Sometimes death waits in an alley. Maybe in a movie theater if you're lucky. Mostly it just snatches you in the middle of a good sleep or making love. But however and whomever it snatches, it pretty much is indifferent to whom it happens. That's how Chesterton felt that morning. Like death was sitting on his couch, eating popcorn and watching his life like a cheap B movie, where anything goes, and not much of it makes sense much of the time.

"Okay. I get it. You're my father. What else is new?"

The Tall Man laughed. "Not in the traditional sense, but rather in the sense of your ideas have their roots in my work."

"That makes as much sense as a bowl of crap in an ice cream cone."

"More."

"How?"

"Haven't you ever wondered why you suddenly became so fascinated with fractals...especially the flames?"

"Not really. Too many better things to do with my life besides running it back and forth to edit it."

"Maybe, but if you had, then you would have noticed smaller things happening around you, preparing you, prepping you for your discovery. Our...discovery."

Chesterton stood up. "Am I under arrest?"

"Not in my power."

"Then I'm out of here."

"I'd stay."

"You would. I'm not you."

Chesterton left. No one tried to stop him. He got all the way to the front door, which was solid metal, and eyed thee green lit panel before it. It took a handprint to open it. He shrugged. It either did or it didn't. It did.

But what he saw was not anything at all like what he expected to find...such as a busy street fronted by large buildings, and hundreds of people scurrying along sidewalks fronting the buildings, on their way to pick up snacks, comic books, clothing, pay bills, meet lovers. You name it. Only this time he couldn't. The reason was plain and simple. He wasn't on earth. Not even close to it.

What opened up before him was a vast cascading field of fractal flames that burned with an unearthly light.

He felt, rather than heard the Tall Man step up beside him.

"Welcome to my world."

"Kinda big for one man, isn't it?"

"In the beginning. But after a while, you kinda grow on it."

"Don't you mean that the other way around?" Chesterton demanded, turning to face the stranger who had whisked him away from his life of teaching and escapism.

"Not at all."

He waved a hand at the vast fields of fractal flame fields, filled with billions of burning planets and suns. "Just imagine the sheer amount of life that must exist in what we see just from here, let alone the full extent of it."

"Actually, I don't care. Gotta enough life in my own world, thank you."

The Tall Man eyed him sternly. "You're a stubborn man, you know that?"

"Asking me or telling me?"

"Both!"

"Then answer your own question."

Chesterton twisted his right pinkie and vanished.

The Tall Man smiled. Just what he expected from him. He sighed, put his hands in his pockets, closed the door to his headquarters, shutting off the splendid view it offered.

***

Chesterton examined the fractal flame at its penultimate level. He couldn't zoom into it any further. He was having a hard time concentrating on it though. He kept thinking back to his capture and subsequent escape or release, depending on how you took it. He didn't doubt that the Tall Man could whisk him back again, but he also didn't doubt that he could also escape again. He'd been in much tighter squeezes, and much more dangerous ones.

"Teach!"

Chesterton turned around on his swivel chair, allowing it to roll with his turn until he faced Timothy, one of his best students. A real jock, but a brain the size of Einstein's.

"Kinda late."

"Yeah. But I wanted to talk to you before I headed back home. Mind?"

Chesterton shook his hair, causing cascades of pink sprinkles to dust his lap.

Timothy laughed. "You're a self powdering Tinkerbelle."

"Yeah. Makes me glow at night too. Great way to avoid cars hitting me on my bike."

"You ride a bike?"

Chesterton spread his hands. "Well, not a traditional one."

He saw in his mind his three wheel device that he stood on when he pedaled, that was solar powered in the day, and ran off battery and leg power at night. It also had a water condenser for the hot days so he could drink back some of his sweat and windshield wipers for the days he had to wear his surround helmet he had made to give him a 360 view of his ride.

"Not at all." He reiterated. "Traditional."

Tim, which is what Chesterton called him in private, sat down, setting his football helmet on the tiny desk Chesterton sat at. He sat there for the longest of times, as if pondering the fate and meaning of the universe, his large brown eyes whisking up and down and right and left, as if invoicing everything he could take in and register it for future investigations.

"I'm bored."

Chesterton jumped up and smiled. "Great. Me too! Let's go get a Sonic!"

***

Tim screamed like a girl and whooped like a tiger as he rode on the back of Chesterton's bike. Chesterton took turns at almost right angles, thanks to his hyper-dense gyroscope which was teched into nine different dimensions so that if the bike went anyway but where Chesterton wanted, it would automatically adjust and get back on track. He had just patented the design and sold it to Darpa for a billion dollars, which he immediately donated to Zimbabwe to build schools and hospitals for kids.

He didn't like being rich. It made him feel dirty when he saw so many struggling to just have enough to eat, or have shelter for the night. He spent his weekends off helping out at the local shelter for battered women in the mornings, brought his electric harmonica and played it for the elders at the rest homes at night and on Sundays; he climbed mountains to raise funds for the homeless.

He didn't have a sheltered life or a boring one. Just a busy one. The way he liked it. No time for women in that dimension, maybe another one...he smirked to himself.

Finally, he wheeled his bike into a slot at Sonic, hits brakes screeching so loudly...he had installed amplifiers on them...that customers immediately ducked, thinking they were a target for an oncoming missile or crashing plane. He switched it off and Tim dropped to the pavement, laughing so hard and crying so hard he could barely contain himself.

"Man, if the kids knew you drove like that, they'd never let you hear the end of it."

"If they knew I drove like this, they'd be you and wouldn't care a gnat's ass." Chesterton replied smugly.

Tim shook his head. "Just for that the Sonic's on me. Chicken or Beef?"

"Fish. With double fries and lemonade."

Time nodded. He spoke into the speaker system in front of the bike. "Sonic Chicken, double fries and a large lemonade..."

"Triple sized."

"Triple sized." Tim corrected. "And a double beef with triple fries and a double chocolate shake."

"Will that be all, sir?" The speaker system asked.

Tim shrugged. "Depends on how much I laugh."

"Pardon?"

"All for now."

"Thanks. Your order will ready in ten minutes. Meanwhile, enjoy your stay at Sonic!"

Tim settled down on a bench next to the bike. Chesterton climbed off and joined him. "What's eating you, Tim?"

"I got a girl pregnant."

Chesterton hadn't seen that one coming, but he should have, seeing how the kid always had a new girl on his arm every time he saw him.

"And?"

Tim began to sob. "I don't know what to do. I don't want the child. I don't want to hurt her. I don't want my parents to be mad at me. Oh hell, Teach, I'm really screwed, aren't I?"

"Pretty much."

Tim looked up. He hadn't expected that reaction.

"What?"

"You plays it, you pays it." Chesterton told him with a straight face.

"You'd throw me to the lions!" Tim growled, anger reddening his face.

"Nope, just pussycats."

Tim laughed, and then he almost choked with anger. "Hey!"

***

The ride back to the school was quiet. Tim rode like a champ, his girly screams chomped back as he pondered his worries, his stupid mistakes.

