The Lost Stories:
A Series of Cosmic Adventures
Karl El-Koura
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011 Karl El-Koura
To my amo Saad.
Introduction
“Feghoots” is the name given to a certain kind of story: usually a bit silly, often contrived, always ending in a groan-inducing pun. In bad cases, a feghoot isn't a story but a joke; in better cases, a feghoot is an interesting story in its own right, with the pun-ending adding a layer of detective story, where instead of figuring out whodunit, the reader tries to anticipate the final line.
I didn't know any of that when I wrote “Lost Eternity,” the first story in this collection. It was 1994, I was 15 years old, and I'd decided I wanted to write for a living. Although young, I was smart enough to know the steps I needed to go through to achieve my goal. Step 1: write a story. Step 2: get it published. Step 3: don't lose your head when you become rich and famous. To tackle Step 1, I thought of one of my favorite authors at the time, Isaac Asimov, and some of his stories, especially the ones that ended in puns. Those were clever, funny, and—best of all—very short. The latter quality appealed to me on two levels: first, I figured a magazine would be more likely to take a chance on an unknown author when the story was a short-short, and, second, with perhaps a bit of laziness tempering my ambition, I felt it would be easier to write a shorter story than a longer one. That summer I assigned my mind the task of thinking up a good story and a good pun. Why I picked a religious pun, I'm not sure. I was born into a Christian family and have been a lifelong believer, but it would only be a few years later that I really embraced my spiritual side and faith became a powerful force in my life.
Step 2. I don't remember how long I deliberated on where I wanted my first story to be published. I settled on The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, the top speculative fiction magazine at the time and, unbeknownst to me, the magazine that had originally published Richard Bretnor's Ferdinand Feghoot stories (the ones that give this type of story its name).
I heard from The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction at the end of the summer. Strangely, bewilderingly, amazingly, they didn't want to publish my little story (so much for Step 2, let alone Step 3). But school was starting up again and there were assignments to complete, exams to study for, sports to play, and girls to figure out (not necessarily in that order), and I decided to go back to Step 1 when I had a bit of free time (the idea that one could send a story rejected by one professional magazine to another professional magazine, an obvious and universal practice among writers, took me a few years to figure out). When my brother, who is two years my senior, was looking for work to publish in our high school's poetry and short story anthology, which he and his friends were editing, I submitted “Lost Eternity.”
That publication led to one of the greatest writing memories I have. My uncle Saad, who was attending university in Alabama, came to visit us in Ottawa, Ontario during the summer of 1995. The anthology was on the shelf in our computer room and when my uncle found out I had a story in it, he wanted to read my work. I remember standing beside him while he read the story, stopping every once in a while to laugh out loud or to tell me he liked a particular line. Although it was more than a decade and a half ago, I can remember exactly which parts made him laugh: the words “Gamma Bamma,” the mix of colors that made up the plain-yellow bush, the pun at the end. Perhaps this is the kind of early encouragement any artist needs to keep pursuing and trying to perfect their craft. For me, from someone I really admired (my uncle was the personification of cool, as far as I was concerned), that reaction was priceless. This book is dedicated to the memory of my amo Saad, “amo” being the Arabic word for uncle. In December of that same year, he and some friends were driving home in bad weather and the driver lost control of the car, which swerved off the road and crashed into a tree. The tree collapsed onto my uncle, who was napping in the back seat, and killed him instantly. I have many cherished memories of my uncle, but watching him read through my story, enjoy it (or at least fake it really well), and then laugh out loud when he came to the end is a particularly special and meaningful one.
I liked “Lost Eternity” and, although you only see glimpses of him in that first story, I liked the main character. Years later, a man named B. Joseph Fekete was editing a magazine of Christian speculative fiction called GateWay S-F. I'd sold Joe a few original stories, and one day I remembered “Lost Eternity.” I sent it to him to see if he'd be interested in publishing it. He was interested, and he and his assistant editor asked if I, in turn, would be interested in turning the story into a series.
Over the course of the next five years, Joe published six more “Lost” stories, the writing of which was often instigated by Joe sending me friendly emails wondering when he could expect the next installment.
We discussed putting together a chapbook once I'd felt I could wrap up the series, but unfortunately, in 2006, circumstances caused Joe to shut down the magazine and withdraw from his publishing work before that could happen.
Here is the complete series, from the first story that made my uncle laugh, to the ones Joe thankfully hassled me to write, to the final arc that, I hope you'll agree, take the series from silly but fun into territory a little more serious. That's the danger with God: you introduce Him as a minor character to help you sell a joke, and soon you realize He's taken over the whole show.
