Keeper and the PLANTERS part 5

Copyright (c) 2020 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.

Keeper and the

 PLANTERS

Part 5

            They appeared to be inside and outside at the same time. A shadow of a humanoid was dwarfed before a vast globe of infinite bright light. Somewhere an English police siren brayed. Keeper and the crew of the vanished Centurion floated forward until they were below the silhouette. A Beatles record was playing “… when we become naked!”. Then everything changed and the shadow became a reverse silhouette against a map of the universe … brighter than the first rays of a supernova. “Why aren’t we dead?” A girl named Greina, who resembled a walking-plant, moaned.

            “The Planters are UBFs,” Keeper, the captain of the Centurion, gasped. The captain was of the Druellian race and appeared as a kind of hologram with no physical body. Light seemed to flicker like fire in the space where his feet should have been. “Unimaginably – Bright - Figures. We always thought them to be myths - legends. It is said that they are what the Drell will become … in another fifty-million years.” The pendulum inside a grandfather clock began to bang against the sides and then exploded. A group of children shouted “Trick or Treat”.

The unimaginably bright figure now spoke into the mind of each crew member. “Welcome,” the entity said. “I am Four-nineteen.” A hundred bugles sounded … a thousand horses broke into a gallop.

The voice was so strange and magnificent a very startled Teuth had to explain to the others. “What we are hearing is not sound waves,” the Centurion’s navigator gasped. A cluster of bubbles broke on the surface of the water. “But sound channels. It appears that the Planters have discovered a way to cut grooves in air molecule clusters … rather than just cause them to vibrate.”

            “I always thought the old vinyl-records sounded better than the CDs,” First Officer Jeff Bland muttered. Insane laughter echoed from somewhere far below.

            “You are not dead …because you don’t believe you are,” the UBF turned toward Greina.

Someone was shoveling dirt onto a pile. An airplane sputtered overhead.

            “Is this all a dream?” Jeff asked. A large wave crashed against rocks.

            “Possibly,” Four-nineteen somehow appeared to smile but with no change to his outward appearance. A wolf howled. The unusual and the impossible had become the norm. A handful of cubes appeared in the air before Bland … dice rotating like small planets.

Jeff Bland reached out his hand to grasp one of the floating dice … a four, a one and an impossible nine. He was astonished when his fingers passed through the four so he tried again. He heard a howler monkey shriek, probably a caged primate from his youth on Earth. The dice appeared to be a hologram but without the faint flicker and color shift associated with the visual technology. It was when his fingers reached up to scratch his head in amazement and his fingers were unable to touch his hair that he realized he was in a dream. He was falling.

Bland awakened suddenly inside his quarters on the Centurion!  His insanely expensive music system was playing Stairway to Heaven at half-volume. He opened the door to his familiar room just as Jimmy Page broke into his famous lead, and after touching several objects, ventured outside.

The Centurion crewmembers were startled to see Bland re-enter the Planter’s globe when he had been standing by their side less than a moment before. His by-their-side image lingered for an instant. Bolts of lightning crashed from the ceiling and then were blown away by a horrific gust of wind. The sound of someone turning a crank on a jack-in-the box that played Pop Goes the Weasel was almost ear shattering. “Where did you go?” Bang! Jack sprang from the box. “And when!” a visibly shaken Teuth asked. Keeper had grown legs … but they belonged on a frog.

The UBF’s strange voice once again seemed to carve channels the air. “One never knows what side of a dream we will find ourselves on … so we must be careful.” A nuclear explosion rumbled the globe.

“I still do not understand,” the plant-girl Greina said. “My emotions showed creatures shrieking, being cruelly ripped apart by ghostly shadows! Keeper even asked me to link my emotions to the ship’s holographic display … and we all saw it!” The plant girl stared as exquisite moth-orchids began to bloom on her fingertips … then on her head. She was suddenly a tiny seed stuck to a bee-like creature and being transported above a meadow. A baby began to cry.

