Douglas Kendall

by Jason the Rescuer

  Jason roared at them suddenly, and, as one, they turned and fled in panic. All except Durdaine, who simply stood and glared at Jason. Jason winked at him, and charged after the fleeing guards, his finger still in his pocket. The guards all poured through the open hatchway back into Colonist Segment #1 as Durdaine began shouting from behind that there was no gun. The hatch clanged shut, and Jason passed by, racing for the nose cone.

  Once at the colony ship air lock, he quickly pulled into his spacesuit, instructing PF24 via his hand communicator to switch over to his helmet communication channel. Jason next mounted his spacebike, and waited impatiently for the lock to cycle. He tried to plan ahead what to do, and again saw in his mind the little forms of Dalton and Monique crumpled against the dome of his sailship. How fast was his sailship spinning? Was it spinning fast enough to crush them? Was the ship's life support still even working? What had gone wrong?! And, what would he do if they were... dead?

  He banged his right fist against his thigh in rage and frustration. Why had he brought Dalton with him?! He should have turned around as soon as he had first discovered him and immediately brought him back to Infinity City. Inter-Galactic space was no place for a boy! There were too many dangers. And now Jason was responsible for whatever had happened to those two, sweet young kids. A moan of despair escaped his lips. He instantly gritted his teeth, angry at himself for losing emotional control. He watched the air lock indicator. When the outer hatch opened, Jason shot out of the air lock at top acceleration, his spacebike in manual control. He left the nose cone of the colony ship and plunged into the dead blackness of deep space, black except for billions of tiny far away stars on all sides.

  He looked around, and spotted his distant sailship, its outside docking lights still slowly blinking from when they had been automatically activated by Jason's previous approach, just before the sailship had mysteriously and tragically jetted away.

  He could see the sailship spinning rapidly, faster than one revolution per minute.

  Jason jetted toward his ship, flipping around halfway there to begin his slowdown. Once during each spin he could see Dalton and Monique still crumpled motionless against the transparent dome of the sailship's pilot room. Jason swallowed hard trying to control an aching sense of dread welling up inside him.

  Fortunately, the sailship's main hatch was near the axis of spin. Jason set the spacebike slowly rotating to match the erratic spin of his sailship, then he reached forward to the outside control panel, and activated the ingress lock cycle.

  Soon the outer hatch slowly yawned open. Jason got inside, and waited anxiously for the outer hatch to close, and air to be pumped in.

  When the inner hatch swung open, he ripped off his helmet, and ordered the sailship's computer to stop the spinning. Though Dalton had ordered the computer to ignore outside radio contact, it now recognized Jason's voice, and did. Jason noticed the spin immediately begin to decrease. Next, Jason ordered the computer to begin repairing the artificial gravity sail which he had noticed outside had been severely damaged.

  Using handholds, for he was virtually weightless near the axis of the sailship's erratic spin, he pulled himself through the cargo hold. The spin of the ship was slowing noticeably.

  The effect caused Jason's body to seem to begin rotating in the opposite direction, the inertia of his body trying to maintain the original spin he had given it outside the air lock aboard the spacebike. This slowed his progress through the cargo hold too much. He finally just held tightly onto a handhold waiting for the sailship spinning to stop.

  Finally it did, and he pulled himself through the door into the central chamber, and then up the ladder to the pilot room.

  The sailship was no longer spinning. Jason looked up and found Dalton and Monique now floating slowly in the zero gravity.

  There was no movement. Their arms eerily drifted out in front of them like sleep-walkers. Their legs were slightly folded up.

  Their clothing billowed out from them in all directions, slightly rustling from the pilot room ventilation. They looked like two sleeping angels floating over Jason's head.

  The force of the spin at the edge of the pilot room dome, the farthest point from the center of the rapidly rotating sailship, had been very high, for Jason now saw the matted blood in their hair where each had fallen heavily against the hard dome above. A large red stain could be seen in the center of the dome. Jason saw small globules of blood floating around near the two overhead bodies. He thought of the three insane colonists he had done away with. He held back his sobs.

