The Off-Worlders

by George Willson

  She walked until she was even with him. She looked at the stun gun he still had trained on the other two. She hoped that if she could at least grab that hand, the others could help defeat him. It was now or never.

  Without a word, Michelle lunged for his gun, and he was taken off guard. She grabbed his right hand and pushed it up, so it was no longer pointing at anyone. Talia and Karafa rushed him. Talia ran into him in the front while Karafa went behind him and grabbed his neck to pull him to the ground. He resisted, staying on his feet longer than Michelle could have possibly expected. He fired the stun gun a couple of times hitting no one before he succumbed to the three of them and fell to the ground.

  He never lost his grip on the gun, however. Michelle sat on his arm as the other two held him down and tried to peel it from his fingers, but he was ridiculously strong. She tried squeezing his hand and his wrist, but he would not let go. He continually tried to pull the gun inward to aim at her, but she was at least able to keep his arm under control.

  He tried to get the women off of him, but they were unrelenting. Michelle had one idea left to get him to release the gun. She took a deep breath and bit his hand. Hard. He resisted the pain as much as he could and tried flailing his arm, but she would not release. Finally, he relented and dropped the gun. Michelle immediately got off his arm and grabbed the weapon off the ground.

  “Give me a reason,” Michelle warned.

  “I swear,” Pingrit began, and then Michelle shot him. “I just remembered you already did.”

  “You Terran women have some fire, don’t you?” Talia said.

  “We do,” Michelle said. “How’s your cheek?”

  “Still hurts,” Talia said, “but I feel much better now.”

  “How long does this knock people out for?” Michelle asked looking at the gun in her hand.

  “Couple hours,” Karafa said. “More than enough time to cage him.”

  “Oh, he does not look like a lightweight,” Michelle said, dreading the task to come.

  “We just have to drag him to a portable cell,” Talia said. “I’ll get it over here, and we’ll get him in there somehow. Once he’s in, the cell has lifts on the bottom of it to make him easier to push around.”

  “All right,” Michelle said, steeling herself up. “Let’s do it.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Talia had produced what looked like a small, one person jail cell about two foot square by seven feet high from a small closet in the room. She activated what she called “lifts” on the bottom of it which allowed it to hover about six inches off the ground. After considering lifting and pulling, the three women manhandled Pingrit’s body into the cell without getting any of them trapped inside, and were able to close the cell door. High fives were had all around, and after Talia called for a prison ship and canceled the call to Sarakis, they ended up at the kitchen island near Perry’s unconscious body.

  “They’re going to be ok, aren’t they?” Michelle asked uncertainly.

  “The stun weapon is one of our best assets,” Talia said. No one carries anything lethal anymore except the criminal element. The stun weapon can increase in intensity if needed, and there are recommended settings for every race we’ve encountered. There is a setting to incapacitate all of them. It is many, many times more efficient than any projectile weapon because it affects the entire body at once rather than an isolated part. You shoot a guy in the leg with a bullet based gun, and he’s still alive and shooting at you. You shoot in the leg with a stun gun, and he’s out. The shockwave of the weapon radiates throughout his body, and that fight is over. There have been motions to ‘accidentally’ introduce the technology to Terra and some other planets outside the Federation for years, but non-interference is always king.”

  “Do you think we should at least make them comfortable?” Michelle asked.

  “Stunning isn’t comfortable,” Karafa said, “Part of our training is to get shot by one. You could be placed into the biggest plushest bed in the universe…”

  “Ferandra,” Talia interrupted. “Am I right?”

  “You know it,” Karafa agreed, and the pair sighed together at the idea that one could apparently find “biggest, plushest beds in the universe.”

  “Anyway,” Karafa continued, “the point is that they’ll wake up with a pretty solid headache and every joint will feel like someone tried to ship you to the other side of the galaxy crammed into a shipping crate.”

  Blake was, of course, the first to recover after only an hour. He casually strolled out of the den where he had been hit. He sat at the island by the kitchen.

