Kaman's World

by Bartholomew Thockmorton

  “By the way,” said Betty, suddenly changing the subject. “How did your meeting with the Navy go? Are they going to give us a couple of warp-doors or not?”

  Sam exhaled deeply while running his hand through his hair. “Bad news there...I thought they were being stingy because they wanted to release the technology slowly. But then I talked with Doctor Lewiston and found out that not only have they refused to make the doors public, but they’ve also taken back the ones they gave to Claire! That’s why she and Doc haven’t been back to Mars for a while...no warp-doors!”

  “But why? I thought those would be incorporated into the Leviathan as well as throughout Claire’s company to assist with the colonization of Xanadu! What made them change their minds?”

  The Leviathan was a 50-kilometer Oort ball the Cranston Corporation had spent ten-years, and a large portion of its resources, converting into a monstrous, mobile base from which to initiate a “hostile” take-over of competing mining operations in the cloud. Sam’s last tour-of-duty in the Navy had been an assignment where he helped the Inter-system Navy’s special-ops group commandeer the Leviathan as well as removing Claire’s stepfather as head of the Cranston Corporation, then placing her in his stead.

  “Can’t tell ya, honey-bunch...I even tried contacting Admiral McNally. But for some reason, he’s never replied to my calls.”

  “Well...I thought that was the hold-up with the B.O.B.—the installation of the doors! If we’re not getting any, they should be done with our ship! We can use it to check-out Kaman’s planet!”

  “That’s what I thought, too. But according to the dock-master, they encountered some problems...said the B.O.B. won’t be ready for some time yet! When I pressed him for specifics, all I got was the run-around!” Sam paced for several moments, then continued. “What about you? What could they tell you about Marty?”

  “Well the lab-boys thought he was the bees-knees! Ran all kinds of tests on him...at least the ones he’d allow...”

  “How so?” asked Sam.

  “Well, you can forget about drawing a blood sample! Marty did not like that at all! Did you, you scoundrel?”

  Marty had raised his head to look into Betty’s eyes at the repeated mention of his name. Now, he did not return to napping, but began paying closer attention to Sam and Betty since he was the topic of discussion.

  “But he didn’t mind the x-rays and ultra-sounds,” continued Betty, stroking Marty’s head. “Seems he has at least four sets of glands in his cheeks and tongue, perhaps more, that secrete an entire host of peptides! He apparently mixes and matches all kinds of combinations: single chains, tripeptides, pentapeptides...all the way up to decapeptides...and all sorts of side chain protecting groups! N-terminal protectors, t-boc’ers, protein-chains...even peptones and proteose mixtures—”

  She abruptly stopped when she noticed Sam’s blank stare and his mouth hanging open.

  “Sorry...I got carried away. Let’s just say he’s capable of cooking-up quite an unbelievable array of organic, molecular soups!”

  “And medicines?” asked Sam. He and Betty had been badly injured when the B.O.B. collided with a comet in the Xanadu system; Marty had healed their wounds with but a bite.

  “Well, what we call medicines...antibiotics, for example...and after what he did to Struther, seems he can concoct venom and neurotoxins too! But, there’s something else I’ve just discovered...”

  She paused in her explanation, reaching into her belt-pouch, withdrawing her utility-blade. She held it up for Sam to plainly see, then flicked open the locking blade, turning it deftly in her fist so the tip pointed downward.

  “You’re not going to believe this...”

  She placed her left hand, palm-down, on the table’s wooden surface. Suddenly, to Sam’s surprise and horror, she stabbed her hand with the knife, the blade thunking solidly into the tabletop. She hissed at the pain, her jaw clenched tightly and her eyes narrowing to slits. Sam started forward in alarm, but Betty waved him off after releasing the knife. Marty watched placidly as blood slowly seeped around the blade for a moment, and then stopped.

  “It’s not nearly as painful as it looks,” she said, reaching out with her free hand to rub Sam’s arm in reassurance. “It’s mostly getting past the self-preservation inhibitions that’s hard-wired into the reptilian part of our brains!” She again firmly grabbed the knife, yanking it from the table. After wiping both sides of her hand with a rag, she held it palm-out for Sam to examine. There was no cut, no puncture, nothing to indicate the hand had been skewered moments before.

