by Scott Reeves
Bucky Jupiter, Ace of the Space Patrol #1:
Bucky Jupiter Meets the Space Lord
Copyright © 2016 by Scott Reeves.
All rights reserved.
Cover art by Tithi Luadthong
Books by Scott Reeves:
The Big City
Demonspawn
Billy Barnaby’s Twisted Christmas
The Dream of an Ancient God
The Last Legend
Inferno: Go to Hell
Zombie Galaxy: The Outbreak on Caldor
Scruffy Unleashed: A Novella
Colony
A Hijacked Life
The Dawkins Delusion
The Newer New Revelations
The Miracle Brigade
Tales of Science Fiction
Tales of Fantasy
The House at the Center of the Worlds
The Chronicles of Varuk: Book One
Soldiers of Infinity: a Novelette
Apocalyptus Interruptus
Welcome to Snowybrook Inn
Liberal vs. Conservative: A Novella
Temporogravitism and Other Speculations of a Crackpot
A Crackpot’s Notebook, Volume 1
Death to Einstein!
Graphic Novels:
The Adventures of Captain Bob in Outer Space
Billy Barnaby’s Twisted Christmas: The Graphic Novel
YouTube channel:
http://www.youtube.com/TheBigScaboo
Twitter: @scottareeves
FREE Star Trek short stories by Scott Reeves on Wattpad:
Star Trek Voyager: Phantoms of the Mind
Star Trek TOS: Warp Speed
Star Trek TNG: Final Requiem
Star Trek Voyager: Home
Star Trek TNG: The Haunting of Orgala 512
Star Trek TNG: Leap of Faith
Star Trek Voyager: Intrepid Voyagers
Ensconced in the control room deep within the bowels of his asteroid lair, protected from the outside universe by a confusing network of tunnels, surrounded by row upon row of glowing yellow vacuum tubes and crackling capacitors that comprised the core of the lair’s main computer bank, Bucky Jupiter, ace of the Space Patrol, surveyed his jurisdiction in the Belt outside, which was displayed upon the bank of cathode ray tubes that formed a horseshoe around his command chair. Occasionally, one or another of his hands would reach out to the control panel and flip a switch or twist a dial, altering the view flickering upon one or another of the tubes.
Through bursts of static caused by the solar wind, through distortions caused by space dust drifting in front of one of the distant cameras, he watched as the asteroids in the surrounding space performed their eternal maneuvers: the stately giants cruising along, scattering anything smaller that got in their way; the smaller rocks whipping about like flies, careening and tumbling away from collisions with only half the mass they’d had before the collision, ricocheting about the field like billiard balls.
He was on the alert for signs of crime, ever vigilant, ready to leap into action at the least sign of suspicious goings-on. The asteroid belt circling the Sun was the perfect No Man’s Land for illicit activity: 1.7 trillion miles of space crammed to bursting with uncounted trillions of space rocks, like little islands whipping through the blackness.
Still, because of the immensity of the Belt, the odds were against any of humanity’s dregs happening through Bucky’s relativity small area of jurisdiction, and so his job was incredibly boring.
Boring, but necessary. What crimes did come his way, usually about one a week, were enough to satisfy his adventurous spirit.
And so he watched, and he waited.
Concealed within his asteroid lair like a trapdoor spider ready to leap out when duty called. The sole human inhabitant inside his rocky little island.
Maxwell 623-B, the asteroid containing Bucky’s lair, needed to remain in the territory comprising Bucky’s jurisdiction, rather than wandering aimlessly through the Belt like most asteroids. It would have been an easy task to anchor the asteroid in one spot with a Tesla aether hook placed at the heart of the asteroid. But a stationary asteroid would have aroused suspicion of being an outpost of the Space Patrol. So instead, the Tesla hook had been affixed to the aether well clear of any baryonic matter. Bucky’s asteroid was attached to the hook by a chain of non-interacting dark matter, so that the asteroid swung in a slow, ponderous orbit about the hook, a situation which was not as likely to attract much notice. The asteroid was also surrounded by an invisible field of aetheric force that pulverized any asteroids that would otherwise collide with it.
Suddenly, the aetheric radio, tuned to a certain open frequency that only decent folk would be using, gave two long beeps of code, indicating that a transmission was imminent. It was an unnaturally loud, grating sound in the silence of the control room.
Bucky picked up the headset and indicated he was ready to receive. Unfortunately, it wasn’t duty calling. It was Jerome Spratz, Bucky’s nearest neighbor, only a thousand miles distant as the space crow flew. A nice old man, definitely senile, possibly driven insane by the loneliness of deep space. Spratz was one of the few official inhabitants of the Belt. One of the few good guys, someone not here for crime, but to enjoy retirement.
“Hey, Bucky,” Jerome said, his voice wheezing with emphysema, hoarse with age. “My cat’s stuck in a tree. How’s about coming over and getting it down?”
The radio crackled as Bucky waited for the punch line. None came; Bucky hadn’t really expected one, as humor seemed to be one of the many supplies Jerome Spratz was perpetually short of. At least the sort of humor that normal folk liked.
“Come on, Mr. Spratz,” Bucky chided, not taking his eyes from the tubes. “You don’t have a cat.”
