Drunk Space Driving in the Twenty-First Century
(Prologue to the series, “The Cosmic Misadventures of Floyd Pinkerton”)
John “Sloop” Biederman
Copyright 2017 John Biederman. All Rights Reserved.
Cover Art Copyright 2017 Luis Limardo. All Rights Reserved.
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Awaiting disaster is one of life’s most harrowing experiences. You know it’s coming, but it’s taking its time--and there’s not a damned thing you can do about it.
I’m sure you’re familiar with the scenario. Remember when you were young and you did something bad--something innocent that only kids do? Maybe you shaved your sister’s head? You roared. She wailed. Your tittering amusement became a panicked whimper as you heard the jingle of dad’s belt buckle. He’d take his time climbing the stairs…
It’s a smidgeon more serious when you’re spiraling through a planet’s atmosphere, completely out of control. You don’t know what planet. Or what star system. Or approximately how far you are from home.
When I was younger, I had a knack for obtaining permission to sit in ship’s cockpits during space flights. Okay, it was probably just because my dad was a commercial space pilot. And we went on a lot of vacations. But more than captaining duties, I was fascinated with astrogation. The astrogator is the guy who actually lets you travel space. Jumps you through the Void, skipping off light years in the process.
I sat in awe as the crew pushed buttons, read gauges and generally tinkered with a very large gadget before my eyes. I took notes, mentally and on device. I remember it all so vividly…
The motions were familiar, so after reading many books on the subject, I knew how to astrogate. I wasn’t exactly a jumper-guru, but I could accomplish it. Okay, perhaps “pull it off” more than “accomplish” it.
I somehow overlooked the fact that I’d have to do it in a flash, seriously medicated, with the Sun System Sheriff’s Department nipping at my posterior.
I was flipping pages, on device and literally, like a speed-reading robot gone haywire. I typed commands willy-nilly. I saw lights pulsing that I knew nothing about. The Blue Maiden (my stolen craft) vibrated like a bowl of gelatin on a jackhammer.
The wall screen began to summarize my command sequence, then the warning flashed--HOSTILE SYSTEM SCRAMBLER RAYS FIRED AT 7 O’CLOCK.
I requested more information. I didn’t understand half of what I was given.
I figured one thing out--they were close. It was amazing that the government craft had missed at such short range. Government ships were always on technology’s cutting edge, while the Maiden was on the edge that was cut. One hit from their scrambler rays and the archaic onboard computer would probably crash.
I grabbed my crotch--hell, it might’ve been my last cheap thrill--and executed my first jump.
******
Out of all the paradise planets in the Milky Way, my random entered coordinates (which I had already forgotten) happened to be well within the gravity pull of 61636-788949X. That was the name assigned to it by the Maiden’s computers, under a forgotten naming system that, from later research, appears to have only been used by that space beater’s outdated computers. Nonetheless, I name I’ll never forget.
I had tampered with the security program enough to steal the Blue Maiden, which was also enough to screw-up the emergency pilot. It hadn’t occurred to me that I’d need to know much more about piloting…
I spiraled through the planet’s atmosphere at the perfect speed to piss me off--quick enough to dizzy, slow enough to give me plenty of time to reflect on my pickle. I had plenty of time to pray and work up a sweat as I pounded the keyboards like a crazed phantom on a pipe organ.
Tons of information scrolled over the screens--I still remember all I read about spacecraft lavatory design in those eternal minutes. I realized there was nothing I could do at this point but sit--slowly shaking my head and sipping my cheap, warm, Martian beer.
******
I had planned this getaway for years. I planned everything I did; that’s part of my sapient side. Yet I wasn’t a very good planner; that’s part of my dominant side.
It surprised me when things went awry. I had fine-tuned my plan daily--finding fewer loopholes each time--until it appeared flawless. Or, well, flaw-challenged.
Out on the perimeter of the First Ganymede Development settlement, the Blue Maiden slept. I hadn’t seen anybody near her, save when I talked Sarah into giving me a complete tour of the base. It was small--requiring one operator, with living conditions for four uncomfortable people. It had all the hardware of a long distance craft, even jumper drives. I borrowed its manuals and studied enough to actually fly the thing.
Designed to travel the galaxy, funds continually delayed the project. Halfway through its construction, new developments caused new duties to be set for the Maiden. Its jumpers were outdated, so it became a solar system rover.
Yet technology had also brought better system rovers and so the Blue Maiden sat--until it was bought by the First Development company. Then the Tri-World economy boomed as Mars and Luna’s settlers multiplied like Earthlings. FD thrived and it, too, bought better system rovers.
And the Maiden sat again at FD’s base in Ganymede (FGD--First Ganymede Development), awaiting another buyer.
She was finished on a low budget. Blue, hard, fuzzy seats. Tiny toilet. Beds made from an armor-like sponge. Quality engineering, shoddy living conditions. There was a lot of space for food. I suppose the cold cabinets were bought early on.
