Tragic Tale of a Man in a Duster Read online

  The Tragic Tale of a Man in a Duster

  Dean Wesley Smith

  The Tragic Tale of a Man in a Duster

  Copyright © 2013 by Dean Wesley Smith

  Published by WMG Publishing

  Cover Design copyright © 2013 WMG Publishing

  Cover art copyright © Luca Oleastri/Dreamstime

  Smashwords Edition

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  One

  Reeves knew he shouldn’t be frying fish over an open campfire in the ship’s botanical garden, but the smell alone was going to make up for all the problems he might face if anyone ever found him. The fire crackled in a rock ring in front of him, the flames casting strange shadows on the trees and brush ringing his little meadow. He didn’t care about the extra oxygen consumption and the fire repellant system being shut off. All he cared about was the two fish in the skillet, and how wonderful they were going to taste.

  Reeves still had on his deep-sleep jumpsuit. It didn’t feel right wearing it out here, while cooking trout, but it hadn’t occurred to him to change clothes since he woke up. That would be next, right after dinner. Besides, there wasn’t much reason to stay in uniform when there was no one to dress up for.

  He kneeled and picked up the skillet, studying the fish for any sign of them being overcooked, then quickly replaced the skillet on the fire before the hot handle burned his hand. His dad back on Earth had showed him how to do this when he was a kid, and he had watched it done a dozen times since. His dad always used to say that fish were never meant to be baked or broiled or steamed. Only fried.

  Reeves had to agree. Cooking fresh trout in the ovens they had on this piece of floating space junk would be a crime. No sir, fish were born to be covered in corn meal crumbs and fried quick and hot in a half inch of margarine in a heavy metal skillet while the flames licked the sides of the blackened pan.

  And right now the two Rainbow Trout he’d caught out of Danny’s stream over in the hatcheries section of the ship were being cooked in exactly that way.

  The rich, wonderful smell was almost more than he could take. It covered the faint odor of the pines around him, filling the small meadow with a mouth-watering aroma. He just wished that when the builders had designed the botanical garden they would have made it possible to open some sort of portal so he could sit beside a fire under the stars. He glanced up hoping to see stars, but the roof was black, the light low, simulating night. Maybe at some point in the future he’d go up there and paint some fake stars on that ceiling just to make the feeling right.

  He glanced around at the darkened meadow and the trees and brush beyond. He had to do this cooking at night. No other time would be right for cooking fresh-caught trout over an open fire.

  The smoke from the fire was swirling upward around the skillet and then on toward the ceiling, lost in the darkness. He had no doubt the garden was going to smell of smoke for months to come, but he didn’t care. Hell, if this worked, and these two fish tasted anywhere near as good as they smelled, he might even fry a couple more fish tomorrow night.

  And a couple more the night after that.

  Maybe he might even fix up a tent and bedding to sleep nearby. What could it hurt? There was no one to stop him out here in the deep space between stars and jump stations. There was no fixing the ship. He had determined that an hour ago. And if he did happen to get lucky and live long enough to finally reach Jump Base Perry, he’d deal with the consequences then. But in the meantime, he was going to eat freshly-cooked trout.

  Two

  “Blame it all to damn!” Canny said, her fingers running over the smooth surface of the tracking board, bringing up images on her screen faster than Fergason could follow.

  Canny was in charge of tracking what they called the “pink sector,” officially call the “P” sector, following ships and anything else that might be jumping through hyper space in that area. Fergason had never heard her swear in the three years he had worked with the tiny and very competent woman.

  Canny was from a colony world around Devan Six, and claimed she was five foot tall. She had typical Devan red hair and light, fair skin. She also had a laugh that sounded like a chime and made him smile.

  Today Canny wore a white blouse, dark black pants made out of some new material, and flat-heeled shoes meant for comfort.

  Fergason was Canny’s immediate supervisor and her exact opposite in just about every way. Where she was short, he was tall, slouching at six-five. Where her skin seemed to glow white in the lights from the screens, his skin was dark, his hair pitch black and short. And he came from Stevens, a planet that had been waging an economic war with Canny’s home planet for decades. Yet somehow, over the years, even with the differences, they had become close friends.

  And were getting closer every day.

  Around them the large General Hyper Drive control room felt hushed as a few of the other controllers glanced Canny’s direction with a look of surprise.

  Fergeson stood from his supervisor console and moved over beside Canny, glancing at her screen. “Transfer to the wall screen,” he said.

