FRANK JAGGER Gang Wars 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.

FRANK JAGGER

GANG WARS

Part 2

By R. Peterson

An Albatross crew member was pressing both hands against my back forcing Michigan Lake water out of my lungs while another removed the cable they had used to pull me, and the chunk of cement my feet were encased in, to the surface. I wasn’t dead … but I wanted to be. Albert McGooganheimer stood next to Captain O'Sullivan. “I’m sorry if we caused you some discomfort,” he said. “We had to be sure you couldn’t be persuaded to disclose any of my secrets.”

When I heard the word discomfort I reached for the forty-five I kept inside my dripping coat … but of course it was gone. “Next time, remind me to ask for a bigger retainer!” I sounded like a sick beaver gnawing on a tree. The retort wasn’t nearly as good as a bullet would have been … but it would have to do. One of the crewmen offered me a cigarette; I shook my head. My lungs already felt like they were filled with ashes. Captain O’Sullivan offered me a tin cup that I’d watched him fill with Old Forester Bourbon Whiskey. I snatched the bottle from him and tried to put out the fire in my throat. Machine Gun had to know everything about me … including my exact taste in booze. “Now that you know I don’t sing,” I told him when I stopped gulping. “How can I make you happy?”

            “I’m a family man,” McGooganheimer said. I wanted to laugh but I didn’t dare. The cement was still encased around my feet; a crew member with a hammer was busting it away.

“Most people think all I care about is money and power,” he went on. “That’s not true. I have a twenty-two year old daughter from my third wife named Lynette. She means more to me than a bakery full of dough. She was kidnapped about a week ago by what I assume is a rival business organization.”

            “You haven’t received a ransom demand?”

            “Not exactly,” Albert said. “Lynette caught that Hollywood virus so many young girls get. She was singing in one of my speakeasies called the Delicia. After the club closed at 3 AM both her bodyguards were found in the alley wearing Sicilian neckties. My employees always turn the chairs over and place them on the tables before they clean. An envelope with my name on it was taped to the bottom of one of the seats.”

Machine Gun handed me an envelope with his name typed on the front. There was a single sheet of paper inside with these words also typed. Daddy Bear! Please get out of the alcohol importation business … so I can come home!

            “Daddy Bear?”

            “It’s what Lynette called me at home.” McGooganheimer smiled. It made my flesh crawl.

            “Any idea who sent the note?”

            “We know where the note was typed,” Albert took a card from his pocket. “Typewriters are like fingerprints,’ he said. “Each one types slightly different letters on the page!” He handed me the card. It was last year’s license application for my Packard Town Car filled out in the name of Jagger Investigations. “I have lots of employees moonlighting at the DMV … and many other city offices.” He didn’t have to tell me I knew … especially the court house and police stations.

            “This note was typed on the old Royal … sitting on your office desk!”

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

            I didn’t go back in the water. Albert must have figured one bath a day was enough. I had the distinct feeling that if I failed to return his daughter unharmed … getting clean would be the least of my worries.

            There were only two people with keys to my office. I was all thumbs and it took an hour for me to type my own name. I went looking for Linda Farmgirl.

The bed in her upstairs apartment was made and when I asked, the stack of mail outside her door said she hadn’t been home for three days. I threatened the pile of newspapers, rent and utility bills that if they were lying … I’d be back with matches. A hungry cat named Felix almost bit through my shoe. Linda’s closet was filled with a rainbow assortment of flapper dresses and her bedroom drawers held mostly black lacy underwear. The Jagger Investigations envelope, with most of her pay still in it, was under a Ballerina music box.  There was a framed picture of Linda and her little sister with both parents at a train station. Her mother looked like she’d been crying. I fed her cat and watered a dozen house plants. My secretary lived better than I did.

I remembered Linda saying that Beth worked in one of Machine Gun’s clubs. Now I only had to find out which one … as far as I knew, he had over three-hundred of them … just in Illinois.

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

Twelve year old Sean O’Brian hawked newspapers on the west end of Water Street when he wasn’t running numbers for bookies. He knew which pony was going to win each week’s special race and you could know too … for a price. I figured if anyone knew where Farmgirl’s sister worked he would. He looked the train station photo carefully. “She’s catch and release,” he said. “No hooking!” He was telling me that Beth wasn’t a prostitute. “Try the Horn Section,” he said. “Downtown … below the Community Bank.” Sean pressed two fifties into my hand. “Tell Chester the doorman he has a gift for picking winners!”