Chesterton was going to drop Tim off at his home, but then got a better idea. He took him back to the school. The custodians greeted the two of them. They were used to the Teach keeping late hours. They did too. Besides, he kept them in stock with Kool-Aid and potato chips. How could you hate or get annoyed by a man who did that, and gave your kids Star Wars Yodas for Christmas?

Chesterton unlocked his office, sat down, as Tim sat down at the desk near him, and then he pulled out a school bought chocolate bar which had cost him a buck and he kept for such times. "Eat it. It'll put hair on your chest."

"I already have hair on my chest."

"Not."

Time ate the chocolate bar. As he did so, he began to calm down. Finally, he belched, and then tossed the wrapper at the trash can. He missed. Made no motion to pick it up.

"Trash it."

Tim eyed Chesterton warily, then snatched the wrapper and trashed it.

"Now what?" He asked.

"We wait."

"For what?"

"You to do the right thing."

"I'm not going to marry that girl. She's a freshman!'

Chesterton's good nature vanished. He stabbed Tim in the chest with his right forefinger. "Expulsion from school, no football career and jail time. Your choice!"

Tim blanched, face becoming as white as a ghost.

"Jjjjjj...Jail time?"

"With lots of big guys that love young kids like you."

Tim staggered to his feet and headed for the door.

"Where you going?"

"To clear my head."

Chesterton nodded. Tim staggered out, leaving the door open behind him. Chesterton kept quiet. The kid was a good one at heart. He'd do the right thing in the end. He was just lucky he was having to deal with it at his age now, rather than as a stunted adult who collected women as prizes and broke heart after heart.

Chesterton sighed, reached into his desk drawer, and then sighed again. "Damn!"

He had given his last chocolate bar away. He had bought a whole box of them.

"Damn those kids are killing me!" He growled, as he got up to leave his office for his bike to return home. He wanted to continue his research with the better equipment he kept there. School computers were usually many generations behind what consumers had, and usually far less well equipped as the manufacturers cheaped them out so they could sell them at discounted prices.

He soured a moment, thinking about how unfair the education system was. It riddled its teachers with holes of discouragement and despair, while paying its top dog admins money to act like coronated Kings and Queens. America was not the same country he had grown up with as a kid. It had become soured and selfish. Corporations ran the world now, just no one was willing to admit it and do something about it.

He nodded goodnight to the custodians he passed. They Buenos Noched him on his way and he waved. He unlocked the electric charge on his bike which would shock the hell outta anyone trying to steal it, leaving this side of death and dying, and then got on. He loved the feel of the night air as he shot along on its three wheels, dodging traffic and lights. His reflexes were quick, but his equipment quicker. He knew when cars were coming, where cops were, and how fast to go to avoid all of them.

He made it home to his humble abode out in the tullies. Just north of the 215 and east of the 95. The homes weren't too expensive. The people a little more laid back and kids didn't try to steal everything that was loose from yards, cars and homes. Vegas had changed so much since he had moved there. Nevada had been one of the top 5 dogs in the nation for its education and now ranked somewhere between the bottom and a cesspool. It stank! And the people running the show just kept heaping more crap on it, rather than letting the teachers figure it out as they used to.

Oh well! He gave up his growing sense of alarm and disillusionment. He wasn't Superman. He never would be. He didn't want to be. No one, with any amount of powers, could change the course of a bureaucracy of that size. Not unless they wanted to get squeezed to death in the process. He had seen hundreds, no thousands of teachers bail after they realized nothing was going to change. Sad. But...

He locked his front door. "Lights on."

Lights came up, softly. He had installed a home-based computer that managed all his needs about the home. It was perfect. It could flush the toilet, warm up his coffee, keep the freezer at just the right temperature in his frig, warm up his bath or shower, make his toast and shine his shoes, if he were regular shoes. He looked down at his Star Wars tennies. Nope. Not for him. Let other fools torture their feet.

He threw himself down on his sofa a moment and ran through TV channels talking his way from zero to CNN. Same news on every channel. Global warming. Some idiot proclaiming the world was approaching the apocalypse. A preacher arrested for molesting a child. A wife killing her husband while he was sleeping because no one believed her he was violent. A school burned down in the South and a KKK sign painted on its parking lot.

Yup. Not much had changed in the world.

He flipped to the Cartoon Network and feasted on Sponge Bob for half an hour, laughing his guts out. Finally, he was hungry. "Toast. Two slices. Buttered." He ordered to the air.

He kicked his tennies off in his bedroom, then walked into the kitchen, where the toaster was warming down, having just kicked out two perfectly sliced pieces of toast, evenly buttered. He snatched them. Sat down at his kitchen table, and tossed them onto a plate with Donald Duck on its face. "Juice. Half cup. Orange." He ordered.

A buzzing sound from behind him. The frig opened and a robotic arm shoved out of it with a half glass of orange juice. He took it. "Thanks Arm!"

The arm wiggled in response, then withdrew into the frig, which promptly shut.

It was as he was enjoying that simple repast that he got the Big Idea. It was so simple; he wondered why he hadn't thought of it before.

He smashed the rest of his toast into his mouth, washed it down with the rest of his juice, and then ran for his lab. Which was actually a bedroom converted. It had loud green painted walls with thousands of Marvel Hero posters pasted to them. Well, technically the walls weren't green anymore, but every once in awhile a poster would loosen and the wall would see the light of day again.

He flopped in front of his Boxx computer. It was hooked in parallel to a hundred more that sat in his refrigerated garage. His server room. He had the computing power of a SuperKray, but at a fraction of the cost. Boxx had gifted him when he showed them how to make 1gigahertz computers ran at a hundred gigahertz without heating up or running up the bill. He could have made millions selling his idea to IBM or one of the other biggies, but why feed the monsters who were ruining the world?

He punched in the co-ordinates into his fractal program. It was a derivation of Chaotica on steroids. It could punch a hole through time and space to the 10th to the 10th to the 10th to the 1 billionth powers. In other words it was a quantum computer times a thousand. Again, something he could have made billions of dollars from. He wasn't in it to win it, but to learn. He couldn't figure out how all those people could sit on so much money and like themselves when so many others struggled to just get by or didn't get by at all.

Money was just that...paper and promises. So he used his wealth to help and to serve. After all he was the Teach!

He smiled at that thought. Teach!

So now that the Tall Man was coming back to him again and what he had been shown. He decided it was time to play Little God Number One.

He fed the last co-ordinates into his computer, waited for the nanoseconds to tick off, then swiveled to stand before the huge hologram being projected behind his chair. It was shot there from a ceiling projector hooked into his super array of Boxx computers.

The Fractal Universe beckoned him. Literally.

He hadn't wanted to admit it at first, when the Tall Man showed him the photos, but now he was ready. Yeah. He was a fractal universe. Yeah. Everyone was to some degree....a fractal universe. Well, this fractal universe was about to become something much larger, much more powerful. It was about to become...The Teach! Because he had finally put it all together. He had found Fractal Zero! Himself!

"Project!" He ordered.

He felt himself slam into the fractal universe of the hologram and vanish from his office. Every atom of his body was shredded, rearranged, nano-sized and rearranged again. When it was all done, the pain subsided, he was good as new.