Karl El-Koura
August 2011
Ottawa, Ontario (Canada)
Lost Eternity
My name is James Kollins, and I am captain of the galactic warship DeVille. This morning I received a top-priority message from Earth ordering me to take my ship to Eden and destroy its one and only colony. The Planopsychologists had rated Eden high in the Grumbles-Against-Earth category, which meant that if a rebellion was not imminent, it was at least somewhat possible.
Many of our technological secrets, some related to the Board of Terrestrial Defense and Offense, were in the heads and computers of these settlers. If the Other Side were to get their hands on those secrets, their technology would rival ours and then there'd be no end to this war. That was justification enough for me to cut my vacation short and jump to Eden. But I couldn't cut short the vacations of my crew; better captains than I have thrown away their lives in futile attempts to force their crew back to work before their shore leave was up.
Not that it mattered, as I took the DeVille to Eden and made short work of the fifteen hundred or so settlers, destroying their colony in the better half of an hour. Not bad, considering I was not only flying solo but also trying to follow my favorite holodrama, Captain Courageous and the Women Who Love Him. The colonists took a few shots at my ship—repairing the damage they caused made me miss the last ten minutes of this week's Captain Courageous, for which trouble I wish damnation on their souls.
Though certain I had killed them all, orders are orders, so I proceeded to scan the planet centimeter-by-measly-centimeter. In an unexplored section on the east side of the planet, I picked up strange energy readings.
Landing my ship some two kilometers from the readings, I trekked by foot until I came to their origin—a huge, green and blue (with dashes of red here and there) yellow bush.
The bush emitted high frequencies of Gamma Bamma radiation, from which I deduced that it was recently hit by a sub-photonic laser—which could also explain why I saw nothing out of the ordinary (as far as bushes go) using only my eyes.
Being the personification of bravery I am reputed to be, and in defiance of the radiation that would scare away lesser men, I strode up to the bush and fearlessly touched it. As soon as I made contact, I heard a voice in my head. I pulled my hand away quickly and cut it off before the storm of words could overwhelm me.
After regaining my wits, I touched it again—but slower this time.
The same voice spoke to me. It hardly made any sense and I had to labor to understand, but by slow degrees I was able to begin making sense of the downpour of words.
To sum it up, the voice said it was called Lord and that, if I left the garden and then the planet, and promised that no other human being would set foot on its world ever again, it would grant me eternal life.
Which was great, except it wouldn't let go of me: both my hands were now touching the bush, and try as I might, I couldn't wrench them free.
“Before leave, about self, tell me,” I finally made out.
Poor lonely guy, I thought, and started to recount my trials and tribulations through this life, my joys and my failures. I began with my childhood, and worked up from there, sometimes having to repeat myself twice or even three times before Lord could get things straight. I didn't mind; I figured it was good practice for writing my memoirs.
When I was finally finished, Lord said, “Interesting is this. Cannot give eternal life, though.”
I was stupefied. I'm as modest as you'd like, but I know who I am, and nothing in all my recounting served to put me in a bad light.
“Lord!” I said, heating up. “We had a deal. I'll leave this planet, and I'll do my damnedest to make sure you're left alone. So explain to me why you won't keep your end of the bargain!”
There was a momentary pause before Lord replied, “My hands are tied. You warship the DeVille!”
Lost Inheritance
Captain Courageous was giving his patented suggestive smile to a beautiful, scantily-clad, green-skinned alien when my ready room doors beeped.
Without any effort to hide my irritation, I said, “Yes? What is it?”
The doors split apart to reveal my second-in-command, Winston.
“Captain, I—” he began, then saw what was on the holo. “Oh, I didn't realize . . . I'm sorry to disturb you, sir.”
I nodded for him to go on with a gracious smile, but made a mental note. If he couldn't remember when Captain Courageous was on, he wasn't the kind of officer I wanted serving under me.
“First things first,” he said. “Your request to have the DeVille rechristened has been denied.”
“What!” I said, coming out of my chair. “What's wrong with the Ilovelord—that's a fine name for a ship!”
Winston shrugged. “Second, we've been ordered to the Planet Meekton.”
He handed me a report, but instead of reading it, I said, “Oh?”
“They've scored a 9.5 on the gee-a-vee scale.”
In my entire career, I'd never heard such a high Grumbles-Against-Earth rating.
“What's their grumble?” I said, glancing at the report.
“Something about getting what's theirs. The Board of Terrestrial Defense and Offense is keeping them from their so-called inheritance.”
