by submission | Apr 7, 2016 | Story |
Author : Rick Tobin
“This one, it’s too close. Something’s wrong!” Taylor Hines tapped the green screen, yelling at Corus, as her brilliant, red-scaled hands clawed the communications panel.
“Ogira 6. Ogira 6. Back away point three apars from the dwarf star. Ogira, respond.” Static and deep-space warbles returned on the speaker.
A snarling, high-pitched response followed. “We do not take orders from two legged.”
Taylor and Corus studied the round screen depicting four hundred gigantic freighters manipulating magnetars toward one side of the galaxy’s center. The stellar tugboats pushed and poked dead stars to manipulate pulsating neutron stars, but if herded too close the magnetar could awaken the deceased, creating a fusion burst, destroying the wrangler’s ship.
“Ogira 6,” Corus repeated. “You must comply. Repeat…” She stopped. The green dot depicting the Peronian’s ship disappeared. The brown circle, the dwarf, turned red on screen, vaporizing two more ships in a nearby quadrant, leaving their packages adrift.
Taylor stared at Corus as water flowed from bulbous double eyes drooping down from the square face of the command ship’s leader.
“Now you know,” Corus whimpered, “Why it was important to find you. We cannot lose another hundred. Without enough magnetars to divert the angle of the black hole, our client’s race will perish…perhaps only surviving another thousand years.”
She returned her attention to the screen. There was no voice traffic. No need to mourn. Every pilot knew the risk, but not everyone believed the capabilities of a new crewmember from an unknown planet.
“You were recently chosen for your unusual skills of knowing. None of our captains have this understanding. You also fit our profile. You are the last of your kind, are you not?”
“I’m not sure,” Taylor replied, collapsing back in his high-backed chair. “My parents were abducted by a snake race from Earth, like thousands each year. Many were eaten, but most were enslaved. My parents were saved at a space station auction raided by the Kersan Kahn. Kahns attack slave-making races and free their captives—then eat the slavers. The scaly bastards didn’t see that coming.”
“So, you hate those with scales instead of your pitiful pale covering?”
“No, no Corus. It’s not like that. Your race was not like theirs. It’s what my parents experienced. There was no way back for us. I’ll perish alone out here since my parents died. I’ll never mate…never love.”
“So you must understand why they picked all of us—orphans of our races. Our kinds were either destroyed by wars or bad choices. Our employer’s wisdom will turn this devourer of solar systems just slightly away from their civilization. That will give them another million years to evolve, yet they will not be blamed for they cannot be tied to our work, and we have no home worlds left to be punished.”
“And the other worlds? The ones now lost too early because we adjusted the black hole?”
“It swallows a thousand stars daily. Millions of cultures disappear. Their time is over. So it is in every galaxy, on every planet. Our client’s superiority designed this adjustment. That wisdom and influence gives them the right to continue.” Corus persisted in her surveillance of the armada.
“And we, the movers of these dead stars, will we be the forgotten…the forever unloved?”
“No, Taylor Hines. Billions will recall our heroic names in story and song for millennia, while on our worlds we would have been mere shadows in time the moment our eyes grew cold. Everyone else has a history to live, but we, on this voyage, have a destiny.”
by submission | Apr 4, 2016 | Story |
Author : Glenn S. Austin
It was the first ship to be outfitted with the Time Jump and the Magnetic Field Drive. It was the perfect pairing of technology. The right tool for the specific research that Gleason was pursuing.
Traverse back in time billions of years to when the Sun was just a cloud of hydrogen. Then, on consecutive Time Jumps, watch the cloud as it compressed, coalesced, and eventually ignited into our Sun. The Time Jump seemed to be perfect, although it had its limitations. You could only go backwards in time and then return to the present, which was fine for this particular research program.
The Magnetic Field Drive, created a magnetic gravity field that would effectively suction up, compress, and then ignite the free hydrogen to propel the ship to various points within the cloud. An abundance of hydrogen was expected at the far end, so there would be no problem fueling the drive or collecting the energy to recharge the Time Jump.
Gleason Jumped.
All worked as expected and placed him and his ship in the middle of a vast hydrogen cloud, exactly as predicted. He checked the systems and onboard chronometer and all was functional. It was surreal, here he was, in the middle of all the matter that would become the center of our Solar System. Eventually, when compressed, it would provide the heat and mass that breathed life into Earth and warmed the beings that inhabited it.
As Gleason’s sense of awe subsided, he got to work. First, start the Magnetic Field Drive and collect energy to recharge for the Jump home. Next, check all the monitoring sensors that collected and stored data for later analysis. Then a side job that he had planned to help fund his research. Collect quantities of this primordial hydrogen in containers to bring back to the future. It was going to be the perfect gimmick. Package the gas in souvenir bottles, and sell them to folks who would pay big for a bottle of the hydrogen that created the Sun.