            “That’s because your emotions were real, but they were created by your fear.” There was the sound of fire consuming a vast forest and many running feet. The UBF turned and began to retreat inside the darkened globe, but his voice continued. “Even after five billion years of sleep … I still detect a lassitude in you. Perhaps you all need to rest again.” The sound of an approaching tornado grew louder. Dorothy was about to be knocked unconscious in her auntie Em’s house and taken again … by a dream.

Keeper’s voice rose as the entity retreated. “Why have the UBF come to this side of the universe?”

Four-nineteen somehow appeared once again to smile but with no change to his outward appearance. Somewhere an organ was playing dark chamber music. “Why, to harvest that which we planted,” the UBF said. “The future starts as a dream and unfolds with our expectations.”

Then there was only darkness, a sleep without dreams, without sounds and time once again … did not exist.

-------2-------

            First Officer Jeff Bland opened his eyes inside the sleeping tube aboard the Centurion. A mist covered the floor of the hibernation level making it appear as if he were floating. Teuth needs to get some ventilation in here, Jeff thought. He was walking into the hibernation showers as Leika was coming out. She was naked of course, using an air-paddle to dry the quills that replaced her hair. “I thought we were going to have to jettison you with the refuse dump,” she said.

            “How long was I asleep?” Jeff yawned.

            “About three years longer than the rest of us,” Leika told him.

            “Damn!” Jeff said. “Why didn’t someone wake me?” He was suddenly in a hurry to enter the showers, no doubt expecting a stern lecture from Keeper when he arrived on the command level.

            “Relax little boy.” Leika sighed. “I might have exaggerated you nap-time a little bit.”

Jeff thought he might be imagining things. The Porosities’ normally flashing eyes seemed somehow sad. The ever-changing bright colors under dark lashes … glowed soft and muted.

Bland shook his head and was turning to leave when a quill suddenly attached itself to the area of skin just behind his right ear. Streaming sensations of exquisite delight coursed and throbbed through his limbs and exited through his toes.

            “Not so fast.” Leika smiled. “I need you to find me … a towel.”

-------3-------

            “How long were we asleep?” Bland asked Keeper and Teuth when he entered the command level. Teuth moved one of his tentacles inside the light-array before he answered. “According to the most precise calculations our most limited technology is capable of .000000000497 of a second.”

            “I can’t believe I watched the earth being formed and all of its most detailed-history in five billionths of a second.”

            “Time is relative,” Keeper said. “Put all those numbers on the left side of the decimal and change the second that follows into years … and it’s about right.”

            “Where are we?” Bland tried not to absorb too much theoretical physics.

            “We just passed the Glovian clusters and are more than half way to Zoogutan.” Teuth seemed satisfied with the calculations and moved his tentacles from the colored light beams. “The Planters have returned us to our worlds.”

Bland gasped. “But that would put us on the path to …”

            “Geelo.” Teuth finished the first officer’s statement then stared at him quizzically.

Keeper raised one of his flickering eyebrows. “I know our organic-science officer can be a pain, or should I say in your case a pleasure, sometimes. But don’t you want to rescue your ice-princess from Gorwan?”

            “But I just saw her coming out of the hibernation showers,” Jeff stammered.

Teuth muttered. “The porosities, Leika, was taken captive by Gorwan before we entered Enubus fourteen’s black hole. She has not been aboard the Centurion since that time.” Then he began reviewing navigational systems-checks on the speeding vessel.

Keeper looked at his first officer kindly. “What was it the Planters said … oh yes … the future starts as a dream and unfolds with our … expectations.”

And the Centurion, a research and rare-species acquisitions vessel sanctioned by Mateuse 17 and at least twenty other planetary clusters was once again on a mission. A crew of ten-thousand, eight-hundred and sixty-seven-thousand, four hundred thirty six and one-half life-forms, hurdled through space at reverse light-speed nine. Searching for the secrets of the universe, these assorted life forms flew through an almost infinite darkness … and into the far-reaches … of the unknown.

TO BE CONTINUED …

Keeper and the PLANTERS part 4

Copyright (c) 2020 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.

