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    Rocket Fuel
    Rocket Fuel
    Rocket Fuel
    Ebook134 pages1 hour

    Rocket Fuel

    By Andrew McEwan

    ()

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    About this ebook

    A ship. A crew. A version of reality.

    Retrograde makes interstellar travel possible, bending space, twisting time, fuelling conflict. But what if a substitute might be found? Equally dangerous, yet new and improved, and most of all synthesized. It would need to be tested. But how and on whom?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAndrew McEwan
    Release dateFeb 28, 2012
    ISBN9781466157583
    Rocket Fuel
    Author

    Andrew McEwan

    Van driver from Newcastle. My work divides opinion. Look me up on Goodreads and Twitter. I welcome all reviews.

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      Book preview

      Rocket Fuel - Andrew McEwan

      Rocket Fuel

      by Andrew McEwan

      *

      Copyright 2012 Andrew McEwan

      Smashwords Edition

      *

      Cover design by Andrew McEwan

      *

      Smashwords Edition License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      ***

      I come from a land in the sun-bright deep,

      Where golden gardens grow,

      Where the wind from the north, becalmed in sleep,

      Their conch shells never blow.

      Moore

      1st Part: MOTHERTUG

      Their faces were not all alike,

      nor yet unalike, but such as those

      of sisters ought to be.

      Ovid

      One - The Happy Monkey

      Okay, wind up the elastic band, we are GO...

      Morgan pressed the button and the light winked off. He spun in his chair before the glitzy console, whistling, tuneless, the tight air squeezing his sound, killing it.

      Frozen Hound peered over his shoulder and yawned. Morgan stroked the dog's wet nose.

      The minutes sidled past.

      Fourteen. Fifteen, and the light came back on. Morgan, known as Lumping Jack, frowned.

      ‘Something not right,’ he said.

      The dog paced in circles, tail between legs.

      The console died, echoing the engines, the ship's drive not only cut but paralysed.

      The Happy Monkey, Morgan's guppy, wound down its vacuous spiral to rest...

      ‘Permission to come aboard.’

      ‘Permission denied.’

      ‘I have a warrant for the arrest of Dr Henry Grey.’

      ‘On what charge?’

      Pause. Then, ‘Murder.’

      Lumping Jack and Frozen Hound shared a bowl of cheese-flavour crackers...

      The brand was one with which she was familiar.

      ‘They're really pushing this stuff,’ she commented to nobody in particular. ‘Cheese-flavour Yum-Yums, bacon-flavour Yum-Yums, banana-flavour Yum-Yums - really, Morgan and his dog have a terrible diet.’

      ‘Really...’ said Sally.

      ‘Yeah,’ Kate replied, nudging her sister. ‘I thought you were asleep. Did I wake you? I'm sorry; I was reading.’

      ‘I can see.’

      ‘I don't know why I bother. It's all Byron's fault, he got me hooked.’

      ‘Kate.’

      ‘What?’

      Sally turned, over. ‘Shut up.’

      They faced each other across the dark expanse of a fibrous carpet, its tangled pile like charred grass. Morgan smiled his jolly smile and folded his arms, rested his weight on one hip, said, ‘Please, no autographs.’

      Kate Droover fell asleep. When she woke, groggy, the comic's lurid colours over her face, Sally was gone, vanished. The dim cabin closed about the emptiness, disguising it, but Kate knew in her heart that Sal was in trouble.

      She swung her legs from under the covers and dropped lightly to the metal deck, its warmth - faintly pulsating - comforting beneath her as yet drowsy toes.

      ‘Sally?’ She keyed the door. Nothing happened. ‘What the...’

      Everything was quiet; too quiet.

      Pause. Then, ‘Murder.’

      Lumping Jack cursed. Frozen Hound switched herself off. One of the dog's ears stood erect and Morgan blew in it, folding the extraordinary animal in on itself, hiding it in a space that was no space, a universe inside out...

      There was an explosion. Screaming in her brain was a host of squabbling bats, feral creatures with one eye. The cabin door slid open, the air-pressure keeping it shut expended in a single languid kiss.

      Kate shook her head in an effort to clear it and ran into the black corridor, its walls undetectable, its floor slick with condensation.

      Someone caught her arm and yanked her through a jagged rent, the cooling teeth of which tore the skin of her upper arm and shoulder.

      ‘Slow down!’ came the order.

      ‘What's going on?’

      ‘Quiet...listen.’

      Kate freed her arm and stood. After a moment she thought to hear dripping - water or blood. ‘What is it? Sal? Monica?’ She fumbled in the uncompromising dark but was alone.

      The dripping stopped. As if a tap had been more firmly closed, she told herself, and shivered.

