Metal Boxes

by Alan Black

  “Speaking of the planet, I set the pod to generate a stable star fix on its location and to download those coordinates to your p.a.. I suggest we agree now to split the ownership 65/25.”

  “What? Ownership of what?” Wright looked startled.

  “The planet, of course,” Stone answered. “What do you think I meant?”

  Wright shook her head. “We can’t own a whole planet. That’s absurd.”

  “Not really all that crazy, Commander. How do you think the rich got that way? Finders keepers. We have a couple of things to do first and then maybe, just maybe, our claim will hold up in the Emperor’s court.”

  “Okay, I’ll play along, but I am sure you have finally gone insane.”

  “First we have to have a stable star fix on our planet’s location. Done that. It is on your p.a. Second, we need to agree to a partnership split.”

  “Alright Mister Stone, why do I get 65% and you only get 25%?”

  Stone grinned, “Um, no Commander. I suggest that you get 25% and I get 65%. Now before you shout about my being unfair I want it understood that I am representing the entire Stone family in these negotiations. We get 65%. We get that much because we have the resources and the skills to exploit this planet. It would not be the first planet owned by us. In fact, I have a couple of cousins who are specialists in carving up new planets. They are real whizzes at squeezing out profit and this planet should be exceptionally profitable because it is habitable by humans. This gives the Stones a controlling interest so we won’t have boardroom squabbles. You know a 50/50 split never works, right? I mean, how do you resolve arguments that way?”

  “I get 25% of a whole planet?”

  Stone shrugged. “Or the profit we take from working it, managing it, leasing it or selling it. Ownership doesn’t mean you have to be in residence. You can trust my family, really. Any partnership with us is carved in Stone.”

  “Ha! Very funny. Okay, I am in, Partner Stone. However, I know your math is bad. But it is not so bad you can’t count to a hundred. We only have accounted for 90%.”

  “Well, it seems to me we have a couple of big ‘ifs’ as to whether our claim will hold up. One, we are in the Emperor’s navy. Anything we discover rightfully belongs to the navy and therefore to the Emperor himself. Second, we discovered this planet in a navy pod. However…” Stone let his voice trail away.

  “What? Go on, Partner.”

  Stone continued. “Well, I guess it depends on what the Periodontitis did when they hit their next station. If they reported us dead, then as far as they are concerned, we weren’t in the navy during the time we discovered the planet. We might have to forgo any navy back pay or benefits for our missing time. I think that is a fair trade off. I don’t see any reason why we would not be reported as dead. Nobody should come back from hyperspace, or at least I never heard of anyone every doing it. And if the navy reported this pod as missing and non-recoverable they would have struck the pod from the inventory manifests. That would mean the pod wasn’t navy property at the time we were using it, right?”

  Wright shrugged, “I don’t know. I understand naval law less than I understand the hyperspace time thing. However, that doesn’t explain where the missing 10% goes.”

  “Oh, I thought it did. That goes to the Emperor as our minority partner. If he is in from the beginning for 10% without any outlay or any effort, he is less likely to challenge our rights to the planet. And if we happen to need military support for the planetary pacification we are more likely to get his direct authorization if he stands to gain from it.”

  “Wait. I can see being partners with the Stones, but the Emperor. I don’t travel in those circles. Oh, my…I…”

  “Relax, Commander. The Emperor isn’t a bad guy when you get him away from his throne room. He is really a pretty good sport on the tennis courts, that is if he wins.”

  “You’ve met the Emperor?” Wright stared at Stone in amazement.

  Stone shrugged. “Yeah, a few times. We are sort of related, by marriage, that is. He isn’t a Stone, but he is ok. You’ll like him when you meet him.”

  “I can’t meet the Emperor. Are you kidding?”

  Stone laughed. “Oh, you’ll meet him. You are going to outrank him in our partnership. Your 25% to his 10%, remember? He will definitely want to meet you.”

  “Oh, crap!”

  “One last thing, we need to name the planet,” Stone said. “Got any suggestions?”