Keeper and the

 PLANTERS

Part 4

Inside the center of the black hole the acceleration was tremendous. The tiny ship appeared to be caught in a giant drain spinning round and round tearing itself in two. Jeff Bland stared at a duplicate of himself. “What the Hell?” he and his duplicate said together.

Across the floor of the command level exact doubles had also been created of Keeper and Teuth. First officer Bland stared as the light array that controlled most of the Centurion’s functions divided and then moved to one side of the room along with the crew’s doubles. “We’re being divided by quantum mechanics,” Teuth said. Bland heard a faint echo as the navigator on the other side of the room said the same thing at the same time.

“How is that possible?” both Blands asked.

“A 27-kilometer-long particle accelerator on Earth was used to verify that if forced to choose between two diverging paths a single subatomic particle will sometimes go down both. Quantum mechanics deals with probability, and in the case of the diverging paths the probability is equal.” Both Teuths echoed.

The echoing questions and answers were nerve wracking. Keeper and his double both moved to duplicate light arrays. “There,” Keeper said in a satisfied – and single - voice. Bland noticed that a swirling green sphere of energy had appeared and now hovered near Keeper’s head. A similar sphere swirled above his own head and Teuth’s.  Their counterparts on the other side of the room remained silent. Bland noticed their spheres were red. “Dark energy is immune to quantum mechanics,” green Keeper said, “and I …we … have created a dark matter randomizer that decides which one of us speaks.”

As if to illustrate, red Keeper on the other side of the control level spoke. “We must hurry,” he said. “The passage of time from when the Centurion was pushed from the event horizon into the black hole’s center and crushed by infinite mass is only .01⁹  or less than one billionth of a second.”

            “Then why are we still here?”  red-sphere Bland asked.

“Time has been slowed exponentially,” green Teuth answered.

“Why?” green Bland gasped.

“Because we needed it to,” red Keeper grinned and then explained. “There are forces in the universe that no one understands. Some things happen … because we need them to happen.”

            “You’re talking about God?” red Bland gasped.

            “If you prefer,” green Keeper replied.

“The Centurion is being pulled out of the black hole by some tremendous force,” red Teuth said, “probably the Planters. And since that’s impossible for the laws of physics … the Centurion and its entire crew has been duplicated and divided by quantum mechanics.”

            “That means,” green Bland gasped. “That one Centurion and its crew will be pulled out of the black hole and one Centurion and crew crushed.”

“Exactly,” green Teuth said.

            “Them poor bastards,” both Blands declared at once.

Keeper checked the settings on the dark matter randomizer.

            “Are you afraid?” red Bland asked.

            “A little,” green Bland admitted.

            “How will we know which of us lives and which of us dies?” red Bland looked around.

            “It doesn’t matter,” red Teuth said moving away from the light array as the entire ship split into two equal wholes. “Because … we’ll never know.”

-------2-------

Keeper and the other crew members watched on the overhead hologram as the Centurion emerged from the black hole at the center of the Enubus galaxy with a big bang . An impossibly fast vortex of entwined matter, anti-mater, dark and light energy and an exponentially enlarged light-spectrum suddenly dissolved.

“For a while there I thought I was going to go blind,” Jeff gasped.

The colored sphere that had hovered near the captain’s head was gone. There was no way to know if it had been red or green. First Officer Jeff Bland shook his head as if trying to awaken from a dream. “Did that really happen?”

            “If you believe it did.” Keeper smiled.

            “I’m glad we were the ones saved,” Teuth said.

            “Maybe we wasn’t.”  Jeff looked himself over carefully just to make sure he didn’t see anything different.

            “It’s just as I suspected.” Teuth pointed to the hologram. “Planters!”

-------3-------

The Centurion was surrounded by glowing spheres, some as large as moons. It was hard to tell if they were metallic or some form of solid-energy. A tractor beam was pulling them inside one of the smaller ones. “Put all power to the forward thrusters,” Keeper ordered. “Let’s see if this ant can escape from the angry herd of rampaging elephants!”

