Arcturus Times Three E-Book

Jack Sharkey

• Herausgeber: Ozymandias Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Seitenzahl: 67

Beschreibung

A man who lived three lives? A piker! Jerry Norcriss lived hundreds - all over the Galaxy! Jack Sharkey weaves a tale so sci fi, so perfectly science fiction, that you will be left completely speechless. A true great in a field of amazing artists, Arcturus Times Three is not to be missed!

Leseprobe

Arcturus Times Three

Jack Sharkey

OZYMANDIAS PRESS

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Copyright © 2016 by Jack Sharkey

Interior design by Pronoun

Distribution by Pronoun

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ZOOLOGY 2097

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

ZOOLOGY 2097

TRIAL-AND-ERROR FAMILIARIZATION WITH NEW life-forms is dangerously impractical on a far planet, where the representation of Earth men may be a solitary five-man crew. The loss of even a single man constitutes, in effect, obliteration of one-fifth of that planet’s Earth-population. This is the “why” of the Space Zoologist.

The science of Contact came into being as a result of a government-subsidized “crash” program in the early seventies, following on the heels of the disastrous second Mars landing.

The first flight to Mars had been simple in intent. The job of the men on board had been merely to land in one piece and radio the joyous news back to Earth, to take some samplings of soil and air, some photographs and then return to Earth. All this was accomplished without incident.

It was the second Mars landing that occasioned the discovery of the quilties. These furry beasts, somewhere between marmosets and koalas in appearance save for overall bright orange and green tangles of fur, were found to be friendly, and unanimously adopted by the crew members as mascots and pets. The animals, disarmingly akin to ambulant rag-toys cut from patchwork counterpanes, did indeed deserve the nickname of “quilties”. They were cuddly, friendly, with sad eyes and mournful squeaky voices that endeared them to all the men on that flight.

Fortunately, their discovery was radioed back to Earth along with the usual information in that first day’s report. There were no subsequent messages.

Mars Flight Three found the remains of the crew where the quilties had left them.

On investigation by the ship’s doctor, it was found that the biology of the quilty was similar to that of a hornet, and they considered man—as they would anything warm and fleshy—in the relative position of a caterpillar. During the cuddling with the small beasts, minute hairlike spines at the base of the quilties’ tails had managed to prick the flesh of the crewmen. By the following morning, the men had been eaten to death from within by the grubs of gestating baby quilties.

All of this, of course, is common knowledge today. But it is mentioned here solely to demonstrate to you the monumental hazards which an astronaut had to encounter in the days before the discovery of Contact, and the development of the Space Zoologist, without whose training, courage and efforts extra-Terran colonization would be next to impossible.

“CONTACT—Its Application and

Indigenous Hazards”

by Lt. Commander Lloyd Rayburn,

U. S. Naval Space Corps

I

LIEUTENANT JERRY NORCRISS STOOD at the edge of the wide green clearing, sniffing contentedly of the not-unpleasant air of Arcturus Beta. Three hundred yards behind him, crewmen and officers alike labored to unload the equipment necessary for setting up camp for this, their first night on the planet.

No one had asked him to lend his strong back to the proceedings. Space Zoologists were never required to do anything which might sap, even slightly, any of their physical energies. Moreover, they were under oath not to take any orders to the contrary.

Now and then, a hot-shot pilot would feel resentment at the zoologist’s standoffish position, and take out his feelings with a remark like, “Would you pass the sugar, if you don’t think it would sprain your wrist, sir?” Such incidents, if reported back to Earth, inevitably resulted in the breaking of the pilot, and his immediate removal from command. It was seldom the zoologist himself who made the report. Any crew member who overheard such statements would make the report as soon as possible, no matter what feelings of loyalty they might otherwise have for the pilot or person who had spoken.

From the moment of landing, the lives of every man aboard a ship were in the hands of the Space Zoologist.

From Captain Daniel Peters, the pilot, down to Ollie Gibbs, the mess boy, there was nothing but respect for Jerry Norcriss, and no envy whatsoever for the job he would soon be doing. That is not to say they were on friendly terms with him, either.

It was the next thing to impossible to call a Space Zoologist “friend.” Even amongst themselves, the zoologists were distracted, bemused, withdrawn from their surroundings. After their first Contact, they never were able to join in amiable camaraderie with other men. Such social contact was not forbidden them. It was merely no longer a part of their inclination. In their eyes a cool, silvery light shimmered, an inner light that marked them for the ultimate adventurers they were. No person would ever suffice them. They lived only for the job they did. Without it, few lived longer than a terrestrial year. Even with it, there was often sudden death.

Jerry was barely thirty, but his thick shock of hair was almost totally white and his mouth a firm line which never curled in a smile nor twisted in a frown. At the edge of the clearing, his bronzed flesh glowing ruddily in the failing sunset light of Arcturus, he stood and waited. Off in the distance behind him, Daniel Peters started across the clearing from the sunset-red gleaming of the sleek metal spaceship.

He drew abreast of the solitary figure, and said respectfully, “All in readiness, sir.”

The words reached Jerry as from across a void. He turned slowly to face the other man, focusing his will with the effort it always took just to use his voice.

“Thank you, Captain,” he said.

That was all he said, but as he followed Peters across the clearing toward the scorched circle where the great ship had descended on its column of fire, the pilot could not suppress a shudder. Jerry’s voice was oddly disconcerting to the nervous system of the listener. It seemed like the “ghost-voice” of a medium at a seance. The mind that was Jerry Norcriss was only utilizing a body for the purpose of speaking. It did not actually belong there.

And that was true enough. Jerry and the others of his kind no longer lived in their bodies. They merely existed there, waiting painfully for the next occasion of Contact.

Beside the ship’s ladder, hooked to an external power-outlet beneath a metal flap on one towering tailfin, was the couch and the helmet Jerry Norcriss would use.

Jerry lay back with the ease of long habit and adjusted the helmet-strap beneath his chin, as Peters read to him mechanically. The data came from the translated resumé of the roborocket that had gathered data on Arcturus Beta for the six months prior to the landing of the spaceship.

“... three uncatalogued species,” his voice droned on. “An underground life-pulse in the swamp-lands near the equator; the creature could not be spotted from the air.... A basically feline creature, also near the equator, but in a desert region, metabolism unknown.... And pulses of intelligent life, and of some unfamiliar lower animal life, on the northern seas.... All other life-forms on the planet conform to previously discovered patterns, and can be dealt with in the prescribed manners.”

A small section of Jerry Norcriss’s mind found itself mildly amused, as always, by this bit of formality. The outlining of the planetary reconnaissance to a Space Zoologist was mere protocol, a holdover from the ancient custom of briefing a man who was about to undergo a mission of importance. Vainly did the zoologists try to convince authority that this briefing was futile. A man in Contact was no longer a man. He was