  She nodded as her fingers moved over her board almost faster than Fergason could follow. He knew she was one of his best, but he had never seen her work at full speed before.

  Suddenly she stopped, sat back, and just shook her head.

  “Dropped out,” she said. “Twenty-six hours ago real time.”

  Fergason stared at the wall monitor filling a section near Canny’s station. It showed three-dimensional representation of the “P” area of space Canny had been monitoring. She had put up a line starting at Jump Base Peanut and ending about halfway to Jump Base Perry.

  “What’s the ship?” Fergason asked, stunned that he was seeing what she was indicating. He had never had a drop-out on his watch, and the last serious drop-out that had occurred was two years before. Ships, with all the fail-safes, and the nature of the hyper-space tubes between jump points, just didn’t drop out of hyperspace in the middle of nowhere.

  Yet one just had.

  “It’s a supply and research ship, a big one called the Western. Headed for the lower edge of the “D” section to help supply a new colony there.”

  Fergason nodded. Nothing unusual at all.

  “Seventeen jumps successful, Canny said, “thirty-six more to go.”

  “So any signal from the ship?” Fergason asked, following procedure.

  “Nothing,” Canny said. “One minute it was fine, the next it had dropped out of hyper.”

  “Can you pinpoint its location?” Fergason asked, still following the questions he was supposed to ask a controller in this situation.

  “I did,” Canny said. She reached forward and tapped her board, changing the image on the screen on the wall.

  Fergason just shook his head. The area shown on the map where the ship would have dropped back into normal space was a sphere of over three light years in diameter.

  There was one more question on the list that he had to ask any controller in this situation, just for the record. “Could you get a reading on the real-space speed of the ship as it dropped?”

  “Fast,” Canny said. “Ninety-one-point-three percent of the speed of light.”

  “Damn,” Fergason said.

  “You can say that again,” Canny said, shaking her head. “The poor guy. He probably isn’t even awake yet, with the differenc
e in time factored in.”

  “Only one crew?” Fergason asked. Usually freighters had two or three. The Western must be one of the newer model ships, only needing one man to take the chance on the deep sleep and the hyper jumps with the cargo. And all that one man did was wake up at each jump point, run diagnostics of the systems, then give the all-clear for the ship to make the next jump.

  She leaned forward, tapped a key on her board again, and then sat back. “His name is Reeves, from Earth actually.”

  “What part?” Fergason asked, as if that was going to make any difference at this point.

  Canny again glanced at her board. “Idaho region.”

  One of the old United States areas. Fergason had never been near it on any of his visits to Earth. Maybe next time.

  “Alert rescue,” Fergason said, glancing at the other controllers who were watching the event. “Tell them to get a ship headed to the center of his possible drop-out area. Make sure you feed them all your data, including his likely speed.”

  Canny glanced back at him, her green eyes showing surprise and maybe a little something else. “Sir, you know they will veto you. It’s not worth risking the lives of a rescue team and ship in an unscheduled hyper-drop.”

  Fergason knew, but he said nothing.

  Canny went on. “Plus the percentage chances of finding one ship in that much area are close to zero, even if the thing was equipped with a newer emergency beacon. The rescue ship would have to stumble within light-days of the Western to trace-hear it.”

  “I know,” Fergason said. “But I’m not going to be the one to make the decision to let that poor man die out there alone.”

  She looked at him harder than she had ever done before. There was a caring and understanding in the look that he hadn’t seen before. Finally she nodded and turned back to her board. “Alerting rescue,” she said.

  Later that night, she asked him to join her for dinner. It had been fantastic, a special baked-trout dinner with all the trimmings. That night she told him how much she admired him and his heart.

  And later that night they kissed and kissed and finally talked about being together for the rest of their lives.

  The next morning he learned, as they had both expected, that Rescue Control had declined to send a ship.

  Reeves from Earth was on his own.

  Three

  Reeves knew, without a doubt, that he would grow tired of fresh-caught, freshly-cooked trout, no matter how good they tasted.

  He had set up camp with bedding, a tent, and change of clothes in an area of the botanical garden near where he had cooked the fish the first time. After dinner that first night he had changed into some western-style clothes he had found in supplies for the colonists. Then with the addition of a cowboy hat, cowboy boots, and a duster he felt almost at home. He could almost imagine he was back in the mountains of Idaho, especially when he was near his fire.

  He had reset the lighting in the garden so that there was more night, because that was the time he didn’t have to think about where he was, and what had happened to him.