            “Ever the optimist,” Jeff snickered. “We don’t really know if they’re going to be that friendly.”

The giant, rare-species acquisition vessel shuddered as Teuth put all eight tentacles into the light arrays that controlled 99% of the ship’s system functions. The smell of ozone penetrated all areas of the deck as a group of students entered the command level. “That won’t work!” The student with the enlarged orange cranium that everyone called Pumpkin head warned Teuth.

            “And you know this how?” Keeper asked the student.

            “We’re being pulled toward the Sadinimo detainment-vessel by a special form of dark energy that consumes conventional power,” Pumpkin Head declared.

“Then the harder we try to escape … the stronger the chain becomes … That makes sense!” Jeff snickered.

            “How do you know this is a detainment vessel?” Keeper asked.

A girl who resembled a walking plant spoke. “I’m Greina from Ardd 23,” she said. “And my species have evolved the ability to use emotions as a form of visual communication. We see things … sometimes things that are many light years away.”

            “I know of the Ardd and their special skills,” Keeper said. “Can you give us a visual?”

The plant girl moved with a dreamlike swaying-grace to the light array that Teuth hovered over. She placed one leafed appendage inside the beams of light. She shuddered slightly and a horrific scene replaced the exterior hologram.

            In an unimaginably vast and glistening chamber, thousands of life forms - most still alive and shrieking, were literally being taken apart by what appeared to be ghostly shadows. Their interior organs and exterior parts were carefully dissected, then examined and cast away. “So this is the party we’re crashing,” Jeff moaned.

            “Thank you for bringing us this information,” Keeper told Greina.

            “That’s not the only reason I’m here …” Plant girl looked at Jeff Bland and the hologram changed.

Leika appeared inside an encapsulated cell, the kind of living space designed to hold galactic criminals. She was dressed in flowing white scales and Tesonian pearls - a Gorwanian wedding gown. Her hands were folded in what looked like prayer and she gazed upward. Her eye color flashed between red and orange before drifting from an emerald green to a soft blue. “If you can hear me,” she whispered. “If somehow you can hear me … Gorwan is taking me to Geelo in the ice worlds. He thinks we’ll be safe there … but I’m already half frozen!”

“Geelo!” Jeff thundered. “It warms up to two hundred below zero in the daytime!”

“That’s only in the winter,” Keeper said.

“It looks like we might have a delay in rescuing your girlfriend.” Teuth grinned.

“She’s not my …”

First Officer Bland’s objections were cut short. The exterior hologram showed a port hole opening in the side of the Planter vessel and seconds later the Centurion was sucked inside.

-------4-------

            Time stood still literally. All life forms inside the spacecraft dissolved and became a series of seemingly infinite images. Every single event, every moment in time was replayed in exacting detail. Time did not exist for Keeper and his crew so it was as if they soporifically endured a billions-of-years-long dream. A swirling ball of gasses condensed and became a massive star and nine orbiting planets of various sizes.

Eons later an unknown projectile, composed of dark and light matter hurtling through space, exploded into the fifth planet and both objects became one large orbiting asteroid belt. All of the planets changed but the third planet was rich in hydrogen and oxygen … and water formed.

            Volcanoes and earthquakes shaped mountains, continents and oceans and then reshaped and reshaped them. Life forms, plant and animal, developed in the seas and after almost a billion years moved onto land. Evolution shaped the world with every rotation of the planet and with every trip around the star. Terrible animals roamed the world and then were exterminated. Some life forms advanced more than others. Cities were built, wars were fought and four and a half billion years after the planet was first formed a delicate species call man first left the atmosphere of the planet and ventured into the space between.

And this sequence of origination … up to the present time, was repeated for every life form on the vessel.

Keeper and his crew were suddenly themselves. It was as if a five-billion year instant replay had abruptly finished.

            The ship was gone and Teuth pointed in eight directions to an impossibly immense chamber of glowing brightness that the entire crew was floating toward. “Planters,” he gasped.

            “And they know everything about all of us,” Keeper said … as they entered the light.

