“Into space?” Dalton asked.
“Into deep space,” Dot said, nodding, keeping her intense gaze on the doctor. But as she did, she signaled to Brian with her right hand by pinching her fingers together.
It was time.
She could see out of the corner of her eye as Brian eased his finger toward the button that would call in the League to extract them. And then pushed it.
Dot took her gaze from Dalton and took off Brian’s oxygen mask. In a moment he wouldn’t need it.
“I’m not sure who is crazier,” Dalton said, “you two, or me for listening to you.”
“Isn’t that what your critics said about you?” Brian asked, staring at the doctor. “Wouldn’t you like to know, prove to yourself, that you were right?”
“You have no remaining family,” Dot said, softly. “You are in this place until your last days. Alone. Trust me, going on missions is what Brian and I and our crews wait for, hold onto life for. Being young is wonderful. Being young with old, experienced minds, is even better. It makes living in a place like this worth the pain.”
Dalton just sat there, saying nothing.
She and Brian had known that Dalton could never allow himself to agree. Just as both of them had never really said, “yes” to that first mission when they were recruited. It was just too crazy-sounding for any sane person to believe.
“We’re going to prove this to you, Doctor,” Brian said, as the sliding door leading out to the courtyard opened up and four young men and one woman walked in.
All were wearing civilian clothes, as was normal for extractions. But Dot knew all of them were Earth-bound members of the EPL. Or at least they would be Earth-bound until they got a lot older and could travel distances into space.
All five stopped and snapped off salutes to Brian and Dot.
Kennison, the young man who often carried Brian to the lift point, came over beside Brian, while the young woman named Sherri moved over beside Dot.
Dot stood.
She prided herself in walking to the extraction point, but it was always good to have an arm to hold onto.
The other three men flanked Doctor Dalton.
“It seems I have no choice but to play along with whatever this is,” he said, standing slowly.
“You will believe us shortly,” Dot said. “We’ll talk again about sixty light-years from here.”
With that Kennison picked Brian up like he didn’t weigh anything.
Dot had to admit, the kid was gentle on Brian’s old, thin skin, and Dot knew Brian appreciated that.
Kennison and Brian vanished just a step outside the door, leaving Doctor Dalton standing there, staring, with his mouth open. Usually, at night, they took them all the way to the center of the courtyard and used a tractor beam to lift them up. But it seemed, with a daylight extraction, the League was willing to take more chances.
“A form of teleportation,” Dot said.
The doctor looked like he might have a heart attack before he got out of the room.
A moment later he and the three vanished just outside the door and then she let Sherri escort her out and pull the sliding door closed behind them before they were taken to the ship.
A moment later she was in the Trans-Galactic Drive transport ship in orbit and Sherri was lifting her and placing her gently into her sleep coffin.
Then she stepped back and snapped off a salute. “Have a safe voyage, Captain.”
“Thanks,” Dot said, giving a slight salute as the coffin lid closed over her.
She really, really hoped that she would see Sherri again. But that would only happen if she lived through the mission and they were successful.
And from what the general had hinted at on the phone this morning, that was doubtful.
ELEVEN
February 12th, 2061
Equivalent Earth Time
Location: Deep Space
BRIAN AWOKE AS usual to the faint, orange and rose smell of the sleep gas being flushed out of his sleep coffin. He reached up and pushed the lid open, relishing once again how wonderful it felt to actually be able to move his arms.
Move anything for that matter.
He sat up, and then levered himself out of the sleep coffin. He still had on his old clothes with the applesauce stains from breakfast, but he shed them quickly.
They did not smell good at all and he wrinkled his nose and tossed them into a cleaning bag to be washed while he was here. If he survived, the least he could do was have clean clothes going back.
He sometimes wondered how Dot put up with him in that old stroke-riddled body.
The room he awoke in wasn’t his normal Captain’s cabin on his own ship, The Bad Business. This looked more like a normal stateroom on a transport ship. All his clothes and gear were on a small dresser.
They usually transferred their sleep coffins to their cabins before they awoke anyone. That meant Dot was here on the transport as well, instead of in her cabin in her ship, The Blooming Rose.
He guessed they were going to talk to the doctor here, before heading out on the mission.
Brian quickly slipped on the black leather pants and white, pleated, silk shirt that was the standard Captain’s uniform. He put on the black leather vest with the EPL logo on the front over his shirt, then buckled on the wide black-leather belt around his waist.
He sat down and pulled on the soft leather boots, tucking his pants legs loosely into the top of the tall boots. Then he took his two photon-blasters from the top of the dresser and put them in their holsters on his belt.
Captain Saber was back.
He stood and just stared in the mirror for a moment, just as he did with every mission, trying to make himself believe this was real, that the young Saber was standing there, not the old, stroke-damaged Saber who lived on Earth and couldn’t move.