  “Betts...how on earth did you figure this out?”

  “When I was with the lab-boys and med-techs...while they were studying Marty, I off-handedly mentioned Marty’s...little talent...”

  “Oh, man...how much did you give them? You didn’t tell them about...”

  “About what? How he saved your life and the way my arm’s compound fracture completely healed in less that 24-hours? No, I caught myself in time, thank goodness! But, they wanted a blood sample from me, and they broke three needles trying to pierce my skin! You should have seen the spike they wound up using! I’ve never seen a needle that big...it looked like something you’d use on an elephant—“

  “Excuse me, you two,” interrupted Charlie. “But we have an incoming call from Cranston headquarters...from Claire Lewiston, and it’s encrypted! Shall I answer it?”

  “Put it on the side-screen, over here, Charlie,” instructed Betty.

  The viewer activated, showing Claire seated, and her husband, Doctor Lewiston, standing behind her.

  “Betty! Hi, Roy,” said the woman. The man beside her nodded in greeting. “Thank goodness you guys answered! Where are you?”

  “Nowhere near Madeira or the shipyard,” answered Betty. “You know Sam...or Roy...whatever you want to call him! We’re parked way out here.”

  “Well...I hope you’ve got your engines warmed-up...” said Doc, leaning in over Claire’s shoulder. “You need to get out of here el muy ass friggin’ pronto!”

  “Let me guess,” said Betty. “Someone’s looking for us?”

  While Betty talked, Sam moved to the main control panel, plugging in and continuing to bring the mains fully online.

  “In the worst way,” continued Claire. “Suddenly, the Inter-system Navy is very interested in you and Marty!”

  “I can’t imagine why,” said Sam. “Besides, I thought Betty and I were now royalty!”

  Claire smiled before answering. “That legal mumbo-jumbo don’t mean squat to the military! You and Betty know that! And if I had to guess, which I’m not, whatever they found in your wife’s blood sample lit a fire under somebody!”

  “As far as Marty,” said Doc. “Our boys reviewed the security feeds from the Oasis...I’m betting you know what they found! The military has access to those tapes also! There’s no way we can prevent that!”

  “What is he talking about?” asked Sam, still working the board.

  “I know exactly what they saw,” said Betty, giving Marty a gentle shake. “This scamp hit Kaman and me with one of his brain-blasts before attacking Struther! Doesn’t take a genius to see we reacted to him before the excitement even started!”

  “I’m not sure what this is all about,” said Claire. “But even we noticed that! There’s obviously something special about that little guy! But if the Navy gets their hands on him, you’ll most likely never see him again! Best get going!”

  “I hate to interrupt again,” said Charlie in his masculine voice, meaning he was primarily addressing Sam. “But a Naval battle-cruiser just warped to within 1500-kilometers of us. They’ll be here in thirty!”

  “Gotta go!” cried Betty, leaping into the co-pilot’s chair. “Charlie! Give us the longest jump the engines can manage! Any destination that’s out of here! Just try not to put us in a star or something!”

  Charlie cut the message from the Madeira colony as the Flipper-Doodle vibrated slightly as it got under-weigh.

&n
bsp; “Charlie, do you still have a connection with the B.O.B.?” asked Sam.

  “Affirmative...warp in fifteen!”

  “Do a complete memory-dump—all systems—and scramble the access-codes,” instructed Sam. “Don’t leave them anything to work with!”

  “Roger-dodger!”

  As the Flipper-Doodle accelerated, a warp-hole opened before them. The vessel entered, leaving the bounds of normal space, instantaneously leaping nearly 175-light-years across the Orion spiral spur.

  Chapter Three

  “Well...now we know why McNally wouldn’t return your calls!” Betty paced the control room, staring at the floor as she walked. “I’m not too worried about them using me as a guinea pig...but Marty would never cooperate! Eventually they’d come to the conclusion he wasn’t worth the trouble and could more easily be examined dead!”

  “Killing the golden goose? Come on, Betty! Don’t you think you’re being a bit melodramatic?”

