The Space_Time Displacement Conundrum

by Milo James Fowler

  "Can you kickstart the thrusters now?" Hank cleared one of his throats, giving his voice that oddly harmonic quality. "Just in case this safety net fails."

  "Right." The captain released one of his boots, turning toward the stern.

  But that was when his helmet received a hail from the surface.

  "They're contacting us," Quasar said with a grin. "This is Captain Bartholomew Quasar of the—"

  "You outta your mind?" A grim-faced Carpethrian, unlike any the captain had ever seen before, appeared in the bottom left corner of his face shield. The creature wore its thick facial fur in braids, forming a scraggly beard, and hid one of its eyes beneath a black leather patch. "Flying during a charger? You must have some kind of death wish, human!"

  Was it ridicule or anger in the Carpethrian's tone? Quasar couldn't be sure. "We are grateful to you for halting our descent. Now, if you would be so kind as to set us down—"

  "What're you doing here?" Not a welcoming tone.

  The captain set his jaw. "I'm looking for the man responsible for Earth's near-demise. I'd wager a guess he passed by your planet as well."

  "My planet?" A garbled chuckle ruptured forth. "I'd say you're a little late to the party, human. Try five centuries too late."

  Quasar nodded. "We came as fast as we could. We, uh, ran into a little difficulty with that cold fusion reactor your people installed on our ship a very long time ago."

  The Carpethrian's good eye twitched, widened, then narrowed with suspicion. "Give me the name of your vessel, human."

  "The Effervescent Magnitude." The captain's chest swelled with pride beneath his squeaky rubber environmental suit.

  "And I suppose you expect me to believe you're Captain Quasar, the famous Earth starfarer. Back from the dead or some such."

  "Captain Bartholomew Quasar, as I said before. And you would be correct. We honestly don't understand it ourselves, but we're here now, and we could use your help. Of course we don't expect to locate Zhan himself after so many centuries—"

  "Why not?" The Carpethrian humphed in a manner almost identical to Hank's. "You just gotta know who to ask."

  Quasar blinked. "You mean—" He swallowed, his heart surging beneath his breast. "This Zhan fellow is still alive?" How could that be possible?

  The Carpethrian's eye narrowed again suspiciously. "From what I remember learning as a young cub, one of our own people sailed off with you when you left Carpethria. Something about him killing one of your crew members."

  "By accident," Quasar emphasized, knowing now without a doubt that he had changed the past. Otherwise, this Carpethrian would have remembered the original past, as Quasar had come to think of it—when Hank came aboard the Magnitude as an engineer instead of a disgraced combat trainer.

  "Remind me, what was his name again?"

  "Hank." Quasar beamed. "He's here with me. Hold on, I'll get him." Captain Quasar released his other magnetic boot and climbed down into the transport pod.

  "You do that." The Carpethrian chuckled gutturally.

  Once inside, Quasar removed his helmet and staggered under the weight of his suit toward the cockpit. "Somebody wants to say hello, ol' buddy."

  With a quizzical look, Hank accepted the helmet and stared down at the face shield. The one-eyed Carpethrian's image had reoriented itself to face the very hairy helmsman.

  "Hello, Hank," came the voice of the Carpethrian on the screen without any pause or surprise in his tone. "What're you doing with that human after all these years?"

  "How'd you lose that eye, Lank? Looking at something you shouldn't?"

  Quasar's jaw dropped. How could Hank possibly know this Carpethrian after so much time?

  "I hear you're looking for Zhan."

  Hank shrugged his superior set of shoulders. "If he's the one responsible for this mess, then yeah."

  Lank shrugged his own very hairy shoulders. "Guess there ain't much left around here. Well, that's what we got for being such good friends with the humans. This Zhan you're after, he really holds a grudge."

  Hank cleared one of his throats and lowered his voice. "How many of our family remain?"

  "You're looking at it." Lank released another one of his humorless chuckles. "But I've managed, you know me. Always been something of a hermit, I suppose. This survivalist lifestyle suits me fine."

  "How is it possible?" Quasar finally blurted out. "How can you possibly know this fellow? We've been gone five centuries!"