“I don’t have no trees, neither, sonny,” Jerome said. “Was just using the cat in the tree as a conversation starter.”
Social grace was another thing Jerome Spratz had very little of. Which was understandable, since escape from the necessity of maintaining social grace was often one of the things that drove certain people to take up residence in the Belt.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Spratz?” Jerome asked.
“Boy, you’re always one for formalities, ain’t you?” Spratz said. “I’m leaving the Belt today. Just wanted to notify anyone concerned. You concerned, Bucky boy?”
“Of course I am, Mr. Spratz. We of the Space Patrol are always concerned for the well being of our citizens.” He said the last off-handedly, as he flipped a dial and turned a knob, trying to bring something on one of the tubes into clearer focus.
“Uh-huh,” said Jerome Spratz. A drawn out, muffled ripping noise sounded over the aetherwaves. “Know what that was, Bucky boy? That was yours truly farting.”
Bucky picked up a ballpoint pen. “That’s nice, Mr. Spratz. I’m making a note that you’re leaving, and will file the appropriate forms with Space Command when next their antennae are pointed our way.” He jotted down just such a note on a pad of paper near his elbow.
“You think that’s so nice, here’s another,” Jerome said, and the ripping noise came again. “You know what, Bucky? A thousand years from now, some other hermit will make a home here in my asteroid, and those two farts that just rippled my wrinkled old cheeks will still be hanging in the air for the new fella. It’s like a message I’ve planted here for whatever poor unfortunate happens out this way in far future years.”
“How kind of you,” Bucky said. “Sort of a housewarming gift, I suppose?”
; Jerome Spratz guffawed. “That’s exactly what it is. Know why I’m leaving, sonny?”
“We in the Space Patrol aren’t telepathic, Mr. Spratz.”
On the tube Bucky had adjusted, a spaceship was drifting.
“I’m going back to Earth, that’s why I’m leaving.” The voice of Jerome Spratz was filled with the pride of knowing where you were headed in life. “Going back to get myself a woman at long last. Going to settle down. Getting tired of my hand, you know what I mean?”
Bucky grunted noncommittally.
The spaceship on the cathode ray tube had been holed. And just recently, for it was still spilling out cargo and flames.
There was a flash of light, and the tube went dead. Either the ship had exploded and the blast had taken out the camera, or someone had shot out the camera. Either way, the result was the same: a tube filled with grey static.
“I’ve got to go,” Bucky said, trying not to let the alarm show in his voice.
“So do I,” Jerome Spratz said, and abruptly signed off. No long goodbyes for Jerome. He was all about clean breaks, apparently.
Bucky put the radio headset back into its cradle. He stood and kicked away from his chair. “This is a job for the Space Patrol!” he cried out, thrusting a theatrical finger into the air. Then he raced over to the wardrobe along the wall, where he donned his snug, form-fitting red spacesuit. “Attention Judy!”
A cat curled up amidst the glowing vacuum tubes of the computer, absorbing their warmth, perked up.
“To the hangar!” he commanded her.
The cat leapt up and raced from the control room. He fastened his ray pistol to his belt, slipped the glass bubble of his helmet over his head, then hurried after Judy.
*****
Bucky Jupiter, snug in his sleek, needle-shaped ramjet, rode the tip of a spear of light as he dodged and weaved through a nightmarish obstacle course of spinning, tumbling and colliding asteroids. Judy, his cat, was nestled in his lap. He could feel her contented purr through the thick plastic fabric of the spacesuit covering his legs. The aether pumps hummed loudly in the engine casing behind him, as their Casimir funnels hungrily drank in the particles of the luminiferous medium that filled all of space, spitting out aftward a brilliant jet of white light, which gradually faded as the excited particles returned to their quiescent state. Through the bubble of his helmet, his hawkish eyes were locked intently on various displays, ever vigilant for indications of imminent collisions, and yanking hard at the control stick when necessary.
Ten minutes after leaving his secret asteroid lair, he came upon the site of the recent attack by what he assumed to be one of the numerous gangs of scurvy space pirates that operated in the area.
He scanned the surroundings, but the instruments found no traces of another ship. Any aetheric disturbance stirred up by other ships would have dissipated by now. And a visual once-over agreed with the instruments.
The ship that had been attacked was a sleek space yacht, such as one of the rich barons of Earth used to tour the solar system. It was heavily damaged, likely utterly beyond repair, with a gaping hole amidships. Bits of debris of various sizes drifted around the ship like a swarm of gnats on the currents of the solar wind. Several bodies in various states of dismemberment likewise drifted among the ship’s debris and space dust left by colliding asteroids.
Bucky coasted alongside the wreck, his dashboard camera recording the scene for inclusion in his eventual report. The yacht had been attacked with a weapon designed to inflict a fatal blow, but with minimal interior damage.
As he maneuvered his ramjet into a parking position, he noticed an enormous asteroid in the distance, tumbling slowly through the void, steadily decreasing the distance between itself and the yacht. A quick calculation determined that the asteroid would collide with the yacht in somewhat less than an hour. So Bucky would have that long to perform his investigations within the yacht.