      Two - The Friendly Mould

      War raged about the star Horus, its six worlds and thirteen moons. The forces of Topica and Upfront fought over the planet Bid-2., its mineral resources for past centuries the focus of countless disputes, with each side accusing the other of abusing agreed quotas and violating land rights.

      The contest was bitter, more so as the opposing planets drew ever closer in their mutual orbits through the firmament. A peace delegation from Earth had been annihilated. Daily the worlds grew in one another's skies, bleeding across green and yellow horizons. And daily the cost in lives and hardware was beamed into Byron's living-room.

      He waited for the knock on the door that never came...

      ‘I can still fly,’ he protested bitterly. ‘They had no right to discharge me.’

      ‘They had no choice you mean,’ answered Sally.

      Byron cracked his knuckles and switched the screen off. ‘Whose side are you on?’

      ‘The Topican's,’ Sally told him. ‘I'm a spy...’

      ‘No,’ said Byron; ‘you're too ugly. Spies are beautiful and dangerous.’

      ‘You don't think I'm dangerous?’ She rose from the couch and walked into the kitchen, acting the ruffled tigress.

      He rolled a cigarette. ‘No,’ he replied. ‘But your sister, she has all the qualifications.’

      Sal returned with a glass of milk and a doughnut. ‘You wish she was here instead of me.’

      He couldn't refute the statement. Brooding, he sighed. The cigarette smoke soothed him, quietened his nerves; but the restlessness was still there, the urge to be flying.

      ‘Don't look so worried,’ Sally said. ‘Sis and the captain want to be underway as much as anyone.’

      ‘To Earth and Sol system,’ whispered Byron, who had never been farther down the arm than Fortuna. ‘Is it really as paradoxical as they say?’

      ‘Earth? Nah, not like it was years ago, more...What's the word? Cultivated.’

      ‘Cultivated?’ It was a new one on Byron. He'd met Sally Droover the previous day on a hilltop on the outskirts of town; she was taking in the sunset, pale and smooth in the waning light. They got to talking about places, his homeworld of Upfront so close to destruction, hers of Luna, Earth's grey satellite, and he'd felt it then, what she called mothertug, a strange, almost overpowering desire to set foot on the world of origin, the blue-green planet from which the threads of life extended, its gravity of the heart and mind an unquenchable attraction, a thirst exacerbated by the fact all non-military traffic would soon stop around the vicinity of Horus, the golden sun that was for many years his guiding star.

      ‘Yes,’ said Sal, munching. ‘Not nearly so raw as Upfront or Grandee or Deathspoint - but kind of boring; the parts I've seen anyway...’

      Which amounted to nothing.

      And they were stuck without a trained engineer, albeit one with a record.

      Byron Friendly would never fly again in this sector, that was definite. So what did he have to lose? Zero, and they were sure to take him as every available engineer of even middling ability had been drafted.

      But not Byron. Byron had survived the unsurvivable, lived to tell the tale, too often; those who flew with him were luckless and, rumour had it, regarded as expendable.

      Sal was right, they had no choice but to discharge him. Still, he should never have floored that controller.

      *

      ‘What do you think of him?’

      ‘I don't know, he puzzles me.’

      ‘In what way?’ Captain Jones leant on the bar, face alert to every movement in the room, its tables and chairs, pillars and shadows fixed in their pattern, each subtle change noted, each citizen and soldier marked.

      ‘It's difficult to say,’ admitted Kate. ‘I like him; he's good, we know that much. But...’

      ‘You can't forget Ernie,’ Amy finished.

      Kate nodded.

      ‘Me neither. But Ernie's dead, gone, and we need an engineer, unless you're planning to spend the rest of your life on this precarious edge, eh? Halfway between somewhere and nowhere!’

      Kate sipped her drink. ‘You've made your decision,’ she said.

      ‘Right,’ confirmed the captain, adding, ‘I may be the majority shareholder in our little outfit - and a drunken whore to boot - but I still like to discuss these changes in...’ She paused, tensed.

      ‘Amy?’

      ‘Sorry, Droover, touch of nerves.’

      ‘You drink too much.’

      ‘Right again...’ A man with brown skin and yellow hair watched them from the far side of the scantly peopled, grotesquely furnished restaurant. ‘No manners.’

      ‘Who?’

      ‘Guy in the corner there.’

      ‘Security?’

      ‘Yeah, they have those eyes.’ She waved obliquely.

      Kate laughed, smothering it. ‘We leave in six hours,’ she reminded; ‘don't go getting us arrested.’

      ‘No chance,’ Amy rejoined. ‘What for, flirting?’

      ‘You know what I mean.’

      Captain Jones shrugged. ‘Okay, okay...I'll curb my less demure instincts; you just buy

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