  Hank favored him with a patient look. "Our average life span is a thousand Earth years, Captain. As long as we're living on our homeworld, that is, under our twin suns and breathing the jungle air."

  Lank cursed in Carpethrian words the captain's collar couldn't decipher. "Not many forests down here anymore, Cousin. Zhan saw to that. They never grew back."

  After all that Captain Quasar and his crew had gone through with the Arachnoids to spare Carpethria—it had been for naught. Thanks to this fellow Zhan.

  Quasar was seriously beginning to hate the guy.

  Episode 62: Family Reunion

  Steve materialized at the captain's elbow. Requiring no magnetic boots in order to stand upright inside the badly listing pod, the wizard thumped his oaken staff against the plasteel floor as if to emphasize a point he had yet to make.

  "You see, Captain? Your hand-to-hand-to-hand-to-hand combat against that spider-creature in the past was pointless. In the end, Carpethria did not lose merely an acre or two of its vegetation, but nearly all of it, from what I can tell." He shook his head grimly. "I can't imagine how depressed you must feel—knowing that no matter what you do to alter the past, the forces of time surge against you!"

  Quasar could agree with that much: time had become his enemy. At least this whole whipping back and forth through it—what could have caused such a space-time conundrum? And why was he the only one experiencing it?

  "Thanks for catching us in your safety net, Lank. We'd also appreciate a nod in the right direction, if it's not asking too much." Hank tilted his very hairy head to one side as he gazed down at the image of his cousin on the helmet's face shield.

  The Carpethrian narrowed his good eye. "What's in it for me, Cousin?"

  "We'll take you with us," Hank said without pause. Then he glanced up at the captain, who merely raised an eyebrow but didn't object. If Lank could bring them closer to tracking down the fiend Zhan, he was welcome aboard.

  "You're certain this Zhan fellow is still alive?" Quasar stepped forward to look over Hank's superior left shoulder at Lank's image. "How can that be possible?"

  Lank shrugged both sets of shoulders. "Lightspeed. Ever hear of it?" He chuckled gutturally. "The trick is, you spend enough time in hyperspace—space-between-space, that is—traveling at the speed of light, and you don't age like the rest of us. The way I hear it, Zhan's been setting up his own little empire in a distant quadrant, but he still has a taste for certain local…delicacies."

  Quasar wasn't sure he wanted to know what the Carpethrian meant by that.

  "And you just might happen to know who his supplier is," Hank growled.

  Lank smirked. "Maybe so. Leastwise I did a while back, but time passes strange-like around these parts, what with the chargers and all—"

  "You mentioned that term before: chargers." Quasar narrowed his heroic gaze. "Would you be referring to the electromagnetic activity in your atmosphere?"

  "A little something Zhan left us to remember him by." Lank cursed again in garbled words. "It'll pass in a few Earth hours, and then you can be on our way. For now, consider yourselves my guests. Welcome to the planet Carpethria—or what's left of it. I'll set you down outside my humble abode, and we can discuss terms." With a short nod, Lank's image vanished from the helmet's face shield.

  Hank handed it back to the captain.

  "I've got a bad feeling about this," Gruber broke his own silence, heaving again as the transport pod dipped and righted itself, suspended only by the Carpethrian energy net. Then the vessel plunged weigh
tlessly for a few moments before it was gently laid to rest on a canyon floor covered in shale.

  "The atmosphere is breathable, despite the spikes in electromagnetic activity and resulting bursts of ozone," Quasar said, consulting his helmet's display. He set it on his seat and quickly peeled off the bulky environmental suit. "Can't for the life of me imagine a weapon capable of leaving such atmospheric residue. This Zhan fellow seems to have an affinity for unconventional weaponry." Quasar nodded slowly, recalling something he'd said once before and thinking now would be the perfect moment to quote himself: "The ultimate villain."

  "Humph." Hank rose from the cockpit and shuffled toward the ladder at the stern.

  Overcoming his airsickness, Gruber disentangled himself from the safety harness and followed Hank, pausing only to retrieve his atom rifle.

  "Lank is family," Hank said at the sight of the large weapon.

  Quasar already had his holstered Cody 52 belted on. "I seem to recall our last visit not going entirely as planned." He nodded to Gruber. "As a precaution only."

