Books by George!

“Going to be the devil to pay,” Melanie said.  “No matter the excuse.  Northcote lost four horses, my paycheck gets hit with the tab. Leastways we’ve got a rule, how much I get to keep no matter what.  I won’t starve.”

“There’s a bounty on large predators,” Schroeder said.  “Mountain lions and bears too dumb to stay away from people are what’s meant.  But it’s large, and it’s for sure a predator. Bounty is by weight.”

A flare of a flashbulb and then another came from behind Winston.  He turned around, realizing that he was facing the Journal-Miner’s Editor.  An engine revving up further back had to be the photographer, making his escape before Winston could grab the film.  That, Winston thought, would have been terminally stupid, something Grandpa might have thought he could get away with, but I can’t.  And wouldn’t.  I had enough of Wilson and his political prisoners.

“Sheriff?” Ulysses Butler was the Journal-Miner’s Editor. 

How had he gotten here so fast? Winston wondered. He looked at the rail station clock-tower in the distance.  Time had seemed to fly while they were shooting, but it had been a good half-hour since the phone rang.

“That’s me, Mister Butler,” Winston answered.  “Always good to see you.” They shook hands.

“Would you care to comment? What are those things?” Ulysses asked.

“Giant spiders,” Melanie answered.  “Took down four horses.”

“They killed horses?” Ulysses asked.  “Oh, Miss Hayes.  A delight to see again our fair city’s greatest artist.  You arrived to draw them?”

“I was here guarding the corral,” Melanie answered.  “That’s my real job, at least until the boss finds out what happened and fires me.  Those things took down the horses and started eating.  I shot the horses to put them out of their misery.  I also took down six of the spiders.  They shrugged off rifle fire at their bodies.  .308 needs an eye shot to kill them.”

“You shot them in the eye?”  Ulysses asked.  “That’s good shooting.”

Melanie shrugged.  “Eyes are big.  Head doesn’t move much while they’re feeding. I was powerful lucky the barn phone is on the second floor—boss had his occasional office up there. I’d’ve run out of ammo before I ran out of spiders.  Bad deal.”

“We need a posse,” Ulysses said, “tomorrow morning, to hunt the rest of these down.  If there are more.”

“No,” Melanie said firmly.  “You need the Army. Or you’ll have a lot of dead men.”

“Ah,” Parkinson said. He stood nearer to a dead  spider, shining a flashlight on its carcass.  “Wondered why Browning worked, and your rifle rounds needed eye shots.  Look here. A bunch of dents, and then its shell broke open. But the one over there, one of the ones you killed, looks like your .308 made holes, each time you hit, went through, must not have reached anything vital.”

A human face appeared on a comm screen. “This is Anglic Union Astrographic Service long-range reconnaissance cruiser Langley, Captain Andrew Davis commanding.  Greetings to Barham system traffic control. We are on a routine pass through your system. I am carrying a substantial number of message balls for System Fleet Command, System Governor, and various private citizens.  We have not touched down since we departed Terra six weeks ago, so quarantine should not be necessary if we land. I have transmitted our itinerary codes so you can confirm.”

Pelham and Wu stared at each other. He nodded.

“Starship Langley, this is Barham System Defense Command. Welcome to Barham,” Wu said.  “What are your intentions here?  Please confirm your travel time; it seems a bit short.”  A bit short? she thought.  Six months is more typical.

Davis smiled and leaned back in his command chair.  “Courtesy of Eyes on the Skies, we took several ultradrive shortcuts.  I’m sure they will be happy to sell you the details at their usual rates.”

Jingfei Wu returned his smile. Assuredly Eyes on the Skies would be happy to sell the needed information to the Imperial Fleet, for a truly remarkable fee, but the Imperial Fleet did not resort to anything as undignified as hopping from star to star in real space when the warp point network already took you to any place of any importance. It was still interesting to learn that there were several points that had to be separated by no more than a few light months that got you from Terra to here that quickly.

“Codes are confirmed,” Vanderwelt said. “And very up-to-date.”