I should’ve waited another year. Read more than seemed necessary. I should’ve looked harder for someone else to go along with the plan, but there was nobody, besides Sarah, at FGD I really got along with--much less trusted revealing my daffy scheme to--and it was hard to get off Ganymede much. Life was a social holocaust.
FGD charged the forefront of technology, although its owners were fanatically dedicated to 17th Century Christianity. They somehow bypassed the basic rules of the New Solar System Order and hired friends and family who followed their dogma. Sarah pretended to follow, but I don’t know how I ever got hired. Freedom of Speech (and Freedom From Common Sense) had me permanently snowmobiling on thin ice.
My position was supposedly prestigious. Two years at Luna U. earned me the position of Pioneer Settlement Investigator at FGD.
In other words, I drove around in a moon rover all day, throwing samples into an Enviro-Syllogist, and sat around all night in a shelter reading, using a little holovision to help me sleep.
The pay was good (if the bureaucratic economy was considered), but it still looked like a decade until my student loans would be paid off. I could’ve gotten better, but making love to Sarah (my department boss) for half my shift on a low-gravity moon was an excellent fringe benefit.
I almost included Sarah in my plans--in fact, I actually explained things to her in its prenatal stages. I had to go all the way to Ganymede to find legs like hers and it would’ve been nice to be lost in space with her. I even showed her the Maiden’s clearance card I’d duplicated.
Little by little, I realized she didn’
t really listen to me.
She just wanted my body. I haven’t the most nebulous idea why. She got off the rock quite often--her ex-husband had left her with a lot of money. And a lot of men with a whole lot more chased her. Sure, I was 20 years younger, but she’d spent most of her life in low gravity, so you really couldn’t tell.
I awaited the dump, hoping my observations paranoid.
It was probably beneficial--her using me. If she had actually paid attention, she would’ve turned me in.
Then again, that might’ve been better.
******
It wasn’t a tempestuous crash. No fire, no rolling end over end. Just a sudden stop and a large “thud.”
The ship was built to withstand some pretty hairy mishaps, but the designer undoubtedly considered cargo more important than passengers. Thrown from the control seat (thus discovering that the safety belts were useless), I bounced off a good amount of the wall surface.
I was a Human bruise. One might say I was lucky, having every part of my body sore for two months. Really sore. Like waking up with a lampshade on your head in the middle of someone’s stairway sore.
I took a few deep breaths and tried to launch.
Ha ha. Hee hee. Hardy har har. It is to laugh.
The Blue Maiden didn’t even tremble. I couldn’t have gotten stuck more efficiently on a bet.
I took root on the floor. Actually on the wall, considering the ship’s alignment. I didn’t feel like standing up, so I pretended to watch holovision on the cracked wall screen. Soon, my legs fell asleep.
My vodka bottle wobbled along the wall, stopping next to my head. Calling it an omen, I took another shot, although I had promised myself I’d put the hard stuff away for the day. I usually stuck with beer once I couldn’t feel where my ass ended and the driver’s seat began.
During a commercial, I decided I had to get my mind back on the horrors of reality.
They’d jail me on Io.
I slithered along the floor, reached the wall, and pulled myself to my feet in about a half-hour. I did a Frankenstein walk to the keyboards, after a couple of tumbles and grabbing three beers from the cold cabinet. A good 12-pack or so had exploded after impact and the whole cabin’s fragrance took me back to my dorm at Luna U. I guzzled two in a minute, feeling I deserved it. The third one wet everything but my throat.
I didn’t care. I’d already soaked my lap on impact--and it was actually a bit refreshing.
I loaded a display of this “Place That Should Not Be” (my name for 61636-788949X)--Gravity .85; 697-mile diameter. I happened to be near a pole. The temperature beyond the Blue Maiden’s six-foot-thick, aluminus-insulo walls was 103 degrees. Kelvin.
The outside periscopes afforded me a view of dun-colored ice and snow in all directions. I tampered with the wiring on a maintenance robot (which I knew nothing about), for kicks. It began to do a funny little jig.
I was dancing with her when she exploded.
The explosion knocked me smack on my rump. The shrapnel didn’t do any major harm, but I couldn’t wash the blackness off my face and some of my hair was fried off. I looked like one of those moronic “New Universe” musicians.
I turned on the distress beacon and decided to wait and see if any non-authority types would find me. That was taking a risk, but why employ caution so willy-nilly at this point? Wasn’t expecting anything, but I had five year’s worth of rations, liquor and cigars on board.
A week must’ve passed before I heard the roar--too loud to identify. Considering my recent streak of luck, it logically seemed that the planet was hit by some monstrous comet.
Yet when I opened my eyes, I was still alive.
I continued vegetating, figuring I might as well get supremely crocked if I were going to the clink.