He hoped at some point to ask Dot to marry him and file for permission to settle down on a planet out here on the frontier, maybe even have some kids and work on growing old once again, doing only local missions. That was his plan, but right now he and Dot were taking it slow. They both had previous spouses they both had loved. It felt odd to be starting over again at such an advanced age.
But he loved her. At some point he would get the courage to ask her to marry him. The rules were that you could only settle out here on the edge of the EPL if you were married, except for rare cases.
But right now, instead of thinking about marrying Dot, he had another mission to complete if he had any hope of ever having that happen.
He opened the stateroom door and headed down the hallway toward the ship’s lounge. That’s where the crew would take the doctor when they woke him.
As he turned the corner, Brian saw Dot striding toward him, dressed as he was, but with only one Photon Blaster on her hip.
She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Her wonderful brown hair was pulled back and her smile filled the corridor. She never once failed in taking his breath away.
“Hi, handsome,” she said, kissing him firmly.
He kissed her back, not wanting to let her go.
Finally she laughed. “I told you that applesauce would get you going.”
“Trust me,” he said, “it’s not the applesauce.”
With that, they both laughed and turned and went into the lounge.
Doctor Dalton stood near the huge window that looked out over the fleet of ships surrounding the transport ship. From the number, it looked like the League was expecting all sorts of trouble on this mission.
The EPL ships looked more like a large flock of birds floating there in space than anything. Even to Brian they looked impressive.
Brian dismissed the guard standing beside the door and he and Dot moved over toward the doctor, through the tables and chairs that filled the lounge area around a small dance floor. He and Dot had spent many a fun evening in this lounge and on that dance floor before returning to Earth.
Dancing was something he loved to remember whe
n trapped in that old body.
Dot loved it more than he did.
The doctor was standing with his left hand pressed flat against the window, staring around his hand at all the stars.
He looked just like a younger version of the man in the nursing home, only his hair was thick and his face much smoother. He still had the extremely thick eyebrows. And, of course, his hands were clearly healthy, something that seemed to be amazing him even more than the space and the fleet of ships.
He just kept pushing his hand flat against the view port, then looking at it.
“Doctor,” Brian said. “I’m Captain Saber. This is Captain Leeds.”
Dalton turned and looked at them, then just shook his head. “The two from the nursing home? How is that possible? How is any of this possible?”
“Yes, sir,” Dot said. “It’s possible because your theories are correct.”
He stared at his hand as he opened and closed it.
He and Dot stood there silently, letting the great mind inside that head fight to grasp the evidence in front of him.
Then Dalton looked up at them. “I was right? I actually was right?”
“You were, sir,” Brian said, nodding. “We are sixty light years from Earth. You are in your thirty-one-year-old body, the exact same body you had sixty years ago.”
He pulled up the clean white shirt the service had supplied him and stared at the scar on his stomach. “Even my appendix is still gone. Lost that when I was twenty-seven.”
“If we had gone four more light years out,” Brian said, “you would still have it.”
Dalton nodded, then turned again and put his hand on the window, pushing it flat, something he clearly couldn’t do in his old body back on Earth.
After a moment, he turned back and looked at Brian. “Captain Saber, there was a reason you and Captain Leeds didn’t let me live out my last days not knowing the truth. And I’m sure it was not simply a gesture of kindness. So what can I do for the League, as you call it, to earn my keep?”
Brian smiled, glad that the doctor had come around so quickly.
“I honestly don’t know for sure,” Brian said. “I will let the League scientists brief you. However I do know that our enemy, the Dogs, have somehow designed some sort of major weapon that has the chance of disconnecting time and space and matter.”
He thought for a moment, finally shaking his head. “I can’t imagine how that would be possible, now that I know my theory was correct. But I also don’t understand how it could be used as a weapon.”
Brian pointed at the fleet as Dot told him the answer.
“Almost all of the crews of all those battleships are senior citizens from Earth, just as the three of us are. It was the only choice the League had to get recruits quickly after we lost so many in that first war with the Dogs.”
The doctor nodded. “Sever the connection, and we end up back on Earth, in our old bodies.”
“And the frontier of the Earth Protection League,” Brian said, “all the League, actually, will be undermanned and outgunned. All these warships would be suddenly empty. The League would fall.”
Dalton nodded, giving one last look at the ships floating outside the big window.
“Where are the Earth Protection League scientists? I will need to get caught up quickly if I am to help.”
Brian pointed at the largest ship in the center of the fleet. “They are on the admiral’s ship, the Tuesday Morning.
“Can you take me there?” Dalton asked, again seeming to get lost in the fantastic view of ships and stars.
“You’ll be taken there,” Brian said. “Captain Leeds and I have our own ships to get ready for this coming fight.”
“Thank you,” Dalton said, again staring at his healthy hand, flexing it. “I’ll try to repay this kindness.”
“Just save us all, Doc,” Brian said.
With that the three of them turned and left the lounge, stopping in the hallway outside.