“I don’t run numbers,” I told him … trying to give the dough back.

“And I don’t give away free information,” Sean said.

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

There was a line even before the stairs. Chester ordered me to “beat it” before I even told him who I was. He took the fifties and waved me inside after I gave him Sean’s message. There was a Negro jazz-band on stage with a complete orchestral horn section … thus the name. I scanned the crowd while I waited for a table. I gave away two fives and a ten … before one with two chairs opened up. About half the women in the place were working prostitutes … the other half were retired. A sultry blonde in a black cat-suit was singing multiple versions of Stardust while the horn section blew her kisses and the piano player ran his long, sensitive fingers up and down her many keys. A waiter poured my whiskey. He wanted twenty for the bottle. I paid him.

I hadn’t spotted Beth and from what Sean said … she didn’t work the back rooms. I was just about to try another club when the door crashed inward. Chester went flying end over end and landed on a table occupied by four city cops. The former doorman looked like an elephant I’d seen shot on safari photo. Blood dripped from a bullet wound in his head. Someone sprayed two tables to the left of the stage with a machine gun. “Everyone still breathing stay where you are!” a loud voice warned, “and finish your drinks!”

“This is an official police investigation!” another said as the smoke cleared. The cops at the broken table all gaped at the men wearing trench coats. “Not you meter monkeys!” The shooter pointed at the uniforms with his smoking gun barrel as if daring them to ask to see his badge. “You get the hell out in the street and block off all the traffic … from here to Detroit!” All four officers jumped up and became instantly on duty.

One of the oldest assailants walked to the stage and gave the singer a twenty. “Play In the Jailhouse Now.” He smiled and a woman screamed. We all listened to the band’s cover of the popular song by Jimmie Rodgers … and we really tried to act like we enjoyed it.

The detectives frisked everyone before we were lined up and crammed into a half-dozen paddy wagons. We were sitting on bales of straw. I could smell expensive perfume on the broad almost in my lap but it wasn’t until the guy across from me lit a cigarette that I saw her face.

“Hello,” I said.

It was Linda’s little-sister … Beth.

TO BE CONTINUED …

FRANK JAGGER GANG WARS

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

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FRANK JAGGER

GANG WARS

By R. Peterson

Albert “Machine Gun” McGooganheimer’s face was splashed all over the front page of the Chicago Tribune. The photo showed him walking out of a restaurant that he owned on River Street and smoking a fat Cuban cigar. A good looking dame was attached to each arm. There was about a dozen cops and three white-faced ambulance attendants framing both sides of him. Six men wearing expensive fifth-avenue zoot-suits and brandishing Thompson sub machine-guns lay in small lakes of their own blood. They had all been shot very- dead by Machine Gun’s bodyguards. Albert was smiling … I could see why.

McGooganheimer had a last name that folks would die for … and many of them did. He was orphaned at the age of nine by the death of his Jewish parents Joseph and Eisra Heimer and adopted from the Our Mother of the Light Orphanage on Center Street by A Scottish whiskey merchant named Sean McGoogan and one of his many wives. Albert grew up on the mean streets of the windy city … and lived to tell about it. He decided that he liked both of his last names. If anyone thought this was funny … they didn’t for long.

I opened the big drawer in my desk and pulled out a half-full bottle of Old Forester Bourbon Whiskey.  I had just poured my second shot, when I heard light footsteps coming up the stairs. I was sure it was Linda. She was here to collect her dough. I’d hired the wide-eyed farm girl to be my secretary, mainly to keep her from pulling tricks in the double-beds that were always above every speakeasy. It was Saturday. We didn’t work weekends. I was here because I remembered the booze … and was running on empty.

Linda Farmgirl didn’t knock; she worked here. “You couldn’t find a better place to get drunk?’ She shook her head. Linda was tall, almost five foot nine, but her extra-long legs still touched the floor. Her button-up, pinstriped dress looked painted on … and her golden hair glowed like a halo.

“I won’t be here very long,” I told her, opening my top drawer and handing her an envelope. “I’m just making sure my tank is full … before I take off.”

“It feels a little fat,’ she said tearing the envelope open. “I hope it’s not filled with ones!”