He turned around and looked back towards his home world. Earth. It shone like a sparkling jewel in velvet black void. It needed a little tender love and affection. He flexed his fractal fingers and grinned. "Look out world! Here I come!"

Then he fractalized!

Klaxons blared.

Men and women scattered to their stations.

Lights went down and launch lights, green and low lit, sparked to life along the floor strips laid out for them.

Remaining crew dashed to make their stations as the Klaxons went to High Alert.

Peter and Jen glanced quickly at each other as they adjusted their googles to reduce the stream of energetic light about to be released in the main test chamber.

Sensors came to life, dancing meters, and scanners reading out the last few seconds before:

“ENTANGLEMENT!” Peter blasted over the horn, alerting everyone to grab hold of something to steady them.

The three story structure, half of which was underground and embedded in solid rock, began to tremble more and more violently. As it did so, the strip lights dimmed even further, the scanners and sensors went off the charts with their readings and then a very strange phenomenon began to erupt in the empty center of the test chamber.

Peter tensed, one hand guiding the entanglement manifestation, and the other ready to punch an emergency alert to get security at maximum response into the room if necessary. They were always just outside in case. He sweated that word. In case.

The last emergency had cost the lives of ten good men and women, and yet the project went on because it had to. It was a national priority. Ever since…

He shook thoughts of that event from his mind and counted down until the full manifestation erupted.

Which it did. Now!

A flare of light so intense that even the heavily shielded googles of the staff could barely restrain its intensity. Peter didn’t want to look away, a second could make the difference between life and death, but he had to. It was just too intense!

The room grew suddenly absolutely dark.

Peter responded immediately. “Doctor?”

Jen responded. “Solid.”

“Techs One and Two.”

“Tech One. Solid.”

“Tech Two. Solid.”

“Engineering?”

“All solid, Peter.”

“Security?”

Rasping sound on the overheads. “Security solid.”

Now the last person. “Richard?”

Silence.

“Richard?”

Silence.

“Security!”

“On it!”Rasped Security.

Emergency lighting returned, a low dim red color lighting everyone’s features and giving them a kind of diabolical feel.

Jen reached across her console, her eyes smiling at him. “It’ll be all right.”

He nodded, not believing it for a moment.

An explosion.

Everyone in the room reached for their side arms, knowing the drill all too well.

A second explosion.Closer.

“Engineering lock down!”

“Locking down!”

Huge titanium doors slid across the entrance. As they did so, the double doors blasted inwards and two Security Guards entered, firing their weapons as they ran. The titanium doors slid shut just as something awful and unbearable to look at started to enter the lab. It never made it. The huge doors shut across it, squirting body matter all over the instruments and people inside the room.

“Decontaminate!” Peter ordered.

Two Techs ran with small white cylinders that glowed in the dark and began spraying the people and the panels and instruments.

Peter and Jen took up a second pair of the decontam units and helped complete the clean up.

Finished, everyone waited near Peter’s console, their eyes on him, as he wiped at sweat on his brow, then broke into a smile. “Great job everyone!”

The lights came back on. The titanium doors slid back, the double doors swung open and a team of janitors came into the room to scrub it down.

Jen took Peter’s hand. “Great job!”

“We’ll see.” He sighed, remembering the time the job hadn’t been so great.

***

The creature was gigantic. It had armored skin, multiple eye stalks and fingers that looked like tentacles in their flexibility. It stood almost ten feet at its neck and had to crouch to get into the lab, but that didn’t stop it. It shoulders were a good five feet wide from side to side and it tore some of the concrete and wood of the doorway apart as it squeezed through.

It opened its mouth as if to speak, but nothing seemed to exit what could be called a mouth, which was a dark slit with a depth of deep red. It surveyed the frightened crew at their stations, its antenna eyes probing the room for details it could assimilate. Finished, it reached to a garish belt of odd instruments, took out one and aimed it at a Tech.

The Tech had no time to respond.

It was struck by some kind of energy blast that turned his molecules into chunks of ice, which shattered, then scattered across the floor, melting swiftly as they did.

The creature observed everyone, as if noting their responses. It raised a strange device to its mouth and uttered something no one could understand, and then it stooped, swept up some of the liquid into a small vial it carried with one of its multiple hands, then eyed everyone once more and exited.

When it turned its back to them, everyone could see where the impact of multiple machine gun bullets had struck its armored exterior, barely leaving a mark. The creature was almost indestructible.

***

Entanglement was the terminology used to describe our world aligning with the next one in an infinite stream of pearl like planets beaded about an infinite sun that defied imagination. It had been Peter's dream since he was a child. His classmates called him Spook Planet, because he was always talking about other worlds where aliens existed that probably were like us, if a bit different in appearance. The appellation stuck to him like glue. When he went to Cal Tech for his Master's, and then later his PhD in Nuclear Biology and Physics, everything he touched became known as the Spook Effect, or Spook Planet Effect. SPE for short.

How he discovered entanglement was as much of a dream as his dreams were. It came to him during a mediation class. He had been practicing Vedic breathing, which was a process of breathing in and out, while chanting God's name...Om. It was very relaxing. He needed it to stress release after night after night of hitting the books and day after day of hitting the labs. And during that last and magnificent experience he had, he had seen open up before him this huge tunnel of light and passing down it and around this huge being he could utter no words for, or find any words to describe, were pearls. But not the pearls you buy in a jewelry store, but living pearls. Planetary systems that were the abodes of life forms. As many as there were pearls.

He called it at first the gateway of pearls and that stuck also when he finally was able to engineer its construction based on what he saw. The Gateway of Pearls became the invention that put him on the map with the Department of Energy, and later Defense. He got grant after grant and finger after finger trying to control the pie. But none could understand what he had seen, or what he was building. On the news he was compared to a modern day Einstein, except with a good college education, which made him plenty formidable in modern day scientific circles.

He had been playing with anti-dark matter and anti-white matter at CERN...The European Organization for Nuclear Research...when he discovered Entanglement. Everyone had been excited when he first spotted the energies. They were almost invisible, but once he had pumped up the vast underground emitter to enough joules of power to create a sun, he had isolated the particles sufficiently to not only name them, but to know how to reproduce them.

Everyone at the Switzerland site congratulated him and expected him to get a Nobel Prize for his discovery, which he would dutifully record and publish. But he did no such thing. Instead he went to the Department of Energy, and as his project escalated not only in size, but in budget and danger, then the Department of Defense. They gave him the manpower and the big guns to protect his people. Or so he had thought.

The first Entanglement he had constructed and energized had brought the ten foot tall alien, who had squashed everyone and everything in its path to discover the source of the energy sink which had captured it momentarily. It had been merciless and without heart. Everyone that got in its way had died.

Before that fatal night had ended, Peter had lost his best friend, an entire Black Force protecting the facility, and half its scientists and staff. It was a setback that cost his project billions of dollars and dozens of lives. The President himself, near to leaving office, had personally come to witness the damage done, and had turned to Peter. "I'm proud of you, son. You saved our world!"

"Not really. It just got bored and left us alone." Peter had responded.

The President laughed. "Don't demean your talents, Doctor. If you hadn't pulled the plug on the Entanglement Field, more of them would have entered and invaded our world. That's never going to happen again."

"Sir?"