  Wright shook her head. “I don’t know. Do we have to decide now?”

  “Yes.” Stone pointed at her p.a. “We are really recording our first partnership meeting. Naming the planet is one of the steps necessary to claim it. I would name it Allie’s World if you leave it to me.”

  “You do have a crush on that marine, don’t you?” Wright laughed.

  Stone grinned. “Can you blame me? I mean, she is smart, witty, has a great sense of humor and so self assured she is scarily confident.”

  “Not to mention that she is very pretty with a great pair of hooters.”

  “Yeah, well, that too,” Stone blushed.

  Wright looked thoughtful. “I agree. Allie’s World it is. Any future residents will change the name to Nimrodville or something equally stupid. I would probably have named it Goatburg. Allie’s World is a good name to start. So, are we good to go?”

  Stone reached up to the console and shut off the engine. “All except getting home to register the discovery.” The drascos wonked plaintively as the CO2 flow slowed to a stop. “We have reached the null point.”

  He looked up at the fuel level gauges in the tanks. “We didn’t use enough of this enriched fuel to be more than a small blip on the consumption gauge. That is good. It means we still have a full tank for our first attempted hyperjump.”

  He got out of his chair and climbed over Jay to reach the open hatch to the engine room. He tried to push Peebee out of the way, but she would not budge.

  “Come on you two. I’ve got to get down there and reset the engine to try a jump into gray. You girls don’t need that much CO2 anyway, you’re just being gluttons.”

  Both drascos started wonking repeatedly at him.

  Wright shouted over the noise. “See. I told you, you were spoiling them.”

  Stone covered his ears and shouted. “Enough you two. Let me fix the engine then we can do lunch.”

  The wonking continued.

  Stone shouted. “Okay, okay. If you behave yourselves you can each have one piece of the golden ooze for desert.”

  The sudden silence was almost palpable. The drascos moved away from the hatch opening.

  The humans looked at each other.

  Stone said, “Huh, I wonder exactly how much they understand of what we say.”

  “Unless my scans are wrong they don’t really understand more than a few words at this point. Ooze must be one of those words.”

  “Well, this engine conversion shouldn’t take long; an hour or so. Will you be alright up here with Jay and Peebee?”

  “I’ll be fine. They seem to ignore me most of the time. I don’t really think they are planning on eating me. I am going to sit quietly in this chair and think about how I am going to spend all of my new found riches.”

  Stone hesitated in the hatchway with only his head showing. “Sorry Partner, but you can’t.”

  “I can’t spend my share of the money?” Wright looked startled.

  He laughed causing the drascos to wonk along with him. “That is not what I meant. You said you want to think about how to spend all of your money. You can’t spend it all. Oh, don’t get me wrong, you can try. I expect you to try real hard, but it is a whole planet. Once we get things up and running you will have more money coming in faster than you can spend it; much, much more.”

  “Faster than I can…no…I…I…” Wright’s voice faded.

  Stone waved as he disappeared below. His voice sounded hollow as he shouted back up to her. “Partner, you shouldn’t count your chickens before they h
atch. We might not be allowed to claim the planet. Grandpa’s lawyers will fight like crazy if it becomes a legal battle. But, if you do want to count your chickens, then I think you will find-crap!”

  “What? Is there a problem? Do you need help?” Wright asked.

  Stone shouted back. “No. No. No. I just banged my head. What I was saying is if you are thinking of money; try not to think about buying things, but how you can help other people with your money. Things like helping people start their own businesses, loaning a stake to immigrants moving to Allie’s World, you know: farmers, ranchers, and goat herders. And think about what you can do for your favorite charities.”

  Wright moved over to the hatch opening and looked down. “I can spend some money on me and my family, right?” She asked as she sat on the deck.

  Jay stretched her two-foot neck around and dropped her head in Wright’s lap.

  Stone answered, “Oh, yeah. Spend away. Give us a year or two to get things moving and you can just go crazy. Believe me, that gets old after awhile. Grandma always says, and it is true, if you help others with your money then you will increase your money to the point you have more than you had to start with. Crap!”

