A low thrumming from the shuttle announced its imminent departure. Dust scattered in all directions from the press of the repulsors. The craft rose 10 meters into the air as its landing struts retracted into the hull. Then it slid quietly forward, rapidly gained speed and ascended into the morning sky.
Sanchez shook his head sadly and said, “ain’t nobody going to believe we was on a trip into outer space, or that we was just dropped off by a flying saucer.”
“They just might,” replied Reagan, who was holding his phone up in front of him. “I just caught the departure on video and sent it to my sister.”
“Great, but you better not tell the LT, bro. Now call someone to get us the hell outta here before the Sun gets too high. Standing around the West Texas scrub in the summer is not my idea of a fun time.”
Frederiksted, St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands
James Taylor and Billy Ray Vincent were bellied up to the bar in one of Frederiksted’s seedier dives. There was no shortage of seedy bars in the smaller of St. Croix’s two towns. They grew in wild profusion in the rabbit warren of old buildings, back alleys and passageways between Strand and King Streets. Off the normal tourist circuit, Frederiksted was less glitzy than Christiansted on the other end of the island. It was also considerably more laid back, with the west-end Cruzans, as the local were known, more interested in having a good time than hustling visitors.
The two men were an odd couple. JT, as Taylor preferred to be called, was tall, black and built like an NFL running back, while Billy Ray was even taller, slim and very white. “Fish belly white” was how JT described his friend. Both were Texans, but more importantly they were shipmates, both serving on the spaceship Peggy Sue.
Billy Ray was one of the Peggy Sue’s two helmsmen, along with his pal Bobby Danner. Dressed in jeans, cowboy boots and hat, he was nursing his third Heineken. Next to him, JT was resplendent in shorts, sandals and a bright orange tee-shirt that read “I ain’ no tourist, I ban ya.”
JT was a former Green Beret who had gone to graduate school when he got out of the Army to study Astronomy. He had been working as a camera man for a West Texas TV station when he accidentally joined the crew of the Peggy Sue. In fact, it was his partner, Susan Write, aka Peggy Sue Whitaker, who the ship was named for. She had heroically sacrificed herself on the alien refueling station in Beta Comae. Waiting alone in the antimatter repository, she gave the ship time to escape before setting off the fuel dump, destroying the station.
That memory still pained JT, but it was even worse for Billy Ray—he and Susan had been lovers and her loss had devastated the normally outgoing cowboy. Initially, it was the shared loss of Peggy Sue that helped forge the friendship between the two shipmates. JT was now a permanent part of the ship’s science contingent and also worked as navigator on the bridge. Since Billy Ray was usually manning the helm when anything important happened, they saw a lot of each other.
“Tell me again what that tee-shirt of yer’s says, pardner?” Billy Ray asked, after taking another sip of his beer.
“It says ‘I ain’t no tourist, I was born here’ in the colorful local patois,” JT replied. “Isn’t that right, Jesse?” This last question was directed at the barmaid, busy washing glasses behind the dark wood bar.
“Don’t ask me, mon, I Jamaican,” she shot back with a big smile. “Dis ain’ my Island, I only work here.” Though St. Croix was officially part of the United States, it was populated by a mix of folk from all over the Caribbean. A local resident was just as likely to have come from Antigua, Barbados, Jamaica, Montserrat or some other similar spec of land. As David Crosby wrote, “From here to Venezuela, nothing more to see, than a 100,000 islands flung like jewels upon the sea.” Almost all of those jewels were populated and, compared with most, St. Croix was the land of opportunity.
JT took another pull from his rum and coke. The rum was made locally and was incredibly smooth. It also had a way of sneaking up on the unwary. This had been discovered the hard way by any number of Navy sailors, who woke up after a night of shore leave “screwed, blued and tattooed.” The Navy had an intermittent presence in Frederiksted, submarines and surface ships often docking at the long pier that the local government once hoped would attract cruise ships to this end of the island.
The Navy vessels came to calibrate their sensors and fire practice torpedoes and rockets on the test range that lay in the deep water just off the west end of the island. Though the schedule of ship arrivals was kept secret by the Navy, the local beer trucks were always on the pier to greet the arriving sailors. The tattoo parlors and brothels were also open and ready to service new customers as, of course, were the bars.
