almost straight for the Belt rather than gradually approaching it. Our new destination was an unimpressive asteroid that he simply referred to as 'Parking Lot'.

John was busy on the bridge when Ali motioned for me to follow him down to the galley.

"May I ask you a question?" he asked.

"Isn't that what you're doing now?"

"You're quite the witty one, aren't you Captain Soñador?" he said grinning. "You wouldn't happen to be Peter Soñador who writes for _Out to the Void_ , by any chance?"

"Just call me Pete," I replied. "And yes, I'm guilty as charged again."

"Was your father a lawyer, Pete?"

"No, he was an independent spacer."

"So . . . the son abandons his career as a writer and follows in his father's footsteps, keeping alive the family tradition."

"Wasn't exactly planned and I still write for _Out to the Void._ "

"I can see where that might work out very well," Ali said nodding his head. "But tell me, what's in this deal we're doing that benefits _you_?"

"What do you mean?"

"I clearly understand John's motivation – he simply wants his wife back. Kid honestly wants to help him, but I've known him long enough to suggest that he's got another angle although he wouldn't do anything foolish enough to harm any of us – at least not intentionally. You on the other hand are something of an enigma. Is it your loyalty to John than motivates you?"

"John is my best friend," I answered. "He helped me launch my career as a writer by telling me what would really work and what wouldn't. Along the way we discovered we had a lot in common."

"A true friend. That's highly commendable," Ali replied.

"What's really in it for you?" I countered.

"There aren't any commercial flights to where we're going," Ali answered. "Finding a ride to Parking Lot that doesn't ask too many questions without charging a crap load of bitcreds isn't easy. Getting a free ride is an opportunity I wouldn't pass up."

"What about the Night Goddess? You almost fell out of your chair when you saw it. Isn't it important to you, too?"

"It certainly cinched the deal for me."

"Now I'm curious," I said. "If you only buy girls that would like working in your brothel, then why do you need the Night Goddess?"

Ali paused and sighed. "Because some girls will choose what they perceive as being the lesser of evils, only to find out later that they've traded an imaginary hell for a real purgatory," he answered. "They think they can turn tricks, but they're just not cut out for it. They're miserable and they don't satisfy their customers, so I have to move them to the front. If they don't work out waiting tables, then we're both 'effed. What do I do with a girl who doesn't work out? Ship her back to Market and resell her? Having the orchids in my brothel eliminates the problem and everybody's happy."

" _Sounds like an honest answer",_ I thought _._

"I get that the whole human trafficking thing really bothers you," he continued. "I don't like the idea either, but it's a reality we all have to live with, so I do what I can to try to make things a little better. It would still be there if I wasn't involved. The whole 'effin Sol System is just as corrupt as it was before the war if not more so. I just try to give my girls a way out that they wouldn't have if they were purchased by somebody else."

"But you still profit from it, don't you?"

"You're an independent spacer. What keeps your candle in the void?" Ali countered.

" _Touche´_ " I replied. "You got me there."

"Pete, you do realize that we may be on a fool's errand," Ali said, conveniently changing the subject. "John's wife may have already been sold by the time we reach Market."

I hadn't thought about that. I was too wrapped up in just trying to get us to Market to consider that Ellie might not even be there when we arrived.

"Assuming that happened, would there be any way to track her down?" I asked.

"Not easily. There's a saying, " _What happens on Market says on Market_." We'd have to find the right people and offer the right bribes. Risky business that."

"What do you think the odds are that she'll be there when we get there?"

"That's tough to say. Depends on whether they put her on a slow-moving sleeper or a fast-moving clipper. One way we get there before her, another way she's most likely already bought and gone."

"What's more likely?" I asked.

"A ride on a clipper is pricey compared to one on a sleeper," interjected Lo as he entered the galley. "The cost of obtaining and shipping merchandise must be factored into the sale price, or otherwise the profit margin will not be worth the effort or risk. The rare media celebrity kidnapping might warrant such expense, but in most cases the lower your acquisition costs the higher your margin bitcreds."

"I couldn't have said it any better," said Ali raising his hands.

"You're saying that Ellie is probably on a sleeper? That sounds promising," I said.

"It's all about timing," Lo explained. "The flesh peddlers on Market prefer a fast turnover on their merchandise, which being alive require air, water, and food to survive. Their merchandise costs them precious bitcreds to maintain. The longer the time until the sale, the lower their profit."

"So, it sounds like we'll probably get there before Ellie's ride, right?"

"Am I missing out on something?" inquired Jason as he entered the galley.

"Oh, nothing Kid. We were just discussing the weather on Pluto," said Ali.

"So, what did I _really_ miss?"

"Nothing really," I answered matter-of-factly. "That is, nothing other than that your legendary skills as a bounty hunter may be needed before this is all over with."

Jason looked at us with a bewildered expression while Ali rolled his eyes and Lo did a facepalm while muttering something under his breath in Mandarin.

"Sit down and we'll catch you up on the discussion," I added.

CHAPTER 17

Ellie drank too much of Ezra Better's homebrew at her coming of age party and woke up the next day with a headache the likes of which she'd never experienced before or again – until now. The aftereffects of a hit from a stunner we're both nauseating and debilitating depending on an individual's physical condition and body mass.

Ellie's vision was blurry, and she felt as though she was falling. She heard a distant voice saying something about a mild concussion. She saw weird flashes in front of her eyes and then she mercifully lost consciousness again.

"You are causing me a lot of trouble and costing me a lot of bitcreds," said a woman's voice. She didn't sound happy.

Ellie opened her eyes and saw a dimly lit ceiling. She turned her head to the source of the voice and saw an incredibly tall, brown-skinned woman with long black hair with copper highlights wearing a metallic copper-colored bodysuit.

Ellie tried to move, but her wrists and ankles were secured to the odd metal reclining chair that she was laying naked on.

"It was bad enough that I had to pay Sheik Abdul's hospital bill after you crushed his nuts," the woman scolded. "But then I had to refund his money _and_ pay your hospital bill as well, although I'm thinking of taking that out or Amal's pay."

"I didn't ask to be kidnapped," Ellie replied.

"Nobody ever does but I have to obtain my merchandise somehow. People aren't going to volunteer."

"How do you know?" Ellie asked her. "On Ganymede there are lots of single women who'd love to have a rich husband or even any husband at all. We lose lots of our men folk in the mines and there ain't enough to go around."

"My clients prefer attractive companions, _not_ grubby miners," the woman said haughtily.

"Are you saying I ain't attractive?"

"No. You're really from Ganymede? Amal told me that you were from Luna."

"That's where I was kidnapped. We'd landed there and was having to stick around until Ms. Cat could fix our motor."

"Hm. Are most women from Ganymede as physically attractive as you?"

"I'm nothing special."

"So, if I were to wish to recruit prospective slav . . .er, _brides_ from Ganymede, how would you propose I go about it? Send _you_ to recruit them?" she said and laughed. "Nice try, but you're not getting away from me quite that easily"

"No, Ma'am. I was just going to tell you to put an ad on Solnet," Ellie replied. "There's folks on Ganymede who have radios and 'faces and they share news with the rest. Once you get enough takers you can send a candle to pick 'em all up. That way you don't have to pay kidnappers and you make more money. My friend Mr. Lo would tell you that's just good business. He's a very smart business man and he's always telling Captain Pete how profit equals income minus expenses."

"You really _are_ serious," the tall woman said shaking her head in disbelief. "You're either incredible smart or horribly naïve. I'm not sure which."

"Well, maybe I'm a bit of both?"

"I can't even believe I'm having this conversation, but I'm going to try your little idea. If it works, then I might just give you Amal's job and put _him_ up for sale."

"I wouldn't want to take anybody's job away from them, Ma'am."

"Don't concern yourself. It wouldn't be much of a loss. In the meantime, you'll be my houseguest. A few months of being restrained in that chair will cause those big muscles of yours to atrophy and you won't be so dangerous. Oh, and don't worry about losing your figure - you'll be on a restricted diet."

"What if I have to pee?"

"The chair has openings in the right places and the floor is stone with a drain. The poopbot will take care of your shit and the washbot will clean you up. The wall 'face will keep you entertained, and I'll be checking on you regularly. Enjoy your stay."

CHAPTER 18

_If slavers ever need a poster boy, Baba Ganoush would be the ideal candidate. In Jack Parsec's mind, Baba_ _looked_ _like a slave dealer. He supposed that part of it was the loose, flowing white robes and turban-like headdress of Baba's trademark desert garb. But there was more to Baba than mere appearances – he had the sort of confidence inspiring charisma and over-the-top salesmanship that would have made him a great refrigerator salesman on Pluto. In the Grand Bazaar he'd garnered a reputation for only dealing in the finest_ _pinkskins_ _, which is why Jack's alter ego, Karn Evil the Monger, the 'slave smuggler extraordinaire', sought him out. If anyone on Triton could lay their hands on Valeria Ontodore, it had to be Baba._

As it turned out, Baba knew all about Valeria. It seemed that the young pinkskin had fetched a handsome price at the private sale Baba hosted only two days earlier. Baba excitedly recanted to Jack/Karn the moment when Valeria was disrobed on the stage in front of the invitations-only audience: there was an audible, collective gasp from the two dozen or so bidders in the darkened room when the spotlight struck her flawless, naked flesh and illuminated her blond hair. The bidding had rapidly gone suborbital, with the girl ultimately selling to the governor of a distant asteroid in the Oort Cloud.

_Regrettably, the buyer's agents had insisted on total anonymity for their employer, and Karn's generously offered bitcreds could not pry from Baba what he didn't know. However, Baba firmly believed that the information Karn sought could probably be obtained from the infamous smuggler and information broker, 'Claw' Roulette, but only if Karn was willing to make the treacherous trip through the Vulgarian blockade to Claw's secret base on Asteroid X92._ – "Out to the Void, Episode 9: The Slave Traders".

* * *

Parking Lot was a good name for the asteroid. It was big enough and had sufficient mass that you could land a candle on it and not have it float away after you'd touched down. The flat side where the landing area was located had a small base with a communication and traffic control center, and a dirty-sheets hotel with a convenience store and restaurant that served food that was mediocre at best an un-edible at worst. Parking Lot also had a refueling station, but their water was very, _very_ pricey.

Parking Lot was like so many other scattered fuel depots in the Belt, but it deliberately discouraged traffic except for a particular kind for whom the lonely asteroid was literally just a place where you parked your candle and then caught the shuttle for your real destination: Market.

Ali's communication with Parking Lot's traffic control was interesting to overhear. I suspect it was scripted and contained certain phrases that identified us as Market customers, thus ensuring our permission to land. It also apparently summoned the shuttle that arrived to pick us up barely an hour after we'd landed. That suggested to me that Market was close-by, at least in the astronomical sense.

The shuttle that picked us up featured first class accommodations, but no windows. There was a panoramic display in the passenger cabin that was essentially a continuous commercial for Market showcasing its many attractions - including several flesh markets. Ali said that Ellie could have ended up at any one of them if she wasn't still in transit.

"How will we know if she's already been sold or not?" I asked Ali when John was distracted by an ad for one of Market's live stage shows.

"We'll know if she hasn't been sold. She'll be listed in the catalog. The Toy Store and Pet Shop both use silent auctions, so everyone is on display at the same time. Sultan's Palace is like a dinner-theater. They show their merchandise one-at-a-time as you drink and dine. Faces on 'Faces is all virtual. You just scroll through their catalog, make your selection, place your bid, and if you're the high bidder your purchase is delivered to you."

"Just like buying anything else in Sagan City on your 'face," I said.

"Yeah, but where's the fun in _that_? Most people like the real store experience," Cat interjected.

"There are some things I wouldn't buy unless I could physically put my hands on them first," Ali added.

"Like girls for your brothel?"

"Yes, those too."

Just before our shuttle briefly cut its rocket motor, the 'WARNING FREEFALL' sign lit-up, indicating that we had reached the halfway point in our trip and were about to begin decelerating. We all held on to padded handholds strategically placed around the cabin while the shuttle pitched 180 degrees, then the motor started back up and restored artificial gravity. We'd only been in flight for about 20 minutes, so Market must be very close to Parking Lot.

Another 20 minutes later we disembarked the shuttle and floated through a pressurized tunnel into the shuttleport lobby. Market had its own security and medical checkpoint that made sure you weren't carrying any weapons, explosives, contagious diseases, etc. but they didn't care about much else. From the lobby windows you could look down on Market, which was built inside a hollowed-out elongated asteroid. The asteroid spun on its long axis to produce artificial gravity. The tall, gaudy spires of hotels and casinos jutted upward from the circumference towards the interior, which was illuminated by a central artificial 'sun' that provided as much light as twilight on Mars. Lower to the ground were a multitude of shops, businesses and numerous attractions. The whole city was bathed in multicolored lights and giant 'faces roamed the sides of the buildings.

We rode an escalator pod from the shuttleport that spiraled down the end of the asteroid towards the floor, noticing our weight gradually returning. Judging from how light I felt when we reached the ground, I guessed that Market's g was about the same as Luna's – tolerable for many residents of the Belt but enough to make walking without bouncing too much doable for us Martians.

"This just don't look natural," John said worriedly as he gazed upward at the tops of buildings on the other side of the hollowed-out asteroid pointing downward toward us. "I feel like they's gonna fall on us any time."

"I take it you've never been inside a large space colony before," replied Ali.

"I've been lots of places, but this place is all inside-out."

"Don't worry. Nothing is going to fall on us. Market spins to make fake g, so 'down' here is always toward the outside. You'll get used to it," Ali explained.

"Just like on the big stations, right?" I added. "You've been on plenty of those."

"I s'pose so," John muttered as he frowned and continued to glance upward.

A tram took us through the forested park and garden area into the commercial district. We passed several gated, palatial dwellings along the way that must have belonged to media celebrities and/or the very-wealthy. I'd noticed areas under cultivation and pastures for rabbits on the opposite side of the commercial district from the lobby. From an environmental standpoint, Market was apparently self-contained and self-sustaining. That made sense if you didn't want a lot of traffic bringing supplies your way and giving away your location.

"Where do we go from here," I asked.

"We start browsing the flesh markets' catalogs and see if Ellie turns up," Ali replied as he scrolled through multiple listings on his 'face. The catalogs were all available on Market's local – and private to visitors only – network. His search for 'blue-eyed blond females' turned up 137 selections available for purchase. Viewing everyone was going to take awhile, so John, Jason, Ali and I decided to find a quiet lounge where we could review the listings while Cat, Lo, and Tuesday went scouting.

We found a quiet bar called The Watering Hole that had not-so-overpriced beer and few patrons, and parked ourselves at a secluded table. Two beers later and substantially less than that in hours, we'd all come to the same disappointing conclusion that Ellie wasn't listed in any of the catalogs.

"So now what do we do?" I asked.

"We don't panic," Ali answered. "We got here pretty fast once we altered course, so we could have easily beaten her here if she's on a slow-moving sleeper."

"Which means what? We stay here until she arrives?"

"That's up to you, Pete. Market's hotels are cheap because they want you to stay here and buy stuff. I can manage Wet and Slippery on my 'face, so we might as well stick around for a little while."

CHAPTER 19

" _Earth's distant colonies have labored long under the yoke of oppression and we now rise united to declare ourselves equals to the mother planet." – Commander Irina Gagarin, Colonial Alliance_

" _We have given our best resources and seen our bravest and brightest leave their home world to colonize space. What have we received in return? Not gratitude, but rather impertinence of the worst sort! The rebels must be made to return to the status quo, even if such effort requires the use of force." – President Russ Schwätzer, United Nations_

* * *

Pluto's Children arrived on the fifth day of our stay. They must have somehow followed a shuttle to Market, because they showed up in force and easily overpowered Market Security. Cat _thought_ she heard what sounded like shots fired in the distance, but we all dismissed it. No weapons are allowed in Market except for the stun pistols carried by Security.

About twenty minutes after Cat thought she'd heard shots fired, every 'face in Market suddenly displayed the skull-with-thunderbolt symbol first used by a group of late twentieth century musicians that Pluto's Children had adopted as their official insignia.

"Attention bourgeoisie capitalists!" announced a harsh and familiar voice that I recognized from when we were boarded by the pirates. "Pluto's Children are now in control of your decadent, self-indulgent habitat. You wallow in luxury and excess wealth at the expense of the poverty and suffering of many. You wrongly kidnap and enslave the innocent to satisfy your perverted whims and desires. Know that the days of this den of sloth and depravity are now at an end. Effective immediately, all those victims of human trafficking are to be set free. All excess wealth will be seized and redistributed to the needy. Comply with our demands and you shall all be spared. Disobey and your asteroid will face total destruction. We have placed explosive devices in your shuttleport airlock that are capable of breaching the doors and venting your atmosphere. Return to your lodgings and await further instructions. That is all for now."

All 'faces in Market abruptly went blank. Ali tried to 'face Wet and Slippery, but the pirates had shut down the high-gain access so that no one could call out.

"Now what do we do?" Cat asked.

"We do what the lady says," Ali suggested.

We made our way along with hundreds of others back to our hotel. We congregated in the room that Jason and Ali were sharing to strategize. Jason raided the cooler and passed out cold beers to anyone who wanted one. I didn't turn him down.

"These pirates are ballsy," Cat said.

"They're pretty damn smart if you ask me," said Jason. "They raided the one place that won't call the Space Guard for help that has no real defenses and has everything you could possibly want just waiting for the taking."

"Takin' Market is definitely gonna put 'em on the news stream big time," suggested John.

"They're a bunch of crazy anarcho-socialists," I suggested. I got blank stares for that remark from everyone except Lo and Tuesday.

"Think Black Beard meets Karl Marx," I added. More blank stares except from Lo, who laughed.

"A fine analogy," Lo said. "Pirates who justify their actions based on a contrived political agenda."

"I didn't know you were an expert on Pluto's Children," said Ali.

"I'm not, but while we were on Luna I got curious and did some research," I explained. "I thought they might make good fodder for an _Out to the Void_ episode."

"You obviously included some historical research as well," suggested Lo.

"I suppose I'm a bit of a history buff," I replied. "Earth before the early twenty-second century was a colorful place. Once the A.I. influenced government took over it was pretty bland until the Interplanetary War."

"What's A.I.?" John asked. "Is that anythin' like a smart 'bot?"

"Artificial Intelligence," Lo answered. "Thinking machines that were smarter than a smart 'bot. Before the war they'd developed A.I.s that were self-aware and self-determining. Not like our navigational or diagnostic computers on _Orchid_ , but pseudo-sapient. Smart 'bots that could think for themselves. The problem was that they didn't figure out how to effectively program human experience into a machine."

"They could've had their 'effing designer utopia if they just hadn't tried to force it on everyone else," Jason commented. "No 'bot should be ever able to think for itself. That's just asking for trouble."

"Relying so much on their A.I.s cost Earth the war," Lo opined. "They had the superior space force in the beginning but lost due to inferior strategy and tactics. Their 'safe and secure' social mentality stifled creativity by discouraging innovative thinking. Unfortunately, the Earth had become so densely populated that strict behavior controls were seen as necessary to maintain order."

"They lost because we put an asteroid on a collision course with Earth and then overwhelmed their planetary defense net," said Ali. "By the time they figured out what was going on the rock was too close to deflect with what they had left."

"Hey, can we all please put the history lesson on hold, put down the beer, and concentrate on how we're going to get ourselves out of this mess?" Cat asked.

"I do my best thinking after a few cold frothy ones," Jason replied grinning and raising his beer.

I looked out the window at the city arranged in a great arc below and above us. I could make out small clusters of pirates patrolling the streets here and there. Unless they were a lot held in reserve, a relatively small force had taken Market – at least for now. Not all of Market's Security would have been in the shuttleport lobby when Pluto's Children boarded. There had to be plain clothes on the ground, and chances were that they were regrouping somewhere.

I told Jason what I thought, and he agreed with me.

"Problem is, unless they've got some heavier weapons stashed somewhere then they're going to have a hard time retaking the lobby."

Just then my 'face chimed to life.

CHAPTER 20

_As the new day dawned and the distant sun began its slow climb into the morning sky, the Eon Hawk lifted from Triton spaceport. The aging tramp freighter's reconditioned military-grade FTL drive easily handled the hyperspace jump from Triton to asteroid X92, but handling Claw Roulette proved to be a much more difficult task for Karn. Claw Roulette might be a mercenary and a smuggler, but it seemed he loathed slave traders with a passion and initially would have nothing to do with Jack Parsec in his persona as Karn Evil. The Eon Hawk was forced to remain in a high orbit around X92 while 'Karn' attempted to convince Roulette that he wasn't really a slave trader over the radio. Karn was forced to tell Roulette every detail he knew about Valeria Ontodore and Admiral Scofflaw's efforts to return her to her husband, and even after Roulette finally agreed to help Karn, the information broker made it clear the 'skinny' on the girl's whereabouts wouldn't come cheap. Luckily, Karn still had the bitcreds that Scofflaw provided to purchase Valeria and was able to meet Roulette's price._ – "Out to the Void, Episode 9: The Slave Traders".

* * *

Ellie was only vaguely aware of the announcement by Pluto's Children on the wall-mounted 'face. The pacification drug in her food made her very tired and she was only semiconscious. Her initial resistance to being fed by hand had resulted in her having a feeding tube forced down her throat. Straps attached to the tube were buckled snuggly around her head to prevent her from expelling it. The other end of the tube was connected to an elevated tank mounted on a stand beside her chair, which rose into a seating position during her 'day' and then reclined for her 'night'. Aside from the artificial day/night cycle imposed on her by the room's illumination, she had no sense of time.

Several times a day, the tank automatically released a pre-measured amount of the bland-tasting liquid that served as her diet. Occasionally, her tall brown-skinned captor would visit her, although the conversations were strictly one-way since the awful feeding mask prevented Ellie from speaking.

Ellie didn't even notice that the 'face on the wall before her had gone blank. She continued to doze on and off, only briefly regaining consciousness when she was being force fed by the tank. Reality and dreams melded together, and she had difficulty distinguishing between them. The distant thud and muffled shouts she heard had a surreal quality, as did her liberation from the chair by the gray-clad strangers.

She awoke with a start. The fog in her head had lifted, and she was immediately aware of her new surroundings. She was lying on a bed in what appeared to be an expensively furnished hotel room wearing a gray jumpsuit. Seated in a chair beside her bed was a red-haired woman wearing an identical jumpsuit bearing a skull-and-thunderbolt insignia.

"About time you woke up," she said smiling.

"Where am I? How did I get here?" Ellie asked.

"You're in a room at the Grand Imperial Hotel," she replied. "My crew and I found you when we were searching a villa and freed you."

"Who are you?"

"You may call me Spitfire, Ms. Tanner."

"How do you know my name?" Ellie replied, puzzled.

"I recognized you from the news stream after you landed on Luna and from the first time we met. I was very impressed by your crew's ingenuity – I expected you'd land on that comet and use it to hitch a ride until you got close to the Belt, but I never thought you'd use it to refuel."

"You're one of Pluto's Children? You're a _pirate_!"

"Pirate is a harsh and inappropriate word. We prefer to think of ourselves as soldiers in a war against a corrupt system."

"If you're not pirates then why did you steal our cargo and our fuel?"

"You're so-called 'independent spacers'. _Freetraders_. You represent a capitalistic system in which your ultimate goal is personal profit at the expense of others rather than mutual social benefit."

"We take stuff to people who need it and trade for their stuff. We're helping people, not hurting them."

The frustrated expression on Spitfire's face reminded Ellie of the look her mother would give her as a child when she was trying to explain something, and Ellie insisted on arguing with her. It was replaced by one of annoyance when three men in gray uniforms abruptly barged in to the room.

"Excuse us Spitfire, but we need to talk to you," said their tall, mustached leader.

"What's up, Horace? And by the way, it's _Captain_ Spitfire to you," Spitfire replied, obviously irritated by the unwelcome intrusion.

"Not anymore. We took a vote and you're out. I'm calling the shots now."

Spitfire was speechless.

"We were all for raiding Market, but not for letting all the cute two-legged merchandise just walk away. Every time we start making money you insist on giving it away rather than sharing it with the crew. If we're going to risk our lives for you then we expect to be _paid_."

"What about the revolution?" Spitfire asked. "What about our _cause_?"

"It's _your_ cause, Spitfire. Your politics. We don't care about it, we've had enough. We're all in this to get rich, not start an effin' revolution."

"I provided you with the means and the contacts to make this all happen," Spitfire replied angrily. "Without me, Pluto's Children wouldn't exist."

"We took that into consideration when we voted," said Horace. "If you hadn't done all that you did for us, then I expect our vote would have come a lot sooner. By the way, the crew also voted you off the candle. We figured you'd be too much of a trouble-maker if you stayed on."

"You 'effin BASTARDS!" Spitfire screamed as she lunged at Horace and slugged him, knocking him backwards. His two companions grabbed and restrained her.

"Now that wasn't very nice," he said as he got up rubbing his jaw. "I've had to put up with your shit long enough. I think I'll just take you with us and sell you on Clandestine with the other pretty slaves. You and your new friend will make good _domestiques[8]_."

Horace moved toward Ellie and grabbed her by the forearm. He got an unpleasant surprise when Ellie grabbed him and pulled him up and over her so that his head smashed into the wall behind the head of her bed.

One of the two men holding Spitfire let go of her arm and bolted toward Ellie. Her heel caught him mid-dive in the neck, crushing his windpipe. Spitfire took advantage of the distraction and stomped her heel onto the other pirate's foot, causing him to release her. She didn't hurt him badly, but when he turned to face her Ellie caught him from behind in a sleeper hold. He struggled, but then Spitfire kneed him in his balls and he went limp.

"You are some fighter," Spitfire said catching her breath.

"I had four brothers who taught me," Ellie said as she relieved the fallen pirates of their side arms. "The one I heeled in the neck looks like a goner, but the other two won't be out for long. We need to leave fast."

"Leave? And go _where_? My own crew has turned against me and Market Security will probably space me if they catch me."

Ellie reached into Horace's jumpsuit pocket and extracted his 'face.

"I'm going to 'face Captain Pete," she said. "He'll know what to do."

"Good luck with that," Spitfire said and laughed. "We took out Market's high gain, so unless you're connecting locally you won't connect to anybody."

"Captain Pete? It's Ellie. Listen, I'm on Market. Can you come get me and Ms. Spitfire?"

Ellie paused, and then continued. "We're in the Grand Imperial Hotel." There was another long pause. "What? You're here too? Got it, we'll be right there."

"You're joking," said Spitfire with an astonished look on her face.

"No, my friends are all here," Ellie insisted as she extracted the other two pirates' 'faces from their pockets and tossed them in the toilet. "They're in Room 420. C'mon, let's go!"

"I don't believe I'm doing this," muttered Spitfire as she reluctantly followed Ellie out of the room.

[8] do·mes·tique (d  m s-t k ) _n._ [French, _servant_ , from Old French.] In contemporary usage, a personal slave trained to serve and entertain with conversation, dance, song, and sexual favors.

CHAPTER 21

If I were writing a script for _Out to the Void_ , I would never in a million years have used a plot device so contrived as what had just transpired within the past few minutes. I certainly wouldn't have believed it, but I suppose it didn't matter. Reality is often stranger than fiction. What mattered is that we had Ellie back with us along with three pistols that she'd confiscated from the pirates. We also had her new 'friend', the former leader of Pluto's Children who had been recently expelled by her crew.

"Nice", said Jason as he checked out one of the 4mm pistols Ellie had appropriated. "Now we have some teeth to fight back with."

"I say we thow 'er out in the street and let her fend for herself," said John glaring at Spitfire. "She done caused a lot 'o hurt."

"No, Ms. Spitfire rescued me!" Ellie protested.

"Yeah, and you saved her sorry ass after Horse mutinied and got himself elected the pirates' captain," John countered.

"His name is _Horace_ ," Spitfire corrected.

"You look familiar," I said to Spitfire. "What's your real name?"

"Why should I tell you?"

"Because eventually your ex-crew is going to leave, and you'll be stuck here. I'm guessing you won't be very welcome once the locals learn your identity, so I'm offering you a ride off this rock if you'll tell me what I want to know," I replied.

She paused for a moment and then finally answered, "My name is Jan Aradal."

All the other conversations in the room abruptly stopped.

"I thought you looked familiar, but the hair and eyes fooled me," I said. So, you're the late Malcolm Aradal's absent daughter."

"That explains where the money for the pirates' fancy hardware came from," Jason commented. "It all came from Aratek."

"Let me see if I've got this figured out," I said to Jan. "Spoiled rich girl feels guilty about inheriting a big interplanetary corporation that exploits people and resources for its own gain and so she decides to do something about it. Board of Directors pushes back when you try to make changes, so you decide to turn revolutionary pirate and fight the corrupt system."

"It wasn't like that," Jan answered. "Father never made anything easy for me. I had to earn it all."

"So, she 'appropriates' a candle from her company's fleet and outfits it with military-grade sensors and weapons," Ali suggested. "I'll bet she recruited her crew from Aratek Security, since they're mostly ex-military."

"Problem with hiring mercs is they expect to be _paid_ ," Jason chuckled.

"I paid my crew well!" Jan protested angrily. "I paid them a generous salary and benefits."

"But I'll bet you didn't let them share the in the _spoils_ , did you?" asked Jason.

"No, what we took we distributed to those in need."

"Robin Hood was a myth, Marxism has never worked, and mercenaries make lousy revolutionaries," I commented.

Lo laughed at my observation.

"Lucky for you, I'm _Orchid's_ owner aboard and captain so I have the final say when it comes to what happens to you," I continued. "I've decided to take you with us back to Mars, but it'll cost you. You or Aratek will have to compensate each of my crew here for what they believe you've cost them. I'll start with Ellie."

Ellie looked at Jan blankly and said, "I don't want any of your money. You rescued me from that evil woman. You did some bad things, but I think you was trying to do right even if you went about it the wrong way."

"John?"

John glanced at Ellie and Jan before answering. "Heck, I don't want none of her effin' blood money. I just want 'er gone."

"Ali?"

"I'm a business man like your father, Ms. Aradal," Ali began. "I came here to Market to purchase some merchandise, which you've prevented me from doing. Fortunately, although you and your former crew have inconvenienced me personally, my financial losses have been minimal so far. I also wish to maintain favorable business relations with Aratek since your corporation maintains a significant presence on Mars."

"You own a brothel," Jason snorted and laughed. "What kind of business relations would you ever have with Aratek?"

"I don't believe in burning bridges before I've crossed them, Kid," was Ali's reply.

"Ali may have a very good point," suggested Lo. "A long-term contract with Aratek would be far more beneficial to us than a one-time restitution. The terms of such a contract could be favorably negotiated to prevent cancellation by Aratek and insure that we are well-compensated for any services provided."

"What sort of _services_ did you have in mind?" Jan asked with a puzzled frown.

"I am sure that Aratek finds it necessary to discretely transport small or sensitive cargos on occasion – if not frequently. As part of our contract, you would give _Orchid_ right-of-first-refusal for any such deliveries. You would also pay a monthly retainer for our continuing services. I believe that such an arrangement would raise fewer eyebrows than an excessively large one-time pay-out, don't you?"

"You are certainly a clever negotiator," Jan answered. "I believe we can work something out – that is, if your captain agrees."

"Lo handles our finances," I replied. "If he thinks it's a good arrangement then I'll approve – assuming Cat and Tuesday don't need anything else for themselves."

"I like John's solution, but I'll go along if it keeps this old candle flying," Cat said less-than-enthusiastically.

"I have no further requirements," added Tuesday.

"Well, I've got a problem with this little deal," Jason objected. "What's to keep her from sending her corporate thugs to take care of us? It would be really easy for us to have an _accident_."

"An insurance policy would prevent such an unfortunate occurrence," suggested Lo. "Data files would be cached that would be automatically released to the media in the event of our untimely demise. These files would contain information that would prove to be extremely damaging to Aratek and result in Ms. Aradal's immediate arrest."

"This deal of Lo's may work for you all, but what's in it for me?" Jason asked.

"What if Kid Marx got his reputation and his 'cast back?" I asked. "Could Aratek make that happen?"

"Aratek owns a major streamer and several studios," Jan replied. "I believe that we could assure Mr. Marx that he regains his popularity and celebrity status."

Jason looked thoughtful and then said, "Alright, I'm in. But we still have to figure out how to get off of this 'effin rock. This place is crawling with pirates."

Our hotel room was suddenly silent. All of our deals with Jan Aradal would be worthless if we couldn't evade the pirates and get off Market.

"How many in your crew?" Jason asked Jan.

"Thirty-four total, but that's including the bridge crew. We took on extras for this operation, and it looks like Horace was able to sway them when they took their vote."

"Too many for us to take on, even with help from Market Security if we could find them," Jason lamented.

"We could sure use the Space Guard about now," suggested Ali.

"What if they were already on the way?" I asked.

"What do you mean? There's no way they're coming here."

"What if the pirates _thought_ they were on the way? They'd leave in a big hurry, wouldn't they?"

"How are you ever going to convince them of that?"

"Ellie has Horrace's 'face, right? He's their captain now. If he were to text a message to his crew stating that the Guard was closing in on Market and they had to leave now, they'd probably fall over each other trying to get away."

"Only if they're stupid enough to believe it," said Cat.

"Peter, you continue to amaze me with your creativity," Ali replied.

"I suppose it's worth a try," said Jason. "What do we have to lose?"

CHAPTER 22

"Captain, you gotta wake up!"

Horace blinked and tried to focus on the blurry figure standing above him. His head was pounding, and waves of nausea were flowing over him.

"I'm awake, Chester. Don't talk so effin' loud," he moaned. "I think that blond bitch cracked my skull."

"Spitfire and the other girl are gone," Chester informed him. "Eric is dead and our guns and our 'faces are missing. I'm guessing that they took them."

Horace tried to stand up, but the room started to spin, and he lay down again.

"Something else is going on," Chester continued. "I don't see any of our crew on the streets and there are others that look like they might be Market Security nosing around."

"We've got to get back to _Revolution_ , Horace growled. "C'mon, help me up. My brain can't tell up from down."

Chester helped his captain to his feet, but Horace's vertigo was so bad that he could only stumble ineffectually despite Market's low g and he collapsed, vomiting on the carpet as he fell.

"I can't walk," Horace sputtered.

"I'll carry you," Chester replied. "You don't weigh much here. Just don't hurl on me, okay?"

"If you get us back to the candle I'm making you my second-in-command," Horace replied.

Chester scooped up his disoriented captain and carried him out of the room and down the hall towards the nearest elevator. They boarded the car and descended, reaching the hotel's main lobby within a minute.

The doors opened. Two identically-suited men carrying stunners were waiting to board the elevator. As soon as they saw the gray jumpsuits, they raised their pistols and pointed them at the pirates.

"I guess I'm not getting that promotion now," Chester said dejectedly.

CHAPTER 23

Walk, tram ride, escalator pod, lobby, shuttle. We were headed back to Parking Lot and _Orchid._ Ellie and Jan traded their gray Pluto's Children uniforms for the jumpsuits Tuesday had bought for Ellie on Luna in order to make it through Market Customs. Luckily, busty Ellie's jumpsuits also fit Jan.

I didn't see any sign of the pirate's candle as we departed, suggesting that our ruse had worked and that they were headed as far and as fast as they could away from Market. Either that or they'd already got enough of what they'd come for and left anyway.

Our old candle was a welcome sight as we approached Parking Lot. Upon seeing _Orchid_ Jan commented, "You came in _that_ thing? You're braver than I thought!"

I'd heard that line somewhere before but couldn't place it.

"She's a good ol' candle," John said defensively. "She's dependable and she's easy to fix when she breaks, right Cat?"

"Most of the time," Cat mumbled.

" _Orchid_ will get you back to Mars," I told Jan. "You can go back to the life of luxury that you temporarily abandoned. You can still enact corporate reforms, but you'll just have to be patient and persistent and not try to make any radical changes overnight. Your former crew will eventually get themselves either captured or vaporized – I suspect the latter. Even if they are captured and questioned and they name you, you can always claim that you were forced to participate. I think you'll have a lot more credibility than a bunch of disgruntled former employees, don't you? Anyway, I suggest you make that your official story and get it out on the stream as soon as we land. You were abducted, and we rescued you. Gives you justification for giving us the contract Lo suggested."

"Ali was right about you, Captain. You're clearly a clever man," said Jan.

"I'm a writer. Sometimes it comes in handy," I replied.

Our departure from Parking Lot was uneventful, as was the trip back to Mars – for the most part. Since Ellie's home world Ganymede's gravitational pull was significantly less than that of Mars, we very gradually accelerated to 0.34 g to allow Ellie to acclimate to our destination's gravitational pull. To help speed-up the adaptation process – and recover from her confinement while she was a prisoner on Market - we gave her e-stim treatments, meta-steroid injections, and nutritional supplements to promote bone and muscle growth.

We accelerated constantly, only cutting our rocket motor briefly to pitch _Orchid_ over to start decelerating. That's when we had our one mishap. Tuesday was on the toilet peeing when we cut our thrust and, since the suction doesn't work anymore, managed to get her ass splattered with piss globules. She wasn't at all happy about that, and we had to listen to her swearing in Mandarin for close to a minute. I have no idea what she was saying, but the expression on Lo's face as he listened to her suggested that I probably didn't want to know.

A few days later Mars loomed large in our viewports. We bypassed Phobosport and touched down on Mars at Olympus Spaceport, fuel not being a concern. We were instant media celebrities, having rescued Jan Aradal from the clutches of Pluto's Children. What was conspicuously absent was the thorough Space Guard interview. I guessed that it was to avoid answers that would have proven to be both inconvenient and embarrassing to some high-ranking officials. Just as well since that meant we didn't have to concoct a story explaining _how_ we rescued her that might have not held up under questioning.

Normally we would have celebrated our return to Mars at the Black Hole, but Ali insisted on throwing a private party for us at Wet and Slippery. Drinks and entertainment were all free. I'll almost always go for free if the beer is decent.

"So where do we go from here?" I asked my crew as we sat around our table.

"Where do _you_ want to go, Pete?" John asked in response grinning. " _Orchid's_ your candle."

I looked up at the bar's ceiling towards an invisible sky that I couldn't see and pointed. "That way," I answered. "Second star to the right and straight on 'till morning."

Okay, so it wasn't very original, but it seemed to me to be appropriate at the time.

CHAPTER 24

Life at Prison Camp #57 was never easy, but things had gotten even worse since Boss and her lover, the other trustee, had a 'falling out'. Marla told DJ that Boss was accustomed to being 'pleasured' nightly by her ex-lover, and she had already approached Marla about taking her place. Marla had resisted Boss's advances, which resulted in Boss being in a worse-than-normal mood and taking it out on the prisoners. In a vindictive fit over being rebuffed, Boss bluntly informed Marla that she could, "kiss ever getting off Penitence permanently good-bye" and that she'd be wearing a collar again before the month was over. Marla was devastated by this announcement, and secretly vowed to find a way to escape.

That night Marla met privately with DJ and told her she wanted to help her and the other prisoners escape. She had a plan, but for it to work they'd need help. Marla's plan involved luring the space station's transport to the camp on a bogus repair mission, overpowering the guards and then using the transport to escape. For her bold plan to work they'd need various talents which Marla believed the prisoners had between them. They'd also need to gain access to the upper floors of the guard tower. Marla had only been up there once - on the night the power had failed during the big storm. Normally, the trustees were only allowed on the bottom floor of the tower, but it seemed that Boss had a key to the metal trap door that separated the bottom floor from the forbidden upper floors. She'd used that key on the night of the storm to access the control room on the top floor and – with some coaching from the space station – re-establish power to the tower and the electronic fence.

Fortunately (or perhaps not) for the prisoners, Boss started selecting a different girl to enjoy the 'privilege' of servicing her each night. If the 'lucky girl' performed satisfactorily she got extra water rations and light duty in the fields the following day. This supposedly accomplished the dual purpose of satisfying Boss's sexual appetite and (she hoped) making her former lover jealous in the process. Marla saw in hindsight that this presented an opportunity for them to overpower Boss and the other trustee and steal the key. DJ was up for the challenge and made her move on Boss the following day. Boss never liked DJ before, but her rabid sex drive overwhelmed her better judgment and that evening DJ was invited to share Boss's bed in the air-conditioned tower. DJ expertly played her part to the hilt and when Boss was in the throes of orgasm Marla clubbed the other trustee over the head and then helped DJ restrain Boss. With Boss and the other trustee gagged and securely tied to their beds, DJ and Marla used the key to access the upper floors. DJ's knowledge of communications equipment enabled her to sabotage the power to the electronic fence. Then Marla radioed the space station and informed them of the 'power failure'. She told them that Boss was keeping an eye on the prisoners and that they needed a repair team to come down and fix the fence.

In addition to packaged meals, supplies and repair parts, the upper floors of the tower contained a hidden arms locker with automatic rifles and several cases of ammunition. DJ distributed these to her most-trusted lieutenants which included several former guerilla soldiers. DJ also found the special tool that would remove their exploding collars . . .

It was early morning at Camp #57 when the transport landed and disembarked a pair of technicians and their escorting guards. The guards fell first, and the technicians were quickly surrounded by a half-dozen, gun-wielding prisoners. The transport's pilot sensed something was wrong and raised the cargo basket, but not in time to prevent a pair of automatic rifles from being pointed squarely at the back of his head.

Marla waited until the orbiting space station was near the horizon to inform them that the repairs to the electronic fence were taking longer than expected and the techs would have to wait until tomorrow morning to resume their repairs. She and the now former prisoners had spent the night loading anything and everything useable from the guard tower into the transport and the girls were already buckled in their improvised acceleration cots in the cargo hold eagerly waiting lift-off. They had unanimously elected DJ their new captain and DJ promptly made Marla her first mate, a position the former Greenslayer saboteur graciously accepted. Among their fellow ex-cons, they'd managed to find a pilot, a mechanic and even a cook willing to crew their 'new' transport. The rest of the ex-cons almost unanimously voted to go to Ganymede where they could blend in with the local population, find husbands, raise families and (hopefully) avoid ever being found again by the Commonwealth . . .

* * *

I don't remember much about my dad. I think that I was maybe nine or ten when he last visited us. Mom told me that he was an independent spacer and that she used to roam the void with him on his candle back-in-the-day, but then they'd parted company and shortly after that I came along. Mom always said that dad was a good man and that destiny simply had different plans for them. She said that they loved each other, but they couldn't be together.

The things I do remember about my dad were the wonderful stories that he used to tell me during his brief visits about his adventures in the void. They were wild, rollicking tales that in my youthful innocence I whole-heartedly believed at the time but became skeptical of as a teenager. Years later those same stories - real, contrived, or somewhere in between - provided ample fodder for my burgeoning writing career.

So _why_ exactly am I bringing this up? It seems that I have managed to literally follow in my dear old dad's footsteps, albeit unintentionally. It also appears that, based on my experiences since I became owner and captain of _Orchid_ , dad's wild, rollicking tales probably weren't so fabricated after all. The life of an independent spacer may not be the space opera that I once wrote _and still write_ (the producers apparently really like the 'edgy realism' that I've injected into my scripts), but it's far from mundane. Something is always breaking on the candle and usually at the worst possible time. At least one of the crew has some drama going on with either another one of the crew or someone dirtside. There are some really, _really_ scary bad folks out here in the void that make my most dastardly space opera villains look comical, _but you know that by now._

I'm still learning my adopted profession as I go. John has been patiently instructing me on how to fly _Orchid_ , and Cat has been teaching me how to fix her when she breaks. Lo schools me on the regulations (and how to get around them) and economics of interplanetary commerce. Tuesday teaches me self-defense. Ellie gives me lessons on everything from cooking to first aid. I don't have time to be bored.

Anyway, I just finished what's probably my best script ever. It's not my typical _Out to the Void_ stuff, but rather an account (albeit 'somewhat' fictionalized) of _Orchid's_ former crew from their early days on the prison moon Penitence to their mysterious disappearance after they'd reportedly all gone insane. It's at once both raunchy (lots of nudity) and gritty (lots of gore), but the producers apparently went wild about it.

I suppose I'm very lucky. I not only get to 'live the life' (as John once put it), but I also get to write about it and get paid. Now, that's just got the best of all worlds.

Oh, despite our best efforts to clean the candle, I can still smell those 'effin orchids . . .

# Part II.

CHAPTER 25

Almost seven months to the day after the party that Ali threw for us at Wet and Slippery _,_ I got a message from Jan Aradal saying that she had a job for us. I'd pretty much given up on the idea that we'd ever get any jobs from Aratek and that the monthly retainer fee being deposited in our account on Mars was the extent of our compensation for our services – and our perpetual silence regarding Jan's involvement with Pluto's Children, so I didn't know whether to be pleasantly surprised or skeptical. Why contact us now after seven months?

We were conveniently headed back home anyway after finishing a three-cornered run between Mars, Titan, and Ceres, so I figured we had nothing to lose by at least hearing what Aratek had for us. Jan said she'd make it worth our while, whatever that meant.

We dusted at Olympus Spaceport. John let me bring _Orchid_ down as part of my pilot training, and I don't think I did too shabby of a job for my first landing. Granted, _Orchid_ couldn't talk to us, but she could land herself in an emergency and I also had John sitting in the co-pilot's seat ready to take over if the need arose.

Jan had requested my presence only. I initially hesitated, but Lo pointed out that I was _Orchid's_ owner aboard and captain, so I needed to act accordingly. John, Ellie, Lo, Tuesday and Phineas all took the train into Sagan City, but only I took a cab to the towering spire that served as Aratek's headquarters.

_Phineas?_ Oh yeah, he's the replacement genius mechanic I hired after Cat and I had a less-than-civil falling out and she ran off with Jason to be his co-star on his new 'cast. (More on that ugly drama later.) Phineas is a 'smart ape' and when I say smart I mean _really_ smart. Between his big brain and his superior dexterity, he can fix things with lightening speed. I'd tell you that he works for peanuts, but that would probably get me in trouble. Jan supposedly found him for me after Cat's sudden departure. Considering what all Aratek does, I wonder if he was actually a product of theirs and not just an opportunistic hire.

I didn't recognize Jan until she said, "Hello Pete." The woman standing before me in the spacious CEO's office had silky black hair, pale blue eyes, and was attired in a pricey business suit. The Jan I knew had emerald green eyes, flaming red hair and wore a gray pirate's jumpsuit. Looks aside, her voice was an instant giveaway.

"Hello Jan," I replied. There was a long, awkward pause. Finally, I said, "I've never been much when it comes to casual conversation, so can we just skip the small talk and cut to the chase? What is the job you have for us?"

"Predictable response from what I've learned about you since our last encounter," Jan replied. "You're all business first and socializing later. I like that. So, here's the skinny: Three weeks ago, Aratek sent a team out to Ceres to retrieve staff critical to the Mars Terraforming Project. Something happened to them on the way back and we lost contact. A few days ago, we got a signal from their candle's transponder."

"Sounds like good news," I said.

"It would be if they'd responded to repeated attempts to contact them," Jan replied. "There's been no reply. We think that they may have had some sort of catastrophic failure."

"What did the Space Guard say when you notified them?"

"We haven't notified them."

"You haven't? Why not?"

"Because officially their candle never left Mars. This was a top-secret mission. We didn't want Exodyne or Gravon or anyone else to be alerted to our activities. Even _Evita's_ transponder was rigged to send only intermittent signals that wouldn't be recognized as coming from a space vessel."

"So why doesn't Aratek send a candle out to rescue them?"

"That's the tricky part. Exodyne has been looking for a way to get back at Aratek ever since they lost the Mars terraforming contract to us," Jan explained. "They've been watching us closely. I have good reason to believe that some of our employees are secretly on their payroll."

"What makes you think that?" I inquired.

"We have our own spies working at Exodyne," Jan answered. "We know they've apparently learned some things about _Evita_ , but not a lot. They're curious about what we're up to. If we were to launch a rescue mission, they'll likely track us and then launch their own mission when they figure out what we're after. Unfortunately, they have the resources to beat us to the prize."

I gave Jan a puzzled look. "Aratek has clippers. Why would they beat you if they launched later?"

"Exodyne is one of the contractors working on an anti-matter drive for the Space Guard. They have a working prototype they call a 'torch' that is theoretically capable of reaching one-tenth the speed of light and can easily outrun any clipper."

"So, once they figured out what your rescue mission's objective was, they'd just launch their super-fast candle and beat you to it."

"Exactly _. Evita_ carries highly sensitive information that can't be allowed to fall into a competitor's hands. Exodyne doesn't know that and I'd rather they not find out. So Aratek will not be launching a rescue mission. Those few who knew about _Evita_ have been told that the crew is dead, and the candle is not worth recovering."

