In Between the Stars

by A. A. Ripley

  ‘Welcome!’ she said with trained enthusiasm. ‘Have you come to trade? We on Confidence are dedicated to the production of the best quality sand chives. I am Aimee Svenson, the trade representative for the Farming Collective of Confidence.’

  She was talking with polished ease, someone who had rehearsed their speech to perfection. A display flickered behind her and started playing a presentation. The panoramic fields of Confidence’s sand chives stretched towards the horizon. Great effort had been taken to make it look impressive, but the best multimedia specialists can only do so much to make low shrubs of thin, entangled plants look impressive.

  ‘Yes, I believe that Confidence produces the best sand chives in the galaxy,’ said Inan politely, with a small bow. ‘But we are not here to trade.’

  ‘You’re not?’ said Aimee, and the smile withered on her face. She turned off the displays and seemed to lose her energy. ‘Then I suppose you want something to eat?’

  She called a robot over to her and issued some instructions. It disappeared with a staccato of clicks, only to return carrying a large tray. On the tray were plates gathered around a tall and translucent vessel. The vessel seemed to be full of yellow water and pale seaweed.

  ‘Sand chives served in brine,’ chirped their host. ‘This is our speciality. They’re a great source of protein and taste great, too! I hope you’ll tell the folks at home all about it.’

  Hijinks picked up a strand of sand chives in between her two fingers and looked at it with suspicion. Even though she was standing a few paces away, Inan could see that sand chives were no ordinary plants. She looked closer at Hijinks’ captive and realised that the “plant” had flagella that seemed to be moving! Inan quickly tried to remember if refusal of food would equal a mortal insult in human culture. She decided for misdirection instead.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Inan. ‘Did somebody arrive before us? A silver human?’

  ‘Of course!’ Aimee perked up. ‘What a figure! So unlike our usual guests. Who is he anyway, your friend? Are you the ones he was talking to for so long on our hyperlink channel? We only have one and he was talking for a long time.’

  Inan looked at Alan. He nodded ever so slightly. Inan felt alarm nipping at the back of her head. There was only one person Ure could have talked to.

  Their host didn’t seem to notice the uncomfortable looks they exchanged, too busy with the story she was telling.

  ‘First he talks for an hour and then he wants Anticipate.’

  ‘Anticipate?’ asked Inan. ‘Anticipate what?’

  ‘Not what,’ she laughed, ‘but where. Anticipate was the first temporary settlement from the time our ancestors made planetfall. He wanted to know where to find it.’

  ‘And did you tell him?’

  ‘Yes I did. Did you say he was your friend? What a strange person! He wouldn’t even wait for the transit, just started walking.’

  ‘It is of great importance that we find him,’ said Inan.

  ‘Oh, that’s easy. You just take the circular that drops people at their farms. Get off when you see buildings on a hill. Can’t miss it. I’ll alert the driver to drop you off.’

  Outside the Visitor Centre, the three of them gathered for a quick counsel.

  ‘We have to have a plan,’ said Alan.

  ‘What are we going to do? Jump him?’ Inan could not believe how ridiculous that sounded. Two adolescents and a grandmother wrestling an armed con man. Alan had combat training, true, but what would he be able to do against someone that could shape their form to their will?

  ‘We should tell security. He threatened us! Left us for dead on that forsaken planetoid.’

  ‘We should,’ agreed Hijinks. ‘Tell the whole story. Maybe they will believe us.’

  Inan took a deep breath and then slowly let it out. Whatever was serving for planetary security in Confidence would have a tough time believing their story. Even if they did, it would take too long. Ure would have plenty of time to do whatever he wanted with the disc.

  ‘Don’t forget,’ said Alan, who had kept an eerie silence until now, ‘that he might have agents here. How do you suppose we… he avoided capture for so many years? This planet might be full of his sympathisers!’

  The nipping alarm at the back of her head evolved into a cacophony of distress. It was as though there were unseen eyes following her around and piercing their gaze right between her shoulders. She looked around. The inhabitants of this planet were still busy with their unhurried duties, but now she was almost expecting someone to capture them.