There is something special about a sailor’s bar. The furniture is heavy, in order to survive the inevitable fights, stained by years of spilled booze and cigarette burns. The walls are always covered with memorabilia, posted by the sailor’s themselves. Pictures of ships, uniform patches and the occasional purloined shipboard sign chronicled the comings and goings of the fleet. Such places have not changed much since the fathers and grandfathers of today’s sailors went to sea.
Of course, the purpose of being in a bar is to drink, but there are also some requisite accompaniments for the beer and booze. Amazingly, these seem to be the same around the world, at least where ever American sailors are frequent visitors. As one sailor described it, behind the bar there must be “at least six Slim-Jim containers, an oversized glass cookie jar full of Beer-Nuts, a jar of pickled hard boiled eggs that could produce rectal gas emissions that could shut down a sorority party, and big glass containers full of something called Pickled Pigs Feet and Polish Sausage.”
That sailor, whose initials were JFK, warned, “Only drunk Chiefs and starving Ethiopians ate pickled pig’s feet, and unless the last three feet of your colon had been manufactured by Midas, you didn’t want to get anywhere near the Polish Napalm Dogs.”
It was in such an establishment that JT and Billy Ray found themselves on a sunny late Caribbean afternoon. They had, in fact, been searching for this particular bar for the past two evenings, because they were looking for some sailors. There was no Navy vessel in port, but these sailors were actually ex-service members who were plying their skills as divers on the island. Moreover, they were past acquaintances of Captain Sutton and Chief Zackly.
It didn’t matter that the sailors in question were no longer in the Navy, once a sailor always a sailor—at least when it came to frequenting sailor’s bars. The Chief had assured JT and Billy Ray that their quarry would sooner or later make an appearance at the establishment they were currently drinking in.
As the Chief had foretold, just as the Sun was setting, which it does with startling quickness near the equator, three large men with short cut hair and sunglasses walked through the bar’s open portal. It was not that the men were overly tall, the shortest was around 5‘7” and the tallest maybe 5‘10”. It was more an impression of mass, of solidity that made them seem large and imposing. A closer inspection revealed them all to be heavily muscled with sloping shoulders and impressively thick necks.
This is not the trio to pick a fight with,
thought Billy Ray, who was leaning with his back against the bar, facing the entrance. He elbowed JT and said in a low voice, “I think our targets just walked in.”
As their sunglasses came off, the three made eye contact, first with JT and then Billy Ray. Billy Ray, who had been in his share of bar fights, knew when he was being sized up. To these three, he appeared a lesser threat than the muscular JT. For his part, JT was staring back at the three sailors in what he hoped was a non-belligerent way. In the end, the tension was broken by the barmaid.
“Now boys, ya ain even had no ‘ting to drink yet,” Jesse said with a big smile that showed off several gold teeth. “It’s too early to start fightin’ but if ya goin’ ta tussle take ya asses out to da alley.”
“Oh now Jesse, you know me and the boys don’t ever start any trouble,” said the biggest and probably senior of the three. “I was just wondering how a cowboy and his boyfriend found their way into a real navy bar.”
“Damn,” JT shot back, “that’s what that smell is!”
The three sailors spread out a bit in anticipation of the impending brawl.
“Now JT, you’ve been hanging out with sailors for the past two months and you never complained about the smell before,” Billy Ray drawled in his best cowboy argot. “Besides, the Chief said that these fellers were supposed to be housebroken.”
This comment brought perplexed looks from the trio of belligerent sailors. Again the biggest one spoke. “Which chief told you what about who?”
“Whom,” Billy Ray corrected.
“What?”
“You use
who
when you are referring to the subject of a clause and
whom
when you are referring to the object of a clause.”
“Ignore him,” JT suggested, “he was an English major.”
“I’m not believing this conversation,” the bewildered sailor remarked.
“If you’re who we think you are,” Billy Ray continued, “we’ve got things to talk about, friend.” Reaching slowly into his pocket, he retrieved a small silver object. “Chief Zackly said you would recognize this.” He tossed the silver object to the sailor who had been doing all of the talking.