I looked around the office in a greatly exaggerated fashion. “Who … me?”

            “There’s two hundred bucks here,” she said as she stuffed the dough in her purse. “I’m only supposed to get fifty a week!”

            “The next time you walk through that door, I want you to be naked,” I told her.

            “Strip for an old rat like you?” she grinned. “How about I just remove one earring?”

            “Make sure it’s your left ear,” I told her. “That’s the one that keeps me dancing.”

She picked up the newspaper lying on my desk. “Looks like McGooganheimer threw another party at his restaurant,” she said reading the headlines.

“I heard people were dying to get in.” I couldn’t resist the sarcasm.

            “My little sister, Beth, works in one of his clubs,” Linda said. “The word is, Machine Gun’s only daughter has been abducted by a rival gang. Your best customer has been putting feelers out trying to find out which mob has her.”

            “By feelers you mean .45 Caliber whiskers-of-lead poked into dark alleys and basement speakeasies by Thompson sub machine guns?’

            “Kind of catty … but correct,” she told me. “I’m surprised he hasn’t collected on that two grand retainer he gives you every year.”

            “I’m a lover not a fighter,” I said reaching for my coat. I reached for Linda too … but she danced easily out of my reach.

            “You’re getting slow,’ she said just before the door closed. She smiled and blew me a kiss. “Better watch your back!”

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

            My coat was off and flung over my left shoulder. I had just crossed the Dearborn Street Bridge and turned right on South Water. There was no wind and it was warm … why take a cab? This was a dangerous mixture for 1929 Chicago. I stepped away from the curb just as the bulletproof, cemetery-lawn green, 1928 Cadillac Town Sedan skidded to a stop. At almost the same time two goons wearing expensive suits and smelling of cheap booze grabbed me from behind. “The boss wants to see you,” the smiling one said as he stuffed me into the back seat.

            “Albert Mcgooganheimer doesn’t know how to use a phone?” My ears rang for another twenty seconds after I stopped seeing stars.

            “This is personal,” A mid-level hood named Chester “Pugs” Dolan said. “The boss likes his fish fresh-caught.”

We had barely gone ten blocks and were stopped at a red-light on West Randolph when I saw the gun-barrels poke out of in the mud-splattered black Ford that pulled up next to us.

I hit the floorboards a second before Pugs threw himself on top of me. It sounded like two freight trains crashing on an overhead railroad trestle as guns on both sides traded insults.

The money McGooganheimer paid for the heavy steel-plated Cadillac was not wasted. The Ford was fast but after a high speed chase during which gunfire from both cars sent pedestrians fleeing off the sidewalks in all directions, the model A rolled over with two shot-out rear tires on River Street just before the docks. Five police cars arrived, with sirens wailing, moments after we did. Half the Chicago cops worked for Al Capone … the other half worked for my favorite client and they never made trouble with each other. Two of the squad cars blocked off the street in both directions. The other cops helped Pugs and his boys douse the Ford with gasoline before they fired it up and rolled it off the docks. Not all the goons in the bullet-riddled Model A were alive when it splashed into the water, but enough were to let the world know … they didn’t like the cold.

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

            Albert McGooganheimer sat next to the pool at his Fullersburg mansion. Servants in white dinner jackets brought drinks as he bid me to sit down. The twelve year old Scotch was as smooth as a baby’s bum, not that I’ve kissed many. “Chicago is at war,’ he said. ‘In case you haven’t noticed.”

            “I’ve noticed,” I told him. “You appear to be winning!”

A young girl, dressed in almost nothing, brought a large bowl of mixed nuts and Albert began to crack the walnuts with his bare hands. “Appearances can be deceptive,” Albert said. “My business has suffered greatly from the recent territorial unrest.”

            “I know you’re a busy man,” I said. “Why did you bring me here?”

            “I believe my associates gave you a two-thousand dollar retainer earlier this year,” McGooganheimer said. “I require services in part of that payment.”

            “If you need someone killed, I don’t come that cheap,” I told him.

Albert laughed. “I’d never have a cook weed my garden,” he said. “You’re too valuable.”

            “Thank you,” I told him.

