Rocket Fuel Read online

  'You were giving me a lot of static just then.'

  He smirked. ‘It's fixed,’ he said.

  You can rely on the pitcher, for now.

  'Thanks.'

  If only they knew the intricacies and understood the effort, showed - were it possible - the appreciation he deserved, and recognized their peril, he might yet come down on their side. But that wouldn't happen, he would be forced to kill again. A pain struck him, as it often did, across the bridge of his twice broken nose.

  If only they knew the truth, and listened to Dr Grey.

  ‘Henry, they bleed blood and sweat sweat, but unlike you and me - and Ernie - they don't know shit.’

  Round and round the stars they go, looping the loop, matching beginnings and endings, starting where they left off, never questioning, never realizing, as, like carbon atoms, they cycle and recycle the same old (new) routes, propelled by a desire to trade and be traded, a need to explore come what may, a gravity of lungs and muscles upon them, the beguiling siren's call, of nature's prey, and predator...

  He wanted the engine, Ernie's legacy. He wanted -

  Spritzer laughed.

  Four - Mucho Tomcat

  ‘“Yes,” replied the alien; “but can you eat it?”’

  Kate's face was blank.

  ‘You don't get it,’ said Byron, feeling foolish. He shook his head.

  ‘You lost me,’ Kate told him, ‘I'm sorry.’ She felt strangely numb, as if the stars around her were not screened away but impossibly close, touching... ‘Look!’ she declared. ‘You can see the engine.’

  Byron followed her gaze. Glimmering dully, silver-grey against light-pricked black, was the misshaped powerhouse of the Mucho Tomcat, the giant engine that was the smaller craft's means of crossing interstellar space.

  ‘Nice,’ said Friendly, who had never handled anything half as large. ‘I like...’

  Kate folded her arms and smiled. ‘Ernie was proud of her; too proud maybe.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  She shrugged. ‘He died,’ she said quietly.

  Byron sensed some mystery. ‘How exactly? Your sister was pretty evasive.’

  ‘Sal's upset; we all are,’ Kate explained. ‘But it'll work out.’

  He was none the wiser. The ship closed under the illusion of acceleration. Minutes would see him inside the greater body. Its structured interiors already occupied his thinking. The woman next to him, tall and silent, vanished from his mind and took with her the fragile thread of his inquisition.

  He stepped through the double lock and paused. A draught of warm air brought the smell of ripened death: fetid meat and stale wine, a feast of unmasked gods. He turned left down a passage whose blistered walls were greasy, pocked.

  He thought to hear a sound behind him.

  The sticky odour faded, dragged behind filters. He halted, wishing the stench had lingered, as his first duty was to locate and expel his predecessor's blighted carcass...

  Five - In Place Of Manna

  What's happened?

  She dreamed and she dreamt; then the clock woke her, blowing in her ear, turning her outside in...

  Kate sat up. The sudden light flooded her mind with barbaric colours, warring reds and greens, embattled pinks and blues, screaming orange. She squinted through their stirred haze at the picture window, its vision of a golden strand, gentle waves and gentler sky, a lone palm.

  And swallowed.

  It was the morning after, the night before a giddy mass of lopsided images: Byron swinging from a stair-rail, Byron with his face painted, Byron caged...

  ‘What's happened, Kate?’ she asked herself. She reached over to the wall console and punched the INFO key. The tiny screen lit with figures, unfamiliar symbols that marched right to left, assembled from miniature yellow squares.

  She scratched her head. ‘I must be regressing...’ Maybe she'd go back to sleep; but it didn't seem such a great idea. ‘Come on brain- function!’ The symbols resolved into recognizable letters and numbers. ‘Better. Now...’

  Earth orbit.

  Her mouth tasted foul. Cigarettes, she remembered.

  ‘I don't smoke cigarettes,’ Kate told the screen.

  ‘Droover K?’

  ‘Yeah...who is it?’

  Silence.

  The window flickered and died.

  Byron's rollies, bushy strands of tobacco, gaudy papers, and an oily taste on the tip of the tongue, the lips unsweetened, his, Friendly's soggy kisses all down her spine.

  ‘Oh.’

  She dialled the captain. Nothing.

  ‘Am I the only one awake?’ There was a robe on the deck, a paperback novel. She picked both up.