“We're to take them out?”
“Not according to orders,” Winston said. “We're just supposed to scare them a little.”
I put the report down and surveyed my first officer. “You've set a course already, haven't you?”
Winston nodded.
I turned and looked out the window. There was a large, mostly purplish planet spinning in space.
“That's Meekton, isn't it?”
My second-in-command nodded.
“Their Prime Minister or President or whoever's in charge is waiting to talk to me, aren't they?”
Nod. “Prime Minister.”
In a quiet, resigned voice, I ordered the holo to turn off.
“Okay,” I said. “Fill me in.”
Winston filled me in. The problem started when religion was brought to their planet a little over a year ago. Instead of trying to better themselves, these people were trying to benefit materially from the work of our missionaries.
They thought our ship was there to negotiate a settlement—hah! I'd show them a settlement.
And what an ugly lot! They've got three eyes and no nose and a mouth too high on their egg-shaped heads. Not to mention sickly-green skin. One of them glared at me from the four-meter-high screen in the main room.
“About time,” he said.
“About time?” I said. “Are you so anxious to have your planet destroyed?”
The frown dropped from his face, then reappeared after the moment of shock passed. “What did you say?”
“Well, let's get on with it,” I said, turning to my weapons officer. “Destroy this excuse for a planet.”
My weapons officer nodded and started keying in the command to launch torpedoes. I hoped Winston had briefed him and he knew that I was just bluffing. If not, I figured, it'd be his neck and Winston's, not mine. And this current predicament would pretty much have resolved itself.
“Wait!” the Prime Minister said. “Stop!”
I turned to face the screen.
“Yes?” I said, impatiently.
“You can't do this!” he said. “We're supposed to negotiate a deal!”
“Okay,” I said. “Stop bothering the Board and your planet doesn't vaporize to dust just yet. Deal?”
They didn't have spaceships or satellites or any other way to defend themselves. My weapons officer's finger was poised over the launch button. He had a hungry look on his face.
With a resigned sigh, the Prime Minister nodded.
I motioned to my communications officer to take the Minister's ugly mug off the screen.
Later that day, the report came in from the Board. Evaluations at Meekton showed a drop in gee-oh-vee. It was hovering just above nine point oh, and dropping. Not bad for a day's work; at the very least, it gave the Board time to decide what their next move would be.
Even though I had missed a good chunk of this week's Captain Courageous, I was happy. The Meek might indeed inherit the Earth—but not on my watch they won't.
Lost Time
There's something that confuses me,” my second-in-command Winston said, when on the holo Captain Courageous turned to wink at the cameras and the scene faded to black.
I figured Winston had never had the talk (shame on his father), so I began to prepare myself mentally to share my vast experience-based knowledge with him.
“You want to know why he winked at us, or what they're planning to do, the good captain and his scantily-clad, green-skinned companion?”
“What?” Winston said. Prior indiscretions had made me request a replacement for him, but Winston had grown on me since then. I made a mental note to remember to cancel the transfer request. “No.”
“Then what?” I said.
“The Grumbles-Against-Earth ratings. Some people call them gee-ah-vee and others call them gee-oh-vee. Which one is it? Ah or oh? And what's the vee stand for? Shouldn't it be gee-ah-eee or tee or something?”
I stared at him. I made a mental note to remember to not remember to cancel the request to have Winston transferred out. Anyone who had the time to think about such things was not someone I wanted as first officer.
“That's a good point, Winston,” I said, standing up, which was his cue to leave.
After he'd gone, I sunk back into my chair and wondered when I'd get some rest. Two episodes ago—Captain Courageous played on a weekly schedule—my crew and I had taken some lost time. It was unauthorized leave, of course—how else could I get vacation time?—so when the call from the Board came, it was me and me alone who went back to work, taking care of some rowdy colonists in an efficient but humane way. It was such a close call that I'd sworn off ever taking any more lost time.
My wallowing in self-pity was interrupted by a beep from the desk, followed by a drawn-out gurgling sound, like a cat dying slowly but painfully. I pushed off the obstructions—papers and books and a Captain Courageous figurine—freeing the screen, which lifted off the desk.
“Admiral Ed!” I said. His face had already materialized; he'd probably been staring at oak for the last minute.
“Long time no see, Wick,” Ed said.
The good admiral calls me Wick because that was my nickname in the Academy. I earned the name because I was hot as a lit wick (and not because I was stringy as a wick, as some—the admiral, for example—would tell it). He calls me Wick because it's a reminder of the good old days, and of the closeness we share now because of the closeness we shared then. And also because he's an idiot who can't let an old joke die.