  Sam sat at a table on the mess deck, sipping coffee while Betty paced about the control room, forward and two decks above. He watched her on one of the monitors. She was so keyed-up and angry, he had removed himself from her company. To be near her when she generated so many jagged, negative emotions had become almost too painful for him—better to stand back and let the storm named Betty blow over. Before him, a slice of apple pie lay half-eaten. They were five-hours into the 12-hour waiting period before they could warp again.

  “Am I?” she asked, glancing at the monitor. “You saw that ship! If we hadn’t leapt, they would have snagged us with a tractor-beam for sure!”

  “Wouldn’t have done them any good...with our propulsion shield up, they wouldn’t be able to board us! Or even hold us, for that matter. The Flipper-Doodle has way more power at her disposal than any old class-four cruiser!”

  Betty hissed a string of curses to the air. “Well, it’s a cinch we can’t go back to the cloud...and we certainly can’t make for Xanadu! That’s the first place they’ll look for us!”

  “Then let’s just go to Kaman’s world...might as well check it out while they look for us...unless they have the coordinates for that too.”

  “I doubt it,” she replied. “For some reason, he didn’t register the planet...and slicked it from his ship’s computer! Kaman was pretty sneaky when he gave me that card! Like he knew they were watching us! I’m not sure why...Kaman’s a very old friend, and I’d trust him with my life...but, let’s not forget about his drinking...habits...and I get the distinct feeling he didn’t tell me the whole story...”

  “Now, don’t go paranoid on me, kiddo! That way lies madness. However, you may have a point there...but what’s to stop them from finding old man Wantanabe just to see if he might know something concerning our whereabouts?”

  “Now who’s being paranoid? No...as far as they know, I was just meeting with an old friend for a few drinks. Besides, that ruckus with Struther has pretty well muddied the waters around there! If I know Kaman, and I’ve known him for a long time, he’ll have gone to ground after so much attention!”

  “Then it’s decided! Once the warp-capacitors recharge, we’ll head for...did he have a name for that world, I mean besides the star’s catalogue number?”

  “Not that he mentioned,” she replied. “Hell—let’s just call it Kaman’s World!”

  ***

  Thirty-four hours later, the Flipper-Doodle orbited Kaman’s World at an altitude of 300-kilometers. Earlier, Betty had launched several satellites, starting a mapping survey of the planet; their database from the card holding little more than the planet’s coordinates and general system data. Now, with detailed maps, there was little more they could do from orbit.

  “Might as well get to it,” said Betty, joining Sam in the control room. She wore a lightweight suit despite the surface pressure registering Earth-normal. An EVA downside required little more than an oxygen mask, much like the type worn by mountain-climbers on Old Earth, or tourists determined to make the long slog all the way to the top of Olympus Mons.

  “Want to do a general fly-over?” asked Sam. “Or head straight for the site where Kiro was...ah...lost...”

  “No sense mincing about! Let’s get down there and see what kind of retrieval job we’re facing!”

  Sam adjusted drive-parameters, nosing the Doodle into the atmosphere. The drive-shield flared furiously as the ship plowed downward at well over 40-thousand kilometers-per-hour. He and Betty had decided earlier that sub-sonic speeds were unnecessary while in the upper layers of the troposphere, as there was little life below to risk startling with sonic booms. Especially in the transition zone between the rocky foothills and open desert targeted. In minutes, the surface was close enough where large details of the landscape were discernable without using the vessel’s scanners. Sam finally slacked-off velocity when their approach came within a dozen klicks of the LZ. They could easily pick out their destination without checking the coordinates. Sam slowly circled the area at an altitude of several hundred meters, affording a closer inspection.

  “Good god,” said Sam in hushed awe. “What in the hell is that?”

  “That is a really good question,” replied Betty. “The way Kaman told the story, I got the impression a friggin’ mountain collapsed on them!”

  “Well I’ve got news for you kiddo...that is no mountain!”

  “That’s for sure...kind of the opposite, in a weird sort of way. Set her down over there...no, on the other side of that dune...let’s not take a chance on that hole being unstable...we’d have a hell of a time digging the Doodle out of there!”

