Planet Patrol: The Interplanetary Age (Star Service Book 1)

by Charles Lee Jackson II

  The Princess added, "Unless you want that kidnapping charge reinstated."

  "Arrrgh, awright. Your worship, we didn't kidnap t'is lady. She came t' us. It were all a plot t' get revenge on Roy here."

  Cabanne started in surprise. The Viceroy snapped a gesture in her direction. "Seize her! The charge is obstruction of Justice!"

  Two other officers bracketed the woman.

  Sandy patted the head pirate on the shoulder. "That's a good boy, Cap'n. I won't even mention kidnapping a Noble."

  Morgas looked hopeful.

  "No, I think you'll have enough trouble serving time for stealing this." She produced the debit card.

  "Your Excellency," the Cabanne protested. "This is an obvious frame-up! She's promised that – that – pirate a deal for implicating me! Me! Of all people. This is ridiculous! I demand that you release me."

  Morgas noisily – and moistly – cleared his throat. "Lady, I may be a lotta t'ings, but I'm not about t' make a deal wit' ol' Roy here t' harm a' innercent female."

  With all the dignity he could muster, he said, "…I'm a pirate."

  HIS MAJESTY'S SPACESHIP Thetis was back on station in orbit the next day, and the whole crew was watching the re-start of the second leg of the Mars Five Thousand.

  Swift Justice had settled all matters by sunset the previous day, Sandy Pendragon stepping aside but concurring with all decisions handed down by a local Magistrate.

  Esther Cabanne, charged with causing a false police investigation and attempting to interrupt the activities of a Noble, got a one-million-Sovereign fine, was required to pay punitive damages to recompense the city and The Empire for wasted time and energy and manpower, and got a six-month sentence in Tehachapi on Earth.

  Cap'n Morgas and his scurvy crew were nailed for grand theft, public endangerment, and complicity to interrupt the activities of a Noble. Most of the crew got two years on The Rock – the prison asteroid. The cabin boy was remanded to the juvenile authorities back on Earth.

  Morgas himself, with a hundred other crimes unanswered, got life without possibility of parole in FDR Penitentiary. He didn't seem too upset. At least he'd dodged the kidnapping charge. That one still brought the possibility of the Death House.

  The pirate bark had been confiscated and sold, the proceeds going to Jerry Cabanne to pay for his wrecked flyer. But the money hadn't made him feel much better, what with being out of the race and having a jailbird mother and all.

  Two members of the crew were not in the Ward Room. Both Wild Bill Webbe and Sandy Pendragon had had their fill of ultralight flyers.

  But Prof Morfett and Ernie Scammera were cheering wildly as the planes took off. Ernie kept watching for the Dodge to take off, confident that his bet was safe. Last man out, there was no hope of his catching even one of the others.

  And when his flyer pulled a crabbing loop on take-off, and crashed into the tarmac, Ernie let out a cheer.

  "What are you so happy about?" Prof asked.

  "Can't you see?" Ernie pointed with delight at the instant replay. "I win! I win!"

  Morfett shook his head sadly. "I don't think so, Sport. What was my wager?"

  "That the Dodge wouldn't lose."

  Another head shake. "No. That the Dodge wouldn't come in last. And since he just crashed, he won't be ‘coming in’ at all, any more than any of the others that crapped out."

  Ernie sighed, now seeing the barb in the Professor’s wager, and dug into his fatigues for the shiny coins. Prof collected them, relishing the tactile sensation of the forty Sovereigns in his palm, smiling like a wolf again. Ernie knew better than to argue. Skunked again.

  But he did get a small measure of satisfaction: Prof had also placed a bet with Jack Flynn. And when the Sangan nosed out the FoMarsCo plane at the last second and finished in first place, it transferred every one of those forty Sovereigns to the Captain's purse.

  Emperor's Note

  SOMETIMES THE DARNEDEST things happen.

  It was a cool crisp Autumn evening in nineteen ninety-two. I was at the old drawing board, putting the finishing touches on the art for The Mark of Cypher for the magazine I was publishing in those days, Amazing Adventures, when one of those darnedest things did happen.

  In those days, my apartment was located on the top floor of the building that housed my offices. My terrace overlooked the roof of the adjacent parking structure (but had a view to the north of the good old Hollywood sign), and I had the big French windows open to the late air.

  I felt more than heard a faint disturbance, and I glanced up.

  One moment the terrace was empty—

  The next, some sort of ship was there. Just… there.

  It looked like a rocket ship, with a pointy nose and four stabilizer fins at the tail. It was about twenty feet long, which, being about ten feet high, made it look rather stubby.

  For a moment it glowed with a violet aura, but as that faded it was revealed as silver in color.

  I put down my pen and left the desk, approaching the apparition with more curiosity than concern. I was half-way there when a hatch appeared on the port side, and a woman stepped into view.

