Prologue – Where the reader gets to learn interesting stuff about what’s going to happen before the members of the crew find out, which allows the reader to be smug and mutter things like “you’re in for it now,” quietly, not because the Captain or Shatman or Chance will hear, but because actual people who happen to be nearby might think it strange that a person is talking to a book. And we mustn’t be thought strange.

        Phineas hated tending sheep. He hated it with a passion that could only be maintained by someone blessed with the energy of youth. The sheep (or, rather, what passed for sheep on Globe) milled about in an uneasy knot, snuffling through what passed for meadow on Globe looking for something edible among the lichen-blanketed stones. Thankfully, the storm had passed, leaving Phineas, the what-passed-for-sheep, and the stones damp and cool in the evening air. The sheep were quite used to it, and the the stones had any objections, they didn’t express them. Phineas, however, had forgotten to bring his oilskin raincoat, and so he stood dripping and watching the sheep, which in his estimation were probably the stupidest creatures that ever drew breath, do what they did every evening, whether a fifteen year old boy was watching them or not.

Phineas had never heard of any harm befalling any sheep, and had mentioned this several times to his father. Fatherly wisdom being what it was, Phineas always received the same answer, which was that Phineas must be doing a fine job watching them. During these conversations, Phineas was often tempted to point out that sheep-watchers left their posts all the time, often for hours, and the sheep had always been found doing exactly what they had been doing when the watcher slipped away. In fact Phineas himself owed his very existence to just such an absence, but he never reminded his parents of that fact, mostly because he didn’t like to dwell on the fact that he could very well be standing dripping wet in the very spot he was conceived, and because pointing things like that out to his father tended to result in extra chores.

Portia was probably waiting for him at the masque. He shuddered to think of her, red hair spilling like flame down her exquisite shoulders, capping a lovely, round face with eyes the color of spring grass and a mischievous grin that made his insides turn cartwheels. Attending evening Masque had been her idea, and agreeing to join her was the first time he had ever agreed to attend a Masque voluntarily. God certainly had a funny way of rewarding piety, because that very night Ben had taken sick, and naturally father had selected Phineas to replace his ailing brother. Trotting out a bit more fatherly wisdom, his father said “Phineas, there’s no virtue like honest work. Why, even our beloved Poet got his start as a bricklayer, so while you’re out there keeping our sheep safe from harm, look to the sky and thank God and the Poet for the blessings of a good night’s labor.”

All of that was easy for father to say. He was a happily married man, especially if one measured happiness by the number of children one had. Phineas was the forth of eleven children, which meant that his father should probably fall over in a fit of ecstasy sometime soon. His two oldest brothers were also happily married and churning out their own broods of sheep-watching slaves, which left him and his brother Ben to endure the indignity of child-rearing without any of the commensurate benefits. Minding his younger siblings was the only thing he hated worse that minding the sheep, because unlike the sheep, his younger siblings knew how to make fire, and their favorite occupation was a constant scientific curiosity about the relative flammability of any object they could lay their hands on. More than once he had caught them testing the flame-resistance of his shoes, hand just yesterday he had come just in time to rescue his mother’s favorite wooden bowl from a fiery death. Tonight, however, there wasn’t any fire danger, because the boys had already left with Father for a three-day visit to Phineas’s older brother’s farm in Wellstone. Mother had gone to evening Masque, where she would feel the poet’s love bring her closer to God, and, though she probably wasn’t aware of it, closer to Portia. At least closer to Portia than Phineas was likely to get.

Stars began to wink into view high overhead, as the last rays of Oberon slowly diminished against the darkening horizon. Phineas stared into the sky, indignant, and decided that the sheep, the burgeoning stars, any long-dead Poets who might have been listening, and even God himself ought to know just how unjust it was for a person his age to waste his youth in a rock-strewn meadow with nothing but sheep for company. Yes, Phineas thought, tonight is the perfect night for a some good old-fashioned blasphemy.

He took a deep breath, looked up into the night, and flashed an evil grin. A thrill tingled in the back of his neck; if anyone heard him, he’d be neck-deep in manure with an anvil on his head before morning. But even the threat of a manure-dip couldn’t dissuade him. He pointed to a nearby sheep, and began:

O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you.

She is the fairies’ midwife; and she comes in shape no bigger than an agate-stone

On the forefinger of an alderman.