            “Every month or so I have a freighter called the Albatross that crosses Lake Michigan,” Machine Gun said. “It’s usually loaded with about ten thousand cases of Canadian whiskey that I pay for in advance.” Albert reached for a Brazil nut … and then studied it closely. “I’ve had several shipment seized by the feds. By the time I pay them for the return of my goods my profits are greatly reduced.”

            “Times are tough all over,” I told him.

            “I have one of my men on board the Albatross. He’s the ship’s cook and his name is Finny,” Albert said. “There has been a far greater than normal number of casualties on this vessel lately and the captain is always looking for replacement seamen.” Albert cracked the Brazil nut between his thumb and first finger. “I want you to sign on with this vessel and find out all you can from Finny. Report back to me when The Albatross docks again in two weeks.”

Chester “Pugs” Dolan and some of his boys drove me back to the rooming house I was living in. All the way home I kept thinking. “I can barely handle a row-boat!” I knew saying no was not an option. Nobody who wants to live ever says no to Machine Gun Mcgooganheimer.

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

            The Captain’s name was O'Sullivan and the Irish were not easily fooled. “You mess me up lad and I’ll pull out every hair,” he said tugging at my four day old beard. I was given the worst jobs on the boat: cleaning up the sick from the new crewmembers and making sure the toilets flushed properly. The first time I met Finny, he spit on the crust of bread he gave me then waved me past the soup. “I don’t like you,” he said. “You’re apt to lose a lot of weight.”

The second night crossing the lake I was pulled from my bunk. “Who sent you?” the captain asked as his men beat me. I knew it was useless to answer, all it did was make the end come sooner and I was beginning to enjoy every breath. I passed out from the pain. When I awakened I was sitting on the deck with both feet in a tub of cement that was nearly dry. My hands were tied behind my back and a cable attached to my wrists slowly lifted me off the planking. “I’ll ask you one last time,” O'Sullivan said. “Tell us who your contact is on this vessel and you have my solemn word on my dear mother’s grave that I’ll let you walk free on shore.”

            I asked through gritted teeth if his mother had worked in a brothel and if he knew who his father was. The lake water was colder than I expected. The pressure grew as the weight of the concrete about my legs pulled me steadily down. It’s true, my entire life passed before my eyes … every second of pleasure … every moment of pain. I heard my mother calling me to supper. A dog was barking. I could not hold my breath any longer. Lake Michigan is deep … I was only halfway to the bottom when my lungs burst and a cloud of bubbles exploded and rose toward the surface. Then there was only an eternal … and somehow restful darkness …

TO BE CONTINUED …

In order for the princess ...

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.

In order for the

Princess

To have a happy ending … something

Bad must happen to …

The Frog

By R. Peterson

In the kingdom of Nodnol, which everyone but the stuffy old turkey-woman who ran the realm’s library called Nod, there lived a much-more-than-beautiful princess that rich and handsome suitor-princes came constantly to admire … and to court  with hope in their hearts.

One day the princess, whose name was Harper, because on the day she was born the king heard angels playing their instruments, was admiring her image in the castle moat when a diamond, from an expensive necklace she was wearing, fell into the murky water. “Drat! That stone was worth at least six kisses!” the princess moaned.

A frog who had been sitting in the shade under the drawbridge catching flies heard her cries and dove into the water. The frog searched through the mud until he found the diamond and then dropped it at the princess’ feet. “Really!” the princess laughed when the frog gazed at her with great expectations but she pressed her lips firmly together. “You may not even be a prince!”

Princess Harper called for her carriage and it arrived so quickly that when it left … a wheel ran over the frog’s leg and he was on crutches for a week!

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

The King and Queen decided that it was time for their daughter to be wed and they sent notices to every handsome prince and wealthy lord in the kingdom. Before long all the roads to Nodnol were filled with rumbling carriages, prancing horses and boys blowing trumpets to announce the arrival of each new guest. Of course a magnificent ball was planned and hundreds of suitors lined up to dance with the princess. By midnight the princess still had fifty dances written on her card and she was already exhausted. She tried to flee into the palace garden but the gate was locked. “Won’t someone help me?” she cried.

The frog who was catching flies next to the pond inside the garden heard her. He hopped over one of the walls and then stole a key from one of the palace guards. The frog gave the key to the princess. She unlocked the gate and once they were both inside, she locked the gate behind her.

The frog was delighted when the princess sat on a large, flat-rock near the water and began to sing. He was not musical at all but he croaked along with her under the moonlight and they both laughed. And they came close to kissing … but they didn’t.