“Welcome to Barham,” Pelham added. “We’ll pass you over to traffic control.” He listened while Vanderwelt made the necessary contacts, then bid Davis adieu.

Abernathy continued his scan of his gravitronic detectors.  “Interesting drive arrangements they have,” he said to Wu. “They appear to be accelerating using their secondaries, pushed up to decently high power.”

“Anglic Union custom,” Wu said, “going back several centuries to when the AU couldn’t build a primary drive. Just like their custom of arriving unannounced, rather than being a scheduled flight with flight plan so we weren’t surprised when they were showed up.”

“And now I have decent imaging on the Langley,” Vanderwelt said.  “They were kind enough to park after emergence, and kind enough to paint their ship bright white.” A slightly fuzzy white pancake was seen on one of the screens. “Yes, those are running lights it has,” Vanderwelt added, “just as though it was a freighter on Old Earth.”

“Aim for the heads!” A woman’s voice shouting could be heard from the barn. “They’re all over the horse.”

The deafening tune of two Browning Automatic Rifles drowned out the shrieks of the dying animal. 

One of the creatures turned, rearing up as it did on its hind legs.  Seen in silhouette, it much resembled a giant spider, complete with four rear legs, two pairs of forefront legs, mandibles, and peculiar faceted eyes.  0.50 caliber rounds from one Browning stitched a line across the creature’s thorax. A burst from the other Browning smashed through the head. The creature dropped to the ground, its limbs flailing convulsively. Schroeder and Parkinson then engaged the other three creatures, which were similarly rapidly dispatched.  One rifle shot was heard. The horse’s screams ended.

“Miss Hayes? Are you here someplace?” Cooper called.

“Second floor of the barn, shooting out the haying door,” she called back.  “Turns out you can kill them with a hunting rifle. You shoot them in the eye.”

“That’s right good shooting,” Parkinson said.  “Are there more of these things?”

“You got four, and it took a while but I got the other six,” Hayes said. “If there were more, they skedaddled. They had to look my way before I could get an eye shot.  But I’m down to half a dozen rounds of .308 and one round for my pistol.  Only had two dozen rounds of .308 to start with. Rest is in my room.

The three men cautiously advanced across the corral, watching for any sign of motion that would suggest that the creatures were not actually dead.  A solitary light bulb above the barn door gave feeble illumination to the eldritch scene. They were joined after a few moments by Melanie Hayes, her finger not quite on the trigger of her loaded rifle. 

“Jesus, Mary, and all the saints,” Schroeder said to himself, “which gate to Hell did these creatures escape through?”  He pointed at the creature, which looked vaguely like a giant spider, at least if one ignored the polychrome plates of armored shell. The men spent time examining the creature, its oddly articulated legs ending in cruel claws, and its bloody mandibles.

“From due south,” Melanie finally said. “And those weird noises they made.  Even before they got here, the horses were spooked.  I had my pistol, a substantial box of pistol ammunition, and my .308, which I didn’t expect to use.  I figured the horses were spooked by rustlers, who’d run off if someone fired a few shots in their direction.  But after I saw the spiders eating the first horse – I finally put a round into the horse’s head, to put it out of its misery – I saved one round for my pistol.”

“Shoot an eye out at pointblank range?” Schroeder asked. “That’s an amazing shot.”

“I watched them take down and eat the first horse,” Melanie answered.  “They didn’t bother to kill it first.  No, that last round was for me, when other choices became worse.”

“You are one cold-blooded young lady,” Parkinson said.

“You don’t survive in this business, being a woman, if you’re prone to fainting,” she answered.  “Which reminds me.  Those disappearances, the ones in the paper.  Might these things have had another meal first?”

Winston looked up at the starry sky.  “There have actually been ten disappearances in this county,” he said, “Three of them, we could see where someone had settled down for the night, and there’d be a small pile of shell casings.  Once, a rifle that was all bent up, never saw the like.  Once a house, a one roomer, looked to have been torn open from the outside.  Family of four was just gone.  Every time, there was blood all over the place.  Ghastly.  We couldn’t figure out the house until now.”