  ‘Sal's.’ She put the robe on, flitted through the novel's printed pages. ‘Why am I talking to myself? Kate? Hm?’

  She dropped the book onto her sister’s bunk, , its shifting cover a melange of eyes peering at her.

  Tossing her unruly fringe out of her face Droover padded along the corridor and rapped on the captain's door. Nothing. ‘Amy? Hey, speak to me.’ Another voice, she thought, I need to hear another voice, one to reassure me. ‘Amy!’ The door was unlocked and slid easily open. A film of blackness engulfed her senses, beyond its receding tide the smell of vomit. ‘You had a party and didn't invite me...’ rambled Kate. ‘Where are you?’

  Some other world, the captain's dead lips told her.

  ‘Oh,’ she said again.

  ‘Have you seen her?’ asked Kate, hugging the robe tightly, a desire in her bones.

  ‘Who? Sally? She's out cold, won't come round for hours.’ The skinny cook looked apologetic. ‘You want something to eat?’ he offered.

  She said yes. ‘I'm starving. Are there sausages?’

  Abdul brightened, relieved perhaps that his preoccupation was not wholly out of place in the circumstances. ‘Six kinds,’ he boasted.

  ‘And hot coffee?’

  ‘As much as you can handle.’

  ‘Okay!’ Kate too was cheered, the business of eating a welcome distraction. She needed time to adjust, take it all in. They, the crew, were in trouble.

  She followed fleet-footed Abdul down to the galley. ‘Down,’ he would often say, ‘so all the delicious smells drift up.’ And Kate had to agree.

  There was a lethargy about her limbs as she descended. The cluttered galley shone, alive with brass and chrome.

  Luke Farouke (Amy had dubbed him Abdul, although she couldn’t remember why) pulled a chair out for her, grinning like a poacher with a deer in his sights.

  ‘Did you see her, before we flew?’

  ‘Captain Jones? No, I thought she was with you and Sal.’

  Kate shook her head, rested it in her hands. ‘I lost Sal,’ she said; ‘somewhere. I'm not sure; but Amy wasn't with us, at least not for long. I don't know, my mind's full of blanks.’

  ‘Then you must have spent some time with her,’ Abdul speculated, ‘eh? Drinking her whisky?’

  She grimaced. ‘Where's those sausages?’

  ‘Two minutes.’ He stepped across the kitchen threshold - an invisible line all save himself were forbidden to break - and poured her coffee. ‘Drink. This's my special memory-restorer blend. You'll see.’

  She took his advice, heaving lungfuls of sausage odour, and saw on the table before her a thimble. ‘What's this?’

  ‘Present,’ Abdul said from behind a curtain of steam. ‘A little something I picked up in Kopa.’

  ‘It's pretty. ..’

  ‘It has special powers.’

  ‘Really?’ Kate placed the steel thimble on her middle finger. ‘What can it do?’

  ‘When the moon is right,’ the cook revealed, ‘it can turn you into a panther.’

  She giggled, felt the tears loosen, the tears she would have to cry for Amy Jones, their erstwhile captain.

  But not now. ‘Real panthers are extinct, like all the big cats; there're only reconstructions.’

  ‘Ah,’ whispered Abdul, delivering a feast of meat and curly on
ion strips, ‘that's what you think. But the real cats, the genuine articles, are making a comeback.’

  ‘You're talking nonsense.’ She ate, uncaring.

  He sat at the table. ‘There,’ he gestured; ‘you're eating like one already!’

  ‘A panther?’

  ‘Of course.’ His posture relaxed, exhausted. ‘You don't need a fork, Droover, just an appetite.’

  She glanced at the metal object on her finger. ‘When were we ever in Kopa?’

  ‘Kate can't remember?’ Abdul stood, fussing. ‘A while ago. I couldn't tell you the exact date. It was Ernie's idea we go there, to see the geysers.’

  ‘Geysers on Iglan?’ Chewing.

  ‘Sure - and Kopa offered the best price for cane sugar.’

  Kate was baffled. Wasn't Iglan uninhabitable? Radioactive? A pink-people bond-prison?

  She finished her sausages. ‘One thing at a time,’ she said. ‘Pink-people?’

  ‘What?’ Abdul sat once more.

  ‘More coffee please...’

  The smiling man filled her cup.

  She drank...

  ‘Droover K?’

