The Travelers 3

by Lee Hunnicutt

  “You’re probably wondering why I chose this cesspool of a planet as my home.

  I came to this galaxy about 80 years ago and had to learn my way around. I didn’t have a contact to show me the ropes like you do. I learned it the hard way and at times it wasn’t pretty.

  CAIN did give me marching orders. I was to find the rift, explore it and find what was in it. Sometimes it was nothing but space junk. Sometimes we found ships that were in pristine condition or only slightly damaged.

  If the ship was salvageable, we would repair it so it could use its drives and send it and the ships that could still fly to Stump’s world.

  Once they arrived to Stumpy’s place, he would have the service bots repair the damaged ships and he would data mine their computers in hopes of finding out just what went wrong with the two waring empires. The main question was, what happened to billions of people. Where did they all go?

  He gave me this ship and a heading to Stumpy Forester.”

  “Ship? What ship?”

  “You’re standing in it.

  I own this entire city block which is one hundred yards by one hundred yards.”

  “Alice, take us to Stumpy’s.”

  “Who’s Alice?”

  “Alice is my ship.”

  There was a slight bump and he saw the glass walls slowly disappeared and were now what appeared to be solid metal and curved.

  “The top four floors of this building which comprises the whole city block is my ship. By Earth standards this ship is massive but by the standards of this galaxy it’s on the small side of medium.

  I know this is a lot to take in. It’ll take us a few weeks to get to Stumpy’s. I’ll fill you in as we go but for right now let’s have a drink.”

  Chapter 4

  Back with Victoria

  Pete told her what happened to him after the war and how he met Mac.

  “Mac explained to me how he came to this galaxy and what our mission in life was. Mac came here about 86 years before I did.”

  “86 years?”

  “Yeah. Another advantage of being hit in the ass with nanobots is you don’t age. It doesn’t mean you can’t die. You just don’t age or die of old age plus the bots make it harder to kill you. They can detect a threat and generate a pretty strong force field around you. The field can be defeated by a strong enough blast but gunshots, knives and such can’t penetrate it.”

  “But when I first saw you, you looked like you were in your 90s.”

  “I did that because on Earth I was expected to age. I had to keep up appearances.

  Mac has never been back to Earth but I returned because it is my home and I missed it. Going to Earth never took away from what I was doing here. Whenever I returned to this galaxy I always returned within a few hours or days from when I left.”

  “What is your mission?”

  “Mac, Max and I were to explore the rift and find what is in it. That is a very nebulous marching order. Apparently if we find whatever CAIN wants us to find, we will know it when we find it. I know what your next question is. ‘What is the rift and who is Stumpy Forrester and what does he have to do with all of this?’

  The rift is a void near this end of the galaxy. It is tens of thousands of light years across in any direction. Ships go into the void and never return.

  Stumpy is a miner 49er who had an uncanny ability to find gold deposits in California and Colorado. He made and lost fortunes over and over again. It never deterred him. He would just pack up his mule and find another rich strike. Of the thousands who came to the gold fields, less than one percent ever found anything close to being a rich strike. Most were making just enough to live on and just enough to keep them looking for the big payout.

  Stumpy struck it rich repeatedly and that ability was why CAIN recruited him.”

  “Recruiting? Is that what you call kidnapping someone and dragging them to some God forsaken place in the universe?”

  Pete looked at her and said, “Are you going to let me finish my story or are you going to bitch about it?”

  With disgust, she said “Go on.”

  “Mac took me to a deserted, barren planet with about the same gravity as Earth, near the rift. About ten thousand years ago a great battle was fought in the rift and some asteroids and planets were used as dry docks and replenishing stations. Not surprising, Stumpy found one.

  It was here that Mac’s ship flew into a mammoth cavernous chamber over five thousand miles long two thousand miles wide and two thousand tall. Mac’s ship looked like a fly in the Super Dome.

  The people who made this magnificent structure had made things to last and even after thousands of years, Stumpy was able to fire up the power plant and central computer.

  Stumpy’s ship had been made by the same civilization that had made the dry dock. He used his ship’s computer to interface with the facility’s computer. This gave Stumpy full access. He was now able to activate the thousands of maintenance and service bots. He immediately tasked the bots to inspect everything, including themselves, and repair the facility back to its original condition.”

  “How long did that take?”

  “It didn’t take long. The people who designed the station made things to last and a skeleton crew of maintenance bots kept things in good repair. There were some things that needed work but nothing important. He came to that part of the galaxy about two hundred years before Mac.

  While the minor repairs were being made, he went prospecting in the rift.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “About 850 years.”

  “Oh! 850 years?” She let that sink in. It was hard for her to get her mind around not just his story but the whole ball of wax. Her being here, his story all of it was unbelievable, impossible yet here she was.

  She looked at him, “Finish your story.”

  “Let me digress and give you some background on Stumpy.

  He was already in California when James W. Marshall found gold at Sutter’s Mill in Coloma, California. He had come to California as a mule skinner with John Frémont. He liked it and stayed.

  He worked odd jobs, tried his hand as a trapper and as a bartender. He liked the adventure of living in a new land but nothing grabbed his interest until the gold strike.

