The Christmas Planet and Other Stories (Beta Version) Read online

  Huh. Same as me.

  “She has an 800K price on her head.”

  “A reward.”

  “Precisely.”

  I nodded. “Enough to pay off my loans.”

  “Quite so.”

  “And you think she’s inside that spaceship.” I gestured to the view screen again.

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

  “Dead or alive?”

  “The ship is dead.”

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

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. Let’s find the door into the craft.”

  * * *

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

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

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

  Breck’s ship bulged slightly near one end, as if whoever had loaded the cigar with tobacco had been sloppy. Wilson had located an elliptical seam obscured by the rim of a crater. I floated over to it, accompanied by one demolition and two stevedore robots. Egg loomed near us like an overly protective beach ball, revolving around the cigar with an angular velocity that matched its slow rotation. It felt as if we were stationary, with the universe of stars pivoting around us.

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

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

  “Wilson, do you hear those noises?”

  “I do.”

  “What are they?”

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

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

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

  “Probably.”

  “But there’s a dog inside.”

  “Sounds like it.”

  “And enough air to transmit his barking.”

  “Good reasoning, Alex.”

  “Don’t you patronize me!”

  Wilson said nothing.

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

  I centered the light from my helmet on it. “Can you understand those symbols?”

  “I can.”

  “How does it work?”

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

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

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

  “I’m handling it.” I babied the controls, conserving propellant, slowing myself down then accelerating back.

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

  “Okay, Wilson, I’m going in.”

  “You’re not concerned about the dog or about getting trapped?”

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

  “You know it’s not really a dog, right?”

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

  “Endish.”

  I nodded. “So, you were right.”

  “I was.”

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

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

  But it slammed into me whining, wriggling, and barking. Nothing but joy. It began licking my helmet. I petted its head, grabbed a bit of loose skin on its neck. It felt like a real dog as far as I could tell through my gloves. It was some kind of mutt, like a black Irish wolfhound but not so big. The fur was wiry.

  I took a close look at a forepaw that gripped the material on my spacesuit. It wasn’t a hand, but the toes were able to hold on to things. Pretty important in zero-G.

  “So, it’s a dog robot. A companion. Right, Wilson?”

  Dead air.

  “Wilson, do you read me?”

  Nothing.

  “Damn it, Wilson, that’s not funny.”

  Wilson’s voice filled my helmet. “Three years ago, on July seventh, you—”

  “I don’t care what I said or did. Don’t make that joke again. Now, tell me where the life-form … never mind. I know where it is.”

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

  “Did Timmy fall into the well?” I asked. I had no idea what that meant, but it’s something my granddad had said whenever our dog acted that way.

  I followed the dog into a passageway. It was a hexagonal tube, barely wide enough to turn around in. I passed storage compartments separated from one another by rubbery protuberances that doubled as hand—or paw—grips. The ship was silent save for the dog’s barks and a ringing in my ears left over from a cargo explosion during my careless period. The faint smell of beer vomit in the suit was another reminder of that period.

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

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

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

  “Affirmative.”

  I looked at the text projected on my helmet’s view screen: “Life support wasted.”

  Aargh. “Wilson, give me alternative translations for that last word.”

  “Debilitated, drained, crippled, weakened, frazzled, bushed, done for, enervated—”

  “Okay, I got it. Let’s get this back to our ship.”

  “This ship’s power was depleted by the long-range jump. I can recharge it.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “It’s valuable, it’s ours, and we can’t jump it back to Griphon 9 if it’s dead.”

  “Okay. Do it.”

  * * *

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

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

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

  I stepped back. “What is it?”

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

  “You mean Jan Breck.”

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

  “Duh.”

  “Is that a yes?”

  “Yes. Revive it.”

  The pod changed to a pale maroon color, and the honking stopped. I ran my hands over the surface, looking for seams. There were none. “How long will this take?”

  “Unknown.”

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

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

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

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

  I jumped back. “Are you Jan Breck?”

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

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

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

  I cleared my throat. “Can I get you—?”

  “Water.”

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

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

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

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

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

  Her voice was raspy and weak. “What’s the date?”

  Wilson answered, “November 15, 2130.”

  “That your computer talking?”

  I nodded.

  “You a bounty hunter?”

  “I run a salvage company.” That sounded a little more grand than it was.

  “Where am I?”

  Wilson gave her the coordinates.

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

  “Yes. I can help you.” I reached out.

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

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

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

  Huh! She’s good. I almost missed it.

  “It doesn’t work.”

  “The shower unit?”

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

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

  * * *

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

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

  I’d heard people describe faces as almond-shaped, and hers fit that description perfectly: wider at the top, tapering to a delicate chin. Her skin was smooth with the only flaw being a chip-on-her-shoulder expression, that is, a slight frown and a set jaw.

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

  “I … of course, I—”

  She turned, catching me in her high beams.

  I gave a little deer-in-the-headlights whimper; hopefully, she didn’t hear it. “I have no choice. You know that. You’re a mutineer.”

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

  I sipped my own coffee.

  “I’m not, you know,” she said.

  “Not what?”

  “Not a mutineer. You know the story, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “the captain and those loyal to him were put in an escape pod and set loose. They weren’t expected to survive, but they did.”

  “But I wasn’t one of the mutineers.”

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

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

  “So you became a renegade and a pirate.”

  She shrugged. “Opportunities for convicted mutineers are limited.”

  “What happened to the other mutineers?”

  Her eyes flashed. “Not ‘other.’ I wasn’t a mutineer. They kept me captive since they knew I’d probably turn them in if I got back to civilization. They stole Asteroid,” she gestured to the view of her ship, one hundred meters from Egg. “I managed to escape, taking the new ship with me.”

  “You can’t turn yourself in? Explain your case?”

  “Renegade and pirate, remember? Besides, I have no e
vidence. The ship’s logs went with the mutineers, and I’ve heard the captain now has Alzheimer’s.”

  “So you started pirating.”

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

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

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

  “If I don’t turn you in, I’m an accessory after the fact.”

  “Just let me go, we’ll pretend this never happened.” Then she said the words that made my heart jump. “Or you could join me.”

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

  She drifted toward me while lost in thought, and our arms touched. The jolt of current that passed between us had nothing to do with static electricity. She jerked her head back and looked at me sideways. Had we felt something more than the bond between two lonely space drifters? No, stop! She didn’t know me at all. But perhaps over time …

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

  A screen flashed on, displaying two warships. Crap! I zoomed in. “Are those …”

  “Xelons, yes,” Wilson said. “ETA, forty minutes.”

  “Slave harvester ships?”

  “Yes.” All trace of humor had disappeared from Wilson’s tone.

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

  “How would that help us?”

  “It’s an Endish ship.”

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

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