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    Kaman's World
    Kaman's World
    Kaman's World
    Ebook91 pages1 hour

    Kaman's World

    By Bartholomew Thockmorton

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    About this ebook

    When Kaman Wantanabe asks Betty and Sam to recover his brother's body from a distant, desert planet, little did our heros suspect the danger, peril and adventure waiting for them! Can Betty and Sam, along with Charlie, the gender-shifting ship's computer, succeed where an old man failed? Can Sam save Betty from the deadly world hidden beneath the dunes? Can Marty, the only carnivorous mammal from planet Xanadu, get all that sticky sap out of his fur?
    Join our crew on this wild adventure and find out!

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBartholomew Thockmorton
    Release dateDec 29, 2011
    ISBN9781465883544
    Kaman's World
    Author

    Bartholomew Thockmorton

    Bartholomew James Thockmorton was born shortly after World War II in the burly, rural environs outside of Antsiranana. His ancestral family owned one of the larger cassava plantations, which his father managed. A small army of poor, itinerate laborers worked the fields and walked the cows when necessary. Although his mother was a schoolteacher in a one-room schoolhouse for the kafirs working the plantation, she often closed school and helped with the family business. Before Bartholomew entered the first grade, his immediate family emigrated to the Americas seeking political asylum during a brief period of political unrest in their home province. Unwilling to enroll her son in a foreign school system, Misses Thockmorton home schooled young Bartholomew, teaching him to read using comic books and by continual recitations off the labels of various and sundry commercial products. This unorthodox methodology is credited to the boy's almost astounding ability to recall a staggering amount of obscure trivia and minutiae. Additionally, his mother's use of American television as an inexpensive and trusted babysitter led to the boy's later talent of usually being the only person in an occupied room that can recall the name of the foreign actor portraying the Cisco Kid (Duncan Renaldo). When the family returned home, Bartholomew enrolled in an academy for gifted children where he studied particle physics and animal husbandry. On his 18th birthday, he took a menial position aboard a tramp steamer, using it as free and convenient passage to the mother country. Upon arrival, he promptly used his undeserved citizenship to enlist in the Royal Navy, where his strapping physique and precise ability to speak intelligently while using large, unusual words led to his serendipitous assignment to special ops. Subsequently, Lieutenant Thockmorton participated in numerous clandestine campaigns abroad and on a multitude of contentious fronts. Completing his enlistment, he promptly returned home to assist with the family business. It was during this period, after a night of unrestrained drinking with a group of chums from his military days, that the still young Bartholomew accepted a wager to attempt a crossing of equatorial Africa with nothing more than the first 25-issues of Mark Evaniner's Groo the Wanderer. Which he did, with splendid aplomb. After a long and unsuccessful life of struggling to blend with the great, unwashed masses, Master Thockmorton now...

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      Book preview

      Kaman's World - Bartholomew Thockmorton

      Kaman’s World

      By Bartholomew Thockmorton

      Copyright 2011 Bartholomew Thockmorton

      Smashwords Edition

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment; but it may be shared with friends, family or acquaintances as long as it is maintained in its entirety. If you are reading this book and enjoy it, please check out my other works by visiting the link below. Thank you for respecting the hard work of Bartholomew Thockmorton. May your days be long and merry.

      Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/Thockmortonterritory

      This work is dedicated to Mama, who gave me my life-long love for the entire Superman family. I miss you.

      Table of Contents

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Thockmorton Territory

      Chapter One

      As Betty Elizabeth Tabatha Hinderken entered the Oasis Seaside Bar and Grill, she was challenged in deciding which struck her harder, the oppressive heat or the relentless glare. She stepped fully inside, allowing the sliding doors to close.

      Before her, the stark white sand, reflecting harsh, artificial sunlight, extended into the distance, changing to soft gradations of gray on her left where the waves rolled gently onto the beach. The water, covered with light, frothy foam where the waves churned, started out crystal-clear, revealing silvery minnows and small, darting fish patrolling the shore, the color soon changing to incremental shades of baby-blue with increasing depth, at last shifting to deeper and deeper hues, stretching to the artificial horizon. Betty wondered just how far the real water went and where the holo-cast began. The small children playing in the shallow surf with minimal adult supervision gave strong indication—no young ones would ever drown in this playground of the mind.