Finally, an image of the breakout appeared on one of the monitors. “Seriously strange,” Abernathy said.  “What do we have here?” He thought for a few seconds. “Senior Chief Pelham! Senior Chief Pelham!”  The AI would now forward his message to the Senior Chief, wherever he was.

“At lunch,” Tactical Technician Jingfei Wu said. “He scheduled himself for an hour, knowing full well that nothing ever happens at this time of day. I suppose technically I’m in charge. He’d get really upset if I ordered a Yellow Alert.  What are we looking at?”

“From the pattern, about a million tons,” Abernathy said. “Oh, I know why the breakout looks odd. That ship is oblate, not prolate.  AIs, who on God’s earth flies oblate starships?” A very long list started scrolling across one of his displays. “Filter that for ‘could actually fly’ and ‘plausibly going to show up here’.” The display went blank. “Broaden the filters until we find someone,” he ordered.

“He’s lighting off drives,” Abernathy reported. “This time the power curve looks fairly reasonable if not very high for a freighter. Are you hearing all this, Senior Master Chief?” Abernathy asked.

“Other than you’ re interrupting my hot date with a corned beef sandwich with sauerkraut,” Pelham answered by the communicator, “I am hearing everything. That includes a certain Tactical Technician’s analysis of what I would do if she ordered a Yellow Alert, which I agree she’s currently authorized to do.”

“They’re about to enter our light cone,” Senior Comms Technician Richard Vanderwelt reported.  “Weren’t the three of us here a few months ago when this happened?”

“The nice people from Teruwhon, and their first starship ever,” Pelham said. “Much more sophisticated than most foreign barbarians from beyond the pale,” he added. “Instead of wandering around their own neighborhood, which was doubtless entirely full of other foreign barbarians, they knew to come here, to the Imperium, immediately.  Those Parsnipians must’ve told them to come to us, whoever Parsnipians are. Some other group of not quite barbarians.”

“And I have a transmission,” Vanderwelt said.  “Military validation codes! It must be one of ours.”

“No way,” Abernathy said. “We don’t build ships like that.”

“Possibly unknown ship with captured codes?” Jingfei said. She began checking readiness levels on the defense systems, then noted Pelham’s glare.  “Better safe than sorry.”

“Fair enough,” Pelham said.

“Melanie?” Winston called into the phone. “Miss Hayes? How large are they?”

“Big enough to take down a horse,” she answered. “Big as a grizzly. Hang on a second. You can hear the horse screaming.”

Winston listened. The screams were those of a horse in agony.

“Yes,” Winston answered. “We’re on our way as soon as we saddle up, so to speak. Parkinson! Schroeder! Break out the Brownings and extra ammo. Double quick! ” He stood and pulled on his pistol belt. “Madison, you have the office. First two men who call to report their rounds, they come here instead.”

Two minutes later, the Department’s squad car roared to life.

“Parkinson! Use the siren! We might as well let people know we’re on the job!” Winston ordered.

The sheriff’s car rushed down deserted streets, porch lights coming on in its wake as people looked out to see what was happening. An occasional rifle shot could still be heard in the distance.

The screams of a wounded horse drowned out the siren as the car approached the corral. Parkinson put over the wheel so the car’s headlights illuminated the nearly-dark corral. The horse was on the ground, and several things stood over it pinning it in place as they tore gobs of flesh from its side.

“Jesus, Mary, and all the saints!” Schroeder shouted. “What are those?”

The car skidded to a stop. The three men threw open the doors and jumped out. Winston paused to grab the reserve rifle and a bandolier of ammunition.

“Parkinson! Schroeder!” Winston shouted. “I don’t care what they are. Kill them. I’m covering our rear!”

“There was another oddity,” Cheryl observed. “This I found about just before heading over here, from drinking at the bars used by the Warp Point Defense Fortress crews. Someone measured the power curve on the Peaceful Harmony, practice test, which pulled rather few gees while arriving and leaving.”