  ‘Yeah...who is it?’

  'The pink-people are innately radioactive; they glow, and have sweet tooths.'

  ‘And the geysers?’

  ‘A side-show.’

  She peered at the empty plate. ‘We can never shake hands then, Abdul...’

  But she was alone, and shivering.

  ‘Where is everyone?’ Sal wanted to know.

  ‘This is it,’ Frank told her. ‘Spritzer's locked himself in the machine-room and the radio's down between here and Byron Friendly. We'll have to wait till he surfaces.’

  Sally slumped in a couch, grim. ‘Wonderful. So, Monica, you're the medical among us. What killed the captain?’

  Monica Hat looked about her at the expectant faces. Frank's hand touched hers. ‘I don't know,’ she mumbled.

  ‘Don't know?’ The co-pilot was angry.

  ‘Right,’ she said louder. ‘It's beyond my experience; we'll have to go Earthside for an expert opinion.’

  ‘That's your diagnosis?’ Sal inquired sarcastically.

  Monica exhaled. ‘Yes...’

  ‘And Ernie? The same for him?’

  ‘We've got to find his body first,’ Frank interjected.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Abdul; ‘but that's Friendly's job.’ He bit hairy fingers unconsciously, as if lubricating them. ‘Won't Spritzer fix the radio link, Frank?’

  The bigger man rolled his shoulders. ‘Maybe.’ He stared at his feet, the suddenly odd-looking shoes upon them.

  ‘Maybe not,’ finished Abdul. He smiled ruefully. Spritzer Rich was always doing his best to trip somebody up. ‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘isn't there a more immediate problem? Sal, you should know...’

  She agreed. ‘Kate's volunteered to make the trip to Radio,’ she said. ‘As acting captain I have to stay with the ship until all the legal ramifications are worked out.’

  ‘Shouldn't that be automatic?’ queried Frank. ‘I mean, didn't Amy make the necessary arrangements?’

  Kate leapt from her seat, the movement her first, and quick as a frightened bird. ‘Are you kidding! Amy Jones never arranged anything over and above the next port of call, the next bar, the next drink.’ She paced before them. ‘Ring-pull Jones they called her on Sarpendon; rainwater, Captain Rainwater she was on Luna!’

  The others were quiet.

  Then, ‘We loved her too, Kate,’ said Monica.

  ‘Right, we're of one mind. Sis here pays a visit to the Licencing Bureau; the rest of us wait for her call and manoeuvre the ship as and when we have to. In the meantime,’ she paused, ‘I suggest we start thinking about a cargo.’

  ‘And Amy Jones?’ asked Frank.

  ‘Is dead,’ said Abdul. ‘She can wait, Ernie too. What matters now is the future, our future, and just what the hell we're going to do if the powers-that-be discontinue our franchise.’

  ‘Point taken,’ Frank conceded. ‘All the cargoes between here and Endsix'd be worthless if we lost the fuel-rights to shift them.’ And now his hands appeared swollen, like they'd been injected with water.

  And, thought Kate Droover, no one really knows what's going on. It's all mixed up...

  Her skin tingled. The flesh at least recalled - but was there more than kisses?

  ‘Byron,’ she said to the console, its flat screen. ‘Byron, it's me, Kate. Switch your set on.’ A stupid thing to say.

  The miniature yellow squares paraded.

  Byron swinging from a stair-rail, Byron with his face painted, Byron caged...read the words.

  The digits she ignored.

  *

  The engineer chewed his lip, teased the fibres apart, set the instrument on the deck. It was too much like hard work; a labour of love, this or any engine. A man could get attached, literally, to the job. The engine fed him, he breathed its air and rolled its cigarettes. It was beautiful. He could appreciate Ernie's art, sense his presence. Byron may have failed as yet to locate his forerunner's corporeal self, but his spiritual anima was all around.

  He whistled, something he hadn't done in years, and it felt a vital part of him.

  Ernie must've been a whistler, he supposed. It was natural, Byron's inheritance.

  He replaced the instrument and clicked the panel shut. A row of red lights advanced along a horizontal scale. They reminded him of Droover, her tidy vertebrae.

  *

  Kate stood a moment before the aft lock, wondering how deep Friendly could be, then made her way up to the bridge where Sal sat waiting in the pilot's chair surrounded by a vague corona of lights.