  He was there on the ground floor. At that time, you could pick up nuggets right off the ground and out of the streams and Stumpy was best at doing this. It was uncanny how he could find gold. He made a fortune.

  He came out of the gold fields to San Francisco in 1852. San Francisco grew from a population of 1000 to 25,000 by December of 1849. The harbor became a graveyard of ships. Five hundred were rotting in the harbor. Once in San Francisco the crews jumped ship and made their way to the gold fields.

  He could have lived well his whole life on what he made from the gold fields but instead he spent most of his money on booze and broads.

  He ended up with less than 200 dollars. With that he bought three mules, two pack animals and one to ride. He didn’t head for the California gold fields but to Virginia City, Nevada.

  Once again, made a fortune and lost it and once again he headed East, to Colorado. The year was 1870. He spent four years in the mountains of Colorado northwest of Denver and he found what turned out to be a huge gold deposit.

  He went back to Denver and into The First Mining Bank of Denver. He had done business with them before and trusted the bank president. He told the president that he had found a large gold strike and wanted to incorporate his find and set up a mining company. He told the president he had no experience in setting up a company or running a mine and wanted the bank to take care of it and oversea the operation and make sure he wasn’t cheated. In short, he wanted a partnership, a 20/80 split with Stumpy getting the 80%.

  They shook hands on the deal. Two days later the paper work was drawn up and The Falling Rock Mining Company was formed.

  At this time, Stumpy wasn’t Stumpy. He was James, Jimmy, Forrester.

  Th
ree days later Jimmy was having a steak at Pat Muldoon’s bar and gaming emporium. When five of Shamus O’Neil’s thugs entered the saloon.

  Shamus for lack of a better word was a local gangster. He stole, cheated or killed his way to acquiring producing gold claims. A week before he had tried to intimidate Jimmy into selling his claim for a ridiculous price. When Jimmy told him to go to hell, O’Neil promised Jimmy he would regret it.

  O’Neil figured if he had a very public killing of Jimmy other miners would fall in line. Big mistake.

  Pat Muldoon recognize right away what was going to happen and reached under his bar for his sawed off 10 gage. When the five goons pulled their revolvers, he gave them both barrels and immediately began to reload.

  He killed two and wounded a third. The other two left standing ignored Pat and began blasting away at Jimmy.

  Jimmy always carried a brace of Colt 1873 Peace Makers and returned fire. He killed both of them but not before one of them had shot him in the left leg just below the knee, shattering both bones.

  His leg had to be amputated and fitted with a peg leg, thus the name Stumpy.

  Stumpy stayed in Denver for the next ten years but he was a changed man. He had seen death and he didn’t like it. He faced death before. He wasn’t a coward but he had never been wounded like this. He decided he wanted more than this rough frontier life. He wanted to see the world and he would do it in style. After all, he was rich and for once in his life he wasn’t going to squander it.

  For the next ten years, he traveled off and on. After his last trip, he returned to Denver and went to his hotel suite. He was never seen again.

  It is one of the great mysteries of Denver. When he wasn’t seen or heard from for three days they opened his room to see the bed had been slept in and his clothes were laid out but he wasn’t there. There was no indication of foul play. He was just gone.

  After about a month in space we arrived at Stumpy’s planet. It was about the size of Earth but devoid of atmosphere. It was seven hundred million miles from its sun and it took over 100 years to orbit the sun. It was a dark and bleak planet, foreboding.

  We entered Stumpy’s hangar/dry dock. To me it was mammoth, huge. There were many docking bays designed to hold very large ships. There was one that must have been a thousand miles long, three hundred miles wide and a hundred tall.

  Further in there was a smaller vessel that was larger than Mac’s and by my standards was huge but tiny compared to the first ship we had passed.

  Mac docked next to the smaller vessel. It appeared that the ships were weightless. There were multiple docking levels below us and besides the docking bay there was no visible means of supporting the docked ships. There must have been a gravitational pull from the planet so what held the ships up? I kept my mouth shut. I figured I’d get the answers to my question sooner or later.

  We stepped out of the docking bay into, it’s hard to describe, stunning, beautiful, overwhelming? Words fail me.

  I exited to see a full blown city with dazzling white buildings. Avenues running as far as the eye could see. The large rectangular gardens that separated the wide traffic lanes were beautifully landscaped parks with lakes, ponds, trees, bushes and flower beds. Along the streets were shops, bistros with outside dining areas. It reminded me of an ultra modern Champs-Élysées.

  It must have shown on my face. Mac said “Didn’t expect this. Did you?”

  “Not at all.”

  “The first thing Max did was pee on a bush and crap on the lawn. Mac looked at me and said “Really?”

  I shrugged and said, “It’s what dogs do.”

  Mac said, “This was more than a dry dock. It was a safe haven. Tens of millions of people passed through here and this city and others in this facility gave them a respite from the war.

  No matter how many times I come here, this place never ceases to amaze me.

  Stumpy and I figured that people may have lived here for decades before venturing out into the void.”

  “About this time a vehicle that looked like a golf cart without wheels showed up. Mac got in and Max and I followed.