“So what's the good news, Admiral?” I said, stressing his new title. His promotion had come as a blow to me; I had been voted Most Likely to Succeed (and legitimately so, without tampering with the tabulation program in any way whatsoever, as some—the admiral, for example—would tell it).
“I'm leaving for Prima next week,” the admiral said. “And I'd like you to come with me. We can tell old stories about the Academy days. You can make up stuff about the girls you dated back then, and I'll pretend to believe you.”
I looked at him suspiciously. How had he known I'd been thinking about vacationing? Maybe the doctor ratted me out, I thought; told the Board I have high blood pressure; he's stressed out, needs a break. That rotten liar! That scoundrel! I'd skipped all my physicals; how could he know if I was stressed out or not?
“You got clearance for me?” I said. I'd used up all my leave time and more several years ago, chasing a treasure that wasn't there to be found. If I worked the next ten years straight, I still wouldn't work off half my debt.
“No,” the admiral said, and I felt my heart sink. “But I can get it. I'm an admiral now, remember?” He winked at me.
But the next day, he didn't look so smug.
“No clearance, huh?” Somehow, it didn't feel so bad. It was good for Ed to be chopped down to size, even if it meant I wouldn't be going to Prima.
“Sorry, Wick. But it won't go through the system, you know? Not until your leave is out of the red.”
“I guess it's true what they say, eh?”
“What's that?” the admiral said, though I felt he already knew.
Reaching to cut the connection, I said glumly, “No rest for the Wick, Ed.”
Lost Word
Jack,” I said, forcing a smile as my brother didn't fail to materialize on the middle pad in the teleportation room. Teleportation was safe, but, once every billion times, something would go wrong and the particles would be scattered throughout the universe. The person's body, life, personality, thought, condescension . . . all would be lost forever.
“Bonjour, Wick.” Jack's eyes were bloodshot and he stumbled as he stepped down from the pad, but it was due to the effects of being teleported, I knew. Jack was too perfect to ever drink past his limit.
Ignoring his use of my nickname (because I'm a bigger man), I said, “Welcome to my humble warship, Jack. Classification: galaxy; maximum speed: oh-four-two; maximum firepower level: planet-destruction.”
“Impressionnant,” he said, but didn't look like he really thought so.
I grimaced. My crew and I had spent the last week on hands and knees and ladders, scrubbing floors, bulkheads, and ceilings in anticipation of his arrival. We'd been so busy cleaning, we'd even ignored three distress signals and spent hours wiping all traces of the calls from our logs. But it was wasted effort, it seemed. If Jack noticed how everything around us sparkled in its cleanliness, he didn't seem to care. Maybe if we'd spent our time writing out the complete works of Guy de Maupassant on the walls of my ship instead, I thought, maybe then he'd notice.
Taking his briefcase, I said, “So how's the family, Jack?”
“Très bien,” he said. Then, as if for my benefit: “Very well.” Then, for his distinct benefit: “Marie says ‘Allo.’”
The way God had planned the universe, Marie was supposed to marry me. The first time I laid eyes on her—she had come to pick up Jack for their date—I knew she was the one for me.
“I'm Jack,” I told her at the time. “I'll be ready to go in just a few minutes.”
She smiled and told me I was cute. Then, just as I had warmed her up and was about to move in for the kill, here comes Jack in his tweed jumpsuit and carrying his book of French poetry. And there I went, pushed aside like a doorstop that's no longer needed; and there they went, to their date, to their marriage, to their happy life together.
“‘Allo’ right back,” I said. “Sorry I couldn't make it to the wedding.”
Jack shrugged. “That was ten years ago.”
“Has it been that long?”
He nodded.
Now that his eyes were no longer as bloodshot, I saw that Jack had had them surgically altered: tiny words were printed on each eyeball. The letters were translucent blue in color, hard to see the first time around but impossible to ignore once you'd noticed them. Looking into Jack's eyes, one literally saw poetry.
“Nice eyes,” I said, my voice full of sarcasm and disdain.
“Merci, Jim,” he said, with a little smile. “Marie likes them a lot.” After a brief pause, he said, “It's a piece I wrote myself, intitulé ‘The Lost Word of the Lifelong Lover.’”
I read the poem while Jack tried to stand still and not blink.
“So what is it?” I said, when I was done reading.
“What?”
“The lost word. What is it?”
“Ah, le mot perdu. It's whatever you think it is, as the reader. That's the beauty of it. In reading the poem, and coming up with an answer to what the lost mot might be, you learn as much about yourself as you do about the author. You in fact become co-author of the poem.”