"That's pretty ruthless."

"Welcome to _my_ world," Jan replied wearily as she gazed out of the office window at the sprawling city below. The towering spire of rival Exodyne was visible in the near distance.

"Pete, what do you think Exodyne would do if an independent was to launch a salvage operation and Aratek did nothing to stop it?" she asked after a long pause.

"I'd guess they'd assume that there wasn't anything on board _Evita_ that was important to Aratek," I answered.

"That's what I'm hoping they'll think," Jan said nodding as she continued to stare out the window. "Just to make sure it doesn't look like we hired a private contractor to recover _Evita_ , the operation will need to be carried out by a small independent operating with limited resources and presumably little chance of success. That's where you come in."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence."

"Oh, you'll be incredibly lucky," she said as she turned away from the window and walked back towards me. "You'll also just happen to have a military grade sensor suite installed in your candle to help you locate and rendezvous with _Evita_."

"Where would I just happen to get that?"

"I'm guessing that you must have purchased it when you were on Market and your mechanic just now got around to installing it."

"Just so we're clear," I said pausing, "My job is to recover this sensitive information of yours. That's all?"

"No, you're to destroy it. You're also to rescue any survivors and return them safely to Mars."

"I thought you said the crew was dead."

"That's the story we're telling those who knew about the mission. There's a chance that the crew may be in hibernation, but we don't know since we're not getting any telemetry from _Evita_ except for the intermittent transponder signals."

"If they're in hibernation, won't we need a medical doctor or at least a medtech to revive them? _Orchid_ only has a few empty bunks left, and if we have to transport survivors back we won't have enough room for them and a doctor."

" _Evita_ had only three in her crew, and the doctor won't be a problem."

"How do you figure that?"

"We'll just have to make one of your crew a doctor."

CHAPTER 26

"Are you _sure_ you want to go through with this?" I asked Ellie. I was holding a bright orange pill in one hand and a sippy box of water in another.

"Yes, Captain Pete," Ellie said. "When I was a little girl, I wanted to be a doctor when I grew up. Papa said we didn't have money for me to go to medical school, so I just practiced doctorin' on my brothers whenever they'd get hurt in a fight – especially if I was the one who put the hurt on 'em."

"Are you sure takin' that thing is safe," John asked worriedly. "It won't mess with her head, will it?"

"Jan said it's perfectly safe," I said. "Once Ellie takes it, she'll fall asleep. When she wakes up in the morning she'll have the knowledge as if she'd learned it normally. She just can't be disturbed while she's sleeping, or she might have gaps in her memories."

"That little pill is very expensive," observed Lo. "You could have gone to medical school for what one of those costs."

"Are they _legal_?"

"That all depends on where you happen to be standing or floating," Lo answered with a grin.

"It's getting late," I said. "We need to let Ellie go to sleep."

"Good night honey bunny," said John as he kissed his wife. "I'll see you in the mornin'."

Ellie swallowed the pill and then climbed into bed. John said that he would sleep on the couch in the hotel suite's adjoining room tonight to make sure she wasn't disturbed. Jan had thoughtfully booked us all rooms on the same floor at the Best Martian Inn & Suites, which wasn't the fanciest hotel in Sagan City, but was nice enough and had a complimentary continental breakfast that was delivered to your room. Phineas had stayed aboard _Orchid_ , taking advantage of the solitude to catch up on his reading. I stayed up and watched a z-ball game on the wall 'face. I dozed off at some point and the sippy box of beer that I was holding in my hand leaked in my lap, so after that I changed and went to bed. I told the wall 'face to wake me up for breakfast.

I wasn't expecting the 'face's too-cheerful serenade the following morning.

Good morning from your friendly hosts,

Good morning! Good morning!

Would you care for jelly on your toast?

Good morning to you!

Your coffee we are bringing,  
Good morning! Good morning!  
So we'll start your day by singing,  
Good morning to you!

I thought whoever wrote those lyrics should be tossed out of the airlock without a space suit.

A squat 'bot with a cartoon waitress' face and an apron painted on its body arrived with my 'complimentary continental breakfast' a short time later. The coffee was cold, the toast was charred, and I had no idea what the green slimy substance was, so I passed on it.

After I'd showered, shaved and dressed, I headed down to Ellie and John's room. Lo and Tuesday were already there, and Ellie was excitedly babbling away about some medical procedure she'd learned in her sleep.

"I guess we're going to have to start calling you 'Doc' now," I told her grinning.

"Did you get your free breakfast?" John asked me.

"Yes, but it wasn't fit for human consumption."

"Ours weren't neither. Anybody else want to go get some _real_ food?"

"If you want 'real' food, then I suggest we find a restaurant with a _real_ chef," said Lo. "All of the food in the restaurant downstairs is prepared by 'bots."

"I don't want nothin' fancy, just somethin' that don't look like it could slither off my plate and crawl away," John repied.

"We passed a little diner with _real_ people cooking behind the counter coming here," I said. "It's just down the street about half a kilometer."

We hoofed it down to the diner, which was called Hopper's and had signs proclaiming, 'Best Bunny Burgers on Mars' and 'Full Menu Served All Day'. They were busy (a good sign), but we got lucky and grabbed a table as another group was leaving.

A cheerful red-haired girl in a retro waitress costume took our orders. I noticed that the furnishings and décor were all retro to give the feeling of dining in a mid-twentieth century restaurant.

"Has it occurred to anyone else that Aratek has invested a considerable sum in our operation," Lo said as we were waiting for our food to arrive. " _Orchid's_ military sensor upgrade, Ellie's medtech edutab, and our fee plus a very generous performance bonus if we succeed all add up to a rather hefty sum."

"What's your point, Lo?" I asked.

"Whatever is on _Evita_ is very valuable to Aratek. _Extremely_ valuable."

CHAPTER 27

" _Fat Lady is on course. Estimate impact in one minute."_

" _Roger that. Defiant confirms orbital defenses neutralized. We lost most of our fleet, though."_

" _It'll all be over soon. They'll have their hands full with just trying to recover for the better part of the next century or so. Do we have an update on ground zero?"_

" _Revised projection shows impact on North American continent."_

" _Schwätzer is live again. He's calling us cowards and murders and claiming that they'll still defeat us."_

" _A blowhard to the very end. When that rock hits, we won't have to worry about his stupid speeches anymore."_

" _Fat Lady has entered the upper atmosphere. Ground defenses still throwing stuff at it."_

" _They can't deflect it now."_

" _Ground zero is now northwestern Wyoming."_

" _A least it's sparsely populated."_

" _That's one big fireball. Only seconds to impact now."_

" _Impact confirmed at 14:33:19."_

" _Wow, would you look at that!"_

" _Defiant reports massive pyroclastic ejections from point of impact. Firestorm is spreading concentrically outward from ground zero and shows no sign of abating."_

" _Elvis, what have we done?"_

* * *

With Wagner's _Ride of the Valkyries_ playing as our launch music over the intercom, _Orchid_ lifted from Olympus Spaceport on February 2, 'Ground Hog Day'. There were no ground hogs on Mars, although there had been talk of recreating them from viable DNA recovered from the Earth Reconnaissance Mission nine years ago. _Make that nine Earth years_. Even though our mother planet was now an apparently desolate world thanks to an asteroid that was intended to end the Interplanetary War but not exterminate all life on Earth in the process, we still used an archaic terrestrial dating system based on Earth years. As a result, Mars frequently had two Februarys in one Martian year because nobody could agree on how long a 'universal standard year' should be. Most Martians wanted a Martian year which was 1.881 Earth-years. The rest of the Sol system all wanted something else based on their years, so we all stayed with status quo as a result.

"Landing gear up," I said as we began our ascent. I was piloting Orchid again under John's watchful eye. The array of blinking lights and readouts on our control panel that had frightened and bewildered me many months ago now made perfect sense to me.

Our flight plan had us heading for Venus, which the supercorp Gravon proclaimed would be 'Nuovo Terra' someday. Gravon had seeded the Venusian atmosphere with a rapidly-multiplying designer microbe that devoured carbon dioxide and spit out oxygen as a byproduct. They'd also seeded the upper atmosphere with reflective 'chaff' and constructed an array of giant kilometers-wide mirrors in a stationary orbit between Venus and the Sun to cool the hellishly hot planet down. They'd reportedly constructed a domed climate-controlled city on the planet's surface, although so far only old-moneyed expatriate Earther's from Saudi Arabia, Dubai and other once petro-rich nations who'd escaped before the asteroid had hit had emigrated there, presumably because the 0.8G gravitational pull was close to Earth's gravity.

Even if we were actually going to Venus, we would be dropping our cargo at an orbital depot rather than attempting a landing. At water-gobbling maximum thrust, _Orchid's_ variable specific-impulse rocket motor still couldn't overcome Venus' surface gravitational pull without a booster and we'd be stuck there – assuming we didn't crash or burn-up on landing. We'd all weigh more than twice what we normally weighed and would have difficulty just moving.

Assuming that we could successfully land on Venus, we'd be considered _infidels_ and wouldn't be allowed entrance to the domed city even though the residents were only _faux_ Muslims who'd only adopted certain religious practices that were convenient to their opulent and exclusive lifestyle. Like Christianity and other waning old religions, what was left of true Islam had perished with the impact of the Fat Lady. Nowadays it seemed that what remained were so-called religions of convenience or self-gratification, but the Elvisians would adamantly tell you otherwise.

Since we'd lifted off from Mars surface rather than Phobosport, our flight plan was a parabolic orbit rather than a hyperbolic to supposedly conserve fuel. In truth, it put us on a trajectory that would conveniently intersect _Evita's_ course and allow a rendezvous without using much additional fuel. As Jan had said, we'd be very lucky – albeit by design.

There wasn't much for us to do until we got close to _Evita_ , so we all took advantage of our leisure time. I worked on a script for _Out to the Void_ , Lo and Phineas played chess, Tuesday taught Ellie low-gravity Tai Chi, and John strummed his guitar and sang.

Take me out to the void

I don't want to be annoyed

I ain't really paranoid

I just don't like people

"Don't quit you day job," Lo told him.

John just gave him a dirty look and kept playing.

Our newly-installed military grade sensor suite located _Evita_ long before our antiquated radar would have ever found her. _Evita's_ intermittent transponder signal confirmed her identity, so John altered our course to close with the stricken candle and match orbits.

_Evita_ first appeared as a dim speck of light in our viewports that grew steadily brighter, finally taking on a discernible elongated shape. As we got closer, I could see that _Evita_ was a small transport, newer and somewhat larger than _Orchid_ , but not the sort of candle I would have expected Aratek to send out on such an important mission.

"No corporate logos," I pointed out to John. "No markings at all that I can see. They were serious about not attracting attention."

John gradually maneuvered _Orchid_ to within a hundred meters of _Evita_ , then opened our cargo bay doors and sent over the fancy remotely piloted vehicle (RPV for short) that Aratek had provided to get a close look at the slowly tumbling transport. John piloted the squat, drum-shaped robot to within ten meters so that the RPV's powerful floodlights illuminated the candle's exterior. The images sent back by the RPV's camera revealed a gaping hole in the fuel tank.

"What do you think did _that_?" I asked.

"Hard to say. Whatever it was must've taken out their power plant too, 'cause their emergency solar arrays is deployed."

"Think it's safe to board?"

"She ain't tumblin' very fast, so yeah. You and Ellie can ride the RPV over. I'll guide you to the center of where she's rotatin'. You can board there and then work your way over to the airlock. Just take your time and don't touch the radiators or the solar panels."

_So why was I going?_ Jan had entrusted me – and me alone - with _Evita's_ secret access code that would get us through the airlock and another code that I was to use to erase all recorded data. Ellie's job was to revive anyone in hibernation and get them into the inflatable escape balls that we'd bring with us.

The RPV was back and waiting for us in the cargo bay by the time Ellie and I had suited up and made it through the airlock. After we'd secured our safety lines to the sides of the RPV, John slowly eased it back over to _Evita_. We boarded and clipped our safety lines onto _Evita_ , then slowly made our way along the hull to the airlock.

I don't think either of us was prepared for the ghastly sight that greeted us when the inner airlock door opened. The interior was dark, but our space helmets' headlamps revealed a pair of decomposing corpses floating around the crew compartment. The emergency lights occasionally flickered on for brief instants, bathing the interior in eerie red flashes. The cabin was still pressurized, but the atmosphere obviously wasn't breathable and there was a thin layer of frost on everything. The cameras on our space helmets relayed the grim images back to John.

"Their air scrubbers must've given out and they drowned in CO2," he suggested.

"There are only two of them," I said. "We're checking the hibernators to see if one of them is occupied."

"This one is," said Ellie. "Vital sign readouts show he's alive."

"They must've used what lil' juice they was gettin' from the solar panels to keep powerin' that hibernator and the transponder," John said.

"That would make sense out beyond Mars orbit, but we're a lot closer to the sun now," I said. "The solar panels should be making enough electricity now to get the lights back on and power-up the bridge."

"You can try," John answered. "I'll get Phineas and have him talk you through it."

Twenty minutes and numerous expletives later I had the lights back on and power restored to the bridge. Attempts to restart the air scrubbers weren't as successful. I shoved the two deceased crewmen into the cargo hold and rejoined Ellie by the lone functioning hibernator.

"The oxygen level in here is too low to safely revive him," Ellie said. "He'll suffocate when we open the hibernator."

"Did you catch that, John?" I asked.

"Roger that, Pete. Phineas says that you'll need to increase the hibernator's internal pressure by about two megapascals so when you open the lid it'll keep the bad air out long enough to get an escape respirator on him."

"How do we do that?" I asked.

"We can't. They don't work like that. We have to open the lid before it drains all the way," Ellie said as her spacesuit-gloved fingers danced over the hibernator's 'face. "The coldox fluid inside will be denser than the CO2 and keep it out. He won't drown right away."

" _Is that the pill talking?"_ I wondered _._

"Ah Pete, we got us a bit o' a problem," John said over the radio. "Our sensors just picked-up another candle vectorin' hard and very darn fast towards us."

"What the 'eff?"

"I tried hailin' 'em, but they ain't bein' sociable. They may be hostile. They's still a ways out, but you need to get sleepin' beauty out of his coffin and get back here fast."

"Copy that. Ellie, it's now or never."

Ellie used an expletive I'd never heard her use before and went to work, punching in a sequence that triggered flashing lights on the display. Abruptly the lid swung open. I had the escape respirator ready for the hibernator's unconscious occupant and promptly clamped it over his mouth and nose.

Make that _her_ mouth and nose. Our sleeper was a pale-skinned, dark-haired and not-at -all unattractive young woman.

"Let's get her out of there," I urged. I pulled her out of the partially drained hibernator, causing large blue globules of coldox to float out into the cabin.

Ellie and I hurriedly got her into an escape ball and then I shot up to the bridge to erase the data files. I punched in the code Jan have given me. I wasn't prepared for what happened next.

SELF-DESTRUCT INITIATED. DETONATION IN 20:00 . . . 19:59 . . . 19:58 . . . 19:57 . . .

" _Eff!_ We've got to get off this candle now!" I shouted to Ellie.

Another new swear word. I didn't think Ellie's edutab had included expletives.

"Hey, what's going on over there?" John asked.

"The access code Jan gave me triggered a self-destruct program," I explained. " _Evita_ is going to blow herself up in less than twenty minutes! We're on our way back."

We tethered the escape ball to the RPV and towed it back with us to _Orchid._ We got it and ourselves into the airlock, then once we'd pressurized shoved the ball into the crew compartment. Tuesday pulled the girl out of the ball and strapped her into a bunk. Ellie followed, and I brought up the rear. We pulled off our suits and stuffed them less than neatly into the spacesuit locker.

"Get us the 'eff out of here!" I shouted to John.

I was on the bridge and had just planted my ass in the co-pilot's seat when John yelled, "Hold on!"

I felt the acceleration shove me back in the seat as _Orchid_ went to maximum thrust.

"C'mon baby, you can do it!" John shouted, as if encouraging _Orchid_ would help us to accelerate.

On the display I saw _Evita_ falling away from us just as another growing sliver of light approached. I tried contacting our mystery guest on broadband.

"Attention, unidentified space vessel, do not approach the derelict. It is about to self-destruct. I repeat, do not approach!" I warned.

Minutes passed. By now both slivers converged into a single faint speck of light. Suddenly there was a brilliant flash followed by an expanding ball of incandescent gas.

"That was an 'effin tac-nuke!" John swore.

"Aratek was serious about _Evita's_ data not falling into anyone else's hands," I commented. "I just wish Jan had warned us about the nuke."

"Maybe she didn't want us to get away. Maybe it was meant for us."

"Remember our 'insurance policy'? I don't think she'd risk it. Anyway, we did rescue her from her former crew. I don't think she wants us dead, but I do think she doesn't want us to know more than she thinks we need to know. What we don't know won't hurt us – _or her_ \- or something like that."

"Maybe so," John said. "Anyway, we got a new problem. When I was tryin' to get us away from _Evita_ I got us goin' hyperbolic, so we definitely ain't going to Venus no longer."

"Where exactly _are_ we headed?" I asked.

"Well, no place in particular at the moment. But if we start slowin' down here," John said as his finger slid over the interactive navigational display, "We should be able to alter our course so that we swing around Earth and use its deep gravity well to slingshot us back towards Mars without havin' to use a lot more of our fuel."

CHAPTER 28

" _Imagine the very air that you breathe suddenly becoming a poisonous gas that at once suffocates you and burns your lungs until they're nothing but crisp, blackened sacks. That's what those who survived the initial impact of the Fat Lady experienced." –_ Dr. Garrett Homen

* * *

Our mystery passenger was still out cold – literally. Ellie removed her from the hibernator her before her body temperature was completely warmed back-up and was now frantically trying to use a combination of thermal blankets and chemical warmers to finish the process. She finally managed to get her heart beating normally and then administered a stimulant from the medkit that Aratek had given her.

Our passenger coughed, and her eyes fluttered opened. Then she coughed again and vomited out a puddle of bluish liquid. Hibernator juice. Good thing our rocket motor was thrusting, and we had some artificial gravity, or the stuff would have gone all over the compartment.

"Where am I?" she gasped hoarsely. "What happened to me?

"You're safe," Ellie assured her.

"You're aboard the independent space vessel _Orchid_ ," I added. "We were contracted by Aratek to rescue you. Do you know what happened to you and your crew?"

"There was a loud thump and the emergency lights came on," she replied slowly and deliberately, as if trying to remember. "Our motor quit working and they told me that I needed to get into the hibernator right away. What happened to Keith and Mick?"

"If they were your crewmates, then they didn't make it," I explained. "I'm sorry."

"Oh. Where are we going?" she asked hesitantly.

"Back to Mars by the scenic route," I said pausing. "I suppose we should introduce ourselves. I'm _Orchid's_ captain, Pete Soñador, and the guy with the red hair and the beard is our pilot, John Tanner. Mr. Lo Phat over there manages our finances and that's his daughter Tuesday with the dark hair. She's our resident legal and martial arts expert. Phineas is our mechanic, and Doc Ellie Tanner here woke you up."

"Helen Bach," our passenger replied identifying herself. "Thank you for rescuing me."

"Are you any relation to the famous composer," I asked.

"I don't know," she said giving me a puzzled look. "What composer?"

"Oh, never mind."

If I were writing a script for Out to the Void, this awkward pause would be a good place to end the episode on a humorous note except that the irony would be lost on many watchers in the Belt or on the outer moons who probably wouldn't know or even care who Johann Sebastian Bach was. They weren't interested in 'old Earth stuff'.

"I need to talk to Jan Aradal," Helen said, abruptly breaking the silence. "Is it possible for me to talk to her in private?"

Now this was truly awkward. Why would she want to talk to Jan privately? The fact that she'd dropped Jan's name the way she just did indicated to me that she'd maybe had a close relationship with her and that there were quite possibly some things going on that we weren't privy to. Or maybe she just wanted to confirm that we really were hired by Aratek and weren't pirates or some other corporation's spies. Jan would have probably known all of _Evita's_ crew personally given the importance of their mission. I recalled the old saying, "Paranoia will destroy you." Regardless, all the eyes in the crew compartment were on me awaiting an answer.

"No problem," I replied.

We gave Helen a 'face and then closed the sound-deadening privacy screen on her bunk. With our directional high-gain antenna pointed at Mars, she was able to contact Jan. Given our current distance from the red planet, conversations were awkward due to the almost 11-minute-long delays between replies.

Helen finally emerged from her bunk almost three hours later, her demeanor much more open and friendly. Apparently, Jan had assured her that we were in her employ and our intentions were benign.

Jan 'faced me next and congratulated me on our success. Our conversation was brief compared to Helen's – she told me that I could provide a full report when we returned to Mars. Despite the long wait between replies, I did confront her about the self-destruct.

"We could have been blown-up," I complained.

"I wasn't aware that _Evita_ was equipped with a self-destruct," was Jan's eventual reply.

I didn't know what to think of her answer. How could she not have known? I wanted answers, but the long delays made conversation awkward. I decided to wait until we got back to Mars and told her I'd talk to her then.

With our mysterious pursuers eliminated and our rescue mission accomplished, all we had to do now was return to Mars. That required a carefully choreographed swing around Earth in which we'd actually steal an infinitesimal amount of the planet's angular momentum to help accelerate us. Yeah, I read up on this. It also gave us all an opportunity for a close-up look at humanity's original home world. Before the war, Earth had been referred to as the "blue planet". Now it was a blackened, desolate sphere with a poisonous atmosphere composed mostly of a toxic mixture of sulfur dioxide and carbon monoxide thanks to the massive eruption of the Yellowstone caldera after the impact of the Fat Lady asteroid. Left to its own devices, it might be habitable again in a few million years from now. I'd read about that, too.

Helen gazed at Earth out of the viewports as we approached and frowned.

"It's hard to believe our ancestors came from that," she said.

"It didn't always look that way," I replied. Imagine all the low areas are deep blue, the higher parts are mostly green, and the planet is covered by swirling white fluffy clouds. That was the world we came from, not this burned out corpse of a planet."

"What happened to all the people who lived there?"

"I suppose that the lucky ones died in the firestorm," I said as I watched the dead world rolling beneath us as we approached. "Those closest to the eruption were incinerated. Those on the other side of the planet suffocated. Those who managed to survive probably either starved or froze to death."

"Why did they do this?"

"They didn't intend to destroy all life on Earth. They mainly just wanted to end the war. Some wanted to teach Earth a lesson after Earth nuked Mars. Nobody anticipated that the asteroid's impact would trigger a super volcano."

"My teachers told us that the Earthers were lazy and that they let their smart machines do everything for them. Even think for them and that is why they deserved to die."

"Where did you grow up?"

"Beulah Land. You probably haven't heard of it."

"If it's an asteroid, then I probably haven't but please don't be offended. There are thousands of asteroid settlements I haven't heard about."

"I'm not offended, Captain Soñador. It's a small world governed by small-minded, superstitious fanatics. I hated it. I left for Ceres as soon as I could."

"Please call me Pete," I said. "With the exception of Tuesday and Ellie, everyone else just calls me that and I'm just fine with it."

"Okay, Pete it is then. You wouldn't happen to be related to the _Out to the Void_ Peter Soñador, would you?

"Yeah, that's me."

"Oh my 'effin Elvis! You're really _you_?" Helen said excitedly. "I've seen all the episodes! Now I get it – you're the _real_ Jack Parsec!"

"Hey, not so fast. Jack Parsec is just a fictional character that I dreamed up."

"But you're still a real _freetrader_. That's got to be exciting."

I winced. She'd used the 'f-word', which Lo had once explained to me had a negative connotation among most independent spacers since it implied that we were unethical smugglers who ignored local laws for the sake of profit.

"Let me tell you what I've learned in the months since I first set foot on this old candle," I explained. "The main difference between independent spacers like us and our corporate counterparts is that we're in business for ourselves. We have to pay our own operating and maintenance expenses, crew salaries and insurance. If we're smart businessmen, we turn a decent profit. If not, then we can't buy fuel and supplies and we're grounded. I'm afraid it's not as exciting as it is in _Out to the Void_."

"But what about when you rescued me?'

"Okay, that was rather intense."

"Yeah, 'specially the part when you activated the self-destruct and that hostile candle was closing in fast," John added. "You ought to use that in one of your episodes. Anyways, it time for Ms. Helen to go strap herself down and you to get your captain's ass back in your seat. We got us an insertion burn comin' up real soon."

CHAPTER 29

endocranial folliculitis – a rare condition in which tiny hair follicles grow inside the cranial cavity, leading to increasingly erratic behavior followed by insanity and ultimately death if not treated. Some notable historic figures suspected to have suffered from the affliction include Charles Manson, Idi Amin, and Russel Schwätzer.

* * *

The invisible man was back on my chest as _Orchid_ accelerated while _Mars_ from Holst's _The Planets_ symphony played over the candle's intercom. I wondered how Helen would handle the g being from Ceres. She didn't look like someone who'd spent most of her life in microgravity. I figured that since she'd apparently spent some time on Mars, she must have had the same treatments we gave Ellie when she first joined our crew and maybe even some muscle mods.

We'd passed perigee and we headed away from Earth when there was an audible thud. Warning lights started blinking on the control panel and an alarm sounded.

"We musta hit some space junk," said John. "There's lot of it still hangin' around in low Earth orbit. Looks like one o' the radiator panels got smacked. Whatever we hit couldn't have been very big, but it wouldn't have taken anythin' bigger than a rabbit's turd as fast as we're movin'."

I recalled John explaining to me back when I first bought _Orchid_ that much of her could be repaired under less-than-ideal conditions using scrounged parts. On the other hand, our wing-like radiators were made out of a thin and ultra-light, exothermic-superconductive-nano-whatever that was ultra-highly efficient at shedding the waste heat generated by our power plant – otherwise they'd have to be a lot bigger than our whole candle to get the job done. The stuff was invented during the early months of the Interplanetary War and was considered a major breakthrough because it would shed heat but not absorb it. It was widely-manufactured nowadays, but you couldn't patch it with duratape.

_Orchid_ was your basic, no-frills transport, which meant that she lacked many of the amenities of her pricier and newer counterparts. No hibernators, no minifac, no automed or autochef, and – maybe most importantly - no repairbots, although the later apparently hadn't helped _Evita_. Under the circumstances, we'd have to wait until we made it back to Mars to repair the damaged radiator panel.

"Can we still make it to Mars?" I asked John.

"Yeah, but we can't retract the busted radiator, so we can't land on Mars. We'll have to put in at Phobosport. Might get a lil' warm in here, too."

With our slingshot maneuver completed, John reduced our acceleration back to normal. We continued under thrust and arrived at our destination in four days without further incident, although we were all running around in our skimpies and sweating profusely for most of the last day.

We docked at Phobosport. Being his usual reclusive self, Phineas insisted on remaining with _Orchid_ to tend to repairs while John, Ellie, Lo Tuesday and I rode an Aratek executive shuttle down. Nice ride. Reminded me of the shuttle we'd taken from Parking Lot to Market, but it was configured like an aircraft with forward facing seats. No windows, just a panoramic display hawking all the great and wonderful things Aratek was supposedly doing, including an interesting segment on their Mars Terraforming Project. The presentation was an accelerated time-lapse video that showed how, not in millennia, not in centuries, but in mere decades, Mars' atmosphere would have sufficient oxygen to support human life thanks to Aratek's proprietary terraforming lichen.

As we descended into Mars' lower atmosphere, the panoramic display morphed into a transparent wraparound window that gave us an (obviously intended) spectacular view of the late afternoon Martian landscape. I was surprised that the spaceport we approached was not Olympus, the towering extinct volcano being nowhere in sight. Where were we?

"Welcome to Bradbury Spaceport", the pleasant-sounding woman's voice announced as we touched down smoothly on the 10 kilometers-long-runway. "For your own safety, please remain seated until the shuttle has arrived at the Aratek hanger and your captain turns off the 'fasten seatbelts' sign."

Bradbury Spaceport? We were thousands of kilometers from Sagan City in the Elysium Plain. Why would we be landing here of all places?

Our shuttle taxied on its air breathing engines passed the main terminal toward a row of low, thick-walled hangers, several of which bore the Aratek logo. The pressure doors of one such hanger were open and we steered toward it, our shuttle's long wings folding backward like some enormous extinct terrestrial moth as we approached so that we might more easily enter the enclosure. We gradually rolled to a stop and the pressure doors closed behind us. The lights inside the hanger turned red as the hanger pressurized, then returned to normal.

"The captain has turned off the 'fasten seatbelt' sign," the woman's voice cheerfully announced. "You may now exit the shuttle. Please don't forget to retrieve any carryon luggage from the overhead bins. Thank you for flying with us today and enjoy your stay in Bradbury!"

A motorized stairway rolled up to the side of our shuttle as we were retrieving our bags. By the time we'd started down the stairs a tall, sandy-haired man in a red Aratek jumpsuit was waiting for us at the bottom.

"Captain Soñador?" He asked extending his elbow toward me as I reached the foot of the stairwell. "I'm Tim Short from the Mars Terraforming Project. Our director, Kyle Brewster, sends his regrets for not being able to greet you personally, but he had an urgent matter to attend to at the last minute. He'd like to personally thank you on behalf of Aratek for rescuing Ms. Bach when we get back to our office. We owe you and your crew a debt of gratitude in addition to your agreed-upon compensation. To show our appreciation, we'd like for you to be our guests for the next few days – hotel and meals all on us.

"Thanks, but you can call me Pete," I said as Short continued to touch elbows with me. "I'm assuming that we landed here rather than at Olympus because the Mars Terraforming Project is being run out of Bradbury."

"That's correct, Pete. You probably noticed the big lichen blooms out on Elysium on your final approach. We're very proud of those."

Short continued to excitedly babble on about Aratek' miracle lichen while we all followed him out of the big hanger. We entered a garage and boarded a large pressurized van emblazoned with Aratek logos. Short sat in the driver's seat and I was invited to ride 'shotgun'. John, Ellie, Lo, Tuesday, and Helen seated themselves in the rows behind us. Like the shuttle, the van had a panoramic display which (thankfully) displayed an exterior window view rather than an Aratek infomercial. As soon as we were all seated and the hatch sealed, the garage depressurized. The van drove itself out onto the service road and then turned onto the two-lane highway that ran arrow-straight toward a group of low domes in the distance.

Short explained to us as we drove that, unlike Sagan City which was housed in an impact crater under a single large dome, Bradbury consisted of a cluster of smaller, interconnected domes built on the Martian plain. The domes in the older portion were smaller and function-specific: agriculture, residential, research, etc. The newest dome was much larger and mixed-use with apartments, restaurants, real stores, and a hotel – a sort of smaller version of Sagan City.

"Are your offices located in the new dome?" I asked.

"No, were still in the old section," Short replied. "The brass figures that we'll be able to build outside in a few years, so they're holding out."

Except for one other vehicle approaching from the opposite direction, the paved road was empty. Short told us that most people use the underground train that runs between the spaceport and Bradbury.

Suddenly a chime sounded and the driver 'bots pleasant female voice announced, "Collision imminent, taking evasive action. Please stay in your seats and remain calm."

" _Crazy sonofabitch!"_ Short abruptly yelled as we watched the approaching vehicle swerving into our lane. "What the 'eff does he think he's doing?"

Our van's 'bot steered us off the road out of the other van's path and onto the regolith-strewn shoulder. As we skidded to a stop, the unmarked van braked to a halt beside us and a pair of figures wearing pressure suits emerged.

"Get down!" Helen screamed.

The mysterious figures brandished automatic rifles. Between our van's insulation and the thin Martian atmosphere, the sound of their gunfire consisted of muffled pops. The impact of armor piercing shells against our van's side was anything but silent and the explosions reverberated throughout the interior. The attack lasted only a few seconds and then our assailants scrambled back into their vehicle. Their rust-colored van fishtailed off the road and bounced off over the boulder-strewn surface towards the south.

Hissssssssssssssss!

I heard the sickening sound of air escaping our pressurized cabin and saw that the upper half of our van was riddled with bullet holes. Short was slumped forward in his seat. I looked back at my crew.

"Is everyone okay?" I shouted as I sent out an emergency call on my 'face.

"I'm hit, but it ain't too bad," John responded.

"Father and I are unharmed, as is Ms. Helen," Tuesday reported.

"I'm fine, but I'm busy," Ellie answered as she tended to John's wound. "Doesn't this thing have a first aid kit?"

"It should have that and emergency respirators as well," I answered as I scanned the cabin. Luckily, like all corporate vehicles, our van had a prominently labeled compartment containing a well-stocked first aid kit, escape respirators, and even an emergency patch kit for leaks.

"Doc, I need you up front _now_!" I shouted to Ellie. "Short looks like he's bleeding out."

"I'll finish bandaging John," Tuesday offered.

Ellie scrambled to the front and checked Short's vital signs. She shook her head and said, "He's dead, Captain Pete."

I don't know why, but I recalled an old joke about red-shirted characters always getting killed and was thankful that none of us was wearing red. Then again, the way the air was escaping our cabin our wardrobe color might not matter.

"We're all gonna be dead if we don't plug some of these holes fast," shouted John.

I passed out respirators and patch kits. We all went to work patching bullet holes with the sticky patches and 'Seal-It' repair foam (made by Aratek, of course).

Minutes passed. We managed to plug most of the bullet holes, but some of the hard-to-reach ones were still leaking. The air was becoming noticeably colder and thinner inside our van, and we found ourselves having to put on our respirators. They only had a twenty-minute air supply, and if help didn't get to us soon we would all die.

"Your employer's must've had a lot of faith in this thing," I commented to Helen.

"There aren't any pressure suits on board. Not good if you break down."

"Oh, I wouldn't know," she replied. "I was just hired the day before we left Ceres."

Any response I might have had was interrupted by the welcome sight of rapidly approaching strobe lights. The large rescue vehicle halted a few meters from our van, and a team of pressure-suited figures emerged. One of them waved at us and held up a sign that read:

RESCUE IN PROGRESS

PLEASE REMAIN CALM

RESCUE OPERATION

COURTESY OF ARATEK

The same message showed up on my 'face as the rescue team worked quickly. They maneuvered their vehicle so that their hatch faced ours, the extended a flexible transfer tube. After the connection was sealed, our hatch opened and a paramedic wearing a respirator entered.

"Who is injured?" he asked.

"We've got one dead and one injured but in stable condition," Ellie replied. "I'm his attending physician."

"Can he walk?"

"Heck yeah," John replied. "It was just a flesh wound."

The rescue team ushered us through the transfer tube into their vehicle. Short was brought in a body bag, then the hatch was sealed, and we headed for Bradbury Hospital's trauma center in the Martian twilight.

It had been an eventful day by anyone's standards.

CHAPTER 30

"Captain Soñador, I can't begin to express my deepest and sincerest apologies," Kyle Brewster told me with what sounded to me like mock sincerity. "Had we even suspected for a moment that the Greenslayer terrorists would pick today of all days to pull their stunt we would have made other arrangements."

Admittedly I wasn't in the best of moods after having spent a good deal of the previous evening in Bradbury General Medical Center's Emergency Room getting scanned by a diagnostic bed in my birthday suit while being poked by medbots and interviewed by a creepy virtual smartbot that seemed a little too life-like before a (supposedly) human physician finally appeared on the wall display and told me I was fine except that I should consider consuming less alcohol and take up meditation.

Regardless, this whole 'Greenslayer' explanation didn't set well with me. I knew that Greenslayer was a radical anti-terraforming organization that had become increasingly militant to the extent that they frequently used sabotage to achieve their goals, but the sort of violent attack we'd luckily survived today was way outside their playbook.

"How do you know for sure that it was Greenslayer?" I asked.

"We found the usual propaganda in their abandoned van. This isn't the first time that they've resorted to violence."

"Shooting up a van is a long way from protest demonstrations and acts of sabotage."

"Sadly, it is. We believe they're trying to draw more attention to their so-called 'cause'. The media wasn't giving them the publicity they wanted, so they've increasingly turned to violence."

I'd noticed that the attack on our van was on all the major news streams, although Greenslayer apparently hadn't claimed responsibility.

Jan Aradal picked a good time to 'face me, because I was tired of Brewster's obviously scripted answers. I excused myself from his office so that I could speak with her in private.

"Hello Pete," Jan said. "I'm sorry about what happened."

"I got that from your pal Brewster," I said. "I really wanted to talk to you about what happened on _Evita_."

"I had it out with my mission director," Jan replied. "I told her I wanted a failsafe program installed that would obliterate all data in the event Exodyne tried something. Somehow she interpreted that to mean obliterate the candle."

"So, you didn't know about the nuke?"

"No. Why the 'eff in Elvis' name would I put a self-destruct on board _Evita_? The crew had the same code you did. If they'd used it, they would have blown themselves up. That would have been a serious set-back for our terraforming efforts – especially if we lost Helen Bach."

"Speaking of Helen Bach, she said that she was hired by you the day before she left Ceres. Care to explain, or is this one of those 'need-to-know' things that I'm not supposed to know about?"

Long pause. "Ms. Bach has a very special talent, Pete. Let's just leave it at that for now."

"So, do you have any idea who tried to intercept us out there?" I asked, changing the subject.

"We're pretty sure it wasn't Exodyne," Jan replied. "We've been monitoring their chatter and there's nothing that would finger them, plus their super-high-delta-v anti-matter candle never lifted. We suspect it may have been Greenslayer."

First it was Exodyne, now it seems that Greenslayer is Aratek's new boogie man.

"Helen Bach is critical to the Mars terraforming effort," Jan continued. "Gleenslayer is desperate to prevent us from succeeding. We believe they have informants working for Aratek and learned about the Ceres recruiting mission."

"Now here's the part you'll really like," she added. "When you activated the self-destruct, you also re-booted _Evita_ 's telemetry. We were receiving good images from her cameras. We even got a decent close-up of the intruders and were able to identify them."

"I thought you said you just suspected Greenslayer," I responded.

"We identified their candle, but we don't know for certain who contracted them."

"So, who were they?"

"That was _Revolution_. They were Pluto's Children."

How very convenient. Jan's former pirate crew gets themselves nuked trying to board an Aratek transport that was on a non-existent mission. Nice way to tie-up loose ends and get us off of Aratek' payroll.

"I guess that means you won't be needing our services after this mission," I said.

There was another uncomfortably long pause. "Pete, is that what you think this is all about? Do you think I'm trying to get rid of you?"

It was my turn to hesitate. "The thought had crossed my mind back on _Evita_ when the countdown clock was running," I explained. "But, as you said, Helen Bach is critical to your operation because of her 'special talent'. I can't see you intentionally blowing her up. I'm sorry if I questioned your intentions."

"Pete, do you know why I asked you to rescue _Evita_ 's crew? Because I trust you. You and your crew got me out of a very bad situation on Market and you didn't ask for unreasonable compensation in return. Someone I can trust is very valuable to me."

"Jan, I don't know what to say," I replied humbly.

"You don't have to say anything. I do have another assignment for you, if you're interested."

"I suppose that depends on the assignment."

"I need you to keep close tabs on Helen Bach for a few days. Are you up for it?"

"Don't you have Aratek Security for that particular detail?"

"Yes, and you saw how easily some of them were recruited for Pluto's Children and how easily they all mutinied. They'll be watching her, but I'll breathe easier if you're watching her, too."

"Don't you think she'll believe I'm stalking her? Following her around everywhere is kind of creepy."

"I think she's quite attracted to you and she'd enjoy your company."

"Yeah, uh right."

"You sell yourself too short, Pete. You're handsome - dark hair, dark eyes, a lean athletic build – you're not like some pale-faced, spaghetti-armed free-faller. You just happened to have saved Helen's life on two occasions. Plus, you're a freetrader. You can't get much sexier than that. I think if you asked her out on a date she'd piss her skimpies."

"Coming from you, I guess that's a real compliment," I said, ignoring Jan's use of the 'f-word'. "I suppose flattery will get you anything, so I'll ask her out and use it as an excuse to keep an eye on her for you."

"I knew you'd come through for me, Pete. All of your meals and entertainment will be on Aratek' tab. Enjoy yourselves."

CHAPTER 31

"You'd think Aratek would do more thorough background checks on their prospective hires," I said between bites. Bistro Barsoom wasn't exactly Chez Olympia, but the rabbit steak sushi was pretty good, and I'd definitely come back for it. The 'bot sushi chef that looked like Tars Tarkas from Edgar Rice Burroughs' _John Carter of Mars_ was fun to watch as all four of his arms simultaneously flailed away when he prepared a customer's order.

"The Space Guard uses mind scans on recruits and that's not new technology," I added. Don't tell me a supercorp like Aratek doesn't have gear that's at least as good if not better."

"Mind scans only detect that which lies on the surface," said Lo. "If someone had undergone subliminal programming, then the scan would easily miss that."

"They can still do that?"

"Not all the so-called 'evils' of old Earth ended with the swan song of the Fat Lady," Lo explained.

"Regardless, there's too much that just doesn't add up," I said taking another sip of beer. "First Aratek was blaming Exodyne, now they're fingering Greenslayer. I could believe Exodyne being the bad guy – they've got the money and the motive. I don't see how Greenslayer would have the resources to recruit Pluto's Children."

"I don't believe Greenslayer was involved in either the _Evita_ incident or the attack on our van," Lo said.

"You think it was Exodyne?" asked John.

"I suspect that Exodyne was responsible for the attack on our van. I believe that Aratek – either intentionally or unwittingly – was behind the _Evita_ incident."

"I don't follow you," I said.

"You said that Jan Aradal suspected she had informants on her payroll. Considering that her ex-pirate crew was recruited from Aratek' security personnel, it would not be unreasonable to assume that some of their former co-workers might be passing along information to them. Whether deliberately or unintentionally, news of the _Evita_ mission could have been 'leaked' to security and then passed on to the pirates. The scenario involving a deliberate leak suggests that whoever provided the information to the pirates knew about the self-destruct mechanism and intended for them to be eliminated."

I didn't like the implications of that scenario, since it implied that Jan had lied to me about not knowing about the nuke on board _Evita_.

"What about the attack on our van?" I asked.

"I suspect Exodyne for reasons you previously suggested. Exodyne has the money and a motive. Sabotage is Greenslayer's style, not attempted murder."

"I get it, but why is the news media blaming Greenslayer?"

"Consider who owns the major news streams on Mars, Pete. Aratek and Exodyne are both major players. Regardless of their animosity towards each other, it is still in their mutual best interests that terraforming continue."

"So, everybody blames Greenslayer," I said.

"All this is gettin' too deep for me," John said.

"It's all purely conjecture," Lo responded. "It could be true, or half-true, or not."

Our musings were interrupted by the restaurant's hourly floor show. The muscular young waiter dressed as John Carter of Mars engaged in an orchestrated sword fight with the Tars Tarkas 'bot while dramatic music played in the background. Their 'combat' ended predictably with John Carter winning the fight and sparing Tars Tarkas, who then pledged his loyalty to John Carter.

"That was exciting!" Ellie said as scattered applause rewarded the floor show.

"Yes, it was, but I think I've had enough excitement for tonight," I said.

"I'm bushed too," said John.

"I think number one daughter and I shall retire as well," said Lo.

"I'm your only daughter," Tuesday protested.

"That is why you'll always be number one," Lo explained as he smiled and affectionately hugged his daughter.

We all took the slidewalk back to our hotel. The Helium was nicer and newer than the corporate lodgings Aratek had arranged for us back in Sagan City. Frazetta art from his Barsoom series adorned the lobby walls along with paintings by Bonestell and the contemporary Martian artist Torque. The usual large predatory 'faces slithered around the artwork on the hunt for a receptive audience, some even masquerading as art to get close to their prey.

My 'face chimed while I was on the elevator, but the identity was blocked so I declined to connect. If it was real and not a 'bot trying to sell me something, then they'd leave a message.

Apparently, it was real. An unfamiliar male voice masked by the ancient Mars shield-and spear planetary symbol avatar simply said he'd call back later.

A chill went up my spine. That particular symbol had been adopted by a certain anti-terraforming organization that was getting a lot of news streaming lately: Greenslayer.

I tried to shake it off. It could have been just a prank, but my 'face's filters should have caught it.

I'd had a beer, a locally brewed Bad Moon Rising Belgian Wit, with my meal at the restaurant. It was a good beer, but now I suddenly felt the need for serious inebriation. My hotel room came well-stocked with an ample supply of War God IPA, so I indulged myself. I'd found myself drinking a lot more lately when I was dirtside and considered that I might be becoming an addict. Easily treatable, but tonight I just wanted to feel comfortably numb and not worry about Orchid, or my crew, or Aratek, or Exodyne, or Greenslayer, or anything else.

I suppose that I must have succeeded in my attempt at cognitive mental obliteration, and as a result missed Helen's attempt to connect with me in the process. She'd left a message asking me out on a date – I get to pick the place, she'll pick the time.

CHAPTER 32

I'd like to say that the following day was calm and uneventful, but it wasn't. My morning started a bit too early with an urgent 'face from Phineas. He'd noticed some unidentified space-suited figures getting too close to _Orchid_ and alerted Phobosport security. The mysterious trespassers had scrambled off, but it was still the wrong way for me to start my day. After that I got up, showered, and ordered breakfast – which was promptly delivered by a real human being and not a 'bot. The rabbit sausage was delicious, the biscuits were hot, and the coffee was fresh. Things were definitely improving.

Brewster had arranged our schedule, which consisted of me accompanying Helen on a morning flyover tour of the terraforming operations in the Elysium Plain followed by a luncheon at the Aratek cafeteria and an afternoon overland rover ride. I noticed that our activities were being closely tracked and fed to the news streams. Apparently, Helen and I were an 'item' after the van attack. Properly spun it all made for positive public relations fodder for Aratek.

Tonight was our 'date night', but after being shepherded around all day I looked forward to some actual time alone with Helen without an Ardax chaperon hovering within earshot. I was curious about her 'very special talent' and why it was so important to Aratek. Getting her alone would take a little bit of subterfuge. Luckily for me, tonight was 'Costume Night' at Bistro Barsoom. I'd noticed the ad when my crew and I dined there last night. You were served free drinks if you came in costume as a character from Edgar Rice Burrough's _John Carter of Mars_ series, which was enjoying a revival in popularity. I figured that Helen and I could go as Dejah Thoris and John Carter. The rest of my plan was straight out of Episode 39 of _Out to the Void_.

Helen liked the idea of some 'alone time' with me and was enthusiastic about my plan. I wasn't sure how comfortable she'd be dressing in skimpy Barsoomian attire, but she didn't seem to mind and in fact made a great Dejah Thoris. I pulled off John Cater well enough and we were complemented by the restaurant staff on our costumes. Our Aratek escorts didn't go in costume and were easily identifiable as they sat watching us from a nearby table.

So far, so good. The second phase of my plan involved a little cooperation with one of the waiters, who 'accidently' spilled Helen's drink in her lap. Helen excused herself to go to the restroom and clean-up. After she'd been gone for a few minutes, I paid our bill and then also went to the restroom. There was a conveniently unlocked exit door at the end of the hall where the restrooms were located that lead to an alley behind the restaurant. Helen was waiting for me outside. She'd already pulled the spacer's jumpsuit that I'd stashed earlier over her skimpy costume. I hurriedly jerked on my jumpsuit and we bolted for the nearest slidewalk. We found a small hole-in-the-wall bar that catered to spacers and blended in with the other patrons.

"That was fun!" Helen said. "Jack Parsec and his girlfriend elude the evil Mercurian agents."

"So, you're my girlfriend now?" I asked jokingly.

"At least for the night," she replied giggling. "I'm sure Jack Parsec has a girl in every port."

"I'm not Jack Parsec," I said smiling. "I'm Pete Soñador."

"Please excuse my intrusion, Captain Soñador," said the thin, sandy-haired intruder who unexpectedly pulled-up a chair at our table. "My name is Miles Kincaid and I'm from Greenslayer. May I please have a few minutes of your time?"

"I suppose you may," I said slowly as I glanced around the darkened room. Where was Aratek security when you needed them?

"First of all, we did not attack your van," Kincaid explained. "Greenslayer advocates the use of education, civil disobedience, and non-life-threatening acts of sabotage to achieve our goals, but not violence."

"That's what I've heard," I said. Helen said nothing, but just stared at Kincaid.

"You know I'm speaking the truth, don't you?" he said to her.

"Yes," she said hesitantly.

"If Greenslayer wasn't behind the attack on our van, then who was responsible?" I asked.

"Exodyne. They're sore about losing the terraforming contract to Aratek and want it back. They can't do anything too big that would draw attention to them, so they've resorted to small scale stuff that they can blame on us. Aratek has been similarly retaliating against them and blaming us as well."

"I'd already come to that conclusion," I said.