"I'm moving your facilities inside Yucca Mountain. It's strong enough to stand off a nuclear explosion and remote enough to protect innocent civilians." He leaned closer. "Besides, we've got to write down those expenses somehow."

Peter had thought it all a joke, until the Black Forces came back with the moving vans and the equipment to get every person moved along with their equipment.

That was when he had met Jen. She was a Doctor in services to the Black Forces. Detached recently from them, but reattached as a favor to the President and Vice President, whom she knew personally as friends, when her father was a Senator in Congress.

***

Jen and Peter watched as the various teams cleaned up and prepared for the next Entanglement. The real one.

"Do you think we're ready?" He asked her.

"I'm more interested in what we might meet this time." She responded, her eyes bright with the fever of desire.

He smiled, then as the last of the clean up finished.

He took the con, raising his voice to speak into the system that spread throughout Yucca Mountain. "Entanglement in sixty seconds and counting. Hold onto your britches everyone; this is going to be a big one!"

He began the Entanglement.

In Las Vegas citizens on the top floors of luxury hotels panicked when the buildings began to shake and sway.

Entanglement had begun!

The corridor stretched hundreds of yards in both directions, at which ends it was pitch black, except for the sharp lights of the mag-light helmets of the Forces stationed on guard there. It had been a rugged day for days now and everyone was feeling the effects of adrenaline constantly pumping fear into their veins. At some point the body has to rest or it breaks down.

Only Doctor Brevard was awake in his spot near the front. The Colonel was bivouacked to his right and Jeffries to his left. He was studying the datasheet again, making marks at appropriate points of it, then doing rapid calculations in his brain and making new marks. He was nearing the completion of them when he suddenly stiffened. "No!" He cried out.

He jumped to his feet.

"It's a trap!" He yelled.

==============================================================

Barnes and Claire sat quietly next to a parked drone, its electric sensors dimmed to conserve energy. It was a robo truck responsible for carrying their food supplies. There was a whole train of them. No one knew how long they would be down, inside the Earth, so they had planned for the worst, assuming that there would be no natural food resources there.

Barnes wasn't so sure anymore. She and Diggs hadn't told anyone yet, but the Glow Moss was edible once it dried out. Tasted like dry wheat, but a bit earthier. Reminded her of the spirulina she used to put into her protein shakes back on Shasta.

"Oh." She gasped, not meaning to.

Claire looked over at her friend. "You okay?"

"Yeah." Barnes nodded, and then fell into a sullen silence. The utter silence of their surroundings, except for the Forces gathered around, also talking very quietly, as if their voices might wake up something. And maybe they would. Something had awoken.

"I don't get it."Claire finally said. She spoke what had bothered her for quite some time now. "Milford thinks we're in some kind of rat's maze."

"Testing us."

Claire eyed Barnes.

"Maybe. But for what?"

"Your guess is as good as mine, but considering how horrible our experiences have been so far; it can't be for anything good."

"Spoken like a true vet." Claire smiled.

Barnes growled lightly, and then smiled. "Sorry, this place is starting to get on my nerves I guess."

Claire looked at the green and gray rock tunnel they were traversing and the occasional bumps of deformed lava that extruded from the walls and floors. "I don't know why such a pretty place would do that for you."

Barnes laughed, and then squinted at Claire. "It's obvious someone of great intelligence built this series of mazes. Or tunnels. Or whatever the hell they were."

"Or are." Claire corrected.

"That's the part that spooks me. If 'are' is the case, then where 'are' they? Why don't they show themselves?"

"Maybe they can't."

"Or don't dare?"

Claire nodded. "Maybe both. Remember the big to do about flying saucers off the coast of Australia. Drove the world nuts trying to figure out what they were about."

"Always some nuts trying to find salvation that way." Barnes groused.

"No, I'm serious. People really thought the aliens were going to land and bring us into a golden age."

"Guess they were wrong." Barnes sighed.

Claire didn't say anything else. What was there to say? Everything was speculation. They didn't know any more today than they did yesterday about who or what really caused the Big One. Or did they?

She drifted off into a gentle sleep, wondering and hoping that there would be a positive ending to all of this, even if she or no one else yet could see it.

==============================================================

Jeffries unhooked the wires from the new star they had found, and looked at his data screen, as Red looked on. "Do you believe that spew that Milford was trying to get us to buy into?

Jeffries stopped whistling the tune he had started. "Does it really matter what I believe? It won't change anything. We'll still keep going. Deeper and deeper. Fighting the unseen and those strange Insectoid. And God knows what else is down here."

Red slid down beside Jeffries. "But what if all of this is some kind of test? What if we're being graded on how we react to the threats?"

Jeffries shook his head. "Just pray we're getting a passing grade."

Jeffries got up, shoveled his scanner and data pad into his backpack, slung it over his shoulder, then turned to leave. "You know, the only thing I'm really worried about?"

"What's that?"

"What happens when we run out of power and ammo?"

With that thought weighing down Red's mind, Jeffries headed back to where the main Forces were. Most of them sleeping or talking quietly amongst themselves. It was a strange sight. Drones, Robo carts. Men. Women. All at the peak of their youth. Heading into the unknown. Traveling into a vast and seemingly endless deep hole of tunnels and pathways.

Red, meanwhile, sat back against the wall and tugged out a ration. "Beef stew." He read.

"I'll split that with you." Diggs said as he dropped down beside Red. "I've got strawberry shortcake."

"You're on." Red grinned.

The two men waited while Red's ration heated up, sharing the shortcake and freeze dried strawberries as they did so. Diggs swiped at his forehead, and then looked at his palm. "A bug." He frowned. "Or..."

He held up the splash of matter in his palm closer to his eyes. "Nah. Just bug."

He wiped it off on his pants, and then returned to eating.

Red opened the Beef Stew and used his service jack of all trades, spoon, knife and fork to scoop out enough for Diggs as he held out his helmet.

"How can you stand putting that on afterwards?"

"Just one more thing, Red. One more thing. And besides, I get hungry; I can always lick it clean."

Diggs broke into laughter. Red gave him a grossed out look.

Diggs poked him. "Just kidding, man. I clean it every night before I slap the zzzzs on."

Red smiled. "That's what I like about you, big guy, and a sense of humor."

Diggs finished his ration and drew his helmet to his lips to get all the remaining juices. He set it down, swiped his mouth clean with the back of his hand, belched, and then sighed. "We have anything else left?"

Red had no answer to that.

==============================================================

Doctor Brevard and the Colonel poured over the flash printout of the data stream that Jeffries had accumulated as he detailed what he had discovered.

"It would appear that the stars are not only warnings, but also distances."

"How so?" The Colonel asked, squinting at the data to understand it.

"See this." Jeffries pointed at the spiky energy at the beginning. "Our star." He poked another spike that was smaller. "The last star we found."

"So what's that prove?"

Doctor Brevard got excited. "I get it. The energy spikes get stronger the deeper we go and weaker the further away we become."

"Not just that, Doc." Jeffries responded.

Doctor Brevard gave him a scowl. He hated that word.

"Not just that, Doc." Jeffries repeated, inwardly gloating at the look of disdain on Doctor Brevard's face. "Not just that, but see these parallel dashed lines?"

