Starlight Tonight: A Short Story Collection

Starlight Tonight

A Short Story Collection

Dave Bakers

Contents

FAREWELL TO MY GRANDFATHER OUR FORGOTTEN HERO

THE DEVIL IS MY LEOPARD

NICK’S JOURNEY

FETCH

MAIL-ORDER MARTIAN

SOLDIER TO THE STARS

IDENTITY IS THEFT

THE FIGHT

ZOMBIES ARE OVERRATED AND BORING

INVITE THEM IN

Author’s Note

FAREWELL TO MY GRANDFATHER OUR FORGOTTEN HERO

1

WHEN I WAKE UP I can hear the cooling systems dripping again.

Drip, drip, drip.

I pull my blanket, a frayed and torn, sad-looking ragged piece of brown material, that I suppose was once fleece, up to my chin and turn on my side, hoping that one of the crew will get that. Not that I hold out much hope given that I heard a bunch of excited drunken roars earlier. I guess they were all at cards again. And the booze.

Most likely now they’ll be comatose, all of them slouched over in the gaming room, snoring away, oblivious of anything that’s happening on the ship, on World One: our vessel which carries the last of our species at top speed away from the exhausted Earth.

My dad’s the captain here. And I suppose that makes me the captain’s daughter, though you wouldn’t believe it considering the respect I get round here. My most common nickname’s ‘Short Stuff’ but I prefer ‘Malice’ which the Lead Engineer, Rod, calls me from time to time.

My real name’s Alice, though no one really calls me that.

I listen to the cooling systems continue to drip away. And I listen to the tick and purr of the ships engines in the near distance—my room’s way at the back of the ship, near the cargo bay. My dad always jokes that it’s to keep me out of trouble, but I don’t mind being round here so much. Sure it might be the loneliest part of the ship but it’s also just about the only place I can count on being alone.

I wait there, wrapped in my sorry blanket, feeling the machine warmth pumping through the walls, and layering onto my skin. I can smell the oil in the air—that pure stench of grease—and I can still taste the bean soup we had for dinner on my breath.

Drip, drip, drip.

Cooling system’s still leaking away. And it looks like no one’s gonna do anything about it.

I lie there, under the blanket, for several seconds more, trying to put off getting off my bunk till the last possible moment. And then, when I can take that dripping sound no more, I breathe a heavy sigh then shuck off the blanket, balling it up and then leaving it on my bunk.

All right, already. Now I’m up.

2

JUST THE STEADY GLOW of the downtime emergency lights out in the corridor, and, like always when I wake up in the middle of the night—on Blue Shift—I have to use my hands to find my way along the walls. In a way, I like to touch the walls of the ship, to feel the purring of the engines resounding against my fingertips. And that stench of grease is way stronger out here in the corridors, even more so as I get closer and closer to the engines.

I get to the door which houses the manual control for the cooling systems. Ages ago, when we left Earth behind, the bio-scanner to the side of it actually functioned. It wouldn’t let me in. Now, though, as with almost everything else on the World One, it’s fallen into disrepair, and no one’s really seen the need to fix it. All I’ve gotta do is stick my fingertips in the crack of the door and give it a good tug and . . . just like that it cranks its way open.

There’s all sorts of controls here. A ton of blinking lights, all different colours. These are all the manual overrides, a lot of buttons that could do a great amount of damage if that was what I wanted to do. All these systems—the cooling system—can be controlled back on the bridge, of course, but I know that it’d only be a waste of time for me to trek all the way up there just to tell Jimmy, the navigator on Blue Shift, just what’s going on.

I know what I’m doing.

The casing for the cooling-system manual override has been prised off around its edges, the metal long ago bent into a curved shape. I just peel it back, listening to the creak of its hinge, and then take a look at the readings hidden away inside.

Just like I thought, the cooling systems are running about two or three degrees too hot, just enough for condensation to form, for it to start leaking out of those cracks all along the pipes—especially the one that runs right along my quarters.

I punch the red reset button and that’s all it takes. I hear the gentle purr of the cooling system and watch the readings shift down a couple of degrees, back down into the normal range.

I swing the bent casing back shut and then wipe my hands, one against the other, feeling the warm friction of it as my palms collide, then I head off back in the direction of my quarters.