  “I don’t imagine you have West Yurian Bubble Water,” Blake asked. “If the scrambled eggs I’m calling a brain at the moment serves, that’s the best thing for a stun gun hangover.”

  “I can offer you some Sarakan herang juice,” Talia said. “It’s what I drink most evenings when I wake up.”

  “I’ll take it,” Blake said. Talia poured him a glass, and he quietly sipped it as he stared blankly at the walls. Michelle had never seen him quite so docile before.

  “You woke up quick,” Karafa said. “We weren’t expecting you guys for another hour at least.”

  “I’m a little different,” Blake said. “Got a little visitor who lives in my head that gives me a bit more resilience, but the body is still the body. I may be up, but I’m going to need a bit.”

  “Everyone does,” Karafa smiled.

  A little over an hour later, Perry sat up, and Michelle helped him to a seat. About the time, a groan issued from the main stairs, and looking like a man with regret after a night of drinking, Turner stumbled to the rest of the gang at the kitchen island.

  “Blake,” Perry said.

  “Perry,” Blake replied.

  “Can we agree not to do that again?”

  “What? Get stunned?”

  “That’s the thing.”

  “I assure you that it wasn’t on my to-do list while we were here.”

  “Well, ladies,” Turner said, “I am sorry our attempt to help you failed so spectacularly. It appears, though, that you didn’t need us after all.”

  “Oh, you can consider your attempt a success,” Talia said. “Once he figured out you all were in the house, it forced his hand. He revealed to us that his lethal gun was actually dead. No charge. He was harmless. However, since he had taken your stun gun, he went around knocking everyone out.”

  “When he came back, Michelle seemed to think it was time to do something,” Karafa said. “She let us know through no more than eye contact that she wanted to attack him. Well, as we were tired of being stuck here, we agreed.”

  “I told him I needed to go to the bathroom,” Michelle said. “He couldn’t very well refuse. Well, I guess he could have, but he allowed me to walk past him. When I got close enough, I went for the gun arm. They jumped in, and even though he was big enough to carry all three of us off the floor, we eventually got him down, wrestled the gun away, and gave him the same treatment he gave you.”

  They all turned to Pingrit slumped against the wall of the tiny cell, his feet curled under him. Little by little, he woke up. He looked around and realized where he was. He did not appear pleased as he started yelling “No!” repeatedly.

  “Mr. Talkisan,” Turner said causing him to stop raging for a moment. “We only have one question for you. One thing that’s been bugging us the entire time.”

  “What?” Pingrit asked.

  “Why in the world did you call the police?” Turner asked. “I mean, you had won. All you had to do was grab the badge and go. In fact, you could have left the body there, gone to his ship, discovered you needed the badge, go back to get it, and then left. None of us have been able to fathom why you called the police.”

  “And really, more to the point,” Blake continued, “why you remained to watch them.”

  Pingrit sighed. “Did he tell you I wanted to be a policeman myself once?” Pingrit asked nodding to Perry. “Lost it all. The dream was ruin
ed. Set me on the path to what I became.”

  “He told us,” Turner confirmed.

  “The police always inspired me,” Pingrit said. “I watched them work when I was little. It was always so methodical. It’s dumb. To pass the time on Terra, I watched those police dramas and occasionally watched crime scenes around town. I saw the opportunity to make my own when I accidentally killed Thorwin. I got scared when I saw them come out, and when I discovered I needed that badge, well, it all backfired on me.”

  “And there you have it,” Blake said.

  They all turned away from him and returned to the kitchen. “So what you all have to eat around here?” Perry said. “I’m starving.”

  They remained in the kitchen as the sun rose outside and flooded the room with light. Talkisan eventually calmed down and sat dejected in his cell. Turner communicated with his central command at one point to let them know the details of the situation, and since Talkisan was safely in a holding cell, they determined that he would wait until after sundown before sending a ship.

  “And then there’s the matter of you three,” Turner said.