  He decided not to assume the worst. He just could not face that possibility at all. He turned, and violently propelled himself back down through the hatchway in the pilot room floor, and down to the floor of the central chamber. He entered the living quarter, and pulled the portable medical unit out of its recessed storage in the wall nearby. It was a box about as long as his forearm, and had a large handle for convenient handling.

  He pulled himself quickly back up to the pilot room.

  Jason needed to pull the two bodies downward so he could examine them. He looked at Dalton's secondary pilot chair now empty. Would anyone ever sit there again? Would he ever see Dalton's excited face as they maneuvered through the gravitonic currents?

  Jason strapped the chair's shoulder harness around one of his boots to hold him down. Then he stretched up and pulled Monique down. He gritted his teeth and slowly extended a shaking hand to her neck to check for a pulse. He felt around for the carotid artery. There was a pulse! He looked at her chest.

  Shallow breathing! He quickly reached back up and carefully pulled Dalton down. He was still alive!

  Jason scanned Monique and Dalton with the hand-held medical unit. Each time, to Jason's great despair, the little medical unit reported the same thing. Internal damage too serious for its capabilities! Its red fatality indicator was rapidly flashing. They were alive but both were rapidly dying! What was Jason to do?! He wanted to grab them both, and hug them to him, willing the life back into them. But he forced himself to think rationally.

  The colony ship had excellent medical facilities! The Conovarians were brilliant geneticists and physiologists! But, how to get the two unconscious forms over there...

  At this point, the mysterious audio tape floated by. With irritation, Jason grabbed it out of the air and glared at it. If it were not for the damn tape, Dalton would have left Jason alone back at the gold souqs, and none of this would have happened!

  With irritation he stuffed the tape into his pocket.

  They still had on there spacesuits! He gently pulled them down, one at a time, through the pilot room hatchway, and into the cargo hold. There, he found their helmets and put them on.

  He next gently strapped them to their 'bikes, and prepared himself while the air lock cycled. They all went through the air lock and crossed to the colony ship, guided automatically by the sailship computer which was once again in communication with the spacebike computers and Jason's helmet.

  Jason, and the unconscious Dalton and Monique were met in the axis tunnelway by Excarver Durdaine who was furious. He hastily ordered stretchers brought up, though, and Dalton and Monique were quickly taken away for treatment. He then ordered Jason arrested.

  As Durdaine's men approached, Jason loosened himself up, ready to begin an easy fight with the inexperienced colonists.

  He would get back to his sailship and threaten to blow the colony ship up if they did not release Dalton. Then he looked up and noticed Excarver Durdaine now holding the gun Jason had left in the control room, aiming it at Jason's middle. Jason let himself be arrested. He was charged with causing another Accident. They led him away to jail. He was still just too despondent over Dalton and Monique to resist. Were they safe? Would they live?

  He had no way of knowing, and no one would tell him anything.

  24. JAIL

  He spent many days alone in a small, isolated, and locked cubicle, his jail aboard the colony ship. It had white ceil
ing, walls, and floor. There was a small lighting panel on the ceiling which automatically turned off at regular intervals to indicate 'night.' Jason did not like the way the damn thing would suddenly slam him into total darkness. There was a bunk that was not long enough for him. And, there was a portable cleaning and waste treatment closet, also not long enough for his tall body. Conovarians had all been genetically engineered to be the same height, optimal for highest physiological efficiency, though shorter than the average male from Infinity City. The females were much shorter than the males. Most Conovarians agreed this was probably due to Henry Conover's personal tastes; he had been very short. Jason detested both the bunk and the cleaning unit, and often restrained the urge to shatter one using the other.

  His jail also had a small desk and chair upon which the colonists had mercifully left an entertainment show player.

