Walter Stickle and the Galactic Rangers, page 21
“Do you know how to work this thing?” he asked.
She frowned at the control panel and flipped a switch, turning on a blue interior light. “It’s a Protector. Millie said my daddy used one to guard their ship when they had to land.”
“You can’t operate it, can you?”
“I turned on the pretty blue lights.”
He handed the trans-beamer to her. “What about this? Do you remember how this works yet?”
She shook her head.
“Okay,” Walter said. “Here’s the plan. We should be safe here for a while. Why don’t you try to get some sleep? I’ll keep lookout. Let’s hope it all comes back to you when you wake up.”
The two cockpit seats were mounted on tracks that allowed the pilots to move about the cabin. Vivien slid hers next to Walter’s, and leaning her head against him, she closed her eyes.
Once in high school, when Walter had gotten up the courage to ask a girl out to the movies, he had tried that classic guy move — the movie stretch. As his older brother had explained, it involved pretending to stretch nonchalantly and then letting one arm come to rest on the girl’s shoulder while never taking your eyes off the big screen. The beauty of the movie stretch was that if the girl was put off by it, it was fully deniable as an accident. If she was okay with it, then it was on to the next step in the Guy’s Manual on Making Out at the Movies. Walter hadn’t made it to that next step because his brother hadn’t included in his instructions a warning about popcorn butter-covered fingers and stained dresses.
Walter put his arm around Vivien and she snuggled in closer.
“Tell me a story,” she said.
“A story?”
“Millie tells me stories.”
“Okay, a story. Once upon a time,” he began.
She smiled. “Fairytales are my favorite.”
“There was little boy.”
“What was his name?”
“His name was Walter.”
“Just like yours.”
“Yes.”
“Was he a knight, like you?”
“No, Walter was a little boy just like any other little boy. In fact, every boy in the world was just like Walter in every way. He was just a normal kid.”
The sun was rising as the ship passed over Africa and crossed the turquoise Indian Ocean.
“One day, Walter decided to go on a walk to a place he’d never been.”
“Was it a nice place?”
The ship rotated and their window on the universe turned away from Earth to places Walter knew only from books and pictures, where the stars were mysteries never to be solved.
“Yes, it was nice. It was beautiful, peaceful, and quiet. Nobody ever got mad there, nobody yelled at anybody, and everybody was happy.”
“What happened when he got there?”
“He never made it.”
“Why not?”
“He met someone along the way that told him to turn back. They said it was too dangerous. They said he didn’t belong there, that he belonged where he was. So, he listened to them and turned back, and went home again to where everybody was normal.”
“Did he live happily ever after?”
“Yes, I guess.”
Walter felt Vivien’s breathing change.
“It’s ironic,” he said, “that a man has to leave his own world to discover the things that are most important about it.” Walter looked down at her, but she was asleep. “I wish you didn’t have to go, Vivien.”
He kept watch, but mostly he just gazed at the woman sleeping peacefully beside him while the sun rose and set every ninety minutes. It was so quiet in space, so free of trouble and worry, so comfortable.
A beeping noise startled Walter from a sound sleep. All the lights were on in the storage bay. Vivien was bent over the console, working the cockpit controls.
“Vivien?”
“Hello, Walter.”
“You’re you? I mean, you’re yourself again?”
“Yes, Walter. I’m fine now.”
“Great, now we can beam out of here.” He reached into his pocket for the trans-beamer but noticed that it was sitting on the control panel.
When she looked over at him, she wasn’t smiling. “We can’t.”
“What do you mean, we can’t?”
“They must have figured out how to block the beamer with a photon damping field.”
“Can you fly us out of here in this thing?”
“The Protector can’t fly, and we can’t get to the emergency evac ships down there.” She pointed his gaze down to the storage bay floor where a squad of Rangers was searching for them.
“What about Millie?”
“They’re jamming everything, Walter.”
“So, what’s the plan?”
“If I can figure out how to turn off that force field, we’re going for a little walk in space. That should put us beyond the effects of the damping.”