  “What about us?” Blake asked.

  “Well, procedure says I send you to your planet of origin because of your involvement with the crime,” Turner explained, “but our own instruments state your planet of origin is Terra. At least two of you anyway. Apparently, your genetic code changed enough from theirs that it doesn’t know where you’re from.”

  “So we get to stay here?” Blake asked. “At least until our own transport shows up to take us away.”

  “It would seem so,” Turner said. “Personally, I have no reason to believe you are a danger to this planet, so I have no problem with your remaining. How long do you think you’ll be here?”

  The ding of an elevator permeated the room. Blake, Perry, and Michelle all reacted to it. The others did not hear it. The door opened behind them with the soft rumble of the door wheels on a track. There it sat waiting until someone would enter it and press the button.

  “Not long at all, it seems,” Blake said. “It was a pleasure to have met you. I wish you all the best.”

  “Goodbye,” Michelle said to Talia and Karafa. Hugs were given among them, and they waved at her as she walked to her companions.

  “So long Detective Turner,” Perry said, shaking his hand. “Just out of curiosity, what would you do if I showed up here in about five minutes, but I looked, like, thirty years older?”

  “I’m not sure,” Turner said, a bit confused.

  “Cool,” Perry said, and he stepped toward the elevator doors. With a final wave from all three, they all stepped into the elevator, Blake pressed the button, and the doors closed.

  “At what point do they stop seeing us out there?” Michelle asked.

  “As soon as you pass inside the elevator,” Blake explained. “It looks a bit like one of those old movie special effects where you walk behind a skinny tree and appear to hide completely behind it. We kind of walk through a crack in space and end up somewhere else. This elevator isn’t ever on any world where we go. The doors open in the Maze itself where it exists, and we step through a portal to that other place. Once we’re back in the elevator, we’re no longer there, so they no longer see us.”

  Michelle nodded as the elevator stopped, and the doors opened to their home.

  EPILOGUE

  Following their return from Earth in 2016, they spent the next day winding down and relaxing from their adventure. This always involved plenty of eating and sleeping, but after a time, Blake always disappeared into the library to follow-up on where they had just come from. This time, he was looking up the results of the case against Pingrit Talkisan.

  As usual, any details about the three of them were excised since not being available for a trial or further questioning, any investigator hesitated to put them down. In this one, however, it seemed to have turned out a bit odd. Talkisan was put on trial for a variety of things for which there was plenty of evidence, but there was ultimately a mistrial in the galactic courts. This was eventually attributed to the involvement of kingpin Jimmy Demarrs and his group of legal experts. The article went on to say that these experts were very good at manipulating the law and threatening people to lean their way, and so the case against Talkisan was thrown out.

  However, that did not mean that Talkisan was out free and clear. Even though he was not in jail, it was widely believed that someone in Demarrs’ gang made him disappear as no record of him existed after that point in time. Whether that involved an identity change or his death, no one knows. It was a long time ago.

  Blake felt like Michelle was reading over his shoulder which did not bother him in the least.

  “Just let me know when you’re done,” Blake said.

  “Sorry,” Michelle said. “I noticed you come in here to see what happened after we left. I think it’s cool that we can actually follow-up like this.”

  “Well, we play a small part in a bigger picture,” Blake said. “Often, we’re there to fill in the blanks of this database. Remember that we’re in what the Maze considers the present, and what you can read here is exactly what we know now. We knew there was an incident back in 2016 with this guy, but I guess there was no information as to what that was. Now we know.”

  Blake turned and entered Thorwin Blysin to see what came up, and in this instance, it indicated that Thorwin was last known to have been searching for a fugitive water-based life-form in the Terran system. His whereabouts following that time were unknown.

  “And they’re not anymore, thanks to us,” Blake said.

  “I know we’re at least thirty-five hundred years after that time,” Michelle said. “I can’t even fathom that. Who would care? That’s like me wondering what happened to some ancestor in…” She had to think for a moment to add it up. “...Fifteen hundred B.C. Hm, what happened to that one guy wherever it was that he disappeared?”