  ‘I've contacted the Bureau,’ her sister informed her, ‘and appraised them of our situation, so they're expecting you.’

  ‘Good.’ Kate stuck her hands in her pockets. ‘Has Spritzer fettled the link to the engine?’

  ‘No; he's keeping a low profile. You know what he's like.’

  Kate nodded. ‘So Byron's still in the dark...’

  Sally rose and approached her younger sibling. ‘You've fallen for his alien charms, haven't you?’ she jibed, half teasing, half bitter.

  ‘Oh,’ answered Kate, looking askance; ‘he's okay.’

  ‘Ha!’

  ‘What? I'm in...’ Droover felt abandoned to the darkness, its slight chill. ‘What's the problem?’

  ‘Kate?’ The voice was Monica's.

  ‘Who else? Move it!’ She banged her fist on the shapeless computer.

  ‘Sorry...lost the key.’

  There was a click and the lights came on, exploded inside the cockpit. She listened to the clamps disengage and tried to imagine herself falling. On the computer screen a red dot separated from a green line. The power-unit's torque jammed in, startling her.

  ‘All yours,’ said Monica.

  Droover punched the code for Luna and relaxed. The grey world of her birth blossomed like a concrete flower before her eyes, overlaid with a plethora of useless maps and data she failed to clear. Like insects, metallic flys, she thought. She hated riding the cramped emergency vessel; it reminded her of an elevator, one in which a bunch of amateur cartographers had set up camp. The environment was oppressive. She closed her eyes and tried not to breathe in time with the broken heater.

  ‘Fucking Spritzer,’ she said. Soon it was damp and warm. Too warm, hot...

  And Luna was twenty minutes off. She drained the stale water as it was offered and let the vessel land itself.

  Luna terminal was quiet. Kate checked the bus schedule, saw she had an hour, and cursed her sister for not better judging the stopover. But at least it gave her time to freshen up; even get mildly intoxicated.

  No! What was she thinking?

  ‘I'm adopting Amy's vacant persona,’ she muttered, those about her disinterested. Their faces were unfriendly, sated. Their smiles mentioned no worries.

  Droover grimaced, feeling like a fight...

  ‘Droover K?’

  ‘Yeah.
..who is it?’

  'Me. '

  She smiled, noticing the steel thimble on her middle finger, pressed into her left palm.

  The bus rumbled. The sun outside its window glittered. On the blue-green ocean below floated Radio City, its family of islands stretched out beyond: lush, barren, tortured, exotic...a total of nine.

  Kate rubbed her eyes and took in the scene once again. A warning light came on above her.

  The bus dived in a broad curve, braked smoothly and coasted into the white and purple depot. Outside the window now were eager vendors, coiled steam from food-stalls, the noise of many feet and the hum of luggage.

  She disembarked amid the clamour, walking briskly to the nearest escalator, ignoring the news-touts and shoe-shines, those characters that - like most people - would spend their free hours laid out on some beach, real or imaginary. The social system of the city rankled her as it always had. There was no room here for the unknown, risk or adventure. Radio City was precise in its functioning, overly perfect. For souls such as Kate Droover's there was only one choice: space - and quick.

  But still she missed Earth. Its ruined continents possessed a degree of scope.

  Taking a street at random she meandered, oblivious to the crystal-cut and animate walls around her, the individual and corporate vanities which adhered to every surface, fixed or movable, overlapping like posters and bills, shop-signs and logos...an identity multifarious, that of themselves, a deliberate confusion. The city, she knew, could adopt any guise; trouble was, most of them were pretty...

  And then there was the absence of traffic.

  She thought of the ancient, tumbled metropolises squatting like parked, rusted spacecraft on the forgotten land, their deserted conurbations once thronged, bursting, streets packed with stinking cars, buildings choked with bodies doing real work, not the ersatz variety so popular among the sanitized dwellers of this tame jungle. There was no raw excitement here, no fires or robberies; there were only reconstructions, illusory dramas acted out in illusory bars and cafes. Radio City was a dream city; happy and careful and even-tempered, a city lacking stealth and bite, a homologous joke.

  People were gunned down around her, but she was left standing, unappreciative of this thematic culture...

  ‘Are you lost?’ inquired a policeman, brass buttons shining, helmet pushed back over red hair.

  ‘Is that possible?’ she came back, testy.