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January 31st, 2001
ON THE GROUND
Eric MacDonald heard a woman scream in the darkest corner of the bar, but the scream was different. It was more like a kiai than a normal scream. So piercing was the scream that Eric could not help but jump from his table and run towards it. People were shouting, and chairs were being heaved about.
Glass was breaking. Quickly a crowd had gathered around the commotion and Eric had to use his size to muscle his way through.
There was a miner on the floor clenching his knee and moaning. Next to him was another miner scrambling to his feet. He squared off against a young red haired woman who was backed up against the wall. She was in uniform, and for a second Eric thought she was a police woman for she was tall and had broad shoulders and strong legs, like a swimmer.
The miner lunged forward, blocked her kick with a huge, hairy arm, and pinned the woman to the wall. Eric decided that he'd seen enough. He grabbed a glass beer mug from a nearby table, moved smartly forward, and smashed the mug on the miner's head.
The result was simply a lot of broken glass.
The miner turned his head to observe the source of this minor annoyance and growled. While Eric wondered what the miner would do next, the stranger brought his elbow sharply backwards into Eric's face. Eric dropped to his knees in a daze thinking that he'd just shake it off and carry on, but then he felt the room start to rotate. Rapidly. He did his best to protect his face as he crumpled to the floor.
The young woman acted quickly. As the miner turned his attention back to her, she brought her right elbow forward and directly into the miner's throat. He staggered back and began to gasp for air, stumbled over Eric and fell heavily onto his back striking his head on the hardwood floor. He lay there unconscious while a lumpy, rattling sound oozed from his throat
The woman stood calmly and surveyed the damage while she brushed bits of glass off her uniform and out of her hair. Then she kneeled over Eric and removed the limp legs of the miner from Eric's back. She hailed a bartender who helped her drag Eric to a nearby booth. The other miner, evidently, had escaped by limping out the back entrance, obviously not wanting to remain for the subsequent ceremonies (or funeral). The crowd, seeing that the action was over, began to disperse. In mere seconds everyone was drinking and laughing again. Presently, the flashing blue lights of a police car could be seen through the frosted, neon lit windows.
When Eric came to and could barely focus, he saw a woman in her late twenties with long, deep red hair and wearing a dark blue one-piece jump suit with gold bars on her collar. She was alternately holding a ice cube to his lip and dabbing it with a moist napkin. He saw her watch him carefully as he slowly sat up and gingerly touched his nose and lip.
"Welcome to the party. Are you okay?" she asked as she looked directly into his eyes and waited for him to focus.
"Yeah. Any time now, I'll be all here."
"Stick your nose in this." She handed him a glass of whiskey and made sure he had a good grip. "Thanks for the help. You distracted that gorilla just long enough."
"Just long enough, " Eric said wincing in pain, "to get my head nearly taken off. "He sipped the smoky liquid and coughed. "Lagavulin?"
"Of course," she smiled.
Eric rested his head in his hand. "I feel terrible."
Presently, a policeman approached and asked the woman a lot of questions. In the back, Eric could see the other officers taking statements and then place a table cloth over the dead miner's face. As he listened to the policeman question the woman across from him, he learned that she was Second Lieutenant Laurette Harris, assigned to the starship Lovell. Questions for him were routine, and self-defense was confirmed by all the witnesses who were still sober.
Finally, with a drink under his belt and the police gone, Eric felt much better. And as his head cleared, he became suddenly very aware of how good looking the young woman was. Clearly, she was many years older than he, and it started to make him nervous,. Suddenly, he could no longer think of anything sensible to say and started to stammer. He reached for words. "So what ... what brought you into a hole like this?" Eric asked, taking another slow sip.
There was a long silence while the lieutenant sat back in her seat and looked at Eric thoughtfully. She spoke quietly and deliberately "I came here looking for something, she said. "Something for my ship. Sometimes, in a place like this, one can find certain rare but useful items for sale. For a minute, I thought those apes back there were interested in bargaining. But they must have just landed and wanted something else."