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

The King and Queen were disappointed that their daughter had left the lavish party without choosing a soul mate … so they picked a husband for her. Prince Herman Gumtongue from Gorbalash, was tall and almost-handsome … but he had the intelligence of a rat eating its way through a library. The first time he met the princess he hung his head and looked at her shyly. He began to snort and then giggle. Soon he was crowing like a rooster. “I’ll be a kissin’ yaw every night,” he stammered. The princess burst into tears and then fled to her tower bedroom. She refused to come down while Herman prowled the castle looking for her.

The frog watched the whole sordid-affair from inside a large bowl that had been filled with tiny, tasty goldfish.  He hopped into Herman’s quarters when a servant left a door open and stole a piece of blank stationary with the royal crest of Corbalsh printed at the top. The frog penned an urgent message addressed to Herman, supposedly from his father. The note said he was needed at home immediately.

As soon as Prince Herman’s carriage rumbled across the drawbridge to take him home. The princess came down from the tower and she and the frog danced in the garden under the moonlight. She wore a white gown that shimmered each time she twirled and the frog rode on her shoulder.

Princess Harper was so happy she almost kissed him … but she didn’t.

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

A very powerful and wicked sorcerer who had come with the other suitors to court the princess was furious that he had not been chosen as her mate. While the entire castle was asleep, the horrible wizard, whose name was Briesmas, started a fire with his wand and then fled back to his dark-swamp fortress … riding and whipping a black horse.

When the subjects inside the castle finally awakened, the smoke from the many fires was chocking their lungs and burning their eyes.

The King and Queen tried to lead everyone to safety out the open front gate … but they found the entrance also was in flames.

-------5-------

The frog who had just been awakened from his very last dream was swimming in the moat when he heard the princess’ frantic cries. He knew he must save her. The frog leaped off the drawbridge over and over again filling his wide mouth with muddy water then spraying a pathway through the flames. When a way to escape the fire was finally clear, the King, Queen, and dozens of lords and ladies trampled the exhausted frog on their way to safety. The princess noticed her dearest friend at the last minute … and ran to save him. Heat from the fire had dried the path and the frog was quickly engulfed in flames. The last thing the princess saw was the everlasting love in the frog’s bulging eyes.

The King and Queen’s beautiful daughter refused to marry. She spent most of her days wandering through the beautiful garden inside her father’s castle grounds. A solid-gold statue had been carefully placed on a flat-rock at her request. It was near the shimmering pond and close to a constantly buzzing swarm of flies. Harper often cried, but sometimes she danced under the moonlight … and when she did something magic always made her smile. She never forgot that according to the laws of all fairy tales … in order for a princess to have a happy ending … something bad must happen to the frog. But Harper also knew, that a new and far-better fairy tale was often … just a story away.

The End ?

Keeper and the PLANTERS part 7

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 7

By R. Peterson

It took twice as much power to start shuttle 419 because of the cold. The bay doors on the Centurion were iced and had to be thawed with lasers. Teuth navigated the massive starship back toward a far less frigid orbit as soon as First Officer Jeff Bland was a safe distance away.

Jeff slowly shook his head when Clarence Wortha one of the most brilliant students interning aboard the rare species acquisitions vessel staggered from the cargo area into the shuttle’s cockpit. “What the Hell Pumpkin Head! Don’t you know it’s a crime to stowaway aboard a Mautese 17 chartered vessel?”

Clarence used his vine like arms and hands to insert a recorded audio disk into the shuttle’s control panel and adjusted the volume. The sound of Led Zepplin playing the opening rifts to Stairway to Heaven floated  through the cockpit. Jeff smiled, but his eyes still held a tint of malice. “Where did you get that?”

            “From your quarters!” Pumpkin Head held up at least a dozen disks. “I figured if we were going to die, we might as well have a soundtrack to embellish all our discomforts!”

            “We are not going to die!” Bland started to turn the shuttle around and then realized the Centurion had already gone.

Pumpkin Head laughed when he saw the look on Jeff’s face. “Elvis has left the building,” he snickered.

Bland stared once again and then shook his head. “Alright,” he said. “But it’s my party and we do everything I say … and I get to pick the next song!”