“This is surprising for a first starship?” Waters asked.

“They had warship-grade power curves,” Cheryl answered. “Actually, and they were staying at very low throttle, they had better curves than the Imperial Fleet does. I didn’t believe it, but the fellow I chatted up had a copy of the curves, so I paid off my bet and bought his first three drinks. They also had a strange warp point emergence burst.” She put the images she had copied up on a screen.

The five of them looked at each other. “Strange people, multiple sightings, warship grade ship?” Waters said, “This is worth a message ball to Earth, four copies, full encryption. On the same line, I received a private message. The Langley has completed its Imperial Fleet Service, and will be here eventually.”

Chapter

Warp Point Prime Defense Fortress

Barham System

Martingale 5, 853 AIS

“Emergence. Emergence. I have an emergence.” Senior Technician Ninth Class Roger Abernathy looked up from his displays and tapped the ‘Warning Acknowledged’ button. “Warp zone three, extreme northwest quadrant.”

Abernathy waited for his AI systems to tell him what was going on. That part of the warp zone corresponded to red dwarf R2578.3194.639A – so said the display – from which there was almost never inbound traffic. The star was utterly undistinguished beyond being one of the 50 billion stars of the Solarian Imperium. Anywhere you could reach from there could be reached more rapidly on a different path. If the star hadn’t had a warp link to Barham, the Imperium might have taken forever and a day to survey it.

The AIs were taking their own sweet time about identifying the new ship. They should be faster than that, Abernathy thought. System Defense Command had, to the great annoyance over large numbers of people, been ordered to do a complete recalibration of the system’s gravitronic detectors, meaning the system’s half dozen warp-capable corvettes had spent several months making warp transitions to distant places and then transiting back again at different speeds. The wear and tear on their conventional and warp drives had been substantial, as a result of which all six of them were now scheduled for major time in the yards. However, with recalibration the detectors were appreciably better, even if the hardware was obsolete junk.

A search of the house revealed no bodies. There was considerable blood everywhere but no sign of any people. A pistol appeared to have been flung into one corner of the room. On examination, it was found to have been fired repeatedly, until it ran out of ammunition. A trail, not made of footprints or horseshoe marks, led into the pond. There was no sign of where whatever had made the footprints emerged again from the pond.

“We didn’t bring any dynamite,” Schroeder said, “because it might’ve been interesting to toss a few sticks of dynamite into the pond, inside bottles to keep them dry until they went off, and see if anything floated to the surface. I don’t expect anything to happen, but that’s the only idea I have.”

“That’s more ideas than I had,” Winston said. “We can confirm the house was wrecked up, four people are missing, but there’s no explanation. Let’s do a broader circuit around the far side of the pond out as far as we can go in the fields without getting into the rocks, and see if we find anything else.”

The search was fruitless. Other than the marks leading to the pond, which McTavish proposed could’ve been something walking one way and then the other, there was nothing to be seen. One entire side of the pond was up against a rocky shelf, across which a small army could have marched without leaving a trail. That appeared to be how the mystery assailants had come and gone.

“Okay,” Cooper said, “time to call it a day here, so I get to go back and write another report saying there are four more missing bodies, but no explanation for what might’ve occurred. And we really didn’t see anything inside that house that counted as a clue.”

Winston Cooper stared at the wall clock. It was not quite nine in the evening. The sun had set. Soon enough the night watch would show up and he could head off to bed. Covering for Grandpa while he was now off in Phoenix listening to the Governor by-and-by became exhausting even with an afternoon nap.

The telephone rang. Sergeant Madison lifted the receiver. “Prescott Sheriff’s Department, Madison speaking.”

“Melanie Hayes, Northcote West Corral. I have multiple large carnivores chasing our horses. Not enough light to identify. They shrugged off pistol fire, and I’m short of rifle ammunition. Please send men and heavy weapons.”

