by Jenn Thorson
“No!” shouted Bertram Ludlow from the hatchway, waving his borrowed laser. He’d seen it all and he’d seen enough. After everything they’d accomplished, it couldn’t end like this; he wouldn’t let it. His people as test market subjects against their knowledge? O’wun powered down and punctured? Rollie half-dead and on his way to the wild Altairan world of carnivorous herbology? And Xylith—
Wait, where was Xylith, anyway? Hadn’t Bertram seen her being held, just moments ago, by two of Skytreg’s pearly people?
He scanned their numbers, searching for a glimpse of shining dark hair among the silver. The showbeings were still there in formation, as if prepared for an impromptu encore show. But if Xylith Duonogganon had ever been in their strange and shiny hands, she wasn’t now. Her Mostly Elevated Demi-Scintillation had vanished.
Paar too, Xylith. And thanks, Bertram thought.
Unfortunately, W.I. Tstyko was still very much there, moving swiftly toward the ramp and scowling at Bertram’s lack of instant cooperation.
This is it, Bertram thought. There’s nothing more to lose.
With a strong, certain hand, he picked up the weapon Rollie had given him and tried to remember what the Deltan had said about working it.
“‘Press this button, it’s on …’”
He pressed the button.
“‘Grip that, it fires.’”
He gripped.
Then he remembered:
Ack! Plant your feet, plant your feet, plant your—
Bertram Ludlow’s head felt like had it met a flying kachunkettball, his skull an unwilling shoop. He tried to sit up, but his body clanged with pains. They bumped and rebounded their way down along every joint, nerve, muscle and bone.
He moved to look around and found himself lying on a slab in a dark room. There was a stiff, smelly tarp tucked over him. An apron with the LibLounge logo had been folded neatly under his head. The door was open and light poured in.
He remembered what had happened.
He just didn’t know what happened from there.
He took his time getting into a standing position and considered throwing up on the tarp. But that would take so much energy. He shuffled out into the main room, making a mental note to vomit later when he was feeling more up to it.
On the far wall, the panels—once smooth and even—were dented so it looked like a toss-up between modern art or a general Bertramesque shape. Underfoot, a burnt streak cut across the flooring.
Yeah. That part he remembered …
Plant your feet.
He peered out the hatch window. Stars danced before it. He was no longer on Skorbig. He had made it to free space. He wasn’t bound by a Klinko system. Tstyko wasn’t waiting to interrogate. Eudicot T’murp wasn’t handing him bottles of fizzy drinks and asking him to rate the flavors.
Like a zombie, Bertram moved toward the cockpit. He frowned. “Rollie?”
There was someone in the pilot’s chair, but judging by the shapely legs and lack of black, it wasn’t Rollie. “Xylith?” He peered around the corner.
Relief washed over Rozz’s face at the sight of him. Her smile was happy and alight. “Dude! Welcome back to the land of the living.”
“We’re—” He stared at her seated there before the controls, and then he looked out the front window, trying to process the sight. “We’re flying.”
“Yes,” she said, indulgently. She offered pity in her warm brown eyes, like she’d assessed the situation and decided she should speak slower and louder to him from here on out. “This. Is. Space,” she told him and pointed.
“No, I mean you. You’re flying.” He moved to sit in the co-pilot’s seat; his muscles shrieked at the movement and the contact of it. He was hating touch. Touch was excruciating.
“I’m flying,” she agreed. Forced patience was still in her voice. “That’s right.”
“You don’t know how to fly a spacecraft,” he pointed out. “You don’t even own a car.”
“Oh!” There was that relief again. “No, see, this is a Protostar model 340-K. I ate an infopill on that.”
Bertram blinked.
“Well, why not? They’re very rare. There are only a few cross-galaxy.”
“The infopills?”
“Protostars,” she said.
Bertram stared.
“There was a rundown on the way they worked in Rockethead magazine,” she explained. “Supposed to be a miracle of misguided engineering.”
Bertram sighed. The gentle exhale of air made him wince. “Where’s Xylith? What happened to Rollie?”
Here, Rozz’s expression darkened. “I’m sorry, Bertram, I don’t know about the woman. But cops still had the blond guy when I launched. I got the impression they were kind of in a hurry to take him somewhere.”
“Altair-5.”
She nodded. “Altair-5.”
He considered letting out a groan but thought it would hurt too much. “And why aren’t we in custody?”