            “It may be your party … but I’ll cry if I want to!” Clarence was looking at a disk with a tiny hologram showing a dancing Lesley Gore as shuttle 419 sped toward the surface of Geelo one of the coldest Ice Worlds in the entire Inversijas system.

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

            “Do you think our captive Earthling will make it back?” Keeper asked Teuth as the Centurion reached the edges of space. The Ice World, Geelo, loomed far below them but ice crystals were still forming everywhere on the ship’s control level. “I lied to him … I lied to my friend,” Teuth moaned. “I knew he would try to rescue Leika from the surface. He won’t have three minutes. He will be lucky to have one. I wanted to give him hope … even if it was false. I have more than twenty-six mastery degrees from universities all over the universe but he has taught me more than any of them.” Strange almost crusty tears formed in the land-adapted cephalopod’s eyes. “I only wanted to give him hope.”

Teuth’s tentacles fluttered in the light array that controlled the ship’s functions. Keeper, the Centurion’s captain, moved close to his navigator, a most unusual gesture from a member of the Druellian race, a kind of living-hologram with no physical body.

            “You gave him everything you had,” Keeper said touching Teuth’s bulbous head. “No friend could ask for more.”

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

            The Centurion shuttle 419 was hurtling toward the surface of Geelo at the steepest angle possible. First Officer Jeff Bland, thought Clarence, the cadet everyone called Pumpkin Head, looked like a bobble figure from his past life on Earth as the shuttle rolled and lurched. He laughed. “Relax kid. Haven’t you ever ridden a roller coaster?”

Clarence was scanning all the ship’s function readings trying to discover why there was such tremendous turbulence in the small craft. He glared as he found the answer. “The reverse thrusters are engaged fully and we using all of the ship’s forward propulsion energy against them,” he yelled. “How could you not notice this?”

            “I call it driving with the brakes on,” Bland told him. “It used to generate a lot of heat in my old Ford Mustang back on Earth. I just hope it’s enough to get us to the surface!”

            “If by some luck we do reach the surface, how do you expect to open the pod the Porosities female is locked inside? We’ll have less than a minute on the surface and Navigator Teuth said the encapsulated cell is sealed by an unknown technology!

            “Probably made of a dark-matter derivative of Datonight.” Bland scowled. “Something that strong must be extremely brittle at these temperatures.”

            “Even if you’re right it would still take a huge hammer to crack it!” Pumpkin Head suddenly gasped.

            “You’re right kid,” Bland told him. “That’s why we’re going to crash into it at max speed. If it doesn’t break … we haven’t lost anything!”

            “That’s your plan? Crash this shuttle into the pod and hope it breaks? What then? What if the pod does somehow break apart … and by some miracle we all survive … what happens then?”

            “I haven’t thought that far ahead,” Bland told him. “I can only think of one ingenious thing at a time.”

Pumpkin Head entwined his vine-like arms together and began to say a prayer directed to the Gods from his home planet. Bland looked at him and snickered as he placed a new music disk into the ship’s audio system. The opening riffs to AC DC’s Highway to Hell blasted through the shuttle’s cabin at maximum volume. “Now aren’t you glad you came with me?”

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

            “We picked the wrong place to re-orbit!” Keeper pointed to the image of the massive Cruanium Battle Carrier speeding toward them on the overhead hologram.

            “There is no way we could have known,” Teuth said. All eight of his tentacles were in the light arrays trying to divert as much of the ship’s power possible to the shields. “The Gorwanian flagship and its support fighters were hidden inside one of Inversijas’ strange shadows. None of our detection systems can penetrate this abnormal kind of dark energy!”

            Keeper shrugged his shoulders and smiled strangely. “It looks like our first officer and Pumpkin Head aren’t going to be the only ones moving on to the next world!”

            “Clarence?” Teuth looked at the captain. “He’s with Jeff?”

            “He missed a class in Dark Matter Engineering,” Keeper said. “I searched for him and found a hologram of him sneaking aboard shuttle 419 just before it left the Centurion.”

            “Why would he want to go on a suicide mission?” Teuth was stunned.

            The Centurion was suddenly rocked by an enormous blast. Warning devices began to go off all over the starship.

            “I have no idea,” Keeper said. “But he does like Bland’s music!”