  ‘Careful, Inan,’ said Hijinks, noticing the change in her mood. ‘Careful but not suspicious.’

  *

  The transit was the same vehicle that had arrived for them at the spaceport. It was also manned by the same mute driver. Inan tried to ask him if he would stop at Anticipate, but he just waved them past. Apart from them, the transit took on a few more passengers. They all looked at the trio with curiosity, but when it became apparent that the newcomers weren’t going to be much entertainment, the heads stopped turning in their direction. The driver engaged the gravity-repulsors underneath the chassis, and the transit was away, followed by a cloud of dust.

  Inan could barely sit in one place or observe the landscape outside. The badly-regulated repulsors shook and sputtered, making the ride wobbly. The grey and yellow stalks of sand chives passed by the window – a mass of tangled fields, broken only by stretches of barren, rocky land. The dull sights beyond the window and the piercing eyes of humans did nothing to calm her thoughts. Their faces, dusted with the ever-present dirt from the road, betrayed no thoughts. They knew nothing of what was about to happen, just that they would rather not have aliens travelling with them on their route home. Inan thought that she should warn them, that she should tell them that something important had come to their planet, something that they should know about. But then she realised that this wouldn’t help. It could change things for the worse. What if they decided to help the pirates to deliver not only the black disc and the location of the Actuality Regulator, but also the trio themselves into the hands of the fanatical captain? What if they felt the same as him, that their fates could be bettered by putting the galaxy under human rule? She felt suspicion rising within her. Didn’t Cochrane say that he had allies? She looked around at the unfriendly faces. Were there any with her at this very moment?

  Inan was actually relieved when the vehicle stopped and the driver motioned them to get off. The doors slid shut behind them and they were left alone in front of a small sloping hill with a flat top. At the summit there was a group of buildings, shining dully in the sunlight. They reminded Inan of bones, picked clean by giant scavenging beasts. A road used to lead towards them, but now it had dwindled to a footpath, overgrown by naked, creeping vines. Carefully, so as not to trip on the neglected path, they started to climb towards Anticipate.

  The standard issue planetary settlement buildings were gathered in a half-circle, facing a dry courtyard devoid of plant or stone. They were up to three floors high. Inan could see the sky through the top windows where the roofs had been removed when being stripped of anything of use. The settlement had long lost the battle against the elements; dark, thin, brown shrubs were growing in the entryways and skinny leaves hung down from the corners of the openings.

  *

  For the longest while nothing happened. The only movement in the abandoned settlement was of the ever-present insects and the only sound was the dry rustling of their wings. The sun started to set and the white, chalky sand of the courtyard turned to the shade of ancient bones.

  ‘Someone’s coming,’ said Hijinks, pointing to a lonely dot working its way towards Anticipate.

  ‘Ure?’ said Alan.

  ‘Who else?’ Inan observed the shape. The feeling of urgency, of the need to chase the human that took the black disc, was no more. Something else took its place. S
omething that was telling her to hide, to find a covered spot away from the bare courtyard.

  ‘Let’s hide.’

  They entered one of the buildings. At one point it must have been storage of some sort; the floor was still littered with boxes and containers of every shape and size. The walls were lined with storage lockers, now rusted over and with flaking paint.

  Inan crouched under a window with an empty pane and carefully peeked out. She saw Ure arriving. He stopped in the middle of the courtyard and looked around. For a moment Inan thought he had spotted her, hiding behind the wispy foliage. But then he averted his face to look at the pebbles at his feet and then towards the horizon.

  Time passed. Inan wasn’t sure how long she squatted behind the corner of the wall. Each time she heard the wind move the overgrown plants, she thought that Alan had broken his promise and was trying to sneak up on Ure. But no, when she looked behind her shoulder she could still see Alan at the other end of the room, his back glued to the wall, the window next to his head. Ure was pacing the courtyard freely, looking more and more impatient.Inan could feel her legs and tail cramping from being in one position for too long. A bold insect buzzed close to her ear. She tried to wave it away, but the buzzing persisted. She could hear it even louder now. She listened closely and realised that it was not a buzz made by impatient wings. It was a buzz made by an oncoming vehicle!

