Part XVI – Tension Rising

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 episode listing.

Part XVI – Tension Rising

Egan Torr woke up cold. It was the gray hour before dawn, a particularly forlorn time beneath the obsidian hills of Blackmoon. He rolled over in his sleeping bag and looked around. Crash was snoring deeply. Murphy’s device was blinking standby mode. But Miss Kitty’s spot on the far side of the campfire was empty.

Torr jumped to his feet. Her sleeping roll was rolled up and her hat and boots were gone. He looked around. She might have gone down into the town, but that seemed unlikely. It took him a moment to spot the path leading up the hill that overhung them. In the dark he had failed to notice it. Torr started to climb.

It took him a few minutes of huffing and puffing to get to the top. Sure enough, there was Miss Kitty, hat in her hands, looking out across the valley toward the distant horizon. Her hair was loose and it moved gently in some unseen breeze. After a moment, Torr began walking toward her. She turned and gave him a brief nod.

“Something on your mind?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Just wishing I’d brought my gun.”

Torr nodded. “I’m not really one for firearms, but I must admit that it would seem handy to have one out here. Why didn’t you bring yours?”

“Well, it didn’t seem like a good idea to go crawling around a junkyard with a loaded piece. And then we left in kind of a hurry. Sorry.”

“No, no, it’s fine! I’d rather we didn’t wind up having to shoot anything anyway.”

“Guess bullets won’t hurt ghosts, will they?”

“Ghosts? Well, I suppose not,” said Torr cautiously, unsure where this conversation was going.

“Professor,” said Miss Kitty suddenly. “Do you know what this piece of hill right here is called?” She turned away from the valley and indicated the bare, black spear of rock that jutted out of the spine of the hill and rose another half dozen meters above them.

“Ah, well, I’m no geologist…”

“C’mon, Prof. What’s this rock on top of the hill called? This high rock, what’s the word for that?”

“Well…” Torr faltered.

Miss Kitty gave him a withering look. “It’s called a ‘tor’,” she said shortly.

“I think – that is – that’s quite remarkable, really,” stammered Torr. “You know, my name and all.”

“Look Professor, let’s get something clear here. I’m all for helping out my fellow man. You looked like you were in a bit of a jam in Ander’s Gap, and my pa always said that folks should give other folks a helping hand. Fine. But I’m starting to think you’re dragging me into something that I don’t much like the smell of.”

Torr bristled. “I don’t see what you mean,” he said coldly.

“No? How about the part where you forgot to tell us you were looking for an Engineer Starship until that ghost ship showed up? And that spooky story of yours last night, I’d wager from the way you told it that it wasn’t something you just heard about one time.

She lowered her voice. “If this is some kinda ghost hunt you’re on, fine, but it ain’t none of my business and I’ll take my leave here and now.”

Torr was staring at the ground through all this, as though he’d found something quite interesting near his boots. “Miss Kitty,” he said, “I’m a scientist. I like notebooks with carefully laid out formulas and things in test-tubes and computer simulations with lots of data points. The last thing I’m interested in is being dragged through horse poo, insulted, and shot at in some godforsaken place on the edge of the universe.” He looked straight at her and pulled himself up to full height. “So when I tell you I came here because it was the only way to pursue science, you had best believe that I speak true.”

There was an awkward moment. Then Miss Kitty shrugged. “Fair enough.”

“Oh, and one other thing,” said Torr. “What I’m after is everybody’s business.”

Going down the path should have been quicker than coming up, although it seemed longer as they traversed it in embarrassed silence. But when they got to the bottom, they were surprised to find their campsite empty of people. Crash and Murphy were nowhere to be seen.

“Well what in the -” began Miss Kitty, but she was interrupted by a low whistle. She and Torr whirled round and saw a hand gesturing at them from behind a boulder. When they reached it, they found Crash crouching behind the boulder with a two-inch-high Murphy peering out from beneath him.

“What are you two doing?” asked Torr.

“Shh!” said Crash. “Get behind here!” He grabbed Miss Kitty by the sleeve and tugged her behind the rock.

“What in space is going on?” she demanded.

Murphy put a finger to his tiny lips. “We’re being watched,” he said.

. . .

“So let me see if I got this clear,” began Miss Kitty. Murphy looked defensive. Crash looked petulant. They were all four seated in the dust behind the boulder. The sun had come up and it was getting hot. “You and your friend Flanagan came here to kidnap Wallace’s sister. Big surprise, Wallace ain’t too happy to see you. Then he drags you out into the desert and you get all hot and bothered when it turns out he don’t like you much.”

“Is everyone out here crazy?” snapped Murphy. “He’s got an evil split personality named Fetch that he can switch on like a light bulb. He kidnapped his own sister, for goodness sake! Why would he do that?”

“It ever occur to you that he was just leading you on?” said Miss Kitty. “Ever occur to you that maybe he just wants to know why the Feds are after him?”

“Didn’t he shoot at them?” asked Torr. Miss Kitty gave him a withering glare, and he subsided.

“See?” demanded Murphy. “The man’s crazy! And he’s out there right now, watching us, waiting for one of us to let our guard down and go off by ourselves so he can pick us off one by one.”

“Well for starters,” said Miss Kitty, “if he is out there, he was out there yesterday and all of last night. I imagine we were the only folks lighting a fire in these parts, so if he was looking for us we ain’t hard to find. And that’s not even mentioning the part where we landed a ship in the middle of Main Street.”

Crash beamed. “You said landed!”

“Miss Kitty is obviously pointing out that hiding under a rock won’t do us any good,” said Torr, ignoring him. “If Fetch is here, he already where we are, and if he’s not, all the better. Either way, we should get moving immediately.”

“Agreed, Professor,” said Crash. “Murph here was just telling me about this hoversled that Mr. Wallace/Fetch left behind when we landed. We can take that back to his ranch and get parts for the ship.”

“Oh, no,” said Torr hurriedly. “That is not what I meant at all. I mean we should proceed to our destination, the coordinates where I believe we will find the -” he looked sideways at Murphy “- artifact.“

“Listen, Professor,” said Crash gently. “I’m all for science, but with all due respect – we need a working ship more than we need a pile of ancient relics. Haunted relics too, for all we know!”

“This is idiotic,” said Miss Kitty. “I know Wallace from when we were both knee-high to a Neptune Dragonfly. We should be looking for him, not running from him. He can help Crash fix his ship, get Torr where he’s going, and set Mr. Murphy here straight about what’s what.”

“I know what I saw,” sulked Murphy. “You want to walk straight into the arms of a psychopath, be my guest.”

“I really don’t see how we can give up now when we are so close to the prize!” said Torr. In exasperation he stood up and began pacing. Then suddenly, he stopped. “Hey,” he said. “What happened to our stuff?”

Crash and Miss Kitty slowly rose to their feet. Murphy expanded to normal size. Their camp, not ten meters away, was in a state of disarray. Sleeping bags had been turned inside-out, bags upended, equipment strewn everywhere.

“Anyone still think we’re not being watched?” asked Murphy.

To Be Continued…

(Part XVII is here.)