      Overhead, delicate clouds cast swift shadows sailing across the beach, mixing with the smaller silhouettes from the wheeling gulls filling the air with their cries. Sandpipers skittered back and forth in time with the waves, pausing to peck up occasional tidbits there exposed.

      Island palms, their fronds swaying, rustling in the pleasant breeze, started a dozen meters from the water, spotting the beach sparsely at first, but becoming thicker in their groupings, establishing the bounds of the shore from the inland proper. Nestled within the leaning trunks, the shaded, thatched-roofed bar, bamboo stools lining its counter, stood surrounded by tables of varying sizes, each with its own umbrella of fronds supported by a central pole, each also swaying to the gentle caress of the wind. Most of the tables were occupied with colony citizens or tourists of all ages.

      Betty reached into her shoulder bag, donning florescent-pink-framed sunglasses, tiny, dancing flamingo’s protruding along the outside edges. She already wore a broad-brimmed hat, bikini, beach shirt and sandals. For any unprepared patron that might enter from the mall’s corridor on a whim, a walk-in kiosk to the right of the doors offered swimsuits, sunglasses, hats, towels, beach-toys, chairs, vid-discs, mellow-vapor and just about anything else a tourist could want or imagine. But the prices were…well…astronomical; regulars from the colony knew to bring their own.

      She selected a table with abundant shade seeing as how they kept the heat cranked as high as possible to guarantee guests would order plenty of cool refreshments. As soon as she sat and placed her bag on the sand next to her chair, Marty leapt from within and scrambled into her lap. Nearby patrons watched curiously, trying to figure out what the small creature actually was. Marty reminded people of many things, but more than anything else, he most resembled a member of the polecat family—the honey badgers, ferrets, meerkats, coatis, minks, skunks, mongooses and martins—hence the name…Marty. Even this small animal fell prey to Betty’s game of assigning fanciful names to everything around her.

      Where most folks went astray was trying to identify Betty’s furry companion as some creature indigenous to Old Earth. It was a useless endeavor, for Marty (or even his most remote ancestors, for that matter) hailed not from mankind’s home planet…not even from the Terra system. The two-kilo ball of furry energy was in actuality the first true, bona fide, honest-to-gracious, believe-it-or-go-to-Hoboken alien ever brought back by a System Searcher. Which had quite a bit to do with the fact that Betty and her husband, Sam, were the first, and to date, only search team to discover an Earth-normal planet. Christened Xanadu (by Betty), the world lay slightly more than 2000-light-years distant, and had made them wealthy beyond all dreams of avarice.

      First, they were granted full title to their exploration vessel, the Bucket-of-Bolts, or B.O.B., for short. Including the lander, the Flipper-Doodle, hard-docked to the top of the main vessel when not in use. Plus four shuttles: two large vessels housed in the B.O.B.’s interior bays, and two smaller craft in the Doodle. The entire compliment built by the Cranston Corporation, the most powerful business entity in the Oort cloud, and assigned to qualified crews via a system-wide lottery. But along with the vessels came a cash bounty of ten billion credits—something the initial exploratory fleet of twenty-three ships had competed for fervently until Betty and Sam discovered Xanadu.

      A young server hurried over to Betty’s table to take her order, but pulled up short when he caught sight of Marty, standing and extending his nose, testing the air at the man’s approach. Betty placed a reassuring hand on the animal’s head and looked over the top of her glasses.

      I’ll have a Banded Bomber, please.

      "Very good, ma’am. But I’m afraid you can’t bring that…whatever that is…in here."

      "What? Marty? But why ever not?"

      When the young man pointed back towards the bar, Betty followed his gesture, looking everywhere for whatever he was indicating. After a few moments, she noticed the small sign posted beside the shelves of exotic liqueurs: "NO DOGS OR PETS ALLOWED". She mused at the insipid ambiguity of the wording…were not dogs pets? She could not imagine the reasoning implied…but she also pretty much did not care.

      That’s all right, she said, picking up the small creature and rubbing her nose to his. "Marty’s obviously not a dog…and he is also not my pet!"

      When the man stood awkwardly shifting his weight from foot to foot while casting nervous glances back towards the bar, Betty took off her sunglasses and sighed in exasperation.

      Look, I’m here on business…not vacation. I don’t have time or the patience for this nonsense. I have the permits and the clearance to take Marty anywhere I so please…so be a good boy and fetch my drink…pretty please?

      Same old Betts! Causing grief and trouble wherever she goes!

      The

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