"There's something else you should know," Kincaid continued as he addressed Helen. "Ms. Bach, we know why Aratek brought you to Mars. It is critical that you not meet with the native Martians."

" _What?"_ I said incredulously.

Kincaid looked as if he was about to reply, but then abruptly got up and left without explanation. I spotted the apparent reason for his sudden departure a few moments later. Our Aratek escorts had managed to track us down and were giving us disapproving looks.

"We'll it was fun while it lasted," I said.

"It doesn't have to be over," Helen said. "It's still early and I like the atmosphere here. How about another round?"

I ordered us two more beers.

"Miles Kincaid must be crazy," I said. "There are no 'native Martians'."

"Don't you read the _Galactic Enquirer_?" asked Helen. "It's supposed to be a big cover-up by the Commonwealth and the supercorps. The Martians live in huge underground caverns and have four arms. They have slaves with upside down heads that they rule using telepathy. It's all pretty farfetched stuff."

"Kincaid must not think so."

"He's also got me meeting with them, too. He probably believes I'm part of the great conspiracy."

"Not that I believe any of this, but why are you so important to Aratek? What is your 'special talent' that they're so obsessed with?"

Helen lowered her eyes and sighed heavily. "If I tell you, you have to swear to not tell anyone else."

"I swear I won't tell anyone."

"Okay, here goes. Aratek thinks I'm a telepath."

"Are you serious?"

"Yes Pete, only I'm _not_ a telepath. It's a trick that I learned on Ceres when I was working for the Great Mephisto. He had a show at the Golden Nugget where he'd supposedly read minds and contact the spirits of the dead."

"How did you end up with Aratek?"

"Ceres was much better than Beulah Land, but I wanted to get to Mars. When the Aratek recruiters showed up I applied. I didn't think that I had anything they were looking for, but what did I have to lose? They gave me a test and I guess I must have aced it because the next day they put me on a candle. I think you know the rest of the story."

"What kind of test?"

"It was supposedly a telepathy test. The tester would stare at a card and I had to tell him what he was looking at."

"How did you ace the test?"

"He showed me the cards and then he shuffled them. I watched as he shuffled and remembered the order."

"Damn, you can do _that_?"

"Danny – the Great Mephisto – taught me how. He said I was a natural. You see, I do have an exceptional memory. That talent is real."

"Why would Aratek need a telepath?"

"I don't know," Helen said. "I just wanted a way to Mars. I didn't care."

"You do realize that they'll fire you on the spot when they figure out it's all a trick."

"Yes, but they won't waste any money on sending me back to Ceres, either. I figured out how to survive there and I'll do the same here."

Our conversation drifted on to other, less serious topics. Helen asked me how a stream series writer had ended up as captain of a tramp freighter roaming the void. I told her the main points of my story.

Time slipped by and last call for drinks was announced. The Dirtside wasn't a 24-hour 39 minute establishment. We finished our beers, boarded the slidewalk and returned to the Helium with our security detail in tow. I invited Helen up to my room for a nightcap and she accepted. I streamed an extended version of _Cryin'_ by the twentieth century classical guitarist Joe Satriani. Helen didn't waste any time shedding her spacer's jumpsuit, but then her skimpy Dejah Thoris costume quickly followed. I followed her example and John Carter was soon naked as well.

We wrestled in the sheets and then fell asleep in each other's arms _._ It was the first time I'd sexed since Cat and I broke up. It was a perfect end to a mostly-scripted day.

Except that it wasn't quite the end.

CHAPTER 33

" _Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night."-_ Bette Davis in _All About Eve._

* * *

The commotion in the hall had to have been very loud for me to have heard it through our room's supposedly 'soundproofed' walls. I'm a light sleeper when it comes to unusual noises and shouting gets my attention.

I jumped out of bed, ran to the door and cautiously cracked it open. I peeked out into the brightly hit hall and was greeted by a sight that was both at once shocking and hilarious. John and Tuesday were supporting a partially disrobed and _very_ drunk Ellie. John saw me.

"She's okay," he explained. "She just had a little too much fun tonight."

I watched in amusement as John and Tuesday continued to guide the staggering Ellie, who was alternately singing and swearing very loudly, back to John and Ellie's room.

Helen had slept through the entire episode, so I threw on my jumpsuit and headed down to their room to make sure that things were really okay. The door to their room was open and I saw John and Tuesday depositing Ellie on her bed. I think she was already snoring when her head hit the pillow.

"Wild night Pete," John said. "Some bad shit happened."

"Something bad happened to Ellie?"

"Nah, but a guy was murdered."

"She was involved?"

"Nope. Yup for some coffee? I'll tell you what happened if you are, otherwise it can wait until mornin'."

"You think I'm going to sleep after you dropped this 'effin bomb on me? The coffee shop never closes. Let's go."

"You will have to excuse me, but I am fatigued and must retire to my room," said Tuesday.

"Sweet dreams Tuesday," I said.

A very tired Tuesday shuffled back toward her hotel room while John and I made our way toward the elevator. We headed down to the coffee shop, which advertised real coffee made from beans as opposed to the synthetic black liquid served by many restaurants that pretended to be coffee. Aside from the lone barrister and a drudgebot cleaning the floors, we had the place to ourselves. We both ordered Columbian evening roast 'straight black'.

When I first met John, I'd ordered my coffee with flavored creamer and sweetener. John had chided me for polluting the 'nectar of the gods', so I started drinking it black. It tasted strong and bitter, but John told me coffee was like life – better experienced without being artificially lightened up or sweetened. Not his exact words, but that was the message.

"What happened, John?" I asked.

"It didn't start out crazy," John explained. "We started out at Bites of the Lepus because we'd heard they had these awesome rabbit steaks. They was pretty darn good alright, but after dinner I decided I needed a drink so I went to Dirtside. I seen you and Helen in there enjoyin' each other's company. I didn't want to spoil your fun, so I went down the street a bit to another joint that had this stripper with three boobs. I didn't go there to see her you know, just grab a beer. I'm a happily married man."

"Go on," I said. The smell of alcohol on his breath was quite strong and I wondered how accurate his account was going to be.

"Well, I finished my brew and was leavin' when I heard some unpleasant stuff goin' on. I went outside, and I seen these two guys standin' over another guy laid out on the ground. I shouted at 'em and they ran off. I ran over to the guy and he was bleedin' out. I 'faced emergency response, but I didn't think he was gonna make it. He was sayin' somethin' about Martians and Aratek and havin' to stop somethin' or they was gonna kill everybody. It was all crazy talk. Security got there pretty quick, but by the time the med techs finally showed up he was passed revivin' without some serious nano, so they left him dead natural-like."

" _Enough money could buy you immortality. The lack of it meant you just died,"_ I thought.

"Anyway, they bagged him and hauled him away to the recyclers. I had to stick around and answer some questions, but they let me go. They said they had eyes on the spot and they knew I was just tryin' to help. When they was baggin' up the body I heard 'em say he was a Greenslayer terrorist. Miles somethin'."

"Miles Kincaid?" I asked.

"Yeah, that was it. I think it was anyway."

So, Mr. Kincaid got himself executed. Not much imagination required when it came to who was behind it. Insert pro-terraforming supercorp of choice in ________.

Then again, you don't take out your preferred scapegoat unless you have a worthy replacement, which meant Miles reported to a higher authority. Why take him out if he wasn't important? What if there was a grain of truth behind his warning to Helen to not meet with his imaginary Martians? My mind desperately wanted to play another round of connect-the-dots with all of the information I'd recently acquired and sort it out, but I supposed that would have to wait until later because John wasn't finished with narrating his night's adventure.

After the incident outside the bar he'd returned to his hotel room but was too wound-up to sleep. He decided to go down to the hotel's lounge for a nightcap, but upon entering was greeted by a hilarious sight: both Tuesday and Ellie had climbed on top of one of the tables and they were dancing to a small but highly appreciative crowd. In an uncharacteristic, apparently alcohol-inspired move, Tuesday had proceeded to do a mock 'strip tease' and shed her dinner jacket in a slow, tantalizing fashion that drew an enthusiastic applause. Not to be outdone, Ellie went a lot farther. She stripped to her waist and danced with her ample breasts bouncing as she moved.

"I was okay with them havin' their fun up 'till them," John said. "Then things got a little out of hand. Tuesday saw me comin' and got off the table, but Ellie had the stage to herself and was goin' all the way. I tried to stop her, but she threw a shoe at me. She's got a mean throw, so I was lucky that she missed. Then she got her skimpies caught around her ankles and fell off the table. Tuesday and I caught her. We got her blouse around her and got her out of the lounge before they called security on us. She was a handful. She was swearin' and throwin' punches and tryin' to get back up on that table. If Tuesday hadn't helped me, I'd never got her back to the hotel."

"I don't suppose you got a hangover pill down her?"

"Uh, nope."

"Okay. She probably won't remember _what_ she did in the morning, but she'll definitely know she did something rather spectacular."

I finished the last of my coffee as Phobos raced overhead through the night sky outside the transparent dome. It was very late, and I was tired despite the dose of caffeine.

"I'm calling it a night," I said. "Time to crash and burn."

"Me too," said John. "I've had enough excitement for one night."

I went back to my room, got myself undressed, and climbed back into bed with Helen. I put my arms around her and promptly fell fast asleep.

CHAPTER 34

"AAAAAAARRRRRRRRRKKKKKK! BRRRRUUUUUUKKKKK!"

I awoke to the sound of someone vomiting loudly in the room next to us. Again, so much for our hotel's supposedly 'sound-proof' walls. I looked over at Helen, who was also awakened by the awful sound, and wondered who on Mars could possibly be making such a racket.

"Honey bunny are you okay?" That was John's voice. His voice was muffled, but still understandable.

"Leave me the 'eff alone!" was Ellie's raspy reply. "On second thought, just shoot me and put me out of my misery. OhhhhhhrrrrrrrrRRRRRRUUUUUUUKKKKKKK!"

"Good morning," Helen said to me.

"Yeah, some wake-up call," I exclaimed.

"Well, since we're awake . . ." Helen said as she smiled and wrapped her arms around me.

We sexed again, oblivious to the sound effects from next door.

Afterward, as we lay in bed, she noticed the pattern of moles on my right upper arm.

"That sure looks like a constellation", she suggested.

"Yeah, my Mother used to tell me that was Draco the Dragon," I replied.

"Was that a designer thing?"

"No, that was all natural," I replied. "You're only the second person to notice it."

Okay, that was a white lie. Cat had noticed it.

"So, who is Cat?" she asked.

I was startled. How did she know about Cat? Had she actually been reading my mind just then?

"Where did you hear about Cat?" I asked her hesitantly.

"I heard Ellie telling Tuesday how much she missed her," Helen replied.

"Cat was our mechanic before Phineas," I explained with much relief. "She and I were sort of in a relationship, which can be a problem when you're also crewmates. She was a lot more serious about it than I was. I wasn't ready to commit and things between us got ugly. She quit the crew and ran off with Jason Marx, the guy from _Kid the Bounty Hunter_."

"Elvis! You mean that Cat on _Kid the Bounty Hunter_ is her?

"Yeah, she traded in her jumpsuit and wrenches for a metallic bikini and a smart pistol."

"How did she meet him?"

"He was part of our crew for a little while. He helped us rescue Ellie after she was kidnapped by human traffickers."

"Wow. So, Jack Parsec knows Kid Marx? You travel in famous company."

"Like I told you, Jack Parsec is a fictional character I dreamed up. I'm just a writer who got drunk one night and bought a spaceship."

"I don't know, Pete. I think you're more like Jack Parsec than you think," she replied as she reclined invitingly on the bed. "Or maybe more like John Carter of Mars?"

We sexed again and then showered together afterward. I suggested that we go out for breakfast, but she wanted to go back to her room and change into something besides a spacer's jumpsuit.

"You could always go as Dejah Thoris," I suggested.

"Very funny," she replied and laughed. "Why don't you go ahead and get us a table and I'll join you in a few minutes."

"I think I'll check on Ellie first," I said. "It sounds like things have quieted down over there."

I dressed quickly in casual 'dirtside attire' and went next door. I knocked softly.

"Who's there?"

"It's Pete, John. I came to see how Ellie is feeling."

John opened the door slowly. He was still wearing the same _'Ski Olympus Mons'_ tee-shirt that he wore the night before.

"C'mon in," he said gesturing. "It's been kinda rough over here."

I entered their suite. Ellie was reclining on the couch with an improvised ice pack on her forehead. Her blouse was rumpled and stained, and her blonde hair was a disheveled mess.

"I gave her a hangover pill, but she done threw that up," John volunteered.

"Just let her sleep it off," I suggested. "It's not as if she has to be anyplace today. Try and get some fluids in her. She's a doctor. She should know how to treat her own symptoms."

"Look Pete," John said worriedly. "I know she done acted real stupid-like last night but go easy on her. Okay?"

"What are you talking about, John? Do you think I'm mad at her for getting drunk dirstside? You're the one who taught me, ' _What happens dirtside stays dirtside'_ , right? As far as I'm concerned, that whole incident never happened. So, don't worry about it, okay?"

"Roger that, Captain."

"It must have been pretty funny to watch, though."

"Yeah, I s'pose it was."

I left John to tend to Ellie and headed down to the restaurant. Helen wasn't there yet, but I went ahead and got us a booth. There were probably better restaurants in the dome than the hotel's restaurant, but Helen said she had to be at Brewster's office in an hour and this was convenient. I punched in two coffees on the menu. I was pleasantly surprised when a real live waitress delivered two cups and a fresh pot to me a minute later.

"Would you care to order now, or are you still waiting on someone?" she asked me cheerfully.

"I'm waiting on a friend. She should be here shortly."

"Okay, I'll check back with you in a little bit," she said and left.

I sipped my coffee and waited. Five minutes passed, then ten, twenty . . .

I was getting impatient. What could be taking her so 'effin long? Elvis, all she had to do was get dressed!

Forty-five minutes and two cups of coffee later, I 'faced Helen but got no response. I paid for the coffees and went back to her room to check on her.

Her door was ajar.

"Helen, are you there?" I called. No answer.

I cautiously opened the door and walked in. The room was a wreck. Both chairs and the table had been overturned and the bed had been stripped of its covers. Helen's partially unpacked bag was still sitting on the fold-out wall shelf, but there was no sign of her anywhere. This looked bad.

I 'faced hotel security and told them what I'd found. They politely told me to stay put and not touch anything. Hotel security arrived about two minutes later, followed ten minutes later by dome security and finally Aratek corporate security accompanied by a red-faced Brewster.

"You were supposed to keep an eye on her!" he shouted angrily at me.

"I did," I snapped back. "Where the 'eff were your guys, by the way? Weren't they supposed to be watching her around the clock?"

"Whose shift was it?" Brewster asked his security chief.

"It was Megan Bacon's" he said. "She was shadowing her."

"Where is she?" Brewster demanded.

"We don't know."

I thought Brewster was going to go thermonuclear, but just then hotel security pulled up the surveillance footage of the hallway showing Helen returning to her room. He stretched his 'face out to screen size so that we could all watch the recording. Barely a minute after Helen entered the room, a woman followed by two men exited. The men were carrying something bundled in a sheet.

"That's Bacon!" shouted Aratek's security chief. "What in Elvis' name is going on?"

"We found something in her room," one of the dome security detectives told the Aratek security chief. He held up a clear evidence envelope that contained a withered, dead leaf.

"Looks like Greenslayer left their calling card," he said.

I was going to asked how they were sure it was Greenslayer and not Exodyne planting fake evidence but decided against it. There was something surreal about this whole scene that became even more surreal when reporters from the local news streams showed up. The interview given by dome security placed the blame for Helen's apparent kidnapping squarely on Greenslayer.

In the midst of the ongoing media circus, my 'face chimed. There was a text message waiting for me from 'M.K.'.

M.K. Miles Kincaid? But he was dead!

I slipped away and casually walked back to my hotel room. I waited until I was inside and then retrieved the message. It read:

IF YOU WANT TO KNOW THE REAL TRUTH ABOUT HELEN BACH'S KIDNAPPING, COME ALONE TO THE EVENT HORIZON AT 10:00 LMT AND ASK TO USE THE RESTROOM.

I deleted the message and checked the time. It was already 9:34 and I'd have to hurry if I was going to make it to the Event Horizon by 10:00. I ordered a ride and then took the elevator down to ground level. The cab was waiting when I reached the street. I told the driver 'bot my destination and we scooted away. Along the route I noticed pairs of heavily armed dome security guards wearing inertial armor stopping people and checking their identity. We were stopped briefly at the dome's exit, but we were waved through after they'd scanned me.

The 'bot got me to the nightclub, which was in the older commercial dome, with a few minutes to spare. The place looked like it had seen better days and reminded me of some of the less reputable establishments back in Tunnel Town. A sign on the door read 'CLOSED', but the door itself wasn't locked.

I slipped inside. The interior was dimly lit, and it took my eyes a few moments to adjust. A young woman with polychromatic hair and animated tattoos was pushing a broom across the tiled floor.

"We're closed," she said flatly.

"I need to use your restroom," I said.

"Take the hall behind me straight back. Second door on your left," she said without ever looking up at me.

I followed the girl's directions but found myself in a cluttered storage room instead of the restroom. I started to turn around when the door abruptly shut.

I tried to open the door, but it was locked.

"Hello Captain Soñador," said a metallic voice from behind me. I turned around, but there was nobody there.

"Thank you for coming," said a dust-covered drudgebot. Someone must have been using its speaker to communicate with me remotely.

"I'm here. What do you want?" I responded.

"Don't you want the truth?"

"If you mean do I want to know who kidnapped Helen Bach, then yes."

"Aratek staged her kidnapping."

"How do you know?"

"We have our sources."

"Why would Aratek stage Helen's kidnapping?"

"To convince Exodyne that we'd kidnapped her so that they wouldn't try to abduct her."

"Why does everyone want Helen Bach so badly?" I asked.

"She has a very special talent."

"Oh, you mean she's a telepath," I volunteered. The 'special talent' line was a dead giveaway that they knew about Helen's supposed mind reading ability.

There was a pause. "How do you know?"

"Oh, she's read my mind a few times. She also alerted us when Exodyne's goons were about to open fire on our van, so we could all take cover. It's an amazing gift."

Except that she really had warned us before they'd attacked, hadn't she?

"You are correct, Captain Soñador. So, it shouldn't be a surprise to you why she is so highly valued."

"Yeah, I kind of figured as much. She'd be the ultimate corporate spy. No secrets could be kept from her. Oh, and she'd be able to talk to the Martians and learn their forbidden secrets. Except that there _aren't_ any native, intelligent Martians, unless you believe the conspiracy theory crap dished out in the _Galactic Enquirer_."

Another very long pause followed.

"About eight years ago," another voice began, "Two graduate students from Bradbury University were doing research on adapting terrestrial fungi to Mar's environment. One day they took a pressurized rover – _without_ permission – on a scouting trip ostensibly to find a location for their test plots. They were 20 kilometers out when their rover's electrical system abruptly shut down. No motor, no heat, no lights, no radio, nothing worked. Their 'faces didn't work either, but that was probably due to the electromagnetic interference from the big dust storm that that blowing up to the south. They hadn't bothered to check the weather forecast, so they didn't know about the storm and thought they could make it back to Bradbury in their pressure suits. They started walking back, but the dust storm caught them."

"That's too bad," I said. "But what does that have to do Helen Bach?"

"I'm getting to that," the voice said with noticeable irritation at my impatience. "They were hopeless lost and running low on oxygen, when they stumbled onto a strange opening in an outcrop. They entered it to get away from the storm, and discovered odd steps leading down. Steps apparently not made for – or even by – humans. Their pressure suits had no headlamps, but the walls and ceiling of the tunnel glowed softly, and they were able to see where they were going. They had descended almost thirty meters when the steps ended at a narrow tunnel."

"They followed the tunnel for a few meters until it made a sharp turn and dead-ended. When they turned around, the tunnel behind them was gone and they found themselves entombed in a small chamber. The chamber was actually an airlock, and when the air pressure inside sufficiently increased the rock wall at the dead end vanished revealing a vast underground world-within-a-world populated with strange looking plants, animals, and even intelligent life. The native Martians communicated with one of the students with a form of telepathy. They were apparently curious about the beings that were attempting to colonize the surface of their world and wanted to closely exam them."

"This is really sounding like a science fiction story I read when I was a kid," I said.

"The dean of their college thought the same thing. Nobody believed their story and they got academic probation for their little stunt."

"I'm still waiting on what all this has to do with Helen Bach."

"One of the students brought back a small sample of an unfamiliar lichen that he'd scraped off the cave wall. He ended up doing his doctoral dissertation on the lichen, which gave off oxygen and water vapor as waste products. His discovery landed him a cushy job with Exodyne, while his former classmate attempted to earn a living selling lurid accounts of the secret underground Martian civilization to the tabloids."

"So, you're telling me that native Martians are responsible for the terraforming lichen?"

"Yes. Exodyne mass-cloned it and planted the surface with it. Their initial results were impressive with measured increases of atmospheric oxygen and water vapor occurring in the first year. Then three years into the project, the concentrations leveled off. The scientist who discovered the lichen investigated and made an unsettling discovery. He determined that the lichen was no longer producing oxygen and water vapor. Having depleted the necessary chemicals in the surface, it had altered its metabolism and was producing carbon monoxide as a waste product. In order to continue producing oxygen and water vapor, the depleted surface material had to be scraped-off and the fresh surface underneath replanted. When he told this to Exodyne's management, they promptly took him off the terraforming project, put him in a 'food supplement' research group, and warned him to keep his mouth shut if he knew what was good for him. They didn't care whether the lichen was producing oxygen or carbon monoxide as long as the appropriations committee kept the funds coming their way."

"The scientist realized that his life just might be in danger, so he negotiated a deal with rival Aratek. In exchange for protection, he'd reveal all his secrets to them. Aratek provided him with a new face and a new identity, and he gave them the ammunition they needed to wrest the terraforming contract away from Exodyne."

"Everything might have ended well if Aratek had scraped-off the depleted surface soil and replanted, but they didn't. They stepped-up planting new areas in hopes of countering the carbon monoxide concentrations, but the areas of old lichen were getting larger. The scientist crunched some numbers and determined that the resulting atmospheric oxygen concentration wouldn't support animal life."

"He informed his boss, Kyle Brewster. Brewster supposedly ran the information up the chain of command and then told him that they needed him to facilitate a meeting with the native Martians. The Martians would surely know how to 'repair' the lichen that had been damaged by Exodyne's clumsy mass-cloning and solve the carbon monoxide problem."

"So, what happened?" I demanded impatiently.

"He knew that would be a very bad idea. The Martians are far advanced of us – think post-technological. They can apparently manipulate matter and energy at will. We're a curiosity to them. You don't give nukes to Neanderthals, and that's what he was afraid would result from such a meeting. He tried to talk Brewster out of the meeting, but when that failed he went underground and managed to link up with us."

There was a pause. "He tried to warn you last night, but Exodyne's goons got to him."

"Wait a second," I said. "Are you telling me that the scientist who discovered the terraforming lichen was Miles Kincaid?"

"Yes. The reason he discovered it was because he had latent esper abilities. That's why the Martians reached out to him and invited him into their home. He could understand them about as well as a child who is just learning speech understands his parents."

"But a true telepath would be able to actually _talk_ with them," I said as the realization dawned on me.

"So _now_ you understand Helen Bach's role," said the voice from the 'bot's speaker.

Yeah, I understood alright. They expected that their clever mind-reader from Ceres would be able to converse with their imaginary Martians. Only Helen wasn't a true telepath - or was she? The incident in the van where she'd told us to get down kept coming back to me. From her seat, she couldn't possibly have seen what Short and I saw, but yet she'd still warned us.

"What do you want me to do"? I asked.

"Stop Helen Bach from meeting with the Martians."

"I think I can manage that," I said. I figured that stopping a meeting with the non-existent native Martians shouldn't be too hard.

With our conversation concluded, I was allowed to leave. I mulled over the whole, bizarre situation on my ride back to the hotel. Had Aratek really believed Miles Kincaid, or was the meeting-with-the-Martians story just an elaborate cover-up for some other operation? Greenslayer had apparently bought Kincaid's story, but that wasn't surprising considering the fanatical make-up of their membership.

Another thought: What if the terraforming lichen was really a product of Exodyne's bioresearch labs and Kincaid had stuck with his Martian origin story just to avoid being charged with theft of corporate property? Like a bad detective story, there were too many loose ends.

There was a line of cabs and bicycles waiting to pass a security checkpoint as my ride approached the tunnel leading to the new dome. The wait gave me time to further contemplate my recent encounter.

I rounded up my crew as soon as I returned to our hotel and told them about my encounter with Greenslayer. I watched jaws drop and eyes roll as my narrative unfolded.

"That's just 'effin crazy," was John's comment. "They ain't no such things as native Martians."

"Aratek would never fall for such tabloid fodder," said Lo shaking his head. "However, Helen could be in grave danger if Greenslayer is convinced of the existence of the native Martians. They may attempt to kill her to prevent the meeting from occurring."

"I didn't think they resorted to violence to achieve their objectives." I said.

"They recently blew-up an Aratek greenhouse. I consider that an act of violence."

"How do you know it wasn't Exodyne?"

"I searched the news stream archives. Greenslayer claimed responsibility and threatened more such actions if terraforming efforts aren't suspended," Lo explained. "They are becoming increasingly desperate. If they perceive that you aren't attempting to prevent Helen from meeting with the Martians, then they will undoubtedly attempt to stop her."

"But how do I stop a meeting that will never take place?"

"I suggest that you speak with Brewster as soon as possible. If Aratek staged Helen's kidnapping to prevent her from falling into Exodyne's hands and Greenslayer knew about their ruse, then they obviously have a highly-placed mole. They could already know where Helen is being hidden."

"Father, if Greenslayer had such an informant as you suggest, then would Greenslayer not know that there is no real plan to meet with native Martians?" Tuesday asked.

"She's got a good point," I said.

"Regardless of what information they may have obtained, if Greenslayer believes that Aratek intends to meet with the Martians then they will act upon that belief. That is what matters."

"I'll 'face Brewster," I said.

CHAPTER 35

"What do you mean, you don't have her?"

"The van carrying her never made it to our safe house," Brewster answered. "It was intercepted in route. We were blaming Greenslayer but based on what you just told me it was probably Exodyne's doing."

I felt a cold chill crawling up my spine as the relief I'd experienced earlier upon learning that Helen's kidnapping had been staged evaporated with Brewster's revelation.

"Why is Helen Bach's 'special talent' so important that everyone wants her?" I demanded. I already knew the answer, but I wanted to hear Brewster's response.

"Come down to my office and I'll explain," was Brewster's guarded reply to me. "I'd rather not discuss this over the ether."

I took a cab to Aratek' offices, leaving my mystified crew wondering what the 'eff was up. When I got there, I was ushered into a windowless meeting room that was apparently EM shielded. There was a table and four chairs. I sat and waited. Brewster arrived a minute later, accompanied by the head of Aratek security and a woman I'd never seen before.

"Captain Soñador, I believe you've met our Security Chief although you weren't formally introduced.

"Will Tesch," said the tall, dark-skinned muscular man as he extended his elbow to touch mine. I reciprocated.

"This is Doctor Joan Fawn, the head of our Geophysical Research Department," Brewster said as he introduced the stranger. She has something she'd like to show you."

"You've probably seen this image before," said Dr. Fawn as she gestured to a wall-mounted screen. She pulled up a back issue of the _Galactic Enquirer_.

GIANT CAVERN DISCOVERED IN ELYSIUM

Secret Martian Civilization Living Underground

The image below the headline displayed side-by-side images depicting a portion of the Martian surface. One was normal, the other was a false color image that supposed showed a gravimetric scan of the same region. A portion was outlined and labeled, 'The Ancient Martian's Secret Underground City'.

"Yeah, I remember that," I said. "That's been thoroughly debunked."

"What if I told you that was an actual gravimetric scan taken by a survey drone?" she said.

"Weren't there later flyovers that didn't show it?" I asked.

"Correct. Then this showed up in a recent satellite photo," Dr. Fawn said as she pulled up another image. The 'cave' or whatever was again present.

"How does a giant cave just appear and then disappear?" I asked.

"It doesn't, unless you believe the conspiracy theorists who claim that the old Martians can cloak their underground cities from our sensors."

"Wouldn't it be easy enough to drill down to the cave and find out if it's really there or not?"

"We tried that," said Dr. Fawn. "The drilling rig suffered every conceivable mechanical failure. In two months, we'd drilled less than eleven meters. We tried conventional surface geophysics, but the reflections were garbled."

"If there really is an advanced race of native Martians living underground, then it sure seems like they don't want to be found," I said.

"Not by us, but maybe they'd be more sociable with someone they could communicate with," suggested Brewster. "Someone with telepathic abilities like Ms. Bach."

"How do you know she's a telepath?" I asked.

"We tested her. Our tester would stare at a playing card and she had to tell him what he was looking at. She aced the test. We also monitored her and the tester's brainwaves. The readouts confirmed that she was reading his thoughts."

So, she really was a telepath! Why had she lied to me?

"Elvis!" I swore. "You actually believed Miles Kincaid's crazy story and recruited Helen Bach to meet with the native Martians, didn't you?

"Absolutely 'no' to both," Brewster answered emphatically. "Initially, we didn't take Dr. Kincaid seriously when it came to the subject of the old Martians, and we recruited Helen Bach to root out spies. Finding her wasn't easy. I've been told that only one in a billion people has her unique abilities. We got lucky."

"What changed?'

"When Dr. Kincaid came to me with his calculations that he insisted showed the Martian atmosphere would never support animal life, I told him to arrange a meeting with the old Martians so that they could tell us how to fix it. I was being sarcastic, but he took me seriously. He became hysterical and stormed out of my office. The following day he didn't show up for work. That's when I realized he really believed he'd met with the old Martians and it wasn't just some wild story he and his friend had invented back when they were graduate students."

" _You_ don't really believe in the existence of the old Martians, right?"

"Given recent events, I prefer to keep an open mind on the subject. I'm not saying that I believe in their existence, but I'm willing to consider the possibility."

"Especially if it means a fix for the terraforming lichen, correct?"

"At this point I'm willing to try anything, Captain Soñador. If I could hire a witch doctor to fix the lichen problem I would. Dr. Kincaid's suggestion that we scrape off the depleted surface and replant simply isn't feasible. Even if we used an army of self-replicating scraperbots, it wouldn't be enough to do the job."

"So, you intended to attempt a meeting?"

"Only as an afterthought. We had nothing to lose and everything to gain. All it would cost us is a half hour rover ride. But that's totally out of the airlock now that Exodyne has Helen Bach. They'll probably wipe her memory and use her to weed out our informants. Or maybe they'll use her to try to locate the old Martians, except that they'll have the same problem we'd have."

"What's that?" I asked.

"When Dr. Kincaid died, he took the location of the entrance to the Martian's cave with him. I always believed it didn't exist, so I didn't press him about it."

"Wouldn't his former fellow grad student know the location? He was there, too."

"Good luck with that," interjected Tesch. "Lusher's a total nut job."

"When Charles Lusher isn't intoxicated, he spends his time writing for any tabloid that will take his stuff," Brewster explained. "At any rate he's of no use to us. Our first priority is recovering Helen Bach, not locating old Martians."

"Aratek has controlling interest in one of the news streams, doesn't it?" I asked.

"Sure," said Brewster hesitantly. "Why does that matter?"

"Could you get me press credentials?"

"I suppose so, but why?"

"Oh, I thought I might just interview Mr. Lusher," I said.

Tesch snorted and rolled his eyes.

CHAPTER 36

"I don't s'pose this was an idea you used in _Out to the Void_ , was it?" John asked me as he watched me prepare for my 'interview' with Charles Lusher.

"No, I've never had Jack Parsec pose as a journalist. I might have to use that idea in a future episode," I said as I pressed on the fake mustache. I was enough of a minor celebrity these days that I didn't want to risk Lusher recognizing me if he'd followed the news stream.

"I still don't get how talkin' to some nut job is gonna help us get Helen back."

"I'm hoping Kincaid stayed in contact with Lusher when he was at Exodyne and told him something that will either give us a clue to where they could be keeping Helen or information we could trade for her," I said as I popped in the blue contact lenses. "Lusher may be willing to reveal the location of the cave's entrance if it gets him the recognition he's been craving. I admit it's a long shot, but do you have any better ideas?"

"Yeah, we catch a ride on the next available shuttle and get out o' here before Greenslayer or Exodyne or somebody else decides to come after us." John didn't like the idea of us being unarmed with bad guys hanging around.

"It is possible that Exodyne is also interested in locating the ancient Martians and will try to use Helen to contact them," Lo suggested. "If we can convince Lusher to provide the location of the cavern's entrance, then it may be possible to intercept Exodyne when they attempt contact. However, that would require fortuitous timing on our part."

"Assumin' he even knows where it is," John grumbled.

In addition to the authentic Accustream News Service credentials, Brewster supplied us with a pair of official gold-and-purple checkered Accustream jumpsuits. One of the jumpsuits fit me just fine with some added padding around my waist, but only Tuesday could wear the smaller one. Having our resident martial arts expert along in case things went badly during Lusher's interview was okay by me. The plan was for me to question Lusher while Tuesday streamed our discussion on her 'face. John would station himself inconspicuously outside Lusher's flat and keep an eye out just in case we had unwanted visitors. It had occurred to me that Greenslayer had likely been watching us and might try to crash the party.

I slicked back my hair and turned from the mirror. "What do you think?" I asked.

"You look like a clown," John snickered.

"You look different," said Ellie. "You don't look like you."

"That's the idea," I said.

Tuesday and I left Ellie and Lo at the hotel and rode to the interview together. John followed in a separate ride. It had now been over 24 hours since Helen's abduction, and the heightened security in the dome was noticeable. We passed more guards wearing inertial armor on our way to the older residential dome. The new, larger dome was connected to its smaller counterparts by vehicle-sized airlock tunnels which were normally left open but could be rapidly sealed in the event of a breach. The old residential dome was lower and didn't have an 'outdoor feel' to it. The buildings all had a similar barracks-like appearance, although recently-planted trees along the road and a mural painted on the end of the first building we encountered on Tom Corbett Drive suggested an attempt to make the old dome more attractive.

Lusher's flat was located in building 'M' on Rocky Jones Avenue, which had not benefited from recent beautification efforts. The neighborhood had a run-down feel to it. Trash along the curb suggested that the drudgebots were not collecting garbage for reprocessing regularly and animated graffiti crawled along some of the dingy walls. I didn't see any sign of dome security.

Repeated attempts to 'face Lusher had gone unanswered, so I hoped the direct approach would prove more successful. It was still fairly early, and I doubted that given Lusher's lifestyle he would be out and about yet.

The comm by the door didn't work, so I tried knocking. I thought heard someone moving around inside in response.

"Who the 'eff is there?" The unfriendly sounding voice on the other side of the door demanded.

"Mr. Charles Lusher? I'm Herb Tarmac from Accustream News Service," I replied. "I'd like to interview you about your encounter with the old Martians."

There was a commotion on the other side of the door, which suddenly swung open only to be stopped by a chain. A bearded, wild-eyed face peered out at us through the crack. I held up my Accustream press badge. The door abruptly slammed shut only to be flung wide open a moment later. The visage that greeted me was that of a balding, pale-skinned, barefoot man wearing a faded and stained tee-shirt and shorts.

"It's about time you took me seriously!" he shouted and grabbed my arm. The stench of alcohol mixed with poor dental hygiene on his breath was almost overpowering. "I've been trying to talk to you for years and you keep giving me the brush-off."

"We're here now Mr. Lusher, and we want to hear all about what happened when you and your friend Miles Kincaid found the old Martians."

" _Kincaid?_ He's no friend of mine!" shouted Lusher angrily. "The sorry S.O.B. left me without a drop in the tank while he went off and got himself a Ph.D. and a cushy job."

"I understand," I said wishing he'd let go of my arm. "Look, could we just go inside and talk?"

Lusher looked around warily. "You're right, they could be spying on us right now," he said in hushed tones and jerked me inside. Tuesday followed us in.

"This is Friday Farkle," I told Lusher. "She'll be streaming our interview."

"Good idea," said Lusher as he attempted to relieve a chair of a mixture of empty food containers and dirty laundry. "You'll have to excuse the place. I don't have many visitors."

"No problem," I said. The combined odors of rotting food mixed with sour clothing wouldn't make anyone want to stay for any longer than absolutely necessary. I saw that the walls of his cluttered, single-bedroom flat were covered with print-outs of maps, photos and news stream articles. A single portrait-sized 'face, immobilized so that it couldn't move, adorned one wall.

The interview didn't go exactly as I'd intended. Lusher immediately launched into an obviously well-rehearsed monolog about his encounter with the old Martians as soon as I was seated, volunteering information without me ever having to question him. I noted that in his account, Miles Kincaid was just a sidekick and that Lusher was the real star of the show. I tried to act like I was listening intently, but my eyes were drawn to a particular photomap of Elysium that had an 'X' marked on it. Other scratched-off 'Xs' suggested that the location had been altered over time.

"Hey, what are you looking at?" Lusher asked. He'd apparently noted my wondering eyes.

"I'm sorry Mr. Lusher, but I couldn't help but notice the map on your wall with all the crossed-out Xs," I said. Tuesday took my cue and discreetly captured it on her 'face.

"That's nothing," he said dismissively. "Now, where was I? Oh yeah . . ."

Lusher's obviously highly embellished account of his meeting with the old Martians included a sequence in which, prior to he and Kincaid being teleported back to their rover, a nude and very attractive human female had materialized and spoken to him, warning him that humans weren't ready to possess the Martian's knowledge.

Lusher was starting to relate how the human female had been sent to mate with him so that his superior DNA could be harvested when John 'faced me with a text that simply read:

WE GOT US BAD COMPANY. GET OUT NOW!

"I'm sorry Mr. Lusher, but we've been asked to cover another attack by Greenslayer and we'll have to finish our interview later if that's okay," I informed him.

"Greenslayer? They tried to get me to show them where the cave entrance was, but I fooled them. I marked out the real location on my map and drew a new 'X' to throw them off. They've been looking twenty kilometers in the wrong direction."

I would have loved to have questioned Lusher about which 'X' on his map was the correct one, but the loud knock on his door interrupted me.

"DOME SECURITY! OPEN THE DOOR OR WE'LL BREAK IT DOWN!"

"They're _not_ security, they're after the map!" I shouted to Lusher.

With surprising speed, Lusher dashed to the map, picking up a small vase from a table in route and splashing the contents at it. The 'Xs' on the map all converged into a spreading dark blob that covered a quarter of the Elysium Plain.

The door burst open, and the dark suits barged in. I didn't see Lusher retrieve the short-barrel shot gun, but he immediately opened fire on the intruders. The first dark suit went down, but the one behind him got Lusher squarely in the heart with a short burst from his autopistol.

"Rufus, you 'effin idiot! You weren't supposed to kill him!" shouted the next dark suit through the door. He shoved the dark suit who'd killed Lusher, causing him to stumble.

"He fired on us, boss. I didn't have a choice," Rufus protested.

"Yes, you always have a choice," the other dark suit said as he pointed his pistol at the Rufus' head, then he abruptly pulled it away.

"See, I had a choice," he said.

"I'm sorry sir, I . . ."

There was a sudden 'pop' and then the Rufus lay sprawled on the floor among the discarded food containers, dirty clothes, and some other things I couldn't identify.

"Now we're totally 'effed!" the boss growled. "We lost the prize and we have two journalists as witnesses! Van der Stront is going to have our balls for 'effin this up!"

"I think I may have a way I can help you gentlemen salvage this situation," I said.

"How the 'eff could you help?" he said as he pointed his autopistol at me. "You're part of the 'effin problem!"

"I could be part of the solution if you need the location of the entrance to the old Martian's secret cave," I said. "I'm guessing that's what you were after when you busted in here."

"Maybe. Keep talking."

"Lusher revealed the location to me in our interview. I'll provide it to you if you give me exclusive coverage when you find it. Deal?"

"Not up to me, smart guy. That's Van der Stront's call. You may have saved all of our asses, so we'll call it a truce for now," he said holstering his gun.

"Who's Van der Stront?" I asked.

"You'll find out," he said. He confiscated our 'faces and tossed them in the toilet, then turned to his fellow dark suits.

"Bring them," he ordered.

CHAPTER 37

The suite was luxuriously furnished, if somewhat lacking in the way of a view. Regardless, Helen wasn't in any position to admire the scenery (had there been any), bound as she was to the chair in the middle of the room. Having to go along with her fake abduction had been bad enough but being kidnapped for real was a terrifying experience. The thugs who'd stopped the van she was riding in had killed her escorts and then forced her into their vehicle. A dark hood had been placed over her head so that she couldn't see where she was going, but the thoughts of her abductors revealed that they were taking her to Exodyne.

She sat there, still wearing the spacer's jumpsuit that she'd slipped back on to return to her hotel room, with her ankles tightly lashed to the chair legs and her wrists securely bound behind the back of the chair. Her hood had been removed so that they could tape her mouth shut. Apparently, the walls here weren't completely soundproofed. The tiles felt warm under her bare feet, suggesting the floor was heated.

She desperately needed to pee! How long were they going to keep her like this without at least checking on her? She knew that there was a guard just outside the door because she couldn't help but read his thoughts. He was bored and daydreaming. The lurid sexual fantasy he was contemplating was particularly vivid and disturbing, and involved her wearing a black leather corset with matching thigh-high boots spanking him on his bare bottom.

His fantasy dissolved with the muffled sound of approaching footsteps. Helen was about to have a visitor. The door opened, and a man entered the room. He appeared to be middle aged and was unusually stocky with blond hair, blue eyes and a pasty complexion. He was expensively dressed in a dark gray suit with a belted topcoat.

"I must apologize for the inconvenience," he began. His voice was deep and rumbling and his accent odd. "My name is Hans Van der Stront and I am President of Exodyne. I trust that you're not too uncomfortable in those restraints, but we couldn't take any chances with you attempting to summon help or escape."

Helen could only glare at the man over her gag. His thoughts were cloaked in malevolence, but it was obvious he regarded her as a newly acquired possession rather than a human being. He spoke at her, not to her. Her own opinion didn't matter in this; he had already decided her fate.

"All you have to do for us is the same thing that you were going to do for Aratek," Van der Stront continued. "That's not so terribly difficult, is it?"

She already knew that there was more to it than that. Van der Stront's thoughts had betrayed him and she knew that she would do as he wished because she wouldn't have the will to resist after Exodyne had erased her memory.

CHAPTER 38

The goons hustled Tuesday and I out of Lusher's flat and into to their waiting van. I glanced around looking for John but didn't see any sign of him. Without a ready ride he wouldn't be able to follow us, but hopefully he could at least ping the van's location so that dome security could track it. The windowless van appeared to be a standard work crew transport with bench seats that faced each other, although I suspected it was probably tricked-out with a polychromatic paint scheme and a rigged transponder to prevent it from being easily followed.

I guessed we rode for a half hour. Maybe less. 'Vinnie', the goons' boss, sat across from us stone-faced with his autopistol conspicuously visible. Abruptly the van halted and a few seconds later the doors slid open. Vinnie motioned us out into what was obviously a sub-basement garage. We took a private elevator up. The building had lots of floors which indicated that we were in a high-rise in the new dome.

Top floor. Posh penthouse executive suite. Expensive furnishings. The attractive, blond-haired receptionist was a very human-looking robot from the waist up. Her lower half consisted of a swivel-mount that was attached to the floor.

"Mr. Van der Stront will see you shortly," she informed us in her perfectly pitched voice. "You may wait for him in the conference room."

A wall panel to our right slid silently open to reveal a stark white room with a long, sleek black table and a panoramic display screen that lined the walls. The screen was currently blank. Vinnie and one other goon accompanied us into the room. We all sat down and waited.

Minutes passed. A wall panel on the opposite side of the room from the one we'd entered through opened and Van der Stront entered. The expression on his face was one of disapproval.

"Where is Lusher and who are these people?" he demanded angrily. He had an odd accent that must have been Earther.

"Lusher's dead, Mr. Van der Stront," Vinnie said nervously. "He opened fire on us and Rufus shot him. Lusher told these journalists where the entrance to the old Martian's cave is before he cashed out, so we brought them along."

"Mr. Van der Stront, I'm Herb Tarmac from Accustream News Service," I said introducing myself. "I'll be more than happy to show you the location of the old Martian's secret cave in exchange for exclusive coverage."

Van der Stront declined my offered elbow touch and simply stared at me frowning. Then with a swift movement of his hand he ripped my fake mustache off. Vinnie's jaw dropped.

"Peter Soñador," he said with a smirk.

"Who?" asked Vinnie, obviously clueless.

"The freetrader who rescued Jan Aradal from Pluto's Children and saved Helen Bach from Greenslayer's attack," Van der Stront replied. "He's quite the celebrity. If you idiots paid attention to the news streams occasionally you might have seen through his disguise."

"You're saying Greenslayer was behind the van attack and not Exodyne?" I asked.

Van der Stront gave me a puzzled look. "Why would we want to kill Helen Bach?"

"To prevent Aratek from succeeding. She's critical to their terraforming programming."

"As she is to Exodyne. When we learned why Aratek wanted her so badly it became imperative that her efforts be redirected towards assisting us."

I going to ask Van der Stront how long they'd known about Helen's secret, but didn't get the chance. Probably just as well under the circumstances.

"I have a problem that I hope you can help me solve, Captain Soñador," he said. "I need the location of the entrance to the old Martian's underground city so that Helen Bach can meet with them on our behalf. You claim to possess that information. It would be in our mutual best interests for you to provide the location to me."

"I'll guide you to the cave's entrance if you let Helen, Tuesday, and me go unharmed after Helen has talked to the old Martians."

"Normally I would say no to such a preposterous suggestion, but just before our meeting I was informed of an unfortunate circumstance which would effectively negate Ms. Bach's future usefulness to Exodyne beyond meeting with the old Martians, so I will agree to your terms."

That was way too easy.

I didn't believe that Van der Stront intended to keep his word. The scenario that went through my mind was that Tuesday and I would most likely 'have an accident' out in the Martian dessert, but I doubted we'd get out alive if we tried to escape now. We needed to buy time. Hopefully, John or Brewster or someone else at Aratek had seen Tuesday's streamed image of Lusher's map and heard his comment about the 'X' being twenty kilometers away from the actual entrance and Aratek would dispatch a rescue team. From what I recalled, there was only one crossed-out 'X' that was twenty kilometers away from the decoy 'X'.

If I was wrong or Lusher's map was inaccurate and I couldn't find the cave entrance, then our 'accident' would probably just occur sooner rather than later.

CHAPTER 39

It was mid-afternoon when we boarded the pressurized rover for our trip into the Martian dessert. I noticed that the rover's color scheme was identical to the one that had attacked us on our ride from the spaceport to the dome. So much for Van der Stront's feigned innocence. Exodyne had apparently not known about Helen's telepathic abilities at the time.

The airlock cycled, the pressure doors slid open and we rolled out of the big airlock onto the service road. We turned onto the highway and drove for several kilometers, then turned off onto a dirt 'road' that led into the dessert. Van der Stront had provided me with a map display that indicated our rover's current position. I sat in the front passenger seat next to the autopistol wielding driver. Helen and Tuesday sat in the seats behind me and Vinnie and another heavily-armed goon sat in the seats behind the driver.

" _If you can hear what I'm thinking then cough twice," I thought._

Helen coughed twice. She could read my thoughts.

" _I have a plan for getting us out of this mess," I thought._

"Turn twenty degrees left," I told the driver. I'd almost said 'yaw' instead of turn. Apparently, I'd been a spacer long enough that I thought in three-dimensional terms rather than two-dimensional. A candle 'pitched' up or down and 'yawed' left or right. The 'roll' axis wasn't something you wanted to utilize in a rover. 'Roll' on a spacecraft didn't mean 'roll forward'.

The driver repeated what I'd said to the rover's autopilot. Our rover altered course, the autopilot picking its way through the bolder strewn landscape while maintaining the desired heading.

"Big dust storm blowing in from the south," the driver observed. "That wasn't on the weather report."

"Looks like it's moving fast," I said.

"Maybe we should turn around," the driver suggested to Vinnie. "We don't to be caught out here in that monster."

"No way we're turning back," scolded Vinnie. "Van der Stront will have us taking a walk outside without pressure suits if we show up empty-handed. Anyway, this thing can find its way back even if we can't see anything."

We drove on. I figured that we must be getting close to the cave's entrance, but the dust storm was closing in on us too. The sky was turning dark and the wind velocity was increasing.