-------5-------

            First Officer Jeff Bland and Pumpkin Head were both fighting over the audio disks as the surface of Geelo roared toward them at a fantastic speed. “If this is going to be our last song, I get to pick it!” Bland was using all of his muscles but Clarence’s vines were strong.

            “You had your Highway to Hell … this is my turn!” Pumpkin Head wrenched the disk away from the shuttle’s commander and shoved it into the audio device. The Archies’ – “Sugar, Sugar” began to sweeten the cockpit.

            Bland’s eyes rolled in two directions and he began to pull hair from his head. “Do you know how many times I’ve listened to that song?”

            “I have no idea,” Clarence said. “But it does have a catchy tune.”

            “At least a million times,” Bland yelled. “It was on the radio every time I turned it on!”

            “What’s a radio?”

            “It doesn’t matter,” Bland told him. “It’s just something that I don’t want to remember … at this time.”

            “I understand.” Clarence reached for the eject-button … but Bland stopped him.

Jeff’s eyes took on a far-away look and after a few moments he spoke. “The first time I saw Janna Stone, this song was playing on the juke box inside Spare-A-Dime. That’s a little eating place on Earth. It was spring, and she had on an Easter dress that flowed around her like the halo that surrounds an angel!”

            “I’ve watched holograms of the women who live on the Paholainen mirror worlds,” Clarence said. “They are beautiful.”

            “I’ve been to the Galaxy of Heaven,” Jeff said. “Janna Stone was more breathtakingly beautiful than any of them!”

            “I wish I could have known her,” Clarence said.

The icy surface of Geelo now filled the entire overhead hologram. “If you hadn’t come with me,” Jeff said. “You might have taken your next vacation as a time portal to Earth in the year 1959. You would have been as captured as I was. I doubt you could have been forced to return.”

            “She was that fine?”

The Centurion was hurtling at unbelievable speed toward a small object on the icy surface. “She was!”

Jeff and Clarence looked at each other and smiled just before a horrendous crash and explosion … that no humanoid in the universe could possibly survive. And then there was darkness … a strange and somehow magnificent darkness.

-------6-------

            Teuth tried every navigation trick he’d learned since he was a cadet at an engineering flight school on Mautese 17, still the Gorwanian’s loomed closer. “We have about ten minutes before they’re in range with their big guns,” Teuth said.

            “Those weren’t their big guns?” Keeper was astonished.

            “According to the data readouts we were struck with a dark matter cannon at the power of seven,’ Teuth said. “That Cruanium Battle Carrier carries nine dark matter cluster cannons on its forward deck alone. Each one exceeds or maintains a power of forty-nine!”

            “I’m glad we didn’t get hit with one of those,” Keeper said. “We’d be in real trouble!”

The overhead hologram switched to an emergency channel.  Greina, the Plant Girl’s, rose-blossom face looked like a dried flower bud being attacked by ants. “We can’t hold her,” she yelled. “We can’t keep the Saggoplatapus captive. The creature has grown so large it’s ready to break the ceiling out of the Biosphere!”

            “Not now!” Keeper told the hysterical cadet doing Leika’s job. “I’m on my lunch break!”

Teuth looked at the captain with surprise as the hologram switched back to the pursuers. “Without my First Officer on board, I’m forced to do both of our jobs,” Keeper explained, “my calm and collected reasoning … and his malicious-wit and sarcasm.”

            “The Gorwat are within striking range,” Teuth declared.

The hologram suddenly changed. Gorwan’s lizard-face loomed like a planet. “You killed my Leika,” he moaned. “You killed my beloved Leika!”

            “What’s he talking about?” Keeper asked.

            “Gorwan is right,” Teuth said. “Our readings detect no life forms alive anywhere on the surface of Geelo.”

            “You drove a shuttle filled with explosives into her sleeping chamber on purpose!” Gorwan’s eyes bulged from his head with murderous intent. “I could destroy you with one blast but I want my revenge. I’m pulling your entire ship into my docking bay. There, and in other special rooms that I’ve provided, each member of your murderous crew will be endlessly tortured … until I decide that it is time for them to perish.”

            “That sounds like a pretty wild party,” Keeper told Gorwan.

Teuth stared at him. “It’s close to what Jeff would have said to his rival,” Keeper explained.