  She looked at Alan and pointed to her ear. Alan repeated her gesture. He could hear it too. Inan peered carefully through the dry leaves, but Ure had already turned away, looking towards the oncoming vehicle.

  It was approaching from a strange direction, not from the city, not from the farms. It was lurching shakily, shuddering like an angered animal, avoiding bigger stones and dips in the terrain.

  It was a strange vehicle, barely more than a platform suspended on a small anti-gravity field. The chassis was just a skeleton of collapsible tubes, held in place by locks and braces. The whole looked as if it could be assembled at a moment’s notice and then disassembled for easy transport off-planet. It looked worn though, as though it had seen more service than it was meant for.

  But Inan hadn’t much time to marvel at the strange vehicle, because the sight of its passengers made her heart miss a beat.

  She had expected the pirates, maybe led by Lisbeth. And there she was, driving the contraption with a steady hand. But next to her, Inan spied the stony expression of Cochrane himself.

  They drove right up to Ure and disembarked.

  From her hiding place, Inan could see them clear as day, a human and a silver replica of one; it felt as though Cochrane was staring into a reflection of himself. The illusion shattered when Cochrane spoke. He uttered a few words in some human language, but Ure interrupted him.

  ‘You know I can’t speak English,’ he said. ‘I don’t ask you to speak Hungarian either. Let us stick to tradespeak, shall we?’

  ‘I asked,’ said Cochrane, his face assuming a sharper expression, ‘if you have what I want.’

  ‘That depends,’ said Ure. ‘Do you have what I asked for?’

  Cochrane extended his hand towards Lisbeth. The female placed a box on his upturned palm. It was oblong and dark, like the carapace of a giant beetle.

  ‘It looks a trifle light, if you ask me,’ said Ure, glancing at the box.

  ‘The traitor and the aliens,’ said Cochrane, ignoring the remark. ‘Where are they?’

  ‘I left them at the previous location. You can pick them up at your convenience. Now, let us return to the matter of my compensation.’

  Cochrane didn’t respond at once. He was looking at the box in his hand, seemingly deliberating something.

  ‘I suppose,’ he said slowly, ‘I can’t convince you to give me the disc and the coordinates without payment? Think about humanity. Think of the future we could secure with that machine. We could raise humanity up from the shame of defeat and obscurity into a position of influence and glory! Is that not worth more than anything anyone can ever pay?’

  He raised his voice; fire sprang from his eyes, his avian features blazing with passion. He seemed to grow with each word he fired. There was something in him of an ancient warlord, one that would walk and conquer all in his path. Inan understood now how he kept other humans with him, to fight a war that was lost many years ago.

  But Ure seemed to be unmoved, remaining cool as the surface of a mirror.

  ‘I know that you take your fantasies of human dominance very seriously. I, however, have my reservations. This is alien technology. I can’t be sure it still exists, let alone works. I prefer money. I know it’s real.’

  Cochrane kept looking at Ure without saying anything for a long second.

  ‘So there is nothing that would convince you to just give it to me?’

  ‘Yes, there is indeed. The container that you hold and that, I assume, holds the money you owe me.’

  Cochrane nodded, as if he was confirming something he had suspected for a long time.

  It happened so fast. One moment the two humans stood there, measuring each other with tense looks. The next, there was a flash and a metallic crack. In the middle of Ure’s chest, a hole had been burned through. He looked at it and laughed, but his smile dissolved. The fingers of his right hand dissolved too, leaving just a bit of silver dust at his feet.

  ‘You didn’t think I’d come unprepared, did you?’ said Cochrane, his voice calm and casual. ‘With no leverage in case you could not be convinced to do something for your race instead of for yourself?’