"Those?"

Doctor Brevard ran a forefinger along a series of lines both above and below the spikes.

"Yeah. The top ones are the level we have descended from. The lower one...where we're headed."

The Colonel frowned. "This is great, but can you get us a reading yet on how many more levels there are to this march?"

Jeffries became very quiet.

"Jeffries?"

Jeffries finally spoke. "That's the crazy thing. See this and this."

Doctor Brevard and the Colonel leaned closer to look at what Jeffries had fingered on the printout.

"Looks like an eight." The Colonel muttered.

Doctor Brevard looked up at Jeffries. "But this is impossible!"

"What's impossible?" The Colonel asked. "Someone make sense of this for me!"

Doctor Brevard looked to the Colonel. "That's not an 8, Colonel, but the symbol of infinity!"

"What the fark are you talking about, Doctor? Nothing can be infinite down here! Nothing!"

Doctor Brevard leaned back against the wall behind him, brushing aside some glow moss that was growing there. "I wouldn't be so sure, if I were you, Colonel."

The Colonel looked to Jeffries, who shrugged, tugged out some chewing gum and slugged a stick into his mouth and began chewing.

"Oh hell!" The Colonel cursed. "Oh hell!"

==============================================================

Barnes drew Claire's service blanket, a light wrap of insulated aluminum and cloth that kept the body warm or cool depending on where the person was, to Claire's chin, then lay down on her side, her eyes watching the glow of a distant Glow Moss. She often thought about the irony of them. Here they were probably miles deep in the interior of the planet now, with no end in sight and of all the things that lived abundantly here, it was moss. The last thing she would have pegged to make it under these conditions.

She thought back to when she was just a Park Ranger, doing her job by giving tours to Tourists who hadn't a clue how to live in mountainous, or forest conditions. Helping them to start fires, put them out, guiding them to what they should do if they ran into a bear or mountain lion. Helping them to make sure they had enough supplies. Those seemed like the good old days now compared to this mission.

When she signed on, she'd thought she was going to be this great big explorer going into the unknown and discovering wondrous scientific inventions created by some ancient civilization hiding deep within the mountain. But as the expedition descended below the base of the mountain and the tunnels, caves and corridors continued to drop lower and lower, she didn't know what to think of her dreams anymore.

And the strange creatures like that grasshopper. That just vanished!

She smiled fondly at the memory. It was kind of neat having a huge doglike insect to cuddle. As she began to drift off she could swear she saw Jiminy's face peering into hers. "Nah!" She had yawned, and rolled over. It wasn't until she closed her eyes again that she felt a heavy shape droop against her side and nuzzle against her, making soothing bass-like sounds.

She drifted off happily into a netherworld of happy lives she had led in college, in high school and training as a Park Ranger. Nothing dark, dreary of frightening for once.

Claire slid down and rolled over, facing Barnes. She stretched, tugging her blanket more tightly around her shoulders, and then glanced over for a brief second. She closed her eyes to drift off to sleep again, thinking the image of Jiminy cuddled next to Barnes just a figment of her dreams and fatigue.

==============================================================

Doctor Brevard screamed over and over. "It's a trap!"

As men and women jumped to their feet, arms at the ready, the Colonel snapped awake and jumped over next to the Doctor. "What in the hell are you doing frightening everyone like that?"

The ground beneath the Forces began to tremble ever so slightly, and then it began to move more strongly.

Doctor Brevard shoved the datasheet in the Colonel's face. "The spikes are not the positions of stars, but earth movement. And the big one. The one we're next to. That's not the star. It's an earth movement.

The ground and walls began to shake. Pieces of the corridor ceiling began to break away.

As men stumbled to their feet, Doctor Brevard hollered at them. "Grab what you can and run to the rear. Back where started! Now!"

The Colonel joined the Doctor, moving swiftly among the Forces, rousing them and hurrying them.

A testament to the sharpness of those chosen to serve was their ability to retrieve nearly everything they had brought under the earth and even get the drones and robo carts moving towards the rear.

As the ground began to break up as well, the steady rush became a near panic.

Diggs and Red came running up from the front.

"Something's coming, Colonel!" They yelled.

The Colonel turned their way. "Oh God help us!"

"Diggs get the rest of our people to safety. Red, I need your help."

"You're going to need more than mine, Colonel."

The Colonel was about to blast him angrily, when he saw what Red meant. A huge worm, like the one they had fought before was sliming its way down the corridor towards them.

"I think this one's for real, Colonel."

"Oh Holy Mother Mary!" The Colonel prayed, then grabbed a grenade from his belt and rushed the giant worm.

Red shook his head. "I get all the shit jobs!"

He grabbed his rifle and shot after the Colonel.

As they ran the corridor floor broke up in a number of places, cutting off any retreat they might have had. Red and the Colonel leaped over a small chasm from which red-hot flames began to spew forth, and then dodged a huge piece of ceiling that dislodged.

When it landed it formed a wall behind them.

The Worm was still barreling towards them. It opened its mouth to have a snack. Them!

The Hollow Earth Special Forces discovered the symbol when they first entered the passageway into the Hollow Earth from Tibet.

It has been in passageway after passageway. 

Who made the strange symbol? 

What does it mean?

Coming soon: Journey to the Center of the Earth: Discovery!

It will shock the world.

It will test the hearts, minds and bodies of the Hollow Earth Special Forces.

A new novel, Journey to the Center of the Earth: Discovery!

The end of everything we know may be coming to pass.

Available by Summer's End in a beautiful mass market paperback edition, and on Amazon.Com, Smashwords and most all online retailers.

Discounted Advance orders will be announced soon.

Keep your eye open for it.

John.
                

S. P. Meek From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia   (Redirected from S.P. Meek) Sterner St. Paul Meek (April 8, 1894 in Chicago, Illinois – June 10, 1972) was an American military chemist, early science fiction author, and children's author. He published much of his work first as Capt. S.P. Meek, then, briefly, as Major S.P. Meek and, after 1933, as Col. S. P. Meek. He also published one story as Sterner St. Paul.

Contents

• 1 Biography
• 2 Writing career
• 3 Works
  • 3.1 Science fiction
    • 3.1.1 The Atlantis series
    • 3.1.2 Collections
  • 3.2 Children's novels
  • 3.3 Non-fiction
• 4 Notes
• 5 References
• 6 External links

Biography Meek received his Associate degree from University of Chicago in 1914 and his Bachelor's degree in Metallurgical Engineering from University of Alabama in 1915. He continued his education at University of Wisconsin–Madison (1916) and MIT (1921–1923). He married in 1927 and had one son.

When the United States entered World War I in 1917, Meek joined the military as a chemist and ordnance expert. He served as Chief, Small Arms Ammunition Research, in 1923-1926, and Chief Publications Officer, Ordnance Dept., in 1941-1945. He retired a colonel in 1947, at which point he became a full-time writer.

Writing career Meek sold his first fiction story, "Taming Poachers", to Field and Stream, where it appeared in September 1928. Between early 1929 and January 1933, he published over 20 science fiction stories and short novels in pulp science fiction magazines like Astounding Science Fiction and Amazing Stories, most of them in his popular Dr. Bird and Operative Carnes series. Meek left the field in early 1933, with only one further science fiction story published in 1939.