All of a sudden, our rover stopped, and the interior lights went off.

"We've lost all power," the driver as he frantically tried to restart the rover. "Everything is dead."

Vinnie pulled out his 'face and then frowned. "What the 'eff? My 'face is dead."

"So is mine," said the driver.

"Look up ahead," I said as pointed toward a small outcrop roughly 50 meters in front of us. "That's got to be it."

"That wasn't there a few seconds ago," said the driver. "I don't like this. This is too 'effin creepy."

"Okay, listen up boys and girls," Vinnie announced. "The captain and Ms. Bach are going to go on a little stroll with me. Kevin, you'll keep an eye on the other girl. Frank, you better have this damn thing running again by the time we get back. Got it?"

"Yes boss," Frank and Kevin replied almost in unison.

"Alright, get your helmets on and let's go," Vinnie told Helen and me. "Don't try any funny stuff."

We'd all donned our pressure suits before we'd left Bradbury so all we'd have to do was put on our helmets and pressurize our suits. Our rover was equipped with an airlock, but it was only big enough to accommodate two pressure-suited people at a time. Vinnie sent me out first.

"You try to run off and you'll stay out here," he warned me. "Your suit doesn't have enough air to get back to the dome and your little friend here could get hurt, so don't do anything stupid."

"I wouldn't dream of it," I replied. Strangely enough, our suit radios still worked.

Vinnie escorted me to the airlock, his gun at ready. I cycled through and descended the rover's steps to the Martian dessert and waited. By now the sky had grown even darker and the wind had really picked up, blowing dust and fine sand grains in the gusts that made an audible impact on my helmet's clear face shield.

This had to be a monster dust storm. Despite increases in barometric pressure due to terraforming efforts, Mars' atmosphere was still way too thin to produce anything like this under normal circumstances. Something was going on that I didn't understand.

Vinnie and Helen followed a minute or so later and we all started walking toward the outcrop.

"I don't see any 'effin cave entrance," Vinnie complained.

"Hard to see anything in this," I replied. The dust was blowing harder as the leading edge of the storm arrived, causing visibility to rapidly drop. I could barely make out the rover.

It was now or never.

" _Helen, pretend that your oxygen is getting too low,"_ I thought. _"Stagger like you're drunk and then collapse."_

Helen played her part to the hilt, much to Vinnie's displeasure. I also faked oxygen deprivation, although I conveniently collapsed in a position where I could pounce on Vinnie. Tuesday had been instructing me in some basic hand-to-hand combat moves, and I intended to put them to the test.

"Kevin you stupid moron, can't you do anything right?" Vinnie swore on the radio as he bent over Helen's fallen form. "They weren't supposed to run out of air this 'effin soon!"

" _Grab his gun. I'll be right there,"_ I thought.

Helen suddenly reached up and for grabbed Vinnie's autopistol. Vinnie held on to it but was caught in a quandary being unable to use it on her for fear of incurring Van der Stront's wrath. That moment of indecision was all I needed as I dove at him, slamming the rock I'd grabbed into his transparent face shield with all the force I could muster. Pressure suit helmets are designed to withstand a hard fall from three meters without puncturing. I didn't hit him hard enough to crack it, but the impact sufficiently disoriented him that I was able to grab his gun and get off several rounds, puncturing his suit and hitting at least one vital organ in the process.

" _C'mon, we've got to make it to the outcrop!"_ I thought, still relying on Helen's telepathy to hear me.

I glanced back at the rover and was just barely able to make out the dim form of someone descending the steps. I turned around and staggered ahead, pulling Helen along with me. The wind was so strong now that it was hard to walk, and I couldn't see a meter in front of me in the dust storm's blinding gloom. This couldn't be happening - the Martian atmosphere was too thin for this! I staggered blindly forward, hoping that I was still heading in the right direction.

Then I bumped into the outcrop. At least I guessed it was probably the outcrop. I couldn't see it but felt my way along its surface. I hoped against hope that I would at least find a recess that we could shelter in until the storm passed, but I found something else: an opening in the rock face. I pulled Helen with me into it.

It was a tunnel. An oddly shaped tunnel with elongated stair steps that descended downward at about a fifteen-degree angle. The tunnel walls glowed softly. There weren't any obvious light sources – it was as if the rock walls were somehow backlit.

" _I think we've just found Kincaid's cave,"_ I thought.

" _I think you're right,"_ was the foreign thought that crept into my mind.

' _Hey, I can hear your thoughts!"_

" _It must be this place. Somehow it amplifies telepathy."_ was Helen's wordless reply.

We continued to descend. The steps ended, and we followed a level section that made a sharp turn into a dead end.

"That was either all for nothing, or we're about to meet the old Martians," I said out loud, breathing hard. Helen didn't answer and collapsed gasping onto the stone floor.

I tried to pick Helen up and carry her, but I was too weak. My head was swimming – I was drowning in my own CO2! I staggered and fell to my knees. Exodyne had obviously provided us with rigged pressure suits with only limited oxygen and must have miscalculated the supply they thought we needed.

Yeah, that had to be it. They wouldn't want us dead too soon. Helen hasn't met with the old Martians yet . . .

Then everything went black.

CHAPTER 40

I was sure that I was hallucinating due to lack of oxygen. I was flat on my back on a carpet of soft grass, staring up at a deep blue sky filled with billowing white cumulus clouds. A flock of long-winged birds was flying overhead, their odd cries sounding more like a small dog's bark than a bird's call.

I sat up and gazed out over a vast forested valley populated by tall, spindly trees that resembled giant firs. Strange animal cries (at least they _sounded_ like animals) echoed in the distance.

I suddenly realized that I wasn't wearing a pressure suit. In fact, I was stark naked and so was the still sleeping Helen. We were like the mythical Adam and Eve in the lost Garden of Eden, only this Eden wasn't on Earth. Where were we? Had we somehow been transported back in time to ancient Mars? The exotic-looking flowers growing next to me resembled nothing that I'd ever seen before. I examined it closely, noting how it seemed to change colors in response to my touching it.

I was startled by the parting of the cliff wall to my left. It was soundless, like a curtain being drawn aside rather than rock moving. Was this an illusion?

A soft, warm light of indescribable color beyond the recognition of human vision emitted from a wide tunnel that had materialized in the cliff wall. From the tunnel strode a tall, willowy biped with four long arms, surrounded by a group of pigmy-like bipeds with upside-down heads. They chattered excitedly to each other in an unfamiliar language – if it actually was a language. The tall biped gazed down at Helen, whose eyes sprang open. She got up slowly and walked trance-like toward the tall biped. She turned around and stood in front of him facing me. She spoke, but the voice that passed her lips wasn't hers.

"You see our world as it once was, warm and wet and abounding with life," Helen said in a deep, faraway voice. "We lived here much as your ancestors lived on your world. We were many nations, but we coexisted in peace and prosperity."

I blinked. In the center of the valley before me were incredibly tall, gleaming glass spires that extended many kilometers into the sky. Silvery, disk-like aircraft sped silently around them in complex patterns like schools of fish.

"Over the millennia our numbers grew until we were multitudes," Helen continued. "We were not good stewards of our world and steadily depleted our resources. We began to quarrel among ourselves. Our hostilities grew until our harsh words were replaced by violence and destruction."

The scene before me shimmered and changed, revealing an urban landscape crowded with gray towers. The once blue sky was now gray as well. Then suddenly, the city was bathed in a blinding flash of light that forced me to shield my eyes. When the light faded, and I was able to see again, I saw only smoldering charred and twisted ruins that extended to the horizon. Ruins that crumbled into dust before my eyes as the sky turned from gray to the familiar sky of Mars. I saw only a barren, rust-colored dessert where the forested valley had once been.

Now I understood. We'd literally followed in the Martians' footsteps and destroyed our own planet in a senseless war, only their war took place millions and millions of years ago. Is so-called intelligent life inherently self-destructive?

"Your species is descended from seeds that we sent to your world. You are now as we once were, children with great power and promise but lacking in wisdom. You are not yet ready to possess our knowledge, but we will help you this time. We have corrected the flaw in the lichen that was poisoning the atmosphere," Helen continued. "We will speak with you again when you have learned to live in harmony among yourselves."

My vision blurred, and my head swam. I blacked out.

CHAPTER 41

"When I woke up, I was in a medivac rover and Doc Ellie was leaning over me checking my vital signs," I told my attentive audience. We were all seated at a big round table at the Black Hole, which interestingly enough had recently been purchased by Ali Kahn who just happened to be seated with us. Drinks were on the house tonight.

"You and Helen are both very lucky," Ellie replied. "Your hearts weren't beating when we found you, but the extremely low ambient temperature saved you both and I was able to revive you."

"That there's a mighty good yarn, Pete," John said laughingly as he slapped his knee. "You might want to use that in one of your _Out to the Void_ stories."

"No offense, but it's not exactly a new idea," remarked Ali. "It's an interesting spin, but not very original."

"I must confess that I find myself in agreement with our generous host," volunteered Lo somewhat hesitantly. "That particular plot device involving the ancient Martians destroying their world has been around for a very long time and used repeatedly."

"I'm just telling you what I remember," I said, somewhat dejectedly.

"Oxygen deprivation can cause some vivid hallucinations," Ellie explained.

"It's not a bad story," Ali said in an apparent effort to salvage my sinking ego. "Just because it's an idea that's been used before doesn't mean it shouldn't be used again with a fresh take. It's done all the time."

"I enjoyed it," Ellie said.

"Yeah, me too," John chimed in.

"Thanks, but I'm guessing that none of you believed it _really_ happened," I said as I downed the last of my beer. I considered ordering another, but I was already tired and didn't need any more alcohol in my system.

For several long moments the only sound at our table was the background noise from the rest of the bar and the 'thunk' made by my empty mug as I returned it to the table. Then Tuesday broke the silence.

"When I was subduing the remaining Exodyne guard in the rover, I observed Ms. Helen and the Captain enter an opening in the outcrop. I was not suffering from oxygen deprivation," she said.

"Number one daughter, how could you be so sure when visibility was heavily obscured by the dust storm?" Lo asked.

"There was a brief moment between gusts when I saw them enter an opening that I had not previously observed."

"An opening that Brewster's team could not discover even though they scoured the outcrop," Lo replied thoughtfully. "I find that most curious."

"So, was I hallucinating or not?" I asked. I was sure that I already knew the answer, but I wanted to hear Lo's analysis.

"I suppose we'll never really know for sure. The sensible answer is that you were suffering from the effects of oxygen deprivation and were hallucinating. That answer does not explain the sudden appearance of a dust storm of such intensity that meteorologists are grappling to understand how it could have occurred in Mars' thin atmosphere, nor does it explain how Exodyne's rover lost all power and then mysteriously regained it when the storm abruptly subsided."

"You're suggesting that there could have been forces beyond our understanding at work?" I asked.

"If you accept the premise that the ancient Martians exist and that they are millions of years advanced of us and possess the ability to manipulate matter, energy, and even space-time to their will, then yes."

"Sounds like science fiction," Ali suggested.

"As was space travel centuries ago," Lo replied.

I turned to Helen, who had been sitting quietly beside me during the entire conversation. She'd tagged along with us, having been given a week off with pay from her new job at Aratek for all her recent troubles. She'd maintained that she had no memory of what had happened after she'd lost consciousness and hadn't been able to confirm my story.

"It's been a long and very eventful day," I said yawning. "The flight here from Bradbury wore me out and I think I'll head back to the hotel. Would you care to walk with me?"

"Sure," she said smiling softly. She seemed rather distracted.

"We'll all regroup in the morning after breakfast," I said to the rest of my crew as I pushed my chair back and stood up. "Everyone have a good evening."

A less-than-harmonious chorus of 'good night' followed as Helen and I walked out of the bar. There was always some traffic on the streets of Tunnel Town regardless of the hour, so I didn't worry about walking Helen back to the maglev terminal for our ride back to Sagan City. Shady deals often went down here, but any sort of crime other than the routine bar fight wasn't tolerated by the locals.

"Something's on your mind," I said to Helen.

"You're a telepath now?" she replied jokingly.

"Nah, I've just gotten better at reading expressions and body language thanks to Lo's coaching."

"Are you headed out to the Belt by any chance?"

"I could be. Why?"

"I need a ride back to Ceres."

"Why? I thought you're going to work for Brewster."

"Not after all that's happened these last few days. It's not safe for me here anymore. Aratek will want more meetings with the ancient Martians and Exodyne will want me back so that they can pick my brain apart and then have me meet with the ancient Martians. Neither option works for me."

"I thought that you didn't remember anything about our meeting with them."

"I didn't at first, but it's all starting to come back to me along with a lot of other things. They shared a glimpse of their collective mind with me and it was overwhelming. I couldn't and still can't begin to understand what all they shared with me. I just know that they showed me a vision and it was so real that it scared the living Elvis out of me."

"What did they show you?"

Helen stopped walking and gripped my arm, facing me. The expression in her eyes was one of genuine fright.

"Pete," she said, trying hard to find her words. "It's the Earthers. They didn't all die. They're going to come back and retake the Sol System and kill us all."

I didn't know how to respond to that. The general consensus was that all life on Earth – with the possible exception of some microbes – had been exterminated by the Fat Lady's impact and the resulting super volcano. Only conspiracy theorists and nut jobs believed humans had managed to survive.

I didn't say anything, and I guess that was a mistake considering that she could read my thoughts.

"I'm not crazy, Pete." She said.

"I didn't say you were."

"No, but you don't believe me. I wouldn't have believed me either if the old Martian hadn't shared that vision with me."

We walked the rest of the way back to the maglev terminal in silence. I tried to make small talk on the ride back to Sagan City, but our exchanges were awkward and forced.

When we got back to our hotel, Helen went straight to her room rather than accompanying me to mine.

"Good night Pete," She said and kissed me on the lips. It was more of a quick peck than the deep, passionate kisses she'd been delivering.

"I love you," she added, and then closed her door.

"I love you too," I said to the closed door. I stood there in hallway for a few moments, then turned and walked slowly to my room.

I got undressed and crawled into bed but didn't go to sleep right away despite the alcohol in my system. I keep replaying my exchange with Helen that had wrecked the evening. What could I have said differently that wouldn't have had this outcome? She could read my mind, and I couldn't have controlled my mind's spontaneous reaction to her wild revelation that the Earther's were still alive and planning to retake the Sol System.

I must have eventually drifted off to sleep, because the next thing I knew it was morning and John was beating on my door and shouting, "Rise and shine! See you at breakfast."

I checked my 'face. I'd missed a call from John a few minute ago, and there was a text message from Helen that she'd sent late last night.

"Change of plans. Not safe to stay here. Catching next flight out. Be careful!" it read.

I hurriedly dressed and bolted down the hall to Helen's room, almost colliding with a drudgebot that was cleaning the carpeting on the way. I knocked on her door, but there was no answer. I tried 'facing her but got no response. Checking with the lobby revealed that she'd checked out last night about an hour after we'd parted company. I pulled up last night's departures and learned that a commercial flight had left Phobosport for Ceres about a half hour ago. Helen could have caught an early shuttle and made the flight.

There was also a private flight – a clipper – that had lifted from Olympus Spaceport for Ceres only a few minutes ago. On a hunch I 'faced Brewster.

"Did one of your fast candles just lift off?" I asked him.

"Yes," Brewster responded hesitantly.

"Was Helen Bach a passenger by any chance?"

"She told me not to tell you, but I supposed you'd figure it out. Yes, she was aboard."

"What did she do for Aratek that rated a private ride on one of your clippers?"

"Oh, she came through for us and then some. She fingered every Exodyne and Greenslayer agent as well as every other informant at Aratek. She also identified two other telepaths on our payroll. They're not nearly as gifted as she is, but they can certainly tell when someone's telling a lie or hiding something."

"What about using her to communicate with the old Martians?"

"Not really necessary now that all of the terraforming lichen is back to producing oxygen and water vapor – and multiplying on its own like crazy. Anyway, even if the old Martians are real, it sounds like they don't want to be bothered by us."

"So, you just let Helen break her contract and go back to Ceres?"

"I had to let her go. She was pretty messed up by whatever happened to her out in the desert and was ranting some nonsense about Earthers coming back from the dead and taking over the Sol System. I felt sorry for her, but I don't need a mentally disturbed telepath on my staff. Besides, she did what we hired her to do and she didn't want to stay on Mars after the news media broke the big ugly story on Exodyne. She thought that they'd blame her and come after her."

"What big ugly story?" I asked.

"Where've you been all morning? It's all over the news streams. Major scandal involving Exodyne execs and Commonwealth officials. Bribery, contract fixing, murder, you name it. Lots of arrests still in progress. By the time the dust all settles Exodyne will be finished on Mars."

"Helen broke the story?"

"No, it was some Accustream reporter named Herb Tarmac. He streamed Charles Lusher being murdered by Exodyne security, and that started an avalanche. They've even implicated ol' Van der Stront, but he's got an army of lawyers to defend him. That may not last very long with Exodyne's stock in the toilet and the board calling for his head on a platter."

I'd forgotten about Tuesday streaming Van der Stront's goons killing Lusher. Apparently, she'd streamed enough of what happened to pin the blame squarely on Exodyne. I had a sudden sinking feeling that Mars might not be a very healthy place for my crew and me – at least for the foreseeable future.

"I've got a favor to ask," I said to Brewster. "I need a shuttle ride for my crew to Phobosport and a full tank of fuel for _Orchid_."

"No problem, you've earned it along with the repairs to your candle's radiator and the generous bonus that Ms. Aradal deposited in your accounts."

After a few more exchanges, I thanked Brewster and hurried down to the hotel's restaurant. My crew was all seated at a big table, finishing their breakfasts.

"Well howdy thar, sleepin' beauty!" shouted John. "It sure took you long 'nuff to get here. We's all done eatin'."

"We've got to get out of here!" I replied. I briefly outlined the main points of my conversation with Brewster.

"It seems to me that it would be highly advantageous for us to put as much distance between Exodyne and ourselves as possible," Lo suggested after hearing my narrative. "Van der Stront may still have resources at his disposal and will undoubtedly wish to eliminate any material witnesses that would possibly aid in his conviction, and our captain and my daughter would be prime targets."

"When's our effin' shuttle leavin'?" John asked.

"As soon as we get to the Aratek hanger at Olympus," I replied. "Brewster arranged for _Orchid_ to be repaired and fueled when we get to Phobosport."

"Assuming that we aren't all knifed, shot, blown-up, or otherwise dispatched before our departure," Lo suggested.

CHAPTER 42

Our shuttle flight from Olympus to Phobosport was thankfully uneventful, although my mind conjured all manner of potential mishaps that might have happened to us as we ascended. I envision everything from an assassin in the shuttle's cockpit to a hidden bomb in our baggage compartment to a missile launched from a stealthy Exodyne spaceplane waiting for us just outside Mars' atmosphere. Fortunately, none of those things happened to us.

Even after we were safely away from Phobosport and headed out to the Belt, I continued to be wary of every odd sensor detection. I was so jittery that John and Lo eventually confronted me and told me that I needed to relax. Actually, they used some rather demanding language laced with expletives to get my attention. They emphatically pointed out to me that there were a million other ways to die in space that were more likely to happen than an attack by a vengeful Van der Stront, who Lo pointed out was living under a microscope and wouldn't dare make a move that might further tighten the noose already around his neck.

As much as I wanted to go to Ceres and try to find Helen, I listened to reason and vectored _Orchid_ for Market. Ali Kahn had been instrumental in having us 'vetted' after we'd helped to rid the clandestine asteroid base of Pluto's Children, and we received the V.I.P. treatment from the time we approached Parking Lot. We were granted immediate landing clearance and there was an executive shuttle waiting for us when we touched down. We avoided the usual screening when we docket at Market and were promptly transported to the exclusive five-star Grand Celestial Hotel, where the upper floor had been reserved for just us. We had our own private gym, swimming pool, and bar. We were celebrities in a shadowy semi-anarchocapitalist world where anything was for sale, but civility was mandated if you wanted to participate. Violence wasn't welcomed here, which made this the perfect refuge until Mars was safe for us again.

While we were living in our self-imposed exile, John decided to take advantage of Market's first-class medical facilities and used a chunk of his bonus money to have his missing eye replaced. They cloned his good eye and then carefully implanted the copy in the now empty socket formerly occupied by his glass eye. A swarm of surgical microbots entered through a tear duct, attached all of his new eye's connecting tissues, blood vessels, and optic nerves, and then exited through the same duct.

John had to re-adjust to having binocular stereoscopic vision again. He'd learned to judge distances with only one eye, and initially his depth perception was thrown off. He reached for things only to overshoot and meals often resulted in spilled drinks. He was embarrassed by his clumsiness, but luckily it didn't last more than a few days.

He saved his glass eye. John said that the next time he saw Jason he was going to shove it up his ex-partner's ass. I wasn't sure if he was joking or half-serious.

Van der Stront's trial came sooner and progressed much more rapidly than I ever would have expected. It was on all the major news streams and you couldn't avoid it. Lo commented that Van der Stront had been thrown to the wolves as a sacrificial lamb to protect others higher up the proverbial food chain. The trial had an almost contrived, scripted quality (Where had I experienced _that_ before?) and his conviction came swiftly. His apparent suicide following his conviction via a drug that had somehow been smuggled into his cell was equally too convenient from my writer's perspective. Events in real life usually don't get tied up in a neat little bow and resolved with such satisfying finality. It was obvious to me that Van der Stront's fate had already been decided for him before his trial ever even started.

Oh well, good riddance. I'll sleep better knowing there's one less super-rich bad guy around.

# Part III.

CHAPTER 43

The attack came on December 7. Future historians will have to decide whether the date was chosen deliberately based on its historical significance, or it just happened to present the most favorable launch window.

They lifted in mass when Kilimanjaro faced away from Luna from a hundred silos positioned in a circle around the slope of the extinct volcano. As soon as the first wave launched the silos were reloaded and a second wave lifted scant minutes later. Next there came a third wave, followed by a fourth, then a fifth, and so on. With each launch their massive candles filled the sky like flights of flaming arrows launched by an army of medieval archers.

The largest space fleet ever assembled arrived in lunar orbit mere hours later. The few Space Guard candles in orbit were vaporized before they could get off a shot. Luna had no surface-to-space defenses, there being no perceived need. The bulk of the Earther's armada took up residence in lunar orbit while their occupation force descended upon Neal Armstrong Spaceport and seized Copernicus City. Similar landings took place at the other major lunar downports so that, in less than a day, they effectively controlled Luna.

Most of the occupation force consisted of pseudo-sapient 'bots. Their bodies were constructed with reactive armor and their speed was superior to their human counterparts. They swarmed by the thousands through the major lunar cities like a plague of locusts, quickly neutralizing any opposition. The few Earther human commandos accompanying them were encased in similarly armored, powered 'battle shells' with integrated weapon systems.

For eighty years, ever since the 'Fat Lady' had decimated their world, the Earthers had been preparing for this. They'd used their giant tunneling 'bots to build a globe spanning network of tunnels connecting massive caverns where they recreated the ecology of their devastated planet. Like the mysterious ancient Martian's, they'd constructed a world within a world. They'd steadily rebuilt their population from a few thousand survivors to well over a half-million, but that was not nearly enough to achieve their goal of reclaiming the Sol System, so they'd built an army of millions of pseudo-sapient warbots to do their fighting for them. Their vast army was guided by a highly sophisticated A.I. with access to all the lessons learned from every battle in recorded history. An A.I. with the memories and vindictive personality of the long-dead Russ Schwätzer.

With Luna secured as their beachhead, they next turned their attention to the neighboring red planet that had caused them so much grief . . .

* * *

With our ready cash supply running low and the Van der Stront affair thankfully behind us, we decided it was time to pack our bags and return to business as usual. I'd also developed a case of 'writer's block' while working on my latest _Out to the Void_ script during our down time. I'd been initially inspired by Helen's notion of an impending Earther invasion and had gotten off to a good start with my story, but then I couldn't figure out how Captain Jack Parsec and his trusty crew were going to defeat the vengeful Earthers' warbot hoards and save the Sol System from being enslaved by the evil Schwätzer A.I. I figured that maybe some real time in space would provide the inspirational spark that I needed to press on.

We'd managed to find a shipping-for-hire cargo of 'priceless antiques' that some rich guy wanted delivered to another candle that would be waiting for us in high Martian orbit, and Lo had acquired a few novelties that he thought he could sell back in Tunnel Town for a decent profit. The nice folks at Parking Lot topped off our fuel supply at no charge as a going away present, so we left with a full tank as well as a payload.

I resisted the temptation to stop at Ceres, justifying my decision by the asteroid's currently less-than-favorable position relative to Market/Parking Lot and Mars. In a lot of those old cinema plots the hero would go chasing after the girl, although in my _Out to the Void_ scripts it was usually the girl who pursued Jack Parsec. Regardless, I figured that if Helen wanted me to find her then she'd 'face me.

Mars wasn't exactly in the most desirable position either for an easy transfer orbit or an economical 'straight line' trajectory, so John had worked out a slingshot maneuver on our navigational computer using Venus to get us there. For a non-spacer the idea of seemingly going out-of-your-way to get somewhere faster may not make sense, but the planets of Sol System aren't stationary. What might be a short hop one day might be on the far side of Sol months or in many cases years later.

Everything was going fine until we were in interplanetary space half-way to Venus and a half-billion kilometers from anywhere. That's when our Magnaflo R22 fuel pump that Cat had rebuilt back on Luna started acting up. Phineas decided to send our new repairbot to investigate the problem.

Phineas was very proud of his 'new' repairbot. I say 'new' because he'd cobbled it together out of used parts he'd scrounged from various sources. He didn't have any money to spend on the darn thing because that had all been eaten up during our protracted stay on Market. We might have been V.I.P.s with complimentary lodging, but we still had to pay for everything else and the food and booze were on the pricey side.

Phineas decided to build the dang thing after one of _Orchid's_ radiator wings had been damaged during our slingshot maneuver around Earth. Being a genetically engineered 'super ape', Phineas was more agile and dexterous in an armored spacesuit than any of us, but he didn't have eight manipulators which could double as either arms or legs as needed.

John said the effin' robot gave him the creeps. Ellie was utterly terrified of it. It reminded me of something I'd seen in a low-budget science-fiction cinema that I'd viewed many years ago as a child that had given me nightmares. Phineas took note of our 'irrational fears' and painted a cartoonish 'happy face' with wide eyes and a big toothy smile on his creation to make it seem less threatening. Frankly, I thought it made it look even creepier.

The 'bot didn't give us good news and only confirmed what our instrument readouts were already telling us. Our fuel pump was starting to sputter much as it had when we'd refueled using comet ice. Either Cat's rebuild hadn't solved the problem (unlikely) or the 'nice' folks on Parking Lot had given us some dirty water. Our fuel pump probably wouldn't get us to Mars before it failed, and we couldn't rebuild it in flight without spare parts (which I'd make sure we carried in the future).

"Why'd they give us dirty water?" John asked. "Don't seem to me like that'd be good for business."

"I don't believe they did so intentionally," Lo opined. "I suggest that an outside party is to blame – likely someone with a proverbial axe to grind."

"You think Exodyne sabotaged their water?" I asked.

"No, it's more likely that Exodyne or someone contracted by them gained access to _Orchid_ and put sand directly into our fuel tank. They would have had plenty of time to accomplish that during our protracted stay on Market."

"Wouldn't been too hard for 'em to break into this ol' candle. They probably spiked our tank with somethin' fine enough to get past the filters but hard enough to scour up the pump really good," John said.

"Like the stuff in unrefined comet water?" I suggested.

"Not all comet ice is bad dirty. We just got unlucky that time."

"Yeah, and I guess we're unlucky again," I quipped.

"I suspect that they might have used a very fine, diamond sand or something similar," suggested Phineas. "It would not have been affected by the pump's magnetic scrubber and would have easily passed through the vibromesh filters. Diamond has a hardness of 10 on the Mohs scale and the particulates would act as a highly effective abrasive."

"What's a Mohs scale?" I asked.

"The Mohs scale of mineral hardness is a qualitative ordinal scale characterizing scratch resistance of various minerals through the ability of harder material to scratch softer material," Phineas explained.

"Show off," John remarked.

Lo simply raised his eyebrows and grinned.

The recent proliferation of pirates – many of whom were apparently former Exodyne security who'd turned to piracy when they'd lost their jobs - didn't make sending out a distress call a good idea, since it would just as likely summon a pirate as the Space Guard. I wouldn't have put it passed the Exodyne goons who 'sugared' our fuel tank to be listening for our mayday, so they could intercept us and finish us off. Given the situation, it looked as though our best option was a Venus-capture and rendezvous with one of the space stations orbiting the perpetually cloud-shrouded planet. With a minor course change and deceleration, we should be able to pull it off.

I really wasn't interested in visiting Venus, but rather one of the roughly two-dozen-or-so space stations that orbited the planet. According to the information I'd dug up on my 'face, most of those stations were Gravon-owned and operated, but at least two weren't. One was a Space Guard base which, given our 'questionable cargo' as Lo put it, would probably not be a good choice. The other was Futuroscope, a pre-war research facility originally constructed with joint funding from the United Nations, the Cousteau, National Geographic and Planetary Societies, and long-defunct agricultural giant Green Goliath. It had continued to operate after the Interplanetary War thanks to assistance from the Martian and Lunar governments, although its importance had diminished over the years and portions of the facility had been either mothballed or simply abandoned. These days its main tenant was GenetiX, a subcontractor of Gravon's.

The one downside to Futuroscope was that it maintained Venus-normal 0.8g, which meant that we'd need some serious acclimation if we were going to dock there. That required both bone density and muscle mass increases. With our fuel pump acting up I was hesitant to increase our acceleration, so we all had to rely on Doc Ellie's magic medicine bag that she'd fortunately stocked with meta-steroids and calcium-building supplements. Coupled with resistance training and improvised electro-stimulation, we bulked-up. We all started to look more like tall Earthers rather than Martians or Belters as we got close to Venus.

Following a too-long, nail-biting trip, we finally reached Venus. John had been nursing our fuel pump, gradually slowing us down so that we'd settle into orbit rather than slingshot away. It took us another day-and-a-half to catch up to Futuroscope, and by then our fuel pump was barely operable. Fortunately, we were able to make our final approach for docking using our maneuvering thrusters. Although Futuroscope was obligated under various interplanetary treaties to offer assistance to spacecraft in distress, we didn't need to do any arm-twisting to get them to grant us docking clearance. Either they really liked the sound of Ellie's voice, or they'd didn't get many visitors. Or perhaps both.

At first the space station was visible only as a tiny ring, but as we drew closer we could make out the central hub and then the spokes that connected it to the ring. The station resembled a wheel from some ancient, gigantic wagon. As we got closer, John lined us up with the 'docking tree' that extended from one end of the hub like an axle and then opened the fairing in _Orchid's_ nose to expose our rarely-used docking coupler. The station's docking tree counter-rotated so that it was stationary compared to the spinning hub, allowing candles to dock with one of its multiple docking ports that extended from the central column. At this point our auto pilot took over and guided us in the rest of the way, although John continued to closely monitor our approach and counted out the remaining distance. We closed to within 18 meters . . . then 15 . . . 12 . . . 9 . . . John announced our progress in a tense, uncharacteristic flat monotone. Mini-bursts from our thrusters gently eased us into position and we approached at walking speed, slowing even further as we came to within just a few meters. There was a gentle bump, and then we were docked. John breathed a sigh of relief.

"Futuroscope, this is _Orchid_. We have a hard dock." I radioed.

"Roger that _Orchid_. We copy hard dock," was a woman's reply. The exchange we'd just had was a centuries old tradition that dated from the earliest days of space travel when just getting to the first space stations in Earth orbit was a big deal. John had taught me it.

After confirming that we had a good seal, we opened the forward hatch. We'd need to be inspected and cleared before we'd be allowed to board. The 'inspector' who emerged from the cylindrical docking tunnel wasn't human, but rather a 'canary' – a reconnaissance 'bot festooned with various optics and sensors to determine if we were pirates and/or carrying any contagions, toxins, or explosives. I was relieved when the thing apparently didn't pick up any trace of our former 'horny orchid' infestation, because after the 'bot exited our next visitor was a pale-skinned, gray-haired human female dressed in a white jumpsuit.

"Which one of you is Captain Soñador?" she asked. Her accent was strange. French, maybe?

"That would be me," I said.

"I am Dr. Marie Marionneaux, Station Manager," she said as she floated toward me rolling slowly and extending her elbow. "It is my pleasure to welcome you and your crew to Futuroscope. We don't get many visitors, so your visit is something of a special occasion."

"Thank you for your generous hospitality, Dr. Marionneaux" I said, extending my elbow to touch hers.

"Please call me Marie," she told me. "We're very informal here."

"Then you can just call me Pete," I replied. I proceeded to introduce each of my crew, which resulted in more elbow touches. Even Phineas, who is unfortunately all too often treated like a second-class citizen due to not being human, received a warm greeting.

Introductions completed, Marie escorted us down through the pressurized, central docking column and into Futuroscope's large boarding airlock. Phineas insisted on remaining aboard _Orchid_ so that he and 'Fuzzy', his spider-like repairbot, could start pulling our fuel pump. The station's inner airlock doors were closed as a safety precaution, but once the outer hatch to the docking tunnel was sealed they were opened to admit us. A quartet of armored security guards brandishing non-lethal stun weapons awaited us on the other side. They spun around us and I realized that we needed to start spinning ourselves to match the station's rotation. Fortunately, conveniently placed handholds on the curving walls facilitated that.

"Don't mind them," Marie assured us as she grasped a handle. "GenetiX insists on this sort of welcoming committee whenever we have an unscheduled visit. They are very protective of their research, although in my twenty-six years aboard this station I've yet to see anything tangible from them in the way of results."

"Uh, would I be out of line asking what GenetiX does?" I inquired.

Marie turned to me and laughed. "I would happily tell you if I knew," she replied. "They send their shuttles down to Venus. They return. They pay their rent, which keeps our lights on. I think that they've convinced Gravon that they're conducting important research. That's what I think they do."

CHAPTER 44

Not much happened on Futuroscope that Monique Boncorps didn't know something about. People will tell secrets to bartenders and prostitutes that they'd never think of telling their spouses or priests. As the space station's only _living_ prostitute, Monique was in an ideal position to hear all sorts of gossip. Her competition, an ensemble of pre-war pseudo-sapient androids in various states of disrepair, rarely saw any business unless Monique was booked, and the client was either too desperate to wait for real flesh or preferred male-sexed companionship, albeit artificial.

The candle's unscheduled arrival didn't escape her attention, although she learned of it accidently as she was gazing out the viewport of the compact stateroom that served as her quarters when she wasn't on the clock. She'd noticed the small transport when it was on final approach. With the exceptions of the daily shuttles that ferried GenetiX personnel to Venus' surface and back, the station saw very little traffic. A transport visited the station once a month, bringing new personnel and supplies. It was usually the same candle, a corporate job with a crew that that might as well have been 'bots and did nothing for business.

She'd closely watched the transport docking through her binoculars, noting the absence of any obvious corporate logos. There was something – a name perhaps – stenciled on its side, but at this distance from the hub the lettering was far too small to make out. The candle looked old to her. What if it was a tramp freighter – a _freetrader_ perhaps? Was that too much to hope? From what she knew about independent spacers, they weren't above bending a few rules for a few extra bitcreds – especially if it meant helping a 'damsel in distress'. Monique reasoned that she qualified for the 'D-in-D' role without too much of a stretch to the imagination. _A young, attractive woman wrongly convicted of a crime she didn't commit and forced into prostitution._ Somewhat over-simplified, but essentially true if you overlooked the fact that she'd chosen 15 years of indentured service aboard the station over hard labor on the prison moon Penitence. With just a month shy of three years served, she'd be 38 when her contract was fulfilled. However, 15 years 'flat-backing' on a space station was more than Monique was prepared to endure. Her son would be a young adult by the next time she saw him again, assuming her scum-sucking ex-husband hadn't turned him against her and allowed her to see him.

Monique had been born and raised on Mars. She'd married Charles when she was only 20 against the advice of the family attorney. She hadn't figured it out until it was already too late that he was only after her trust fund. She'd naively called dome security when she found Yvette dead of an apparent drug overdose. Monique had no idea who put the pills in Yvette's drink, how her fingerprints got on the wine bottle, or why her home's security cam footage showed that she'd been in Yvette's room when she wasn't even there at the time. She'd been framed but couldn't prove it.

Contract or not, she had to get off the station and back to Mars. The tramp candle's unexpected arrival might just be her ticket to ride.

Monique swung her long legs out of her bunk, padded softly over to the compact clothes bin, and extracted a tube top and a pair of form-fitting stretch pants. She yanked her sleeveless half-tee up over her head and stood there, gloriously nude for a moment, before she stepped into the pants and pulled the tube top over her ample breasts. A pair of spiked-heel pumps completed her wardrobe.

"Yes, it will do nicely," she said to herself. A mood suit would have been pointless – she might as well have not worn anything at all.

Monique briefly contemplated the small tattoo on her left cheek that identified her as an indentured servant in the mirror on the wall next to her stateroom's door. She picked up a hairbrush from the small, fold-out wall shelf beneath the mirror and brushed her long, curly black hair. Her hair, skin tone and even her facial features hinted at her north-African ancestry. She put down the brush and picked up a pair of pendant ear rings from the shelf. She wanted to look her best during her meeting with the transport's captain, just in case it took more than words to convince him.

What if 'he' was a 'she'? She'd serviced many a female client as well. Having sex with strangers had come unexpectedly easy for her following her arrival on Futuroscope. In fact, she _craved_ sex. She often wondered if there was something in the station's air or water or even her food that caused her constant craving since she hadn't been this way before she arrived.

"Time to get acquainted," she said as she exited her stateroom. She was free to move about the station as she pleased since the surrounding hard vacuum prevented any chance of escape.

Monique thought Dr. Marionneaux would probably greet their visitors and take them on a tour of the inhabited portions of the station. Sooner or later, they'd cross paths.

CHAPTER 45

We all rode a large elevator car that ran from the central hub down through the interior of one of the spokes to the rim. The car had a peeling red arrow placard on the door's interior that indicated 'down'. As we moved outward from the hub, our sensation of weight steadily increased until we were just shy of 0.8g when we reached the torus' upper level. When the elevator stopped, and the door opened, I started to take a step and almost fell flat on my face. Despite our in-flight conditioning, I felt as though my feet were stuck to the floor. Except for a few rare occasions aboard _Orchid_ at high-thrust, I'd never experienced a feeling of weight like this, and I hadn't been trying to walk at the time.

Marie must have anticipated our difficulties and gave us time to acclimate. We sat in the lobby by the elevator and practiced taking steps until we could walk without stumbling. Even then our steps were small and deliberate. Marie insisted on giving us a tour of the station, maintaining that walking would help us acclimate faster.

Marie told us that, while Futuroscope lacked vast open-air spaces like space colonies, the station's torus boasted a shopping mall and recreational plazas, a landscaped park and several gardens. The remainder of the torus mostly consisted of living quarters and laboratories. Sadly, the big space station no longer offered the luxuries it once had. The hotels had long ago closed or been converted into apartments, and the only places to eat besides the cafeterias and some food stands were a handful of pre-war 'Insta-Meal' outlets that still dispensed something edible, albeit barely. She explained that the station still grew its own food was largely self-sustaining, although with age a number of the robofacs had failed and some supplies now had to be delivered.

As we walked along the central concourse, I noticed that the aging space station had a musty smell and that a quite a few of the overhead lights weren't working. Many of the businesses in the shopping mall were shuttered and apparently had been so for many years considering the logos of long-defunct retail chains that still graced some storefronts. There were a number of seedy-looking bars and several convenience stores that seemed to have survived, and the cafeteria looked busy. The net effect was that of an old, run-down town at twilight that reminded me of Tunnel Town on Mars.

I noticed a man in a grimy white jumpsuit manually sweeping the floor with a push-broom. As we walked passed him he looked up at me, and I recognized a tattoo on his right cheek that caused me concern.

"You use indentured workers?" I asked Marie.

"Not by choice," she replied flatly as we continued walking. "One of the ways that they use to justify keeping the lights on is to send indentured workers here to fulfill their contracts. Most of our old drudgebots broke down years ago. Rather than replace them, they just ship in indentured laborers to do their jobs. If they fulfill their contracts they're freed and allowed to leave if they wish."

"Why wouldn't they want to leave?"

"Some have nothing that would make them wish to return. They've made a niche for themselves here. Their tattoo may be easily removed, but the stain on the reputation remains. In my case, no university or corporate research facility would ever have me, so I stayed here. Now I am the Queen of Purgatory."

"I'm sorry, I didn't know."

"No apologies are necessary, Pete. Many years ago, I made a mistake and paid dearly for it. I was young and ambitious and put my own personal success ahead of ethics. I was so sure my data was inaccurate that I selectively edited it to provide the 'correct' results. That error in judgment cost me my career and had me working as a menial assistant to Echols for 10 long years."

"Who is Echols?" I asked.

"Dr. Franz Echols is the head of research for GenetiX' Venus project," Marie explained. "I may be the Station Manager, but he effectively runs things here." Without GenetiX we'd be dark and cold, so we cater to them like they're 'effin royalty. When something essential breaks they get it fixed in a hurry, otherwise we just have to make do."

Our tour took us through into the park, which like the shopping district had seen better days but was still being somewhat maintained. There were dead trees that needed to be cut down and living ones that needed to be trimmed, although the smaller bushes and plants showed evidence of pruning and shaping. The garden beyond had a number of large planter boxes that were empty, but there was a section under cultivation that featured flowering plants as well as fruits and vegetables. Lights had been rearranged to provide illumination to the planted portion while leaving the empty part in semi-twilight. At the end of the garden was a bulkhead with a pressure door emblazoned with a stylized 'X' logo.

"This is the end of our little tour," Marie explained. "GenetiX leases everything beyond that door. They mostly keep to themselves and we rarely see any of their personnel."

"They lease the remainder of the station?" I asked.

"Yes, but they don't use all of it. About half the torus remains abandoned. Such is the sad state of Futuroscope."

The pressure door in front of us abruptly opened with a hiss and a man wearing a pale green GenetiX lab coat walked out. His appearance was almost cartoonish with an abnormally tall and skinny build for the station's 0.8 g, and facial features that included steeply arched eyebrows, a long skinny nose, and pencil thin lips.

"Dr. Larbin, what a pleasant surprise!" Marie exclaimed. "I was just showing our visitors around the station."

"So, this must be the crew of the transport that arrived a short time ago," Larbin said. The tone of his voice was one of irritation rather than curiosity.

"Yes, their fuel pump malfunctioned so they were forced to dock here," Marie replied.

"Well, I'll trust that you'll assist them with making their repairs so that they can leave as soon as possible."

"If you gotta spare Magnaflo R22 fuel pump layin' around that you'd care to part with that'd help," John interjected.

Larbin stared at John with a look that I could only describe as contemptuous. He didn't immediately reply, as if doing so were in some way beneath him.

"I'll see what we have in our inventory," he said flatly after a long pause. Then he abruptly turned and re-entered the pressure door.

"No offense, but he isn't exactly Mr. Congeniality," I remarked as the door hissed shut behind him.

"You're being overly kind," Marie replied. "Dr. Larbin is only slightly less unpleasant than his superior. He's a misogynist sociopath who bought his doctorate from a diploma mill out in the Belt. He's only here because he took my place after I'd fulfilled my contract. Echols uses him for his lackey. Larbin is Echols' doormat, but he behaves like he's his second in command."

We turned and retraced our steps back toward the lobby. Marie had arranged rooms for us in one of the former hotels and had already had our bags delivered so that they'd be waiting for us. It was approaching dinner time, so she recommended a cafeteria that was near our quarters.

"I'll take you there," she said. "It's easy to get lost here, even with all the signage and color coding.

We took the elevator up a level to the residential section, and I understood what Marie meant. We exited into a long, broad hallway the gradually curved upward in the distance. On either side of the hall were doors with letter and number codes. The well-worn anti-slip carpeting was discolored but had at one time apparently matched the blue stripes than ran along the white walls when new. As it was on the commercial level, the walls were dingy looking, and a number of the overhead light panels weren't working.

"Your suites are all adjoining," Marie explained as she pointed out our accommodations. "You'll be staying in A24 through A29."

"We don't need that many rooms," John said. "Ellie and I is married."

"My daughter and I can share a suite as well," Lo added.

"Well in that case take your pick. It's not like we've a shortage of living quarters."

We continued to follow Marie down the hall and into a section with double doors on each side. Large lettering identified the various tenants as an Insta-Meal outlet (with a prominent 'OUT OF ORDER' sign across the transparent doors), an exercise room, and a convenience store/gift shop. One pair of doors featured opaque panels and no sign, just a red light above them that wasn't illuminated at the moment.

"That's our 'courtesy station' if you find yourself in need of a sexual outlet," Marie explained with a hint of disgust in her voice. "A less stigmatized term for brothel."

As we passed the brothel, a white jump-suited indentured worker carrying an archaic looking gadget that Marie explained was a vacuum cleaner was exiting. It wasn't the vacuum cleaner that caught my attention, but rather the faint scent that escaped the briefly opened doors.

I recognized that flowery smell immediately. It was the Night Goddess.

CHAPTER 46

Dr. Bernard Larbin was not a happy man. He hadn't been pleased when he'd learned about the unscheduled arrival of the tramp freighter and had vigorously protested to Dr. Marionneaux, but to no avail. Unfortunately, she had the law on her side and failure to allow a space vessel in distress to dock would have brought the Space Guard as well as unwanted attention to Futuroscope. The Venus Project had reached a long-awaited, critical stage and the last thing he needed was the Space Guard poking around and asking questions. No, it was better to tolerate the freetraders' visit and encourage Marionneaux to do everything she could to help them repair their 'candle' and get on their way again as quickly as possible. Maybe one of the spare fuel pumps from their shuttles would work on their vessel. He would check into that.

Now he had the unpleasant task of breaking the news to Dr. Echols, whom he knew would be even less pleased to learn of the station's unexpected guests. He wasn't so much worried about them venturing into the restricted areas as he was them talking to the 'wrong person'. They'd have to be watched closely, as would Larbin's 'problem child'. Hawker was scheduled to be rotated out when the next supply transport arrived, but the traders' presence on the station prior to his departure increased the chances of him spilling his guts. Credible or not, they didn't need him saying anything to anybody that might make it on the news stream - at least not until he was off the station and no longer in GenetiX employ.

The easiest solution was to keep Hawker too busy for a chance encounter until the transport arrived. Reassigning him back to 'C' quadrant would insure that as well as limit his access to 'A' quadrant and prevent a chance meeting with any members of the tramp freighter's crew. Hawker already knew what was going on inside Future Venus, so further involvement would make no difference. After he left Futuroscope, any of his accounts of GenetiX' research would be viewed as the fabricated rants of a disgruntled and obviously mentally disturbed former employee.

CHAPTER 47

A hot bath. Fresh food. Beds that weren't acceleration bunks. All the things that 'groundhogs' took for granted and that a certain pair of distaff spacers relished. Staying on the station for a few days wasn't going to be bad at all.

Then there were the bars. After dining with the rest of the crew in the cafeteria, Tuesday and Ellie decided to have a girls' night out and check out the local night life. They found a cheery (by Futuroscope standards) hole-in-the-wall called the Storm Shelter that featured a man singing and playing the keyboards accompanied by a woman blowing a saxophone. The duo was playing a slightly off-key version of a popular tune, _Dance Without Pants_.

Have you heard the news today?

It's all the rage they say

If you want romance, dance without pants!

Just let it all hang out,

When you start to move about

If you want romance, dance without pants!

You'll be more than just befriended

When you start to dance bare ended

So, drop your drawers and

Get out on the floor!

Have you seen the streams today?

It's the next big thing they say

If you want romance, dance without pants!

When you're showin' off your dick

Gals will think you're pretty slick

If you want romance, dance without pants!

Don't be shy 'cause some may giggle

When your privates start to jiggle

If you want romance

If you want romance

If you want romance, dance without pants!

Dance without pants!

Dance without pants!

When asked what he recommended, the friendly bartender suggested a local favorite called a 'Melt Down' that was made with rum, tequila, and a genetically-engineered fruit grown on Futuroscope called a 'bannapple'. Ellie and Tuesday both decided to try it and it was served to them in glasses bearing an old-fashioned radiation symbol that was the bar's trademark.

Apparently, the drink's alcohol content was sufficiently high enough that you could have run a shuttle's rocket motor on it. Ellie passed out before she was halfway through her second drink, still seated in her chair but with her head on the table. Tuesday was still on her first round and definitely not feeling any pain but remained coherent enough to pop an anti-hangover pill.