I don’t know how long I slept. I awoke three or four times and, still feeling hungover, took a few shots, puffed a bit, then passed out again.
When I awoke, with my head feeling cracked in only a couple spots, I decided to go investigate.
I didn’t fully trust my all-weather suit, so I wore my thick, beer-stained clothing underneath. I looked at the suit in what remained of a mirror. Technology never seemed to catch-on to fashion--I looked just as silly as Neil Armstrong when he first walked Luna.
Crawling onto the frozen snow (after stashing some beers and stogies in my pockets--a thousand “yippies!” to the inventor of the Personal Consumption Airlock Helmet), I realized how sad my space beater really looked. Even if it were repairable, I was perfectly stuck. Wedged into the surface. And I thought I was done with “ditches” after leaving Earth.
With my power lens, I saw black smoke wafting about in the meager atmosphere. I stumbled along the trail of pollution for about an hour, finding a few soft spots along the way. My “techno snow boots” helped--once I got the hang of walking like an orangutan to prevent sinking. I had a feeling that archaic, tennis racket-shaped snowshoes would’ve been far more efficient.
The sun started to set on The Place That Should Not Be. I was about to bed down for the night in my comfy monkey-suit when the smoke began to thicken. I started jogging, reaching the top of a titanic crater’s edge, and there in the crater it smoldered…
******
What is it about running away? Every time my life starts to get boring, empty and ominously messed-up, I think that running off somewhere will make things better. I ran to the moon for college. I drained my money and ran to Mars to embark on a new life. Then to Ganymede. And now this.
Yet personal history also repeats itself. There seems to be so much hope in starting with a blank slate, yet we tend to use the same chalk each time. This time it seemed I’d destroyed my eraser as an encore.
It didn’t matter where I ran. I’d soon become an eccentric outcast again, acquire a small circle of demented friends and date women (always dangerous in one way or another) who’d eventually call me a kook and scram.
I’ll never really learn what I already know.
What was I thinking when this fiasco entered my mind? That there were oodles of other freaks like me cruising the galaxy aimlessly? That I would mysteriously find gorgeous women and party buddies wandering boondock planets?
I can’t answer these questions. I don’t like thinking about the reality of my decisions. My own little world’s much more palatable.
******
The giant craft smoldering in the crater was gaudy yellow and banana-shaped. I’d never seen anything like it. It looked like it’d ricocheted off a few asteroids in its time. Its façade led me to believe it was alien in design.
The thrill of being the first man to encounter alien life! (Assuming the rural dwellers’ sightings in the back-planet, so called “Floating Cities” orbiting Neptune were the hoaxes typical of the tabloids they were reported in.) I, Floyd Pinkerton, ambassador of Humanity. Lost and thoroughly inebriated.
I straightened my helmet, stashed my beers and cigar box in a snowdrift and listened to my heart trying to beat its way out of my chest.
A periscope peeked from the banana-shaped whatever-the-hell, reminding me of a frightening old story written by by a guy named Wells (I think)… Fear toyed with me. I had half a mind to gesture peace and half a mind to head for the hills.
Mostly, I had half a mind.
The periscope rose. A hatch opened ever so slowly, creaking eerily--as if I were lost in some silly sci-fi yarn.
I ran. I’m not sure in which direction, but I ran…head-on into an ice drift.
When I returned to drunken consciousness, a blurry form came into view. A Human form, with a beer belly, wearing a spacesuit sillier than mine (with a cocked baseball cap under the helmet) and an even sillier grin. He was smoking one of my cigars and, when I recognized him, I started to cry.
Of all the beings I could’ve encountered lost in space, here I was face-to-face with Bob Tripeman. The biggest mooch I’d ever met. I went to high school with him back on Earth. He’d given me a ride once when I’d wrecked one of
my many ground cars.
For a while, I paid him back with hundreds of credits worth of bummed booze, stogies and rides. I refused to associate with him after he showed up one morning wanting breakfast, a shower and 50 credits. (The shower, in itself, was just too weird a mooch to accommodate.)
He stood over me, sniggering in his unique manner and puffing like an active volcano. “Got any more beer?” he burped.
It took all my inner strength to resist standing up and landing a circle-kick on his freckled face. “Yeah. Yeah. I stocked up. Brought enough for a few years. I suppose I’ve got a few weeks worth, with you around.”
“So you’ve gotten yourself into another fine mess, I see.”
“I’ll take a wild guess and say you didn’t exactly plan your landing either.”
He frowned for a moment, then his eyes lit up. A grimace began to fester on his chin as his eyes scrunched. He leaned forward for a closer look at me before slapping his knee with laughter.
“No cracks about the hair,” I said.
There still wasn’t much reason to stand up. “Hand me one of my cigars.” He obliged. I awaited the inevitable reopening of his mouth.
Drunk Space Driving in the 21st Century (or Prelude to the Cosmic Misadventures of Floyd Pinkerton, Space Crock) Page 1