“Fascinating,” I said.
We stepped into the chute and rose to the top floor. Once in my ready room, I offered Jack the seat in front of my desk.
Jack looked at it questioningly; the chair was very low to the ground. Gently I reminded him that there were species in this universe who weren't blessed, like him, with legs.
He took the seat quietly and opened his briefcase on his lap. I walked around the table and sat at my regular-sized captain's chair.
Jack tried to place some papers on the desk between us. His head barely reached above the edge of the table. He looked so ridiculous in that tiny chair that I was glad I was having the whole thing videotaped. My first officer Winston had made the chair the perfect size—not too low, not too high. Winston was back in my good books. It was all I could do to stop myself from bursting out in laughter. Jack was so ridiculous and so gullible—as if I'd let any legless species enter my ready room!
I wasn't laughing when Jack finally managed to push the papers across the table.
“What's this, a book?” I said.
“Just read it, s'il vous plaît,” he said.
After reading the first paragraph, I said, “It's all like this? All seventy pages?” It was the most boring, driest writing I'd read since Jack used to show me his poetry in high school.
“Oui.”
“Then no,” I said. “I refuse.” Pushing the papers away from me, I continued: “I didn't want to sell the house anyway, especially not to these people, for whom a good old electronic signature isn't good enough. Besides, that home is filled not only with our own personal childhood memories, but with centuries of family history. It's a monument and it should stay within our family, with us, in the custodianship into which it was entrusted, to be treasured by our descendants for ages to come.”
“Your take is on the last page,” Jack said.
My take was the last page.
After I'd signed the papers, I said, half-heartedly, “You sure you can't stay longer, Jack?”
“Non,” Jack said, putting the papers into his briefcase and—tragically—getting up from the hilariously tiny chair. “Marie awaits.”
Jack couldn't say three words without mentioning her name, it seemed. I walked him back to the teleporter room and waited long enough to hear the confirmation from his ship. That was twice he'd teleported now, but no jackpot.
Later that day, Winston and I watched the recording I'd made and howled over how ridiculous Jack looked. The video only got funnier the more beers we had. But then Winston said something stupid and jumped right back into my bad books, undoing all the good he'd done in building that tiny chair.
We'd been laughing at Jack and I mentioned the translucent letters in his eyes and his stupid poem. But Winston stopped laughing and told me, in his tongue-loosened, artificially-brave drunken state, that my poems weren't much better.
“So?” I said, trying to focus my eyes on him, in case I decided I wanted to punch him.
“So,” Winston said, slurring his words a little. “You should get yourself fixed up—you know?—before you look cri-hic!-tically at the mot in your brother's eye.”
Lost Ship
The week got off to a bad start when I checked the listings beamed from Yoo and saw that this week's episode of Captain Courageous and the Women Who Love Him would be a repeat. A week without a new Captain Courageous to look forward to was a week best spent in bed.
But with an interstellar war raging in the depths of space, I had to captain my warship and not sulk. Or so my first officer, Winston, kept insisting. By Wednesday, I couldn't ignore his nagging anymore and finally tossed off the covers.
“Very well, Winston,” I said. “Despite the crushing disappointment I've suffered, somehow I've found the strength to pull myself together again. Your captain is returned to you.”
I slapped him on the shoulder and went to shower and shave while Winston returned to the bridge. Although I had already requested a transfer for Winston, I now decided to recall those orders. Winston had done a splendid job covering for me over the last few days. The Captain's Logs he'd filed by cutting and splicing audio from my previous logs were so convincing I half-believed them myself! (Then again, that he'd lie to protect his commanding officer meant that Winston had a devious streak; I must remember to take note of that character trait in his next performance report).
When I strode onto the bridge, Winston said loudly, “Battled off that nasty virus, have you, Captain?”
I had no idea what he was talking about. “I haven't been sick, Winston,” I started to say. Then I looked around at the other officers on the bridge. “By which I mean, I have indeed been sick, and am still very, very ill, but it'll take more than some bug to keep me off my own bridge for more than a few days.”
Led by Winston, the officers cheered. I can be pretty quick-thinking under pressure.
“Status report,” I said to Winston when I sat down in the captain's chair.
“A small ship, perhaps from the Other Side, has trespassed into our space. We're on an intercept course, ETA two hours.”
The ship was very tiny indeed—so small it didn't even have a weapons system. Personally, I'd be embarrassed to captain a ship like that. Although size isn't everything, my ship was thirty times the size of theirs, which is something.
