To Infinity

by Darren Humphries

  The sky had been, in its natural state, a glorious clear purple, but mankind had never been able to cope with pink seas, orange rain or pale purple skies. As a result, chemicals were steadily pumped into the atmosphere to maintain the azure illusion. Even the sand of the desert had been dyed to get rid of the bright green tint. The environmentalist lobby had long since given up trying to fight this trend. One particularly vociferous group of protestors had been exiled to a moon with a most striking pink sky, brown sea and rock strata that contained all the colours of the rainbow. Rainbows on this moon had been mainly bright yellow. The sun was a white dwarf and the grass grew lilac. When a rescue ship came to pick them up after six months, they had all plucked out their own eyes and sworn fealty to the great god Feng Shui. Following this, protests about planet colour engineering had been much reduced.

  The ship floated down to the ground with all the grace and calm of any other plummeting hunk of metal, the air screaming around the hull as it was brutally ripped apart by hard plasteel surfaces. At the last possible moment, particle thrusters roared into life and arrested the headlong plunge. As the ship was designed with more aerodynamic qualities than most space-borne vehicles, it was able to manoeuvre into its assigned space with much less brute force and atmospheric discharge than was normal. The flight couches transmitted no sensation to the crew as the undercarriage thumped down hard onto the pre-cracked concrete landing pad.

  “That was as light as a feather,” Keely declared in an awed, impressed voice. The computer chose not to disabuse her of the notion.

  Keely had handled the stress of landing much better than Haynes, mostly due to the fact that she had never witnessed the results of an orbital landing gone bad with her own eyes. Neither had anyone else, due to the impacts wiping out all witnesses for hundreds of miles in all directions, but Haynes had seen recordings of such events made from orbit and the news footage of the devastation that they left behind in their wake. Thus, whilst she had been whooping in delight at the rollercoaster ride through the atmosphere that had been projected onto the viewscreen, he had been pinned inside the couch’s tight embrace, curled up in mind-numbed horror. There was a reason why spaceships generally stayed in orbit and passengers used wire-fall towers for their final descent.

  Now that they were safely on the ground and not swirling masses of atomised molecules, he struggled out of the furniture’s grip and stood on his own feet, the only mode of transport that he implicitly trusted, to better examine the view outside.

  “Not very pretty,” Keely commented from his side.

  The spaceport wasn’t very pretty, but then spaceports never are. The stresses placed upon buildings in the vicinity of spaceships brutalising their way to the ground and back up into space were such that only constructions with hugely thick walls of the strongest grade stresscrete could stay upright. As a result, there were an awful lot of low, square, featureless blocks that housed all of the functions of the spaceport that could not be secreted below ground. To Haynes, though, it was a glorious sight marking the gateway to a civilisation that he had not experienced since his sentencing to Srindar Djem.

  “Right,” he straightened his shoulders in preparation of his return to modern humanity. “You stay here.”

  “But I want to see…” Keely started to complain through pouting lips.

  “This is true civilisation,” he admonished her. “The most dangerous environment known to man. You wouldn’t survive the length of time it takes to get to the travel tube station. We’d probably both be sold into slavery before you even realised it. Computer?”

  “Yes?”

  “Nice landing. Very much appreciated the lack of total annihilation. Check with the port catalogue and see if there’s anything available for your systems.”

  “My systems are all operating within required parameters,” the computer didn’t have Keely’s lips to pout, but managed to recreate the tone perfectly.

  “I’m not talking about what your systems need,” Haynes checked the external temperature and shrugged into an overjacket. “You’ve been out of circulation for a while. See if they’ve got any upgrades that you fancy. We’re not here for long mind, so nothing core.”

  The hatch hissed open and he paused to breathe in deeply the mix of scorched air, burned lubricant and stresscrete dust that passed for the atmosphere of the spaceport. After the clean, pollutant-free air of Hochnar and the triple-filtered ship’s atmosphere, his lungs were irritated by the coarseness. He breathed deeply again to savour the feeling until it subsided.

  “Welcome back,” he muttered to himself as the hatch slid back into place behind him and he started down the ramp that led into the inhabited sections of the spaceport.

  The areas around the ship berths were bustling with activity as the crews of the vessels and the planet’s ship-techs went about the millions of tasks required in the maintenance, restocking and refuelling that kept the space vessels in space. As he stepped out into the (literally) cavernous space of the arrivals hall, he noticed that almost all of the activity paused briefly and heads turned in his direction. None of them wore welcoming smiles. Deciding that this was natural paranoia brought on by his enforced absence from large groups of people, he continued to the bottom of the ramp and looked for a sign pointing the way to the travel-tube station.

  One of the station-techs walked past carrying a piece of equipment with an indeterminate purpose over her shoulder. Despite having her hair jammed under a worker’s cap and engine oil smeared across one cheek, she was clearly a very attractive woman. He admired the view of her from behind, her shape not quite wiped out by the official spaceport-issued baggy coveralls.