Drawn with a team of…

Phineas racked his brain for the missing word. Portia had taken great pains to teach him a piece of the Sacred Speech, and he had taken great pains to learn it. But the words had fled, and now, with his mind empty, he felt foolish.  Then, it came to him.

Drawn with a team of anatomies

A thwart men’s noses as they snore loudly… no, that wasn’t right…

Athwart men’s noses as they loudly snore-

Something about that still didn’t seem quite right, but Phineas was energized by his success He was somewhere in the vicinity of what Portia taught him, and so he continued, louder and more confident with each line:  

Her wagon-spokes made of long spider’s legs

Pasted on top of grasshopper wings with cobwebs!

Somehow, the whole thing sounded much better when Portia was doing it. Then again, Portia could count backward from seven thousand and he’d drink each word like honeyed wine. It was probably just familiarity that had taken the blush off.

Traced with some….other spider webs

And moonshine collars’ watery beams

        A dry little voice in his head quietly informed him of two things. The first was that he was uttering complete nonsense at the top of his lungs to an audience of formerly indifferent sheep. The second was that, contrary to what he usually experienced as a sheep-watcher, his chargers no longer appeared to be indifferent. His voice trailed off, and a tiny finger of dread began creeping up his spine, erasing the pleasant, pre-blasphemy tingling sensation he’d enjoyed earlier. He swallowed hard, and suddenly felt very, very small.

        The entire flock of sheep had stopped eating, and every head now focused intently in Phineas’s direction. The one time he decides to blaspheme, the one, short, infinitesimal time he decided to utter the hated words of the Bard, and every single sheep within earshot had suddenly become his audience. They stood, some with plants hanging limply from unmoving mouths and gazed at him with an intensity With a growing sense of dread, Phineas realized his folly;  the Directors had been telling the truth the whole time: the Poet was listening.

        He was also watching, apparently, which required a bit more light, because the sheep were visible in far more detail than they should have been after Obset. A brilliant red-gold sparkle danced in the eyes of the sheep who stood in the erstwhile front row, and suddenly Phineas realized that the sheep weren’t looking at him at all. They seemed to be looking past him.  Slowly, he turned around, expecting at any moment to be swatted into a paste by a gigantic book or a barn-sized manure shovel. Neither of these things descended from the heavens to destroy him, but that fact did little to put his mind at ease. Resigned to death and what was sure to be subsequent eternal damnation, Phineas sank into the wet heather and watched passively as a gigantic fireball illuminated the valley like a second noontime, descending slowly, inexorably, toward Globe.

        With the resilience that only youth can muster, Phineas began to prepare in his mind the perfect logical defense, taking a basic naïve ignorance strategy and sprinkling it with dash of reasonable doubt. Surely, it might have sounded like the Sacred Speech, but anyone listening closely would know that the words were totally wrong, because had only been half listening anyway, distracted by Portia’s flowing crimson locks and the odd glimpse into the paradise located just below the maddeningly low neckline of her dress. Surely the Poet would understand. He had been young once too.

        The fireball suddenly winked out, and Globe plunged back into darkness.

Chapter 1 – Where you meet the Captain Haigh and the other important members of the crew, except for Ezekiel “Papa” Bantan, and Doctor Proctor. We’ll catch up with them a little later.

        As seen from the sizable viewscreen located a few meters from Captain Haigh’s command chair, the world below them seemed pleasant enough. He’d seen hundreds of worlds just like it; complete with breathable atmosphere, generous supplies of water, and clouds drifting across emerald and brown continents. Just past the curve of the planet, where day receded into night, he could just make out the silvery edge of a distant moon.

        “Orbital insertion complete,” said Mr. Chance, leaning back and grinning that unsettling, smug grin of his. He was wearing his Early Ricardo Montalban head, which he had received just before the Explorer had left port, one more addition to the collection of heads he carried with him in his cabin for every voyage the Explorer made. It didn’t matter what head he wore, however; regardless of the face, the grin always seemed the same, with the same slight upward curve to the left side of his face and the same smarmy look that seemed to say, “Yeah, I already knew that”. Captain Haigh secretly wished Chance would find another ship to pilot, but couldn’t bring himself to dismiss the man. He felt a certain sense of guilt about the man’s strange condition. He could still see Chance, poking his head out of the lavatory doors, wondering what was happening, when the doors, drunk with rerouted power, closed right on his head and pinched it off like an overripe grape. Captain Haigh hadn’t yet decided if the aliens who had caused all the trouble in the first place had done him a favor by replacing Chance’s head with an artificial one.