  "That's right, sir." Gruber shrugged at Hank. "It's been a while since you've seen this cousin of yours. He might've changed."

  Hank stared back at him a moment. "Those beard braids were new." With that, the very hairy biped climbed up the ladder, hand over hand over foot.

  Captain Quasar put a hand on Gruber's shoulder before following his helmsman outside. "I don't have to tell you to keep your eyes open."

  "No, sir, you don't." Gruber cocked his rifle.

  "Good." Quasar nearly leapt up the ladder this time without the cumbersome environmental suit to slow him down. Chief Gruber followed close behind.

  Once outside, Hank had already moved to the rear of the transport pod and had begun wrenching the manual kickstarter lever round and round. He resembled an automobile owner from the ancient days when vehicles had to be started in much the same manner. The irony of the moment wasn't lost on the captain—standing on an alien world with an alien trying to start up a spaceworthy vessel that had gone kaput—but he didn't have much time to savor it.

  Rumbling toward them from a few hundred meters away came an all-terrain vehicle, something between a jeep and a rover, open to the elements, with two figures seated inside. Neither one of them appeared to be Carpethrian.

  "Captain?" Gruber gripped his rifle but kept the muzzle back against his shoulder.

  "Good eye," Quasar said with one hand drifting toward his holster. He raised his other hand in greeting.

  And nearly had it shot off by one of the approaching strangers.

  Episode 63: The Grinning Ghoul

  Captain Quasar ducked just in time as the pulse round hurtled through the air over his head, striking the face of a rock formation not ten meters behind him. Before he could blink, Hank had drawn a Cody 52 pistol from his fur flab and taken aim. So much for Lank being his relative; the very hairy helmsman had come armed as well. Without barking a warning of any kind, he fired two quick bursts, tight balls of blue energy that struck each of the figures in the vehicle dead-center, paralyzing them instantly. The vehicle itself continued on unimpeded until it struck a ditch and capsized, dumping out its pair of unconscious passengers.

  "Nice shooting." Quasar gave Hank a wink, then jumped to his feet to dust himself off.

  "Humph." The Carpethrian shuffled over to the vehicle to inspect the strangers. He paused, turning slowly to meet the captain's curious gaze. "They're human, sir."

  "How odd."

  According to Bill, Earth's sole survivor, the human race had deserted Sol's system for parts unknown, and so it should have come as no real surprise that more than a few humans had decided to take up residence on Carpethria, home of Earth's only alien allies. But what struck Captain Quasar as odd was the fact that these humans had fired on their own kind. One would assume that after having survived Zhan's apparent attempt at global holocaust, this pair would have greeted the appearance of their fellow man with more hospitality—particularly if they were friends of Hank's cousin, Lank.

  "Scruffy-looking couple," Chief Gruber observed, the chest and armpits of his uniform drenched with sweat. "If I didn't know better, I'd say they were—"

  "Pirates." Hank narrowed his deep-set eyes. He gestured to the beard braids on the unconscious man and the tattoos both he and the unconscious woman bore on their tanned but grimy muscled arms. "They call it the—"

  "Jolly Roger." Quasar nodded slowly. If he hadn't seen it with his own narrowed heroic gaze, he wouldn't have believed it. The archaic symbol hadn't been used anywhere but in history texts and interactive entertainment for centuries—even longer now, after the Magnitude's sojourn in limbo. "Skull and Crossbones. Grinning Ghoul. Take your pick of monikers. Do you think your cousin has fallen in with some bad company?"

  Hank's superior set of shoulders barely rose and fell. "Lank was always something of an opportunist."

  "That's no way to speak of the living."

  Quasar and company whirled around to face the source of the voice and found Lank flanked by half a dozen humans as tanned and dirty as the unconscious pair on the ground. Each pirate carried a sawed-off plasma rifle aimed with impunity, muzzles switching from the captain's head to Hank's to Gruber's.

  "Made some new friends, I see." Hank didn't raise his arms. Gripped in one of his right hands was the Cody 52 he'd used a few moments ago.