  It zipped us through the city. I marveled at the architecture. Most of the buildings looked like apartment buildings or condos. Every apartment had spacious balconies overlooking the parks.

  After about an hour we came to a large impressive building. It looked like it had been designed in art deco. It soared into the artificial sky. Some floors had sweeping balconies with flowering greenery cascading over the railings. A large, wide stairway lead up to a wide front door that was at least three stories tall and framed in an aged green brass finish with brass filigree designs covering the glass doors.

  This building was designed to impress and it did.

  As we approached, the doors swung open. We entered a vast foyer with light yellow marble floors and large highly polished porphyry columns going from floor to ceiling. The walls were polished variegated black and white stone. It was jaw dropping beautiful. The sheer size and magnitude of the room was, to over use a word, amazing.

  We were still in the golf cart. We glided through the room. There were large hallways and doors on either side of the room. We rode for about two miles to the end of the foyer and entered, for lack of a better word, an elevator.

  There was no sensation of movement. I didn’t know if we were going up or down and said so to Mac. All he said was ‘Up.’

  After a few minutes the door opened to a bright large room that was obviously a lab and a workshop. Two glass walls met at a right angle. This was a corner room.

  In the corner was a living room. There was a counter with a wet bar and off to the side a simple cot. Running around the outside of the glass corner was a deck with an entertainment space. The deck was wide and half of it was covered by an awning. There were conversation pits scattered over the deck. Plants growing out of cut outs in the floor added to the ambiance complete with a fish pond.

  Over in the workshop a voice said, ‘Mac is that you?’

  “Are you expecting someone else?”

  “From the other end of the room a neat, well dressed man appeared. I didn’t notice him before he spoke. He limped toward us. To my surprise, he had a peg leg.

  In a low voice, I asked Mac ‘Why didn’t the nanobots fix that?’

  “He didn’t want them to. He said he had lived with a peg leg for years and it was part of his persona thus the name Stumpy.”

  As he got closer I sized him up. He was about 5 foot 9 inches tall. He was ruggedly handsome with black hair, graying at the temples which made him look distinguished.”

  “This is Pete Bolton. CAIN sent him here to help us.”

  “We shook hands and he said, “We can use all the help we can get. This guy” indicating Mac, “can’t find his ass with a hand full of fish hooks. How about a beer?”

  “Before I could answer he hollered, “Roscoe get us three cold ones. Let’s go outside and talk.”

  “We went out on the deck. It overlooked the city. There were buildings and parks as far as I could see. We sat down in incredibly comfortable cushioned patio furniture.

  Behind us the door slid open and a tall white haired distinguished man in a waiter’s tuxedo walked towards us with a tray of three cold mugs of beer.”

  “Thank you Roscoe.” said Stumpy.

  “Will there be anything else sir?”

  “‘No, Roscoe. That will be all for now, thank you.”

  “Who was that?” I said. “Is he another CAIN import?”

  Mac paused from swilling down his beer and said, “No, he came with the place. He’s a service bot.”

  I looked at Jimmy and said, “Your nothing like I expected.”

  “What did you expect, Gabby Hayes, Arthur Hunnicutt or Smiley Bernette? A colorful scruffy but humorous sidekick in B movie westerns?”

  “Well, yes, I guess so.”

  “I’m a Harvard graduate. I speak Greek, Latin, German and French. Well now with the bots I speak any langua
ge I damn well please and so will you.

  I was raised in wealth and privilege. I came out west for adventure and found it.

  Just because I have a wooden leg doesn’t make me an idiot.”

  “I didn’t know what to say.

  He slapped me on the back and said, “I’m just jerking you around. Have another beer.”

  “Mac and I were to be his prospectors. He’d tell us where to go and look and we’d check it out.

  Stumpy had asked Katherine to make billions of probes to spread out in the rift and look for artifacts and energy signatures. Every third probe was a replicator probe to make other probes so billions of probes would be scanning the rift. The probes could work alone or collaboratively with other probes. They could link together and form huge antennas thousands of miles in diameter. The replicator probes would settle on asteroids or use space dust as materials to make other probes. In a matter of years, the void would be filled with them. The theory being a wide net would catch lost ships, platforms and any other technology that had been lost to time and distance.

  The probes communicated with Stumpy’s computer through subspace.

  The civilization who built these cities and ships had long ago realized that sentient machines were dangerous and had integrated these super computers with a human monitor, called a Sentinel. These monitors were invariably female. Females were found to be calmer and more logical than testosterone driven men.

  The young woman chosen to run this carved out planet was named Katherine by Stumpy.

  This computer had been sleeping for ten thousand years and the young woman had awoken confused so Stumpy had given her the name of Katherine. She knew all the things the computer was supposed to know and do but her past was fuzzy, thus the renaming.

  She was encapsulated in a clear canister in the center of the city. Her long dark hair and gauzy white dress swirled about her like she was in a liquid that was in constant motion.”

  Stumpy said, “It looks like the probe program is about to pay off. We got our first ping a couple of days ago, a very weak energy signal. Katherine has fed the coordinates to Sarah so when you’re ready, you can get cracking.”