Like many early pulp science fiction writers, Meek used fiction to give detailed descriptions of current and projected scientific advances. He utilized many contemporary science fiction tropes, e.g. the notion that atoms were miniaturized solar systems in his stories "Submicroscopic" and "Awlo of Ulm".[1]

Meek quickly became popular with pulp magazine readers and was eagerly sought out by editors. In the first issue of Astounding Science Fiction in 1930, its editor Harry Bates listed Meek among "some of the finest writers of fantasy in the world", alongside Murray Leinster, Ray Cummings and others.[2] However, Meek's stories were crudely executed and the higher standards introduced with the Golden Age of Science Fiction soon made them of strictly historical interest. Science fiction writer and critic Samuel R. Delany later called Meek's writing "unbelievably bad"[3]

After leaving science fiction, Meek published over twenty children's books between 1932 and 1956, starting with Jerry, the Adventures of an Army Dog, usually about dogs or horses. Many of these books drew on Meek's experiences in the military.

Pat: The Story of a Seeing Eye Dog, written in 1947, became a much-loved children's story.[citation needed]

Works Science fiction

• Stolen Brains. Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930.

The Atlantis series

• The Drums of Tapajos. "Amazing Stories", 1930. New York, Avalon Books, 1961, 224pp.
• Troyana, "Amazing Stories", 1932. New York, Avalon Books, 1961, 224pp.

Collections

• Arctic Bride. [London, Utopian Publications Ltd.], [1944]
• The Monkeys Have No Tails in Zamboanga. New York, W. Morrow & Company, 1935, 288pp.

Children's novels

• Jerry, the Adventures of an Army Dog. New York, London, The Century co, 1932, 235pp.
• Frog: The Horse That Knew No Master, New York, Grosset & Dunlap, 1933, 302pp.
• Gypsy Lad: the Story of a Champion Setter. New York, W. Morrow, 1934, 314pp.
• Franz : A Dog of the Police. Wm. Penn Publishing, 1935, 319pp.
• Dignity: a Springer Spaniel. Wm. Penn Publishing, 1937, 304pp.
• Island Born [as by J. P. Meek], New York, Godwin, 1937, 271 pp.
• Rusty, A Cocker Spaniel. Philadelphia, The Penn publishing company, 1938, 296pp.
• Gustav, a Son of Franz: a Police Dog in Panama. The Penn Publishing Co., 1940, 296pp.
• Pat: the Story of a Seeing Eye Dog. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1947, 190pp.
• Boots, the Story of a Working Sheep Dog. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1948, 234pp.
• Midnight, a Cow Pony. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1949, 217pp.
• Ranger, a Dog of the Forest Service. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1949, 232pp.
• Hans, A Dog of the Border Patrol, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1950, 253pp.
• Surfman: The Adventures of a Coast Guard Dog, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1950, 267pp.
• Pagan, A Border Patrol Horse. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1951, 238pp.
• Red, a Trailing Bloodhound. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1951, 225pp.
• Boy, An Ozark Coon Hound. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1952, 238pp.
• Rip, a Game Protector. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1952, 266pp.
• Omar, a State Police Dog. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1953, 240pp.
• Bellfarm Star: the Story of a Pacer. New York, Dodd, Mead, 1955, 213pp.
• Pierre of the Big Top: the Story of a Circus Poodle. New York, Dodd, Mead, 1956, 208pp.

Non-fiction

• So You're Going to Get a Puppy: A Dog-Lover's Handbook. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1947, 149pp. 7 printings through 1963.

Notes

See Tony Hey and Patrick Walters. The New Quantum Universe, Cambridge University Press, 2003, ISBN 0-521-56457-3 p.286

Quoted in Gary Westfahl. The Mechanics of Wonder: The Creation of the Idea of Science Fiction, Liverpool University Press, Liverpool, 1998, ISBN 0-85323-573-2 p.168

1. See Samuel R. Delany. Silent Interviews: On Language, Race, Sex, Science Fiction, and Some Comics, Hanover, New Hampshire, Wesleyan University Press, 1994, ISBN 0-8195-6280-7 p.26

References

• R. Reginald. Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature: A Checklist; Volume 2: Contemporary Science Fiction Authors II, Gale Research Company, Detroit, MI, 1979, ISBN 0-8103-1051-1 p. 998
• Donald B. Day. Index to Science Fiction Magazines: 1926-1950, Perri Press, Portland, Oregon, 1952.

The whole thing to listen to in one sitting if you have the time. One of the many fabulous and fascinating novels (or in this case split novels) that the master writer put together for his eager audiences.

Enjoy!

John

Orphans of the Sky

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaOrphans of the Sky1964 hardback editionAuthorRobert A. HeinleinCover artistIrv DocktorCountryUnited StatesLanguageEnglishGenreScience fictionPublisherVictor Gollancz LtdPublication date1963Media typePrint (Paperback)ISBN9780671318451OCLC751436515Followed byTime Enough for LoveOrphans of the Sky is a science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein, consisting of two parts: "Universe" (Astounding Science Fiction, May 1941) and its sequel, "Common Sense" (Astounding Science Fiction, October 1941). The two novellas were first published together in book form in 1963. "Universe" was also published separately in 1951 as a 10¢ Dell paperback. These works contain one of the earliest fictional depictions of a generation ship.

Contents  [hide] 

• 1 Synopsis
• 2 Reception
• 3 Links to other Heinlein stories
• 4 Radio adaptation
• 5 See also
• 6 References
• 7 External links

Synopsis[edit]The gigantic, cylindrical generation ship Vanguard, originally destined for "Far Centaurus", is cruising without guidance through the interstellar medium as a result of a long-ago mutiny that killed most of the officers. Over time, the descendants of the surviving loyal crew have forgotten the purpose and nature of their ship and lapsed into a pre-technological culture marked by superstition. They come to believe the "Ship" is the entire universe, so that "To move the ship" is considered an oxymoron, and references to the Ship's "voyage" are interpreted as religiousmetaphor. They are ruled by an oligarchy of "officers" and "scientists". Most crew members are simple illiterate farmers, seldom or never venturing to the "upper decks" where the "muties" (an abbreviation of "mutants" or "mutineers") dwell. Among the crew, all identifiable mutants are killed at birth.

The 1951 Dell printing of "Universe"The story centers upon a young man of insatiable curiosity, Hugh Hoyland, who is selected as an apprentice by a scientist. The scientists ritualistically perform the tasks required to maintain the Ship (such as putting trash into its energy-converter to generate power) while remaining ignorant of their true functions.

On a hunt for muties, Hugh is captured by them. He barely avoids getting eaten, and instead becomes the slave of Joe-Jim Gregory, the two-headed leader of a powerful mutie gang. Joe and Jim have separate identities, but both are highly intelligent and between them, have come to a crude understanding of the Ship's true nature.