The sailor snatched the object out of the air with a meaty hand and peered at it. The object was an old fashioned cigarette lighter, the type that took flints and liquid lighter fluid. On one side there was an engraved and enameled crest showing the bow of a ship throwing a wake, surrounded by stylized cording, anchors and other nautical stuff. “Would that be Senior Chief Hank Zackly?” the sailor asked, looking back at Billy Ray.
“It would be indeed,” the cowboy replied. “The Chief sent us here to talk to you fellers about a little employment opportunity.”
Adelaide, South Australia
Dr. Olaf Gunderson was sitting in the lobby of his hotel, enjoying a second cup of coffee. It had been a hectic trip so far: he flew Qantas to Sydney and then changed to a smaller plane for the hop to Adelaide. This left him in a strange city in mid afternoon with his internal clock completely scrambled. Rather than waste the day, he went to the local University and looked up his colleague, Professor Sun.
She was happy to see him and they ended up having a nice, relaxing dinner at a restaurant he never would have found on his own. On the down side, once he told her about his supposed interest in looking at the Kangaroo Island greys she insisted on making some calls to ease his way with the local authorities. This meant that he actually had to make the short trip to the island and spend two days acting suitably interested in the large marsupials.
Having established his cover story at a level of detail he never intended, Olaf had returned to his hotel late last night. Now, after his first good night’s sleep since arriving down under, he was lazing around the lobby reading the latest edition of the Journal of Evolutionary Biology and wondering when he would be contacted by Dr. Tropsha.
“Dr. Gunderson?” A woman’s voice asked.
Olaf looked up to see a pert young woman, perhaps in her mid twenties, about 5‘6” with medium brown hair cut in a pageboy and hazel eyes. “Yes, I am Olaf Gunderson,” he replied cautiously.
Now what? This woman most definitely is not Ludmilla Tropsha.
“G’day, Professor. I’m Sandy McKennitt and I’ve been sent to collect you and some other arriving visitors.” The voluble young woman stuck out her hand and smiled. Olaf stood up and shook hands with the girl. “Other visitors?” he asked, puzzled.
“Yes indeed, I’ve already collected Doctors Gupta and Piscopia and dropped them at the FBO. I left them having brekkie but we need to shake a leg, or they’re going to wonder what happened to us. And I still have to pick some things up at the market for Mrs. Reilly.” She stood there, looking at him expectantly.
“Who is Mrs. Reilly? And what’s an FBO?”
“Now don’t worry about that, you need to go pack up and check out. Then we can go to the airport where the plane is. An FBO is a Fixed Base Operator, an aircraft service center. That’s where I parked the Caravan.” She took him by the arm and led him toward the front desk and the elevators. “Come on Professor, off with you, we’ve got places to be.”
* * * * *
A half hour later, Dr. Gunderson found himself being hustled into a waiting car by the effervescent Sandy. She had been talking nearly nonstop since introducing herself, and was now explaining that they needed to get back to the Adelaide airport so they could continue their journey to someplace called Parker’s Station, which was evidently somewhere in the wilds of the Australian Outback.
“Come on Professor, you’re going to love it,” Sandy was saying as she threw his bag in the back seat and shoved him into the front left seat of her rental car. This was a bit disorienting to Olaf, since Australian cars are right-hand-drive. “Australia is a really big place and you’ll get to see a lot of ace countryside. It may seem that Parker’s Station is beyond the black stump, but we’ll be there well before dark, I promise.”
With that she started the car and launched them into traffic. Olaf gathered that she was also to be his pilot for the next leg of the journey. If she flew like she drove, it was going to be an exciting flight, perhaps more exciting than he was prepared for.
As the pair departed, neither noticed the blond woman observing them from across the street.
Oh crap! Where did she come from,
Kim Lawson thought furiously,
and where is she taking him?
Kim had been following the Professor around for three days now and though the sneaking around like a spy was exciting at first, the Mata Hari act was starting to get old.
We better get to where the undead cosmonaut is soon or Dad’s going to have a stroke when he sees the credit card bill,
she fretted as she flagged down a cab. “Follow that car!” she told the driver, and then smiled.
I’ve always wanted to say that.