With a wink to Dot, Brian signaled they were ready for transport, and a moment later he was in the hallway of his ship, The Bad Business, headed for the bridge.
If he had anything to say about it, he and Dot and the doctor would be enjoying drinks and dancing in that lounge very soon, celebrating their victory.
CHAPTER TWELVE
February 12th, 2061
Equivalent Earth Time
Location: Deep Space
BRIAN STROLLED INTO the Command Center of The Bad Business and dropped in to the big center chair facing a wall of screens. The Command Center was actually fairly small, with only four stations. Usually his second-in-command, Marian Knudson, a stunning redhead from Wisconsin, sat in the chair to his left, but this time she had moved over to the communications chair directly behind him. Just from what little he knew so far of this mission, he needed someone he could trust at the communications station, especially since he had a hunch they were going over the border.
Marian knew that and had already moved.
Carl Turner, the best navigator in the fleet was in the chair to his right.
“So what’s happening, Captain?” Carl asked, his boyish face turning to look up at him. Brian could see that Carl was worried, not an emotion he normally showed in any way.
Carl appeared to be in his teens and had a face full of freckles. This far out, Carl was actually only twenty-one. Brian was twenty-eight or so. Carl was the youngest member of his crew, but Dot had a few slightly younger on her crew.
“From the best I can figure,” Brian said, “and what little information I’ve been given, we’re going to be getting a little younger. We have to take the fight to the Dogs.”
“I hope I don’t have to fly this thing in diapers,” Carl said, shaking his head and turning back to his screens that surround his chair.
“We all hope that,” Marian said from behind Brian.
Suddenly, across all the dozens of screens in the command center, an image of the area of space they were in came up. Admiral Lincoln’s voice boomed out of the speaker, and Marian at the communications panel moved quickly to dampen it a little as Brian studied the three-dimensional chart on the big screen in front of him.
“Make sure everyone on the ship is getting this,” Brian said to Marian and she nodded.
“The Dogs are on the verge of creating a new weapon,” the admiral said over the image, “that will disconnect us all from this time and area of space and send us home.”
Brian knew that much.
“They are within hours of launching the new weapon over the border and sending it toward Earth, followed by their fleet.”
“Hours?” Carl said softly, then whistled under his breath.
Brian agreed with that shock. No wonder the brass had been in a hurry to extract everyone and get everyone staged. Brian had no idea there was so little time.
The screen showed the location of the EPL fleet, and then the location across the line that divided EPL space from Dog space. The weapon seemed to be on a big moon in a system three light years beyond the border.
“We’re going to get five years younger if we go in there,” Carl said, doing the quick math. “I’m going to have pimples again. Damn.”
The illustration also showed a large fleet of Dog ships staging about four light years on the other side of the moon’s system.
Brian didn’t like the looks of that at all. EPL warships were far more powerful than Dog warships and had beat Dog ships before numbers of times. But EPL just didn’t have enough ships out here on the edge to take on that entire fleet at once.
Not good, not good at all.
The admiral went on, not showing himself but instead just talking over the image of the ships and the moon with the weapon. “If we jump in and catch them by surprise, we’ll only be outgunned about three-to-one around the weapon. But that Dog fleet will be coming in fast, so we won’t have more than fifteen minutes at most.”
“Ten,” Brian said.
“Nine,” Carl said.
“My first desire is to destroy everything on that moon,” the admiral said, “including the weapon, but my science advisors warn me that if the weapon is functioning, that might set off a cascade effect. So we are going to let the science boys work on the problem of destroying the weapon for one more hour. Stand by at my command to jump in one hour.”
At that his voice cut off, but the image of the border, the big moon, and the Dog fleet remained.
“I sure hope the guest we brought can come up with something,” Brian said, staring at the impossible fight that they faced.
“Who’s the guest?”
“Dr. Jack Dalton,” Brian said.
Carl laughed. “This ought to be messing with his brain. Didn’t he get discredited for even suggesting that all this is possible in physics?”
“He did,” Brian said.
“Let’s hope he’s not bitter,” Marian said.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
February 12th, 2061
Equivalent Earth Time
Location: Deep Space
BRIAN SAT FOR the next forty-five minutes in his big command chair, not moving. There was just nothing he could do. Beside him Carl ran over calculations and in the fourth station Marian made sure all the ships were in close contact so they could work together when the fighting started.
Mostly Brian just stared at the area of battle and the space between here and there. He knew for a fact that the Dogs were watching the EPL fleet just as carefully.
At one point, two more of EPL warships appeared as late reinforcements.
Brian had no doubt that if every ship in the EPL fleet prepared to jump, the Dog fleet would do the same, and they would have even less time than the nine minutes Carl thought they all might have.
Brian slowly came to the conclusion that jumping the entire fleet at that moon just wouldn’t work.
Suddenly, he knew what had to be done. “Marian, put me through to a private line with the admiral.”
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