        To be fair, Captain Haigh did enjoy some distinct advantages by keeping Chance on. Armed with the latest in cephaloprosthetic technology, Chance was by far the finest navigator and pilot humanity had ever partially produced. Calculating orbit trajectories or visualizing the ships course through five dimensions had become mere child’s play for him, and there had been more than one occasion where having David Hasselhoff or Tom Wopat on the crew had been decidedly helpful. Although Captain Haigh couldn’t argue with the benefits, all it took was one glance at the man’s smarmy, knowing grin to make him look over his shoulder and see who might be standing behind him with a butcher knife or a hangman’s noose. There was also the man’s unsettling and rather creepy hobby of selecting his heads exclusively from the Small Box Classics artificial head catalog.

The captain composed himself just long enough to glance over at his navigator and nod. The part of him that still suffered mortal terror every time the Heisenburg Drive hummed to life was just beginning to calm down, and he would soon regain his ability to speak. At present, though, he merely nodded, with the composed expression of a Captain who enjoyed total control of his ship and its crew. It was a well-practiced illusion, but an illusion nonetheless.

He looked again at the viewscreen, finding himself peering at the clouds to see if they were actually moving or not. He squinted and leaned closer. Something about the planet wasn’t sitting right with him, but the Heisenburg jump had temporarily blotted out most of his memory, especially recent ones that occurred just before Chance had hit “yes” in the “You are about to engage the Heisenburg Drive. Are you sure you want to do this?” dialog box on the touchscreen control panel embedded in his console. This mean that while the planet seemed pleasant enough-pleasant enough to visit, in fact-there was something nagging at him, something about there not being a planet, or any other kind of naturally occurring space object in the vicinity of his destination.

That was it. There wasn’t supposed to be a planet here.

“Chance,” said the Captain.

“Sir,” said Chance.

“There isn’t supposed to be a planet here.”

“Depends on where ‘here’ is, sir,” said Chance.

Captain Haigh paused. He started to say “That sounds bad,” but decided against it for a couple of reasons. The first was that saying it would be as good as admitting that he, the Captain of the Explorer, didn’t have a firm grasp of the situation. While the lingering effects of the jump made that admission truthful, having the entire command deck staff aware of it wasn’t good for his image as a steady-as-she-goes starship captain, nor was it conducive to good order. The second was that if he did say, “that sounds bad,” and Chance agreed with him, then what Captain Haigh was afraid of would suddenly become very real, and he wasn’t quite ready for full-on reality at that particular moment.

Instead, he said “Let’s do a scan, see what we can pick up.” It was the starship captain equivalent of the noncommittal grunt, and it had never once failed to buy him time to think. The command deck crew went straight to work, carefully checking their instruments and making calculations. In a few minutes, Captain Haigh would have a full report. He’d know the planet’s albedo, its principal mineral makeup, the ratios of gasses in its atmosphere, the declination of its axis, the ratio of its rotation to its orbit, its mass, its volume, the force in Newtons required for escape velocity if they should find it necessary to visit the surface, mean temperature, surface temperature, highest and lowest point, the shape and intensity of its magnetic field, average windspeed, the locations of any pockets of radioactivity, and a myriad of other tantalizing tidbits of data, few of which would be of any help whatsoever.

The command deck hatches swooshed open, clearing the way for a briskly moving Commander Shatman. She weaved automatically between the frantically calculating crewpersons bent over their consoles and came to a halt about twelve inches from the Captain’s Command Chair. The two stared at one another for what seemed like ten seconds, but was probably closer to one, the captain noting her “what now?” expression, while Shatman took similar notice of the Captain’s “those headlights are getting awfully close, I wonder what’s behind them?” look.

Despite the panicked expression on the captain’s face, he was actually very glad to see his second-in-command. She was the one person on the ship that he could speak to freely without worrying about whether or not the thing he was about to say would have some adverse affect on the ship or his intrepid mystique. She was very good at handling the day-to-day operations that the Captain found tedious. It was Shatman who made sure the food holds were stocked, the repair parts were inspected and in their proper places, and all the paperwork was up-to-date.  She was also very good at coming up with excuses so that the captain could leave the command deck without appearing foolish.

“Captain,” she said, using her “Urgent Matter Elsewhere” voice. “I need your approval on the personnel manifests. It’s very important.”