-------7-------

            On the surface of Geelo, a harsh wind blew frozen ice crystals around the wreckage. Pieces of charred metal most no bigger than an Earth dime were all that remained of some of Mateuse 17s most advanced technology. A howl, like a thousand wolves suddenly released from their cages, swept across the snow-covered waste-land as a shadow made of Dark Energy slowly left the wreckage site. There was no life on this planet and it was as if there never had been. Night was coming … as this part of the planet rotated away from the energy produced by the giant star Inversijas. The daytime temperature of -200 below zero would soon be replaced by absolute zero or -460 degrees Fahrenheit. No life forms without tremendous and very advanced shielding could exist for more than a few seconds. There was no advanced technology nor would there ever be again … only cold and death.

On an icy outcropping, more than seven miles from the wreckage-site, a round metal disk reflected the last rays of Inversijas’ light. Engraved on the disk, in the language of a very distant planet called Earth, were these words “J. FRANK WILSON and the Cavaliers - Last Kiss". A sudden gust of wind buried the disk with snow … and it was no more.

-------8-------

The Centurion was almost inside the massive Cruanium Battle Carrier when Greina, the Plant Girls face appeared on the hologram. She was furious! “The Saggoplatapus is breaking away the dome that covers Biosphere 3,” She screamed.

“Let the damn thing go,” Keeper told her. “Get the hell out of there … and let the damn thing go!”

Moments later the entire ship trembled. The massive biosphere that protruded from the front of the ship was closer to the Battle Carrier than any other part of the science vessel. Keeper and his crew watched as the clear dome covering Biosphere 3 exploded sending more than one-hundred twenty-five thousand square-miles of sea-water into the tractor beam pulling them into the battle cruiser. The ocean turned to ice instantly, and a moon-sized Saggoplatapus flew into the cargo bay of Gorwan’s flag ship. Massive explosions erupted repeatedly from the enemy vessel.

Minutes later, Gorwan’s lizard face appeared as a wavy-hologram just before the Centurion sped away. Behind him hundreds of Gorwanian soldiers could be seen fighting a losing battle with a monster from hell. The creature had grown exponentially in the amphibian friendly atmosphere and was literally tearing the inside of the massive battle cruiser apart.   “I’ll get you for this!” Gorwan promised. “I’ll have my revenge … if it’s the last thing I ever do!”

-------9-------

Weeks later Keeper and Teuth were together in the control room. The Ice Worlds seemed far away. Biosphere 3 had been repaired and they were manufacturing water from a hydrogen and oxygen rich gas-cloud. The ship’s navigator was still grieving … Keeper, as captain, was not given that luxury. “The Planters returned the Saggoplatapus to us for a reason,” Keeper said. “Perhaps they read and somehow alter the future.”

Teuth was quiet for a moment before he answered. “Does it really matter?” he asked. “Do the Planters really matter?”

            “I think all things matter,” Keeper told him. “Jeff and Leika both mattered to me. Their death was a most terrible tragedy. But there is a balance in all things … in good … and in bad. The truth and dreams are the only things that truly last forever. Perhaps we shall meet again. No odds are too great … in infinity. There never was a time when we were not here … there never will be a time when we do not exist. The mysteries of the universe are as infinite as the stars. Only love lasts forever … riding on the entwined paths of … light and darkness.”

THE END.

(Thank you everyone who enjoyed reading these space adventure stories … it is for you that I write)

Post script:

More than seven months later, just as the crew of the Centurion was preparing to enter a time warp to return to their own place in infinity, Teuth detected a beam of dark energy coming from the far side of the universe, possibly from the Planters, and moving toward them at an impossible velocity. The tiny burst of focused power hurtled through entire galaxies in a matter of seconds. There was no chance for avoidance or any time to activate any of the vessel’s shields. The entire star ship trembled once and then seemed to become a liquid. Darkness moved across the face of the waters … and then vanished in a burst of light.  

First Officer Jeff Bland, Clarence, the cadet everyone called Pumpkin Head and the Porosities female “Leika” appeared on the control level floor. They were real and not holograms. Bland was holding Leika who appeared to be waking from a long sleep. A wide-eyed Clarence gazed about the room. “Let go of me!” Leika slapped Bland hard across the face and stung him with her quills as she wiggled out of his arms. “Sleeping!” she said. “You always make your move when I’m sleeping!”

Jeff Bland looked at Keeper and grinned. “Wow!” he said. “What a ride!”