TO BE CONTINUED …

Keeper and the Planters part 3

Copyright (c) 2020 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.

Keeper and the

 PLANTERS

Part 3

“The new-species acquisition ship Centurion, with a crew of ten-thousand, eight-hundred and sixty-seven-thousand, four hundred thirty seven and one-half life-forms is hurtling at reverse light speed times nine toward the inescapable event-horizon at the center of the Enubus 14 Galaxy,” an orange-tinted cadet with a giant pumpkin-shaped head blurted after raising one of his vine-like hands. “So why should we be concerned with infinity and the advanced laws of physics?”

“One-half life forms?” a girl-android from Mateuse 17 focused the twin aperture lenses imbedded into her metallic head on the student with the huge orange pumpkin-like head.

“He’s talking about you, half-screws,” a boy snickered.

The android girl cocked her head to one side, a programmed human gesture, but the light in her camera-like eyes never flickered. Flushing a deeper shade than pumpkin head, the boy cowered away. 

Teuth, the ship’s navigator, ignored the banter. “Yes Clarence,” he said. “Flying around the inside perimeter of a black hole is dangerous! So we may never get another chance to enlighten our minds.”

The land-adapted cephalopod continued. “The closed-structure laws of infinity where the end becomes the beginning apply not only to dark and light matter … but to analytical things such as size and weight.”

            “That’s why unchecked accumulative mass eventually becomes a black hole or less than nothing,” one student said.

            “Exactly,” Teuth agreed. “And the largest thing in the universe … is also the smallest.”

            “I don’t understand,” a bewildered student who looked like a walking plant said. Several students, who resembled earth hyenas, laughed. One lifted his leg. The plant girl was obviously embarrassed; her naturally green skin-color took on a crimson tint.

            “What is the largest thing?” Teuth asked. There was a long pause as the students searched for the correct answer.

            “The sum of all galaxies and gasses in the universe.” the girl android answered.

            “Wrong,” Teuth said. “It is the expanding ball of dark energy that these galaxies float upon.”

The girl android appeared to faintly vibrate. An almost indiscernible wisp of ionized smoke floated from one of her audio receptors.

            Teuth glanced at her and made a mental note to suggest that she have her circuits cleaned. “And the smallest?”

            “A sub-atomic particle diminished to the power of four-nineteen … called a zilch,” Pumpkin head answered.

            “And what is a zilch made of?” Teuth asked.

            “According to hypothetical-physics a very, very, I could very for a year, tiny-ball of … dark energy,” the plant girl said smiling at her classmates. Suddenly her mouth fell open. “Oh!” She once again turned red and the hyena-looking students howled.

            The Centurion’s First Officer, Jeff Bland, appeared beside the teacher. “Keeper needs you on the control level … now!” he said.

            “Class dismissed,” Teuth told the students.

-------2-------

            Keeper was standing under an exterior hologram showing thousands of battle ships rapidly overtaking the Centurion. “We were wrong about the Gorwat coming out to meet the Planters; it’s us they want!”

            “No! It’s me they want!” Leika stepped out of the transporter and marched toward Keeper, Jeff Bland and Teuth. “I received a personal message from Gorwan. He will destroy us all … unless I submit myself to him.”

            “I thought lovers were supposed to die of a broken heart,” Jeff quipped. “That lizard, warlord-king must not know the rules!”

            “We were never lovers!” Leika glared at Jeff. “I did what I had to, to get us out of a tough situation.”

            “Will they catch us before we reach the event horizon?” Keeper asked Teuth.

            “With a few alterations to the laws of physics, hopefully I can get us there before they do,” Teuth said. “The problem is … when we enter the event-horizon they can keep us from coming out.”

            “I’ll inform Gorwat … that I’ll shuttle myself to his ship.” Leika sighed.

            “No!” Keeper said. “The Gorwat have discovered a way to render all Porosities species powerless. Once he gets you aboard his ship you won’t be able to resist his matrimonial plans.”