When I get back there, I don’t feel sleepy at all. In fact, now I feel totally awake, as if going off to fix the cooling system has punched adrenaline into my veins. I glance at my bunk, looking just a bit sad there with my blanket all scrunched up at the foot of it, and then I decide, since nearly everyone else’s sleeping, to go off and see Grampa.

3

FUNNY THING is that, as I make my way along the corridors, I do my best to keep my footsteps quiet. Maybe it’s just a game I’ve got into the habit of playing. I’m the only kid on the World One so I’ve got to use my imagination any chance I get. We have entertainment systems, sure, but our ship’s all about saving energy, pooling whatever it is we’ve got. And entertainment, well, right at this moment and time, that just comes down pretty low on the list of priorities. Maybe by the time we move into range of the next star system we can start thinking about entertainment . . . but that’s not likely to happen till I’m fifty or sixty years old.

I always go and look in on Grampa, I guess recently I’m the one that visits him most of all. Sometimes I see Mum in there too, and those times when I catch a glance of her, crouched down by his bedside, his leathery hand in hers, his spindly fingers entwined with hers, I silently slip back to my quarters and wait out the time.

I don’t like to interrupt or anything.

The door to Grampa’s quarters is permanently stuck three-quarters open. Sure, we’ve tried all sorts of things to get that thing shut all the way, but no matter what Theresa—the ship’s engineer—comes up with, whatever she tweaks, it never changes. I like to think sometimes that there’s ghosts in the circuit boards, that something’s stopping us from fixing it. But once, when I told Mum, she shook her head and told me that was silly. Still, like I said, I’ve gotta use my imagination, else I’ll just go completely mad.

I slink in through the door, turning on my side so I don’t touch the part of the door that’s always stuck open, and I slip into Grandpa’s quarters.

He’s lying on his side, back to me, facing the wall. His blankets tucked up to his ears, and I just know that Mum’s been in here pretty recently. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from coming and looking in on Grampa, it’s that he has a habit of scrunching up that blanket and chucking it off at his feet. His blanket’s that sludgy-brown colour just like mine. But it’s still got a little of its softness, unlike mine.

I sneak a little further inside and feel that musky, leathery scent over everything. I look to his bedside table and see that there’s a cup of condensed soup that’s been emptied. That he’s eaten or, maybe more likely, Mum’s fed it to him with a spoon.

I settle down at the side of his bed, the way I like, with my back pressed up against his bedside table, and my knees drawn up to my chest. Then I just watch him. I watch his shoulders gently bob and fall as he breathes in his sleep. Sometimes I wonder just what he dreams about. He’s a deep sleeper, just like me. And, if he’s anything like me, then I guess that he never remembers whatever he’s been dreaming after he’s got through with dreaming. Maybe he dreams about the past. About Earth. Sometimes I dream about Earth. But just stuff I’ve seen on the entertainment systems, before we had to cut the power off those.

What struck me most about Earth was the colours. Those bright-greens, the purply-blues, the scolding-orange of the sun as it set on the horizon. And I got a sniff of those fresh breezes, of the leaves and the branches, of the earth itself.

The animals too. Wow, that’s the thing that sticks with me, just whenever anyone so much as says the word ‘Earth.’ My favourite animals are the African ones. I think of those zebras, and those tigers, and the rhinos. Just completely bizarre things if you stop to think about it.

Yeah, I guess sometimes I dream about those things, only thing is that I know they’re not real. Only thing that’s real for me, that I can really make memories from, is exactly what happens here, on the World One.

And I know that Earth’s in the Invaders’ powers now. Maybe there’s no more animals anymore. Maybe there’s no more nature or anything like that. Maybe what I watched on the entertainment systems is just a memory there as much as it is in my own mind—in my own dreams.

No way of us knowing that here on World One.

That’s for sure.

4

GRAMPA SNIFFS in his sleep and then he breathes one mighty deep breath, blows it out and then stirs. He coughs a couple of times. He rolls his shoulders and I listen to that clicking sound as he breathes in.

I rise up on my haunches, try to get a glance over his sleeping, slumped body, but he’s still facing the wall. I stand up and look over him and see that his eyes’re still shut tight. Next thing that strikes me is the colour of his skin. That he’s gone all red-faced.

He coughs again.