  Sam set the ship down on the other side of a series of small sand hills a good four hundred meters to the side, and within the hour, he and Betty stood at the edge. Before them, an immense pit spanning no less than fifty meters lay surrounded by an amphitheater-like arrangement of dunes. The sun, almost directly overhead, cast no shadows from the sandy hills or within the cone-shaped hole before them. The sides sloped sharply downward almost to a point, but not straight from lip to bottom. Twice, flat terraces interrupted the descent, providing narrow ledges completely around the cone-shaped depression’s interior.

  “I can tell you this, right now,” said Betty, standing with hands on hips, close enough to see all the way to the hole’s bottom, yet far enough back so as not to tempt an edge-collapse. “No way is this a natural phenomenon! And what’s with those two flat rings?”

  “I may be nuts, Betts...but they look like inspection walkways!”

  “You’re not nuts, dear! What were Kaman and Kiro doing down in there? And how could Kiro get buried?”

  “You’re not thinking of going in there are you?” asked Sam, moving closer and placing an arm around her waist, as if to hold her back. “I don’t mind telling you how nervous this...whatever this thing is, makes me!”

  “Don’t be a worry-wart,” she replied, removing her oxygen mask and giving an exposed portion of his cheek a quick kiss. “That’s what they made spider-bots for...Charlie! Are you getting all this?”

  “Indeed I am,” came the feminine voice over their helmets’ earphones. “How many and what do I need to bring?”

  “A dozen will do...for now. And this is what I want...”

  ***

  Sam sat in the shade of the pavilion pitched by Charlie’s drones, sipping a glass of iced-water while watching Betty inspect the gantry erected near the pit’s edge. Careful experimentation by the globe-like, half-meter bots with six flexible tentacles for legs had proven the periphery surprisingly stable; not once did any portion of the rim collapse, no matter how close the spider-bots tested for strength. On the contrary, the verge proved quite cohesive, even when several hundred kilos of bots gathered there. Apparently satisfied with the construction, Betty returned to the shade of the tent.

  “Charlie, how’s Marty doing?” she asked.

  “He’s been quite anxious, Betty,” came the reply from the nearest spider-bot, pausing in its activities to address its mistress. “I f
inally turned on the main screen and pointed most of the cameras in this direction. When he saw you and Sam, he climbed into the co-pilot’s chair and has since been enjoying the show.”

  At the news, Betty relaxed somewhat; Marty’s distress when she began to leave the ship without him had been both touching and hard to bear. The lovable creature had been her constant companion almost from the moment she found him, or when he had found her, as Sam liked to point out. On the ship, he followed her everywhere, that is, when she wasn’t carrying him...which she did, most of the time. He had made such a scene, running about and mewing a pathetic, keening whine the first time she entered the shower, leaving him outside the stall, that she had finally relented and allowed him to join her. The only time he understood his presence was...unnecessary...was when she and Sam shared an intimate moment. But afterwards, he always promptly joined them, claiming what became his customary spot on Betty’s side of the bed.

  When she and Sam suited-up, strapping on their hip-tanks and rebreathers, obviously about to embark on an excursion outside the ship, Marty had grown very excited as he fully expected to be included in the adventure. However, when he finally realized he was to be left behind, his alarm and antics had proved quite distracting. But there was nothing to be done for it. They had no cage or pet-carrier to put him in, and they doubted he would cooperate for even a second if they did: above all else, Sam often reminded Betty that the little fellow was, after all, a wild animal...and a head-strong one at that.

  The one trait that never failed to startle and bewilder both Sam and Betty was the inexplicable bond Marty shared with them. Within days after he first came into their lives on the planet Betty christened Xanadu, they realized an incomprehensible two-way emotional conduit existed between them all—Marty could “tune-in” to their emotional state, and lately, to a growing extent, they realized they could also sense his mood, especially when it shifted unexpectedly. It wasn’t that he was telepathic to the extent he could actually talk to them, as an animal, he obviously lacked language, but his clear, concise thoughts came through as piercing images easily succeeding to such an amazing degree, he just might as well be communicating with words. Marty’s ability to convey surprise, joy, aggravation and, yes, sudden anger, made him seem indispensable in their daily routines.