She wasn't sure who noticed whom first. His face was very familiar, but the name was lost in the alcoholic fog that now clouded her brain. He must have recognized her though, because he got up from his barstool and walked over to their table.

"Tuesday Phat, is that really _you_?" he asked cautiously.

"John? John Hawker?" Tuesday answered as she took another swallow of her potent beverage.

"Oh Elvis, am I glad to see you!" he said hugging her. She almost lost her balance and fell back into her chair when he released her.

"I thought you went to Vesta," she said.

"I did, but I got an internship from GenetiX and . . . here I am. What are you doing here?"

"I joined my father's business after graduation," she muttered sleepily. "I'm a spacer now. We're part of _Orchid's_ crew."

"You mean you came here on the transport that arrived last shift? Elvis, I can't believe this!" he said as he pulled up a chair and sat down next to Tuesday. "Look, I've got to talk to you. There's some stuff going on here that you need to know about."

Tuesday didn't get a chance to get another word in. Hawker was already frantically spouting off some wild tale about something called 'DNAMs' and monsters. Her head was swimming by the time he finished his story.

Or had he? One moment he was talking to her about Venus and then suddenly he got up and abruptly left.

"He mushhh not have liked our company," Tuesday slurred as she addressed the sleeping Ellie, who was snoring. "C'mon, leshhh go back to our rooms and cr-cr-crashhh."

CHAPTER 48

"Hello?"

"It's Larbin. Our little bird sang."

"Was zur hölle?[9] To whom did he speak?"

"It's bad. He talked to the dark-haired girl from the tramp freighter."

"Has he spoken to anyone else?"

"No, I've had him followed."

"The girl he spoke with . . . what do you know about her?"

"Her name is Tuesday Phat. She's presently helping her intoxicated friend back to their suites in the residential level."

"Du dummkopf![10] This has gone too far! You should have found a way to prevent Hawker from making contact with the outsiders. Now we'll have to deal with the consequences. Have the girl picked up for questioning."

"What about Hawker?"

"Unfortunately, he's become too much of a liability. Space is a dangerous place. Accidents can happen."

"What are you suggesting?"

"I'm suggesting that perhaps he is as careless when it comes to following proper safety procedures as he is with his conversations with the outsiders," Echols replied after a long pause. "Wouldn't you agree?"

"Yes," he responded, but the interface had already been terminated.

He painfully recalled how Echols had stated on more than one occasion that Hawker was a brilliant intern with a lot of promise, unlike Larbin. But Larbin recognized that Hawker was too naïve and idealistic. Echols maintained that, in the interest of scientific advancement, it was sometimes necessary to do things that were considered unethical or even abhorrent by the small-minded, ignorant masses. There were circumstances when the ends truly justified the means, and society as a whole benefited. Larbin understood that. Hawker didn't understand and never would.

GenetiX' research would make the colonization of Venus possible without the need for heavily shielded domes such as the one the Saudis had built just before the war. Even that massive construct had started to fail 11 years ago after a massive seismic tremor had damaged the dome and forced an immediate evacuation which GenetiX had graciously provided shuttles to assist in. The tragedy had provided an important benefit, however. It had provided much needed 'volunteers' for GenetiX' research.

Larbin 'faced Sal Monella, GenetiX' Security Chief, and relayed Echols' instructions. The girl was to be discreetly detained and brought in for questioning. Hawker was to meet with an 'unfortunate accident'.

Sal was head of security for a reason. He never asked questions. He never felt the need to ask, he just discreetly handled things his way.

[9] German for "What the hell!"

[10] German for "You blockhead!"

CHAPTER 49

I normally prefer not to drink alone anymore unless circumstances mandate it. Tonight, to use the term subjectively because day or night on the space station depended on what shift you were on, was one of those situations. John and Lo were both sacked out, and Ellie and Tuesday were having a girls' night out-on-the-town, so I was left to my own devices. I needed a beer. Or maybe two. Or . . .

I've loved a good beer since I had my first drink. My father loved beer, so I suppose it runs in the family. I've been concerned for awhile now that I may be an addict rather than just a _zymurgophile_ [11]. Oddly enough, I don't seem to need it when we're in flight, although I don't mind sharing a cold frothy one with John on occasion. There's something about being dirtside – or station side as it were in this instance – that makes me want to drink until I'm 'comfortably numb'. They called it alcoholism a long time ago, but it all has to do with minute difference in our genes that result in how we're wired and certain environmental triggers.

I'd thought about having an assessment performed. Treatment was easy if I was an addict: swallow a pill and you wake up next day with an aversion to alcohol. The scary part was that whatever caused you to drink in the first place probably didn't go away, so you'd eventually seek out another poison. So I stuck with beer and considered myself blessed that I could drink the rest of my crew under the table and then magically wake up the next day without a hangover. There's a medical term for that I don't remember. Maybe I've just got the right genes.

So here I sat alone at a table in a quiet bar, listening to an instrumental version of _Angelique_ and sipping a cold Full Moon when she showed up. She was tall and dark complexioned with long curly hair and almond-shaped eyes. She eased herself into the chair opposite of me.

"Mind if I join you?" she asked. Like so many others on the station she had an accent that I'd determined was probably French or something close to it.

"I guess you already have," I replied.

"I'm sorry, did you wish to be alone?" she said as she began to slide back out of her chair.

"No, go ahead and join me! Please excuse my sense of humor," I replied.

"Thank you," she said smiling. "I see your glass is almost empty. Can I buy you another round?"

I scrutinized her body language. Considering that Futuroscope's population was limited to GenetiX employees, station ops personnel, or indentured workers, what was the possibility of getting scammed here?

Then I noticed her tattoo. I probably should have noticed it immediately, but I was too distracted by everything else she had going on.

"You like my tattoo?" she asked following my gaze. "I received it after I was convicted. I am an indentured prostitute."

"Oh, I'm sorry I wasn't . . ."

"I did not come here to solicit your business, Captain Soñador," she said interrupting me. "I came here to ask for your help."

"I guess that you must have done your homework on me," I responded. "You can call me Pete."

"Very little happens on the old station that I do not know about Pete _,_ " was her reply. "There are certain advantages to my position. But . . . I am being so rude and should introduce myself. I am Monique Boncorps."

"It's nice to meet you Monique."

"I will spare you the line and get to the point. I have a five-year-old son on Mars whom I have not seen in almost three years. His father prevents him from communicating with me, and I'm afraid that he is poisoning his mind against me."

"I'm very sorry to hear that."

" _Merci´._ You see his father – my ex-husband – is the one responsible for my being here. He . . . framed me for a crime I did not commit so that he could have _my_ money and _his_ mistress at the same time. I am neither a murderer nor a prostitute, but it was either this or Penitence."

"Ah, let me guess," I said hesitantly. "You want me to help you get off this station, correct?"

" _Oui´_. I know it is a lot to ask," she said, her voice cracking slightly. "I miss my little Jean Claude, and the thought of him growing up to hate me is more than I can stand."

I sat there silent for a moment, scrutinizing her. I admit I'm a sucker when it comes to helping someone in trouble, but Lo has taught me how to smell a con coming on, and this had a troubling scent to it.

"I'd like to help you Monique," I began slowly. "I want to believe you're telling the truth and not trying to talk your way out of your contract, but I still can't help you. Aiding in your escape would be a felony, and I could lose my candle and spend the next 10 years on Penitence if I'm caught."

"No one would have to know, Pete! I could stow away aboard your candle. You would be innocent if I was discovered. Please, I beg you . . . help me get off this station! Please!" she pleaded.

I believed her tears were real. I seriously wanted to believe her story was true, but that wasn't enough to justify aiding in her escape. I couldn't risk helping her and jeopardize my crew's livelihood if we were caught smuggling an escaped indentured worker who had broken her contract. We'd _all_ go to Penitence for that.

"I'm . . . sorry," I muttered flatly as I abruptly got up from my chair and walked away. This one was clearly a 'no win'.

I briefly glanced back as I was exiting the bar. Monique was still sitting at the table with her head buried in her hands. I kept going and hurried down the hall towards the elevator.

Damn. I needed another beer.

[11] Someone who likes fermented beverages, particularly beers and ales.

CHAPTER 50

Tuesday didn't remember what happened after she'd left Ellie in her suite and started to stagger back towards her own room. She vaguely remembered talking to John Hawker in the bar, which was crazy because John was on Vesta. It must have been a hallucination caused by the potent alcohol content of the 'Melt Down' she'd consumed.

She opened her eyes and looked around, trying to focus. Her present surroundings didn't look familiar. She was obviously in a stateroom on Futuroscope, but it wasn't the suite that she and her father had been assigned. It was small and, except for the bunk she was laying on, lacking furnishings or decor. Dingy white walls surrounded her. The net affect was that of a closet, or maybe even a prison cell.

She slowly got up from the bunk, still slightly disoriented from the effects of the Melt Down. She was still wearing her jumpsuit, but her sandals that she typically wore dirstside were missing along with her 'face. At least the anti-hangover pill she'd taken had down its job. She walked slowly over to the door and pushed the exit button. Nothing happened. She was locked in. A scanner below the button suggested that some sort of additional security clearance was required to open the door.

"Hey, open up!" She shouted as she pounded on the door. She thought she heard muffled voices on the other side. Still, the door remained closed.

She pounded again. No response. She walked back to the bunk and set down. Apparently, she'd been abducted. She didn't recall breaking any laws and she wasn't wearing a prisoner restraint garment, so abduction was the obvious conclusion.

Tuesday was contemplating her next move when the door to her stateroom suddenly slid open and two men entered. They both wore black uniforms that displayed the familiar GenetiX 'X' logo.

"Finally decided to wake up, eh?" said the shorter of the two men. He had a large nose and a beard that was trimmed low on his face. His accent was strange, and she couldn't place it.

"Where am I?" Tuesday asked.

"I'll ask the questions," was his curt reply. "Give me the answers I'm looking for and you can leave. What did Hawker tell you?"

"Hawker?"

"Yes, Hawker. Don't play stupid with me."

"I do not remember. I was sufficiently intoxicated at the time that I only vaguely recall an encounter which I presumed was an alcohol induced hallucination."

"That's a very convenient answer, but I don't believe you're telling the truth. Care to try again?"

"What fabrication would you have me relate to you that would satisfy you, because anything I would tell would surely be a complete fantasy."

"You sure use a lot of big words for a little girl," he replied with a mock sigh. "I guess we'll just have to do this the hard way. Karl, will you kindly hand me the neurobaton?"

The other man handed him a shiny, half-meter long black staff.

"This may not inflict any real physical damage, but it will cause you unimaginably intense pain," he said as he brandished the staff. "Karl, restrain her while I demonstrate."

Karl grabbed Tuesday from behind and held her with his gloved hands. The other man stepped forward and pointed the neurobaton at her left breast.

"Last chance," he said. His expression was gleeful, as if he looked forward to torturing her.

Tuesday had to mentally compensate for Venus' heavier 0.8g before rolling forward and flinging Karl over her and into the extended neurobaton. Karl landed on top of the other man, sandwiching the energized baton between them. His gloves might have been insulated against the baton's effects, but their uniforms obviously weren't. Their collective screams of agony filled the compartment as they writhed together on the floor. Eventually they both grew silent, although they continued to twitch for what must have been several minutes before finally ceasing to move.

She examined the now still bodies, noting the old-fashioned identification cards they both wore on lanyards. It was probably already outdated technology when the station was constructed, but far more economical than the then available DNA scanners for an already over-budget project. Both men wore low-cut boots with insulated soles, suggesting they might be needed to safely move about wherever she was. She appropriated the smaller man's boots, which fortunately were only slightly too large for her.

Tuesday carefully extracted both of their identification cards, then used one of them to open the door to her cell and exit. The hallway she entered looked familiar, but then they all looked the same in Futuroscope. The color coding and signage indicated that she was in 'B' quadrant, which she recalled was leased by GenetiX. The numbering on the doors indicated to her which direction led to the abandoned 'C' and 'D' quadrants of the torus, and which lead back to 'A' quadrant and her crew.

The shouts from the direction of 'A' quadrant suggested to her that flight in the opposite direction was preferable, so she ran toward 'C' quadrant. Despite her in-transit adaption to Venus' 0.8G, she found that her endurance was limited and that she was tiring faster than normal as she ran. Her ill-fitting boots were further slowing her down, so she jerked them off and carried them as she continued to run barefoot. At least the torus' curvature limited line-of-sight, preventing her pursuers from seeing or stunning her.

She saw the bulkhead gradually come into view as the hallway curved upward. There was some sort of warning sign posted on the pressure door in the bulkhead. She reached the door uncharacteristically out of breath. The sign read:

WARNING

DANGEROUS ENVIRONMENT

AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY

ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK

Tuesday observed that the sign used the term 'dangerous' rather than 'hazardous' or 'toxic'. It didn't indicate that any special protection was needed to enter nor were there any biohazard or radioactivity cautions.

The distant shouts echoing through the hall behind her indicated that her pursuers were approaching rapidly. She decided to take her chances by entering 'C' quadrant and swiped one of the cards over the scanner. It didn't work.

She took a deep breath and swiped the second card she'd confiscated from the shorter man. This time the door slid open with a hiss revealing a short hallway with a second doorway at the end. It also bore a warning sign:

CAUTION

EXTREME TEMPERATURE ≥55º C AHEAD

RESTRICT OCCUPANCY

TO 15 MINUTES OR LESS

Notify Your Supervisor Before Entering

It _was_ an airlock, but not the type used for moving from an atmosphere to a hard-vacuum like on _Orchid_. She'd seen these before back on Mars. They were utilized in hospitals and some greenhouses to separate different zones of temperature and humidity and prevent atmospheric mixing that could result in cross-contamination. That meant that conditions on the other side were at least tolerable without a hard suit.

With her only other option being certain recapture if she remained at her present location, Tuesday slipped the boots back on her feet as a safety precaution and then passed through the second door into 'C' quadrant. It felt as though she was like walking into a sauna. Hot, dry (but luckily breathable) air enveloped her, but that was less of a shock than the incredible sight that greeted her disbelieving eyes.

The interior of the torus had been completely gutted beyond the bulkhead to create a single, large open space that curved gently upward in the distance. What appeared to be old lava flows covered the 'ground' before her, and the 'sky' above her was filled yellowish clouds. Clusters of strange plants that resembled cacti were visible in the distance.

Tuesday stepped forward. She could feel the intense heat of the surface even through her insulated boots. Walking on the rough 'lava flows' would have been impossible barefoot. Was this GenetiX or Gravon's idea of what a 'terraformed' Venus would resemble? If so, no human would ever want to live here or even could live there.

She struck out across the rocky surface, noting a sort of path marked by meter-high fluorescent poles at regular intervals. Hopefully, the path would lead her to the 'D' quadrant bulkhead. If she could reach the abandoned section of the station, she could make her way back to 'A' quadrant.

That is, if she didn't die from hyperthermia first.

CHAPTER 51

The scene in Marionneaux's office was tense. Lo was nervously pacing back and forth – I'd never seen him this upset before. Ellie was crying softly, and John and I just sat there in stunned silence. Marie was seated at her desk and talking on her 'face in hushed tones to one of her staff. She finally ended her conversation and addressed Lo. Her face was ashen.

"GenetiX security found Tuesday's 'face and sandals in one of their employee's quarters," she announced hesitantly in a low voice. There was no sign of her, though."

"What about the employee?" I asked.

"He didn't report for his shift. They're searching for him as well. They determined that he talked with her in the bar and they'd gone to his apartment after she escorted Ms. Tanner back to her suite."

"It is not like my daughter to go anywhere with a stranger that she meets in a bar," Lo remarked.

"The bartender told GenetiX security that they acted as if they knew each other," Marie replied.

"Who was the dude?" John asked.

"His name was John Hawker. He was a research assistant from Mars. He hadn't adapted well to life on this station and was having psychological issues."

"What sort of issues?"

Marie hesitated. "He was becoming delusional and believed in wild conspiracy theories. He was scheduled to leave Futuroscope on the next staff rotation."

"You said he was from Mars," I said. "Is it possible that he was from Sagan City and Tuesday knew him?"

"She had a friend when she was at the university whom I recall was named John, but that is a fairly common name," Lo replied.

"Ain't _that_ common," John remarked with a hurt expression on his face.

I didn't say anything else because the writer in me was trying to fit the pieces together in a way that made sense. There were disturbing similarities between Tuesday's disappearance and Helen Black's abduction when we were back on Mars. GenetiX wasn't a behemoth supercorp like Exodyne, but it had a lot to lose if it turned out that their research wasn't producing anything beneficial as Marie had hinted and Gravon cancelled their contract.

I usually dislike it when writers recycle plots (even though I've been guilty of it myself on occasion), but I also know that incidents in real life tended to occur again and again. Miles Kincaid came immediately to mind. They'd thought he was nuts, too. What if Hawker wasn't delusional and was really on to something? What if he had tried to tell Tuesday what he knew and they'd both been abducted?

Okay, this isn't an _Out to the Void_ script. I told myself that before I started down this wormhole, I needed to consider the simplest explanation which was that Hawker was in fact suffering from a psychological disorder resulting from his failure to adapt to life on the station. For all I knew, Hawker could be holed-up somewhere with Tuesday and 'protecting' her from whatever imaginary demons he believed were after them.

The problem with that particular scenario was that Tuesday was both highly intelligent and a skilled martial artist. If she suspected Hawker was mentally unhinged, she'd have no problem getting away from him unless he'd incapacitated her. Ellie said that they'd both consumed a potent local concoction called a 'Melt Down'. Based on Ellie's own experience, Tuesday could have been sufficiently drunk that she wouldn't have had either the ability or the better judgment to resist Hawker.

Yeah, the simple explanation was that Tuesday got really drunk, ran off with Hawker and was still passed out somewhere. At least that's what I hoped.

CHAPTER 52

Marie suggested that we all go back to our suites. She pointed out to us that the old station was very large, and that a thorough search could take awhile. She told us that she'd let us know as soon as she learned anything new. We left her office and returned to our quarters, but I didn't feel like just sitting around and decided to go for a walk.

The scenery on the residential deck was monotonous, so I took the elevator to the commercial level. A cold beer sounded pretty good right to me right about now, so I headed for the bar that I'd previously visited. I was about ten meters from the door when a familiar voice reached my ears.

"Pete, please wait! I must talk with you!" shouted Monique. She was still wearing the same tube top and slacks that she'd been wearing when I last saw her but had shed her shoes and was running barefoot to catch me.

"Look, I already told you," I began, but she cut me off.

"No, you must listen to me!" she insisted. "I know what happened to Tuesday."

"How do you know about Tuesday?" I demanded.

"I told you once before that very little happens on this old station that I do not know about," was her reply. "The man she was talking to in the bar, John Hawker, must have told her what he told me."

"Oh? What exactly did he tell you?"

"I will tell you everything, but not out here in the open. I think the bar will be much less conspicuous. You were going for a drink, no?"

I followed Monique into the bar, wondering what she was up to this time. We sat down in a booth and she ordered two waters.

"I need you to be clear headed for what I'm about to tell you," she began. "I didn't believe Hawker's fantastic story, which is why I haven't brought it up before. Now I think he may have been telling the truth."

"What are you talking about?"

"What do you know about the Saudi colony on Venus?"

"Only that they live in a supposedly fabulous giant domed city."

Monique leaned forward and stared directly at me. "Yes, they once did. Their dome started to fail eleven years ago after a massive seismic tremor and they had to be evacuated. GenetiX assisted in their evacuation. They were brought to the station. Most left for Luna or the Belt, but some just disappeared."

"What do you mean?"

"They didn't leave, but they could not be located anywhere on the station, either."

"So, what happened to them?"

"Hawker told me that GenetiX was conducting experiments on humans using something he called DNAMs. The missing Saudis were the subject of their experiments."

"What kind of experiments?"

"He tried to explain it to me, but I am not a scientist. He said they were trying to meet Venus half-way, whatever that meant."

"Did he say what GenetiX was doing to the Saudis?"

"He told me that they wanted to make them so that they could live on Venus without having to terraform it all the way. He said that Venus would never be like the old Earth and it would always be too hot and dry for humans to survive there, so GenetiX wanted to change them so that they could live on what it would be someday."

What Monique was telling me sent chills up my spine. There were communities on Luna and in the Belt where 'mods' were socially acceptable, but despite their often-extreme superficial differences they still lived in atmospheres and temperatures which were considered 'Earth like' before the arrival of the Fat Lady. GenetiX was attempting to go way beyond that. They were trying to change humans into things that weren't really human anymore. It wasn't a new concept, but it was one that nobody had attempted because of the ethical and social ramifications. If that wasn't horrific enough, they were doing it to unwilling subjects!

"Why didn't you tell Dr. Marionneaux this?" I asked her.

"Do you think she would listen to me? Besides, Hawker made me promise not to tell anyone. He said if Dr. Echols ever found out that he told anyone about GenetiX' experiments that Echols would have him killed."

"C'mon, we've got to tell Dr. Marionneaux," I said as I grabbed Monique by her wrist and started to get up from our booth.

"It won't do any good," she protested. "Hawker tried to tell her, but she wouldn't believe him."

"Well, maybe she will now!"

CHAPTER 53

Tuesday estimated that she'd been walking for maybe ten minutes when she saw the odd- looking building ahead. It looked as though when the torus was gutted, a cube comprised of multiple decks was left in place. Whatever it was, the path she'd been following led toward it.

She briefly considered her options. She hadn't made as much progress as she'd hoped due to her ill-fitting boots. She was sweating profusely which was good, but if she didn't find water soon she would eventually stop sweating and overheat. The strange looking cacti she'd encountered all had hard surfaces that defied her attempts to break off a piece. She doubted she could make it all the way to 'D' quadrant or even back to 'B' quadrant in her present condition. The building seemed to be her best option, even if it meant risking recapture.

She approached the building. The GenetiX logo prominently adorned the front door with a sign below it that read:

VENUS PROJECT LABORATORIES

There was no scanner by the door, just a prominent button. She hesitated for a second and then pushed it. The door slid open to reveal an airlock like the one shed passed through when she entered the quadrant. She stepped inside and noted the second door at the end of the short hallway with a second button. She pushed it and the door behind her slid shut, then the door in front of her opened. She felt cool air envelop her. A pair of GenetiX security guards was waiting for her with their stunners drawn.

"Come with us," they ordered.

She was in no condition to resist, so she complied.

The building's interior was identical to the station's which suggested that it had in fact been a remnant of the gutted torus rather than purpose built. The hallway she was escorted down was wide with identical looking doors on either side, but all the ceiling lights worked, and everything had a cleaner, brighter appearance than the other parts of the station. She was prompted down a side corridor and through a door labeled "Showers". A woman with short brown hair was waiting by the door holding a bundle in her hand.

"This should fit you," she said as she handed Tuesday a folded orange jumpsuit bearing the GenetiX logo. You can leave your stuff outside the shower stall."

Tuesday didn't ever remember having a shower that felt so wonderful. The cool water reinvigorated her, and she drank as she showered. She stepped through the air curtain to dry off, combed her hair with her fingers and then dressed in the fresh jumpsuit. Her own jumpsuit and borrowed boots were conspicuously missing as she exited the shower stall.

The guards escorted her down the hall to section with small staterooms that had transparent doors. She was prompted into a vacant room and then the door shut behind her. The room was identical in size to the one she'd been held in earlier but featured a toilet and a sink in addition to a bunk.

She wondered if they would attempt to interrogate her again. They would undoubtedly take measures to restrain her next time. Recalling almost nothing from her encounter with John Hawker, she would have to endure whatever torture they administered until they were satisfied she in fact knew nothing. Then they would likely kill her.

CHAPTER 54

"Those are strong accusations that you're making," Marie said as she stared at us from the other side of her desk.

Monique turned to me and said, "See, I told you that she would not believe us."

" _Au contraire, madame_ ,[12]" Marie responded. "Hawker tells me a wild story about genetic experiments involving missing Saudis and then suddenly vanishes without a trace along with Ms. Phat after he visits with her in a bar. That's quite a coincidence, don't you think?"

"It stinks if you ask me, but I admit I'm biased in my opinions when it comes to big corporations," I replied.

"Ah yes, you're the famous independent spacer who brought down mighty Exodyne. Then again, you have a contract with Aratek for transporting 'sensitive' payloads, don't you?"

"Yes," I replied. "That was a reward of sorts from Jan Aradal after we rescued her from Pluto's Children. We receive a monthly retainer fee from Aratek and right-of-first-refusal on all sensitive payload deliveries."

"I knew that, Pete. Please don't be offended, but I know a lot about you. I made it my business to learn about you and your crew before you ever docked. I like to know who is visiting my station. In your case, that's not a bad thing at all since it told me you're not some anti-corporate _freetrader_ who is just trying to stir up dirt on GenetiX. I may not be their biggest fan, but they do pay their fair share of the rent and then some."

"No offense taken, Marie," I replied. We check out anything that's coming aboard _Orchid_. She's our home as well as our source of livelihood."

" _Alors!_ [13] Will you help us or not, Dr. Marionneaux?" Monique asked impatiently.

"What would you have me _do_ , Monique? I have only limited resources and am dependent upon GenetiX for security."

"You could call the Space Guard for assistance," she suggested.

"Why?" she asked and laughed. "They'll only become involved if it involves _interplanetary_ crime. Missing persons on a space station is a local matter. Even if they were to respond, GenetiX would not react favorably to having their operation disrupted by a Space Guard investigation that I instigated. GenetiX accounts for a substantial portion of our operating budget. Would you have me bite the hand that feeds us?"

"What if your 'meal ticket' is conducting illegal experiments on humans? Would you still not bite the hand that feeds?" I asked.

Marie leaned back in her chair and sighed heavily.

"If it can be proven that an experiment is being conducted on an individual without their contractual consent, then that would be a serious violation in most jurisdictions," she answered somewhat hesitantly.

"Including _this_ one?"

Marie paused before answering. "Yes. It would a violation of interplanetary law, which governs this station."

"That would trigger Space Guard intervention, correct?"

"Yes, it would. _"_

"So how do we get into 'B' quadrant?"

"Getting in there won't tell you anything, Pete. What you're looking for is probably in 'C' quadrant."

"Why?"

"I told you that I was indentured to GenetiX for ten long miserable years. I spent a good portion of that time enduring Echols' daily admonishments for my incompetence in the Venus Project Laboratories in 'C' quadrant."

"Wait, I thought you said 'C' and 'D' quadrants are abandoned."

Marie lowered her eyes and shook her head before answering.

"They're abandoned as far as the outside world is concerned," she finally replied. "Monique, could you please leave us? I need to speak with Pete alone."

Monique gave me a puzzled look, and then got up from her chair and left Marie's office.

Marie waited until the door had closed and then continued.

"When I was released from my contract, there was a condition that I not reveal anything about my activities while I was indentured or risk a lengthy stay on Penitence as a consequence. What I'm about to tell you is a violation of the terms of my release."

"Marie, I didn't know. I'm sorry."

"No, don't apologize. Do you remember why I told you I was sentenced here in the first place? The problem is that I did not learn my lesson. I traded one ethics violation for another. I was told, and I believed because I wanted to believe, that the research we were conducting here was all perfectly legal and endorsed by the interplanetary community at large. I was told that our test subjects were all volunteers and I believed that because it was convenient for me to believe rather than questioning what I was told. Even after I was released, I continued to believe that GenetiX' research was legitimate, albeit increasingly lacking in any meaningful results."

"Marie, just tell me how the 'eff do I get into 'C' quadrant."

"There's an old tubecar system that runs around the inner circumference of the torus' outer rim," she replied wearily. "It once carried personnel quickly to any part of the station. It broke down and was abandoned many years ago, but the tube can still be accessed by taking the elevator to the lowest level. You might be able to reach 'C' quadrant through the tube."

"You mean we can walk through the tube?"

"Either that, or you can ride the pedalcars that are down there if they're still useable. Maintenance crews once used them to get around after the tubecar quit running. You'll need to take lights with you. It's pitch-black in there."

"Nobody has to know you told me this."

"Pete, how would you ever find out about the tubecar system if I didn't tell you?"

"I'll just give Phineas credit. Trust me, he's really good at figuring out stuff like this," I said as I started to get up from my chair to leave.

"Wait, I have something else that you might need," Marie said getting up from her chair. She walked to a door behind her and tapped in a code on the old-fashioned key pad. The door slid open and the light inside the room flickered on. From my limited vantage point it looked like a long supply closet of some sort. She emerged a minute later holding what looked like a pair of old-fashioned stun pistols.

"Obviously, you didn't get _these_ from me either," she said dropping them on her desk. "Before GenetiX took over station security, Futuroscope had its own dedicated police force. These stun guns may be old, but they should still hold a charge and they'll take down an enraged sumo wrestler."

I picked up a pistol and examined it.

"Do you have any more of these?" I asked.

"Well, that depends," She said raising an eyebrow. "How many more do you _need_?"

[12] French for "On the contrary, madam."

[13] French for "So!'

CHAPTER 55

"Is this a private party, or may I join you?"

The question came from a white jumpsuit-clad Monique as she exited the elevator behind us. We'd taken it to the 'lowest' (read outermost) level of the torus to the old tubecar boarding platform in 'A' quadrant. The entrance to the tube was blocked by a long abandoned tubecar, and John was talking to Phineas on his 'face discussing how to get passed the car.

"Monique, what are you doing here?" I asked her.

"I came to help you," she replied.

"Thank you. I appreciate your offer, but unless you know how to move this old tubecar out of the way then I'm afraid your good intentions are wasted."

"Oh, you don't need to move the car. Just open the door and board it, then use the emergency hatches at either end to exit."

"How do you know so much about the tubecars?" I asked.

"I've been down here a time or two."

"Hey, she's right! We can get into the tube!" John shouted. "Dang, it's 'effin' hot down here!"

Ellie and I turned on our headlamps and slowly entered the tubecar's dark interior. Monique followed us, donning a pair of goggles that I guessed must have been night vision capable.

"Where did you get _those_?" I asked her.

"GenetiX. A client gave them to me in exchange for my services. They've been very useful on occasion. What about your stunners?"

"Oh, we just found them when we were rummaging through Dr. Marionneaux's closet and thought they might come in handy," I answered.

"I don't suppose you have an extra one of those for _moi´_?

As a matter of fact, I did. I'd originally procured four of the stun pistols from Marie thinking that Lo would be accompanying us and then changed my mind. Lo had not been himself since Tuesday disappeared. He was uncharacteristically irritable and forgetful. I knew it was because he was worried sick about his missing daughter, but the last thing I needed was someone whose head wasn't fully in the game participating in an undertaking that was at best risky and at worst outright dangerous. In the end I'd put him aboard _Orchid_ with Phineas. If things didn't go smoothly and GenetiX was on to us, at least they could get away.

"Monique, can I trust you not to use it unless you're about to be killed or captured?" I asked her.

"I'm a convicted felon, Pete. Just holding a stunner gets me in trouble. Using one is a one-way ticket to Penitence. What do you think?"

I pulled the stun pistol from my satchel and handed it to her.

"Okay, so here's the plan. We get inside the Venus Project Lab in 'C' quadrant and find evidence that GenetiX is conducting illegal experiments. We 'face that to the Space Guard. They come here, arrest Echols and his staff, and then turn the station inside out and find Tuesday and Hawker. Then we all live happily ever after."

"You seem very sure that we'll find evidence that they're conducting illegal experiments."

"Based on what Dr. Marionneaux told me, that shouldn't be too difficult. She said that Echols turned the Saudi's into monsters."

"Hawker told me the same thing, only I didn't believe him," Monique replied remorsefully. "If Dr. Marionneaux knew GenetiX was conducting illegal experiments, why didn't she report them to the Space Guard?"

"She would be sent to Penitence for violating the terms of her release if she reported them," I replied. "There was a condition that she not reveal anything about her activities while she was indentured and working for GenetiX."

"The poor woman! I never knew that she carried such a terrible secret. It must have been an awful burden."

I simply nodded in response to Monique's remark. I knew that wasn't the real reason. Whether she wanted to admit it or not, Marie was an accomplice. She may have convinced herself that she was just following orders or that the Saudis were willing volunteers, but she was just as guilty as Echols. I guessed that her willingness to help us now was her way of trying to atone for past sins.

A putrid stench that I was at a loss to describe suddenly filled my nostrils. It reminded me of something that had rotted and then whatever was left over had rotted again. The stench got even worse as we exited the car through the emergency hatch that faced 'B' quadrant and stepped into the tunnel, which had probably three to four centimeters of water standing in it.

"I wonder if this air is safe for us to breathe?" I asked John.

"My 'face's canary says it's okay. Oxygen content is around 21 percent which is station normal, but the temperature is 38ºC and the humidity is high enough that we could almost go swimmin' in it. We didn't go through no airlock, so the air we're breathin' is the same as the rest of the station but just hotter, wetter, and very stinky."

"That's almost reassuring," I said as I panned my headlamp around the tunnel's interior. What I saw were light panels that probably hadn't functioned in decades and creepy-looking slime covering walls over which thin streams of water ran down. If I ever wrote a horror-themed episode of _Out to the Void,_ this place would make a great on-location set.

"Hey, we found the pedalcars!" exclaimed Ellie. "They're all parked here ahead of the tubecar."

My headlamp found a trio of pedalcars parked a few meters ahead of the derelict tubecar. Two looked useable, but the third had apparently been scavenged for repair parts.

"C'mon Monique, let's go catch some bad guys!" Ellie shouted as she jumped into one of the pedalcars.

" _Oui mon ami_ , I'm with you!" Monique answered as she jumped in beside Ellie. The two began pedaling furiously and the pedalcar lurched forward, quickly disappearing into the darkness.

"Hey, wait for us!" I yelled.

"I dunno what the heck has gotten into her lately," John complained. "Sometimes I think that dang pill we gave her to make her into a doctor did some other things to her brain."

"Let's try to catch up with them," I suggested as I slid onto the other pedalcar's seat. John seated himself beside me and we both pushed down hard on the pedals. There was a loud pop, and suddenly the pedals spun freely with no resistance.

"Uh, I think we just broke the drive belt," I told John.

"So, what do we do now?" he asked. "How would Jack Parsec handle this?"

I shined my light back on the remaining pedalcar, which among other things was also missing its drive belt.

"I guess he'd get his feet wet," I replied.

CHAPTER 56

Tuesday estimated that roughly forty-eight hours had elapsed since her capture when they moved her from her cell into the cage in the laboratory. She based this on the cell's day/night cycle and the number of times they'd fed her. The cage had closely spaced bars. After they pushed her into the cage, a fine mist descended from the ceiling that caused her jumpsuit to evaporate, leaving her nude. Apparently, she'd graduated from 'prisoner' to 'laboratory specimen'.

The security guards brought John Hawker in a short time later and installed him in the cage opposite her. The mist disrobed him as well. Tuesday was relieved to see that he was apparently alive and well but concerned that they now shared a similar fate.

"Tuesday? Oh Elvis, please don't tell me that they got you too!" Hawker lamented once they were alone.

"I was captured, escaped, and caused myself to be recaptured out of necessity," Tuesday replied.

"What necessity are you talking about?"

"Conditions outside of this facility are at the limits of short-term survival even for a physically-fit human. I allowed myself to be recaptured to escape certain death from hyperthermia."

"Tuesday, you probably should have stayed outside. Don't you see that they're going to turn us both into monsters?"

"Not if we escape."

"Escape? How? We're locked in cages!" John shouted hysterically.

"Please calm yourself, John. We are locked in cages, but they are equipped with rather rudimentary mechanical locks."

"What are you saying?"

"Please excuse me for a moment," Tuesday said as she turned her back on Hawker. She regurgitated the tiny sphere that she'd swallowed when she was recently captured. She always carried it, frequently moving it around her person to avoid detection. To the untrained eye it might have been a small, shiny ball bearing from some long-obsolete device. In reality it was a swarm of tiny dust-sized microbots capable of reforming its configuration as needed. She rolled the sphere between her index finger and thumb, and it reconfigured itself into a slender rod. She turned and deftly inserted the rod through narrow bars into the cage's lock. She rolled it again and it morphed into a shape corresponding to that of the tumblers as it depressed them.

She rotated the rod and the cage unlocked.

"How did you do that?" Hawker exclaimed.

"It is a very old trick originally perfected by the great nineteenth century illusionist and escape artist, Harry Houdini. My father taught the trick to me, having mastered it himself," Tuesday explained as she moved quickly to release Hawker from his cage.

"I always knew you were amazing," he said as he stood up and covered his privates with his hands.

"You do not need to conceal your genitalia from me, John. I'm quite familiar with the appearance of male sex organs, and yours in particular."

"Yeah, I guess you would be. Sexing with you was always great."

"You never failed to satisfy me either, but now is not the time for romantic reveries. We must formulate an escape plan. Is there another egress point aside from the one leading to the dangerous environment that I passed through to reach this facility?"

"Uh, if you're asking me if there's another way in or out besides the Future Venus simulation, then yeah. There's the way they brought me in, which is through the skywalk. When they gutted 'C' quadrant they left the hall that ran along the top deck intact."

That explained why not everyone in 'C' quadrant wore boots with insulated soles, she thought.

"How do we reach the skywalk?" Tuesday asked.

"By the elevator. It's in the middle of the building and goes all the way up to the hub like it always did before GenetiX remodled. But we wouldn't ever get passed the skywalk level. Security stops and checks everybody."

"What about the lowest level? That must also still be intact."

"If you mean the old tubecar tunnel, it is but nobody goes down there."

"Why not?"

"Because that's where GenetiX dumped all their earlier DNAM experiments, and some of them are still alive. They're very scary and they make perfect watchdogs. They're not something you'd want to ever have to meet, that's why."

CHAPTER 57

"I think it's broken," Ellie remarked. They had coasted to a stop after there was an ominous pop. The pedals still spun freely but didn't move them forward anymore.

"Something did break," Monique remarked as she noted the broken belt dangling from the drive sprocket. "I guess we'll have to walk from here on."

"It can't be that much farther to the 'C' quadrant station," suggested Ellie. "We passed 'B' quadrant a long time ago."

"It is hard to judge distances in this darkness."

"I timed how long it took for us to get to 'B' quadrant station," Ellie replied. "The station's spokes are all the same distance apart, so it should take just as long for us to get to 'C' as it did to get to 'B'."

"Except that we no longer have wheels."

"We can't be more than a few minutes away now." Ellie said as she removed her sandals and stepped into the shallow water. Monique followed suit and discarded her slippers.

"At least the water is warm and the floor is smooth," she said.

"Make that slippery!" exclaimed Ellie as she almost lost her footing. "Be careful where you step, it's slimy."

"I wonder what happened to Pete and John," Monique asked worriedly. "They never caught up with us."

"Maybe they broke down too."

"Shouldn't we wait for them?"

"We'll wait for them at the 'C' quadrant tubecar platform. That way we won't be standing in water the whole time."

As they sloshed barefoot though the blackened tunnel, Ellie's headlamp shone on a welcomed sight. The 'C' quadrant landing was just ahead. So was a wide, grated drain in the tube's floor identical to the one they'd passed at 'B' quadrant station that apparently captured the accumulated water in the tube to prevent it from flooding any deeper.

She might have wished she'd seen it sooner. The grate suddenly erupted with a mass of writhing tentacles. With startling swiftness, one of the long, snake-like tentacles ensnared Ellie.

"What the 'eff!" shouted Ellie as she drew her stun pistol. She fired into the source of the tentacles. Her shot caused the nightmarish creature to release her, but not before she'd also suffered feedback from the stun blast through the tentacle that was still looped around her.

A second tentacle whipped around Monique. Having witnessed the outcome of Ellie's use of her stunner, she drew the contraband vibroblade that she secretly carried in a concealed pocket in her jumpsuit and slashed savagely at the encircling appendage. Severing the tentacle elicited a hideous gurgling sound from the thing, causing it to promptly withdraw back into the darkness beyond the range of her goggles and leaving behind a foul stench that reminded her of rotting food as it retreated.

"Ellie are you okay?" she called out. There was no response.

"ELLIE!" she shouted over and over. Her voice echoed through the tunnel, but there was still no reply. " _Merde!_ [14] Where the 'eff are you?"

Ellie would have answered if she could. A tentacle had wrapped her from ankles to neck and then shoved its end into her mouth to gag her. The thing was dragging her swiftly through the shallow water. She'd lost her headlamp and couldn't see anything in the tube's inky blackness.

" _It's going to eat me!"_ she thought to herself.

Suddenly the creature lifted her upward and deposited her on a hard, flat surface. The tentacle uncoiled, and she heard the thing slither away.

She was alone. She felt around with her hands and found an edge. Extending her arm over the edge revealed a vertical wall but no floor. She must be on some sort of ledge in the side of the tube. She felt in the other direction and her fingers found another wall extending upward behind her.

Blinding light pierced the darkness. The 'wall' was in fact a door which had opened. Someone stood in the doorway, silhouetted by the bright light from behind.

"Well, look at what Cuddles brought us," said a woman's voice. She wore the black uniform of Genitix security and was tall and muscular. She reached down and pulled Ellie to her feet.

"Look at her jumpsuit," said a man's voice from behind the woman. "She's from that tramp freighter that docked here."

"I'll bet you were looking for your missing crewmate, weren't you?" the woman said as she ushered Ellie through the open doorway. A second guard placed his hand behind Ellie's back and guided her ahead of him. "Sneaking around the tube is a bad idea. People have gone missing down here and never been found."

"Do you know where Tuesday is?" Ellie asked as the guards escorted her down a narrow corridor that apparently paralleled the tube.

"Tuesday? Is that your little friend's name? As a matter of fact, I do. Would you like to see her?"

"You found her? Yes! Is she alright?"

"You can see for yourself. We'll take you to her."

[14] French for "Shit!"

CHAPTER 58

"Somebody is coming. Quick, get back in your cage!"

When John didn't move fast enough, Tuesday shoved him in and shut the door behind him. She barely made it back into her own cage and pulled the door closed before the two guards escorting Ellie rounded the corner.

"Is that your friend?" the woman guard asked.

"Tuesday? Elvis, why are you in a cage? What is going on?" Ellie asked bewildered.

"Didn't I tell you that people have gone missing down here and never been found? It's too bad that you also went missing searching for your friend."

The male guard open the door to the empty cage beside Tuesday's and started to shove Ellie inside. Ellie abruptly turned, surprising him with a _jujitsu_ move Tuesday had taught her and hurled him into the cage. The woman guard instantly went for her stunner, but Tuesday forcefully opened her cage door into her and knocked the stunner from her hand. Before the guard could retrieve her weapon, Tuesday brought her down grunting with a well aimed punch. She then used the woman's stunner on both of the guards to ensure that they wouldn't be waking up anytime soon.

"Tuesday! Why are you naked?" Ellie asked.

"GenetiX intended to use John Hawker and I as test subjects in their nefarious experiments," Tuesday explained. "They disrobed us both in preparation. Fortunately, these guards will provide us with suitable clothing. I believe the male guard's uniform will fit John adequately, but I will have to adapt the other guard's uniform to my smaller frame."

"She's a big gal. You could probably just wear her shirt and it'd be long enough to cover your privates."

"I was thinking the same thing, Ms. Ellie. With an improvised belt it should make a functional robe," Tuesday said as she proceeded to remove the female guard's shirt.

Tuesday and John dressed and then with Ellie's help dragged the now shirtless woman guard into Tuesday's empty cage. Once her and the male guard's cages were locked, Tuesday pushed the button that caused the clothing dissolving mist to descend on them.

"An added safety precaution," she said. "Now we should decide upon our next course of action. John Hawker and I were considering our options when we were interrupted by you and your guard's arrival."

"We can't go up," Hawker said. "There's too much security."

"Then we must go down."

"I told you nobody goes down there, Tuesday. That old tube is crawling with tentacloids."

"What are tentacloids?" Tuesday asked.

"They're the results of GenetiX' early experiments to modify human DNA and cause rapid mutation. They weren't trying to make future Venusians, just figure out how to make the process work without killing their test subjects."

"That's how I got here," Ellie interjected. "One of those things with tentacles attacked me and Monique when we were getting close to the tubecar station. It caught me, but it didn't try to eat me."

"It wouldn't," Hawker said chuckling. "It used to be human. The tentacloids are what's left of the Saudis who didn't leave the station after the dome failure and didn't get made into future Venusians. It might have tried to sex you, though."

"Yuck!" exclaimed Ellie.

"What are the future Venusians?" Tuesday asked Hawker.

"They're Dr. Echols' pride and joy. Imagine something that can withstand temperatures of over 100º C and thrive on less than ten percent oxygen. Venus isn't there yet, but Gravon believes it's attainable. Echols invented a way to transform humans so that they could live comfortably under those conditions.

"They already exist?"

"Yes, they're in a separate facility closer to 'D' quadrant. They had to build a special containment for them because of the higher temperature and pressure. We call them 'rock people' because they look like they're made out of living rock."

"That's horrible," Ellie commented.

"That's interesting, but we need to focus our attention on escaping," Tuesday commented. "Ms. Ellie was able to reach the 'C' quadrant tubecar platform before being captured by the tentacloid, so their range of operation must be purposely limited to the vicinity of the platform. We now possess two stunners, which should have some effectiveness against the creatures if we encounter them since they were once human."

"I shot the one that grabbed me with my stunner," Ellie volunteered. "I passed out because its tentacle was wrapped around me when I shot it and it caught me anyway."

"That makes sense. You were in essence shooting yourself, although the effect of the stun charge on you would have been reduced by the mass of the tentacloid."

"So, what's our plan?" Hawker asked.

"We descend to the tube, avoiding contact with GenetiX personnel, and use it to return to 'A' quadrant."

"Works for me," said Hawker.

"It's really, really dark down there. We won't be able to see where we're going without lights," Ellie informed them.

Tuesday glanced around the lab. They needed flashlights or portable lanterns of some sort. Walking half the circumference of Futuroscope in total darkness wasn't an attractive scenario but might become necessary.

"Ms. Ellie, you walked here through the tube. If we had to walk back to 'A" quadrant blind, could we accomplish that?"

"I suppose we could. We could follow the track. We'd just have to watch out for the big drains in front of the tubecar boarding platforms so that we don't fall in, but they'll also tell us when we're home."

"We won't be able to see the tentacloids," said Hawker.

"We just need a light source that illuminates the tube in the vicinity of the platform as we exit," Tuesday answered as she glanced around. "This laboratory must contain combustible materials that could be used to construct torches."

"Just about everything that you either can't eat on this station is either fire retardant or non-combustible," said Hawker in response.

"I guess nobody's going to really care if I'm walking around in my skimpies in the dark," Ellie commented as she proceeded to doff her jumpsuit. It was one that Tuesday had purchased for her on Luna for wearing dirtside and was made of cotton fiber rather than a fire-retardant synthetic.

"You probably could have waited until we reached the tubecar platform before undressing," Tuesday suggested.

CHAPTER 59

I'd been sloshing along alone through the dark for what seemed like an eternity but was in reality only fifteen minutes. I was alone because John had slipped and fallen and sprained his right ankle. He could hardly walk, so we decided it would be better if he joined Lo and Phineas aboard _Orchid_ and I went on by myself. I helped him hobble the short distance back to the elevator and then struck out for 'C' quadrant. I took his headlamp with me as a spare.

I'd almost slipped myself several times and was having to walk slowly, so I wasn't making very good time. Even still, I figured that I must be getting close to the 'C' quadrant tubecar platform. Futuroscope was a fairly large space station, but it wasn't Market. At a normal pace you could in theory easily walk the entire circumference in half an hour.

My headlamp captured something in its beam that resembled a very large snake in the shallow water ahead of me. It was writhing and twitching as if it had been injured. I approached it carefully, stun pistol at the ready, and took aim. Then I noticed it wasn't a snake at all but a long, severed tentacle. I recorded a short 'cast of the repulsive thing on my 'face and sent it to _Orchid._ Let Echols explain this.

I guessed that whatever the tentacle had previously belonged to already had a run-in with Ellie and Monique. I'd passed their abandoned pedalcar only a minute or so earlier, but there was no sign of the girls. I had hoped they had the sense to wait for me at the 'C' quadrant platform, but the sight of the empty platform in my headlamp revealed that wasn't the case. So much for good planning.

I climbed onto the platform, happy to get out of the water-logged tunnel. Except for the slime-covered 'C' placard, the platform looked identical to the one in 'A' quadrant. From the looks of things, it hadn't been used in a long time. That worried me. If Ellie and Monique had made it here, I would have expected to see their footprints on the platform. Had the creature that owned the severed tentacle gotten the upper hand?