My heart bobs a little, thumps my throat, and I reach out for him. Grampa? Grampa?

He keeps on coughing.

My fingertips rest on the blanket, feel its rough fabric against my skin, and I can also feel the warmth of his body coming through it. I look to him again. His eyes’re still closed, and he’s still coughing like crazy. I glance back over my shoulder and think about going for help. The communicators round here, the little speakers in every room, set at strategic places in the walls of the corridors, are just as broken as everything else on the World One.

I tighten my grip on his side, and get a strong whiff of his leathery smell. I shake him lightly, trying to get him to open his eyes, to get him to look at me. But he just keeps on coughing. His hand covering his mouth as if he’s still caught up in his dreams. Almost like he’s drowning in them.

I freeze, just totally freeze up there, still saying, Grampa, Grampa, Grampa, over and over again, but he doesn’t answer me. And I know the only thing I can do is go get Mum or Dad, get them to come and see to him, to see if he needs some medicine.

I have to stare at my fingers, still rigid as they grip Grampa, and then, with a big effort, I let them go from him and back away. I rush right through the ship, knocking my elbows as I take the corners too acutely, and when I get to my parents’ quarters I pound on the door, hearing that metallic thunk echoing about the inside each time I bring my fist down.

Only when I stop, listen to hear my parents stirring on the other side of the door, do I realise that I can taste salt in my mouth. I bring my hands up to my cheeks, feel the dampness there.

Tears.

Quickly, I wipe them all away, telling myself that I have to look brave, have to be brave for Mum and Dad. I can’t be a scared little girl. Not right now.

I hear the thud of footsteps from inside my parents’ quarters, and then, with a couple of sharp tugs and the grinding of the mechanism, the door slides open and Mum stands there in the doorway.

I explain, and she rushes back inside, rouses my father, then comes back with a kit clasped in her hand. It’s the medicine that Grampa needs. As we fly our way along the corridors, headed down to his room, I think about how I sometimes get angry that she doesn’t teach me how to use that medicine, doesn’t show me how to treat Grampa, like she doesn’t believe that I can be helpful. If she’d shown me how to use the medicine, left the pack in Grampa’s room then I wouldn’t have had to get her up at all.

We arrive back at Grampa’s quarters and I hold back, standing in the doorway.

Grampa’s flipped himself onto his back now, and his face has turned from red to purple. He’s just coughing himself silly there, and I can see that a few yellow-white flecks of spittle line his cheeks. I can see just the whites of his eyes blinking through at the bottoms of his eyelids.

Mum kneels down at Grampa’s side, flips open the medical pack and goes through all those glass containers. They tinkle against one another, and I wait, feeling totally useless standing here and watching. I might as well just go right back to bed for all the good I could do.

I hear footsteps sounding in the corridor, back over my shoulder, and I turn to see my father. He’s still wearing his pyjamas but he’s thrown his khaki uniform jacket round his shoulders for warmth. That’s always funny, that Dad’s the only member of the crew that still wears something of the uniform from before.

Dad gives me a faint smile. As he passes by, he reaches out and places his palm against my cheek. It’s cold and clammy, and I’m afraid that he can feel the water from my tears, but if he does he doesn’t say anything. He just slips into Grampa’s quarters and goes to crouch at Mum’s side. And I just wait here, in the doorway, seeing what’s going to happen.

And that’s just what gets me thinking of the stories Grampa told.

Of just how we escaped from Earth.

Of how we nearly didn’t get away.

5

IREMEMBER that it was somewhere between Yellow and Red Shift when I was sitting in Grampa’s quarters. We were playing with this battered old chess set of his. All the pieces were made of wood, but they were all notched, some of them even had burn marks on them. When I asked him about them, he’d tell me that he’d used that very set back when he’d been in the armed services, when he’d sat around with his ‘boys’ and they’d smoke along. Whisky too, sometimes. But mostly just smoking, or that was what he said to me. When I lifted those pieces up to my nose and gave them a couple of sniffs I could always smell that airy tobacco smell there, what I recognised as tobacco from the entertainment systems.

Like always, Grampa was letting me win, making all these stupid mistakes and then slapping his forehead, rolling his eyes too, and opening his mouth doing his best impression of a dummy. Sometimes I wonder just what might’ve happened if we’d played fair then, if he’d actually tried to play me properly.