I was reading Journey to Venus out loud while my son was sitting happily by my desk playing with his ether-craft toys, hovering them all together in tight formation, then making them dive, flip and fly in a rather skilled display of aerobatics. I flexed my left arm and glanced at the fingers and fingernails, tapping them on the desk in quick succession and then I did a series of short, light stretching exercises to strengthen it.
“What happened, dad?” asked Jonah.
“Oh, nothing. I was just stretching my arm.”
“Does it hurt? Your new arm?” Jonah was suddenly more interested in my new left limb than his toys.
“It's doing fine. Let's see, where did I leave off,” I found my place again. It was a very old story by G.W. Pope and I wondered if it was as interesting to Jonah as it was to me. I paused further for a bit to watch the little toy aircraft race around the room.
“Keep reading dad!” Jonah urged. I laughed and proceeded on. I was now on a long, mandatory vacation from work and yesterday I'd talked to Fred who had just come back from a two-week long jaunt with his wife and hunting buddies from – of all places – Venus. The city of Vepaja was going up far faster than anyone had imagined. It was still small but there was apparently a huge vacation destination there under one of the most massive and technologically advanced biospheres that existed in the solar system. A beautiful park said to surpass the hanging gardens of Babylon, or even the garden of Eden. People do like to exaggerate.
Industry was ramping up on Venus as well; almost like a gold rush of sorts.
“Guys, lunch is ready! I'm going out to the soup kitchens now. I'll be back right before dinner!” I heard Pam call out from the kitchen. I was going to surprise her and take her out to dinner tonight. I'd get my parents to watch the kids tonight. Or maybe I'll call a rent-a-mech baby-sitter.
“Pam,” I called to her from the intercom in my office.
“Yes, honey?”
“Would you please turn up the patio heaters a bit for the kids? I just want to make sure the flagstones around the pool are warm enough for them.”
“Sure thing, honey!”
I got out my little black medical case and gave myself a shot of an immune-suppressant in my upper left arm. I had three different ones I had to take each day. And also two pills in the morning. Jonah watched with great interest as I took my medication. The demarcation where the skin of my arm and the skin of the lab-grown arm was no longer as noticeable. The skin had knit together well. Pam would rub it with an aloe-vera ointment at night and the scar was fading. There was still a ring of raised scar tissue there all around the arm. I stretched and rubbed my fingers again to get rid of the tingling numbness. The nerve endings in my arm had been attached to synthetic nerve endings in the engineered arm and it was hard to get get used to the odd feeling in the fingers. But, at least I could feel them.
As I cared for my arm I knocked over my reading pad and accidentally switched on the live feed. The holo-screen in my desk appeared and spread open to reveal brightly colored, lavish images as I struggled to close it back up again. An advert blared.
“Looking for a new type of tropical getaway? Come to the planet Venus and visit Vepaja! Paradise city!” Jonah looked up from his toys and watched the screen.
“Vepaja! Paradise city! Even more beautiful and exotic than the cloud forests of the Congo! Nothing that you've experienced before can prepare you for the wonders of Vepaja! Bring the whole family! It's nothing like the Venus you've seen in the past!” Images of the true wasteland Venus actually was, with sulfuric acid clouds and volcanic activity, metal rain and dust and rock everywhere danced across and then they were contrasted with the advanced, new, domed city of Vepaja.
And it certainly was beautiful.
“Take your wife on a romantic getaway to the planet of love! Take your kids on a paradise wonderland! Come to the hottest destination vacation this side of the sun! Vepaja, Venus – the new place to be!”
“I want to go there, dad! Can we visit there for our vacation?”
“You want to go to Vepaja?”
“Yeah! I know a kid at school whose dad was the former CEO of Amtor Industries. They went when it first opened. He said it was fantastic! Nothing like the holo-vid images they usually show of the industrial sites on Venus. He said that the place is like a huge natural reserve with big game hunting too!”
“Really?”
“Yup!”