  Jason, however, spent most of his time obsessively exercising, doing calisthenics, isometrics, and martial arts KATA ( a variety of stylized movements designed to practice hand, elbow, knee, and foot strikes against an invisible assailant, learned by all young men of Infinity City early in their mandatory years in the Militia Guard Academy. ) Jason had learned techniques of self-meditation in the Militia Guard designed to keep a captured Infinity City Adventurer sane if incarcerated for a long time.

  But Jason hated these mental exercises which he considered pointless. Instead, he went over again and again just what he would like to do to Excarver Durdaine if he could just get his hands on him, especially around that old, white wrinkled up neck...

  Twice a day, once in the morning, and at the beginning of the afternoon, a panel snapped open in the wall above the bunk, revealing a meal. The afternoon meal was satisfyingly large, and grew even larger in some automatic response to Jason's growing nutritional requirements. The food was average in quality.

  Jason preferred quantity anyway.

  Often, he would pull the mysterious audio his parents had given him so long ago, from his pocket to examine. What secret did it hold? He cursed himself in frustration for not listening to it earlier. The mystery of the tape there in the isolation of the cubicle drove him mad with curiosity. He begged the colonists, who checked up on him through a small panel in the sturdy door from time to time, for an audio tape player but they consistently refused. A few times, in spite of himself, he held the tape up to his forehead, foolishly wishing he could read it with his thoughts.

  Each time the colonists peeped in on him, he asked about Dalton and Monique. When they refused to tell him anything, he would insult them rudely, and they would angrily snap the panel closed again.

  Jason practiced many of his deadly combat strikes against the solid door but to no avail. Even a devastating heel kick, slamming his entire body backwards, caused no harm, and only gave him a sore foot.

  Ethera started coming by to torment him. She told him he was a liar, and a monster who prayed upon women. WHAT HAD GOTTEN

  INTO HER?, he wondered. He told her they had been just two sailships passing in the night, a great old line that he thought quite romantic. But she just spit at him through the little open panel, then stalked away, while Jason watched in leering fascination.

  Strangely, she came by again and again, angrily mocking Jason's helpless incarceration. Jason was at a loss to understand her continuing obsession with him. Her emotions flew between raging anger and tearful sobbing as she ranted hysterically about their lost relationship. Jason would sit on his bunk leaning against the wall with his hands behind his head, watching the flashing colors of her beautiful angry eyes through the little open door panel. He never asked her to leave since often she was the only visitor for days.

  Once, he asked her if she did not appreciate the gifts of gold he had given her. But she angrily informed him that she did not even have that; her father had taken them from her to make the statue. She sneered at him through the door panel announcing she had kept his academy ring which she had hidden away.

  Durdaine came by and informed Jason that they had tried to contact the sailship, but there was no answer. He accused Jason of being a pirate, and said they would keep him aboard the colony ship to do their bidding; to be their own personal repairman. He told him he viewed all Adventurers from Infinity City as trouble makers. Two of their original crew, the brothers Stomec and Romeg had both become involved with a girl who arrived on an Infinity City Adventurer's ship before the colony ship had left.

  Romeg had disappeared, and could not be found in time for the colony ship launching.

  Durdaine usually underwent short bursts of intense anger as he talked to Jason. He told Jason during one angry outburst that the colonists would force Jason to pilot their ship to their new world. If he would not, then he and Dalton would be put to death for piracy. And Durdaine assured Jason that Dalton would be put to death first, with him and poor Monique watching and listening closely.

  Jason's blue eyes blazed at the threat. He grinned wickedly, then revealed to Durdaine in a smug voice that if he killed Dalton, he would be killing the son of Romeg! At first, Durdaine snorted at the ridiculous idea, and was skeptical. But something made him think. Could the boy Dalton possibly be the carrier of the great intelligence genes that they required on their new world? This would certainly explain the boy's high intelligence. It had been amazing how a mere boy could have repaired so many of the colony ship's sophisticated systems. If his father were indeed Romeg, Dalton would certainly have an exact copy of his Y-chromosome which carried the special genes.

  Maybe this even explained his obsessive attraction to Monique.