  “We don’t choose what we follow,” Blake said. “We might have been there for several reasons. We got a dangerous criminal out of the heavens, and influenced some people while we were there.”

  “Can you look up Ghilduv … I never got a last name,” Michelle asked. “I think they said he was a Lyca… Lyrica… Well, he looked like a big dog or wolf.”

  “Lycramal?” Blake asked.

  “Yes,” Michelle said. “That’s it. I ran into him in the concession area and talked to him for a moment. He had just lost his wife, and I guess it wasn’t safe for him to go back to his own planet. I can’t even imagine that. How does a guy lock down a planet?”

  “Technology just gets better,” Blake said. “Time was that you could disappear by going to the next town over and changing your name. Not anymore.”

  Blake typed the information into the terminal and got a result. Ghilduv Tansselery had married Princess Azarala Vumdal of Turranas but reported on a forbidden expedition to the non-Federation world, Terra, that she had abandoned him. He was reportedly on the brink of death when he attributed a new lease on life to a human woman who spoke to him in his own tongue. He acquired a ride to a neighboring world and negotiated his forgiveness with the leadership of Turranas since the Princess had only used him to leave the planet. He since took up a place on Turranas ruling a continent with a firm, but gentle, hand, and the people loved him.

  “Well, how about that?” Blake said. “You managed to figure out one of the biggest benefits of our translator.”

  “Not that I knew what I was doing,” Michelle said. “I just hoped it would work when I talked to him.”

  “That’s all you need usually,” Blake said.

  “He actually had a transport off Earth lined up before I got there,” Michelle said.

  “It seems like he may not have intended to take it,” Blake said. “To kill himself on Earth as a Lycramal, all he would have needed to do was run through a public place as himself, and he would have been shot on sight. I have no doubt that he knew that, and the whole event would have been rapid
ly covered up. But you helped him. You see, it’s hard to say, sometimes why we end up where we do, but no matter what, we always manage to do something for the people we touch.”

  Blake typed something else into the terminal. At seeing the results, he grimaced.

  “I’m seriously going to kill him,” Blake said. “Then again, it’s already happened, so what can I do? Not tell him, that’s what.”

  “What is it?” Michelle asked.

  On the screen, Blake had searched for Samuel Turner, an officer in the Galactic Federation Law Enforcement. It indicated that operations on Earth following Turner’s return to Galactic Central was given into the hands of a native Terran who was somehow very familiar with Galactic Operations: Perry Newman.

  “You remember what he said right before we left?” Blake asked. “He asked about showing up five minutes later. Dork took down the time and date we were there, and turned up five minutes later.”

  “Is that not allowed?” Michelle asked.

  “I suppose nothing is necessarily disallowed,” Blake said. “I mean, he saw an opportunity, so he took it. I’m still not going to tell him. To an extent, I envy him. In my time, interplanetary travel was restricted for Terrans because of dumb government stuff, but back then, he might have been able to transport with someone else right off-world to almost anywhere.”

  “That means he lives through everything and goes home though,” Michelle said.

  “Yes, it does,” Blake said. “No one has died in the service of the Maze so far. I won’t promise it will never happen, but it hasn’t yet. We know that we’ll eventually be on a spaceship and help it land safely. That’s an odd thing to think about really. We haven't done it yet, but we have.”

  “As you say, our future is someone else’s past,” Michelle said.

  “Even when you pop in and out of it,” Blake said. “Well, I’m going to relax for awhile. I saw what I came to see. A little minor follow-up to learn what went on with our last adventure. The library is yours.”

  Blake walked away and saw Michelle turn off the terminal for now. She wandered among the bookshelves and disappeared. He knew she had not finished with that sixth Harry Potter book yet, but figured she was going to grab the seventh for when that happened. Who knew how long they would be here before it was time to go again?