He sighed.
No pressure!
Once he had parked near the gaping wound in the space yacht’s side, he played the circle of his spotlight around on her hull until he found her designation, Starry Splendor, along with her registry number, painted in big, pink letters and digits near the yacht’s bridge, which was a bubble on her bow. Once he had her name, he reached below his dashboard and pulled out a spiral-bound notebook containing information on all the legally registered ships beginning with the letter ‘S.’
The entry marked ‘Starry Splendor’ was two pages long, and contained her year of construction, 1998, along with grainy photographs and short biographies of those persons authorized to travel within her hull. There were five such persons, from the well known and wealthy Howell clan, whose forebears had made their fortune during the boom years just after the aether had first been harnessed, in the late 19th century.
With that small knowledge of the Starry Splendor now in his mind, he placed Judy into a tiny pressurized compartment behind his seat, and then drained the atmosphere from the cockpit. That done, he swung open the glass canopy and shot a grapple across to the yacht. He then hooked himself to the taut line and zipped across to Starry Splendor. He entered her through the gaping, ragged wound in her side.
Having gained entry, he wended his way through a maze of narrow corridors, heading toward her bridge. He found that the yacht was mostly intact, although both the atmosphere and crew (as far as he could tell, having encountered no one thus far) had been sucked out into the vacuum of space during the attack.
The yacht’s gravity generators had either been turned off for the voyage, or they had been incapacitated during the attack. Whichever was the case, he was forced to drift along in freefall, and pull himself forward using the brass handholds that had been placed at intervals on the walls for just such a purpose.
Once on the bridge, he obtained the current manifesto from the captain’s station. Consulting it, having a bit of difficulty with the poor, chicken-scratch penmanship of whomever had made the entries (presumably the captain), he determined that there had been three passengers: one Desmond Howell, the current head of the Howell clan; one Mimi Howell, his wife; and one Suzy Howell, their only daughter, who had recently come of age, and whose birthday celebration was the reason for this excursion to the Wong-Chu Pleasure Dome on Jupiter’s moon Europa. The manifesto also listed the presence of five unspecified crew members.
There was also an itemized listing of the valuables that had been brought along by the Howells: jewelry; gold necklaces; diamond rings; emerald brooches; sapphire hairpins and gold cufflinks; a collection of ancient Roman coins; and three backup aether pumps, which, out here among the asteroids, were themselves as valuable as any precious metal trinkets, as far as Bucky was concerned. In short, the yacht held a treasure trove that would have enticed any space pirate. The Howells had been foolish for bringing such valuables along on their trip, without at least some sort of fighter escort, of which there was no evidence, either in the debris or on the camera footage that had been relayed to Bucky’s lair before the camera had been shot out by whatever force had attacked the Starry Splendor.
He tucked the manifesto away into a pocket of his spacesuit. Then, ever conscious of the approaching asteroid and his increasing desire to be away from the yacht before the fatal collision took place, he made a brief survey of the various control stations of the bridge, halfheartedly hoping that his visual assessment of the yacht’s incapacity had been incorrect, and that the yacht might be fired up and moved from the path of the approaching asteroid, and eventually be brought to Space Patrol headquarters for placement in the evidence spaceyard.
But he quickly determined that his assessment had not been incorrect. The yacht was indeed permanently incapacitated. It therefore remained merely to investigate the rest of the ship in the brief time remaining before the asteroid finished the work begun by the space pirates, or whoever had actually attacked the yacht.
He doubted that he would find any survivors within the ship, for the attack had no doubt
been ambush, and both the Howells and the crew had been taken unawares. That being the case, they would have been ejected from the yacht when she had been holed, sans their spacesuits. Indeed, the bodies he had already witnessed drifting outside the yacht confirmed his suspicion.
But it was not impossible that one or two family or crewmembers might, at the time of the attack, have been tucked safely inside some airtight compartment, and had been spared the sucking power of the vacuum, and were even now still trapped, with Bucky himself their only hope of rescue.
So he roamed the corridors of the yacht, glancing into the various cabins he passed, checking closets and any other areas that might possibly have preserved enough air to sustain human life.
But after twenty long minutes, his search had proved fruitless.
It was then that he happened upon the yacht’s main storage lockers. Within, he discovered the various valuable possessions that had been described in the yacht’s manifesto. This puzzled Bucky, for he had never known space pirates to attack a ship and then not abscond with its most valuable cargo.
He examined the necklaces, rings, brooches, and the coin collection as he considered what to do with them. There was too much to fit within the pockets of his spacesuit, and too little time to return to his ramjet to retrieve evidence bags. Yet duty dictated that he take the treasure into custody as evidence.
He considered his options, and he considered the time remaining before the asteroid arrived upon the scene to finish the destruction of the yacht, which itself was a piece of evidence that he obviously would not be able to bring back to Space Patrol Headquarters. Since he would not be able to take the largest and most telling piece of evidence into custody, why bother with the smaller pieces, such as the treasure? He already had a record of the crime back at his lair, and within the pocket of his spacesuit, in the form of the manifesto.
But the puzzle of the treasure still gnawed at him. Why had the pirates left it behind?