Venus hadn't been open for business for very long as a destination/vacation planet. Only exploratory missions and a small but growing metal and ore mining industry. What Fred had told me sounded rather swell and I knew that my own company had contracts for building housing materials to be shipped there. I'd overseen some of those materials on my QA team. Somewhere new and exotic didn't sound too bad. Didn't sound bad at all, especially since Fred had good things to say about the place. It would be an extremely expensive vacation. And I could charge it all to the Vartan company credit line. I wouldn't have to pay a single credit for it. The more I thought about it the more it sounded like a mighty good idea for relaxation and fun.
“You know Jonah, I think I agree with you. I'll talk it over with mom first, though.” He beamed and did a fist pump.
“You're awesome, dad!” he said. He gathered his toys and left for the kitchen. I heard Mary playing in the heated pool with her friends. They were doing cannon balls.
“I am Aqua Queen, Rescuer of all fabulous water creatures and Terror of those who try to hurt them! Arrg!” she roared, which, from her little voice, came out more like a loud, high-pitched squeak. The other girls squealed and giggled as she jumped in the pool, splashing water all around the flagstones. I smiled as I finally managed to turn off the feed. I concentrated, feeling for any dangers around our home, trying to sense if I could get a feeling of anyone watching us. I sensed nothing. Whatever threat was looming over my family, it had been thwarted. It would be back, I was sure but for now, everything was happiness. And happiness was a contented family life.
I turned on the phone console and pinged Fred's number. It chimed for a few seconds.
“Hey, Bob! You slacker! Haven't seen you in a good, long while! How've you been?”
“If I'm a slacker I learned from the king of 'em!” I could hear Fred's merry, good-natured chuckling. I laughed. “Actually, I've been good.” I said, curling and uncurling my fingers slowly and watching each of them with careful interest.
“Say, Bob, one of my wife's nephews said the strangest thing the other day. You know he interns at Vartan now, right?”
“Right.”
“Well, he said that he thought he recognized you in a video that's been going around. I didn't know what to make of the comment. It's posted on one of those UFO alien fan sites. You know how weird those folks are.”
“You don't say!”
“Yeah, I thought it was kind of ridiculous too.”
“You know, Fred, there's some strange things happening in this world. Those people might not be so weird.”
“Tell me about it. All that news about the Sci-Tech convention, the failed stargate and the Luddite Brigade was insane! A huge embarrassment for the companies involved, I'm sure! My wife thinks aliens have landed,” he said, laughing.
I loved Fred but he wasn't the sharpest guy around. It was a good thing he tended to listen to his wife, though he'd never admit it. One day I would explain to Fred what actually happened. But today I had more mundane reasons for calling.
I knew I should talk to my wife before making any kind of decision on this but it wouldn't hurt to just get some information. That's all this was. Information gathering.
Really.
“Say, Fred. I was wondering about something.”
“Wondering about what?”
“You know that trip that you and your wife took to Venus. . .”
Thanks for downloading the book. I hoped you enjoyed it.
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Also, check out the short story prequel to this series:
The Prototype
To find out more from this author visit: www.epistlepublishing.com
or http://www.pencilword.blogspot.com
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Look for the upcoming sixth novel
in the Mission space opera series Spring, 2016:
A Venus Affair
Pick up the first novel in the series:
Mission: Flight To Mars
Mission: Blackguard Conspiracy
By V. A. Jeffrey
Artwork by
Streetlight Graphics
An Epistle Publishing book
Copyright © 2015
All rights reserved.
Mission series:
Flight to Mars
Lights of Langrenus
Attack on Europa
Harbeasts of Mars
Blackguard Conspiracy
Also by V. A. Jeffrey:
The Red World series:
Edge of Darkness
Schisms
Cryptic Tongues
Rise of the Red King
Short stories:
The Prototype
Keeping Strange Time (collection)
Rainfall
Dust and Bones
The Candy Shop
Edge of Darkness
3 Fables
Fairy Tales and Fables
Memory Lane
Poetry:
When The Sky Is Gray
Half Light
City Life
October Fog
Table of Contents
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
Mission: Blackguard Conspiracy Page 16