'I thought you knew!'
'I’ve been cataloguing!
You’re the leader! You’re supposed to know these things!'
'You know I haven’t been feeling well.'
'You aren’t the one who was shot!'
'Trust you to think of yourself!'
We glared at each other as the lights powered up. Slowly, peripheral awareness returned and we realiseda strange man carrying a person in a cryoglove was standing in front of the blue box. He was thin, with unusual spiked hair and a brown striped suit.
He stared at us with an incredulous expression.
'You!' he said.'I know you! Wait, don’t tell me! Gary and Unstuffed? Harry and Full Stop?' He gave a little hop. 'I know! Garron and Unstoffe! The Bilkos from Ribos! Well, fancy meeting you here!'
'You have us at a disadvantage, sir,'said Garron, struggling to his feet, 'but that’s beside the point. You’ve committed an unlawful search and seizure, per Alliance regulation 221-beta, clause 578, pertaining to the unwarranted damage of, and removal of personal property from, a privately owned vessel. I demand you and your associates leave this ship and…'
'Sorry! This is a person, not property, and whoever is boarding this ship –it’s the Graff Vynda-K’s, isn’t it? What a terrible man! Anyway, you’d better look sharp, ’cause whoever is boarding this ship, they aren’t with me.'
At that he kicked the door of the box open and carried his burden inside. As the door closed he cheerily called, 'Good-bye!'
The heavy footsteps –scarily suggesting beings running in formation –approached as Garron and I gaped at the box. For once, we were speechless. The nerve! The lack of consideration! The–
'Garron! Was that a girl he was carrying?'
'Let’s ask him.'
We dashed to the box. Garron made a ‘let’s calm down’gesture, straightened his collar and drew a breath. Then he rapidly but politely knocked.
'Excuse my intrusion,' he said, 'but might we have a word?'
He listened intently. From the stair at the end of the corridor I heard the boarders draw near.
'I
don’t think he can hear us,' I said. 'Knock louder.'
Garron pounded on the door. 'Hello! Perhaps we could meet a mutually agreeable settlement?'
Garron pounded on the door. 'Hello! Perhaps we could meet a mutually agreeable settlement?'
The hatch atop the stairs slid open. I saw dark silhouettes and glowing green eyes. Garron saw it too. 'Hello, young man? Is the Doctor inside? He’s a dear friend and would doubtless spare no effort to aid us!'
A muffled voice replied through the door. 'Well, that’s rather overstating the case, isn’t it? I mean, I don’t take the word‘friend’ lightly and... say!'
The door cracked open. 'Have either of you seen anything unusual? A small glowing cube, perhaps?'
As Garron vainly tried to wedge his sandal-clad foot in the door I replied, 'Yes! I know exactly where it is!'
The dark figures reached the level deck and approached. Three robots in security armour, bland but friendly human faces. The one in the lead levelled a large weapon, a gun of some sort, and in a pleasant voice said, 'Pardon the interruption but please identify! You are the proprietors of this vessel?'
The man in the box said, 'Well, I see you’re busy. Never mind! I’ll find it on my own! Ta!' and pushed the door closed. It clicked with a distinct air of finality.
'I repeat for your convenience: you are the proprietors of this vessel?'
'What?' Garron, still staring at the shut door, said, 'Yes, of course we... wait!'
'Identification confirmed. You are the criminal the Graff Vynda-K and unidentified associate. You have been tried and convicted in abstentia of crimes against…'
'No, no! I’m not the Graff! You’re making a mistake!'
The blue box made a faint sound, like an old-style combustion engine starting on a cold morning, and the little lamp on top began blinking. The robots simultaneously cocked their heads. I heard a distant mechanical voice say, 'Warning! Return to ship! Unscheduled warp commencing!'
From within the blue box I heard a cry of, 'What?' and suddenly the craft’s engines began whining shrilly. The blue box began to fade in and out of sight, but with no pattern, as if it were struggling.
The Indomitable Prince began to shudder, then lurched violently. Garron, myself and the robots were tossed into the air, hit the ceiling and came down hard. In the brief stillness that followed a foil-wrapped package –that ship’s registry you’re so keen on –dropped out of compartment three and hit the deck with a tink!As one, the robot’s heads snapped to it. So did Garron’s.