            “The captain is right,” Jeff said. “Tell that lizard to catch his flies somewhere else!”

            “Flies?” Leika smirked. “That’s not what you said when we were in the showers.”

            “I was pleading for my dignity,” Jeff argued. “I would have said anything!”

Teuth had his tentacles in the light array and was moving them with furious precision. “By switching all power to the engines and creating a time vapor-lock we should be able to achieve Reverse Light Speed to the power of twelve.”

            “Time-lock? I like that,” Jeff said. “I don’t like waiting around for something bad to happen.”

            “Do it,” Keeper told Teuth.

            “Shall I inform the crew?” Jeff thought Keeper would at least consider other options before doing something so radical.

            “No,” Keeper said. “They’ll know what happened … when they awaken.”

            “Maximum power to engines and time-vapor in ten seconds,” Teuth said.

Jeff looked at Leika and she smiled. He thought he saw her mouth the words I love you … then he held his breath.

The Centurion seemed to glisten … just before a tremendous acceleration. Inside the vast multi-level starship all life-forms, as well as machines, became grey, misty-statues, frozen in time without power or thought. All the ship’s electrical and photonomic control systems paused. Millions of beams of multi-colored light, some now visible for the first time to the human eye, hung suspended in mid-air and the flow of electrons in millions of miles of circuits stopped … waiting for eternity … or just a split-second to continue.

-------3-------

Jeff Bland felt pressure in his ears and his eyes once again focused. Keeper looked much like he had before … a shimmering-hologram of a humanoid with unfinished legs. Teuth blinked his bulbous and octopus-like eyes. “Looks like we made it,” Keeper sighed his relief.

Teuth looked stunned as he examined the light array. “According to our data … we didn’t.”

The holographic display floating above them showed thousands of Gorwat ships covering all possible escape routes as they entered the black hole.

Teuth continued. “According to our data, the Gorwat actually arrived here before we did … we should have been vaporized!”

            “Wait a minute,” Jeff said as he looked around. “Where’s Leika?”

            “I should have thought of that,” Keeper said as he shook his head. “Porosities are not affected by time-vapor the same way other species are. She would have awakened some time before we did.”

            “There!” Teuth pointed a tentacle toward the exterior hologram. A small shuttle craft could be seen being pulled by a tractor-beam into the largest warship.

            “She can’t do that!” Jeff yelled.

            “But she did.” Keeper hung his head.

Gorwan’s lizard-like face suddenly replaced the exterior hologram. “I’m happy that at least one of your allies shows some reason.” He smiled … and his long tongue licked his wide lips.

            “We have entered the event horizon,” Teuth reported without looking up.

            “Keep us just inside the horizon line,” Keeper told him. “And conserve the power we’ll need for escape velocity.”

            “I thank you for your gift.” Gorwan laughed. Leika could be seen struggling behind him and being stripped naked by dozens of Gorwat warriors. “I must give you something in return!”

A tremendous blast of photon energy came from the largest Gorwat ship and several others. The Centurion, without adequate shielding, was slammed far inside the black hole at the center of the Enubus galaxy. With impossible velocity and acceleration the interior of the spacecraft began to blur. For almost a second, Gorwan’s face and laughter could be seen and heard … and then it faded.

Jeff Bland felt at first weightless and then as heavy as a planet. A roaring sound volumed to infinity and then became deathly quiet. He looked across the rippling control level and Keeper and Teuth both appeared to be swelling and then pulling apart as well as all the matter and dark-matter machines on the ship. There were suddenly two captains and two navigators staring at him. He heard a gasp and turned … and he was looking at … himself.

TO BE CONTINUED …

           

Keeper and the Planters part 2

Copyright (c) 2020 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.

Keeper and the

 PLANTERS

Part 2

By R. Peterson

“Planters!” Jeff Bland gasped.

A hologram above the control level of the spaceship showed a seemingly endless wave of moon sized and larger spheres appearing over the horizon at the far edges of the known universe.