"What are you are looking for?" Eric asked. But the lieutenant looked away choosing not to answer. She was silent and distant as she took another slow sip of her own drink. and gazed out the window. "I didn't mean to pry," Eric stammered.
"Listen," she said, "If you're okay, I need to leave now." Eric nodded as the lieutenant pushed some of her long hair behind an ear and slid out of the booth. She stood and faced Eric, pausing for a moment "The drinks are paid for, but I can't pay you back for what you did."
Eric started to say something but stopped himself. Words eluded him. All he could do was shrug and gaze straight into her pale green eyes until she became uncomfortable and turned to go. As she pressed her way through the crowd, she looked back just once. She gazed at him in a curious kind of way and squinted -- as if she were examining an artifact. Eric started to panic. What to do? All of a sudden this stunning woman was walking away. As she turned to leave, he watched the tall lieutenant walk out of the bar and out of his life.
When his alarm went off the next morning, Eric fumbled with it for a long time and lay confused. The small, dark room looked unfamiliar, and it took him a few seconds to remember that this was only his third night in the rented room. He forced himself to roll out of the small bed and stumbled to the single window. He sat on the ledge and drew open the blinds. The lights of Lompoc and Port Vandenberg were clearly visible in the distance against the brightening sky. Only a few bright stars and Venus were still visible in the predawn light.
Eric remembered a similar view three days before in the Academy simulator showing the night landing approach to Vandenberg. But now he was gone from the Academy, and he wondered what was in store for him.
He watched the stars fade while he thought about the beautiful woman he met the night before. So many things were fading from his life lately. It was a struggle to get dressed and more of a struggle to accept that he now needed to look for a job. With a shrug, Eric MacDonald left his room, walked down the creaky wooden steps, and emerged into the cool morning air. His head still hurt, and the damp morning air made him shiver.
The Vandenberg Port Authority Personnel Office was an imposing name located in an imposing building. The Port's main offices were located in a twenty-one story building built in the shape of a slim pyramid with reflecting glass all around. The kind of people who routinely walked in and out of the building made it even more imposing.
Eric rode the elevator up with a shuttle pilot, a very distracting flight attendant, a Navy Commander and two distinguished looking men in expensive civilian suits. His own inexpensive suit made him feel nervous and conspicuous, and he was relieved to get out of the elevator on the fourth floor. He followed the signs to the employment office, cleared his throat, straightened his five dollar tie, and walked in.
Two hours later Eric heard his number called. He was led behind the reception counter by a dizzy looking, middle-aged woman with green hair who chewed gum to distraction. She showed him into a small office with nothing but a desk, a computer display and two chairs. There was nothing else in the room or on the desk. Eric seated himself at the chair obviously meant for him and waited.
Presently another woman in her 40's, more stately and composed, came in and sat herself at the display. She was wearing a natty brown suit and had grey-streaked brown hair pulled back into a bun.
"Do you have a resume?" she asked tersely.
"No," Eric said hesitating. "I just have this folder."
The woman interrupted. "For what job are you applying?"
"Whatever is available, I guess." The woman gave Eric a distasteful look, reached for the folder, laid it squarely in front of her, and opened it. She perused Eric's high school transcript, then flipped to the next item which was a letter of recommendation from his high school physics teacher to the Space Merchant Academy.
"I see that this letter to the Academy is dated last March. This is November. What are you doing here?"
"The Academy ... um ... asked me to leave," Eric said flatly.
The woman considered this, then turned to the display and began typing. The screen was adjusted so that Eric could not see it, but he guessed that it was his Academy records.
"You realize, young man, you're overqualified for the jobs we have. If you were bored in the Merchant Academy, these jobs will be worse."
"I'm just asking for fair wages for a job well done. If I get bored, I'll keep it to myself."