  Ure said nothing, watching the tiny spider robots fall away from his body.

  ‘You could be a hero to all humanity!’ bellowed Cochrane. ‘You still can. Give me the disc and the coordinates and you’ll live. I can fix the damage to your core unit.’

  ‘Unfortunately for… you, Captain,’ said Ure, his voice changing speed and pitch, ‘I know you… lie.’ Ure went down on his knees in a jerking motion.

  ‘You can’t repair this… not on… Confidence. So I shall give… you nothing.’

  Cochrane did not answer. He took two steps back and turned to his underlings. Just as had happened on the asteroid, Ure’s hand receded, revealing a gun. But before he had a chance to shoot his hand crumbled, hit by another sonic discharge. The gun fell to the ground, sprinkled with the dust of dying nano-units.

  Lisbeth holstered her weapon without a shadow of emotion.

  ‘Thank you, Lisbeth,’ said Cochrane, as if he was thanking her for a minor courtesy.

  ‘My pleasure, sir,’ she said. ‘Should I finish him off?’ Cochrane waved her proposition away.

  ‘Wasted effort, he is dead already,’ he said. ‘Search the area. He did not have enough time to arrange a better hiding place.’

  The sudden realisation that they would be found out hit Inan with the force of a crashing meteor.

  She pulled backwards, deeper into the building. She looked around desperately, trying to hide somewhere.

  She crawled into a container, feeling unclothed in its four walls. She grabbed a pile of debris, a large scrap of fabric, some discarded packing materials, dead foliage, and covered herself. The smell of decay filled her nostrils, almost making her sneeze. She curled herself into a ball, trying very hard to look just like a discarded heap of rubbish. She left only her eye uncovered. Inan saw Alan cramming himself into an upright wall-storage unit. The slight click of the closing door sounded like a thunderclap in her ears. She was sure that the pirates must have heard that, along with her breathing.

  The pirate was a bulky male, so tall he had to stoop in the entrance to come in. His flat, pale face, of a deep-space dweller, was shadowed with fur growing on his cheeks. He looked around, holding his gun casually at the hip. He was not expecting trouble.

  He took a few steps inside. Inan could feel the thin floor trembling under his heavy boots. He looked under an overturned cr
ate and kicked it aside, not finding anything underneath it. He moved on toward his next target – the lockers under the wall. Inan’s heart almost stopped. The pirate opened the first locker, the rusted hinges shrieking pitifully.

  He slammed the locker door hard and flecks of rust fell off it. He grabbed the handle of the next one. Inan was lying there watching the human, breathless with terror. A few more seconds and he’d open Alan’s locker. Her panicked brain was throwing up solutions, one more crazy than another. What should she do? Jump out? Scream? Try to wrestle the gun out of his hands? She couldn’t let him do it, take him away or shoot him on the spot. In slow motion, she saw the human’s hand moving towards the handle. As if in a dream, she started to extend her arms, to pull herself up, to jump him, to claw and tear…

  A guttural order came from outside. The pirate stopped in the middle of the move, his hand extended for a couple of seconds more. Then he barked something in response and turned around to depart, leaving Alan’s hiding-place undisturbed. Inan felt herself deflating, letting go of the breath she held, and listening to the sound of her heart rumbling as hard as steelworks machinery.

  She heard the pirates leave, the commanding voice of Cochrane over the snarling of the engine and the crunching of pebbles under the wheels. And then it was quiet again, the rustle of leaves and wind blowing the only sounds remaining, suspended in the air.

  Inan dug herself out from under the rubbish pile and ran towards the door and out to the courtyard. For a brief moment, Inan thought he was already dead. He sat motionless, a large lump of silver mass propped by a brown rock. Through the hole in his chest, she could see the green glow of his core unit, growing paler with every second as if life was a liquid that trickled away from it. Inan approached him cautiously, almost afraid that he would dissolve with one careless move on her part. Inan couldn’t tell if he was surprised to see them. His features were misshapen and unreadable.