Galactic Taxi Service (eBook)

Robert Veres (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2021 | 1. Auflage
336 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-0983-4685-0 (ISBN)

Infos

Take a few trips with the human race's only intra-star-system taxi driver as he ferries a varying collection of interstellar celebrities around and between the stars you see in the night sky: Sirius, Tau Ceti, Keid, Beta Hydri, Tabit and ultimately Deneb, whose habitable planet houses an alien technology beyond anything humans have ever conceived.

Bob Veres, as he is known in professional circles, is a journalist who has won several national awards for his writing about the financial planning profession. He is a sought-after speaker for the industry's top professional conferences, and publishes the Inside Information report on trends and innovations in the field of financial planning. In addition, Mr. Veres is the publisher of several novels, including Song of the Universe Conversations With My Daughter The Root of All Evil South of Maya

---

Take a few trips with the human race's only intra-star-system taxi driver as he ferries a varying collection of interstellar celebrities around and between the stars you see in the night sky: Sirius, Tau Ceti, Keid, Beta Hydri, Tabit and ultimately Deneb. The highlights include skiing down a mountain whose highest peak pokes out into space above the atmosphere, an expedition to hunt the apex predator in the most dangerous jungle in the known universe, a variety of ruins abandoned by nonhuman civilizations millions of years ago, and the most expensive birthday present ever conceived by the human mind. Who built these abandoned cities, and how did they become embroiled in a far distant space war which shattered planetoids, casually flung inhabited planets to a distant frozen orbit, and melted deep craters into and through the planetary crust?Follow a trail that starts at Saturn's moon Titan and leads finally to a ruined city whose inhabitants ruled this sector of a now-forgotten galactic empire. In the city, there remains behind a weapon, still functioning, that is capable of unimaginable destruction. This technology was once used against Earth and could be again this time by pirates of the future who have already harnessed alien technology for their own ends. The question now is: How can an intergalactic taxi driver and an Oxford professor with the help of a grumpy but brilliant artificial intelligence entity prevent the pirates from securing the weapon and enslaving the human race?

Textauszug

I

“There is no record of whether or not it hurts to be digested alive.”

The colonists on the planet Zandor are sticklers about their precious goddam rules. I made note of this as I was sitting at the docket waiting for my moment in court, watching the trials ahead of me. The first one caught my attention.

“Offense?” the middle of three dour-looking magistrates demanded. Each of them was wearing a ridiculous wig that fell down past their shoulders and gave the whole proceeding a comical air.

“Littering,” the prosecutor, also bewigged, responded in a bored voice.

“Specifics?”

“He spit gum out onto the street. The officer saw a pedestrian step in it.”

“Truth?” one of the other magistrates scowled.

A young man in uniform nodded from the side.

The magistrates sternly regarded a young man who sat manacled in the defendant’s chair.

“Do you have anything to say?” the prosecutor demanded.

The young defendant looked up at the bewigged scowlers who would decide his fate. “I’m sorry,” he said finally, shedding a tear. “I’m very very sorry.”

“Guilty,” the first magistrate intoned. “Guilty,” said a second one. The third echoed him: “Guilty.”

“Penalty?” asked the prosecutor in a bored voice.

“Death.”

“Death,” a second magistrate agreed.

The third made it unanimous.

“Death?” I blurted to one of my companions on the docket. I looked around the courtroom, but nobody, not even the spectators, appeared to be shocked.

The young man was led off through a side door, to be followed by a multiple-offense jaywalker (“Death!”), an older man who was nearly deaf, accused of listening to music turned up so loud that the neighbors could hear it (“Death!”) and a young girl who had defied her parents and stayed out past curfew (“Death!”).

Socrates tells me that the Zandorians came by their sticklerhood honestly; indeed, practically their first moments on the planet resulted in a weeding-out of non-sticklerish genes. Eight generations ago, when the planet’s first colonization ship landed, a bunch of settlers climbed tentatively down the stairs into something so unusual that experienced planetologists would consider impossible: a world devoid of life, yet having a perfectly breathable atmosphere.

A few tests later the colonists were strolling about in shorts, T-shirts and sandals, praising their luck under the beautifully bright orange glow of Epsilon Eridani. They wandered about claiming land and planning where they’d put up their houses.

Under strict colonization safety protocols, every colonist was supposed to return to the ship before nightfall. Some did.

Those who did are the ancestors of today’s Zandorians. They are also the ones who emerged from the ship the next morning to find that the people who slept outside, every one of them, were gone without a trace.

“Next?”

I approached the defendant’s chair warily, rattling my chains.

“Offense?” the center magistrate demanded with what I considered to be a discouragingly unfriendly gaze.