Having become convinced of the Ship's true purpose, Hugh persuades Joe-Jim to complete the Vanguard's mission of colonization, having noticed that there is a nearby star that Joe-Jim remember as growing larger over the years. Intent on this mission, he returns to the lower levels of the Ship to convince others to help him, but is arrested by his former boss Bill Ertz and sentenced to death. He is viewed as either insane or a previously unrecognized mutant - he was a borderline case at birth, with a head viewed as too large.

Hugh persuades his old friend Alan Mahoney to enlist Joe-Jim's gang in rescuing him. He shows the captured Bill and Alan the long-abandoned command center and a view of the stars. Convinced, Bill then enlists the captain's aide, Phineas Narby, to Hugh's crusade.

Inspired by one of Joe-Jim's favorite books, The Three Musketeers, they manufacture swords, superior to the daggers everyone else has, and overthrow the captain and install Narby in his place. They embark on a campaign to bring the entire Ship under their control.

But then things go wrong. Narby never believed Hugh and was only playing along as a means to gain power. Once in control, he treacherously sets out to eliminate the muties. Joe is killed in the fighting. Jim sacrifices himself to hold off their pursuers long enough for Hugh, Bill, Alan and their wives to get to a highly automated lifeboat. Hugh manages to land on the habitable moon of a gas giant. The colonists disembark to uneasily explore their alien surroundings.

Reception[edit]Avram Davidson described Orphans as "a modern classic," praising "the magnitude and magnificence of Orphans‍ '​ concepts" despite expressing disappointment in "the limitations of its conclusion".[1]

Links to other Heinlein stories[edit]A paragraph at the start of the novel shows an excerpt from "The Romance of Modern Astrography", explaining that the ship was part of the "Proxima Centauri Expedition, sponsored by the Jordan Foundation in 2119". (A timeline produced by Heinlein to link different stories in his Future History places the launch of the Vanguard in the early 22nd century.[2]) A discovered ship's log begins in June 2172, a few days before the mutiny breaks out. The mutiny was suppressed by October, with the ship divided into "mutie" and "civilized" areas and anyone who understood navigation dead. Within a generation or so, no one on board has any understanding of anything outside the ship, as the last crew member born on Earth dies of old age. An unknown number of centuries have passed between this and the main events of the novel.

In a much later novel Time Enough for Love, the Vanguard is briefly mentioned as the sister ship of the New Frontiers, which was commandeered by the Howard Families in the storyMethuselah's Children. It is clarified that the vessel had been bound for Alpha Centauri, but never landed colonists there; in fact the ship was far off course, possibly as a result of actions taken during the mutiny. The Vanguard has been discovered with its crew long dead, some unexplained failure in its mechanisms, and its records destroyed or illegible. Its path is traced back ballistically, and the descendants of Hugh's people are found, flourishing as highly intelligent savages, on a planet which scientists dubbed "Pitcairn Island". This was apparently the only star where settlement would have been possible on the Vanguard‍‍ '​‍s path.

This conversation takes place in 4291, and it is mentioned that the settlers have been there 800 years. So the events of Orphans of the Sky would have happened after the ship had been in space for about 14 centuries, c. 3500 AD.

Radio adaptation[edit]"Universe" was also performed as a radio play on the NBC Radio Network programs Dimension X (on November 26, 1951) and X Minus One (on May 15, 1955). This version has several drastic changes to the story, especially in its conclusion wherein Hugh is killed showing the crew of the Vanguard the true nature of the Ship.

See also[edit]

• "For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky", an episode of the original Star Trek with a similar premise.
• Non-Stop by Brian W. Aldiss (Starship in its US release)
• Captive Universe by Harry Harrison
• "Proxima Centauri" by Murray Leinster
• "The Book of the Long Sun" by Gene Wolfe
• Pandorum
• "Mission of the Darians", an episode of Space: 1999 with a similar premise
• "Metamorphosis Alpha", an RPG by James Ward
• The Starlost, a Canadian-produced science fiction television series devised by writer Harlan Ellison and broadcast in 1973
• "The Oceans are Wide", a story about a generation ship whose inhabitants have not forgotten its purpose, by Frank M. Robinson

References[edit]

1. Jump up^ "Books", The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October 1964, pp.37-38
2. Jump up^ Timeline for Heinlein's Future History

Food!
"A Rocketman Story"
By John Pirillo

Food!

The thought was like a hammer on its stomach and its mind.

Food!

It raised its snout and sniffed the air, drawing in the cold scents and the warm ones. The warm one was sweet like the food it loved to eat the most. Its tongue swept across its sharp fangs, which began to wet in anticipation of a fresh meal.

It leaped to the top off a rock about fifteen feet high and clung to it like a spider, its clawed hands holding it firmly in place. It sniffed again.

The scent jerked its eyes towards the horizon. It couldn't see anything clearly. But every once in awhile it seemed as if something glowed against the ground over the gulley that ran down from the mountain and to its side.

Food!

The thought drove it mad with frenzy. It was starving. It had eaten its full a month ago and lain in a kind of deep coma filled with strange memories and faces...small faces...ones it should have felt something for...something besides hunger. But it couldn't remember them that well anymore and the thought of food overwhelmed its memories and drove it in a great leap from the boulder it clung to.

It drove towards the wide, surging flood of water.

Food!

=======================================================

The fire crackled warmly in the bowl of rocks and dirt they had piled together in the deep gulley that lay at the foot of Rishikesh, deep in the heart of the Himalayas. The Ganges spun its surging song of joy happily as it crashed and splashed over the shoreline and boulders strew in its path to the sea. The stars were like sharp pricks of light ripped through a velvet cloth in the sky. The moon hung over the nearest mountains like a Guardian Angel keeping its babies safe. The high embankment that ran into their gulley kept the light smoke and flickering fire safe from the eyes of any passersby's.

And there could be some. But not the kind you would want to welcome with open arms. Unless you wanted your neck shredded and your heart torn out. That's what happened to the careless here. Hearts sold for extremely high prices in the Black Market of Delhi.

Harry felt a great sadness descend over him as he thought back to the old days when he and his best buddy, Jim, would hike these ranges, looking for challenges. They weren't mountaineers, or rock climbers, just very young kids happy to explore regions that were forbidden to them. Both their parents would have been horrified to know what they were doing, risking every day. But such is the folly of youth that never dwells on death and dying, and thinks it's immortal and above danger.

"Jet."

"Yeah, Harry." Jet answered drowsily from a blanket on the opposite side of the fire. "Do you ever miss the good old days?"

"Since when were they ever so good for me?" Jet asked, his voice steeped with fatigue, but also a latent anger.

Harry looked at his friend. "That bad?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

Harry waited. Jet always wanted to talk about it.

Jet rolled over, propped his head on his hand, and then looked through the fire at Harry. "My school teacher beat me for looking at a white girl. My father beat me for me getting caught looking at a white school girl, and my mother disowned me for looking at a white school girl. I was damned and kadoodled by everyone."

Harry grinned. "Was it worth it?"

"Hell no!" Jet cursed. "I nearly got away with it, but Mister Kinder, my teacher, caught me again. I darned near got hung when he brought me to the Principal. Both of us didn't know he was the head of the KKK back then."

Harry stiffened. "That bad?"