“I did put in a trade inquiry,” Cheryl Michaelsdotr said. “They’re willing to offer purified elements, recordings of music, novels, pretty pictures of tourist sites that no one here can visit, and the like.” The people around the table rolled their eyes. The Imperial supply of recorded music was so large that no one would ever finish reading the list of the pieces, let alone listening to them. “There was one minor peculiarity. There is a recent record of Teruwhon.  Ten years ago, an  Altai Lines freighter had a jump discontinuity and decided to force drop into their system.  Any port in a storm, and Altai is scrupulous about the non-contact regulations. However, they did download a complete data dump from the masked Imperial observation satellites.  Ten years ago, the locals were attempting to invent the internal combustion engine, not stunningly successfully. They had half-decent steam engines, meaning reciprocating pistons, not turbines. Suddenly, these people have a starship. And it seems to have been locally made. Immigration made their usual surreptitious sampling of various things they brought along, and all of the isotopic compositions match precisely what you would expect from Teruwhon.”

“Now, that’s quaint. How did they pull that off?” Senior Researcher Waters asked.

“Teruwhon is at the far end of the Observation Zone,” Sachenbacher said. “It’s absolutely amazing we have recent data on it.”

“The Teruwhon ship, the Peaceful Harmony, had two extra crewmen,” Abraham Fullmer observed. “They were Parsnipians. They stayed on board out of sight. They explained they had been stranded on another system way out there, where the Peaceful Harmony first stopped, and were helping with practical space navigation in exchange for being taken home near the end of the trip. No one in Immigration seems to have noticed that no one has ever heard of Parsnipians before.  So I did a search. They’ve never been seen before in our sector. But if I go across frontier sectors, all the way across the Empire, in the last few years there have been some dozens of cases in which a ship from a more or less new world would show up with a couple of Parsnipian crewmen. Their alibis were all different.”

“Imperial Immigration Service didn’t pick up on this?” Waters asked.

“Officially, they stayed on board out of sight,” Marjorie Quan said. “The ship showed up with a considerable number of Imperial credits, and I suspect left rather poorer, even not counting the Imperial map and survey they purchased. Indeed, if we send off to our Planetary government for the immigration visitation report — those are public documents — I will happily bet ten credits that the Parsnipians don’t get mentioned. Long live the Empire!”

“In theory we’re also supposed to be supporting our friends who insure starships,” Waters said.  “After all, there are only a modest fraction of a quadrillion star ships in the Empire. Did these folks give us any data?”

“Curiously,” Quan said, “they didn’t even charge for it.  For a modest number of warp points we now have improved measurements.  Actually, they did a precise job of measuring things, assuming their instruments are any good.”

“Mr. Schroeder,” Winston said, “we get enough horses from Matthews. Do you know where the Chadwick house is?”

“Rail Tower Three,” Schroeder answered, “follow the arroyo downhill to the pond. It’s about 2 miles, and the house is right there.”

“Does that sound right?” Winston asked Roberts. “Wouldn’t want to ride out there, and discover there are two Chadwick houses.”

“He’s got it, no two ways about it.” Roberts nodded vigorously. “But I ain’t going out there again. It weren’t natural. And if Mr. Matthews insists I go out there again, I quit.”

“Mr. Della Vega,” Winston called. “It appears that I get to ride out to investigate a murder. Or something. You get to be the backup Sheriff, just like Gramps ordered. And Mr. Schroeder and I ride out there to see what happened. Meanwhile, Mr. Roberts, you get to tell Deputy Della Vega here exactly what you saw, that’s after you take care of your horse a bit, while Mr. Della Vega is bringing in one of the patrolmen to back him up here.” He paused. “Gentlemen, did I forget anything?”

“You’re good,” Schroeder said. “I’ll phone ahead to the stables for a second horse, and load it up with supplies and water, just in case.”

“And pack a Browning,” Winston said. “Someone who wrecks up a house, may be a decent number of them.”

“There’ll be a couple of men calling in soon,” Della Vega said, “it being that hour of the morning. Shall I have them meet you at the stables? It might be better to send a larger party.”

“Might as well,” Cooper said. “It’s midweek and very quiet. And switch around the other walking patrols so we appear to be covering everything.”