  "I like to think of them as my crew." Lank bared his fangs in a vicious attempt at a smile. He stroked his makeshift beard braids. Truthfully, any portion of his very hairy body could have sported a similar fashion (or lack thereof) statement. "But I could say the same about you. It would appear that both of us have been lacking in proper Carpethrian company. Tell me Hank, have they commissioned you yet? Do you have any sort of rank on that human vessel?"

  "He's our helmsman and a damned good one," Gruber spoke up. Taking his cue from both the captain and Hank—neither of whom had raised his arms in surrender—the chief stood with his atom rifle propped nonchalantly back against his shoulder.

  Lank squinted his good eye as he regarded the captain before him. "So, you're the man in charge, eh? What do you say? Is Hank a good little walking carpet?"

  Quasar didn't allow the derogatory term to faze him. "He's the best helmsman the Effervescent Magnitude has ever seen. And it is an honor to call him my friend." Quasar half-turned to regard Hank with an appreciative eye. "We've been through thick and thin together, and we've always made it through to fight another day."

  "This won't be one of them," said Lank.

  Quasar's hand dropped to his holstered Cody 52. His mind quickly calculated the trajectory of every shot it would take to incapacitate Lank's crew as speedily as possible while allowing both Hank and Gruber to take out their fair share of pirates as well.

  "Because you're my guests!" Lank roared with laughter. At a gesture from Hank's cousin, the human pirates lowered their weapons and dropped back as Lank stepped forward. "Assuming my people are both still alive."

  Hank nodded, nudging the unconscious woman at his feet. She moaned quietly.

  "It's good to see you, Cousin." Lank clapped all of his furry hands on Hank's four shoulders. "We may very well be the last of our kind in the galaxy. The twin suns smile upon us this day—or they would, if not for that bastard Zhan and those chargers he left behind." As if on cue, a chorus of static energy tore across the cloud-smothered sky. "We really shouldn't be out in this. Come. My habitat module is close by." He glanced at Quasar with little interest. "Your friends are welcome too, of course."

  "Well now, look who's playing second fiddle," Steve appeared in time to comment, then disappeared just as quickly.

  Setting his jaw but doing his best to appear amiable, Quasar nodded for Gruber to follow as Lank led the way with Hank under his wing. Even though their Carpethrian host had welcomed them into his humble home, the human pirates, while no longer pointing their weapons at the captain, had not ceased to stare at him with evident malcontent festering in the
ir bleary eyes.

  Episode 64: A Common Enemy

  "I don't like it one bit, sir," Gruber muttered so only the captain could hear—or so he hoped. "We're outnumbered and outgunned, and as long as those electromagnetic chargers control the skies, we're trapped down here."

  Quasar nodded. The odds were not in their favor, should the situation turn sour.

  Hank's cousin led them up a rise of jagged shale to what appeared to be no more than a hollow cave carved into the rock face, but once they found themselves inside, it was as though they had stepped through a holo-mirage of some sort. The interior was as warm and inviting as any tavern in any medieval tale of high adventure. Quasar, Gruber, and the pirates seated themselves around a long, wide, synthetic-oak table while Hank sat to the right of Lank, who positioned himself at the table's head in the largest of the faux-leather sling-chairs. At a clap from their host's posterior hands, a tarnished, steaming plasteel robot appeared, wide-eyed and frazzled from what appeared to be overwork—or perhaps it was the demeanor intended by its designers.

  "Drinks all around, Servo. We have guests." Lank's good eye narrowed at Chief Gruber's sopping wet perspiration. "Is your man feeling quite all right, Captain?"

  "It's a medical condition," Gruber muttered, setting his atom rifle down beside his chair.

  "I'd call it fear," said one of the pirates, a massive fellow with large teeth white enough to rival Captain Quasar's. The others chuckled heartily.

  Servo the robot shuddered back from whence it had come, presumably to retrieve beverages for everyone present. A nagging voice in the back of the captain's mind warned him not to drink anything served by strangers—it had gotten him into plenty of trouble in the past—but he shoved this concern aside for the time being.

  "What is there to be afraid of?" Quasar raised an eyebrow at the muscle-bound pirate. "We are among friends, are we not? Our own kind. Tell me, how long has it been since you have seen a representative of United World Space Command?"