  They were as genetically similar as a brother and sister with the same father since Romeg and Stomec had been identical twins.

  They even looked alike, except for coloring since Dalton had dark hair and complexion, and Monique was blonde. Was the strong attraction between the boy and girl caused by the human family bonding instinct?

  Durdaine now felt stunned. His intuition whispered in his mind that it was all true. But Excarver Durdaine was not the sort to pay attention to his intuition. Jason saw through the little door panel the look of confusion on Durdaine's face. The huge gray shaggy eyebrows were tightly pressed together in concentration. Jason suggested that Durdaine have his medical team scan and analyze Dalton's genes.

  And Durdaine did! During scanning, Dalton was found to be genetically pure with no known defective genes at all, though it was found that he most definitely was not purely Conovarian. The baffled doctors reported several genetic traits of unknown function. ( Henry Conover had single-handedly completely mapped out the human genome before starting his colony on CONOVER. Ever since then, the Conovarian geneticists had meticulously kept tract of each gene and its specific function for every individual on the planet. ) The important and amazing discovery was that Dalton HAD the missing Y-chromosome with its complex genetic structure of maximum intelligence that Romeg and Stomec were supposed to have carried to the new world. The colonization mission could easily succeed after all! If they could just find a crew to man the colony ship...

  Even more important, the scanning computer revealed that Dalton and Monique were completely recovered from their serious head injuries. Durdaine told the two how Dalton was related to the mission. Dalton was not surprised having secretly begun to suspect this long ago after Monique had told him about her father Stomec. It meant he was closely related to Monique. It meant he was her genetic BROTHER! But Durdaine informed them both this did not matter. There was no risk of birth defects associated with their offspring since their fathers from Conover had no recessive genetic defects that could come together with Dalton and Monique. And, they had not grown up together, which eliminated the taboo and stigma of a sexual brother and sister relationship. However, Durdaine suggested it would be prudent not to mention their fathers were identical twins. Durdaine now WANTED Dalton and Monique to be together! They would both be released and given free run of the ship. Excarver Durdaine was extremely happy about this now.

&nb
sp; But Durdaine still kept Jason locked below as a pirate. He was convinced Jason had originally kidnapped Dalton, and then had also kidnapped Monique. And he further blamed his daughter Ethera's sudden melancholy on Jason, just another rogue from that Infinity City.

  When Dalton heard about all of this the day he was released from his sick bed, he begged Durdaine to let Jason go. He would gladly stay with the ship, pilot it to the new world, and solve any problems on the way. He knew the ship inside and out! He had the INTELLIGENCE! He told him Jason was NOT a pirate but just an Adventurer from Infinity City who rescued disabled spaceships for living. Durdaine was still ecstatic over the recovery of the high intelligence Y-chromosome. And, with the boy-genius piloting the ship, the colonization mission would now finally proceed! He benignly agreed to release Jason. Better to have the rogue off and away...

  25. FREE AGAIN

  Jason was sitting at the little desk of his tiny room when suddenly the door flew open to reveal Durdaine wearing his usual white robe of office. Jason automatically tensed ready to spring for Durdaine's throat and fulfill the fantasy he had dreamed up from within his cell. He slowly rose.

  Durdaine saw the look in Jason's icy blue eyes. He took a few steps back in response, his old gray eyes wide with surprise, his bushy gray black eyebrows shooting up almost to his bushy dark hair. He quickly pulled out Jason's own hand-gun from a pocket in his robe, aiming it straight at Jason. However, Durdaine looked downright happy. He smiled revealing his gnarly old teeth, the wrinkles around his mouth turning to deep furrows, the result of the unaccustomed activity. He said, "Relax, Commander Jason. Jason the Rescuer. Yes, I know exactly who you are now. I've good news. We're going to free you. I want you off the colony ship for good. As far as I'm concerned, you're still a pirate, really."

  Jason slowly rose to his feet, and growled, "Where's Dalton?

  Where's Monique? What happened to them? I'm not leaving until..."