Part XIV – Ghost Story, Part 1

This is Part XIV 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.

Part XIV – Ghost Story, Part 1

“Somebody should tell a story,” said Miss Kitty. The little group was seated around a crackling campfire. They had made camp under a cliff a short distance outside of the ghost town. Although they offered shelter, the eyeless windows and empty doorways of the town had seemed singularly unappealing as dark fell.

“Ooh, yeah,” said Crash enthusiastically. “I ever tell you folks about the time I threaded the needle over Arcturus V?”

Miss Kitty rolled her eyes, but Egan Torr said “No.”

Crash rubbed his hands together delightedly. “Okay, picture this: big old gas giant in orbit around Arcturus, and it’s got this little moon with got some real nice liquid helium deposits or something like that. There’s a mining platform out there and a station up around the gas giant. The thing is, it’s a pain in the tailfins to get to. The moon has a moon of its own, this big spinning donut of rock that’s like half its size. So if I want to land on the moon, see, I can’t do the standard maneuver where you let the gravity well pull you in and the atmosphere brake your speed. You’ll run smack into this donut. Instead you have to climb up above the orbital plane, brake yourself, and come in real slowly from up above.

“Well, the pilots who were doing runs from the station to the platform had a standing wager to see if anyone could take the shortcut. The idea is that if you made your approach at just the right moment, the donut would be aligned so you could shoot right through the middle and make an ordinary landing. Threading the eye of the needle, so to speak. Nobody had ever made it though. Alive, anyway; a couple boys had gotten themselves splatted on the donut.

“As you may well imagine, I was game to try as soon as I heard about it. I had just upgraded the Void’s computer and I figured that I could account for the rotation of the donut and time it right down to the nanosecond. So I plot it all out and set up a landing sequence. All the boys are out to watch. Then I start my descent.

“It goes real well at first. I come in tail-first to shed some speed, the computer cuts the thrust at just the right second, I flip around and go nose first towards the eye. The donut spins around and the eye is right in front of me, perfectly lined up. Then my system starts going crazy. Turns out the reason those other boys never made it is because the hole in the donut ain’t natural – there’s a microscopic black hole sitting right in the middle of it.

“Well this is the very definition of not good, so I start trying to scratch the sequence, but I’ve still got plenty of speed left because I needed it to get through the eye before it flipped around again. If I stay where I am, a black hole will rip my bulkhead open. If I try and brake – not that there’s any time, but even if I do – I’d just wind up as another stain on the donut. So I figure I better try the only option open to me, which is to go faster.

“Well I open up the throttle and pile it on the reactor and away I go. And sure enough, the Void’s nose catches on the lip of the eye and sends me into a horizontal spin. I don’t know which way is up. At some point gravity catches up to me and I pass out. When I wake up again the boys are pulling me out of my cockpit, cheering like crazy. Man, I was such a hero that day!” Crash smiled with fond remembrance.

“So you did it?” asked Torr. “You threaded the needle?”

“What?” said Crash. “No way! I bounced off that rock and down into the atmosphere where I crashed.”

“Then what were they cheering for?”

“Son,” said Crash, “they were cheering ‘cause I survived!”

Torr and Murphy clapped. Miss Kitty sighed and said, “Crash, I pray for your mama every day.”

“That’s mighty sweet of you, Miss Kitty,” said Crash. “Anyone else got a story? We need a good ghost story.” He looked around expectantly. Everyone was silent. The campfire flickered. So did Murphy. Then someone cleared their throat.

“I might have one,” said Egan Torr.

“Jane Davenport became Jane Highrock at the ideal age of twenty-six. She had completed a graduate degree in Xeno-anthropology and Linguistics with high honors. She had traveled and seen something of the universe. And she had met the man of her dreams – charming, witty, and brilliant – Adrian Highrock.

“Jane was not oblivious to the fact that she would be living and working in what the rest of the Sphere referred to as ‘the Device’. She had heard all the stories, the bad fright tales: it was said that the scientists who worked there had harnessed the chaotic power of the Device to prolong their lives unnaturally; that they communicated with the Engineers through the three singularities at its core; that those who spent long enough trying to decipher that vanished race’s strange language soon went insane.

“This last amused her especially, since decrypting Engineer inscriptions was in fact her specialty and would be the bulk of her work. The natives, several large families of scientists and the technicians that supported them, had of course no such fears. In fact they cheerfully referred to The Device by its astronomical designation, Omega Zero.”

“The Torrs live there too, right?” interrupted Miss Kitty. “Your folks?”

“What? Oh, yes, of course,” said Egan Torr. “But they don’t really enter into this story. This is an old ghost story that the families who live in the Device have handed down.”

“Well carry on!” she said, drawing her knees up to her chin.

Torr did so: “But Jane was a cheerful, practical girl and more importantly, she felt that no place that had given birth and nurture to her soul mate could be truly horrible. And at first things went very well. The many scientists she met were warm and welcoming. They had built a small, bustling city on the outskirts of the Device and pumped breathable atmosphere into the compartments it stood in.

“The only thing which struck Jane as odd was that she had still not met Adrian’s father. Adrian’s mother had come to the wedding, of course, but pleaded ill health for her husband. When Jane expressed concern she was told that it was nothing dangerous and that he would soon be well and wish to meet her. Yet she saw nothing of him in her new home as the days went by.

“When she questioned Adrian about it, he told her that his father’s work often took him deep within the Device for days at a time. ‘Well then, we should go and see him,’ she suggested, but Adrian would have none of it. He said that he did not think that his father would wish to be interrupted. Besides, it could be dangerous in the depths of the Device. The thing was truly a labyrinth that could never be mapped in a thousand lifetimes. It was only by sheerest chance that humans had ever penetrated it at all. Adrian simply couldn’t bear to think of his new bride wandering lost and alone through the maze.

“’But surely I’ll have to go into it sooner or later,’ protested Jane. But the suggestion seemed to upset Adrian so much that she let the matter rest for the time being.

“A few days later, however, her curiosity on one score was satisfied completely. Adrian’s father returned quite suddenly and had his wife immediately invite the young couple for dinner. At the meal he seemed genuinely pleased to finally meet his son’s new bride. For her part, Jane found him to be an older, more dignified version of Adrian, if perhaps sadder and more reserved.

“’My dear,’ he said, ‘it is so good to finally meet you. I deeply regretted missing the auspicious event. But now we must make up for lost time.’ He laughed. ‘How does the old saw go? I do not feel that I have lost a son so much as gained a Xeno-anthropolgist!’”

“Oh man,” groaned Murphy. “This guy must have been the life of every party.”

“Hush!” said Miss Kitty.

“Adrian’s father,” continued Torr, “expressed his eagerness to take Jane down into the core of the Device to do some translation work for him. But Adrian frowned and said ‘Jane is very busy right now as it is, Papa. She is going through orientation and training and besides we’re still getting settled in the new house.’

“Adrian’s father subsided, but later he and his son disappeared for a while and when Jane went looking for them she overheard a shouting match on the back patio. Adrian appeared to be incensed with his father for suggesting that Jane accompany him into the core. For his part, his father was defending the suggestion as perfectly reasonable. Jane crept away, mystified. She could not fathom why Adrian was so deeply opposed to her visiting the core.

“Still, she was so certain of his distaste for the idea that when his father called a few weeks later to ask Adrian to join him in the core immediately on urgent business Jane ventured only a token suggestion that she accompany him. Adrian rebuffed her brusquely, packed in a rush, and was gone.

“I predict he comes back as a robot,” said Crash.

To Be Continued…

(Part XV is here.)