“Hail them,” I said. Then: “You have one second to identify yourselves or we will destroy you.”
Although I am by nature a pacifist, I had a feeling that this ship was from the Other Side, and those people only respond to threats of violence. True to form, before the full second had passed, the ship returned our hail.
“Pleese don't deestroy us,” they said in that peculiar Other Side accent. “Wee are a reesearch sheep gone eestray, a modeest veessel. Wee got lost in thee Peebular system, wheere thee radiation preeved too much for our meegre deefences. Without navigation seestems, wee treed to feend our way home, but obviously miscalculeeted.”
Winston leaned across and whispered in my ear. “We should escort them back to Other Side space. This is a great opportunity to extend an olive branch, a goodwill gesture that may be the beginning of the end of this bloody war.”
Winston had a way of saying things that made me angry. Who said anyone wanted an end to this bloody war? Certainly no one serving on my ship, a warship. What use was there for a warship or its captain in peacetime? I saw past Winston's words to the insubordination underneath.
But this time, there was more to my displeasure than Winston's regular rebellion. Here was a golden opportunity floating right beneath his nose, but Winston couldn't see it for what it was. It doesn't bode well for my succession plan when the Board finally wakes up and realizes what a great admiral I'd make.
I stood up with so much force that I almost knocked Winston to the ground.
“Ship thirty times smaller than mine!” I said. “Prepare to be boarded. Anyone who resists will be shot with lethal weapons, as those are the only kind we carry. Anyone who seems to resist will also be shot, as we can't take chances and my security personnel are a trigger-happy bunch. My suggestion is that you all lie face down—now is a good time—and be completely still while my crew boards your ship.”
To his credit, Winston gave the order to assemble and make ready a boarding party before turning to me and saying, “Captain, I don't understand.”
“And that's why I'm captain and you're not, Winston.” In fact, Winston had me down as a reference, so I knew how many times he'd been up for the position. And if it was something I'd said that caused him to be passed over all those times—well, I'm not about to apologize for telling the truth.
“Captain?” Winston said.
“Hm? Oh, yes. Like I was saying, this is a great find. We'll take it back to Earth and reap the rewards.” If this isn't worth an admiralty, I thought, I don't know what is.
“I still don't understand, Captain.”
“Don't you read the Bible, Winston?”
Winston nodded, but I knew he was lying.
“If you read the Bible, Winston, you'd know that there's nothing quite like finding a lost sheep.”
Lost Opportunity
In my long and distinguished career, I have seen many admirals snarl, scowl, swear, and shake their heads in disappointment. But I'd never seen one this angry before.
“This is a disaster, Kollins,” Admiral Potrowski said, spitting in his anger and pounding his clenched fist against the desk in front of him. “This is an unmitigated disaster.”
“I agree with you, sir,” I said, wiping away spittle that had landed on my forehead. “When we found the ship, I was bedridden—ill with a nasty virus. My first officer was in charge; it was his decision to bring the lost ship back to Earth. Had he chosen to consult with me, even in my state, I would have advised him to escort the ship back to Other Side space, as a show of goodwill.”
The admiral shook his head slowly, seeming to calm a little with each swing of his neck. “If only, Captain.” With a tired and wistful sigh, he added, “We really lost an opportunity here. Returning that ship might have helped put an end to this bloody war.”
“And isn't that what we all want, Admiral?”
My words seemed to snap the admiral out of his pensive mood. Standing up, he said, “You're captain of the DeVille, Kollins. You must be held accountable for its actions.”
“Of course, sir,” I said, cursing the admiral silently but colorfully in my head.
“You and your crew will remain in this system until the Board can think of an appropriate punishment. As you can imagine, we've got our hands full doing damage control for this disaster you've brought on our heads.”
“Yes, sir.” I turned to leave.
“Captain.”
I turned around slowly.
“Don't worry about your first officer,” the admiral said. “This blunder of his won't soon be forgotten.”
“He's young and inexperienced,” I said, deferentially. “I hope the Board takes that into consideration when deciding his fate, sir.”
“You're a good captain, Kollins,” the admiral said, softening a little. “But don't allow your affection for this Winston to take you down with him.”
With a nod, I turned once more and walked out of the admiral's office.
My senior staff was waiting for me at the Tiberia, a bar in Luna City that catered mostly to officers of the Board.
Their expectant smiles faded as I walked through the doors, my shoulders drooping and a sour look on my face.
“Bad news?” Winston said.