I guess it was just instinct for the old man. If it was valuable to the robots it was valuable to him, you know? So all four of them dived and scrambled to be the first to gain possession. As the box gurned behind us and the ship began to shudder again, Garron and the lead robot played tug of war with the slab. The foil ripped and Garron was left holding it while the robot triumphantly held the slab aloft. And then the sarcophagus case of the 3rdDuke of Misty Meadows toppled out of the compartment and squashed the three robots flat. Garron whispered, 'Thank you!' to the gods of realtors and hugged the slab. I grabbed his shirt and pulled him to his feet and yelled, 'Escape ship!' He nodded and we stumbled away in opposite direction.
'This way, you old fool!' I said, reasoning that the escape ship dock would be mid-decks.
That’s when the blue box made an incredible tolling sound and everything went transparent and sparkly. It was like a primitive computer graphic. Sparks crawled along the lines of everything. I could see the frame of the ship, the decks above and below and, incidentally, an empty escape ship port and an unpillaged, secret treasure compartment. But superimposed upon this was something else, something like a labyrinth of corridors and chambers, somehow escaping the confines of the blue box and extending into the far distance. It hurt the brain to look at it. I saw the stranger standing at a console and a slumped figure on a seat near him. He stared at us, open mouthed, and began to furiously throw switches.
Beyond the ship I could see a vast black orb with a veil of the same blue sparks, an umbilical reaching out and ensnaring us. The stranger yelled something over the reverberating tolling and grabbed a lever. He looked over at us, cocked his head and grinned, and pulled it.
I heard Garron cry out. The planet had vanished but the blue sparkly veil remained. As we watched, it stretched tighter and thinner until, from our perspective, it was like looking down the mouth of a cone, tunnel or vortex. The machine rumbled and I heard the man cry out again, 'No, no, no!' And, just like someone had released the end of a stretched rubber band, we shot forward into the sparkly vortex…
'But what of the registry? Do you know where it is?'
'That was the last I saw of it. Sorry, Bob: I was too distracted, what with having my very existence violated, to pay much attention to anything else. I guess it was on the Graff’s ship?'
'The
wreckage of the Graff’s ship has been searched with no success. We
know the registry is here and regretfully we accuse you of concealing
it.'
'And
I’m telling you that the only person who might know is Garron. And
Garron isn’t here. Now, if I can continue maybe we can figure it
out together?'
'Very
well. Despite the urgency of our situation, I must confess we find
your story fascinating. You were shot into a space warp vortex, then?
That must have been alarming.'
'You’ve
no idea.'
~~~
I was still screaming when I awoke in the jungle. I screamed again when
I realised I was slipping through the very top of a very tall tree. I
seized a handful of thin branches, clambered to the bole and found a
thick branch to sit on. Assuming I could climb down, I was safe.
I
looked out through the leaves. A hot yellow sun gleamed in a
cloudless blue sky. A sea of green foliage stretched to the base of a
high plateau that spanned the horizon. Behind me, the jungle thinned
and I could see rolling grasslands. In the farthest distance I saw
another treeline and an expanse of sparkling water.
Here
and there I saw signs of civilisation. A quaintly curved road crossed
the prairie, occasional clumps of trees and buildings along the way.
Multiple small columns of smoke lazily curled upward into the still
air.
Birds
sang, and the trees were crowned with butterflies.
I
breathed deeply. The air was flush with green freshness. It made me
feel at peace.
That’s
when I realised a sound had slowly been overtaking me. A thin
sustained squeal or scream coming from the sky above. I looked up
just as something white plunged into the branches overhead. It
snapped into the foliage a bit further from the trunk than I and
continued to fall. Without thinking I lunged toward it, guessing
where its trajectory would intersect mine. Using a springy branch I
leaped and took hold of the plummeting object.
I
realised two things. One, the object was a woman in a tight
cryo-glove. The inhabitant of compartment four that Garron had tried
to hide from me. The same one the stranger had taken into the box.
The Graff’s hostage.
No,
no. Not a woman. A woman is mature, measured in tone and temperament.
A woman, no matter how lovely, has some invisible gravity to her that
a man can sense. This was a girl.
Young, fresh and astoundingly beautiful. A princess, you know? My
arms encircled her right beneath hers and I gazed into her face as
she gawked into mine. I instantly fell totally and terrifyingly in
love. Endless hours later her screams and struggles alerted me to the
second thing I mentioned before. We were well away from the branches
of the tree. We were in mid-air and plunging toward something big,
brown and flat. As the ground rushed up at us I cried, 'I love you!'
She screamed and I cried, 'I’m sorry!' She screamed again but I
didn’t have time to respond.