I was debating my next move when a light shone above the door at the entrance to the platform. The next instant the door opened and a lone GenetiX security guard stepped forward, stunner drawn. I shot first and got lucky. He must have had some idea that I was out here, otherwise why would he have chosen now to open the door? I panned my headlamp around and it caught a tube-aimed security camera mounted above the platform in its beam. Either the gadget had night vision, or my headlamp had given me away, but my presence was no longer a secret.

I had an idea. I didn't know how much time I had left before another guard showed up, so I had to work fast. The guard looked to be about my height and weight, so I swapped my jumpsuit for his uniform. It was an old trick and a plot device I'd used in more than one _Out to the Void_ script, but it would buy me some time to try to locate the girls – if they were here – and find the evidence I needed to prove Echols was conducting illegal experiments.

I had a disturbing thought as I hurried toward the elevator: Why hadn't Marie warned me about the tentacle thing? Was that what she was talking about when she told me, _"What you're looking for is probably in 'C' quadrant."_ If that's all there was in the way of 'evidence' then I was probably looking at a nice long vacation on Penitence for trespassing, armed assault, breaking and entering, and a few other offenses I hadn't committed yet. There had to be something big going on in 'C' quadrant, otherwise why the need for security?

I stepped into the elevator car. Pick a level, any level? No, there was a directory on the wall above the control panel. Level eight was the main laboratory. Level nine was restricted. Why 'restricted'? Level nine it is then.

I'll admit I was disappointed when the elevator door slid open and my eyes weren't greeted by something that looked like a clandestine top-secret research facility. The door to the supposedly 'restricted' lab didn't even have a keypad or a card reader.

Before I could open the door, it opened, and a very familiar face emerged.

"Ellie?" I said pleasantly startled. "What are you doing here and . . . uh, _why_ are you running around in your skimpies?"

"Captain Pete! You made it! Oh, we had to use my jumpsuit to make torches. Everything on this station except for food, candy wrappers, and dental floss won't burn. Where's John?"

"I'm right behind you," Hawker said obviously confused by Ellie's question.

"Not you, my husband. His name is John, too."

"John slipped and sprained his ankle," I told her. "He's okay, but he was having trouble walking and I thought it would be better if he joined Lo and Phineas aboard _Orchid_.

"Why are you wearing a GenetiX security guard's uniform, Captain Pete?" Tuesday asked me.

"Well, it's nice to see you too, Tuesday. I'm glad you're okay," I replied. Then I added, "Apparently we all received the same 'dress like a GenetiX security guard message' except for Ellie."

"I'm sorry Captain Pete. I lost my 'face after the tentacloid grabbed me in the tube and didn't get the message," Ellie said apologetically.

"That was just a joke, Ellie. There really wasn't any message," I replied. "Please don't feel bad."

"Captain Pete was making an attempt at humor to relieve the stress of our current situation," Tuesday explained to Ellie.

"Seriously, I 'borrowed' this uniform so that I could get in here without being noticed and gather evidence that Echols has been conducting illegal experiments," I added. "Where's Monique?"

"We got separated in the tube after I got caught by the tentacloid," Ellie replied.

"Do you think it got her?"

"I don't know."

"Why do you require further evidence that Echols has been conducting illegal experiments?" Tuesday asked. "It is obvious from our recent experiences that GenetiX is conducting experiments on non-consenting subjects."

"I can certainly testify to that," added Hawker eagerly.

"I have a short recording of a severed tentacle," I said. "We've got your testimonies, but they would carry a lot more weight with more hard evidence."

"Pretend you're a real GenetiX security guard and go into the lab," Hawker suggested. "The 'subjects' in the cages will give you all the evidence you need."

"There are test subjects in there?"

"Well, not exactly. They're the guards that we got our uniforms from. They'll probably spill their guts trying to convince you they don't belong in those cages."

"Let's do this," I suggested. "I'll go in and try to get the guards to sing like canaries and you all try to find Monique. Don't linger too long in the tube, though. I wouldn't want to have to try to find my way back to 'A' quadrant in the dark after those torches burn out."

Then I remembered the spare headlamp that I got from John after I helped him limp back to the 'A' quadrant elevator. I'd stuck it on the unconscious security guard after I'd traded clothes with him so that he'd look the part of a tube skulking trespasser.

"There's a stunned GenetiX security guard wearing my jumpsuit down on the tubecar platform," I told them. "He's wearing a headlamp. Take it. That way, at least one of you will be able to see ahead of you and warn the others if there's trouble."

"Good idea Captain Pete," Ellie replied. She headed towards the elevator followed by Tuesday and Hawker. I entered the lab.

Cages. Rows and rows of what appeared to be empty rabbit cages greeted my eyes. The lab had an odd 'animal smell', although animals were not in evidence. Judging from the cries for help coming from around the corner, there was a human presence. I put my 'face on auto-record mode and then stretched it just enough that it could video from my vest pocket.

I drew my stunner and walked cautiously around the corner toward the source of the voices. I wanted to look the part of a wary GenetiX security guard who'd just been assigned to the station.

"Shut up or I'll put you in time out!" I shouted, brandishing my stunner.

"Let us out!" the woman in the first cage pleaded. "We're security like you, not test subjects."

"Uh huh, and I'm Captain Jack Parsec. Try again."

"No, we really are security guards!" the man protested. "I'm Nall Envoyd and that's Cheri Bohm. Just 'face Orson and he'll confirm our identities!"

"Are you effin' nuts, Nall?" the woman countered. "If Orson finds out we got ourselves caged by those freetrader bitches he'll just leave us in here. I've got no desire to be an 'effin rock person."

"So, you'll both be turned into rock people?" I asked innocently.

"Hell yes! You 'eff-up bad enough and you get 'voluntered' to become a 'future Venusian'. Didn't they tell you that in orientation?"

"I must have slept through that part," I responded.

"Don't feel bad. I did too," replied Nall.

"You're both worthless," snapped Bohm. "Elvis, I don't know why they keep hiring rejects like you two."

"I thought the pay and benefits were pretty good," I said staying in character.

"Me too," Nall chimed in.

"Dear Elvis, please give me strength, for I am surrounded by idiots," lamented Bohm.

"Nah, just one," I remarked casually as I turned and walked back towards the door to the lab. I figured that I had enough evidence now to convince anybody that Echols had been up to no good.

I opened the door to the hallway and saw a stunner pointed at me, and then everything went black.

CHAPTER 60

Things were looking bad for Jack Parsec. Our hero had been captured by the evil Empress Smegma and imprisoned in her dungeon. Suspended by stout manacles that tightly encircled his wrists, Jack could only watch helplessly as the giant mutant leeches slithered ominously toward him . . .

* * *

Okay, so that was one of my very early episodes. Certainly not my best work by any stretch, but I also didn't have John as a consultant back then. I'd missed the mark on a few details. I was in a white-tiled room that looked more like a disused communal shower than a dungeon and there were no giant mutant leeches slithering toward me. I'd gotten one thing right, though. I was suspended from the ceiling by my wrists and I wasn't going anywhere.

I was naked. Nice touch. I also felt like I had a monster hangover, but that was just the effect of being stunned wearing off.

Two men entered the room. One wore the familiar black uniform of GenetiX security and was short with a large nose and a beard that was trimmed low on his face. The other man wore sandals, baggy khaki shorts, and a button-up flower-print shirt.

"That's him Dr. Echols," said the security guard.

"I've got eyes Sal," replied the other man.

"So, you're the famous Peter Soñador who brought down Exodyne," he said to me with more than a hint of contempt in his voice. "You don't look so tough now."

"You must be Dr. Echols," I replied. "I'm afraid I can't say it's nice to meet you."

"The feeling is mutual. You and your crew have seriously inconvenienced me at a critical time in my research."

"If we've stopped you from performing illegal experiments, then I'm glad we inconvenienced you."

"Nice try, but if you thought your little 'cast reached the Space Guard you'll be disappointed. This space station is a research facility, so it has an EM security fence around it to prevent unauthorized communications."

"Well, if I'd known that I'd have written a letter instead," I quipped.

"You must really think you're funny, space cowboy. Sal here enjoys torturing young women, especially when they're as attractive as two of your crewmembers. We'll see how funny you think it is when you have to listen to them scream their lungs out for hours on end. As for you . . . I'd just as soon dump you in the airlock and watch you suffocate as it slowly depressurizes, or better yet, listen to your cries of agony as you're gradually turned into a tentacloid."

"You're mad."

"Mad? How many great men have been called 'mad' by ignorant fools lacking vision? I've made discoveries that will redefine the very nature if humanity. Imagine a human race that no longer requires an oxygen atmosphere to breath. Imagine humans that are able to thrive on virtually any planet! I have discovered how to induce rapid, advantageous mutation or 'RAM' as I like to call it in humans. No need for lengthy and expensive terraforming to make marginally habitable worlds. With RAM, I can quickly and easily adapt the person to the world. _Any_ world!

"Are they really still human after you've messed with their DNA, doctor? Do they behave like humans, or do they act like those things of yours in the tube? Besides, what you're describing is against interplanetary law."

"Law, schmaw. So was dancing on Sunday at one time in the distant past. Laws change, and if they don't change fast enough then they're broken more and more often until they're eventually changed. I'm just ahead of the curve, that's all," he said pausing.

"You're obviously small-minded like the rest of them, but you'll make a suitable tentacloid," Echols added. "Sal, go get the RAM drug and administer it to Captain Soñador. I'll be back in about an hour to watch his transformation."

Echols and Sal left me alone. I struggled briefly against my restraints, but it soon became obvious that wasn't getting out. Things were looking _very_ bad for me.

Then Sal returned holding an ominous looking hypo, and things looked even worse.

"Still hanging around here by yourself?" he said jokingly. "Well, don't worry. You'll slide right out of those nasty ol' cuffs in a few hours after you've had a shot of this."

Sal held the syringe in front of my face. It was filled with a swirling green liquid that seemed almost alive.

"It's a big needle, so it's going to hurt a lot when I stick it in you. Dr. Echols prefers to give these in the neck, but I think your left testicle will work just fine."

As Sal bent down to give me the shot, I swung into action. Now I was Jack Parsec from Episode Four of _Out to the Void_ , wrapping my legs tightly around his neck and squeezing as hard as I could with my inner thighs. Sal dropped the syringe and tried to pry my legs apart, but I continued squeezing until he passed out. I released him, and he fell to the floor. I was trembling from the exertion. I'd bought myself some time, but it wouldn't do any good if I couldn't figure out how to free my wrists from the cuffs that held me suspended.

"Ellie are you down here?" echoed a familiar voice from the corridor outside my cell.

"Monique? Over here, quick!" I shouted.

"Pete? Is that you?"

"Yes, hurry!"

"Hang on _cher_ , I'm coming!" she shouted. I heard the slap of her bare feet running toward me as she rounded the corner.

"Elvis! What happened to you?"

"I'll explain but get me out of these cuffs before he wakes up," I said as I pointed my toe at Sal.

"Oh, I don't think he'll be bothering us anytime soon," Monique said as Sal rolled over jerking in the grip of a seizure with the half-empty syringe protruding from his stomach.

"Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy," I remarked. "He'll match his personality better."

"What do you mean?"

"He was going to inject me with the juice in that syringe to turn me into a tentacloid." I explained. "Can you figure out a way to get me down?"

"Hmmmm. I kind of like you like this, Pete. Naked and helpless. I could have my way with you and you couldn't stop me."

"Monique, _please_?"

"Alright then, maybe later," she said with a fake pout as she reached upward and unfastened the cuffs from my wrists.

"How did you do that without a key?" I asked as I rubbed my wrists.

"They're quick release, _cher_ ," she answered. "Standard bedroom bondage gear. I have a set back at the brothel."

"I suppose I really shouldn't be surprised. How did you get in here?"

"A tentacloid attacked Ellie and I and we were separated. I found Ellie's 'face near a door in the side of the tube and there were foot prints on the platform by the door that looked like hers. I thought she must have come in here."

"Ellie's okay, she's with Tuesday and John Hawker. They went back out to the tube to look for you, and then they were going to head back to 'A' quadrant."

"You found Tuesday and John? That is wonderful news! Now we can get out of this horrible place."

"Not so fast. All the evidence I gathered on my 'face didn't go anywhere. This place is EM shielded. I've got to recover my 'face, or it'll be just our word against GenetiX."

"Hawker told me that Echols has an office on the concourse level. If he has your 'face it's probably there."

I relieved the thoroughly incapacitated Sal of his uniform. He was already starting to mutate into something, but I didn't want to stick around to find out what.

"Echols will want to see what's on my 'face so he'll know how to cover his tracks if the Space Guard does happen to pay a visit," I told Monique as I dressed.

"Hawker said Echols had something he called a 'fail safe' that would destroy any incriminating evidence," she replied. "I don't know what he meant."

I did, and if it was I thought it could be then the whole station was in danger.

CHAPTER 61

"I see the tubecar. We made it back!" Ellie exclaimed as Tuesday's headlamp caught the welcome sight of the long abandoned tubecar parked in front of the 'A' quadrant platform.

"I do not see any evidence of Captain Pete," Tuesday said worriedly as she stared behind them into the blackness. "He was alone and should have made better progress than us. I am concerned that he may have been captured and detained."

"He told us to go back to 'A' quadrant," said Ellie.

"I perceived it as more of a suggestion than an order. Specifically, he said not to linger too long in the tube because he wouldn't want to have to try to find his way back to 'A' quadrant in the dark after the torches burned out."

"So, what are you saying?" Hawker asked.

"I suggest that you and Ms. Ellie join the rest of the crew aboard _Orchid_. If Captain Pete has been detained, then it will not be safe for us to remain on Futuroscope."

"What are you going to do?"

"I will return to 'C' quadrant and attempt to locate Captain Pete and assist him in escaping if necessary."

"I'll go with you," Ellie suggested.

"No, Ms. Ellie. You are a strong and courageous fighter, but you lack my martial arts skills and enhanced reflexes."

"Enhanced reflexes?" Hawker asked puzzled.

"Yes, John Hawker. My father had me genetically engineered so that I would possess superior intelligence, strength, and agility. I have been physically and mentally trained for my role as his bodyguard, assistant, and eventual successor in business."

"I guess that explains why you're such a good fighter and so smart," Ellie commented.

"Thank you, Ms. Ellie. Now, I strongly recommend that you and John Hawker proceed directly to _Orchid_ and inform John, Phineas, and my father of the situation."

Tuesday turned and ran back down the tunnel, her bobbing headlamp quickly vanishing in the darkness.

"I hope she knows what she's doing," commented Hawker.

CHAPTER 62

We emerged from the elevator on the concourse level. I had my stunner drawn and pointed at Monique's back as if I were escorting a prisoner. There was surprisingly little activity on this level and the few GenetiX personnel that we encountered simply ignored us. Echol's office was conveniently located next to the lobby. The door was unlocked, and we stepped inside. Nobody was home.

I don't know what I'd expected a mad scientist's office to look like, but this definitely wasn't it. There weren't any organs floating in jars on shelves or strange looking devices crackling with electricity. There was a practice putting green. There was an expensive looking executive's desk with some sort of old-fashioned control panel on one side that featured numerous switches and a prominent red button. There were framed diplomas and certificates on the wood-paneled walls as well as quite a few still photographs. One of the photos featured a much younger looking Echols standing with a group of what must have fellow researchers. A few photos were really old. One was captioned 'Echols Family Reunion, August 2017'.

"Look how fat everyone is", Monique commented.

"I think that was considered normal for Earthers back in the twenty-first century," I said. "They tended be shorter and stockier than us, anyway."

We were so distracted by the old photos and other odd memorabilia that we didn't notice the private elevator on the spoke side of the office, which had a door that matched the surrounding paneling.

"I wonder where Echols could be?" Monique asked.

"Try looking right behind you," answered an unpleasantly familiar voice.

" _How thoroughly melodramatic,"_ I thought.

"Drop your stunner Captain Soñador and turn around slowly. You too, Ms. Boncorps. Don't try anything stupid or I'll shoot, and you won't be waking up afterward . . . at least not in this life."

Monique and I reluctantly complied with Echols' order, and I observed that he was holding a slug-thrower rather than a stunner. He obviously meant business.

"I'd be careful with that thing if I were you," I said.

"This only shoots flesh-piercing ammo," Echols explained as he waved the pistol in my direction. "The rounds won't go through the station's hull, but they'll make a nasty hole in soft tissue. I suppose you came here looking for something?"

Echols reached with his free hand into the pocket of his shorts and held up my 'face.

"I'm disappointed in you, he continued. "Did you really think you could just sneak in here undetected?"

"Well, that was sort of the plan," I replied.

"I'm really getting tired of your insolent sarcasm," Echols said with annoyance in his voice. "Fortunately, I won't have to put up with your meddling much longer. As soon as Sal gets here, you'll both be initiated into life as tentacloids."

"You're a monster," Monique told him angrily.

"You shouldn't have gotten involved, Ms. Boncorps. I seriously considered just keeping you here as my pet, but that would have raised too many eyebrows."

"I hate to burst your bubble doc, but your partner Sal's rather preoccupied at the moment," I interjected.

"Another fail. Look at the display above the elevator. He's already on his way up. Now, both of you strip. You'll find those clothes won't fit very well once you've been modified."

Monique had stripped to her skimpies and I'd discarded my uniform shirt and was starting to shed my pants when the elevator door opened and out surged Sal, or at least what was left of him.

"Daaaaawwwcchtuerrr Eeccchhhhsssssssss!" he gurgled.

Echols half turned, and upon seeing his partially transformed former assistant, started to back away.

"Stay back you freak!" he ordered. "Stay back, I'm warning you!"

The Sal-thing continued to shuffle toward Echols with his 'arms' outstretched. Echols raised his gun to shoot, but the barrel was knocked aside by a waving tentacle.

"AHHHHHHH!" Echols screamed as a tentacle coiled around his neck and lifted him from the floor. He dropped his gun and my 'face as he tried to pry himself free of the tentacle. I chose the opportunity to scoop up both and managed to squeeze off two shots at the partially transformed tentacloid. The creature dropped Echols, but another tentacle whipped around the gun and jerked it out of my hand.

"Let's get out of here!" I shouted to Monique as I dodged a tentacle and we both bolted into Echol's private elevator.

"It looks like this thing goes all the way to the tube level," Monique said as she pushed the bottom button which was labeled with a 'T'.

As the elevator door was closing, I caught a glimpse of the wounded Sal-thing flailing away at Echol's desk as the doctor was frantically attempting to stop it.

"No! Keep away from there! You'll . . ." I heard him croaking hoarsely.

The door closed, and we began to descend. I could easily imagine what would happen next. I mean, who the 'eff puts a self-destruct button on their desk where an enraged tentacloid can accidently trigger it? I'd never use such a lame plot device in _Out to the Void_.

Then again, maybe I would.

"WARNING . . . WARNING . . . EMERGENCY SELF-DESTRUCT SEQUENCE HAS BEEN INITIATED. ALL PERSONNEL MUST EVACUATE 'C' QUADRANT IMMEDIATELY. D-MINUS 15 MINUTES AND COUNTING," boomed the frightening announcement over all the station's PA system.

"Oh no, not again," I said with a heavy sigh.

"What do you mean, 'not again'?" Monique asked, puzzled by my remark.

"Never mind, I'll tell you all about it later. Right now, we've got to get out of here fast!" I said as the elevator door opened. Monique still had her night-vision goggles dangling around her neck, but I'd lost my headlamp. She'd have to lead me through the lightless tube and I'd slow us down.

We caught a break. The short hallway leading from the elevator to the tube access ended at a small platform in front of which sat a motorized buggy that looked like it belonged on some Martian golf course.

"This thing must be how Echols and Sal get around the station when they don't want their whereabouts known. Look, it even has headlights."

"I never saw it when I was searching for Ellie," said Monique.

"We must be close to 'D' quadrant," I suggested. "We'll get back to 'A' quadrant faster if we go through 'D'.

"I'm driving," announced Monique as she hopped into the driver's seat.

"You know how to drive one of these?" I asked as I climbed in beside her.

" _Cher_ , I used to race ATVs when I lived on Mars. This thing is child's play."

The motor whined to life and Monique spun us around. We fishtailed down the tunnel for a few meters then sped toward 'D' quadrant. We'd only gone a short distance when our headlights illuminated the closed bulkhead. Monique swore and spun us back around.

"They must have sealed off 'D' quadrant because it's uninhabitable," I suggested. At least I hoped that was the case and that the bulkhead hadn't closed because the self-destruct sequence had been activated to isolate 'C' from the rest of the station.

We flew down the tunnel. As we approached the main 'C' quadrant tubecar platform our headlights illuminated what appeared to be a fight in progress. A dark-haired female in a short, black robe was battling three security guards. A fourth guard lay sprawled on the floor and was soon joined by two others. Despite having some semblance of hand-to-hand combat training, the lone remaining guard was no match for the girl's lightning fast punches and was quickly dispatched. Her four attackers subdued, she faced us and stuck a defensive pose.

"Tuesday, it's us!" I shouted.

"Captain Pete? I am most relieved that you are safe. Is Ms. Monique accompanying you?"

"Yes, I'm here," Monique answered. "Jump on, we've got to get out of 'C' quadrant in a hurry!"

Tuesday climbed in behind Monique and the buggy lurched forward again. Monique floored it and we speed through the tube. I happened to glance behind us and saw a pair of headlights rapidly approaching from behind.

"We've got company!" I shouted.

" _Merde!_ Where did they come from?"

"I don't know, but they're gaining on us."

"We're going as fast as we can!"

Ahead in our headlights I saw the big bulkhead doors that separate 'B' and 'C' quadrants starting to close.

"Hold on, this is going to be close!" Monique shouted.

We cleared the closing bulkhead doors with just centimeters to spare. Our pursuers weren't so lucky, and I heard a loud crash as their buggy slammed into the doors behind us.

"That _was_ close," I remarked.

Monique continued to drive at top speed in an attempt to put as much distance between us and 'C' quadrant as possible. I was relieved when we caught sight of the 'B' quadrant tubecar platform in our headlamps. We sped passed it and continued on toward 'A', but suddenly came upon the closed bulkhead that separated 'A' quadrant from 'B'.

" _Merde!"_ Monique swore and swung the buggy around. We skidded and slammed sideways into the closed bulkhead with a jolt.

"Is everyone okay?" I asked.

"I am uninjured Captain Pete," Tuesday replied.

"I'm fine _cher,"_ Monique replied somewhat breathlessly.

I glanced at my 'face. I set a timer when the self-destruct announcement was broadcast over the PA system. There were only seconds left now . . .

CHAPTER 63

Back in Doctor X's office, the hideous tentacloid had finally succumbed to its wounds and the injured doctor was able to drag himself over to his ruined desk and extract the key that would deactivate the self-destruct sequence. He fumbled frantically in an attempt to insert the key as the space station's PA system counted down the final seconds.

" _THREE . . . TWO . . . ONE . . ."_

" _WAIT!" Echols screamed. – "Out to the Void, Episode 87 – Space Station of Monsters"_

* * *

I was about to say, "Any second now." I was a couple of seconds too late.

We all heard a muffled boom and felt the floor move as if the space station had somehow experienced an earthquake. A few seconds later my 'face chimed with an incoming call from John.

"Pete, you okay? I've been tryin' to 'face you for hours!"

"We're okay John," I answered. "I'm down in the tube by the 'A' quadrant bulkhead with Tuesday and Monique.

"Pete, a section of the torus just blew up. There's fragments flyin' all around us and Phineas is havin' himself a monkey fit over it."

"If that doesn't bring the Space Guard here, then I don't know what will," I replied. "Are you all okay?"

"Yeah we're okay, we was worried 'bout you."

"We'll be better off once we get out of this tube. Looks like our only option is the 'B' quadrant elevator, and that's assuming it's still running."

"There's a stairwell by the elevator," Monique volunteered. "That's how I got to where they were holding you."

That made sense. They'd need a way to get between levels in the event of an elevator malfunction just like in high-rises on Mars.

"John, I'll 'face you again when we get to higher ground," I told him. "If you don't hear back from me before too long then send in the cavalry."

"Roger that, Pete. Good luck!"

"Think this thing still runs?" I asked Monique.

"The lights didn't go out when we hit the bulkhead," she said as she steered the buggy back towards the platform. "It does not run so smoothly now, no?"

"Just nurse it back to the platform. We don't need to set any speed records."

"Captain Pete, conditions in 'B' quadrant will likely be chaotic," said Tuesday. "I suggest that I enter first as a precaution against our encountering hostile behavior."

"No argument with that Tuesday, but let's see if we can get inside first. They may have everything locked down."

We drove on, but I noticed that our speed was steadily decreasing.

"I'm going as fast as I can," Monique said. The concern in her voice was obvious.

"The battery must have been damaged when we hit the bulkhead," I replied. Our headlights were flickering and growing dimmer.

We rolled up to the 'B' quadrant platform at walking pace relying on Monique's night vision goggles for navigation, but at least we made it.

"End of the line," I announced. "Let's hope they left door unlocked."

We abandoned the dying buggy and mounted the tubecar platform. We hurried toward the stairwell. Thankfully, the door was unlocked.

Tuesday's prediction of conditions in 'B' quadrant proved to be frighteningly accurate, perhaps even a bit understated. Amid the screams and shouts, alarms were blaring, and the PA system kept repeating the same scratchy recorded message instructing everyone to remain calm and shelter in place until help arrived. Nobody was listening. People were running around, some semi-clothed as we were, frantically trying to find some way to escape to 'A' quadrant. Some were beating futilely on pressure doors until their fists were bloody. GenetiX security was conspicuously absent, their members having discarded their uniforms to join the mob. Futuroscope's aging electrical system had been compromised and illumination panels and display screens were flickering erratically. The effect was at once surreal and nightmarish. Even gravity seemed different, and I suspected that the explosion might have affected the station's rate of spin.

My 'face chimed. It was John again.

"Pete, you there?"

"Yeah, it's like bad horror cinema in here. Where's the cavalry?"

"Space Guard is on the way, but Futuroscope ain't in the best orbital position for a meet-n-greet. Just hole-up until they get there."

"Roger that," I said. "What's their ETA?"

"Uh, maybe sometime tomorrow?"

CHAPTER 64

The Space Guard arrived in a few hours. They employed a 'gravity-skid maneuver' in which their constant acceleration was actually angled slightly toward Venus rather than purely tangential so that they didn't go hyperbolic at high delta-v but rather looped around in very tight, fast orbit to get to us. Anyway, that's the way Phineas later explained it to me. Pretty slick.

We weren't let out right away. The Corps of Engineers had to make sure the bulkheads on either side of 'C' quadrant hadn't been compromised by the sudden explosive decompression. Even after determining they weren't damaged, the Space Guard wasn't allowing anyone to leave 'B' quadrant unless they were needed in 'A' or were being evacuated by GenetiX. We were a 'special case' and were released on day four after being thoroughly questioned twice.

While we were being detained, I had a field day browsing Futuroscope's extensive library which included vintage books and cinema offerings going all the way back to the mid-20th century. Although the cinema performances were typically comical and the pre-spaceflight improvised imagery crude, the often-prophetic imagination of the writers was impressive. Writing as I did for _Out to the Void_ , I felt like a dwarf standing on the shoulders of giants with names such as Bradbury, Clarke, and Heinlein. Writers so visionary that we'd named spaceports and cities on distant worlds after them. We'd even named a planet at the fringes of the Sol System 'Foundation' in tribute Isaac Asimov and a comet 'Roddenberry'. I wondered if they'd all perhaps briefly glimpsed visions of our time I their dreams.

Hawker caught a ride back to Mars with us, having been told by GenetiX that, _"Due to the unfortunate events on Furturoscope, your services at GenetiX will no longer be needed."_

With a bit of subterfuge, we were able to sneak Monique aboard _Orchid_. What was left of GenetiX security was preoccupied with maintaining order in 'B' quadrant, and the Space Guard seemed less concerned about who was leaving the station than they were about what you took with you. Wearing one of Ellie's jumpsuits and with a strategically-placed opaque bandage covering her facial tattoo, Monique looked like just another member of _Orchid's_ crew. _Hey, it worked back on Market when we had to sneak Jan Aradal through Customs, didn't it?_

We learned on our way back to Mars that, between the recordings on my 'face and Tuesday's, Ellie's, and John Hawker's testimonies, the Space Guard determined that there was enough evidence to warrant an investigation into Echols' activities. Unfortunately, all the hard evidence, as well as Echols himself, was destroyed in the explosion. It turned out that all the clandestine research was being conducted in 'C' quadrant. With the possible exception of Dr. Larbin (who wasn't admitting he knew _anything_ ), the 'B' quadrant staffers weren't aware of the research being conducted next door in 'C'. To them, 'C' quadrant was simply the 'Future Venus' simulation where the super heat-resistant plants that resembled a cross between a cactus and a coral were being tested. Their research was perfectly legal and had been producing successful results.

Marie knew, but she wasn't talking. I knew why, so 'nuff said.

GenetiX denied having any knowledge of Echols' research and went so far as to insinuate that we were engaged in an elaborate publicity stunt. Their lawyers politely suggested that we should just let the matter drop if we knew what was good for us. We did, but it didn't stay dropped for long. GenetiX' thinly-veiled threat didn't stop Hawker from taking his story to the tabloids. After all, what did _he_ have to lose? Coupled with the short vid I'd recorded of the writhing tentacle which had mysteriously surfaced on Solnet and then promptly captured by the news streams, the incident didn't go away. The next thing we knew, a photo-shopped image of Tuesday, Monique, and I from 'B' quadrant captioned 'Space Cowboys Ride Again' was making the rounds. There was also a cropped version of just me, bulked-up, shirtless, and holding a pistol, that was captioned 'The REAL Jack Parsec'.

By the time we landed on Mars, we were media celebrities (again). I was worried that GenetiX' would sick their lawyers on us, but Lo told me they wouldn't dare because we were seen by the public at large as heroic whistleblowers. I guess GenetiX must have decided that suing us would make for bad publicity, because they issued a statement thanking us for exposing Dr. Echol's illegal experiments. Of course, they still denied having any prior knowledge of Echols' activities and put the blame solely on him. It's easy to blame everything on a dead mad scientist.

It wasn't all good news. There was a report on the stream that the historic Futuroscope space station's orbit had become unstable. Like an out-of-balance wheel, the station was wobbling. I'd noticed that the station's gravity felt different after the explosion, and conditions had further deteriorated since then to the point that a full evacuation was in progress. The plan was to de-orbit the station and then let it burn-up in Venus' atmosphere.

It looked as though Marie wouldn't be stuck in Purgatory any longer. Then again maybe she would still be trapped there, but just not on Futuroscope and not as its queen.

Monique was able to get in touch with her son and they were reunited shortly after we landed at Olympus. Her ex-husband was totally out of the picture and on his way to Penitence after having been caught attempting the same frame-up he'd pulled on Monique with another wealthy young woman. Monique's conviction was summarily overturned, and she was finally free. She wanted to repay the favor, as she put it, by showing me a 'good time'.

"Monique, you don't need to sex me," I told her.

"Pete, if you think this is because those naughty orchids are influencing me, then you are wrong. Yes, I know about them now, but that is not what this is all about. I happen to find you very attractive."

"Really?"

"Really, _cher_."

I hugged her, but politely passed on her offer. A few months ago, I probably wouldn't have, but there was someone else waiting for me this time.

# Part IV.

CHAPTER 65

The power outage and been barely two minutes long, but for Paul that was about ninety seconds too long.

"Ruth, grab Timmy and go to the shelter now!" he shouted. "Jeff, grab your machete and your flamer and come with me."

"Be careful!" Ruth pleaded fearfully as she herded their sleepy youngest son into the bunker and closed the heavy steel door behind them.

Their oldest son quickly joined his father, his machete strapped to his side and his flamer at the ready. Paul was standing in front of the wall 'face which was displaying external views from their security cameras. The bright floodlights illuminated the area around their heavily walled cabin, just reaching to the electric fence that surrounded their homestead.

"Doesn't look like anything got through," he said. Then he froze for a brief moment before panning the camera back to the motionless form of a collapsed _lepus gigantus_ just inside the fence. Something was bending over it, feeding.

Paul used a swear word that he normally wouldn't have used in his son's presence.

"Looks like it got Lassie," Jeff commented upon seeing the prized dead rabbit that he'd raised. "C'mon Pa, let's go fry the damn zombie!"

"Not so fast son. It couldn't have breached the fence or taken him down alone. It had to have had help," his father replied tensely.

"Pa, you think there's a . . ."

Jeff didn't get the word out before the claw-like hand smashed the camera, causing the external display to go blank.

"It'll go after the generator next," Paul warned his son. "Get your headlamp and follow me! We're going to have to go out and burn it before it tries to get inside!"

CHAPTER 66

Local talk show host Diana "DJ" McCall had never made her disdain for the Interplanetary Commonwealth a secret, but she normally stopped short of directly attacking the government in her daily broadcasts. One day she was "baited" by a covert Commonwealth operative into making seditious remarks on-the-air and was subsequently fired. Then things got a lot worse: DJ was arrested and charged with 'conspiracy to commit terrorism'. After languishing for weeks in a cold, cramped, filthy jail cell, she was tried, swiftly convicted and sentenced to ten years of hard labor in a prison camp on the distant moon Penitence. DJ was dragged from the courtroom, stripped naked, drenched with foul-smelling de-lousing spray, and locked into a tiny cage in the cargo hold of a Space Guard transport with 19 other similarly-caged female convicts.

For many days the transport crawled through the void while DJ and her fellow prisoners squatted in their own urine and feces. When they finally reached their destination they could barely walk and were driven from their cages and out of the stinking hold with cattle prods. They were herded into a crude shower to wash the shit off their bodies and then bright orange donut-shaped collars were locked snuggly around their throats. Then the warden appeared to them as a life-sized hologram and explained that the collars contained enough explosive to blow their heads off. The explosive would be triggered if they got too close to the electronic security fence the ringed their camp. The fence was marked with red warning posts spaced ten meters apart. In the center of their camp was a concrete guard tower that reminded DJ of a picture of a castle she'd seen in one of her father's old books about medieval Earth. The tower looked to be about four stories tall with a single door at the base and a row of narrow, mirrored windows at the top. A short distance from the tower was a concrete bunkhouse where the prisoners would sleep at night. Rows of rough-hewn bunk beds (with no mattresses) lined the interior walls of the bunkhouse. DJ noticed that the bunkhouse windows had no bars and the doorway lacked a door. She guessed that the electronic fence made such security measures unnecessary. The bunkhouse also had no lights or running water. Between the electronic fence and the camp was the farm. The warden explained that the prisoners were responsible for growing their own food and that those who didn't work wouldn't eat. Then she introduced the three "trustees" who would oversee them. They wore uniforms consisting of gray short-sleeved shirts and matching shorts. Unlike the prisoners, the trustees didn't wear explosive collars and they carried whips. The trustees lived in the bottom floor of the guard tower, which had air-conditioning, lights and running water – but apparently no toilet. Prisoners and trustees alike were expected to relieve themselves in the fields to help fertilize the crops.

After the warden hologram vanished and the prison transport departed, the trustees used their whips to drive DJ and the other prisoners into the muddy fields where they spent the rest of the day toiling in the hellish heat and humidity. Their evening supper consisted of awful-tasting "mystery soup". Nightfall brought no respite from the oppressive heat and DJ got little sleep despite being exhausted. Daybreak saw the return of the whip-wielding trustees and another long day of backbreaking manual labor. The following day was the same, and so was the day after that . . .

* * *

Okay, so I admit my account of conditions on Penitence was somewhat 'embellished', but my agent thought it would sell more books (not sure who to). I begrudgingly gave in to her and added the enforced nudity, whip-wielding guards, exploding collars, and other lurid details. I had originally planned on 'Escape from Penitence' being an _Out to the Void_ script and thought I had the producer's enthusiastic support, but then the powers-that-be that dwelled higher up the proverbial food chain decided that 'it didn't fit' and rejected it. No Jack Parsec, no go. So 'Escape from Penitence' became a working novel-in-progress.

I started turning my script into a full-blown novel after we returned to Mars from Futuroscope just shy of three weeks ago. We were all still basking in the afterglow of our renewed media celebrity status, although John got antsy and wanted to head back out to the void again after only one week dirtside. I knew that part of his impatience centered around Ellie. Oddly enough, when they were aboard _Orchid_ they were fine together. Dirtside was a different story. The honeymoon was definitely over, and they argued over the most trivial stuff. Listening to them quarrel reminded me why I had absolutely no intention of tying the knot anytime in the foreseeable future.

I was doing more than just writing during my 'dirtside time'. I competed in a charity fundraiser bicycle race at the Sagan City Velodrome. My 0.8G Venus gravitational pull acclimated muscles gave me the superior stamina and sprinting power of an elite cyclist, and for the first time in my life I finished on the podium. The guys who finished first and second apparently did routine muscle conditioning in a full one-gravity centrifuge at the Olympic Sports Complex, so I didn't feel bad at all about my third-place finish. Anyway, I got to dance with cinema star Hillary St. Cloud to _Walk Like a Neanderthal_ on livestream after the event.

I'm still a really lousy dancer.

I was getting a lot of fan mail and marriage proposals from women, men, some trans, and even a few polys. Some of them included rather revealing images and videos apparently intended to entice me into accepting their overtures.

Helen 'faced me from out of the void. It was an awkward conversation, though. Maybe it was because we were just communicating verbally rather than having her read my thoughts. The time lag caused by the distance between Mars and Ceres didn't help any. She said that she was fine and had been working for an investment broker to whom she'd just recently become engaged. I congratulated her and asked her to send me a wedding invite, although I didn't really mean it. I was genuinely happy for her, but as I've already said numerous times I'm absolutely no fan of weddings.

Cosmostream, a major Solnet entertainment streamer (which just happens to be owned by Aratek), approached me about doing a 'cast based on my crew's and my exploits. I briefly considered their offer then politely passed. Having me and my crew living under a constantly streaming microscope didn't seem like a good idea.

I suppose the whole celebrity status thing started to get old when I was repeatedly referred to as 'the REAL Jack Parsec'. During a livestream interview on _Olympus Tonight_ , I got a little bit testy with the host when I launched into my 'Jack Parsec is a fictional character and I'm not _him_ ' rant. After that things quieted down and I wasn't being constantly pursued by streamer 'bots and predatory 'faces. Being just an 'ordinary person' can definitely have its advantages.

Back to my novel: expanding my script into a book posed a number of challenges. I had no idea why _Orchid's_ former crew had been convicted in the first place and didn't feel like doing extensive research that might yield less than story-worthy results anyway, so I fabricated all that. The bulk of my narrative was largely based on anecdotal stories about Penitence as well as Jason's account of his time with his 'gals'. In-depth information about Jupiter's infamous prison moon was hard to come by, so when Jan Aradal asked me if I would be willing to make a trip out to Penitence for her I jumped at the chance. Our mission was to transport some equipment and supplies to an Aratek-funded research station located not too awfully far from the real-life inspiration for my novel's fictional Camp #57.

"Mind if I ask what sort of research Aratek is conducting on Penitence, or is that another need-to-know thing?" I inquired of Jan. We were both enjoying pricey Rare Earth dark ales in her Sagan City penthouse apartment. When I arrived, Jan had been swimming laps in her private pool. Her form-fitting hydrodynamic swimsuit accentuated her lithe, muscular body. She hadn't bothered to change for our meeting and watching her was distracting.

"No secrets Pete," Jan replied. "My father bought NanoGenesis, the old firm that did the late-stage terraforming on Penitence back when it was still called Io. If you consider what the moon was like before terraforming they did an amazing job."

"What was it like?"

"Nothing like it is now. No breathable atmosphere and sulfur dioxide volcanoes all over the place. Lethal radiation out the ass. They had to shift Io's orbit out of Jupiter's magnetosphere and into a more distant one before they could even start terraforming. Now that was a real piece of work, especially considering the technology that was available back then. NanoGenesis wasn't even involved at that point, but perception is everything. Penitence is usually referred to as a 'failed experiment', but that's only because it didn't turn out as originally planned."

"So why are you still doing research there?"

Jan paused and took a sip of her beer before she answered. "Do you know what happens to people who die and are buried on Penitence, Pete?"

"If this is a trick question to see if I occasionally read the _Galactic Enquirer_ , then yes. They rise from the dead and turn into flesh-eating zombies," I replied.

"Correct! You get extra credit for doing your homework. Now, _why_ do they supposedly turn into zombies?"

"Okay, you've got me there. I didn't get passed the first paragraph," I answered.

"I don't blame you. It was badly written, but it did talk about the Lazarus enzyme."

"What's that?"

"It was a key element in the process that turned Io in a world that could support plant life. Combined with everything else they did, it transformed the moon's surface. Unfortunately, it had an unanticipated outcome. Dr. Dancer calls it the 're-animator effect'. Basically, it reverses post-mortem decomposition, but not perfectly. The result is a walking corpse with a lizard brain driven by the most basal instincts."

"Io was never intended to be a prison moon," Jan continued. "Conditions there are no worse than they were in the Earth's ancient rainforests. Hot and humid, but not intolerable. It's a greenhouse. You can grow lots of things in an environment like that, and they do just that on the prison farms. A lot more could be grown there, if you could attract enough settlers. That isn't ever going to happen unless we can eradicate the zombie problem."

"Can't you just shoot the damn things?" I asked.

"No, they're indifferent to slug-thrower and laser damage, unless it's really massive. Farmers normally don't have that sort of military-grade weaponry at their disposal. A few of the big rabbit ranches have private security details, but they're the exception rather than the rule."

"So how _do_ they kill the zombies?"

"With a machete. Hacking them to pieces seems to do the job well enough. So does burning them. Otherwise they keep them away with high voltage electric fences."

"For a while I thought you were trying to convince me that conditions on Penitence weren't so bad, but now they sound even worse."

"The zombies aren't the worst problem, Pete. It's bad publicity – and what the zombies apparently evolve into if they survive long enough."

"Would it be a stretch for me to guess that Aratek' research has something to do with the later?"

"You're some kind of smart, Pete. Yes, it does. The zombies are stupid, slow moving, and not too difficult to put down. Their numbers have been steadily dwindled since the practice of burying the dead was ended. There are some, maybe a few dozen or more, that have apparently morphed into something else. They're faster moving, stronger, smarter, and don't look like walking corpses any longer. We haven't been able to get a good look at them because they hide in the deep forest during the day and only come out at night. They feed on the blood of warm-blooded mammals. They've been a real nuisance for some of the rabbit ranchers."

"So, the zombies eventually turn into, uh . . . _vampires_?"

"Don't go getting any ideas for an _Out to the Void_ script just yet. Dr. Dancer believes if she can capture one, then she can figure out how to get rid of them without having to send a battalion of flame-thrower armed soldiers into the forest to attempt to clean them out."

"Dr. Dancer works for Aratek?"

"Yes, we're funding her research."

"I guess if she's successful and Penitence becomes attractive for settlement then that's a big win for Aratek," I suggested.

"And humanity at large, Pete. It means there's another terrestrial world within easy reach where humans can live without having to dwell under domes or underground and not just a convenient dumping ground for criminals."

"Okay, so I'm guessing my job is to haul some equipment and supplies out to Penitence that Dr. Dancer needs, right?"

"You continue to remind me why I agreed to put you on retainer in the first place," Jan said grinning. "Yes, Dr. Dancer and her team departed Phobosport for Penitence yesterday. This morning we learned that there was a mix-up and not all of her equipment was loaded. That's where you come in. You'll pick up her missing equipment at Phobosport and deliver it to her at Lastima on Penitence. She'll be waiting for you there."

"Sounds simple enough."

"You'll also be carrying a passenger."

"A passenger?"

"Yes, Dick Stroker with Accustream News Service. He's been assigned to report on Dr. Dancer's research into eradicating the zombies."

" _Dick Stroker",_ she said _?_ Really? Ouch, I already felt sorry for the poor guy. I remembered when I was in high school that there was a kid named Harry Balz. With a last name like that, who names their kid 'Harry'? It turned out he was named after his great grandfather who just happened to have been the captain of the Colonial Alliance frigate _Defiant_ that was instrumental in neutralizing Earth's orbital defense network during the Interplanetary War, but that still didn't spare him from the ribbing that he frequently got.

"I'm guessing that you anticipate he'll deliver a favorable report or you wouldn't be sending him, correct?" I asked.

"Let's just say that I have a lot of faith in the eventual outcome and that the resulting publicity will be good," Jan said as she finished the last of her beer. "I need to cool off. Care to join me for a swim?"

"Uh, I didn't bring a bathing suit," I told her.

"You don't _need_ one silly boy," she said with a chuckle as she walked to the pool's edge and peeled off her bathing suit like a snake shedding its skin. For a brief moment she stood there, nude with her back turned to me, her sculpted muscular body looking like a professional athlete's. Then she looked over her shoulder and smiled at me before executing a flawless dive into the pool that generated barely a ripple.

I stripped off my clothes and followed her, although my so-called 'dive' was more of a clumsy plunge.

CHAPTER 67

Futuroscope's de-orbiting was live-streamed. All the major streamers carried it and it was at once spectacular and heart wrenching. The giant space station had been slowly descending after the Space Guard initiated a carefully choreographed firing of the attitude control thrusters to break it out of orbit. Venus' gravitational pull and steadily growing air resistance as the station lost altitude did the rest.

The still rotating station burst into flame as it spiraled into the upper atmosphere, causing it to briefly take on the appearance of a gigantic flaming wagon wheel or some ancient firework. Then the combination of rapidly increasing aerodynamic and thermal stresses finally compromised the dying space station's structural integrity and it suddenly broke apart into large fragments which further disintegrated and glowed brilliantly like a cluster of meteors as they entered the lower atmosphere, ultimately vanishing from view in the dense cloud layer that perpetually enshrouded the planet.

"Do you think Marie made it off okay?" I asked. I was seated in the galley with the rest of my crew watching the stream on the wall 'face. We all had our legs hooked under the bars on the underside of the table to keep ourselves from inadvertently floating off. Thanks to a favorable gravity-assist, we were coasting along rather than thrusting at the moment. We'd still get to Penitence in a week, but we'd save fuel.

"I don't know why she wouldn't have," was John's reply. "They 'vacuated everybody."

" _Everybody who wanted to leave,"_ I silently thought. _"Everybody who had someplace else to go."_

"How's our passenger," I asked Ellie, changing the subject. I was referring to the young man who was still strapped in his bunk and hadn't been watching Futuroscope's spectacular demise.

"I gave him a nausatab, but he was still suffering from freefall sickness, so I had to administer something a little stronger," she responded. "He's asleep now, but he should feel better when he wakes up."

"Should?"

"Some folks just can't handle freefall."

"What do we do if he can't?" I asked.

"Turn the rocket motor back on and give him a _down_. It won't take much g," she answered.

Fuel-miser John frowned at Ellie's comment.

"I just think it's odd that Jan would send a rookie reporter with us," I said.

"If her intent was to provide material for a favorable documentary that would encourage investment and migration, then a neophyte with a strong desire to fulfill his employer's wishes would be an excellent choice," said Lo. "You send a reporter who'll report what you _want_ to hear rather than objective and potentially unfavorable commentary."

"Father, it could be that he was the only one who was willing to go to Penitence," Tuesday suggested. "It is also possible that Dr. Dancer objected to the inclusion of a reporter in her crew, necessitating a ruse involving essential equipment that failed to be shipped as a pretext for our flight to Penitence."

"An excellent observation, number one daughter," Lo replied smiling.

"At least Ellie got a barf bag to him before he hurled too much," I said. "I don't what he had to eat before we lifted from Olympus, but it sure looked nasty."

"I'm guessin' Mexican, maybe Italian," said John.

"Your having the vomitvac ready was quick thinking," I said.

"I always keep it ready when there's virgin on board," John replied. _Orchid_ may not have a lot of fancy doodads, but no spacer I know would ever lift without a vomitvac. I had it ready for you first time we lifted."

"I wasn't a virgin, John."

"Shuttle flights are for kids, Pete. You know real spacers ride candles."

"That we do," I said nodding in agreement. I supposed that I'd come a long way from my first flight aboard _Orchid_ when I was convinced I was going to die as we lifted-off from Olympus Spaceport.

Fortunately for us all, Dick was doing much better when he woke up. Ellie was able to get some electrolytes in the young Accustream News Service reporter and he was eventually able to un-strap and float around the cabin. Once he realized how much fun freefall can be we had to caution him about not bouncing around the cabin too fast.

"You may be weightless, but you still have mass and momentum," I explained to him. "If you hit something moving too fast you'll hurt yourself."

Luckily, John had to start decelerating for our rendezvous with Penitence before Dick had an opportunity to injure himself with his experimental freefall acrobatics.