"Yeah. Harry, that bad." Jet rolled over onto his back, his thoughts reliving those years. "Black kids got a burden on them by just being born. You wouldn't know anything about that."

Harry nodded. "Maybe. But being Catholic has sure got my ass kicked a lot of times by those who hate us."

Jet rolled over to look at Harry. "That bad?"

Harry nodded. "But I'm sure that getting beat up every day after school for being Catholic, spit on by grown-ups when you passed them on the way home, and having cops throw you in jail for looking at them cross-eyed. I suppose that's not as bad as what you've gone through."

"Nope. Nowhere close."And that was the end of the conversation.

Harry lay down. The Rocket suit was a new model. It laid to his right. Jet had one too. They were testing them out. So Harry had suggested a long flight. To India. Jet had smacked the ceiling at first, telling him that they might get eaten alive by Abominable Snow Men. Harry had laughed. "There are no such things."

Jet shook his head. "Harry, maybe not in your timeline, but this one..."

Harry felt a cold shiver run up and down his spine. He was afraid to ask, but he did anyway. "How?"

"One of the first things Hitler did...after blowing up half the world's capitals with nuclear bombs was to experiment."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. Lots of experiments. That's how the Sturmgiganten got born. Genetic manipulation and a few other...more gruesome things."

Jet sighed, throwing an arm over is eyes as he remembered.

"One village my team was sent to clean out, had a whole pen filled with werewolves."

Harry sat back up. "You're kidding? There's no such things!"

"In your..."

"Timeline...yeah, I know. But werewolves?"

"Harry, you got a lot of catching up to do."

"Evidently."

Harry lay back down. "Jet."

"Yeah, man."

"Do you think we're actually making a difference?"

"You mean by blowing up all those arms depots and destroying Sturmgiganten?"

"That too."

Jet sighed. "I just don't know anymore. Ever since you brought me out of that hellhole of a life I had been stuck in, I've given that thought a mangling in my mind almost every day."

"And?"

"We're only two people, Harry."

Harry was silent.

They both fell silent and the warmth of the fire and flickering of the flames sent them into a deep sleep.

Harry fell into a world of has beens and might have beens. He saw a nurse, whose name he couldn't remember, but who he needed to find again so badly that his heart was breaking, and then she would vanish and he'd find himself struggling in the arms of this gigantic soldier, whose face resembled a gorilla's, but with pointed teeth and eyes sparkling with intelligence driven mad by pain and disfigurement.

He woke up with a start.

"Jet, wake up!"

Jet leaped to his feet, reaching for his service weapon, which he had left on the ground. He dove for it the same time as something huge leaped from above and landed where Harry had been lying.

Harry spun around and drop kicked the beast in its chest, tumbling it head over heels, nearly into the surging waters of the Ganges which would most likely have sucked it down to its death, but the creature was quicker, more nimble than that. It landed on its toes and sprung at Harry, claws reaching out for his throat.

BLAM!

Jet's weapon sent a single bullet into the chest of the beast. It fell to the ground and lay there. It didn't move.

Jet and Harry stepped near it, but not to near.

"It's one of those damn hybrids!" Jet cursed, raising its gun to fire again.

"No, Jet.Wait!"

Harry gently rolled over the creature. It had a woman's face, but her face was distorted, skin pulled back into the snout of a wolf. "Damn!"

"Double that." Jet snapped.

"She might have been a looker once."

"Not any more. I wouldn't date her if you paid me." Jet cursed.

Harry looked at her skin. He felt it. "She's starving."

"How can you tell?"

Her skin is loose. No fat. Probably lost most of her muscle."

"This probably saved our butts."

"Maybe."

"What do you mean, maybe?"

"Just..." Harry didn't like what he did next, but he was going on a hunch. Something flashed across his memory. A face peering into his. "Should we kill it?" The face asked.

"No. It's not a threat. It only appears to be."

"But it's our enemy."

"Haven't we killed enough in this war?" The voice had asked.

Harry had survived, brought back to life and succored b the rebels who had survived Hitler's devastating nuclear blow against the world. Everyone mistrusted him at first, but in time they came to know him better, and when they realized he was fighting for the same cause, they became friends.

Harry looked to Jet. "Help me tie her hands behind her back. Quickly."

"She's not dead?"

"Hell, Jet, you know you're the worst shot I've ever known."

"Saved your butt enough times."

But Jet helped him truss her up and sit her up against a rock. Harry went to the Ganges and soaked a hanky in the water, then came back and gently pressed it to her forehead, then her cheeks and her throat.

She made a low growling moan and her eyes flickered open. Then she tried to claw him, except her hands were tied behind her and around the rock she sat against. She struggled a long time, but both men said nothing and waited.

Finally, she settled. Harry held up a stick of jerky. "Hungry?"

The she creature's nose sniffed the air and she went wild again.

Harry waited. She settled down again. Harry came closer. "You behave and it's yours."

She looked into his eyes and they narrowed a moment, then she relaxed. He nodded. "Good." He pressed the jerky towards her mouth and she nearly took his hand off too. He let go and she ravaged the jerky, swallowing it in seconds.

She growled at him, and then sniffed the air, looking around.

"Damnit, Harry, you might be onto something."

Harry got out a bigger piece of jerky. "A bit at a time and I'll let you have even more."

The she creature considered him a long time, as if weighing whether to eat his hand or the jerky, then she nodded her head slightly.

"Damn!"  Jet cursed. "She has some brains left after all."

The she creature howled at Jet and he dropped back. "No offense, lady. But I'm not used to good looking dolls trying me out for a muffin meal."

The she creature looked back at Harry and he slowly eased the longer jerky towards her. She didn't try to snap at his hand this time. She nibbled on it, and he pushed it gently all the way into her mouth. When she was through, he repeated the process.

"Jet!"

"Yeah. I know." He sighed. "Ante up!"

Jet grabbed his own jerky and tossed it to Harry and continued to feed the she creature. Her eyes lost some of their ferocity and her snarls lessened, and finally her head drooped forward. She began to make light dog sounding snores.

Harry picked up his rocket suit. Jet did his.

Harry dumped all their food at the foot of the she creature. Jet did the same.

"It's going to be a long empty stomach home, Harry."

"Yeah. Ain't it always, pal?" Harry asked with a smile.

They went behind the rock and loosened the rope.

"She'll be outta that in ten." Jet said.

"And we're outta here in five."

Harry threw on his rocket suit, adjusted his helmet as Jet did the same and they ran for the Ganges. They leaped into the air. Their feet barely touched the waters before they were airborne and roaring into the air.

The she creature's eyes snapped open on the sound and she growled angrily, and then noticed that her arms and hands were loose. She snapped the rope free, and then jumped to her feet. She was about to run after the men, when she felt the food at her feet.

She looked down, confused, surprised. Then her nose got the better of her. She dropped to a squat and began shoving the food into her snout, as her eyes watched the two men arc upwards and then blast across a full moon.

When she was through eating, she threw her head back and howled at the moon, giving thanks to her luck...and maybe, just maybe a little thanks to the men creatures that hadn't really hurt her when they could have.

Puzzled as she thought about it, she shook her snout, and then loped off back into the hills.

Food! She thought. Maybe. Just maybe. Friends!