“I’ll see if railroad can give us a ride to Tower Three,” Schroeder said. “They have that fancy new diesel yard locomotive, so they never need to get up a head of steam before they can move.”

Soon enough Winston and his three deputies had reached Tower Three, waved goodbye to the yard locomotive and its flatcar, and headed down the arroyo. There was little to say. The three deputies engaged in vigorous discussion of the ongoing baseball season, a topic about which Cooper knew little.

Beyond the modest pond were the remains of the Chadwick house. Winston signalled for his deputies to stop while he approached the house. The horses, he noticed, were a bit skittish, as though they were aware of something that evaded human senses.

“Keep your eyes open,” Winston said. “The horses might smell something, like a large bear.”

“Weren’t no bear what wrecked that house,” Schroeder said. “On the ground. That was the front wall. It looks like it was just yanked out of place, so part of the roof collapsed. You could do that, with a truck, and a chain wrapped through the two windows. Assuming the walls weren’t too solid.”

Winston looked inside. Furniture was smashed to pieces. In what had been a kitchen, barrels of salt pork and flour look to have been split open. Little was left of their contents.

“Hello?” he called. “Is anyone here?” His call was met with silence.

“Mr. McTavish?” Winston said. “You’re the expert tracker. Please see if you can find a trail. Houses don’t blow apart like this, not all by themselves. Someone must’ve done it, and probably left a trail behind them.”

We are now well into the future. A private firm Eyes on the Skies provides the best available astrographic data for the Anglic Union — and anyone else who wants to pay for it.

Eyes on the Skies

Sector Headquarters, Barham

Marcus 27, 853 AIS

Senior Researcher Hiram Waters looked around the senior staff conference room.  The conference table was a slab of goldenwood, locally grown, inlaid in black oak with the corporate Eyes on the Skies logo.  Waters thought the inlay had been a substantial waste of money, though less of a waste than the rococco-carved marble walls.  However, they had inherited the corporate headquarters from the former owners, an in-system space freight Corporation whose owners and board had apparently been dedicated to seeing how thoroughly they could take the stockholders for a ride. It appeared that the stockholders had been thoroughly ridden. It was obviously a waste to tear out the marble, so there it remained. The inlay in the pre-existing table was a concession to practicality, occasionally useful to impress locals with the magnificence of Eyes on the Skies.

The rear face of the marble slabs, the face locals did not see,  was two inches of battle steel,  with a substantial air gap between the steel and the next wall. Under the conference room, reaching forty feet down into the granite bedrock, were the equally armored Eyes on the Skies computers.  Waters was inclined to view the armor as being excessive, but this facility was an Eyes on the Skies sector headquarters, remodelled when pirate attacks were not unknown.

“Gentle beings,” he opened the meeting, “we did receive the full data block from Earth Headquarters last month. We are now only the two years travel time behind them. We’ve all had computers chewing on it to see what interesting bits there might be or what inconsistencies there are with our own data.   Have we learned anything?” He looked around the table, starting at the far end and Junior Researcher Marjorie Quan.

“Their data is correct on us up to our last transmission and return date some years back.” She spread her arms palms upwards. “After all, we are at the extreme far end of everything. At least this time they didn’t get anything wrong that I’ve found — yet.”

“Still looking for new contacts,” Wilhelm Sachenbacher said. “Within our sector, almost every ship that has shown up in the last year is from someplace we already know about. That puts us out a hundred light-years from the frontier with decent coverage. There was one interesting arrival. We received a ship from Teruwhon, which is apparently their first starship. They didn’t get beyond immigration except for exchanging biological data for future trips, but they had the brains to show up with a whole pile of Imperial Credits, so they could at least pay for things. The only thing they actually bought was a decent map of the Empire so that they could figure out where they wanted to go next. They’d actually figured out the way you trade with people who’ve never seen you before without risking biological contamination issues is to trade with people who use completely different biologies.   Alas for them, they breathe air, meaning they can easily trade only with methanovores and the like.”