That done, it was time to take a trip around the Cloud to measure the different hydrogen densities. Gleason activated the MF Magnetic Field Drive D and the ship accelerated leaving a fiery tail behind as the hydrogen plasma ignited and thrust the ship forward. It was beautiful and the onboard cameras got some great pictures of million mile long trails of burning hydrogen.
Gleason watched in fascination as the trails expanded to consume even more hydrogen and leave large swaths of empty space where the gas burned off.
How long would it take for those voids to fill in with the surrounding Hydrogen?
As that depended on the various minute gravity influences, his propulsion trails could theoretically endure for millions of years. He grinned, it was nice to know that something he did here would have a long lasting effect, even though there was no one to see it.
Time to head back. Gleason activated the Time Jump and was instantly back in the Solar system, or was he?
The Sun didn’t look right. It seemed dimmer. Was he in the wrong timeframe? The chronometer said he was right back where he started. Where was Earth? He should be close to the Lagrange point between the Earth and the moon. But there was nothing. A quick scan, four planets orbiting the dim star. It was all gone, no Earth, no humanity, no history.
Gleason figured it had been the long trails of burning Hydrogen but he looked at the souvenir bottles of gas and wondered if just that little amount had made the difference.
by submission | Mar 23, 2016 | Story |
Author : Bob Newbell
I rub my eyes. I’ve been staring at a computer screen for hours but my allotted telescope time will soon come to an end. It’ll be easier in the coming years when there are more telescopes available. Astronomy has finally become a properly-funded field of study. I turn my attention back to the screen but it’s no use. I’m tired and my mind keeps wandering back to a decade ago.
“That can’t be right,” I’d told a colleague over the phone ten years earlier.
“It’s confirmed,” she’d replied. “The Great Canary Telescope in Spain, Hobby-Eberly, the LBT — they’re all seeing the same thing.”
The “thing” in question was an object for which the word “spaceship” was pathetically inadequate. It was a lattice structure so big its ends touched the orbits of Venus and Mars. The sheer mass of the thing should have disrupted the orbital mechanics of the solar system but didn’t. Mankind reacted with a predictable combination of wonder and fear. Four days later, emissaries from the giant vessel arrived.
“Is there any obvious pattern?” I had asked my team regarding the audio and radio transmissions originating from the…what? Ambassadors? Robot probes? We’re still not even sure what the things were. The few samples of material we have don’t really fit into our categorization scheme of biology or machine. As for their appearance, one blogger’s description — “A giant cyborg octopus” — has yet to be improved upon.
“It’s not a sequence of prime numbers. Doesn’t look like anything related to the hydrogen line. Don’t think it’s any human language,” a fellow astronomer had said. To this day, despite exhaustive efforts at finding some meaning, we have no idea what the aliens said to us.
After a couple of hours of analyzing the repeating message we had received, the first shooting happened. Someone in Aleppo, Syria opened fire with an AK-47 on one of the aliens. There soon followed similar incidents in Chicago and Nigeria. Most of the estimated 2,000 aliens simultaneous rose silently back up into space. A few remained and traveled to assist their three wounded comrades in their ascensions. The enigmatic message ceased abruptly.
One of my friends had unleashed an expletive-laden tirade at no one in particular regarding Man’s barbarity. For the next 18 months, the human race waited to see what the reaction of the aliens would be. The great lattice-ship hovered ominously over the solar system. One day, a second impossibly large vehicle arrived. And then another. And another. The alien fleet soon numbered 11 vessels. Both the northern and southern skies seemed covered in mesh. Ten days later, the ships seemed to vanish. But the skies they left behind were unrecognizable.
I look at the bright whirlpool on my computer screen: the Milky Way galaxy, now well over a million light-years in the distance. They only teleported the Sun, the Earth, and the Moon to the intergalactic void between the Milky Way and Andromeda. Even the company of the other worlds of the solar system has been denied us. We always assumed the day would come when Man explored and colonized the solar system and then, confident but unsatisfied, would strike out for the stars. Now, we are marooned in a cosmic desert. The odd and distant brown dwarf aside, we are prisoners in a starless void.
by submission | Mar 17, 2016 | Story |
Author : Kate Runels
Mary Slade slipped her ship into the maze kilometers ahead of the police’s patrol craft still trailing her. Trailing since Ganymede station days ago. It was annoying to say the least.
Slade didn’t know why they had decided to trail her ship, why her, out of the dozens that had left the station at the same time, they followed, and to get rid of them was through the maze.
A small face appeared reflected in the glass of the front view. Slade knew her craft was small, but she’d never had another person in it with her. She kept her eyes on her controls as more and more asteroids surrounded them.“What are you doing up here?”
“Are they still following?”
It was odd how small the ship felt with another in it, even if the other was a young girl. “Yes. Now get yourself strapped back in, I’m heading into part of the asteroid belt called the maze.”
“But-”
“We’ll lose them. I grew up in the maze, Amy.”
