by Ken Pence
Her hand whipped out, and you could hear the air move. The pipe wavered a bit and then fell in four sections where it had been sliced cleanly in four places. LeiLei exclaimed, “What did you do? It was wonderful.”
“First do the same thing with your other hand and feet,” Joel demanded to test the safety protocols and a good thing too. The left foot scarred the pipe on a soft pass but that was remedied easily with some tweaking.
“Okay. I am going to have the manikin thing attack you with everything. Let the suit respond. We will stand way back,” Joel said. He would have been worried if they hadn’t tested it a half dozen times. Luckily, it was easy to build the manikin attackers. He pressed attack on his MemDex and the manikin made several simultaneous movements. LeiLei was a blur leaping over the manikin’s head in a movement; then, shearing the manikin’s support column like slicing the spine of an attacker lengthwise. The manikin lay in pieces on the floor and LeiLei rushed over and nearly crushed Joel as she licked and caressed him with her head, arms and tail. She then pulled herself away and went before Shiv where she bent down and exposed the back of her neck in the ultimate presentation of respect to a Vicvic. Shiv reached out and touched LeiLei on her shoulder and LeiLei rose. No words were necessary but that never stopped LeiLei before.
“That was incredible. I even used the tail thrust technique I told you about. It was awesome,” she said to them both. “We have to take a little break right now,” she said to Shiv as she pulled Joel to the exit while caressing him all over. He didn’t seem reluctant to leave.
Shiv watched them leave. She would have sighed if her species sighed but she thought – Mammals! She went back to her research.
***
Tod and Steve worked with Rett. But Rett got testy because he was being pulled off his probe ship conversion, and he wanted to be done when they arrived at Bellatrix. He had not asked for help and had seemed to resent it when he got it. He changed his tune completely when Tod offered him lamlee improvements to his weapons, field drive and navigation systems. Then it was – here is how the ES troops got through my field at the lab and they used this method – a new Rett. The field neutralizer was simple. It projected a weak field that varied in frequency – all the fields varied a little. When you put its field up against another field – it simply sensed temperature in its own generator. Field to field out of sync caused heat increases. In sync fields could pass through each other. The neutralizer either adjusted to match or make its field so out of sync that the opposing field generator would burn out. The neutralizer had hardened generator components that could withstand extremely high temperatures.
Rett said they ought to harden our own field generators on all our ships and he showed us plans on how to do so. He then went back to upgrading his ship. He hardened his own shield generators. We added powerful lasers and molecular disruptors for his ship. We even added the nano and meta-material outer surface to give him our camouflage ability. He even seemed pleased when we added lamlee to his drive and navigation system – without gloves, I might add. I think the gray ghastly tried to smile. Tod and I weren’t sure. He was either trying to put on a smile or he had stepped on a nail. I want to think it was the former.
***
We stopped at our next waypoint and tried the field neutralizer circuits – shuttle to shuttle. The circuits didn’t do much of anything so we tried adding some lamlee into the circuit – with no gloves. We wanted our neutralizer to be able to penetrate others shields and it wasn’t happening. Now the Albert had the upgrade we thought we’d try again. Sure enough – the Albert appeared to have no luck for a second and then it was skin to skin with the Victoria. It was decided to upgrade all our ships and we did so. We wanted backups without lamlee backups in case the conversion went wrong but it didn’t. We were on our way to our final rally point that would put us a light year or so from Bellatrix. We reviewed all we had learned from UmBllatt and from the traders at 68 Eridani but all said we were headed to a large trading planet – not a trading port but a trading planet with myriad ports. We decided we’d stay together and we printed a prodigious volume of brochures and catalogs. We inventoried our teaching machines, lamlee and trade goods. We didn’t have enough Earth food to trade but we could give out samples if we had to. We planned to refurbish our food supplies. The variety from the Eridani food had helped a lot. Vitamins helped where the Eridani food left out trace elements.
We had almost 6000 kilograms of lamlee. We had used very little to upgrade but we had recovered roughly one hundred different - 60 kilogram stashes of the crystals. We did discover that you had to touch them when installing and you had to picture a specific purpose and location when you installed them or they did nothing. We didn’t know why but we’d find out more as we went along. We planned to move 1800 kilos of them from the Odin to Junior at our next waypoint. Our navigation was getting better and better with use and we were within a couple of hundred kilometers and five minutes apart at our last dropout. We were going to try to nail it the next time. We planned a long scanning period in prep at our next dropout. We wanted to get some idea of what we were getting into.
Phillips – the new young Phillips — had turned into a gold mine. We still didn’t trust his ass but he had some good ideas. From the grapevine, we heard his youth had translated to prowess with the ladies and we figured that helped overall – we’ll see. Phillips had suggestions on opening mutual trade deals and thought our original idea as going in as lone traders was ridiculous. He said we’d get rich that way but wouldn’t entice enough traders from Bellatrix to Earth. We needed regular, safe trade routes to Earth. He explained how the overpopulation from life extension would push second and third career people off Earth as explorers. He suggested, and we agreed that we find the best shipyard on Bellatrix, or someone who ran one and hire them and bring them back to earth. We would need to build many more ships. He suggested we use the teaching machine or hire the talent we need. We thought we’d do both. The Odin still had plenty of passenger room so that wasn’t a problem.