Centuries ago, Io/Penitence had been Jupiter's innermost moon. Now it orbited conveniently beyond Ganymede. Jupiter's intense magnetosphere had provided the mechanism for shifting its orbit outward, a unique accomplishment that had yet to be duplicated. Io's numerous volcanoes supplied plenty of heat to warm up the frigid moon. It just needed an atmosphere to trap the heat, which comet bombardment and giant fusion reactors supplied. Mars-equivalent daylight was furnished by an 'artificial sun' which was just a big orbiting fusion reactor. If it hadn't been for the unintended extreme heat and humidity – and the zombies – Io/Penitence might have become the most desirable destination in the Sol system.

We dusted on Penitence eight days after leaving Mars at Lastima Spaceport, which was the only spaceport on the moon and was just outside Lastima City, which was also the only town of any size and not overly large at that.

Lo told me that he'd visited Penitence many years ago when he was supercargo aboard the tramp freighter _Dang Hao_. He said that you could have crammed the entire town into one of the older domes at Bradbury. The spaceport itself was just a broad, bare patch of hard, flat ground with a half-dozen or so homing beacons arranged in a grid to mark the individual (unpaved) 'pads' and some landing lights. The lone control tower was rarely occupied and incoming calls for landing or launch clearance went to a local bar where the proprietor, who was also the launch/landing controller and hotel manager, spent most of his time. Prisoner transports put down at the camps (at least my novel got that right), so the only traffic here consisted of an occasional freighter. It was rare when more than one candle arrived in a month.

Judging by appearances, things hadn't changed appreciably from the time of Lo's visit.

The scene that followed after we'd dusted at the spaceport was one those I would have preferred to have avoided. I liked living the life of an independent spacer except when it came to the dirstside hassles. Irate shippers were at the bottom of my list of people I like to have to deal with, along with pirates and lawyers. I didn't think it would be unreasonable for me to expect some show of appreciation for delivering a much-needed cargo to its destination on time and intact, but that apparently wasn't good enough for Dr. Dancer.

"Just look at this! It's upside down!" she angrily protested.

"Excuse me Dr. Dancer, but the label on the side of the shipping container indicates otherwise. I can't help it if Aratek packed it upside down," I replied. My answer failed to satisfy her, and she threatened to report me to such-and-such. I finally got fed-up with her tirade.

"Fine, go ahead! And while you're at it, why don't you sue me?" I said with angry sarcasm.

Dr. Dancer glared at me for a moment, then shoved the shipping container into her hovercar and sped away with her red ponytail whipping behind her toward a VTOL[15] with Aratek markings that was parked in the distance. A second larger, unmarked VTOL was parked a short distance from it.

"Did I miss anything, Captain?" Dick asked me as he walked up to where I stood just beyond _Orchid's_ landing gear.

"Just a chance to meet Dr. Dancer," I answered. "Don't worry, you'll have plenty of other opportunities to interview her."

The rest of my crew – sans Phineas, who was uncharacteristically feeling 'under the weather' - joined us shortly, and we all bounded with our flight bags in hand toward the waiting Aratek VTOL. The gravitational pull on Penitence is just a smidgen greater than Luna's, so carrying loads that would have been heavy on Mars was easy.

We arrived at the VTOL and started to board when Dr. Dancer confronted us.

"Just where do you think you're going?" she demanded.

"We're passengers," I replied.

"Oh no you're not! This aircraft belongs to Aratek and is for use by its employees, subcontractors, and invited guests."

"Well, that includes us," I replied smugly.

"Is there a problem, Captain Soñador?" the VTOL's pilot asked me.

"None at all," I replied calmly. "Dr. Dancer and I were just getting better acquainted."

I watched Dr. Dancer's facial expression change from one of angry frustration to embarrassment as she finally figured out who I was.

"Oh Elvis, I don't believe this! They sent _you_ here?"

I waited for the 'REAL Jack Parsec' comment, but it never came.

"This is totally unacceptable!" Dr. Dancer complained loudly. "I don't need some glory-hunting space cowboy interfering with important scientific research. We're not going anywhere until I've spoken with Ms. Aradal!"

"Go knock yourself out," I said as she stormed off with her 'face in hand.

"What's eatin' her?" John asked me.

"I don't think she likes 'glory hunting space cowboys'. We might as well find a place to cool off while she 'faces Jan. The distance between Penitence and Mars won't make this a short conversation."

Unless you've accidently landed on the lost Mormon colony, all spaceports have a bar either at the port or very close-by. Ellie, Tuesday, and Lo decided to wait at the VTOL while John and I found a hole-in-the-wall with a weathered sign that simply proclaimed 'BAR' and another sign that read 'Free Beer Tomorrow'. We entered the establishment drenched in sweat, but that seemed to be a social norm here. The beer selection was limited to a few major brands, but neither of us cared. Frother's isn't such a bad beer after all – especially when you're thirsty. Except for two couples who were sharing another table, we had the place to ourselves.

As we sat there sipping our beers, we couldn't help but overhear the conversation at the other table.

"Are they sure it was a bloodsucker that got them?"

"Yeah, the recording showed a claw right before it took out the security camera, plus it tore through the fence while the power was out. It had a zombie following it. They fried the zombie, but the bloodsucker got Paul and Jeff pretty bad before it got away. Paul shot Jeff and then himself so that they wouldn't turn."

"Poor Ruth! What is she going to do now?"

"She has a sister who lives on Vesta. I guess she'll take Timmy and move in with her for awhile. There's nothing to keep them here any longer."

"We've got to do something about those damn vampires."

"Did you see those soldiers at the spaceport? I think that may be why they're here."

"I sure hope so. Sheriff Morris says he doesn't have the firepower to go after them."

"He's lost two deputies to the 'effin bloodsuckers. Says he's tired of having to burn bodies so they won't turn."

John and I finished our beers in silence and then left the bar quietly.

[15] An aircraft capable of Vertical Take-Off and Landing.

CHAPTER 68

I boarded our VTOL last to make sure I could pick a seat as far away from Dr. Dancer as possible, but that didn't stop her from giving me a dirty look as I passed her row. She was seated with two other scientists in the front part of the VTOL. My crew sat behind them, and the back rows were filled by muscular-looking guys in black, military-style uniforms. There was an empty seat next to a square-jawed man with short gray hair.

"Is this seat taken," I asked him.

"No, it isn't. Please feel free to join me."

"Thanks," I said as I extended my elbow. "Pete Soñador."

"Gregg Stone," he said in a deep, commanding voice and smiled as we bumped elbows. "It's a pleasure to finally meet the real Jack Parsec in person."

I winced at his comment, but since I figured he was trying to compliment me I just smiled.

"You're with Aratek security?" I asked him.

"No, we're with Black Thunder," Stone answered. "We were contracted by Aratek to provide protection for Dr. Dancer and her team. What's your business here?"

"Jan Aradal hired us to deliver some equipment to Dr. Dancer and then stick around to keep an eye on the guy in the purple and gold checkered jumpsuit," I said as I pointed to Dick. I didn't tell Stone that I was also here to gather fodder for my novel.

"Baby sitting a reporter, huh? Sounds like you may have drawn the tougher assignment."

The whine of our VTOL's four turbofan engines starting up followed by our lap belts fastening themselves interrupted our conversation.

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is your pilot speaking," announced the voice over the intercom. "We'll be departing momentarily. Our estimated flight time to Watership Down is fifty-seven minutes. Please enjoy your flight."

The turbofans' pitch abruptly changed and we lifted from the tarmac, initially ascending vertically but gaining forward motion as the engines progressively angled themselves toward horizontal.

"We seem to be cruising at low altitude," I remarked.

"Effective service ceiling on Penitence is only about four thousand meters," Stone explained. "Air starts getting thin pretty fast above that. At about seven thousand meters give or take you leave the troposphere and enter what they call the 'synthosphere'. It's a manufactured layer of charged gas that holds the heat and oxygen in and keeps Jupiter's radiation out or we wouldn't be talking right now."

"You seem to know a fair amount about Penitence."

"I make my business to know. If I'm going to eradicate the zombies then I need to know as much as possible about where they live. That's why this isn't my first trip out here."

"I thought zombie eradication was the purpose of Dr. Dancer's research."

"Yes, but if she can't find the magic bullet soon then my orders are to finish the job the hard way. Best estimates put the total number of zombies at a couple thousand and vampires at a few hundred tops. They tend to cluster in the forests close to ranches because rabbits are their main food supply. There's enough fire power in the VTOL behind us to wipe out the entire zombie population several times over."

"Why not just burn them out in the first place?"

Stone looked at me and grinned. "Not my job to ask," he answered.

_Need-to-know._ I knew all about that.

"So, just what do these VTOLs use for fuel?" I asked changing the subject. "Hydrogen?"

"Try methane. They run everything here on methane. Between the all the rabbit shit and the decaying vegetation they have a surplus. Methane is a major export along with rabbit meat and crops."

"How much do you know about zombies and vampires?" Stone abruptly asked me.

"Just what Jan Aradal told me and what I read on Solnet on the way out here from Mars," I replied.

Stone looked at me with a look that might have been one of sadness.

"You're about to get a first-hand education," he said.

"You've seen them up-close?" I asked.

"Up close and personal. The zombies are easy to kill if there aren't too many of them. You don't want to get close to a vampire if you can help it."

We flew along, weaving our way through valleys and passes between the now thankfully dormant volcanoes that dotted Penitence' surface. Some of the peaks where high enough that they extended above the low-lying atmosphere. After about an hour we left the volcanoes behind and approached a vast green plain ringed by a great forest.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we will be arriving at Watership Down shortly," announced our pilot.

I could see something moving on the prairie below us. At first it looked like an amorphous mass, but as we continued to descend I could make out individual specs. Then I realized that those specs were rabbits. There must have been thousands of rabbits that, judging from their size compared to the nearby trees, were at least three meters tall at the tips of their long ears.

Watership Down, named after a twentieth century fantasy novel by Richard Adams, was one of the largest - if not _the_ largest (depending on your particular metrics) - rabbit ranch on Penitence. It was thousands of acres in size and home to many more thousand _lepus gigantus,_ or giant rabbits. It was owned and operated by Njord Jensen, whose grandfather, Borr Jensen, had started the ranch with a single pair of the big bunnies. At least that's how the story on Solnet went.

We touched down just inside of the ranch's tall, electrified fence within fifty meters of a long, straight paved road that led to the ranch house, which resembled a sprawling old Earth ski lodge. We'd barely disembarked the VTOL when a hovercar accompanied by a big jackrabbit approached us. As they drew closer I saw that a blond-haired girl was riding the jack.

The hovercar settled to the ground a few meters from where we stood, and a tall, lanky, white-haired man emerged. He wore a wide brimmed hat, shorts, boots, and a sleeveless sweat-soaked tee-shirt. His rabbit-riding escort dismounted her jack. She had a machete strapped to her right thigh and wore sandals and what would have easily passed for a skimpy two-piece bathing suit. Given Penitence's oppressive heat and humidity, the minimalist clothing preferred by the locals made perfect sense and I felt uncomfortably over-dressed and sweaty.

"You all must be from Aratek," the man addressed us in a gravelly voice.

"Yes, we are," replied Dr. Dancer extending her elbow. "I'm Kali Dancer."

"Njord Jensen at your service," he said as they touched elbows. "Jan Aradal told me to expect you. Welcome to Watership Down."

"Thank you, Mr. Jensen. It's a pleasure to meet you."

"Which one of you is Peter Soñador?" he asked as his eyes turned anxiously to our group.

Great, here it comes, the 'REAL Jack Parsec'.

"That would be me, Mr. Jensen," I said as I hesitantly stepped forward and extended my elbow. "Just call me Pete."

"You can just call me Njord," he said grinning from ear to ear as we bumped elbows. "It's an honor and a pleasure to meet you. I'm glad you're here."

Elvis, this whole celebrity 'space cowboy' thing is getting really, really old. At least there was no Jack Parsec comment, though.

"I'm just along for the ride and to help Accustream gather info for a documentary," I explained as I gestured toward Dick. "Dr. Dancer and her team will be doing their research, and Commander Stone and his team from Black Thunder will provide protection."

Stone smiled at my explanation, so apparently, I'd interpreted the subdued rank marking on his paramilitary uniform correctly. Dr. Dancer displayed no such reaction.

Introductions and lots of elbow bumping followed. As we were all getting acquainted, a bus had been making its way from the ranch up the road to our location.

"That's your ride back to the house," Njord informed us as he pointed to the approaching bus. "Squeaky will help you get your gear loaded and then she'll show you to your rooms. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got some bunny issues to attend to."

Jensen abruptly jumped back into his hovercar and zoomed off across the plain. As soon as he'd departed, his young blond-haired escort stepped forward and addressed us.

"Okay, listen up guests!" she shouted in a cheerful high-pitched voice that sounded more like a five-year old child's than a young teenager's. "Please feel free to leave your gear here and board the bus. The hands will be along shortly to bring your stuff to your rooms."

"Squeaky is a good name for her," I whispered to John as we boarded.

"Why, thank you Cap'n Pete!" Squeaky chimed in. "Coming from you, that's a real compliment!"

"You're welcome," I said sheepishly. The girl must have a dog's hearing.

It turned out that 'Squeaky' not only had a dog's hearing, but also a bird's eyesight and a canine's sense of smell just for starters. She was the only one on the ranch that could ride a jack – and stay on it. We were soon to learn that she had other rather remarkable talents as well.

When we got arrived at the house the air conditioning in the guest wing wasn't working properly. Squeaky trouble-shot the problem and fixed it with a speed that would have made Phineas jealous. Electrical, mechanical, or whatever, she seemed to be able to figure out the problem and fix it.

She reminded me in many ways of Cat.

Speaking of Phineas, it seemed that he wasn't doing so well. He 'faced Ellie complaining that he was suffering from fever and chills, so she took the Aratek VTOL back to Lastima to care for him. Considering how uncomfortable she was in Penitence' oppressive heat and humidity, returning to _Orchid_ was probably the best thing for her.

She'd be a lot safer there, too.

CHAPTER 69

We all 'went native' quickly, adopting the casual, minimalist clothing style preferred by the locals. Even Dr. Dancer abandoned her red Aratek jumpsuit for a sleeveless white cut-off tee-shirt and shorts. I think Tuesday would have preferred to go _au naturel_ [16] _,_ but her father vetoed that. Black Thunder didn't go minimalist, but it turned out that the hot weather uniforms they wore had a refrigerated base layer that Stone informed me kept them cool even in temperatures as high as 55 degrees Celsius.

Dr. Dancer and her two assistants set up shop in an empty, air-conditioned warehouse that Njord Jensen generously provided. Njord was a gracious host, but I suspected that he found the presence of the heavily armed mercenaries highly desirable since his own security patrols were stretched thin due to the sprawling ranch's size. He confided to Stone, John and I over evening beers that he wished the mercs could just go into the forest and clean the damn bloodsuckers out once-and-for-all, but he also understood the danger involved after several encounters of his own.

At least for now, Black Thunder's unenviable mission remained capturing a vampire. The preferred strategy was to shoot one with a powerful tranquilizer, but that required drawing one out into the open. Both zombies and vampires preferred to feed in darkness, which meant that they waited until after Penitence's artificial sun set. Njord told us that there had been some serious discussion about orbiting a second artificial sun to eliminate nights and confine the zombies to the deep forests but keeping the suns in perpetual opposition would be too difficult because of the gravitational influences of Jupiter's numerous other satellites. So, the ranchers stayed behind their electrified fences after dark with their homes and barns bathed in bright, UV[17]-intense floodlights to keep the zombies and their vampire brethren away.

The plan that took shape involved constructing a quarantine pen for a 'sick' rabbit outside of the main fence. The pen would have its own floodlights, which would conveniently fail and afford the vampires an opportunity for an easy meal. They'd breach the un-energized fence without too much trouble, but after they were inside Black Thunder snipers with night vision scopes would target two of them. Once the tranq rounds found their targets, the flood lights would be turned back on to drive the other vampires and zombies out of the pen and into Stone's waiting incendiary barrage.

It sounded like a good plan to me, but then again, I'm no military strategist.

Njord, John, and I were invited by Stone to share what he termed a 'front row seat to the fireworks'. He'd established a command post inside the main fence but close enough to the bait where we could still see the live action while watching an enhanced close-up on a display. Dr. Dancer and her team would be viewing the same images on a large wall 'face back at their lab, as would Tuesday, Lo and Dick in the ranch house. John decided at the last minute that he wasn't too thrilled about watching a live zombie attack and passed, so Dick was only too happy to take his place,

Sunset came with agonizing slowness, as did the passing of twilight. To make our charade convincing to the seemingly intelligent vampires, our orchestrated 'power failure' wouldn't occur for several more hours. I could have used a beer or two while we waited, but alcohol would have to wait until we celebrated after the mission was successfully completed.

At 22:30 LMT[18] Stone gave the signal for 'Operation Sucker Punch' to proceed. The floodlights surrounding the quarantine pen momentarily flickered and then failed. At that same moment our display switched to enhanced night vision mode.

"Now we wait," he said in a hushed tone.

And wait we did. An hour and twenty minutes later our 'sick bunny' was still safe and sound in its unprotected pen.

"Why aren't they taking the bait?" Dick finally asked.

"I don't know," Stone answered frowning. "Wait, there's movement at the tree line."

The first zombies emerged slowly from the forest with a shambling gait, their hair matted and dressed in the ragged remnants of the clothing they'd last worn. Those that followed moved more surely but were naked as well as hairless. Stone called them 'transies', meaning zombies that had survived long enough that they were evolving into what ultimately followed.

I'd seen lots of enhanced and conceptualized images of vampires on my 'face, but none of them prepared me for the creature that emerged from the tree line. It was taller than its zombie companions, with large luminous eyes. It was still humanoid in proportion, but the resemblance to the deceased person it had 'evolved' from ended there. It was at once skeletal and muscular, as if it had discarded the need for outer skin. It had pointed ears and an articulated snout that reminded me of an extinct elephant's, only not as long. It moved deliberately and quickly without hesitation. It raised an arm with a fluid gesture that summoned two more of the vampires, and together they all made their way deliberately toward the unprotected pen.

"Big Bopper report," said Stone.

"Target acquired," was the response.

"Killer report."

"Eyes on the prize."

"Proceed at will when you have a clear shot."

"Roger that," came a pair of responses.

There was a long pause followed by, "Hit confirmed."

On the display I saw one of the vampires stagger and then fall to its knees.

"It's show time!" Stone announced.

The floodlights blazed to life, bathing the pen in daylight. The zombies shrieked and staggered blindly as they attempted to flee the compromised enclosure. The trio of vampires had ripped down one side of the pen, but for the undead mob even that wasn't a big enough exit and they frantically attempted to claw their way over each other in order to escape the burning light. With two vampires in the lead, they finally escaped the enclosure and headed for the distant tree line.

Stone waited until the two vampires and a majority of the zombies were in the 'kill zone' before initiating phase two. There was a loud whoosh followed by a crescendo of blasts as the incendiary rockets landed squarely on target. The vampires and their zombie followers were enveloped in the resulting firestorm and quickly burned to a crisp.

"And that's how it's done boys and girls," Stone remarked.

"Where's the vampire that got hit?" I asked as I noticed that the pen was empty except for the rabbit.

Stone looked at the display and swore.

"Big Bopper and Killer, eyes on the prize!" he shouted.

"Prize is a no-prize. Elvis has left the building," was the reply.

"What the 'eff!" Stone swore in obvious frustration. "There was enough juice in those tranq rounds to put down five vampires!"

"Look," I said as I replayed the recording of the vampire's capture. "The thing was there going down, and then the lights came back on and it wasn't there."

"You think the light revived it somehow?" Dick asked.

Before anyone could answer, alarms started blaring and Njord's 'face chimed. His face turned white as he took the call.

"Main fence is down by the road!" he shouted. "They got in!"

"That's by the VTOL!" Stone exclaimed, obviously alarmed.

"They must have planned this," I said. "This whole thing was just a diversion. We're the ones who were suckered!"

The four of us bolted for Njord's hovercar. The lanky rancher gunned the motor and we zoomed out across the prairie toward the main gate, our headlights illuminating the ground beneath us. We covered the distance at top speed, arriving in less than a minute. The floodlights that normally covered the section of the fence by the gate were off. That was a bad sign. An occasional burst from a flamer provided brief glimpses of the grim scene. Njord's ranch hands had been joined by members of Black Thunder, and together they were concentrating their fire in the direction of the breach in the fence.

Flashlight-waving Squeaky signaled us to stop.

"They used a tree like a battering ram to breach the fence," she informed us. "There must have been a half-dozen vampires and several dozen zombies in the attack."

"Njord's 'face chimed again. This time it was Dr. Dancer. At almost the same time Lo 'faced me.

"What is happening?" he asked me. I gave him a thirty second synopsis.

Stone joined his mercs, who by now had succeeded in driving the zombies back outside the fence. The vampires who'd apparently led the attack were nowhere to be seen, although they could have still been lurking nearby in the darkness. With only the hovercar's headlights for illumination and no weapon, I suddenly felt very vulnerable.

"C'mon Cap'n Pete," Squeaky said as she hopped into the driver's seat. "I'll run you and Dick back to the house. There's nothing we can do out here until morning."

"Thanks, Squeaky," I said as I climbed into the passenger seat beside her. Dick was still seated behind us, apparently composing a report about the night's attack on his 'face.

"Is Squeaky your real name or just a nickname?" I asked.

"Nickname, but that's what everyone calls me."

"What's your real name?"

"Freyja, but I haven't been called that since I was a little girl. Course I guess I'm _still_ a little girl in everyone's mind. Nobody believes me when I tell them I'm twenty-four years old 'cause my voice never changed and my boobs never grew."

I had no idea how to respond to that, so I asked her another question.

"How long have you been with Njord?"

"All my life. He's my Pa."

"I didn't realize that you were his daughter," I said feeling stupid.

"Adopted daughter, but he and Ma got me just after I was born." My real parents were murdered by a vampire."

"I'm sorry," I said. Now I was truly at a loss for words, but fortunately we had arrived at the house.

"Here you go boys," Squeaky announced with her ever cheerfulness as we pulled up to the steps leading to the front door. "I'll see you in the morning."

"Good night and thanks for the ride," I said to Squeaky as I hopped out of the hovercar. John was waiting for us at the door looking very distraught.

"It's Phineas," he said frantically. "Ellie says he's really sick. He can't even talk. She's got him over at the clinic in Lastima and they're runnin' tests, but they haven't figured out what the eff's wrong with him."

I 'faced Jan Aradal. The clinic at Lastima wouldn't have the resources to treat him if there was something seriously wrong. I'd always suspected that Phineas was a product of Aratek's laboratories, so maybe Jan would be able to tell me what could be wrong with him. Between the time lag and the fact that it was probably late night at Sagan City, it might be several hours before I got a reply.

I could tell that this was going to be a very long night.

[16] French, literally for "in a natural state"; originally meaning "uncooked', but used euphemistically for "undressed".

[17] ultraviolet

[18] 10:30 p.m. Local Mean Time

CHAPTER 70

The following morning brought bad news and more bad news. Black Thunder's big VTOL had suffered substantial damage during the zombies' attack and the mercs' counterattack. Stone had intended on using it for air support if 'Plan B' became necessary, but that was no longer an option. Without the VTOL's infrared sensors to help locate the zombies and auto cannon to provide covering fire, the chances of a successful forest assault were greatly diminished. The flea-sized, autonomous spy drones they'd brought along had been stored aboard the VTOL and destroyed in the assault. That left 'Plan A', which was going to be more difficult now that the vampires were wise to our 'sick bunny' trap.

The other bad news concerned Phineas, whose condition had further deteriorated overnight. I did receive a reply from Jan informing me that a fast candle was already in route to Penitence to retrieve him and take him back to Sagan City for treatment, so I guess it wasn't all bad news. In the meantime, Phineas was being placed in hibernation to stabilize him and prevent further deterioration.

The danger was that, in his weakened state, he might not survive the revival process.

Conversation at breakfast that morning was abnormally subdued, until Dr. Dancer broke the ice.

"I think we should use the original plan," she spontaneously suggested.

"You mean the 'shark cage'? We already discussed why that was too dangerous," Stone replied.

"We both know that the vampires prefer a human to a bunny to feed on," Dancer argued.

"Yeah, so they can dine and then add to their membership. That's not happening on my watch."

"The cage was designed to be vampire proof. It's not like the perimeter fences. The vampire won't be able to break through to the bait or get out of the trap."

"What's a shark cage?" Dick asked me.

"A cage that you use to observe sharks underwater," I answered.

"You mean you put the shark in the cage to watch it?"

"No, you get in the cage so that the shark can't get to you."

Dick gave me a blank look. Then it dawned on me that the only sharks he'd probably ever seen were the miniature sharks in the Sagan City Aquarium.

"Okay, just imagine a shark that's ten times the size of the ones in the aquarium back in Sagan City that could swallow you whole. If you want to get close to one under water, you use a heavy-duty steel cage."

"Why would you want to get close to a monster like that?"

"To study them," I explained. "Just like what Dr. Dancer wants to do with vampires."

"Except that our 'shark cage' is really two cages," Dr. Dancer interjected having apparently overheard our conversation. "One to keep the 'bait' safe and the other to trap the vampire once it enters."

"After seeing what the vampires did to our VTOL, I'm not convinced that cage would keep anyone safe or hold the vampire," Stone commented. "The shark cage plan is a no-go."

"Then how do you propose we capture one?" Dr. Dancer asked obviously frustrated.

"The vampires know how to breach the perimeter fence," Stone explained. "They're hungry. It's a safe bet they'll be back tonight to try again. We'll be watching for them and when they attack we'll fry them. We'll teach them not to come back. I'll have snipers posted with tranq darts again. We'll use double doses this time, and the second an ugly bloodsucker goes down we'll nab him."

Dr. Dancer didn't have a response for Stone. She finished her breakfast in silence and then excused herself from the table.

"I don't think she liked your idea," Njord said to Stone.

"Well, I didn't particularly care for hers either," he replied between bites as he finished the last of his rabbit sausage. "I'm not going to risk any lives just to trap a vampire."

"What if they volunteered?"

The question came from the young, dark-haired ranch hand standing in the doorway to the dining room.

"Are you thinking of volunteering, Ransom?" Njord asked.

"Hell no, I ain't stupid," Ransom replied. "But I'll bet one them gals at the prison farm next door would jump at the chance if it got her an easy pardon."

"I'm not taking advantage of anyone in a bad situation," Stone replied.

"Suit yourself," Ransom said as he turned and started to walk away slowly. "You may feel differently after we've had to fight off another attack. They's all just convicts anyway, so it wouldn't be much of a loss if things didn't work out."

Squeaky glared disapprovingly at Ransom.

"They're all human beings," I said. "Just because they made some bad choices doesn't automatically make them expendable."

Ransom turned around and walked slowly back into the room with a disapproving smirk on his face.

"Well if it ain't the great Jack Parsec in person," Ransom said mockingly. "I suppose you'd know all about that. Didn't you help some indentured whore sneak her way off Futuroscope?"

"I helped reunite a wrongfully convicted woman with her son," I replied. "She was exonerated and received a full pardon. Our system of justice has never been perfect and never will be. She'd have gladly risked her life to be bait for a vampire in exchange for a pardon."

"Yeah, I'll bet that was easy for a rich big shot like you to pull off," Ransom said.

"I'm neither wealthy nor a 'big shot' Mr. Ransom," I replied. "And my name is Pete Soñador, not Jack Parsec."

"Ransom, don't you have work to do?" Njord asked as he took another sip of his coffee.

Ransom glared first at his boss and then at me, and then he turned and walked quickly out of the dining room.

"Sorry about that Pete," Njord told me apologetically. "He's been trouble since the day I hired him. He's good at what he does, and good help is hard to find, so I put up with him."

"No apology needed," I said.

"Ransom tries to pick fights," explained Njord.

"I gathered as much," I said. "I hope for his sake he doesn't ever pick the wrong fight."

CHAPTER 71

With breakfast concluded, we all went about our separate ways. Dick decided to go for a walk, first checking out the merc's damaged VTOL and then following the perimeter fence around for about a kilometer. He noticed a lone, familiar looking jack grazing beside a small stand of trees on a low rise inside the fence and decided to investigate. The jack ignored him as he approached. It was obviously Squeaky's mount, although the girl was nowhere to be seen.

The sound of splashing water from beyond the trees caught his attention and he ran in the direction of the source. The trees encircled a small pond in which was occupied by a lone blond-haired swimmer. She noticed his approach and called out to him.

"Howdy there, Dick!" Squeaky shouted. "C'mon in! The water's fine!"

Dick made his way down the bank to the pond's edge. His shorts and shirt were already soaked with sweat, and a dip in the pond actually sounded good.

Squeaky stood up and waded out to meet him. She was stark naked.

Startled, Dick stumbled and fell backward.

"Are you okay?" Squeaky asked as she ran forward to help him up.

"Yes, but you're . . . ah . . ."

"Naked? You don't go skinny dipping with your clothes on, silly. C'mon, get your clothes off and join me."

"I . . . I don't know if it would be such a good idea. I mean . . . you're just a girl and I'm a man."

"Oh for Elvis 'effin sake, Dick! I'm twenty-four years old!"

"What? But I thought . . ."

"I know what you're thinking, but you're wrong. Yeah, I ain't got no boobies and I ain't got no pubies, but I'm a grown woman just the same. If I want to go skinny dipping with a handsome young feller, then I certainly can. Now strip or I'll do it for you."

"You think I'm really handsome?" Dick said as he shed his shirt.

"Hell yes! I'll bet you've got lots of girl friends back on Mars."

"Actually, I don't. The truth is I've never been with a woman naked before."

"You mean you've never sexed before?"

"Uh, no." he said hesitantly.

Squeaky knelt down beside where he sat and kissed him softly on his cheek.

"Then we both have something in common," she whispered huskily in his ear. "I'm tired of being a twenty-four-year-old virgin. I'm tired of having to smell those damned horny orchids when the wind blows and not have a way to scratch my itch. I'll pop your cherry if you'll pop mine. Deal?"

Dick just stared at her wide-eyed and nodded. The next thing he knew, she was yanking his shorts down and over his feet.

CHAPTER 72

Njord, John, Lo, and I were all standing on the front porch of the ranch house talking when Squeaky rode up on her jack. Dick was clinging tightly to her waist to keep from bouncing off.

"Where have you two been?" Njord asked as the big rabbit with its two passengers stopped in front of the steps.

"Down at the pond cooling off," came a strange woman's voice from Squeaky's lips. The voice was high and lilting, but it wasn't a five-year-old's any longer.

"What did you say?" Njord asked in amazement.

"We were just down at the pond, Pa. It's daytime so there ain't no danger."

"I'm not talking about that," Njord said impatiently. "What happened to your voice?"

"What do you mean, Pa? Is there something wrong with it?"

Njord hesitated for a moment and then he smiled.

"No, it's beautiful!" he exclaimed. "Have you finished checking out the perimeter yet?"

"On my way now," she replied as she deposited Dick at the foot of the steps and then hopped off.

Dick stood at the base of the steps. He looked up at us nervously, like a child who'd just done something really bad that he didn't want his parents to know about it.

Njord looked at him stern-faced for a long moment, the shook his head and laughed.

"C'mon up here, Dick. We need to talk," he said grinning.

Dick hesitantly ascended the steps. As he reached the front porch, Njord put his arm around him and ushered him back into the house.

"Have you ever thought about taking up ranching?" he asked Dick as he escorted him down the front hall.

I'm a writer, so I've got a vivid imagination. Lo is very intelligent and insightful. We both got 'it' at about the same instant. We looked at each other and started laughing uncontrollably.

John didn't get 'it' and looked at us both like we were crazy.

"Mind lettin' me in on the joke?" he said to us somewhat irritably.

I regained my composure enough to respond.

"They sexed and her voice changed," I said still laughing. "It's an old joke, but it really happened to her."

John looked at me dumbfounded. He obviously wasn't familiar with the joke. Fortunately for me, Lo came to my rescue.

"It was an environmental trigger", he explained. "Squeaky has repeatedly displayed talents that suggest she was _designed_ by her real parents. The retardation of puberty may or may not have been intentional, but it seems that having sexual intercourse with Dick unlocked whatever inhibition to her physiological development was present."

"In other words, they sexed and she instantly grew up," I added.

"That sounds like crazy talk," John said. "You're both pullin' my leg."

"No, they're quite serious," said Dr. Dancer as she approached us. "Environmental triggers are very real. We experience them all the time, although we don't realize it. I agree with Mr. Phat's suggestion that Squeaky's sudden voice change was caused by her sexual encounter with Mr. Stroker. An orgasm can work wonders."

Now that was something I wouldn't have expected to hear from Dr. Dancer. I sniffed the air but didn't notice the telltale scent of the Night Goddess.

"I hope you'll excuse my intrusion, but I was hoping that I could speak with Captain Soñador privately if that's okay," she said to us apologetically.

"Uh, no problem Doc," John said as he looked at me grinning. Lo simply smiled and nodded in agreement as they both walked back inside the house.

"I'll never get used to this awful humidity!" Dr. Dancer exclaimed. "Let's go back to my lab where there's air conditioning so that we can talk without sweating to death."

I didn't know what Dr. Dancer had in mind but being the curious sort that I am I decided to play along.

The warehouse housing Dr. Dancer's field laboratory was located roughly a hundred meters behind the main house. It featured thick walls constructed of native concrete and a sloped metal roof that must have been imported from off-world. Dr. Dancer opened the steel side door and I followed her inside. The transition from hot-and-humid to cool-and-dry was not just noticeable, but rather shocking. Only a small portion of one end of the warehouse interior was being utilized as a laboratory. Dr. Dancer's assistant, Dr. Cas Dreyfus, was busy calibrating some equipment. She glanced up briefly and waved at us.

A pair of large, stout-looking cages surrounded by a secondary fence occupied the central portion. The cages were empty.

"Much better!" Dr. Dancer exclaimed as the door shut behind us. "If I had to stay out there much longer I'd be running around in my birthday suit."

"What did you want to talk to me about?" I asked her cautiously.

She turned and looked at me thoughtfully for a moment before answering.

"I suppose that I owe you an apology," she replied. "You're not the swaggering, glory-hunting space cowboy that I thought you were. In fact, you're quite the opposite."

"What changed your mind about me?"

"Just watching you. I think when Squeaky told me about how you handled that cocky ranch hand at breakfast is when I realized how wrong I was. Of course, Jan Aradal swears up and down that you're the 'REAL Jack Parsec', so it took me awhile to get passed that."

"Jack Parsec is a fictional character, Dr. Dancer," I explained patiently for the umpteenth time. "I'm not him. I'm Peter Soñador. I'm a writer who unintentionally became an independent spacer and just happened to land at the right place at the right time on more than one occasion."

"Just call me Kali," she said.

"You can call me Pete," I replied.

"Okay Pete, I have a question for you and I'd like your frank opinion. Do you believe that Commander Stone is right about not using the shark cage to trap a vampire?"

I hesitated for several seconds before answering.

"I believe he's right," I said as I carefully chose my words. "You probably know more about the vampires than anyone else alive, but there's still a lot more that we don't know about them. They surprised us with their diversion last night. That suggests to me that that they may be a lot smarter than we thought they were. Maybe even smart enough to figure out how to defeat a supposedly indestructible polycarbonate shark cage."

Kali looked straight at me with her hazel eyes for a long moment before saying anything.

"Thanks for being honest with me, even if it wasn't the answer I was hoping for," she said. "You're both probably right about the shark cage. We're dealing with a still evolving creature, but that makes capturing one even more important."

"Hopefully, Commander Stone's plan will succeed, and they'll be catch one for you tonight." I said.

"Let's hope for all our sakes you're right," Kali responded. "Now if you'll excuse me, I need to get some work done."

"Yeah, I need to find out how my mechanic is doing," I said, taking my cue. As I was starting to leave, Kali called after me.

"Hey, maybe we can have a beer together after Stone catches a vampire tonight," she suggested.

"Sounds like a plan," I replied as I exited the warehouse.

I hurried back to the ranch house to locate John. I knew he'd been in regular contact with Ellie, and I genuinely wanted to know if there were any new developments regarding Phineas, or if we had an ETA[19] yet on Aratek's clipper.

I caught up with John and Lo in the lounge. John informed me that there had been no change in Phineas' condition, although that was a good thing since he was in hibernation. As for Aratek's fast candle, the word was 'any time now'.

"How could it get here so fast?" I asked.

"They didn't send a clipper, they sent this thing," John explained as he pulled up a news report on the lounge's wall 'face.

"Accustream News Service has learned that Aratek Corporation's experimental high-speed spaceship, the AMX-1, is currently in route to Penitence on an urgent rescue mission," the announcer said as footage of the candle lifting off from Olympus was displayed. "Powered by a revolutionary anti-matter rocket motor, the AMX-1 is believed capable of reaching velocities approaching 30,000 kilometers per second, roughly one-tenth the speed of light."

"It looked like they were using conventional thrusters to lift off," I said.

"You got sharp eyes, Pete. I'm guessin' they can't use their anti-matter motor close to Olympus."

"Perhaps they were concerned about it potentially exploding upon lift-off," Lo suggested. "That isn't an uncommon occurrence with experimental rocket motors."

I pulled up a schematic of the AMX-1 on the wall 'face. A lot of information about the candle was classified, but the interactive diagram clearly showed four CH4 – LO2 [20] motors surrounding the central anti-mater drive.

"Some of the early candles like the ones we got now had booster motors like that before they figured out how to clean up the exhaust," John said. "There's one on display at the spaceport museum at Olympus."

"I thought that they used boosters because they didn't have variable specific impulse motors back then," I said.

"That too," John replied. "Hey, there's somethin' goin' on outside!"

"Captain Pete, Mr. John, Father! Come quickly!" Tuesday called to us from the hall. "You must see this!"

We all hurried outside. Njord, Squeeky, and several of the ranch hands were standing around looking and pointing upward.

I stared up and saw what looked like small, fast moving star streaking across the horizon towards us and growing steadily brighter as it approached. As it passed directly overhead it entered the troposphere tail first, booster motors firing to rapidly slow it for its landing at Lastima. A few seconds later a faint sound like distant thunder reached my ears. The tiny silver needle continued to lose both speed and altitude, and we watched it descend until it disappeared behind the line of volcanic peaks that separate Watership Down from Lastima.

"Okay boys, show's over!" Njord shouted to his hands. "Let's all get back to work!"

"They must've travelled in a straight line to get here," John remarked in awe. "If they can do that, then they don't have to worry about matchin' orbits too much. You just point your candle where you want to get to and go."

"How fast would they have to accelerate to get here so fast?" I asked.

"I dunno. One, two, maybe even three gs. Elvis only knows."

"How could anyone stand that?"

"G-tanks. Counter-pressure suits, maybe? Thing is they can do it, and they just made every other candle flyin' obsolete."

Since _Orchid_ was already obsolete, I wondered if that made her prehistoric.

[19] Estimated Time of Arrival

[20] Methane and liquid oxygen.

CHAPTER 73

The AMX-1 was barely on the ground for twenty minutes before lifting off again with Ellie and the hibernator containing Phineas aboard. Their travel time back to Mars would be longer than the trip out to accommodate Ellie and hibernating Phineas, neither of whom could tolerate high-g acceleration. Regardless, their round-trip travel time would still be a record setter, and the pricey experimental candle's first use for a rescue mission amounted to good public relations for Aratek.

Unlike plentiful ol' deuterium or Helium-3, anti-matter wasn't cheap or easy to come by. It took a giant array of really expensive gamma ray lasers just to make the 'effin stuff. I suppose that meant we wouldn't all be zooming around the Sol System in super fast candles anytime soon. Then again, John told me that the rocket motors we had now were descended from large, cumbersome things that couldn't even be operated inside a planetary atmosphere and were dirty as all get out. Given a few decades, anti-matter drives would eventually become more practical. Maybe.

With the diversion provide by the AMX-1's arrival and subsequent departure over, things at the ranch returned to their normal routine. More or less. There was a palpable tension in the air that seemed to grow as evening approached. Stone and his mercs had planned and rehearsed over and over. Stealthsuit wearing squads equipped with multi-spectral night-vision headgear, flamers, and high rate-of-fire submachine guns that could cut a zombie in half, would patrol the perimeter.

Stone wasn't going to make it easy for them. All the perimeter floodlights would be working. There'd be no bait this time. If the bloodsuckers wanted in, then they'd have to fight their way in and it would cost them dearly.

Again, sunset came with agonizing slowness. Again, we waited as darkness fell.

We waited, and then we waited some more.

At 2:00 LMT, I suggested to Stone that a conveniently orchestrated power failure might help to draw them out. Stone initially rejected my idea, but at 3:30 LMT decided to try it. We cut the power to a section of the perimeter fence that didn't seem like an obvious trap.

Still there was no attack.

Dawn came. Perhaps they'd attack at dawn before the burning light of Penitence's artificial sun was too high in the sky. We waited some more, but no attack came.

Finally, at 8:00 LMT, Stone ordered his men to stand down. The much-anticipated zombie attack had never materialized.

There was no attack the following night, or the night after that.

After four nights of no zombie attacks, we were all mentally and physically exhausted.

"They're trying to wear us out and get us to let our guard down," said Stone over supper on the fifth day.

"It is possible that they no longer have sufficient strength to mount a mass attack," Lo suggested. "They suffered substantial losses during their last incursion. If you were successful in killing the vampire leaders, then the remaining zombies would be unable to mount a similar attack without their coordination."

"You cut off the head of a snake and the snake can't bite anymore," I said.

"What's a snake?" Squeaky asked.

"Extinct reptile that lived on Earth," I explained. "It looked sort of like a giant worm, except that it had eyes, a nose, and fangs. Some were poisonous. They have some cloned examples in the Sagan City Terrestrium that you can pull up on your 'face."

"You may have a valid point, but I'm not ready to quit just yet," Stone said to Lo. "Black Thunder will stay on the night shift a while longer. Njord's hands can patrol during the day."

"That doesn't catch me a vampire," Kali said to Stone. "That was our main reason for coming here."

"Our primary objective was to eliminate the vampire and zombie menace," Stone replied. "If we've succeeded in sufficiently diminishing the zombie population and neutralizing their vampire leaders to point that the survivors are confined to the deep woods and feeding on wild rabbits, then I think we can call our mission a success."

"You may have helped Watership Down, but what about the other ranches and homesteads?" she asked.

"I fight my battles one at a time, Dr. Dancer," Stone answered as he gulped down the last of his iced tea.

I could tell from Kali's expression that she was not happy with Stone's response, but I couldn't think of anything to say that would have made things any better. She said something to Dr. Cas Dreyfus, who was seated beside her, then got up and left the table.

We all sat around, eating our meal of rabbit churrasco in silence. Suddenly, I had an idea.

"What if we could rig the shark cage with some sort of bait and stick it in the forest?" I asked.

"What would you use for bait?" Njord asked.

"I don't know. What do vampires like to feed on besides rabbits and humans?"

"They'll feed on just about anything warm blooded, but Penitence' ecosystem isn't the most diverse," said Dr. Dreyfus. "All the wild species here are derived from imported terrestrial varieties that were accidently released. As far as the forests go, aide from the wild rabbits there are mostly feral cats, bats, mice, and tree rats. They deliberately avoided importing anything that would compete with the rabbits for grazing land."

"Bats?"

"To control the mosquitoes. "They were imported by accident, so they introduced the bats to control them."

"You forgot about the jackalopes," interjected Njord.

"What are jackalopes?" I asked.

"They're a cross between a rabbit and an antelope," he explained. "They were supposed to be a heartier breed of big bunny that could tolerate the hotter more southerly latitudes. They turned out to not be such a good idea. They're mean and aggressive and don't make good livestock. Even the vampires won't mess with them. They had to import giant hybrid chihuahuas to control the jackalope population or the damn things would have taken over. You don't ever want to meet up with a giant chihuahua unless you want to be its next meal."

"I wish I had me a jackalope," Squeaky said. "I'll bet I could tame it."

"I don't think so," Njord replied frowning at her. "Don't go getting any ideas."

"The vampires and zombies have eaten most of the wild rabbits in the forests," he continued. "That's why they stay close to ranches and homesteads. We're their groceries."

"Vampires don't actually _eat_ rabbits or humans," I said thoughtfully. "Zombies feed on carcasses, but vampires only drink blood, right?"

"Yeah, so what's your point?" asked Njord.

"Why couldn't we just put a container filled with fresh rabbit blood in the shark cage? Wouldn't that lure a vampire?"

Everyone stopped eating and looked at me.

"Elvis!" exclaimed Njord after a moment. "Your idea just might work! What do you think, Dr. Dreyfus?"

"Kali's the expert, but I don't see why it wouldn't work," Cas answered. "We'd have to chill the blood and then keep it cold until we're ready to put it in the cage. Once it warms up the vampires will smell it and be drawn to it."

"What triggers the trap?" I asked.

"The door will slam shut when the vampire steps on the pressure plate inside the open half. The cage should hold it long enough for Commander Stone's people to return to tranquilize it."

"You don't think it will sense that it's a trap?" questioned Stone.

"Even if it does, bloodlust should overwhelm it if it's hungry. I believe it's at least worth a try," said Cas.

"Well, what are we all waitin' on?" asked Squeaky enthusiastically. "Let's go catch us a bloodsucker!"

"We'd better hurry," Stone suggested as he looked out the window. "It'll be sunset in another hour and those woods will get dark fast."

"I'll go tell Kali," Cas said as she hurriedly got up from the table. "She'll be excited."

"Go round up a few bunnies," Njord told his daughter. "We'll draw a liter of blood out of each of them for the bait."

"If you're going beyond the tree line, then you'll need an escort," Stone said. "We'll take two squads; one to beat the bushes and one to cover our exit."

Everything seemed to be coming together until Cas returned some time later with a worried expression on her face.

"I can't find Kali anywhere!" she told us frantically. "Also, the shark cage is missing!"

"One of my hands said he helped her load something into one of the rage trucks," Njord informed us as he hurried in from outside. "I was coming to tell you that it looked like she might be up to something, but I guess I'm too late."

"Could she unload the cage all by herself?" I asked Cas.

"It's made out of clear polycarbonate that's bullet proof and it weighs about seventy kilograms on Mars," Cas replied. "It only weighs about half that here, so she could probably unload it by herself. It's bulky, but if she could manage to drive the truck inside the tree line then she could slide it off the bed and set it up without too much trouble."

"She's had the better part of an hour to reach the trees and set the cage up," Njord said. "We better find her before the vampires get to her or she may be their evening meal."

" _Yeah, their evening meal and their newest convert,"_ I thought.

Cas' 'face suddenly chimed. It was Kali calling!

CHAPTER 74

Cas, Dick, Tuesday, and I all piled into Njord's hovercar. I'd barely made it into the front passenger seat when he gunned the motor and we went careening over the road that led to the main gate. The gate was closed, but the sentries guarding it saw us approaching and opened it for us. Njord brought us to a stop and shouted to them.

"Which way did the truck with Dr. Dancer go?" he asked. The sentries both pointed to the left.

Njord gunned the motor again and we zoomed off, skirting the edge of the rapidly darkening forest. Behind us the two lumbering range trucks carrying Black Thunder struggled to catch up.

"We should be close," said Cas. "She's just inside the trees close to where we set up the 'sick rabbit' trap."

"Look, there's the truck!" I said pointing to a break in the trees. The truck was backed in with just its front end barely protruding from the thick vegetation.

Njord swung us in beside the truck so that our headlights shown into the now blackened forest and illuminated a ghastly scene. A half-dozen zombies were clustered around the shark cage, which was rocking violently. I could see Kali inside the 'bait cage'.

"I've got one!" came her excited voice over Cas 'face. "It's trying to get out, but the cage is holding so far."

"Hang on, we're here!" Cas told her.

"Where's Stone?" Njord asked. "We need him now!"

I heard the whine of the approaching range trucks. They were getting close.

Tuesday swore something in Mandarin and suddenly bolted from the hovercar, a machete in each hand, and sprinted toward the zombies.

"Are you crazy?" Njord shouted after her.

"No, she isn't," I told him as Tuesday proceeded to decapitate two zombies and dismember a third in the first two seconds of their encounter. The other three zombies were reduced to twitching body parts in under five seconds. She turned and walked back toward us just as Stone's troops were exiting the range trucks, twirling her bloody machetes.

"Look out, there's another one behind you!" Cas screamed.

Tuesday never looked back. She didn't need to turn around to sense the zombie's approach, but simply waited until it was conveniently within range before decapitating it.

Everyone stood around with their mouths hanging open, except me. I'd seen her in 'killing machine' mode before.