“You really don’t remember.” Sympathetically, she reached to touch what Bertram learned was a sizeable bump on the back left of his head. It rattled that kachunkettball of pain down his body again. He twitched with raw nerves. “Sorry.” She put her hands back on the steering wheel where they couldn’t do so much damage.
“I remember Tstyko was coming up to get me, I fired, and …”
“I closed the hatch and floored it,” she said simply and then rolled her eyes. “I mean, not that you can floor this thing, per se. It’s so not the way a Protostar works. You have to kinda jiggle it around a little and—”
“Rozz, you’re saying you launched, left the planet, and now, if I look back there, I’m not going to see a whole fleet of GCU law enforcement still on our tail?”
Rozz’s expression did not exactly exude confidence.
So against all pain, all nausea, and all desire to believe she was right—Bertram scrambled across the ship to peer out the back hatch.
He’d even planted his feet in preparation.
But when he looked out that portal to blackness, there was nothing to see but the stars they left behind them.
Rozz’s voice bounced back through the ship. “We’re clear, right?”
“Clear,” Bertram told her, returning. “Maybe.” He still didn’t like it. Dread joined the physical pain in a close tete-a-tete. “Why would they let us go? They all know I’m trouble.”
“Uh-huh.” The tone was non-committal.
“Come on,” Bertram pressed, “you saw me; I’m a dark horse. A rabble rouser. A revolutionary for Tryfling rights. An Intergalactic Fugitive.”
Rozz coughed politely into a hand and then grew quiet. Finally she said, “You’re the star of an up-and-coming reality show. And they’re already losing one major cast member. I’d say celebrity has its perks.”
“Hm.” It was an interesting theory, and it did explain some things. He let the idea rattle around like a kachunkettball in his mind. Bertram leaned back in the copilot’s chair.
For a long moment, they sat silently watching the stars. The thing that went “bip,” did.
“You know what we should do?” Bertram said finally. “We should go to Tryfe—er, Earth—and warn everyone.” The very idea filled him with hope. Maybe he could still make a difference. He looked eagerly to Rozz for response.
“Oh.” She frowned. “Yeah, about that. Um, Bertram, originally I was hoping for a better time to mention this …” She bit her lower lip. “Aw, what the hell.” She turned to meet his gaze. “Warning people on Earth is probably going to be harder than you think.”
“Because if we start yammering about space aliens and extra-terrestrial test market takeovers, people will think we’re several squares short of a full candybar. Yeah, I’d expect some of that,” Bertram told her with a reassuring smile.
“No,” she corrected, “because there’s something wrong with this meter over here that controls the coordinates.” She tapped a gauge.
Now it was coming back to him. Ro
llie had said something about some gadget being “fragged.” “Ah.”
“Annnnnnnd …” Rozz continued, “also because of landing.”
“You mean where to land, because we can’t be specific.”
“Er, no. I mean how to land. Like, at all. Because of me not being really, you know, so much educated on that part.”
It was like the kickback from a hand-laser all over again. “You know how to take-off and fly but you don’t know how to land? What about the infopill? The rundown in Rocketleg magazine?” he protested.
“Rockethead. It was a two-parter,” she said.
“And the second part?”
“Out next U-week.”
Bertram gave her a hard stare.
“Look, I don’t control the publishing schedule,” she said.
Finally, he nodded, wondering why he was even surprised. Such were the wily, wily ways of space. He rose. “Okay. That’s fine. It’s all good. No freaking out necessary.” He was saying this more to convince himself than Rozz. “I’ll just check the Uninet for landing instructions. No problem.” But in the cockpit doorway, a second thought stopped him. “Your infopill didn’t happen to mention how to, um, start the Uninet computer, did it?”
“The Uninet system wasn’t standard to this model,” said Rozz. “If it’s got the Uninet, it’s custom. I mean, the Protostar was all about handling and performance, so any system like that would weigh it down and—”
“No.” Bertram winced and put up a hand. “Just silence.” He pushed at his temples as the great kachunkettball game in his head went mani-ball. “Just silence.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jenn Thorson is an author, marketing writer, and a compulsive weaver of fictions in the car, shower and other places she normally can’t find a pen. She lives in Bertram Ludlow’s hometown of Pittsburgh, PA, but is definitely mostly sure she’s never met extra-terrestrials there. Her stories have been published in the Humor Press, the journal for the Lewis Carroll Society of North America, The Timber Creek Review and Romantic Homes magazine.
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