“What if it doesn’t?”
“It will.”
“Right, but what if it doesn’t?”
Vivien shrugged. “Our momentum will continue to carry us away from the ship.”
“Well, that’s okay then, is it?”
“When we float far enough away, they’ll be able to target us with their weapons.”
“Oh. Not good.”
She gave up on the controls. “I can’t override the force field from here.”
“So, what’s Plan B?”
“There is no Plan B, Walter. If we can’t get through that force field, we’re stuck.”
“Can’t you just walk us through it? I mean, this is one big robot.”
“I don’t think so. Entering the force field would neutralize the Protector’s electronics.”
“This Protector thing is armed to the teeth, right? Can’t we just blow a hole in it?”
“The Protector’s weaponry won’t function inside the ship. It’s a built-in failsafe.”
“Then we’ll get that tank-looking thing down there. If it doesn’t work on the force field, we’ll blow a hole in the wall.”
“Walter, first of all, we can’t get to it, and second of all, if an explosion were to breach the seal of this dark space containment bay, everything in it would return to normal size. The Protector is as big as your Empire State Building in normal space. It would expand and destroy the ship and everyone and everything in it.”
“Including us?”
“Yes, including us.”
“That’s a stupid way to design a ship. It’s like the Hindenburg. These guys are way smarter than that. No. Something doesn’t add up.” Walter drummed his fingers on the console. “I have an idea.”
He explained his plan to Vivien. After some trial and error, she set the robot’s communicator to external speaker and the translator to Argonian. She gave Walter the “thumbs up” and turned on his microphone. As he spoke into it, the robot’s voice boomed throughout the bay, “Protector self-destruct sequence activated. Detonation in T-minus sixty seconds. All personnel clear the storage bay.” Walter began counting down the remaining seconds into the loudspeaker.
The Rangers surrounded the giant robot with weapons drawn while their squad leader worked the controls at the panel where Vivien had opened the access door into the robot’s leg.
“Are you sure about this, Walter?” Vivien whispered. “We’re taking a big risk.”
Walter nodded and kept counting. “Thirty-three, thirty-two, thirty-one, detonation in T-minus thirty seconds. Warning, all personnel evacuate. Compressed space breach imminent.”
He pointed to one of the controls, and Vivien switched it on. The instrument panel sparked. The robot began to shake. The bay began to vibrate. The vibrations intensified. Equipment that was bolted down rattled in place. Metal crates spilled across the deck. The squad leader gave up trying to open the robot’s access panel and shouted something to the others. They gathered around him as he spoke into his wrist communicator.
“Twenty-two, twenty-one, T-minus twenty seconds to detonation,” Walter said.
The leader shouted an order to his squad. The Rangers hustled out of the bay and the doors closed behind them.
Vivien took Walter’s hand. He kept counting. At T-minus ten seconds, the ship shuddered. The storage bay groaned and lurched sideways. The robot tipped over and thudded against the deck, bounced off it, and floated toward the ceiling. Everything not tied down was adrift in the bay.
Vivien shut down the Protector, and the vibrations stopped.
“Three, two, one, boom,” said Walter, and he laughed.
“Artificial gravity is gone,” said Vivien.
“So, did they do it?” Walter asked.
“The Protector’s uplink to Alpha must have been broken by the system overload we created. I’m not getting any signal from them. Life support systems in the bay and inside the Protector are offline. Our propulsion unit is damaged.”
“I get it. We’re dead in the water, but they did it, right?”
She smiled. “Our orbit has shifted by two degrees. The storage bay is drifting. Yes, Walter. You were right. They’ve separated us from the rest of the ship.”
“I knew it. I knew they were too smart to design something this dangerous without a way of getting rid of it. Who’s the one with the ill-formed brain now?” he crowed, shaking his fist at the floating debris in the bay.
“Wait,” he said. “Where are they now?”
“I don’t know. They probably engaged their compression drive to get to a safe distance when they broke free.”