Well,
obviously I didn’t die. If there had been solid ground beneath us I
expect we’d have been goners, but the flat brown thing luckily
turned out to be the surface of a deep mud hole. We impacted with aslap! and
the morass closed above our heads. I imagine it was quiet for a
moment, maybe a bird made a tentative attempt to resume its song,
when we erupted, spitting, from the mud. The princess waded through
the waist deep mud, glared up at me with brilliant
emerald eyes from behind her brown mask, and slugged me with
surprising strength. My knees buckled and I just lay there.
'What,'
She spit mud, 'was the,' spit, 'meaning of that?'
'Princess,
I -'
She
held an imperious finger aloft and expelled brown mud for a moment. I
floated, enchanted, as she cleared one fine nostril, then the other.
She squeezed the muck from her long dark hair, peeled the glove from
her skin and shook off the excess goo, and sighed. Then she looked
down at me.
'You
idiot! Were you trying to get me killed? And who gave you permission
to touch me? And,' she paused, 'did you just call me princess?'
'I
do. I mean, I did.'
'What
would a princess be doing... Oh, fine. You know.' She looked around
her, seeming to take in her surroundings for the first time. 'Where
are we?'
'I
have no idea. Some planet. You were in
cryo-sleep on a ship belonging to the Graff Vynda-K. Now we’re both
here. I think there was a warp accident. By the way, you appear to be
sinking. You should try not to stand.'
She gave a startled
shriek and did exactly the wrong thing, which was struggle. In a
moment she was stuck fast, only her head visible. I paddled across
the surface to her.
'Permission to touch
the sacred personage?' I asked.
I’d heard the word
‘glower’ before and knew what it described, but I reckon
I’d never truly seen one.
'Just this once,
imbecile.'
It crossed my mind,
briefly, that Garron would have left her there upon being called, imbecile. Fortunately, I am not Garron. I am, however, me, and
the princess’s singularly common manner stung.
'Princess, imbecile?' I
said as mildly as I was able, 'You wound me. I’ll tell you what
–perhaps there is a gallant prince of proper breeding somewhere in
this jungle. I’ll ask around, shall I? Don’t wander off!'
She growled and
struggled, freeing one arm. Luckily I was out of range. She sank a
little bit more. I smiled to myself –she was in no danger. Soon
she’d realise a hard layer was just under her feet. I had better
hurry.
I
swim-crawled my way to the reeds edging the mire. I pushed my way
through, enjoying the solid ground beneath my
squelching space shoes. The princess cursed my ancestors; really, her
vocabulary was appalling. Inventive, to be sure, but rather raw for a
person of breeding. I was chucking over her intimation of my
grandfather’s proclivity toward llamas when I reached a large
fallen tree. I hoisted myself up and got a good view of our
surroundings.
A
narrow, clear stream rushed toward the prairie; we’d landed in an
adjacent pool. The jungle thinned considerably to what I guessed was
the north, in the direction of the stream. One of those clusters of
trees and buildings lay outside the forest, sharply delineated in the
bright sunlight. Down below, in the shadows of the jungle, I was
pleased to see the princess treading mud but now silent. She saw me
on my high perch and thrashed again. She shouted.
She
was going to ‘behind me’? That didn’t make sense, did
it?
Well,
gentlemen... BAM! I was staggered by a hard knock to my head. “Ow!
That hurt!”I said, spinning to see who’d done the deed. I must
have been hit harder than I thought –turning around made me
terribly dizzy. I swayed there, looking into the reptilian face of a
savage warrior! It swung the club again, giving me a good clock on
the ear.
'Stop
it!' I said. I was getting very light headed, but my sense of
self-preservation kicked in and I covered my head. So he calmly
reached out and gently pushed my chest. That was all it took to send
me off the log and down into the foliage below.
Garron
says I have a hard head and he’s hinted more than once that my
capacity to withstand injury was the reason I caught his eye. That’s
all fine and good for him. He’s not the one being hurt. I’ve been
stabbed with knife, spear and sword, shot by laser, slug and plasma
(Oh, plasma!)... I won’t even mention the torture. Sure our Handy
House call unit on the Connie always
fixed me up in a few days and I’ve no lasting scars, but in
principle I’m strictly opposed to pain and general discomfort. So,
while being hit twice with a metal club and falling about twenty feet
into a bramble was par for the course, I didn’t really enjoy it. I
wish I’d lost consciousness, but I rarely seem to.