“But-”
“No buts. Now strap yourself in!” Slade had no patience for idle questions, coming into the belt at speed. The patrol craft still trailing.
The reflected image disappeared. Slade never once looked directly at the girl. Her first glimpse of her on station had been enough for all the memories and the guilt to almost overwhelm her. The resemblance was uncanny. Her sister had died a long time ago and this eight year old girl looked just like her. Clone? A frozen test tube child? What kind of experiment had the government done? Slade didn’t know, but the government did that to recruits, tried to do it to Slade.
Warning alarms brought her out of that self-defeating memory as small asteroids went past.
“Light Space Craft, you are entering restricted space, heave to and-” the trailing craft finally contacted her.
Slade silenced that as well. She needed all her attention and focus for the maze. Not many pilots dared the asteroid belt outside of the proscribed and constantly cleared lanes, between the inner and outer system.
More asteroids filled the H.U.D. and the patrol ship gained on her as she fired braking thrusters and changed direction.
Soon that’s all she did while heading deeper and deeper into the maze. She’d traveled mostly in the maze, but had visited the labyrinth, but had never been to the far side and the warren.
The maze constantly changed, shifted. She had a basic idea where she was and where she wanted to go. Vaguely, she sensed the patrol craft until she no longer did.. Either crashed or turned back. It was no longer her concern. The beacon alert chimed at her. She was close to five mile asteroid.
“Five mile, Five mile.” Slade hailed the old prospecting homestead, knowing she had been spotted and most likely targeted. “This is courier ship, Slade’s Promise. Mom, Dad, I have someone you need to meet.”
She hadn’t been back since she and Alissa had left, with such optimism, filled with the knowledge they were doing the right thing. Now, her sister was dead and it had taken Slade years to track down this lead. This child.
Slade flicked off the comm and then slowed the ship and aligned it with the slight opening in the asteroid which led to the dock.
“Wow,” came from behind her.
Slade started, it had sounded so much like Alissa. “You’re safe now,” she said, as the ship settled onto the dock and the slight opening closed back up. “Welcome home.”
by submission | Mar 15, 2016 | Story |
Author : George S. Walker
“The bird couldn’t have just flown away,” said Ms. Donaldson, pointing to the vacated spot in the photos.
The Director nodded. They spoke quietly in his office as rain lashed against the window behind him.
“Maybe the last ones there simply forgot to lock up,” she added.
He didn’t get the joke. “That wouldn’t have made any difference. There were too many approaches. It’s not like the old days, when we didn’t have to worry.”
The Director was old enough to be her father. In his youth, a theft of this magnitude would have been inconceivable. Back then, they’d relied on the difficulty of physical access.
“Has anyone checked for prints?” asked the Director.
“Not yet. Of course, there were lots already there.”
He turned from the photos to look at her. “Each one is unique.”
“I’m not stupid,” she snapped. Instantly she regretted her outburst. He was the Director.
He shook his head. “Of course not. But even a footprint is a clue.”
“You mean, like an inside job.” She’d avoiding mentioning that till now, the elephant in the room.
“No. I’d know if it were our people.”
Would he really? And how much had he known before she’d walked in? What if the Director himself was involved? The power of the institution had been spiraling down for decades. What if the administration’s elite had masterminded the theft as a publicity stunt?
“Then who?” she said, studying his face for some betrayal of expression.
“I can count on one hand the organizations that could pull this off.”
“Where could they sell it? Not to a museum; it’s like the Mona Lisa.” She looked pointedly at the Director’s curio shelf, where a small replica of the original perched, eager to fly, every detail lovingly reproduced. “A ransom demand?”
“They must know we’d never pay. No, I think whoever did this took it just to prove they could,” he said. “You have to respect their gumption.”
Gumption, now there was a word you didn’t hear anymore. “Theft isn’t something I respect. We put our treasure on display for all the world.”
“On a long dark night with no one on guard.”
Lightning flashed outside the window. The weather here was stormier than there, overlooking a tranquil sea.
“We’re spread too thin these days,” he said. “One of the A-men is dead and the other will be soon. They were the best we had, the last ones there.”
Those days, the days of boots on the ground, were gone. Unmanned surveillance was the future, and the Director still had his head in the past.
“Of course, the only thing there was the body,” he said, “the base. We lost the top long ago.”
“Maybe they’re after that, too. Wouldn’t that be something to see? The whole thing put back together?”
“What part of smashed to a million pieces don’t you understand? No, they just went after the easy part.”
“Easy being a relative term.”
“How many people know?” he asked.
“You, me and the one who discovered it missing.” The man with the enhanced telescope was an outsider. That had to hurt the Director’s pride.
“Who has he told?”
“It’s not public. Not yet. I made sure of that.”
The Director looked her in the eye. “Once I tell the President that someone stole the Apollo 11 lander stage from the Sea of Tranquility, heads will roll here at NASA.”