  Wow, what I could do if I ever got those off! He thought to himself.

  The tech hadn’t looked at him as she passed, so he decided that she hadn’t noticed him. Perhaps when he came back he would look her up and see if she would be interested in some of the multi-tantric tricks that he had learned. There was one that he thought would be perfect for her particular talents. He could…

  The tech had turned around and was walking back towards him. He couldn’t quite read the expression that was on her face, but thought that perhaps his luck was in after all. The tech reached him and calmly swung her load in an arc that was aimed at taking his head off at the shoulders. So surprised was he by the move that he reacted late and was unable to dodge the blow entirely. As he collapsed, confused and slightly concussed, he noticed that she had also staggered under the force of the blow.

  He tried to regain single vision before getting up again. A swarm of port authority skimmers hummed over the heads of other people in the hall on a direct line towards him, slowly coalescing into a single vehicle that came to a hover above him. Long ropes disgorged from the body of the skimmer, followed moments later by a number of black-clad commandos. They slid down the ropes and hit the ground with purpose, pulling out small, but ugly and efficient-looking assault weapons, all of which they turned on him.

  Two men moved behind him and hauled him roughly to his feet. A third came up in front of him, his face masked by a combat faceplate complete with nose and mouth filters. When he spoke, the filters distorted his voice.

  “You must wear this,” the commando held up a tie, bright yellow with large blue spots on it.

  “What?” Haynes wasn’t sure whether he was still suffering from concussion or whether a heavily-armed man had offered him a tie.

  “You must put this on and you must wear it at all times whilst here,” the man reached forward and looped the tie into place around his neck.

  “Wow, the dress code on this planet is really tight,” Haynes commented. He decided it best not to comment on the planet’s colour sense.

  The commandos all holstered their weapons and turned back to the skimmer, which had floated down to the ground nearby. The leader removed his helmet to reveal a relatively normal looking face. “I’m sorry about the theatrics,” he apologised, “but we had to work quickly. You were broadcasting
very loudly.”

  “Broadcasting?” Haynes wondered if the tech’s blow had left him permanently confused.

  “Your thoughts,” the officer explained. “This is a planet of telepaths and your unrestrained thoughts were distracting, offensive and even painful to us. That,” he pointed to the tie, “will dampen the effects and must be worn at all times. Surely you were aware of this?”

  “My background briefing may have been a little less than complete,” Haynes suggested, wishing that the computer could read his thoughts about how he was going to repay this.

  “I suggest that you study planetary backgrounds in a bit more detail in future,” the officer said. “Your purpose here?”

  “I have a little business to transact,” Haynes told him, frantically running back through all the thoughts that he could remember having since he stepped out of the ship for anything that might have revealed what that business was or anything else that might lead him back to Srindar Djem. He cringed inwardly when he recalled the thoughts he had harboured about the ship-tech.

  The officer nodded and chose not to inquire further, “It might be wise to transact it quickly before anyone thinks to file charges against you.”

  “Thanks I will,” Haynes assured him, wondering what kind of charges might be filed. Thinking without a licence, perhaps. One thing was for certain, being on a planet where everyone could hear his thoughts was not a situation that he would choose to be in for long. He had far too much to hide for that. His main thought at present was to get back into space as quickly as possible.

  Taking leave of the officer, he found directions to the travel-tube station and took the first transport into the city proper.

  The travel-tube rose above ground for the last few miles of the journey from the spaceport, affording him wonderful views of the bustling city. Whilst the distance was great, the journey time was not too onerous due to the high speeds that the travel-tubes were able to achieve. They were capable of going even faster, but there was little public support for the idea of arriving at the other end of the journey in a condition not unlike that of well-stirred raspberry jam. Streets flashed past outside the windows far too fast to be properly glimpsed, but the huge towers of superconcrete and glaz offered an impressive skyline.

  At the city centre station, he strolled past the queues waiting for the street tubes and went up to the row of executive transport cubicles. He keyed a code into the pad that he hoped was still valid and was rewarded when the door eased open. He stepped inside and was gently lowered down the several levels to the street below.

  Someone had programmed a light rain over the city for that morning and the smell of it was still fresh in the air and every surface glistened wetly in the aftermath.

  Haynes took a moment to peer up at the towers all around and the blue hints of sky between them so high above. He gloried in being in the midst of so many people again, being able to feel the rhythms of city life flowing around him. He noticed that some of the other people passing by were wearing ties similar to his own, though the designs were in better taste.

  A portly man barged brusquely past him, jostling him strongly. The man eyed him briefly, muttered, “bloody tourist,” and went on his way.

  Haynes waited until he had turned the corner of the street before examining the wallet that he had lifted from the fat man’s pocket. An executive in the agriculture ministry, he appeared to be a member of some questionable clubs in what would almost certainly turn out to be the less salubrious end of town, but possessed nothing that was of use to Haynes. Nonetheless, he used the cards to attempt access to the mans bank and credit accounts, covering the retina scans and mis-inputting the codes until the accounts were fraud-locked. The rest of the contents he threw, along with the wallet, into an incinerator unit. Replacing all those IDs and cards would be a long and inconvenient task.