  “Bang your head again?”

  “Nope. Skinned my knuckles. Now the palms of my hands are torn up by thorns and the backs of my hands are chewed up working on this engine. I am never going to be a hand model ever again.”

  “So, how does that work?” Wright asked. “I can see how loaning money and helping a business get started could generate additional income. But, you said just helping others will bring me increase.”

  Stone’s muffled voice floated back up to her. “You give money away to good causes and more money flows back your way. I don’t know how it works. But it does. Just like I don’t understand how this engine conversion from sub-light to hyper jump capable works, I just know that it does. Or at least with this engine it did the first time. Crap! Banged my head again.”

  Stone melted some metal ingots into cone shapes and used another ingot to pound the cones into the ends of the exhaust pipes. He left one tight, but still loose enough that it could blow free. The others he pounded so tight they would not come out unless the engine exploded. He crawled around the engine, changing settings, crossing wiring and pushing levers until he was satisfied the engine was configured the way it had been the first time.

  He double checked the configuration by comparing his work to the diagrams he had etched onto the engine room bulkheads. He reworked his first trial by comparing his memory with Wright’s p.a. and the pod computers until he was satisfied it was a match.

  He continued to check and recheck until he realized he was just stalling. He patted the top of the fuel tank. It was meant to be a comforting gesture, but it only brought pain from his wounded hands.

  He climbed the ladder back up to the bridge, pausing on the way up to breathe into the mouths of each of his drascos. They wonked happily. Peebee rolled onto her back presenting a round little belly for rubbing.

  Wright was standing by the oven. “Spoiled ‘em like last month’s cottage cheese.”

  “I didn’t spoil them. That is how you have to treat them or they will eat you.”

  Wright replied with a sarcastic “Ha!”

  “Hey! Who is the expert here on raising drascos? I have two. How many are you raising?”

  “Just because I can’t swim doesn’t mean I don’t know water is wet,” Wright said. “Change of subject: I fixed lunch for us, so we can eat while you feed your girls. It is not much, I just boiled up some tubers, berries and bits of jerky in one of the bamboo buckets.”

  “Sounds appetizing. Let me feed Jay and Peebee first, then we can sit and eat before we jump into gray.” He slammed the engine room hatch closed and dogged the recessed locks. He was sure a closed hatch would not help if the engine exploded, but he did it anyway.

  Stone quietly piled up two equal size bundles of red leaves in the main cabin and sliced off two chunks of solidified ooze with his survival knife. He did not speak as he ate. Wright was quiet too. He wondered whether Wright was thinking about spending money or if she was as worried as he was about trying another hyperspace jump in a ship not designed to do just that.

  The drascos were their noisy selves, gulping down their leaves and slurping at their golden ooze. They rolled, jumped and crashed into each other with wild abandon. Stone picked up a discarded branch and tossed it across the cabin. The drascos fetched it back to him. He tossed it again and they fetched it again. The drascos raced each other to see who could get the stick first and return it. Jay quickly learned to either catch the stick as it bounced off the back bulkhead or to outrace the stick and use the back bulkhead as a springboard to leap into the air and catch the stick before it dropped to the deck where Peebee could scoop it up.

  Stone slowly chewed his lunch, not tasting the tasteless meal. He tossed the stick without thinking. He worked and reworked the engine reconfiguration in his head. He could not find any steps he had done the first time and missed this time.

  Finally, he tossed down the small bamboo utensils and the bamboo bowl, jumped to his feet and rushed onto the bridge. Without any hesitation, he pushed the engine thrust to the max and closed his eyes willing the little pod to make the hyper jump, not wanting to watch the bridge controls.

  “Took command there, didn’t you, Mister Stone?” Wright’s voice made him jump.

  Stone answered without opening his eyes. “Well, Commander Wright, if we are dead then we aren’t in the navy, right? And since we are partners in a commercial venture and I am the majority partner, then I am in command.”