“Right away,” said the captain. He strode purposefully toward the door, with Shatman following close behind. “Keep scanning,” he said, “I want a full report.” Before anyone on the command deck could reply the doors whooshed shut.

He and Shatman made their way down one of the many long passageways that honeycombed the outer decks of the Explorer. Crewmen bustled past, intent on their duties, and Captain Haigh didn’t interfere. He was perfectly content to have the crewmen doing the job they were paid to do instead of pretending to be diffident. Besides, he despised pleasantries for the most part, so it was actually a relief when they rushed quietly around him. Some starship captains required the same customs and courtesies that one might find on a military vessel, but Captain Haigh found all the saluting and rank structure and rules very tedious. Saluting might be fine for military ships, but the closest thing to a weapon on the Explorer was the attitude thrusters, which could possibly be mistaken for some kind of rail-gun, if one squinted hard enough and bent sideways. As far as he was concerned, peace and quiet was more than enough respect for him.

“So we’re in orbit around a planet,” said Shatman suddenly. She wasn’t the kind of person who needed to test the water with her toe before jumping in.

“Apparently,” said the captain.

“A planet that isn’t supposed to be there,” said Shatman.

“That’s pretty much the same reaction I had.”

A door whooshed open, and the two stepped inside one of the many wardrooms, breakrooms, and sitting areas spread liberally across the ship. Shatman leaned against the bulkhead, while the Captain flopped down on a nearby couch.

“You used the Vend – a – Sector again, didn’t you?”

“It’s usually pretty accurate,” said the captain. “You just have to make sure you get there during business hours, when there’s an attendant. And we were a little pressed for time, if you recall.”

The Vend – a – Sector was invented during the pioneering days of do-it-yourself Space Travel. It consisted of a computer terminal, a very, very large database that contained the relative positions of all the stars and planets, using Earth as the initial reference point. Its simplicity and ease of use made it a staple of spaceports in the rapidly expanding sphere of human influence. For short jumps, the Vend – a –Sector was surprisingly accurate, usually getting its users within a few hundred thousand kilometers of their intended destination. However, as people began to push farther and farther away from Earth, the sheer volume of gravitationally significant objects made cataloging all of them nearly impossible. It only took a few colonist-laden ships to vanish without a trace after getting directions from a Vend-a-Sector for the company lawyers to add a clause to their legal disclaimer that indemnifies the company from any suits resulting from the use of its information.

“You know, the Trade Patrol doesn’t charge all that much for a Navigational Audit,” said Shatman.

“Then I’d have to talk to a real person,” said the captain. “Besides, I really don’t think they need to know every place I’ve visited for the last ten Jumps.” The captain’s head was starting to clear, which wasn’t as pleasant as he’d hoped it would be. Intruding reality is almost never completely welcomed, except by those who can afford to pay other people to worry about it.

Of course, it was the tracking that was the real heart of the matter. What Captain Haigh despised above almost everything else, even more than overly cheerful people, the kind who say “How are you?” and then walk away without waiting for an answer before foisting their self-absorbed mock-happiness on the next victim, was taxes. Something deep inside him railed against the idea of someone coming in and taking what he had earned, and then spending that money on things that did absolutely nothing to protect, serve or improve his life in any meaningful way. The idea of a crowd of idiot pickpockets fumbling around in his pockets lit a tiny, smoldering flame of passive-aggressive rage deep in his psyche, and he did everything he could to deny the Interplanetary Authority their tax money whenever he could get away with it.

“It wouldn’t kill you to ask for help every once in a while,” said Shatman. “We’re going to use up most of our fuel making the jump back. Won’t leave much of a profit for us, after tax-“

“Yeah. I know,” said the captain. “But as long as we’re here, we might as well have a look around. Maybe there’s some kind of rare mineral or something down there that we can sell.”

“Maybe,” said Shatman.

“It could have been worse,” said the captain. Had they not been in space, the captain’s reply would have sounded like hollow platitude, but out in the trackless void between stars, it’s something to be taken quite seriously. When the only thing that separates you from the deep, frigid vacuum of space is a carbon-polymer-flexible-cyanosteel hull no thicker than the average human head, you tend to take a more appreciative view of any voyage that doesn’t include words like “impact” and “event horizon”.  So, while most planet-bound people would probably scoff at the Captain’s positive viewpoint, Shatman just nodded in agreement. Spacers tend to appreciate the little things, like air pressure and simulated gravity. If you have them, pretty much anything else can be worked out later.

Next Chapter: Chapter 2