  She took two steps out onto my terrace and stopped, snapping to attention and raising her right hand, touching two fingers to the mesial aspect of her left clavicle, and bowing her head slightly.

  It was obviously a salute, awaiting a response, but I took a moment to study the woman.

  Red hair, shot through with silver, a dark grey greatcoat and green gloves and boots. She regarded me through green eyes under Titian brows.

  I raised a hand to my own clavicle, mimicking her action, then dropped my hand sharply back to my side.

  Apparently it was the right response, for the woman spoke. “Time Princess Chanin Spangle reporting, Sire.”

  All the more interesting. She spoke as if she knew me.

  “At ease, Your Grace,” I said. If I was Sire and she was a Princess, that would be the proper form of address.

  However, the response startled her. As she relaxed, she asked, “You know me?”

  I shook my head. “But I know a Princess when I meet one.”

  “I should have known.”

  I gestured to the seating area by the hearth. “You have a report. Let’s sit while you make it.”

  She followed me to the lounge. I poised in front of my throne (you know I have one, don’t you?) and waited politely for her to sit. She stood awaiting me. I realized she had the edge on me, protocol-wise.

  I sat.

  She sat.

  “So why are you here?”

  She smiled, and I saw little crinkles at the corners of her eyes. It was hard to guess her age, but I was sure she was older than she looked, even with the grey in her hair. Something about those eyes told of experience and wisdom.

  “You should know that I’m a Temporal Librarian in the service of The Empire, and that I’ve just come from the year one thousand ninety-seven.”

  I PUZZLED. I pointed to her ship, raising one eyebrow.

  Spangle smiled again. “Calendar reform. That would be three thousand forty-seven to you.”

  “Oh good. The future. Three thousand… Ah. My nineteen fifty is your—?”

  “Zero.”

  Now I smiled. “Archaeology? Geology? Space travel? –My birthday?”

  “All of the above. It was a convenient year for us. The anti-Jesus crowd had been arguing for a new calendar, and we were already using our ‘Present Year’ calendar, so… .”

  Nineteen Fifty. Science had used a system of so-and-so many years “before the present” to date ancient findings for long enough that the present had moved over fifty years. So nineteen fifty had been defined as “the present” to keep time-lines straight. It was also the year that both Earthmen and the people of Sangar, our ally planet, had first reached outer space. It’s also the year I was born, so all the way around it seemed like a good year zero – and of course avoided the problem of no zero the Christian calendar had engendered.<
br />
  “And you mentioned The Empire; I could hear the capital T in your voice. My The Empire?”

  She nodded. “I’ve been sent back to bring you a gift. Case files and historical records to allow you to include our Star Service in your ‘Amazing Adventures’ stories.”

  I hope you were sitting down for that. I was sure glad I was.

  “You’re… bringing me information about the future… to publish now?”

  She nodded enthusiastically.

  “Won’t that… cause a problem, if people know what’s coming? Won’t it screw up the course of future events?”

  “No. Nothing like that. We’ve discovered that time is immutable, despite all the stories to the contrary. Things just happen. It may be hard to get, that each person has free will but whatever is done is the thing that always was done, but that’s how it works out.”

  “Still… .”

  She raised a hand. “We already know how things worked out, after all. You can publish the cases from the future, and no matter how many times you tell people they’re really going to happen, most people won’t believe you. And the ones who do won’t do anything differently than if you hadn’t told them – in fact, you can’t haven’t told them, from our perspective.”

  “OK.”

  “The stories you print will be forgotten by the time the real events occur, except for the copies in our secret files.”

  I had to laugh. My heirs, as it were, had all the bases covered.

  She glanced around. “I need a radio connection to your computer.”

  “Richmond?” I spoke to my trusty communications maven, in his secure redoubt.

  “Yes, Sire?”

  “Can you accept a wireless file transfer to an isolated mainframe?”

  “Of course.”

  “Your Grace, tell us what you need.”

  She did, and retreated to her ship for a few minutes.

  WHEN SHE RETURNED, I stood and we went through the little Alphonse/Gaston routine of “after you”, “no, after you” once more, and I sat first.

  “The transfer will take a few minutes.”

  “You couldn’t have put the files on a disc or something?” I asked.

  “Incompatible technology.” She explained. “Besides, nothing from your future can directly interact with you.”

  “Do tell.”

  “Of course. The secret of time travel is not something I’ll reveal to you now, but the transmission of matter through time generates a field of force, similar to electro-magnetism, which insulates the traveler from the past.”

  “Ah, that answers the question of how the same object can exist in two places at the same time.”

  “Exactly. My ship, my computer components, me; none of these things can touch you. And this limits my visit: the field begins to fade after a time. Look.” She gestured toward the patio.

  As I watched, a little cluster of sparks flared up and died.