"Elvis," muttered Njord in wide-eyed disbelief.

"You're getting sloppy," I told her jokingly.

"Machetes aren't the best weapons," Tuesday replied matter-of-factly as she wiped the gore off the blades in the grass before replacing them in the scabbards strapped to her bare thighs.

"Hey, I could really use some help over here!" came Kali's muffled shout from inside the still rocking shark cage. "It's trying to tip us over!"

Two merc's armed with flashlight-equipped tranq pistols approached the cage. The cage featured ventilation holes near the top as well as a small sliding hatch that was just large enough to point the muzzle inside.

Three tranq rounds later, the creature was still very much awake and very unhappy. It shrieked hideously and pounded violently against the side of the cage.

"Has anyone got a stunner?" I asked.

"We don't know what a stunner will do to it," Kali said. She'd exited the 'bait cage' and was standing between Cas and me. "It might kill it."

"We can't stick around here any longer," Njord complained as he glanced worriedly around the darkened forest. "More of them are bound to show up and we can't use flamers in these woods."

"Worst case is that a stunner does nothing," Stone said. "If it kills it, then we just found another way to put them down."

"Yeah, except nobody around here uses stunners," Njord remarked. "If we have to shoot at something then that usually means we're trying to kill it."

A merc carrying a stunner walked up to the cage and took aim at enraged vampire. We all held our breaths. The creature suddenly convulsed and then collapsed.

"Jackpot!" Stone exclaimed.

"Is it still alive?" Kali asked anxiously.

"You can figure that out when we get it back to your lab," Stone answered. "I don't want to still be here when its friends decide to come calling. Let's get this damned thing loaded in the range truck and haul it back to the lab before it wakes up."

I watched as Stone's mercs detached the capture cage containing the motionless vampire and transferred it to the range truck. I happened to turn and stare out into the blackened forest behind us. I thought I saw dozens of pairs of yellow eyes staring back at me.

CHAPTER 75

"I don't know if that's the dumbest thing I've ever seen or the bravest thing," Stone said to Kali as we all stood inside her lab while a pair of mercs moved the still unconscious vampire inside the double-walled enclosure that would serve as its new home. "You could have been killed, or worse turned."

"I'm sorry Commander Stone," Kali apologized. "I didn't mean to cause any trouble, but you know that I _had_ to capture a vampire."

"Even if it meant risking your own life?"

"If risking my life meant we might find a way to permanently rid Penitence of the vampires, the yes," she replied emphatically.

"Well, you sure gave us all a scare," Cas scolded her.

"Yeah, and I missed all the excitement!" Squeaky complained to Njord. "That was really mean of you leaving me stuck at the house while y'all went off to help Kali catch a vampire!"

"Don't feel like you're all by your lonesome," said John as he cast a disapproving glance my way. "I done missed out on the fun, too."

"Oh, you really didn't miss much," Tuesday said to them as she winked at me.

Stone just shook his head and smiled.

I walked over to the cage to get a closer look at the vampire. There have been some pretty scary space monsters in _Out to the Void_ , but this thing made them all look cheesy. Even the tentacloids that we'd encountered on Futuroscope weren't as ugly as this hideous looking thing. I think the fact that it was still vaguely humanoid in appearance made it even more repulsive.

"You are one ugly monster," I said to the thing.

Suddenly, the creature's large yellow eyes sprang open and it stared straight at me. It startled me.

"It's awake!" I shouted.

By the time everyone else joined me around the secondary enclosure, the vampire had stood up. It glared at us menacingly.

"Ugly monster," it rasped.

"Elvis, it can talk!" Dick exclaimed.

"Can talk," it gurgled back.

"I think it can understand us," Cas exclaimed excitedly.

"That's not possible," Kali said shaking her head in disbelief. "Language is learned, and the vampire wouldn't have retained language even if its higher cognitive functions regenerated. Memories can't regenerate."

"Ugly monster understand language," it said in its deep raspy voice.

"It formed a sentence," Cas said to Kali. "Do you need more proof?"

"Why do you want to kill us?" I asked it.

The vampire just stared at me with it luminous yellow eyes as if it were studying me.

"See? It can only parrot sentence fragments back at us," Kali remarked.

"Need food. You food," it said in its guttural voice.

"That doesn't sound like it's just repeating what we say," I said.

"You made us. You kill us. We kill you," the creature said haltingly. "We learn. More come. We kill you. We turn you."

We all stood there shocked and speechless. Njord eventually broke the silence.

"Okay, that's enough for now," he said. "It's late and I've still got a ranch to run."

"I'm putting a continuous guard on this thing," said Stone. "If its buddies try to come to bail it out of jail they'll be in for a big disappointment."

"After all the excitement, I could sure use a beer before I turn in," Kali said to me.

"I might need more than one," I answered.

We retreated to the ranch house's lounge. John and Cas joined us for a beer and to watch the news stream, then both of them turned in. Kali and I stayed up and she insisted on watching _Out to the Void._ Fortunately for me, she picked one of the later episodes to view rather than my earlier, pre- _Orchid_ scripts.

"Now I get it," she said to me as the final credits rolled. "You take your real-life experiences and use them as material for your 'cast. You really _are_ Jack Parsec."

"Parts of him are loosely based on me," I explained. "Other parts are drawn from Homer, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Ian Fleming."

"So, you're an Earther history buff?"

"I'm no historian, Kali. I just find a lot of material in classic literature that makes for good fodder for my scripts. A lot of people nowadays don't care about 'old Earther stuff', but they like it when it's updated and repackaged. I don't plagiarize, but I often harvest story concepts and adapt them for a contemporary audience."

"So, Jack Parsec is really Odysseus, John Carter, and James Bond all wrapped into one?" Kali asked.

"Yeah, I suppose so," I said surprised. "How do you know about them?"

"I took a couple of classes on historical fiction for electives when I was an undergraduate," she explained.

"Did you like reading historical fiction?"

"Not really, but I enjoyed _Out to the Void_. I suppose now that I'm going to have to binge stream to catch up."

"I'd skip at least the first nine episodes if I were you. They weren't very good."

"You wrote those before you became a spacer?"

"No, I wrote them before I met John. He became my technical advisor and told me what would really work and what wouldn't. We roomed together back in Sagan City. He's _Orchid's_ pilot and my best friend."

I didn't hear a reply from Kali. I looked at her and realized she'd fallen asleep.

I got up from the couch where we'd been watching the wall 'face together and walked quietly into the kitchen. I fetched another Full Moon from the cooler and returned to the couch. I was still feeling wound up from my encounter with the vampire.

I didn't remember falling asleep, but then whoever does?

CHAPTER 76

"Breakfast is served!" Squeaky shouted loudly as she banged the spoon on the cast iron skillet to wake us up.

I awakened with a start as did Kali. I noticed the half-empty sippy box of Full Moon still sitting on the coffee table.

"Good morning," I said to her.

"Good morning," she replied yawning. "I guess we both fell asleep watching _Out to the Void_."

"Yeah, I suppose it doesn't say much for my writing."

"Your writing is great. We were both exhausted as well as rather inebriated," Kali said with a soft smile.

We got up and made our way to the breakfast table. Breakfast consisted of something Squeaky referred to as 'chicken fried rabbit', although I think the last chicken died over eighty years ago, so I really wasn't sure where the 'chicken' part came in.

I'm not a huge fan of fried foods, but I won't complain. It was rather tasty.

Breakfast was a rushed affair for Kali and Cas. They were both eager to get back to their lab to begin running tests on their new 'subject'. I admit that I had an unsettling feeling about them experimenting on what was an apparently sapient being, even if it was bent on killing us. I suppose that if it had been the mindless monster that I originally thought it was then I would have felt differently. I had to keep reminding myself what the loathsome creature had said to us.

" _We kill you. We turn you."_

Since the vampires' intentions were blatantly apparent, finding a way to exterminate them all didn't seem as much like xenophobic genocide.

Kali's explanation of her intended 'cure' for vampirism made me feel better about the nature of her research. The living vampire's DNA would be scanned for a genetic flaw that could be readily exploited and result in their rapid demise. As Kali described it to me, a dead vampire's DNA tended to 'unwind' exceptionally fast making such a scan very difficult. The other challenge facing her was that vampires started out as deceased humans, so their regenerated DNA was close enough to ours that whatever pathogen was synthesized could affect us as well.

Their research was tedious, their hours long, and their results frustratingly disappointing. The Lazarus enzyme's effects had made the vampires incredibly adaptive. Kali decided that they needed a break from the grind and switched on the wall 'face to stream some music. The popular tune, _Dance without Pants,_ boomed from the warehouse speakers.

Have you heard the news today?

It's all the rage they say

If you want romance, dance without pants!

Just let it all hang out,

When you start to move about

If you want romance, dance without pants!

"Elvis!" Cas shouted. "Kali come over here quick!"

Kali ran over to where Cas was standing in front of the vampire's cage and stared in disbelief.

"Is it doing what I _think_ it's doing?" Kali asked.

"It looks like it's dancing," Cas said in astonishment.

The creature was moving rhythmically to the music, shuffling its feet and swaying.

"I've got an idea," Kali said as she muted the music. The creature abruptly stopped dancing and glared at them. Kali un-muted the speakers, and it resumed dancing. She alternately muted and un-muted the music multiple times. Each time the music resumed, the vampire would start dancing again.

"Is is a voluntary or compulsory reaction?" Cas asked.

"It appears to be compulsory," answered Kali in amazement. "I know that sounds crazy, but the vampire seems to go into a trance-like state when the music plays. It's possible that the Lazarus enzyme caused the auditory cortex that responds selectively to sounds that people typically categorize as music to regenerate in such a way that it the response is involuntary, just like we react involuntarily to a burn by jerking away from the source."

Kali had to explain all this at length in less scientific terms to Njord, Stone, and the rest of us.

"You're suggesting that _music_ incapacitates them?" Stone asked incredulously.

"Dance music seems to work the best," Kali replied. All harmonic music seems to retard them to some extent, but dance tunes fully incapacitate them."

"That's just 'effing crazy," Njord replied.

"Would you like to see some of the recordings I made of the vampire dancing?" asked Kali as she stretched her 'face to tablet size. "They're very convincing."

We all gathered around Kali so that we could watch. Sure enough, when the music was playing the vampire swayed and shuffled his feet to the beat of the tune. When the music stopped, it abruptly stopped.

"Its footwork ain't bad at all. I've seen a lot worse," John remarked as he looked at me.

"You're convinced it can't help itself?" I asked, ignoring John's humorous jibe at my (lack of) dancing skills.

"Yes, I believe it's an involuntary response," Kali said.

"So, all we have to do is pipe music over the loudspeakers and we turn them into a dance troupe?"

"Essentially yes, but I wouldn't expect a chorus line."

"What about the zombies?" Stone asked. "Will they dance too?"

"I seriously doubt that their brains have sufficiently regenerated to be receptive to music, but they may attempt to mimic the vampires."

"We won't know for sure until we test it out," said Njord.

"We may have an opportunity this evening," Stone informed him. "We managed to get the multi-spectral sensors on the VTOL working again. She still can't fly so we can only scan from ground level, but the sensors show a large concentration of zombies in the forest near the previous fence breach. It's possible that they may try to rescue their captured comrade tonight."

"We'll be ready for them," Njord told him enthusiastically. "We'll have speakers set up on the perimeter floodlight poles. When they try to break through the fence we'll serenade them."

"What happens after that," I asked.

"Vampire roast," said Stone grinning. "While they're incapacitated, we fry 'em."

His answer made perfect sense. So why did I feel bad about it? They were bloodthirsty monsters, after all.

I waited until Njord and Stone had gone to prepare for the evening's much anticipated performance to express my concerns to Kali.

"You continue to amaze me," she said shaking her head. "Not only are you not a space cowboy, but you're concerned about invasive species that wants to feed on us."

"They're sapient and they were human once." I pointed out.

"The fact that they're sapient doesn't make me feel any sympathy for them," Kali said. "They may have been human once, but that's not what they've become. The one we captured told us that they wanted to kill us and turn us."

"It also said that _we_ made them, and _we_ kill them."

"What's your point?"

"According to Njord, the vampires didn't start attacking humans until after his grandfather burned one that was feeding on one of his rabbits. They didn't start the 'war', we did."

"You're forgetting that zombies have always attacked humans. Also, wasn't that tentacloid thing that the tabloids say you shot on Futuroscope also sapient as well as once human?"

I paused for a long moment before saying anything.

"I suppose you're right," I finally admitted. "I hadn't really thought about it that way."

"I wouldn't worry too much about it, Pete. Some people would rather just kill first and then ask questions later. At least you _thought_ about it."

"Thanks," I said as I left Kali alone in her lab and went to track down John to see if he'd heard any news from Ellie about Phineas.

* * *

Kali waited until after I'd left before she walked back over to the vampire cage.

"I wish Pete was right," she said to herself as she stared at the vampire.

The vampire simply glared at her with its large yellow eyes. Its image seemed to shimmer briefly.

Kali blinked. Pete was standing in the cage!

"Kali! It tricked us! Let me out, we've got to stop it!" he shouted.

Kali hurriedly punched in the four-digit code that deactivated the cage's security locks. Pete emerged from the cage and immediately grasped her forearms.

"I regret that this deception was necessary," the vampire told her as it planted its snout against Kali's neck. "I further apologize for having to feed on you. I will only withdraw enough blood to sustain myself without endangering your life."

CHAPTER 77

Kali was running up the road toward the ranch house. Behind her the zombie hoard was steadily closing in on her, despite the fact that she was running, and they were only awkwardly shuffling. The sky, the prairie, everything around her had taken on a colorless, monochromatic hue leaving only shades of gray. The howling wind kicked up clouds of dust that intermittently obscured her vision.

She reached the ranch house to find it abandoned and overgrown with weeds as if it had not been occupied for many years. The front doors stood open and the interior was dark. She mounted the steps to the porch despite the foreboding appearance and hurried inside, slamming the doors behind her. The doors were heavy and solid. Maybe they would keep the zombies out.

"Why did you make us?"

Kali whirled around. Pete was standing behind her in the dimly-lit foyer along with Njord, Squeaky, Cas, and Stone. Only they weren't human any more. Their hair was matted, their skin gray and shriveled, and their eyes yellow.

"Why did you make us?" Pete asked, only the guttural, rasping voice as he shambled toward her with his arms outstretched wasn't his. _"Why did you make us?"_

Kali awoke with a start. She immediately recognized the clear walls of the 'shark cage' surrounding her. There hadn't been time to safely recover it after they'd captured the vampire, so they'd left it in the forest. It had served its purpose, and there wasn't a pressing need to immediately retrieve it.

Now it seemed she was its prisoner.

" _Why_ did you make us?" the vampire demanded again in its rasping voice. "Why did you turn us into monsters?"

"Nobody ever meant for this to happen," Kali answered. "If you were one of the early settlers, did you believe this would happen? You were the ones burying your dead, not us."

"I don't recall anyone we buried ever rising from the dead," said the vampire.

"No, it didn't start to occur until many years later. We don't know why, but it seemed to be an unanticipated effect of the Lazarus enzyme."

The vampire looked at her as if surprised by her answer, then lowered and shook his head.

"I never would have dreamt that it would reanimate the dead," it said. "None of our trials produced results that would have indicated such an outcome."

"You were with NanoGenesis?" Kali asked.

"Yes. My team arrived here from Earth with the first group of settlers. We wanted to observe the effects of human colonization on the planetary ecology as well as the world's affect on the settlers. We were concerned about unintended consequences, but we never imagined one of them would be reanimation," it explained. "My wife and I came to love this world and decided to remain here as permanent colonists. It reminded us of our old home in Argentina."

"There were brief flashes of memories, but they were meaningless before I heard the music," the vampire continued. "I didn't know I had once been human. Initially I was a beast driven by a need to survive. Over time, I became increasingly self-aware. I seemed to know things, but it was more instinctive than learned. The others and I fed upon the wild rabbits in the deep forest. Then many of the rabbits suddenly died and we didn't have enough food, so we began to attack the ranches and homesteads."

" _You made us. You kill us. We kill you,"_ Kali recalled his words.

"So you only attacked the settlers because they attacked you first and not because you prefer human blood to rabbits?" she asked.

"Yes," said the vampire. "Now that I remember who I was, I have no desire to feed upon humans."

"You bit me!" Kali argued feeling the bandage on her neck.

"Only out of necessity. I was starving."

"Then why am I still in this cage if I'm not your next meal?" she demanded.

"That was for your own protection. I needed to keep you safe until the others heard the music," the vampire explained as it held up Kali's 'face. "Your interface is impressive. I wouldn't have believed that they could have been improved upon."

"Will I become a zombie . . . one of you?" she asked the vampire hesitantly.

"No," the vampire said with what have might have been a laugh. "The Lazarus enzyme cannot survive inside a living organism. It can't reanimate something that's already alive."

"How do you know so much about the Lazarus enzyme?"

"I developed it."

Kali stood in stunned silence for a few moments before speaking.

" _You're_ Dr. Drachen?" she asked in utter amazement.

"The one and the same."

"Elvis! I read your book on enzymatic molecular transformation. You're famous!"

"Thank you, but my name is Fritz, not Elvis."

"No, Elvis is just an expression," Kali explained with a chuckle. "Look, can you please let me out of this darn cage? It's rather stuffy in here."

"I'll release you, but I wouldn't recommend going any deeper into the forest without me accompanying you. Those that you call 'zombies' haven't regenerated sufficiently to be affected by music and will still try to feed on you. We can control them, but only if we're in their presence."

"How do you control them?"

"They same way that we communicate with each other. What one sees and feels, the others may experience as well. Once I'd heard the music, I was able to reach into your mind and trick you into freeing me."

"So, it's some sort of telepathy?"

"I suppose that you could call it that," Dr. Draken said as he unlocked the cage door. "I'll be happy to explain, but we probably should be joining the others. Before we regained our coherent memories, our plan was to mount an attack on the ranch and seize it. When our previous attack failed, we realized in our collective, intuitive way that only an organized, full scale assault would succeed. Among us are many who were soldiers in their previous life, and they helped to organize an army to defend us if the need ever arose. It took us days to assemble, but now our army has massed just inside the tree line near the ranch's gate. We have weapons, and we are prepared to use them if necessary. After today's events, we would much rather end this needless conflict rather than endlessly prolong it."

"What do you need me to do?" Kali asked somewhat bewildered.

"Just help me talk to your people," Dr. Draken replied as they trudged off together along the forest's edge toward the ranch's main gate. "Help me to convince them that the killing needs to stop. They might just listen to an 'ugly monster' if you're there with me."

CHAPTER 78

Darkness was falling again at Waterhip Down. We were all gathered in Stone's improvised command post anxiously waiting on the evening's 'floor show' to begin. Well, at least most of us were. Squeaky was with Tuesday and Lo back at the house, and Kali and Cas were presumably in their lab so that they could follow the night's events on the wall 'face. The new floodlights and loudspeakers were ready. All we needed now was a zombie attack.

We waited. At shortly after 21:00 LMT, things started to happen.

"Sensors show movement just inside the tree line," announced a merc's voice over Stone's radio. "Commander, can you _see_ this?"

Stone looked at his display screen and swore.

"What the 'eff? There must be thousands of them!"

"That's impossible!" Njord objected. "There's not that many left on the whole world."

"Commander, they're coming out!" the sensor operator shouted.

"Hit the floodlights," Stone ordered.

The powerful pole-mounted floodlights illuminated the tree line, although at this distance everything was muted shades of gray.

They emerged. Their line must have stretched for well over a hundred meters, and as they stepped forward I could see it was not a single line but extended line upon line into the forest. Their progression was organized and orderly, and they appeared to be armed with a variety of weapons ranging from homemade clubs, spears, and bows and arrows to captured shotguns, autorifles, and flamers.

"The Army of the Undead", Njord muttered in disbelief. "I've heard stories about it, but I never believed they were true."

"They've got us outnumbered by at least a hundred to one," Stone said grimly. "Even with firepower on our side we won't be able to stop them. They'll overrun us."

"Let's give 'em a taste of the _H &D Stomp,_" Njord urged. "Once they're dancing they won't be such a threat!"

A hovercar with Squeaky at the controls suddenly roared up and came to rest behind our position. Cas jumped out of the passenger seat and ran toward us.

"It's Kali!" she shouted frantically. "She and the vampire are both missing!"

" _Can this possibly get any worse?"_ I thought to myself. The prospect of the great Jack Parsec meeting his untimely demise in a zombie apocalypse wasn't a storyline I'd ever contemplated.

"They're just standin' there," John said puzzled. "How come they ain't attackin' us?"

"There's your answer," Stone said as he pointed at the enhanced display. Two figures were walking toward us from the center of the long line. One was waving what looked like a white tee-shirt.

"Is that supposed to be a white flag?" Dick asked.

"Hold your fire!" shouted a distant but familiar human voice. "They need to talk!"

By now the pair had approached close enough that I could clearly distinguish Kali and her vampire escort. They continued to approach across the clearing, halting just a couple meters outside the fence. I saw that she was shirtless and, more importantly, her throat was bandaged, and my heart sank.

"Kali, did it bite you?" Cas asked her worriedly.

"Do not worry," the vampire answered in its guttural voice. "She will not turn. The Lazarus enzyme only affects and regenerates the dead and will not survive in the living."

"How do you know about the Lazarus enzyme?" I asked.

"He knows because he created it," Kali replied. "He's Dr. Fritz Drachen."

"That's not possible," Cas argued. "Dr. Drachen died well over a century ago and memories don't survive after death."

"I once believed as you do," the vampire replied. "Even as I regenerated, my memories were just random, disconnected fragments. It wasn't until I heard the music in your laboratory that they re-ordered themselves and I discovered who I once was."

"Why do you attack us?" I asked.

"We did not start this 'war'. It began when you proceeded to indiscriminately kill us."

"This is all rabbit shit!" Njord protested. "You were killing humans and our rabbits first."

"We fed upon your rabbits because the wild rabbits that we were feeding on mysteriously died," Dr. Drachen replied. "It was almost as if they'd been poisoned."

"Do you know anything about that?" I asked Njord.

Njord hesitated for a few moments before answering.

"Yes, my grandfather and the other ranchers decided it was a good idea," he finally answered. "The escaped rabbits were breeding like crazy and the biologists told us that they'd wreck the forests and destroy the ecosystem."

"Is that the only reason?" Dr. Drachen asked him.

"No, they wanted to get rid of the zombies, too. They were scared of them and thought that killing off the wild rabbits would starve them out," Njord explained.

_So, the real truth finally comes out,_ I thought.

"Sounds like it wasn't such a good idea," Kali said. "Before that the zombies weren't attacking people, were they? When the ranchers virtually eliminated their food supply, the zombies didn't have a choice but to feed on whatever they could get."

"The past is passed," said Dr. Drachen. "There are two possible outcomes to tonight's encounter. One outcome involves the needless loss of many lives. The other results in an end to the war."

"What are you suggesting?" I asked.

"The ranchers should release sufficient numbers of rabbits into the forests that they will establish a stable population," Dr. Drachen explained. "With an adequate food supply, attacks will become unnecessary. We can coexist peacefully together."

"Those rabbits are worth a lot of bitcreds," Njord protested. "What do all of us ranchers get in return for our donations besides no more zombie attacks?"

"What if Penitence became a tourist destination?" Kali asked. "What if this was a world that people _wanted_ to visit rather than avoid?"

"What are you talking about?" Njord asked her puzzled.

"What if there was a really cool tourist attraction?" she said, turning to the Dr. Drachen.

The vampire gave her a look that might have been a smile and then gurgled, "Show time!"

"Cue music!" Kali shouted enthusiastically.

The searchlights redirected themselves, turning the space beyond the fence in front of us into a well-lit stage onto which a line of vampires marched. As _Dance Without Pants_ boomed from the loudspeakers, the vampires began to all sway and move in unison. Kali grinned at Dr. Drachen, who suddenly launched into a series of complicated dance steps that his fellow vampires perfectly replicated.

"I don't 'effin believe this," Stone said wide-eyed as he watched them dancing.

"Elvis! They's darn good," John exclaimed in awe.

"Think what we could do here with them as a tourist attraction!" Njord said excitedly as he grasped both Squeaky and Dick by their hands. "We could be as big as New Vegas! You kids wouldn't have to worry about ranching in a few years."

Kali had finally rejoined us after walking around the fence to the gate and back.

"Are you really okay?" I asked as I hugged her.

"Yes," she said hugging me back. "The living who've been bitten and live don't turn. It's only those who die."

"How are they doing this?" I asked her. "They hardly had anytime at all to rehearse."

"They don't need to rehearse," Kali explained to me. "The older vampires have developed a form of telepathy that allows them to instantaneously share experiences via synaptic communication. Whatever Dr. Drachen does, his accompanying dancers can do without having to learn the steps."

"So, what you're saying is that he is doing the dancing and they're essentially just puppets," I suggested.

"Where'd he learn to dance like that?" John asked, obviously amazed.

"He told me he and his late wife were once competitive dancers when he wasn't preoccupied with his research," Kali explained. "She was a famous choreographer back on old Earth."

"What happened to her? Is she a vampire too?"

"No, he told me she was killed by a homesteader when she was still a zombie."

" _You made us. You kill us."_ Dr. Drachen had said before listening to music had fully restored his memory.

Dick was oblivious to our conversation and was excitedly livestreaming the vampires' performance while providing commentary on his 'face. Even with light-lag[21] in a matter of hours it would be all over the Sol System.

I realized that tonight's events were going to change everything for Penitence's inhabitants forever.

"Are you ready for a beer yet?" I asked Kali.

"After tonight, I'm probably going to need more than just one," she replied smiling.

We both ended up drinking too many Full Moon IPAs and watching more _Out to the Void_ episodes. At some point we both feel asleep on the couch (again).

[21] Radio communication is limited to the speed of light. Given the vast distances between the various worlds of the Sol System, this can result in delays of minutes or even hours before a transmission is received.

CHAPTER 79

We were Njord's guests at Watership Down for the better part of another two weeks. There really wasn't any point in us going back to _Orchid_ since we were short both a mechanic and a doctor, so we decided to wait until the AMX-1 carrying Ellie and recently recovered Phineas returned to Penitence from Mars before we left the ranch.

During our time at the ranch, I spent my days working on my novel. I decided against including any mention of the zombies or the vampires. I briefly considered doing away with the exploding collars and having the prison farm's electronic fence serve its real purpose of keeping out the zombies, but then decided against it. I figured it would have meant too much re-writing. While the zombies might have added a nice horror element before recent events, their inclusion now would have dated my plot.

I never made it over to 'Camp #57' for a tour, by the way. And as for _Jack Parsec and the Dancing Vampires_ , that's definitely not happening!

Kali and I spent our evenings watching back-to-back episodes of _Out to the Void_ and falling asleep on the couch. There was no sexing. Between the alcohol and Jack Parsec, we just never quite got there. It was probably just as well considering that Jan had proposed to me while we were both naked together in her penthouse swimming pool. She'd told me that she didn't need an answer from me then, but when I was ready to let her know.

"I don't expect an answer anytime soon," she'd told me with a knowing smile. "When you're finally tired of going out to the void, let me know. I'm in no hurry."

I admit I'm very attracted to Jan, but I'm also still very afraid of tying the knot. I acknowledge that I apparently have some 'commitment issues'. Blame it on my parents. Or John and Ellie. Or maybe not so much.

I thought John was going to piss his pants in excitement when the red Aratek VTOL carrying Ellie finally arrived at the ranch. With the possible exception of the time he'd been reunited with her after she'd been abducted on Luna and taken to Market, I'd never seen him so glad to see her and they embraced and kissed for what must have been well over a minute. Ellie informed me that Phineas had insisted on staying in Lastima so that he could check out _Orchid._ That sure sounded to me like he'd made a full recovery.

Ellie went on to explain to me that Phineas had apparently contracted a retrovirus that was prevalent on Penitence. The retrovirus was a lingering terraforming artifact that was harmless to humans, but not so harmless to a genetically-engineered super ape. The really smart folks back at Aratek Genetic Engineering Laboratories managed to cook-up some exotic nano in short order that fixed him up.

Dick stayed behind when we boarded the VTOL for the return trip to Lastima. Based on recent events, I suspected that I'd be receiving a wedding invitation in the very near future. I might actually make an attempt to attend the nuptials if there's an ample supply of spirits.

By the way - Squeaky was excited that she was finally growing boobs. 'Nuff said on that topic.

We all said our good-byes and boarded the VTOL. My crew and I were the only passengers. Stone and his mercs would wait until tomorrow when their larger VTOL was airworthy again and then ride it back to Lastima. Kali and Cas were remaining behind to continue their reanimation research with the assistance of Dr. Drachen.

Aside from having a really large, ugly-looking bat smack into our VTOL's windscreen, our evening fight back to Lastima was uneventful.

Lastima had already changed dramatically. New construction was in evidence everywhere and existing businesses had undergone a transformation, all in anticipation of the flood of tourists that would be arriving very shortly. The nondescript hole-in-the-wall bar where John and I had snagged a beer before boarding the VTOL for Watership Down a few weeks ago was now garishly illuminated in signage that proclaimed, 'Zombie Bar'. Street vendors in zombie and vampire masks were hawking dancing vampire and zombie tee-shirts. Souvenir shops and stalls had sprouted up like weeds. Homesteads were suddenly rustic 'bed-and-breakfasts'. There were ads promoting a soon-to-be-constructed theme park, 'Zombieland'. This it seemed was the future of Penitence, which the politically correct now insisted should now be referred to by its original name, Io, although there was a contingent that was pushing hard for 'Zombia'.

I was ready to get back to the void. So was John. I've discovered that for all its isolation, the void has a cleansing effect. At least it does on those of us who call ourselves 'spacers': those of us who seem to prefer a living in the void to a life dirtside.

Sometimes I wonder if that's what I've become: a _real_ spacer. Not just a wannabe because I wrote about being one.

I'm more than slightly irritated. I want _Orchid_ to lift but Lastima's grossly understaffed traffic control is already overwhelmed by the approaching swarm of candles and can't give us clearance. We sit on the ground for close to two hours before we finally get the okay to lift.

"Let's go back to Mars," I told John. "I've had enough of all this dirtside drama."

"Me too Pete," he said as he looked at me nodding in agreement. "Liftoff in t-minus five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . ."

Our rocket motor roared to life, and moments later Penitence was falling rapidly away as _Wheel in the Sky_ played over the intercom.

CHAPTER 80

I had this weird dream. The low g produced by Orchid's constant acceleration seems to do that, especially after a Full Moon IPA. Or two.

I dreamt I was in some ancient, glitzy old Earth Hollywood musical. I was dressed in a top hat and tails and dancing on stage with Kali, Dr. Drachen, and another woman whom I intuitively knew was his wife in what was apparently the grand finale. Dr. Drachen was also human looking in my dream, but I knew it was him. My similarly dressed crew was in the row behind us, followed by Stone and his mercs and then the vampires and zombies. We were all dancing and singing with perfect pitch and precise chorography to _Dance Without Pants_.

In my dream, I was viewing us all from a camera's perspective. Jan joined us on stage, and arm and arm we proceeded to step forward and kick as the ranks behind us fell one by one in step with us while the music swelled. Then the camera slowly pulled away and the credits rolled.

I awoke with a start. I was seated in my acceleration couch on the bridge and John was at his pilot's station beside me.

"You done dozed off," he said to me.

"Sorry," I said as I stared out of the forward viewports into the blackness.

"No problem. It ain't like things haven't been crazy stupid lately."

"I just had a weird dream, John"

"Don't go tellin' me 'bout no dreams o' yours unless you want 'em to come true."

"Since when are you the Dream Fairy?"

"Huh?"

"Never mind."

"Pete, is thar somethin' eatin' at you?" John asked me. "You ain't been yourself this whole trip."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean the Pete I know would've been shackin' up with Kali, but you've been keepin' her out of your pants.'

"She didn't try to go there."

"You didn't exactly invite her, neither. What the 'eff is up?"

I paused and sighed heavily.

"It's Jan," I replied. "She proposed to me."

"Elvis! Jan Aradal asked you to tie the knot? I knew you was spending a lot of time with her when we was dirtside, but I didn't know it was that serious," he said excitedly. "You are one 'effin lucky bastard! Uh, don't go takin' that the wrong way."

"I just don't know if I'm ready to settle down John," I said. "I like being a spacer."

"Yeah, I know whatcha mean," John said calming down. "Once it gets in your blood you don't get it out 'o you easy like."

"So, what am I supposed to _do_?" I asked him.

"Don't marry her if you ain't ready, that's fer sure," he replied thoughtfully. "Do you love her?"

"Yes. Well, maybe. I'm not sure. I think I do. I'm very attracted to her. I just don't want to commit and then have things go off-trajectory."

"Sure sounds like Cat all over again."

"I'd rather not have it end up like that," I replied. "It wasn't very pleasant."

"We had us a sayin' back on Ganymede. Follow your brain and not your cock, 'cause one will get you outta trouble and the other will getcha in it."

"So you're suggesting that I should listen to my rational mind, which says I'd be a stupid idiot for not marrying someone to whom I'm very attracted and who also just happens to be the CEO of a major interplanetary supercorp?"

"Nah, I'm suggestin' that you might wanna just use your head and not do somethin' that'll make you miserable in the long run, that's all."

CHAPTER 81

The coffin-sized shipping container was waiting for us at Olympus Spaceport's cargo terminal when we returned to Mars from Penitence. They delivered it to our pad the morning after we'd dusted. John, Ellie, Tuesday, Lo, and I all suited up and rode the cargo basket down to where the container had just been deposited at the base of _Orchid's_ landing gear.

The shipping label on the container read:

INTERPLANETARY DELIVERY SERVICE

' _The Sol System on Time'_

SHIPPED FROM: MARIONNEAUX, FUTUROSCOPE STATION, VENUS ORBIT

SHIPPED TO: SOÑADOR, ISV ORCHID, OLYMPUS SPACEPORT MARS

TRACKING NO.: QPX2755R21177DV90000048213ZXB5LF4481S

" _Why would Marie ship something to me when she could have just put it aboard Orchid before we left the station?"_ I thought.

"What do you think it is?" John asked me.

"I've no idea," I said. "Do you think we should open it out here or bring it aboard?"

"Are you concerned that it might be booby-trapped?" Lo asked me.

"The thought crossed my mind that this might be payback from either GenetiX or what's left of Exodyne."

"I don't think that's likely. It would be too obvious and draw unwanted scrutiny from the authorities," he replied.

"Okay, so what do we do?"

"Dr. Marioneaux would have packed it aboard the station, so it would be something that is normally in a breathable atmosphere and habitable temperature range. That suggests we should bring the crate aboard to unpack it or risk damaging the contents," Tuesday opined.

John and I loaded the crate into the cargo basket and climbed in. Phineas raised us up, and we unloaded the crate into the cargo bay. He sent the basket back down and we were joined shortly by Ellie, Lo, and Tuesday. Once everyone was back aboard, we shut the doors and then pressurized the cargo bay. The crate was a standard two-meter long by one-meter wide by one-meter high small shipping container, which was a bit too big to fit into the airlock.

"We might should all stay suited-up 'til we see what's in it," John suggested.

John helped me unseal the crate. We got the lid off and were greeted by a mass of shock absorbent 'jelly beans' that we had to dig through to find . . .

A body.

Uh, a _body?_

The rest of my crew was standing around and their reactions were a mixture of various stages of shock. Lo was the most composed, and leaned over the apparently lifeless figure.

"It's not a human. It's a humanized 'bot. An android," he announced.

"She's holding a messager," I added, noting 'her' obviously feminine features. I carefully pulled the 'face-sized rectangle from her hands and stretched it. A hand written message appeared in a shaky script that suggested the author was either drunk, under duress, or perhaps both, and read:

Pete,

Please look after Cherry. She doesn't deserve to burn up when we go down.

Marie

The message had chilling implications. Marie had obviously intended to go 'down with her ship' rather than face the consequences of her indiscretions.

"She looks like a sexbot," I suggested after I'd helped John and Lo peel away more of the jelly beans. "She probably came from Futuroscope's brothel."

'Cherry' had dark, metallic red hair, an angel's face, and an athlete's lean, slender body with the exception of her firm enhanced breasts and buttocks. She was dressed in a standard white Futuroscope jumpsuit.

"A high end model and quite old," Lo said as he examined the android. "Her skin and hair appear undamaged by age which indicates a sophisticated self-repair capability."

"You mean she's got nano runnin' around her innerds?" John asked worriedly.

"Quite likely. Probably self-replicating as well. They certainly don't make them like this anymore."

There was a coverless, dog-eared manual in a clear envelope next to the android. I carefully extracted it from the crate and examined it. The front page proclaimed:

CYBERDYNE SYSTEMS

REACREATIONAL ANDROID

MODEL RA2500F

Owner's Manual

"Elvis, she's almost 200 years old!" I exclaimed as I carefully turned the faded pages.

"Not surprising considering when Futuroscope was constructed." Lo replied. "She was probably one of the brothel's original occupants."

There was a folded, yellowed piece of paper tucked between the pages. Yes, real _paper_. The stuff that they used to make from trees rather than the stuff that's made from algae. I gently pulled it out and unfolded it. On it were written the words, 'Hello Cherry'.

"What does it say?" John asked.

"It just says, 'Hello Cherry', and nothing else," I replied puzzled.

'Hello Cherry' must have been the magic words needed to wake up our sleeping beauty, because the android's eyelids suddenly opened revealing brilliant jade green eyes.

"Hello, I'm Cherry Poppers!" she announced in a cheerful voice as she sat up smiling. Then as she looked at us and the cargo bay's interior, her facial expression became troubled.

"Where am I? Where is Ms. Marie?" she asked. She seemed genuinely confused and distraught.

"Cherry, Ms. Marie couldn't care for you any longer and sent you to us," Lo instructed her slowly and deliberately. "Peter Soñador is your new owner."

I started to protest, but Lo held up his hand in a familiar 'shut up' gesture.

"Oh," Cherry said frowning and looking around. "Which one of you is Peter Soñador?"

"Me," I said raising my hand. "Just call me Pete."

"Okay Pete," she replied cheerfully. "Would you like to sex with me?"

CHAPTER 82

There have been many times when I've been amazed, frustrated, and even amused by Lo Phat, but I've never been truly angry with him. That is, until today.

I used a lot of expletives in my ensuing rant, which is uncharacteristic of me because I almost never lose my temper. Lo listened to me with a placid expression on his face without ever offering a response. We were standing alone in _Orchid's_ still-pressurized cargo bay. The rest of the group had taken Cherry up to the crew compartment so that Phineas could run a diagnostic on her.

"Why in Elvis' name?" I asked in exasperation. "Why the 'eff did you tell her I was her owner?"

"Pete, if you'll calm down I'll explain," Lo replied calmly.

I took a deep breath. "Okay, fire away," I said with my blood still boiling.

"Do you know what the term 'pseudo-sapient' means?"

"I think it means artificial self-awareness."

"Correct. Before the war, it was a goal of the Earthers to construct androids that were human-like in appearance _and_ behavior. This was especially true for androids that were intended to socially interact regularly or intimately with humans. The ability to realistically display empathy was particularly desirable, and that required some highly sophisticated programming, a lot of processing power, and the capability for 'fuzzy logic' that resulted in a computer that functioned a lot like a human brain."

"Did you get that from Phineas?"

"As a matter of fact, I did. He's quite conversant when it comes to such topics."

"Never mind, what does this have to do with you telling Cherry I'm her new owner?" I asked impatiently.

"I was concerned about her reaction if she thought she'd been abandoned. I wanted her to have a sense of security," Lo responded.

"But she's just an android. She doesn't have real feelings." I protested.

"Her reaction when she woke up in unfamiliar surroundings suggested to me that she does."

"That's crazy," I said.

"No, it isn't. One reason that they quit making pseudo-sapient A.I.s is that they didn't _remain_ pseudo-sapient. Over time some developed true sapient traits, and that frightened people. An android that can empathize is hair's breadth away from one that develops emotions. Or in rare instances, violent behavior – but those stories all seem to be anecdotal and stem from a single incident in which an elderly patient with dementia physically attacked her android caregiver. The android attempted to physically restrain the patient with tragic results. The Earther's heavy reliance on A.I.s during the war didn't help their reputation, either. Sophisticated, life-like androids like Cherry fell out of favor due to unsubstantiated fears and social prejudice, not because they were ever really a threat."

I knew not everyone would agree with Lo, Jason Marx in particular coming immediately to mind.

"The bottom line is you were worried about her having some kind of bad emotional response and not about her going psycho on us, right?" I asked.

"Yes. Cherry may be close to 200 years old, but emotionally she's maybe an adolescent. That's not always a good age."

"So, just what exactly am I supposed to do now?"

"Well you could use her for her intended purpose but knowing you I don't believe you'd find that very appealing, so I recommend that you do what Marie asked you to do. Take care of her. Help her to grow up."

"How do you suggest I do that?'

"Be a mentor to her. Teach her. She's capable of learning almost anything instantly. Tuesday and I will assist you. She could also watch John pilot _Orchid_ and easily learn to fly this old candle."

"Why should we go to all that trouble in the first place? This old candle already has a full crew and we don't really need another body occupying one of our spare bunks."

"John will be the first one to tell you that it's always good to have someone else aboard who can sit in the pilot's seat. Cherry doesn't require a bunk or even any food or water, just an occasionally battery charge. Also, consider that at some point in the not too distant future, you'll need someone to take Tuesday's place."

"I don't understand," I said confused.

"Pete, my dear friend, I'm not getting any younger and I've no desire to artificially extend my life with nano or other treatments" Lo explained patiently. "I joined your crew because John convinced me a singular voyage to Ganymede would provide urgently needed working capital. I'd planned on one run, but it seems I've been occupying a bunk on _Orchid_ for well over a year now. During that time, I've managed some lucrative investments that have provided the necessary funds to mitigate the situation that caused me to join your crew in the first place. I desire now to retire from spacing and spend my days living in a real gravitational pull."

"What does that have to do with Tuesday?" I asked dismayed.

"She will be taking over my business in the near future. She is also approaching optimal reproductive age and is very attracted to John Hawker. From my observations, they are highly compatible and would produce superior offspring."

"Okay, I get that."

"She was very attracted to you as well Pete, but she recognized early on that you were already in a relationship."

"Cat has been gone months and I was never as serious about her as she was about me." I replied, conveniently not bothering to mention my more recent 'engagement' to Jan.

"I'm not talking about Cat. I'm talking about _Orchid_."

"What do you mean?"

"You're just like your old man. You're married to your candle."

I was dumbfounded by Lo's statement.

"You _knew_ my dad?" I asked.

"We were partners many years ago aboard _Dang Hao_ , before he met your mother. I didn't realize until just recently that you were Max Donner's son. Your last name and your looks are what threw me off."

"Soñador was my mother's last name and I guess I favor her," I said. "Look, can we please finish this conversation in the galley? I'm feeling a severe thirst coming on."

We both retreated to the galley, shucking our pressure suits and stashing them in the locker along the way. I walked over to the cooler, extracted a Full Moon IPA _,_ and held it up.

"You want one?" I asked Lo.

"No thank you. It's still rather early."

"It's always the right time zone somewhere," I replied. "Anyway, I'm probably going to need more than one of these after the bomb you just dropped on me."

"What 'bomb' is that?"

"You and Tuesday quitting the crew, that's what."

"We're not leaving you immediately," Lo said shaking his head slowly. "It is an eventuality, though. Just like death and taxes. Don't worry, you've come a long way with your negotiating skills since we first met, and you'll do just fine on your own after we're gone."

"What will I do if John and Ellie quit on me?" I asked taking a rather large gulp.

"I don't think you'll have to worry about that," Lo said with a chuckle. "From what I've observed, they wouldn't remain married for very long if they had to coexist dirtside. Regardless, you would have a very difficult time ever prying John out of the pilot's seat."

"That's for sure," I admitted.

At this point, I definitely needed another Full Moon.

CHAPTER 83

Oh well, I'm the type of guy who will never settle down

Where pretty girls are, well you know that I'm around

I kiss 'em and I love 'em cause to me they're all the same

I hug 'em and I squeeze 'em they don't even know my name

They call me the wanderer

Yeah, the wanderer

I roam around, around, aroun'

_The Wanderer_ by Dion DiMucci

* * *

" _Orchid_ , this is Olympus Control. Please hold until TranSolar 513 clears SSD."

SSD. Safe Separation Distance. 100 kilometers altitude. Yeah, I knew that.

"Roger Olympus, copy hold," was John's monotone reply. The exchange was yet another launch ritual as old as space travel itself. It was an anachronism that persisted perhaps from a lingering fear that a fully-automated system might malfunction, but mostly from tradition.

I was sitting in the second row of seats on the bridge next to Phineas behind my normal position. My usual seat was occupied by a metallic red-haired android who was intently watching and instantly learning John's every action. Lo was correct, you could pretty much teach Cherry anything. She could read a textbook or manual that would take a human several hours to read as fast as she could swipe through the pages. Tai Chi, Kung Fu, or whatever, show her the correct movement and she could flawlessly duplicate it under identical conditions. I was mystified that her manufacturer would have ever wasted this much capability on a 'recreational android' and I wondered if there was much more to her than met the eye.

It seems that Monique knew Cherry from Monique's early days in Futuroscope's brothel, but Cherry was pulled after an 'incident' with a customer and she'd lost track of her. Now they 'face each other regularly.

Sometimes Cherry acts like a pseudo-sapient android and sometimes like a hormones-in-overdrive human teenager. Fortunately for me, the latter episodes are usually fleeting. At least I finally got her to quit asking everyone new she meets if they want to sex with her. Now most people that she meets believes she's human and not an android, which seriously simplifies my life. She even had one of Jan Aradal's telepaths fooled. Now that's _very_ impressive.

" _Orchid_ , Olympus. You are go for liftoff. Clear skies!"

"Roger, thank you Olympus, we are go and commencing final countdown," John responded. His announcement went out over _Orchid's_ intercom.

He turned to me grinning and asked, "Captain?"

"Cue music and light this old candle up," I replied as I smiled and gave him a 'thumbs up'.

"Roger that, Pete!" he said as his fingers danced over the control panel. "Liftoff in t-minus five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . ."

Our 'launch music' had already started playing over the intercom before the roar of our rocket motor partially drowned it out, but I could still make out the words.

"Interesting launch music selection," I shouted to John a bit sardonically. He'd selected an ancient rock ballad from the very dawn of space exploration entitled, _The Wanderer_.

"Lo suggested it," John shouted back to me over the din. "He said he thought you'd relate to the song. It's kind of a catchy tune."

" _Am I the type of guy who will never settle down?"_ I asked myself as I listened to the lyrics.

Maybe it isn't just 'commitment issues' that keep me from ever wanting to settle down. Maybe I'm really a lot more of an adventurer than I ever thought I was. Maybe, as Lo suggested, I'm 'married to my candle'.

Maybe that's why I keep going out there. Going out with _Orchid_ in the void.

I suppose Jan may have a longer wait for me than she might have anticipated, but we'll just have to see . . .

(Okay, you can cue the ending theme music and roll the credits.)

Well we had a lot of luck on Venus

We always had a ball on Mars

Meeting all the groovy people

We've rocked the Milky Way so far

We danced around with Borealis

We're space truckin' round the stars

Come on let's go Space Truckin'

Remember when we did the moonshot

And Pony Trekker led the way

We'd move to the Canaveral moonstop

And everynaut would dance and sway

We got music in our solar system

We're space truckin' round the stars

Come on let's go Space Truckin'

Space Truckin' by Deep Purple, 1972

# The End?

(Nah, there's already a sequel.)

# About the Author

Geologist, cyclist, home brewer, and author all describe Steve Whitting. His formative years were spent in Fayetteville, Arkansas building model rockets, stargazing with his friends, and reading science fiction. Graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Arkansas in 1978, he had aspirations of becoming the first Geologist to visit the planet Mars. When that didn't pan out, he began writing short fiction in his spare time. Over the years those story concepts grew and eventually coalesced into his first novel, _Orchid in the Void_.

When he isn't busy pursuing his profession as an Environmental Geologist, he can be found aboard his beloved bicycle cruising along Alligator Bayou Road near Prarieville, Louisiana, concocting ales in his home brewery, or working on his next novel.

Steve Whitting is available for select readings and lectures. To inquire about possible appearances, please email him at steve.whitting@gmail.com.

# Connect with Steve Whitting

Thanks for reading my novel. I hope you enjoyed it!

You want my social media coordinates? Getting kind of personal, aren't we? Okay, you can "friend" me on facebook at <https://www.facebook.com/steve.whitting.9> or make me a favorite author by visiting <https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/freetrader2300>.