Rett declared that his craft was ready for testing at the next waypoint and we told him he could do so after we scanned. We asked him if he wanted company and his ears twitched and head leaned back and he said, “It will be many revolutions before I get the smell of humanity out of my nostrils. You are an interesting people but it has been a long time. I will be content by myself I think,” he said.
Wow. He hadn’t say several sentences in a long time. He was usually Mister monosyllable. I guess he simply meant – No, Andrew thought. We came up on the last rally point and were about 50,000 kilometers from the Odin. The Odin had gotten here almost at the same time. That’s damn good and we were proud of the accuracy. Time for our sensor scans.
Damn. Our sensors displayed a plethora of ships moving and enclosures across the planet. We recorded all the concentrations and the largest, strongest enclosures. We had never found enclosures like ours on Earth however. All the alien enclosures had entrances you could walk through without the deadly effects on Earth but the ones on Earth were set up to speed up time perception/reality inside by 30 times – now up to 60 times. The most we had seen anywhere else were one to one where their enclosures provided environmental protection and protection from molecular disruptors though not lasers. We weren’t about to give that idea away because it would be too easy to copy. It wouldn’t be long before all these Enclosures had our ability but, for some reason, they didn’t have it yet. Society often develops blind spots. This was one of their blind spots, I guess.
Earth didn’t have this blind spot because we didn’t have any idea about what was and was not possible. We mapped out the traffic direction to and from the planet and tried to extrapolate the most frequented paths but the interstellar traffic was like a rural dirt lane compared to the intersystem traffic. Most of it went between ports on the fifth planet but an occasional ship went to the sixth or fourth planet. They must have colonies of bases there but not much else. There didn’t seem to be
much enforcement. We hailed probable authorities on the frequencies listed in the manuals and got garbled instructions on what to do. Essentially, it was, don’t run into anything on the way down. Follow the signals. There were some navigation controls but nothing as sophisticated as we had put out around Earth – like the manuals had called for – we didn’t know the manual specifications were the ideal. Anyway – we headed to the next largest port and called to find a landing site on the frequencies we detected. We asked what was available and they told us it depended on what we were willing to pay. We said we were from Earth and wanted the best.
There was a long pause and another voice came on and directed us to a spot close to the cargo terminal-rail junction. They explained there would be a daily fee, and we said fine. We planned to land both ships to on-load supplies and trade goods. We planned to sample the best of everything...in other words we wanted to be tourists for a few days before we started trading full time. UmBllatt said we needed to do that first or we’d waste a lot of time. The crew was ready for some shore leave after almost three months on board. Everyone had the obligation to give out brochures and cards and catalogs but their job also was to make a good reputation for Earth. There were so many beings that we couldn’t go around with battle armor everywhere – at least not sealed up – so no helmets worn. We had to carry the damn helmets after Eridani but what the hell. We were going to look like tourists no matter what we did.
An administrator came out to meet us and tell us what good judgment we used to land at his facility and could he see our credit. We asked what type of credit was that and he looked like someone had dumped in the punch bowl. We said we had plenty of credit worthy material – could he direct us to a place that issued credit. He said that wasn’t possible and I handed him a lamlee. That lamlee disappeared into his pocket neater a street magician could have done and Mister Niceness conjured up an assistant to escort us.
I started toward the equivalent of a credit institution – a frigging bank with couple of our soldiers in battle armor for an escort. I started to walk but stopped and asked Phillips to come with me. He knew his way around financial institutions.
We got to the bank – may as well call it that because that’s what it was, and we played twenty questions until Phillips just took over. This was his bailiwick so I went ahead and let him. He was slick. He asked security, insurance, fraud questions I never would have thought of asking. He asked for a line of credit and what to do when a credit pad was lost or stolen. He asked where they were used and how they were used. He asked a million questions. We gave them ten kilos of lamlee and we got unlimited credit pads. We could buy anything with them. They would alert when we were at a dangerously low limit. He gave us radio frequencies to call him and code words to use. We were treated like royalty. They were not accustomed to seeing beings come in with this much of a stake. They recommended guards around our ship and we said we used our own people for that but they could provide local security for us as we went touring.
We asked when the local guards would show up and how would we know they were legitimate. We transmitted the information to everyone and headed back. The bank rep did suggest a local hotel so we would all go there and check in first. It was supposed to be the best around for humanoids. All the gals were getting excited. Shiv and LeiLei were ready to roll but we had to hold them in check. The security weenies showed up two hours later and they were large humanoids – reminiscent of hairy pro-wrestlers. They about had a fight trying to carry LeiLei’s stuff. We mainly had toiletries and underclothing because we were all going to wear our suits. We decided it was like a uniform to tell us apart from inhabitants.