“I think you’re right,” Keeper said. “I believe what we are seeing is perhaps only the first wave of the legendary Sadinimo never before seen with humanoid eyes. I don’t recall ever witnessing an armada of this size and numbers.”

“Four-hundred nineteen thousand vessels,” Teuth injected as he moved his tentacles with great dexterity through beams of colored lights rising from the Centurion’s systems control panel. “Eighty-four light years away and approaching at a greatly magnified reverse light speed.”

“Is that an estimate?” Jeff was curious. The ship’s land-adapted cephalopod navigator was notorious for giving exact figures even with numbers approaching infinity.

“No,” Teuth told him. “I’ve counted the approaching objects with three different universal positioning scans and come up with those exact numbers.”

“Curious,” Keeper said. “The quantity four nineteen appears throughout history, on countless planetary systems, as a number of great implications. Science has yet to understand the significance of this numerological anomaly.”

“Six-hundred forty-three thousand, eight hundred and seventy two planets,” Teuth said.

“Back on Earth we always thought of the number thirteen and the number four nineteen as a bad luck … satanic,” Jeff said. “There were no thirteenth floors in hotels … and no room numbers four nineteen.”

“How long before we make contact?” Keeper asked.

“At their current velocity I would estimate three hours, twenty six minutes and fourteen seconds,” Teuth said.

“Estimate?” Jeff raised an eyebrow and grinned when he looked at the octopus-like creature operating the ship’s controls.

“The Sadinimo, if that’s what they are, appear to be increasing their speed exponentially. The rapid increase in velocity makes exact calculations very difficult.” Teuth didn’t look up but appeared to be absorbed in gathering data. His tentacles were moving so fast through the colored beams of light they looked like a blur. “Long range life scans have determined that one-thousand three-hundred and eighty-nine planets at the edge of the universe have just been stripped of all life forms.

“Plants or people?” Jeff gasped.

“Everything … all life forms including bacteriological,” Teuth said.

“Get us out of their path Teuth,” Keeper ordered. He turned to Jeff. “Wake up all members of the crew and have them prepare for maximum reverse light speed without hibernation. And have our organic science officer report to the control level as soon as possible.”

“Leika!” Jeff moaned as he hurried toward the ship’s inter-level transporter, “and I’m the one who has to wake the witch up!”

-------2-------

            First Officer Jeff Bland drained the hibernation fluid from the sleeping chamber and then opened the sealed cover. The organic science officer looked disheveled. The barbed quills that replaced hair on humans lay limp and tangled. She moaned softly and twisted as if caught in some otherworldly dream. He was glad her eyes were still closed. It was anyone’s guess what color they would be when she opened them. Porosities females had changeable eye color that covered the entire light spectrum and beyond. The eye color reflected their moods and was accompanied by an almost hypnotic ability to make male humanoid species fall hopelessly in love with them. Leika was dangerous and had both a sadistic and enamored personality when it came to matters of the heart.

Of the male crew members, only Keeper was immune to Leika’s exotic and irresistible charms. But then the ship’s captain was not humanoid. He belonged to a rare and mystical species from the opposite side of the universe called the Eyd that had evolved over eons away from any type of physical form. Teuth referred to him as a living hologram. Jeff thought the Centurion’s captain most resembled a spirit … or a god. The captain’s appearance as a humanoid was nothing more than an illusion. The space where his feet should have been was ever-changing multicolored flames … much like Leika’s eyes.

Leika’s lips moved and she murmured something. Jeff leaned closer to hear her better. Suddenly her eyes opened, as red as an exploding dwarf star and almost as violent. “Get back!” she hissed. Before Jeff could take a step back, he was flung across the room with some type of optic energy. He crashed into a cluster of hibernation fluid filters and crumbled to the floor. “How dare you wake me before my appointed time!”

“It was Keeper’s orders,” Jeff stammered. “The Planters are less than four hours away!”

“I know,” Leika said and Jeff felt his legs weaken. “I’ve been awake for some time, and when I’m awake, I know everything that goes on!”

“Then why did you pretend to be sleeping and then throw me across the room,” Jeff was astonished.