  “The density of the field is proportionate to the volume of the object. Those flashes are skin flakes that fell away from me, or dust I brought along, coming into contact with their own past on an atomic level. And being instantly annihilated.”

  I stood. “You sure you have enough time for all of this?”

  She jumped up the moment I did. “Certainly. I’ve time, so to speak. My boss, the Doyenne, told me you’d be easy to talk to. I was afraid I’d have to do a lot more explaining, but she assured me I’d have no trouble and could get this whole meeting done quickly.

  “Besides, my clock stopped while I was aboard my ship, cloaked by its greater field. I’m perfectly safe.”

  I got back to the subject. “So I’m going to have all this information about the future.”

  “Not all the future. For one thing, that’s why there are Temporal Librarians. There will be a war in about seven hundred years that will damage our historical records. Most of what I do is recover lost history.”

  “A war? In seven hundred years? Surely not the Thuleans?”

  She shook her head. “No. You’ll see. It’s in the files.”

  I sighed. OK, I don’t need everything right away. “…So,” I shifted the subject, “you do a lot of this?”

  “I’ve been at it for much of my adult life. It’s an interesting life. As I say there’s no changing what happened, but we do run into occasions when the history books got it wrong. So we do have surprises from… time to time.”

  She smiled at the turn of phrase. I thought she must get a lot of that.

  “But I haven’t brought you a history of the world or the universe. It’s just Imperial records plus the historical contexts to make sense from the case files.

  “The Doyenne told me to direct your attention to the files of HMSS Thetis and HMSS Magna Carta. You’ll find them cross-indexed. And I’m sure you’ll be interested in ten forty-nine and the following twenty-five years.”

  I gave her a mildly hard stare. “Your career, Your Grace?”

  She blushed. Before she could respond, Richmond spoke up.

  “Sire, the transfer is complete. Should I vet it?”

  “Go ahead. You heard her recommendations.”

  “Indeed.”

  “I should be going then,” Spangle said. She stood and backed away three steps before straightening and saluting. I sketched a response and she turned.

  I followed her part way to her ship, pausing when she stopped at the hatch, looking back.

  “I’ll give you three hints.

  “First, watch for a gentleman named Sean Miller. You’ll find him fascinating.

  “Second, Continent-Eight is mistaken.

  “Third, the Thuleans are wrong.”

  “Well, those last two speak for themselves. I suppose you mean in specific ways.”

  “You’ll see.” She winked and turned, closing the hatch behind her.

  After a moment, the ship disappeared – well, not entirely. In its wake it left a red ghost, the image of the ship that lifted off just as it faded away.

  I whistled, like Humphrey Bogart in To Have and Have Not.

  “Sire?” Richmond spoke up. “What was all that, if I may ask?”

  “…The darnedest thing just happened. …I seem to have left a legacy.”

  And that’s how I’m able to tell you about The Empire Yet to Come.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Charles Lee Jackson, II, is a Hollywood-based film scholar, cartoonist, and author, who has been recording his own Amazing Adventures and those of his fellow Swashbucklers since 1966. He is pleased to share with the reader these recently declassified accounts of those exploits.

  Born in Los Angeles, Mr. Jackson was stricken with cerebral palsy in infancy, and worked successfully over many years to overcome this disability. A voracious reader by the age of five, he found himself longing for stories no one had written, so he began to write them himself. First as cartoon strips, later as shooting scripts, eventually as prose. He spent several years working in and around the motion-picture business, as reflected in several of his adventures, before retiring to specialize in the written word. His work as a cartoonist has produced numerous strips and books, not only exciting adventures, but funny-animal comics as well, including his popular feature, “The Brontosaurus and the Toad”.

  In addition to his fiction, Mr. Jackson is also a motion-picture historian, specializing in the era of the double feature, and is continuing his work on a definitive history of the cliffhanger serials, to share the voluminous knowledge he has accumulated in his studies of ephemeral cinema.

  Mr. Jackson has collected reports on many adventures of his Swashbuckling friends and adventurers of the past and future, to be presented for your enjoyment.

  You may write to him at cljii@CLJII.com, or visit him on the CLJII Unified Boosters (The CLub) page on Facebook, or follow him on Twitter at @CLJII. He’s always happy to hear from you.

  Publication Credits

  “Space Virgin” originally published in Amazing Adventures number 13, Septem
ber 1993. (Chapters two, three, and four based upon unproduced teleplay, Star Service “A Princess On Board”.) The events recounted will occur between early September and early October 2113.

  “Sunset or Death” originally published in Amazing Adventures number 25, August 1994. The events recounted will occur in December 2113.

  “Ghost Dance” originally published in Amazing Adventures number 33, April 1995. The events recounted will occur in late November 2114.

  “The Mars 5000” originally published in Amazing Adventures number 44, March, 1996. The events recounted will occur in mid-December 2114.