“They won’t shoot us down, will they?”
“I don’t think so, at least not immediately.”
“Can we beam out of here?”
Vivien found the potato floating up against the glass. She pressed a few buttons and said, “Yes, the damping field is gone.”
“Than, can we please leave?” Walter said. “I think I’m ready to go home now.”
For one final second, Walter witnessed the grandeur of the universe in a shimmering molecular state as they beamed to Earth and reappeared beside Millie.
She hugged Vivien. “Are you okay, sweetie?” she said.
“I’m fine,” said Vivien, “thanks to Walter.”
“Walter, you had me worried there, but you did okay,” Millie said, giving him a big hug too. “You’re all right in my book.”
“Thanks,” he said.
Vivien reset the trans-beamer’s controls and aimed it at the lake. The placid waters rippled, the ground shook, the ducks flew off, and something invisible lifted into the air, dripping lake water and trailing weeds. It landed beside them, crushing the newly mown grass. She pressed a few more combinations of buttons, and a small space ship appeared. Opening the hatch with the controller, she turned to Walter.
“Good-bye, Walter,” she said, kissing him.
He touched the tear on her cheek. “I’ll never see you again, will I? I mean, it’s not like you’re going to France. You’ll be a bazillion miles away. What are the odds we’ll ever meet again? And please don’t tell me sixteen trillion to one.”
“I hate to break this up, but we’ve got get going,” said Millie.
“Good-bye, Vivien,” said Walter, and they kissed one last time before she climbed up the ladder and into the ship.
“Make sure Lenny takes care of my dog,” Millie said, pulling Walter into one last hug. “See you on the other side, pardner.”
The hatch door closed, and so ended Walter’s adventure. Monday morning, he would wake up at 6:03 a.m., stare at his neighbor’s floodlights, get up, get dressed and go to work, and his life would return to what it was and what it would be for the rest of his normal days.
Moonlight shimmered in the distance on the far end of the lake like a million fireflies playing on the water. The engines started up and the craft lifted off. Walter backed away from the heat of the ship’s exhaust, bumping into the barrel of First Officer Gak’s Lason-T.
“Do not move,” Gak said, and then spoke into his communicator. “I have confirmed that both fugitives are onboard. Do you have a lock on the ship?”
“Affirmative,” Klaxon replied.
“No!” Walter shouted. “What are you doing?”
“Executing orders,” replied Gak.
“You said that your orders were to take them back for trial.”
“We have new orders, Mr. Stickle.”
“No, don’t do this. Please.”
From orbit, three hundred miles above the Earth, Scout Ship Alpha’s primary weapon locked onto Vivien and Millie’s ship hovering over Alcorn Lake and fired what appeared to be a shower of meteors that struck the craft, enveloping it in liquid plasma and turning it to dust.
Walter fell to his knees and began to cry. Gak stood over him. “Walter Stickle, you are charged with aiding and abetting wanted, dangerous criminals, and have been found guilty under Congress of Planets Article 23-16.5. The sentence is death. Do you have any last words?”
“You let us escape, didn’t you?”
“Mission parameters required it.”
“Why did you have to kill them?”
“Benoit’s daughter was illegally born and guilty of effecting the escape of convicted criminals. Communications Officer Varger was found guilty of mutiny, piracy, and other crimes against the Congress. Their escape was imminent, so the captain invoked battlefield addendum 13.”
“And you used me to get to them.”
“As they used you to attempt to deceive us.”
“Is that all I’m good for?”
“If you have no further comment, we will proceed.”
“You blue-skinned murderer. Don’t you have any feelings at all?”
“I do, but we are a society governed by rule of law, and a Ranger’s duty is, above all, to the law.”
“Is that so? Then what about Congress of Planets Article 13.04? Huh? Stick that in your duty.”
Gak raised a blue eyebrow and his head tilted sideways as he considered what Walter had said.
Walter sobbed, “Oh, go ahead. I don’t care anymore. It doesn’t matter. Just do it.”