“That was for referring to me as a witch!” Leika glared. “She climbed out of the chamber completely nude and walked toward the sleeping level showers stretching her arms. Her anger seemed to evaporate like a comet that flies too close to a star. She was the most breathtaking and exotic female species that Jeff had ever seen. “Roll in your tongue and bring me some towels!” she smiled. “Make sure they’re clean … and lovingly warm.”

Jeff wanted to run, but instead he went looking for towels and the warming cabinets … like he was her personal slave.

-------3-------

            The Centurion was hurtling through space at reverse light speed squared to the maximum power of nine when Jeff and Leika entered the command level. Most of the ship’s more than ten thousand crew members were already at their duty stations. “It’s about time you woke up, sleepyhead.” Keeper glanced at Leika.

            “Next time send an alarm clock with more on his mind than taking advantage of an unconscious female,” Leika scowled at the ship’s first officer.

            “I never!” Jeff held up his hands in frustration.

            “Maybe that’s your problem,” Leika smirked.

            “I’ve bought us a little time,” Teuth said, “but at their current velocity, the Sadinimo fleet will overtake us in three-hours and twenty one minutes.”

            “We need to find a way to get out of their reach,” Keeper thrust his own hands into the light array.

            “I would suggest offering the Planters a life form to see what they do with it,” Leika said.

            “Now, wait a minute!” Jeff stammered. “I know you’re still angry, but this is murder you’re talking about.”

            “Not you fly-paper boy,” Leika laughed. “I would suggest sacrificing something from the gumball machine. Perhaps the Alpineen Sea Snake we captured on NMZ 12?”

Jeff Bland was closest to the strange storage device that Keeper kept exotic animal species in. Each life form was shrunk to marble size, encapsulated along with a critical natural environment and then stored in a device that indeed did resemble a 1950’s Earth gumball machine. “I would suggest a Maronian Saggoplatapus,” he said. “Without reduction, they’re almost as large as this entire ship and we already have too many. They’re extremely fast breeders … I count at least nine.”

Leika turned her head toward a group of mostly male cadets and didn’t say anything.

            “Enlarge one in a self-contained environmental sphere as soon as it’s beyond the ship’s gravitational field,” Keeper said. “We’ll see what these Planters do with the life forms they encounter.”

Jeff shook his head as he watched Leika stroll toward the youthful future officers. There was a mixture of exotic anticipation and sexual excitement in the group … dominated by an understandable fear of loss-of-control. “Better you than me,” he whispered.

-------4-------

More than half the crew watched on the overhead hologram as the first of the Planters approached the encapsulated sea creature. A beam of greenish light suddenly extended from the closest green sphere and turned the Saggoplatapus a vivid orange. A moment later the creature and the capsule it was contained in both disappeared. “Vaporized!” Jeff gasped. “I thought they might at least try to eat it.”

            “That possibility still might exist,” Teuth said. “The particle imprint that is always present in all destructurizations cannot be found on any of our energy scans.”

Jeff gaped. “And that means?”

“The planters obviously transported the creature inside their own ship or to another location,” Teuth said.

“That’s good news,” Keeper said. “At least we know our new friends aren’t outright

killers.”

            “We have other problems,” Teuth said. “Do you want it on the hologram?”

            “Why not,” Keeper said looking about the busy command level. “Why should we keep bad news to ourselves?”

Jeff gasped as the hologram appeared above them. “Are those what I think they are?”

            “Gorwat battle ships coming out to meet the universe’s newest invaders,” Teuth said. “I count more than five thousand … some are obviously cloaked.”

            “We’ll never survive in the middle of this type of war,” Keeper said. “Navigate us into the exact center of the nearest spiral galaxy!”

            “That will put us into a …” Jeff gasped.

            “… Black hole,” Keeper finished. “Don’t worry. I f we survive a rather bumpy ride around the event horizon you’ll have something wild … to tell your children.” Keeper smiled as he saw Leika approaching.

            “If we survive?” Jeff moaned.

TO BE CONTINUED …