The hotel turned out to be a real disappointment. We thought top notch hotels would be like ours but no joy. It was clean and had toilets – sort of. The sinks and mirrors were like ours but nothing fancy. You could adjust temperature of the room and open shades but it was like a very modest, rural motel on Earth. I will say the rooms were huge but the accommodations were unimaginative. There were no 3D displays in the room, no Gideon bible, no brochures of local attractions. Phillips loved it. We asked him why and he said there was so much room for improvement – Earth would need to export some of its expertise if this was an example of their best. We had gotten the whole floor below the top floor for everyone. There was no swimming pool or workout room. It did, however, have a dynamite bar with our own bartender – just for us. There was a huge common room where we could invite people and have meetings or parties however. It was a nice feature. The common room had a large railed deck overlooking a good view of the lighted trading shops. That was nice too.
The blue-white sun was a lot brighter and bigger than Sol but this planet was so far away the days were pleasant with nice breezes. We dialed down our suits and with helmets off – the air was sweet with exotic smells and sounds. The patio was really nice. Susan came up, nuzzled me and held my arm. I could get to like this place. The atmosphere wasn’t polluted and you could see bright stars in the sky...little light pollution too. We couldn’t see Sol. It wasn’t up yet. We set our MemDexs on alert and had a pleasant and quiet first night on Bellatrix 5 – they called it Chu or something like that. I thought they had sneezed the first time they said it. Welcome to Chu. Not sure if that means the city or the planet but we’ll see soon.
The next day they trooped down to the front and the concierge equivalent recommended the hotel restaurant. Our experience with hotel restaurants suggested we should look elsewhere. He suggested a restaurant across the street but we looked at it and decided that discretion was the better part of valor. We walked down the street a bit. We were all in our white suits – even LeiLei and Shiv – we turned heads. We saw a place that looked promising. We went in and asked if we could look at the menu. They had a problem serving Shiv and LeiLei so we said we’d all leave. They changed their tune and brought out samples of meals that they served.
We ordered a lot of stuff, hoping we could eat some of it. They started bringing out dishes and some of the stuff was delicious. We tested everything and only a couple tested marginal. Shiv sat across at a table by herself. We suggested a shield to block the view of other customers and asked if they had anything live. They looked consternated but came back with something that looked like little lizards and snakes and that was fine with Shiv.
LeiLei had tastes like ours but she was finicky. She devoured anything she really liked and we ordered more of that stuff – whatever it was. We had a good meal and the servers were surprised when we authorized more credit than they asked. They did not complain. We said they ought to come to Earth to learn how to make more. We said they ought to put up a sign that said, “Favored by Earth.” They said what was Earth and we gave them a brochure. You never know.
Fat and sassy, we decided to go see the sights. There were shops and lots to see but not within walking distance. We decided to use the little taxi like transportation instead of the rail system because we didn’t want to travel so far. We hadn’t seen our security so we said screw it and loaded up seven of the little vehicles. They were taken to the equivalent of a shopping mall where they got all sorts of stuff. The security crew showed up about noon all a dither because we had gone off and left them. We suggested they missed a good meal. They huffed around and we were getting tired. We found a tavern that looked promising and headed in. We saw a small pictogram by the door that indicated humanoids and Ullumff. We couldn’t bypass such a class place even though the security folks said this was not a good area. We were more tired than concerned so we went in anyway. Security chilled when we told them we would pay for their meal.
The place was huge on the inside and there weren’t too many patrons inside at midday. The proprietor said he did not serve Vicvic or Lemsla – guess he meant LeiLei’s species. I gave him my credit pad and said drinks and food for all of us if he did. He snagged my credit pad and posted a big tab on it to make sure it was good and handed it back. He did happen to serve their kind he said – just for today. We
ordered local chilled ale, which came in tall pewter steins. It tested good and tasted even better. We started quaffing down a few. That was strong stuff. Even Shiv seemed to like it but she may have just said that – never did she how she drank a damn thing. I had never really seen her drink anything but I didn’t know then that she got most of her fluids from moisture in the air. She couldn’t do that with her suit on so I guess she needed a drink.
They were having some type of match between fierce reptile-ish creatures in the back area. The Ullumff handlers pulled them apart when Shiv walked around where the beings were betting. We asked the stakes and they told us. Some of us bet on one and some on the other – the battle was fierce. The match was over when one crushed the rear leg of another and the handlers pulled them apart wearing heavy, armored mittens.
We paid up or collected our winnings and invited all of the patrons in the place to have drinks on us. More Ullumff were coming in and we were starting to feel the drinks. Shiv asked the handler of the injured creature if she could buy him for lunch. He said it was ruined anyway and named some astronomical price. She offered half and he swapped the beast for her credit pad. They made their deal and Shiv took the fighting creature without gloves. It was snapping and thrashing until she bit its head off and sat down to a quiet lunch in a rear, corner table. We had ordered everything they had on the menu and the stuff was starting to come out. Some of it smelled delicious and some nasty. A lot of it was good but I guess it was just flavored by hunger. We drank some more and ate some more. More and more Ullumff came in and were really surprised when most of us spoke their language. We told them we were from Earth but they had apparently never heard of it. I smelled something acrid and passed out as my MemDex set off a warning.