Part IX – Their Own Devices

This is Part IX of the serial space western The Ghosts of Blackmoon Rift. It is also available for download in RTF format here. Or click here for a complete listing of episodes.

“I say, are we there yet?”

“No Professor. I told you, this ain’t no three hour tour.”

“And I told you that that sentence didn’t make any sense.”

“He means space travel ain’t like teleportation, Professor. You don’t blink once and you’re there. You blink a bunch of times, and you’re still here.”

“So might as well get comfy, Prof. Settle in and enjoy the ride. Have some GORP.”

“Ah, no thank you. I’m having a bit of trouble getting comfortable, actually. I think my seat is just a blanket thrown over, uh, some kind of machinery.”

“Ah, that’s the black hole-detector.”

“Is it okay that it’s beeping like that?”

“Oh, we’re probably just passing a neutron star or something. Dang thing’s on the fritz anyway.”

“Oh.”

“Professor?”

“Yes, Miss Kitty.”

“I been wondering some stuff. You know, about the universe ending and all.”

Part IX – Their Own Devices

 

 

Previously: Young archaeologist Egan Torr and his friend Miss Kitty are trying to get from Ander’s Gap to the small world of Blackmoon to search for a lost starship. A devil-may-care pilot named Crash is the only one who will take them, but they hit a snag when Crash’s ship is impounded. They break it out only to find themselves targeted by the town’s defense systems. Meanwhile, a mysterious woman in a blue coat has been following their progress with interest.

“Yes?”

“Well now, I know you’re an Engineer Archaeologist and not one of Physics types, but you’ve got a fair amount of schoolin’. Maybe you could explain all that to me. Seems like the universe has been ticking right along since I’ve been in it.”

“Quite! But the problem is entropy.”

“See, there’s that word. I’ve noticed folks kick it around a lot, but like they don’t quite know one it means.”

“Well… it really just means that things fall apart.”

. . .

Julian had been having the best night ever. First he got to get up well after lights out. Then he had been told to shoot somebody down. He hadn’t gotten to do that in just about forever.

“I repeat, Void Where Prohibited,” he said into the headset in his most important-sounding monotone, “Standby to be shot down.”

At the other end of the transmission he could hear muffled, angry words. They sounded like the words mommy didn’t know he knew, that he heard from daddy sometimes. Then a man’s voice cut in, “Why you little viper, I’ll wring your little – ” The transmission was cut off. When it cut back in, there was a woman’s voice.

“Julian, is that you?”

“This is the Ander’s Gap Laser Defense System,” said Julian slowly and clearly. “Be advised that I am going to shoot you now.”

“Okay, Julian, listen, don’t -” Julian pulled the trigger. This was a muffled squawk on the other end.

“JULIAN! This is Miss Kitty! DON’T SHOOT!”

“I’m awful sorry Miss Kitty,” said Julian, “But I have clear orders to shoot your ship down. Didn’t I hit ya?”

“It looks like you just blew the trailer off. That’s okay. But Julian, you can’t shoot us anymore.”

“Well why not?”

“Um, well, because how can I ever show you how to use my lasso if you shoot me?”

“Really?” Julian was all ears. “The superconducting one that you use with black holes?”

“It’s really cool, Julian! I think you’d have a lot of fun with it.”

“Oh man,” moped Julian. “I really want to try that lasso. But I’ll get in trouble if I don’t shoot you.”

“Listen, Julian, you’ve already shot us once. Just let us get a little further away and then you can say that you tried to shoot us, but didn’t realize you hadn’t killed us until we were out of range. How about that?”

“Well…”

“C’mon Julian. I know you don’t want to shoot me.”

Julian was torn. “Could you get me some Monkémor trading cards, too?” he asked hopefully.

On the other end, a sigh. “I think I could swing it, Jules.”

Julian nodded vigorously. “Okay then! But I think I’d better wing you once more, just to make it look convincing.”

“NO Julian.”

“Okay, fine. Bye Miss Kitty.”

“Bye Julian.”

In his small control room, Julian did a little dance. He was going to get to play with the lasso!

. . .