Gak adjusted the dial on his Lason-T and said, “Good-bye, Mr. Stickle.”
Chapter 18
At 6:03 a.m. the next day, the alarm clock on Walter’s nightstand began to buzz. He opened his eyes and sat up in bed as he did every morning at 6:03 a.m. and stared at his neighbor’s floodlights beaming through his bedroom window. He slid into the slippers that he left on the floor in exactly the same spot every night before going to bed, and got up. He put on his robe, which he always hung neatly on a plastic hanger on his closet door, and by 6:05 a.m. was in the bathroom. He brushed his teeth with his electric toothbrush until it shut off automatically after the recommended brushing time, washed his face vigorously until he could feel his skin tingling just as the dermatologist had said it should, and brushed his hair with no more or less than ten strokes because that was what his barber had said was needed to bring out the shine. Any less and it would be left dull, any more and it would look greasy. By 6:15 a.m. he was dressed in a gray suit, white shirt, blue tie, black oxfords, and matching dark blue socks.
It was Sunday morning. That was the day the Pitville newspaper was heaviest. That was the day the paperboy’s dad drove him around with the papers stacked in the back seat of the car while the boy ran back and forth delivering them. When the Pitville Times thudded against the screen door, Walter finished washing out his cereal bowl and brought the paper inside, being extra careful not to touch his suit with it and get ink all over it. Front-page news was the Perseids meteor shower over Alcorn Lake. One resident of the garden apartments who was interviewed by a staff reporter said that sometime after 2:00 a.m. he was out walking his dog, Rusty, when he saw balls of fire fall from the sky and explode over the lake. He’d never seen anything like it. Local authorities were investigating, but by all appearances it was nothing more than an unusually large meteor fragment from the Perseids that had survived the initial burn upon entering the Earth’s atmosphere and broken up and exploded over the lake.
Walter skipped the rest of the story and skimmed the report on the Comic-Con in Dantford. There had been a small fire in the auditorium touched off by actors using unlicensed pyrotechnics. There were no injuries reported, and the police were still looking for those responsible. A convention spokesperson denied any involvement or prior knowledge of the display, but said that after all the excitement, the organizers of the Comic-Con were looking forward to a huge crowd Sunday and were bringing in extra police and security guards to make sure no more unauthorized publicity stunts went awry. Walter wondered why he hadn’t read about the Comic-Con before, but decided he would skip it. It sounded unsafe.
He opened the paper to the comics and went right to the Galactic Rangers. The first panel was an exterior shot of the ship. It had landed on Earth by a lake. A squad of grim-faced Rangers was returning from their mission and boarding the craft on a long ramp.
The second panel homed in on First Officer Gak on the bridge giving his report to Captain Kleeg.
“Tobine has been eliminated, Captain,” he said.
“And so ends another threat to the safety of the galaxy,” said Kleeg. “What is our next mission?”
“There’s been an inmate revolt at Maxim Prison. They have hostages.”
Walter could tell that Kleeg was not happy, not happy at all. There were enough angry lines drawn on his face to repair the screen on Walter’s front porch door.
Walter realized then that there were only three panels, and it was a Sunday comic. Odd, he thought.
The last panel showed Alpha taking off.
“Set course for the Omega System, Mr. Klaxon,” said the captain. “Maximum safe speed.”
“Aye, aye, Captain,” said Klaxon.
“Next: Into the unknown!”
Walter was disappointed that there hadn’t been a battle. With the Sunday edition, there usually was one. Below the strip was something he had never seen before in the comic section of the paper, and it was why there were only three panels. They needed the room for an editor’s note. It read, “This is the last syndicated episode of Galactic Rangers. Starting tomorrow, the comic Hello, Baby Beagles will appear in this space. Please join us in welcoming Berta, Bambo, and Ralphie, the lovable dogs from Puppytown, U.S.A. Reprints of selected Ranger episodes are available at our website, and the collected stories of the Galactic Rangers is scheduled for release in book form later this year.”