“Entering the city without proper credentials,” the prosecutor responded in a bored voice.

“Indeed?” All of the magistrates regarded me closely. One of them took off his glasses to see me better.

“I was ferrying a person to your planet, a person who does have the proper credentials,” I put in quickly, before the prosecutor could shush me. “I was simply helping him carry his bags.”

“Without credentials,” the prosecutor added unhelpfully.

“I didn’t plan to stay,” I said. “In fact, I was arrested on my way back to the ship.”

“So you say,” said the prosecutor.

“Come on! There’s nothing here that would make me want to stay,” I blurted out. “Far as I can tell, this is the gloomiest town in the known universe.”

My outburst did not seem to influence the magistrates in my favor. Their scowls deepened with every word I spoke.

“Specifics?” one of them demanded.

“He hasn’t been paid by his passenger yet,” the uniformed person in the back added to the story.

The magistrates looked at each other, and then back at the prosecutor. “Let him be paid immediately,” one of them said with visible exasperation. “What kind of a loose ship are we running around here?”

My passenger appeared out of the rows of spectators. I tried to stand up, but the prosecutor held me down by the shoulder. My passenger counted out a wad of bills, as we had agreed, reached down and put them in my hand. My manacled hands could barely reach my pockets. I breathed a sigh of gratitude.

“What say you regarding this serious charge?” asked the prosecutor in a bored voice.

“Guilty.”

“Guilty.”

“Guilty.” It was unanimous.

“Penalty?” asked the prosecutor in a bored voice.

The magistrates conferred among themselves for a moment.

“Banishment,” they said in unison.

At the same moment that I was breathing a sigh of relief, every single other person in the courtroom let out a gasp of horror. The prosecutor looked up sharply.

“Are—are you certain, excellencies?” he asked.

I thought the magistrates would be affronted, but they all nodded wearily. “It is the law,” one of them said, “and we have no legal recourse to be merciful.”

“So let me understand this,” I said to the stern-faced officers as we rode in a hover jalopy out into a sandy stretch of land beyond the river. “You’re going to wait until the sun sets, and then simply turn me loose. Did I hear that right?”

The officer on my right nodded. A look of mild horror crossed his face.

The jalopy, somehow, lurched and bounced, even though it had no actual contact with the ground.

I adjusted my cane and leaned back, rattling my manacles. “And you’re going to be driving back to the city as soon as you drop me off.”

Another nod.

“So what happens if I just follow you back to the city on foot? Does that mean I’m free to go?”

The officers looked at each other. Then they looked straight ahead. Then, with a visible shudder, the one on my right raised his hand, and the driver stopped the vehicle.

I looked around. There was nothing to see but a dusty, featureless plain dotted with small humpy mounds of what looked like rock. There was nothing to mark this spot from any other that we had passed except that it looked to be an inconveniently long walk back to the city.

We sat together for a long, silent moment. Finally I pulled my cane out from between my knees.

“This is where I get out,” I said.

The officer on my right unshackled me with trembling hands while the officer behind the wheel looked around uneasily. Behind them, Epsilon Eridani had turned a beautiful deep red looming right at the horizon, a sliver of its lower edge obscured.

“Okay,” I said. “I probably won’t be seeing you guys again, but thank you for the ride.”

The two officers did not meet my eyes. I shrugged my shoulders and stepped out of the vehicle. Instantly, the hover jalopy turned around and was heading back to the settlement at what I considered to be an unsafe rate of speed.

Then it was gone.

“Okay, fine,” I said. “You don’t have to wish me luck or anything.” I stared at the red glow on the horizon, which seemed to have accelerated its descent. I took a few deep breaths, looked down at the bright crystal that was the handle on my cane, its facets brilliantly reflecting the last reddish fading light of day.

“Socrates,” I said, keeping my voice steady, “maybe you could tell me what killed those original colonists.”

The ghostly voice in the crystal responded immediately.

“Baffids.”

“Baffids?”

“Isn’t that what I said?”

“Can you be a little more descriptive?”

“You didn’t ask me to be descriptive. You simply asked—”

“I want to know if any deadly dangerous creatures might be out here with me when that sun goes down.”

“Well then you could have phrased your question that way, instead of snapping at me because I didn’t read your mind.”

“You’re impossible. You know that?”

“Fine with me. For all I care, you can just guess what Baffids are. But I don’t think you’re going to like them very much.”

“I apologize.” I made my voice sound contrite. “I realize now that I should have asked a more precise...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 19.1.2021
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Fantasy / Science Fiction ► Science Fiction
• ISBN-10: 1-0983-4685-8 / 1098346858
• ISBN-13: 978-1-0983-4685-0 / 9781098346850