“I don't know,” I said, suddenly slapping him on the back and smiling as wide as my lips would allow. “Would you consider it bad news that the Board is so thrilled with our capture, they're rewarding us with some vacation time?”
With a cheer, the senior officers raised their glasses in my name and I graciously suffered their pats on my back.
“Listen,” I said, turning very serious. “They'll need to make a show of disapproval. The Other Side has spies everywhere, and if they thought the Board was happy with this capture—which they are, they are!—that might cause the Other Side to escalate this war before the Board is ready for them. Just be aware that anything you hear is for show only; deep down, the Board is thrilled with us.”
Again they raised their drinks and again they cheered my name.
When the other officers were gone, Winston turned to me with a very serious look on his face and said, “I was wrong, Captain.”
Despite his time with me, Winston had never learned the crucial lesson that one never admitted it when one was wrong. “It takes a big man to say that,” I said. “Good for you and forget about it. I know I have.”
“Thank you, Captain.”
“We all make mistakes, Winston. The important thing is to learn from them.”
“Yes, Captain,” he said. “I guess I was just anxious for peace—”
“Isn't that what we're all anxious for?” I interrupted.
“It is, Captain. But you were able to maintain your objectivity, and I allowed my feelings to cloud my thinking.” Winston was becoming very depressed, which usually didn't happen until he'd had a lot more to drink. “May I speak freely, Captain?”
I nodded graciously.
“Most captains don't make decisions all by themselves,” Winston said. “They consult, they listen to their first officers and advisers. They think things through. But you . . . you seem to know exactly what to do without talking to anyone else, and even when”—here he became very sheepish—“you're given bad advice.”
“Some may question my management style,” I said, mentally noting that Winston himself had obviously questioned it, yet another sign of his ever-present insubordination. “But I've learned an important lesson, a lesson you might learn too if only you read the Good Book.”
“Oh?”
“It's very simple,” I said. “I keep my own counsel; that way, I will always have the wisdom of a solo man.”
Lost Reward
When the last of my crew had left the ship, off to visit family and friends and mistresses, I made ready to pilot the DeVille myself. The Board could take all the time in the world to decide my punishment, I figured, but I wasn't fool enough to be around when they made up their minds. In a large universe such as ours, there are more than enough places to escape to, places where one can change one's name and appearance, places where one can live out a whole new life, a life that didn't include whatever punishment the Board had cooked up for one in their depraved minds.
It didn't even occur to me to wonder if my punishment would be worse if the Board caught me trying to escape . . . until the console on my chair's armrest beeped. I hadn't made it past Jupiter and already they'd caught me.
For an instant, I considered ignoring the beep. But whatever the Board already had in mind, I knew, it couldn't be worse than having hundreds of the Board's ships descend on me and turn my ship into a dust cloud of insubordination.
“Yes?” I said, touching the contact on my armrest and trying to make my voice sound casual.
Admiral Potrowski's face appeared on the main screen, looking nowhere near as angry as I expected.
“Captain,” he said, his voice mild and curious. “Didn't I give you strict orders to remain on Earth?”
“Yes, sir. But we were getting anomalous readings from the ship's engines; I wanted to run them around for a while, to discover the source of the problem.”
The admiral looked unconvinced for a moment, but then he shrugged it off. “Whatever, Kollins. Not even your regular defiance can make me angry with you right now. All thanks to your first officer.”
“Winston?”
“Do you have any other first officers you haven't told us about, Captain?” I'd never before heard the admiral make a joke. “Yes, of course, Winston. Put him on, will you?”
“I can't,” I said, cringing as the admiral's face clouded over. “Due to the dangerous nature of these tests I'm running on the ship's engines, I ordered my crew off the ship.”
“Well how do we reach him?” the admiral said, full of enough excitement and happiness to make anyone—even someone as equanimous as myself—want to burst with anger. “There's a celebration in his honor and a captainship waiting for him, his choice of any vessel in the fleet!”
“What? Why? What's happened?”
“What's happened is that the ship Winston captured and brought back to the Board—the ship that you would have returned to Other Side space—was not a research vessel at all.”
“No?” I said, gulping.
“No. Do you know who we found aboard the ship?”
“Who?” I closed my eyes and prayed that the admiral would say any name except “Dr. Evan.”
“Dr. Evan, that's who! He was disguised, of course: different skin color, different height, different build. But DNA isn't so easily disguised. And I think I can tell you, Captain, without offending my modesty, that it was my idea and my order to run everyone through the tests.”