“Professor, I know all about Murphy’s Law. ‘Whatever can go wrong will go wrong.’ My daddy used to say that every time he counted my fourteen brothers. But that doesn’t explain why the universe is broken.”

“Sure it does! You see Miss Kitty, Mr. Murphy had the right idea. Everything is going wrong all the time. But in a very specific way. Now I’m sure that when you were a child you broke something fragile – tipped over a vase or threw a ball through a window.”

“Well Crash here tries to break at least two fragile things before breakfast!”

“That’s sweet of you to say, Miss Kitty!”

“Um, that’s very good Crash. Anyway, Miss Kitty, you might have noticed that although it’s very easy to make a vase turn into a pile of glass splinters, that you never see a pile of glass splinters suddenly jump up and form a nice vase. That’s sort of the principle of entropy. The natural state of the universe is to be in a pile of glass splinters on the floor. Except that it’s not. It’s the vase balanced up on the shelf. But this order is an unnatural state, and everything in the universe is always trying to revert back to the pile.”

“Okay, Professor, I can understand that. But here’s my question: in this universe of ours, who’s the kid with the ball?”

. . .

“The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Energy Weapons requires your full cooperation, Mr. Mayor,” said the officer rather nastily.

“Sure, sure.” The mayor waved his hand vaguely. “We’ve only woken up the entire town in the middle of the night to put a stop to your little junkyard problem. And turned the emergency teleportation system and the power grid over to you.” He yawned. “Not to mention tried to shoot a ship with our own citizens on it out of the sky. So, you know, we’re really trying. Extending every courtesy, etc, etc. But I’m afraid we can’t spare any ships that would suit you and your… friends. So sorry.”

“Look, our craft got shot up during a standoff on Blackmoon. She’s not safe to fly. I need something that can get me and my men back out there now so that we can bring the full might of the law down on this gun-running hooligan Wallace and his ship-thieving friends.”

“Well technically they only took their own ship,” said the Mayor with a sigh, “So, it’s not exactly like theft, but whatever.”

The Mayor had convened the meeting with the Bureau officers in his own office. It was a shabby place, with bare walls, threadbare carpets, and a cheap plywood desk with two uncomfortable chairs facing it. The outspoken officer slumped angrily in one. Behind him, in the shadow of the door, lurked the woman with the long blue coat.

“Now, they tell me that we can have some sort of something out here in a day or two, maybe three days,” the Mayor said.

“Three days!” shouted the officer. He threw up his hands in despair. “Don’t you have anyone at all going out Blackmoon way?”

“The only thing out today is a long-haul tanker going out there on a fuel run,” said the Mayor, “and he’s only got room for one other man riding shotgun.”

When the woman in the blue coat smiled, the corners of her lips drew up but she showed no teeth. She was smiling such a smile now. “Actually, that’s perfect,” she said. “I’ll take it.”

The officer guffawed and punched his hat. “See Mayor,” he said, “those boys will never know what hit them.”

. . .

“When the original colonists awoke from cryo-sleep on board the Sphere, they did not know where in the universe they were. No star chart corresponded with the giant, bloated suns and the myriad bottomless black holes that surrounded them. Originally they believed that they had somehow traveled billions of light years from home, perhaps having fallen through a wormhole. But we have now come to believe that we are not very far from our original home at all.”

“But Professor, how could that be?”

“The stars themselves have changed. They are dying. The Sphere had traveled not across the vastnesses of space, but of time. The colonists had inadvertently traveled many thousands of years into the future. In the meantime, the beings known as the Engineers had come and gone.”

“Ah, I always like hearing about the Engineers.”

“Do you? But you see, this is all their fault; it was the Engineers who killed the stars.”

“See, there’s the part I can never understand, Professor. Folks always blame them for sucking the life out of the universe. I don’t see what cause we have for pinning the blame on them. Sure, they could build a moon like nobody’s business, but that’s a far cry from dropping the curtain on the whole show. How do we know it was them? Maybe it’s like you said, the universe just kinda fell apart on its own.”

“Oh, we know it was them, Miss Kitty. I’m afraid there’s no question of that. You see, we found the Entropy Device.”

To Be Continued…

(Part X is here.)