The woman closed the folder and called up another window on her screen. "Well," she said, "I can offer you a job part-time in the shuttle maintenance motor pool. In a few days. As a driver. Perhaps some routine maintenance on vehicle electronics. Twenty-five an hour, no benefits except W.C. Some on-call driving duties. That means twenty-four hours a day."
"I'll take it," Eric interrupted.
"As I said. In a day or two. We'll call you."
Eric started driving on Wednesday. He was essentially a chauffeur and ended up going all over town bringing people to and from the Port. The work was easy enough, and he rather enjoyed being outdoors driving and getting to know the city. Unfortunately his vehicle had a polycarbonate screen that soundproofed the riders from his driving cab. Were it not for that Eric would have enjoyed his job even more for he imagined that his passengers, based on their appearances and uniforms, must have been having the most entertaining conversations.
It was Thursday morning when a lull came and he spent some time learning his way around the Shuttle Departure Building. While wandering down the main corridor from the motor pool, he noticed an office with a glass window into the hallway and an open door. The sign said Dispatch Office. No one was there so he wandered in and looked at the LCD displays hung on the walls. One of the displays has a list of departures and passengers.
Shuttle 009 Dep Fri 2200 UT. Arr S.S. Lovell 2245 UT.
Beneath was a roster of names. The tenth name caught Eric's attention. It said:
2nd Lt. Laurette Harris, 562-22-1003
When a door opened down the hall, Eric promptly but casually walked out and continued his explorations. Feeling hungry, he wandered into the departure lounge to have an early lunch. He found a seat by the tall windows and watched a third generation shuttle, piggybacked on its carrier, accelerate down the runway and climb rapidly into the clouds.
As the ship disappeared into the distance, Eric munched on his sandwich. A few days before, he'd been training to fly one of those ships. Now, he was basically a cab driver. Without tips. To add to his depression, the sandwich was dry and his Coke was watered down. Eric tried to feel better by thinking back to his high school days, but it didn't help. Nothing helped.
His future had disappeared as fast as that shuttle, climbing rapidly into the sky.
Thursday evening, Eric went back to the bar where he'd been Sunday night. He was half hoping that he'd find that beautiful lieutenant again. It did not occur to him that he ought not to visit that particular bar for a few weeks. As he sat by himself drinking a beer, he thought he recognized one of the miners from his previous encounter.
Then it did occur to him that he'd made a mistake.
Eric tried to hide his face but it was too late. He slid out of his booth in a hurry and headed for the exit, but the miner closed fast and cut him off at the door. Even though Eric stood ten centimeters taller than the space miner and was fifteen years younger, he was scared out of his mind. The miner grinned in a menacing way and extended a muscular arm against the exit to block Eric's way.
"Well, well, well. Look what we got here. If it ain't the little runt who got me partner killed. Tell you what, lad, tell you what. Me friends and I are gonna stomp you into a wee little pile of shit. How's that sound, eh?" The miner leaned a little closer and coughed in Eric's face.
Eric was frozen with fear. "Um. Sir. Actually. I just hit your friend with a mug. You see ... that woman was the one who killed him. Really."
The miner slapped him on the back and laughed. "Ha! Ladie. You be dumber than you look. Me partner had her so much as pinned before you interfered." Suddenly, the miner grabbed Eric's arm with a viselike grip, and out of nowhere, four more miners, scruffy, barrel chested and reeking of beer, surrounded him.
Eric MacDonald had only a single, searing thought burning in his mind. That this was a pretty stupid way for a young man to die.
Copyright 2001 by John
Martellaro, All rights reserved. Quantum Threads banner
artwork by Tracy Haynes.
About the Author
John Martellaro lives in Colorado at 2,800 meters above sea level with a Ph.D. wife and two cats, Nikki and Data. He holds a B.S. in Astrophysics and an M.S. in Physics. His hobbies, include amateur astronomy, downhill skiing, bicycling, and listening to piano solos. His personal Macs are a B&W G3/400 with a flat screen Studio Display and a blueberry iBook.
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