  “It’s good to be back,” he told himself and set off to locate the financial district.

  There were several banks of truly galactic stature in existence, but few possessed the reputation for quality and security that the Nova Banking Corporation enjoyed. Haynes obviously avoided those. The bank that he did choose was a mid-grade operation with little or no reputation in any direction. A banking system on a galactic scale required a flow of information of equally celestial magnitude. The system of bureaucracy needed to control it was vast enough to hide almost anything in and most of the banks hid a lot.

  Haynes passed through the white marble façade of his chosen institution, crossed the white marbled floor to a white marbled table and sat in a chair that was fortunately a lot more comfortable than a white marble one would have been. The client advisor looked up from his screen and asked if he could help. Haynes passed him a slip of paper, which he read twice, swallowed twice and then excused himself. Moments later, he was back with a management grade executive.

  “If you would come this way sir,” the executive indicated a private office. The man was thin with a hawklike nose and a habit of rubbing his hands together that was clearly inkeeping with his profession. Once inside the office, he dimmed the glaz so that nobody could observe from outside. Haynes looked around for security cameras.

  “There are none in here sir,” the banker guessed at the purpose of his glance, “only a context alarm. I say the right two words in order and the city’s security forces will be here in force in seconds.”

  Recalling his earlier brush with this planet’s security forces, Haynes hoped that the man had chosen two words he wasn’t likely to say by mistake.

  “Now then,” the banker’s fingers ran over the keyboard that appeared in the desk’s surface, inputting a series of security codes and ID inputs that Haynes was hard put to even read, let alone remember. Some of them came from the piece of paper in his hand, “I am sorry for the delay, but these accounts are highly unusual and we don’t get too many of them in here. I am a little out of practice.”

  Haynes was impressed. Despite being ‘out of practice’ the man’s fingers actually blurred in front of him.

  Another keyboard appeared in the desktop in front of Haynes for a last code to be input. As the last digit was entered, a screen lit up above the desk, displaying an access welcome message.

  The banker stood up, “I will leave you now sir, but please press here if you need anything.” He indicated a press-sensitive section of the desktop that had lit up. With that, he eased himself out of the room, rubbing his hands as he went.

  Haynes immediately opened up the accounts screen, bypassing the advertisements for high-return investments and male potency pills, and went straight to the summary page. After a moment, he went to the transaction history and studied it very carefully before closing down the screen.

  The banker intercepted him as he left the office. “I hope that everything was in order sir.”

  “The requisite fee has been transferred to the bank,” Haynes told him what he really wanted to know, “along with a little extra.”

  “Thank you sir,” the banker actually gave him a little bow.

  Haynes made a straight line (as far as that was possible with intervening tower blocks and suchlike) back to the travel-tube station. It was just as well that he was wearing the telepathy-suppressing tie as his mind was awhirl with thoughts and none of them were very charitable.

  “Computer!” he yelled even before the hatch had hissed shut behind him, grateful for something he could finally shout at. “Prepare for immediate launch and I do mean immediate!”

  “Can’t do that I’m afraid,” the computer’s soothing tones only serving to increase his anger.

  “I can cut off your functions and fly this thing on manual you know,” he warned, storming onto the flight deck.

  “Won’t do you any good,” the computer warned him, “the main engines are offline.”

  “What? Why?”

  “You said that I could pick an upgrade,” the computer replied defensively.

  “I also said no core systems,” he recalled. “I
specifically said no core systems.”

  “It’s not a core system,” the computer told him smugly, “Just one that requires the engines to be shutdown whilst being installed.”

  Haynes decided that it was probably not worthwhile arguing the point, so he stalked back out of the control room and set off for the engineering section. During the voyage from Hochnar to Caldarea, Haynes had scouted out the entire ship. Knowing the environment was the first step to winning a battle. For Haynes, it was more a matter of knowing which way to run and where to hide. His first step to winning a battle was not to get involved in it in the first place. He followed his steps exactly as he remembered the route and ended up in the galley.

  “Can I get you something?” the computer asked archly.

  With a snort, Haynes stalked back out of the kitchen and tried again. This time he managed to find the correct corridor and stormed straight into the Engineering Section. The area was usually full of noise with the steady pulsing of generators, pumping of pumps, clicking of circuits opening and closing, vents venting, gas exchangers exchanging and a myriad of other operations that he barely understood the first principles of let alone the technological details. Now, though, it was eerily silent without even the soft clicking of hot machinery cooling. The sound of a pin dropping might have been shocking in such a silence.

  Instead of a dropping pin, there was a hollow clang that reverberated around the chamber, followed by a string of invective that was both lively and physically impossible in either human or machine Kama Sutras.

  Haynes followed the voice and walked around a large, turbine-like machine. “What the hell are you doing to my engines?”