“Evan!” I said, cursing. One of our top-ranking military scientists, Evan had gone missing a few weeks before. It was hoped that he'd been murdered and dumped into deep space; it was feared that he had defected to the Other Side. Too recently, another research scientist named Urth had tried to defect to the Other Side. I myself had entertained hopes of capturing Dr. Urth and bringing him back, but that honor went to my long-time friend—and once fellow captain—Ed, who for his efforts got an immediate promotion to a nice, cushy admiralty, where he could sit on his butt and watch episodes of Captain Courageous all day.
“We've already contacted the Other Side and they're disavowing all knowledge of the ship and its crew, sure confirmation that this mission to help Dr. Evan defect goes all the way to the top levels of the Other Side government.”
“Evan!” I said. His capture was a gold-find, an instant promotion—but now my witless first officer was getting the credit and the reward, even though both rightfully belonged to me.
“Get in touch with your first officer, Captain,” the admiral said. “You can tell him the good news yourself.”
“Admiral,” I said, forcing my voice to sound calm and steady. “There's something I have to tell you about my first officer Winston.”
“Yes?”
“He's dead, sir.”
“Dead?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“By his own hand. Winston had many faults, one of which was a cowardly disposition. Unable to live like a man, to face the consequences of his actions as we all must, he chose instead to end his own life.”
“No!”
“Yes.”
“What a tragedy.”
“Indeed, Admiral. Very tragic. But we need to keep this quiet, to protect his memory and his family. As luck would have it, Winston has a twin brother I can hire for the post of first officer; no one need know about Winston's—the dead Winston's—act of shameful cowardice.”
“Winston has a twin brother?”
“Yes.”
“A twin brother you're going to hire to be your new first officer?”
“Yes.” He stared at me for a very long time; I could almost hear his thoughts. Maybe Winston hadn't committed suicide—but maybe he had. Maybe Winston's suicide wouldn't be blamed on the admiral and his ominous threats—but maybe it would. In cases like this, it was best not to ask too many questions and just leave things nice and covered up.
He shrugged. “As you think best, Captain.”
“Thank you, sir.”
When the admiral's face disappeared from the screen, I sunk into my captain's chair with a sigh. It was close, but I had managed to save Winston's immortal soul. Had I allowed Winston to attend a celebration in his honor and receive a captaincy and his choice of ship in the fleet—all on false pretenses—I would have made out of him a liar and a thief of the credit that rightly belonged to me.
Yet I couldn't deny that I was disappointed. Once, I had missed my chance to be rewarded in Urth; now, I wouldn't be rewarded in Evan either.
Lost Empire
Gathering my crew back to my ship was much harder than it should have been. If I was away on vacation and my boss was looking for me, I wouldn't answer my phone either, but really, I expected more from them.
Eventually I tracked them all down and we were ready to get underway.
“Neat mission, eh, Winston?” I said to my first officer, the next day. We were escorting the ship we'd captured back to Other Side space. Of course, we weren't sending it back with its original crew.
“I don't know, Captain.”
“What do you mean? It's brilliant. They were helping Dr. Evan defect to their side; well, if they want him so badly, we'll give him to them. Or at least, someone who looks just like him.”
“That's just it, Captain,” Winston-the-worrywart said. “What if they figure it out? This could escalate the war to disastrous proportions. We should have sent the ship and crew back, minus Dr. Evan. The ceasefire we have is tenuous at best, but it has averted immeasurable bloodshed in the last few months. Don't you think this could jeopardize all of that? I just can't escape the feeling that this is a dangerous game we're playing. We might not have that much to gain and we have so much to lose.”
I was accustomed to Winston's constant second-guessing, but this was getting to be too much. How could I work with a first officer whose main joy in life was spoiling any enthusiasm I cared to show? It all made me so mad I wanted to scream at him.
“You raise a very good point, Winston,” I said. “However, we have our orders and I intend to carry them out.”
“Of course, Captain. But it's not too—”
Whatever insolent phrase Winston was about to say never made it out of his mouth.
“Captain,” Nikki, my very beautiful and long-legged, although tragically not green-skinned, tactical officer said.
“Yes?” I said, turning my gaze—very happily—away from Winston and onto Nikki.
“We're being followed, sir. The ship just appeared on my screen, but it's gaining on us at an incredible rate.”
Despite his tendency toward worrywarting, Winston was good under pressure.
“Silent alert,” he said immediately. If I were stranded on a desert island and could only pick one person to be with me, Winston would be my last choice. But if I were stranded on a desert island and was being attacked by savages and had run out of food and could only pick one person and it couldn't be a woman, Winston would be close to the top of the list.