  He felt her arms wrap around him from behind in a warm hug.

  “It’s okay, Stone,” she said. “I wasn’t sure I could have given you the order to turn the engine on.”

  “I am sorry, Commander. I couldn’t wait anymore.”

  “Well, if we are about to blow up and die again maybe you should call me Dani instead of Commander,” Wright said.

  Stone leaned back into her embrace, still keeping his eyes closed. “Why? You earned the title, even if you leave the navy, it is still yours. Mom often calls Dad ‘Sergeant’, especially when they are kidding around, just before they go off alone and…well…do you know what.”

  Wright chuckled. “I heard rumors about ‘you know what.’ So, was your Dad a marine?”

  “Army,” Stone shook his head. “He and Mom were both in the army. She was a lieutenant and Dad was a sergeant. Dad was younger and Mom outranked him, but it didn’t matter to them. Do you think it will matter between Allie and me?”

  “Not if I know Allie,” Wright sighed. “I think that your coming from a rich family bothered her more than anything else. Besides partner, we should take first things first. We have one jump down and one more to go.”

  Stones eyes shot open. He saw an expanse of gray nothing on the view screen.

  Wright gave his shoulders a little shake. “You’re not whooping with delight?”

  “No. I think I am in shock. It shouldn’t have worked. It should have blown up and we should be dead.”

  Wright turned away. She grabbed the stick lying at their feet, and tossed it back through the cabin hatch toward the back bulkhead. “Well, Mister Stone, we are already dead, remember? You can’t kill the dead.”

  “I guess that makes us zombies.” He rolled his eyes back in his head and staggered around the bridge on stiff legs. He stopped and looked at Wright. “Nope, I still feel alive. But I never considered how zombies feel.” He picked up the stick Peebee dropped at his feet and tossed it back through the main cabin hatch.

  “So Senior Partner Stone, what is next? How long to we spend stuck in this nothing?”

  Stone shrugged. “Well, we have been here and seen this, so I say we don’t spend any more time than we have to. I won’t have to reconfigure the engine again, but I do have to check the seals and the fuel tanks.” He leaned over the bridge console. “The engine is off. It did an
auto shutdown. I need to check the fuel levels, but it looks like we only used about a quarter of the fuel tank. So we shouldn’t have to slurry any more metal enriched fuel into the tank.”

  He picked up the stick Jay dropped at his feet and tossed it back through the open hatch. Both drascos bounded after the stick.

  “We will need to melt down some of the girl’s golden ooze bars if last time was any indication,” Stone said. “I will need to reseal the whole engine, spread the goop on any loose connections and let it dry. Then we can try our jump out of hyperspace and hopefully we will come out somewhere near human space.”

  He picked up the stick Peebee dropped at his feet. It was slimy with drasco spit. “Enough now, give us a break, girls.”

  Jay wonked plaintively.

  “Okay. One more time, but this is the last time. We can throw the stick later. I have work to do.” He waved the stick in the air. “This is for all of the marbles. Winner takes all. Got it? Whoever gets the stick this time gets to keep it until the next time we play.”

  The drascos tensed into crouches ready to spring into action. Both of them stared intensely at the stick, quivering with excitement and anticipation. Although their bodies were facing the main cabin, their heads were twisted around so their eyes never left the stick. When Stone finally released the stick it spun through the open hatch.

  Jay launched upward. Peebee raced forward along the deck. Both drascos squeezed through the hatch at the same time.

  “They sure can be focused, can’t they?” Stone said.

  Wright nodded. “They sure can. If they get much bigger they won’t be able to fit through that hatch at the same time. What I am really curious about is how they determined which one went through the hatch high and which went through low. I wonder if they worked it out between themselves or if it was just a chance occurrence. I mean, it did look planned.”

  Stone shrugged. “That is your area, Commander. You are the animal expert.”

  Wright punched him gently in the arm. “You can’t have it both ways, Stone. You already claimed to be the drasco expert in this pod. I think I need to run some more scans on your pets if you are not using my p.a.”