  After finding the clothes he had gone to a mirror in one of the bathrooms. The hat hid his white forehead and receding hairline, and the duster swung loose and free, giving his body a lean and mean appearance. He had been lucky that the colony this ship had been packed to supply was for was a western-based group. He hoped they survived the loss of these supplies long enough to get more.

  Too bad there hadn’t been something he could have done about saving the ship. He had been in cold sleep, as anyone was going through jump space, when the ship had malfunctioned and dropped out of hyper-space. His last readings before the jump had shown no indication of any problem at all.

  The moment he had woken up to the sounds of the alarms filling every inch of the cold sleep chamber, he knew he was in trouble.

  Deep trouble.

  It had taken him a long time to check all the ship’s systems and discover everything was just fine, except for the fact that he, the ship, and all its cargo were no longer in hyper-space. He had no idea what had gone wrong, and didn’t have the skills or the desire to find out.

  He had set the rescue beacon just in case someone came for him, and actually found him, and then he had sat for hours just staring out of the control room’s viewports at the stars and the blackness of space. He had no idea where he was, or even exactly how fast he was moving, or where he was heading.

  Hyper-space travel used jump stations, connected to other jump stations. Only close-in system travel used actual real-space movement. It just took too long and had too many troubles with the differences in ship-board time and real time.

  While he sat there staring at the stars and feeling sorry for himself, he started thinking about never seeing Earth again, and just generally considering his future death alone in deep space. Then, as if hit by a sudden blast of realization, he really understood his situation. He might die alone out here, but until he did he was now a really free man.

  No more worrying about money, or jobs. The ship had more than enough supplies to last him for a very long life.

  He no longer had anyone to answer to, to be chewed out by.

  He was on his own, in a seven-mile-long space ship full of everything he might need.

  With the realization he had laughed out loud, staring at the stars. The entire thing was sort of a glass half-empty, glass half-full sort of thing. Yes, he was trapped in deep space with almost no hope of rescue, yes he had known this possibility might happen, but now that it had happened, he could live any way he wanted.

  He could cook fish over an open campfire.

  He was a free man who loved fresh-caught fish.

  Finally, on the third day of staying in the meadow near his campfire, it became clear he was going to need other fresh foods beside fish. So after finishing a wonderful breakfast of trout, he made a trip through the seven mile-long ship to the embryo stores near the nose of the giant ship.

  He felt odd walking in his cowboy boots down the wide halls, his duster swirling around his legs with every step. And his duster was a little warm for the environmental settings, but he didn’t care. He was living on a new frontier, just like his ancient ancestors had done when they had gone west in the old United States. There were hardships on the frontier, the least of which was heat and cold.

  They had been alone, in a wild and dangerous place.

  He was alone in a wild and dangerous place.

  They had survived in their way, he would survive in his.

  It had taken him hours to finally reach the right area, not wanting to use the ship’s directional systems to help him. His ancestors didn’t have directional systems to help them out west.

  After only a few wrong turns, he found the storage area he was looking for. It was where the animals that were scheduled to be born and raised on the new colony were kept. He pulled up on a screen the animal cargo list and smiled when he saw it was as he had hoped it would be. Cattle, horses, sheep, pigs, chickens, and so on. And there was enough feed on the ship as well to keep the animals well-fed for many years.

  And another thing that worked in his favor. The ship was carrying an Accelerated Growth Lab that could take an animal from embryo state to full grown in three or four days.

  He studied the list of his choices. He didn’t want to raise too many animals too quickly, mostly because he only needed as much as he could use over a few months time, and he wanted to make their feed last as long as possible. So he did some calculations as to exactly how long the feed would last for a certain number of each animal, then went to work taking out a few of the animals and putting them in the Accelerated Growth Lab chamber.

  Then, as almost an afterthought, he picked out a horse and put it in the chamber as well. His ancestors rode horses, so could he.

  He spent three days there in the lab, eating rations while wishing for trout, sleeping in a bunk room, growing the animals to a decent size. He used that time to set up sections of the ship f
or each group of animals to live.

  The chickens he put in a large storage area with old-world furniture they could nest in, then set the timer on the ship’s computer to remind him every three days that he needed to replenish the chicken’s food and supplies, and with luck harvest the eggs.

  His mouth watered at the idea of eggs and bacon, cooked over a camp fire. What a perfect life he was setting up.

  He worked out similar environments for the cattle and pigs, then prepped a slaughter area and then used it to kill a calf, using a colony butchering-machine to package and refrigerate the meat all in one process.

  Tonight, back in his meadow, over his campfire, he would cook veal. And then tomorrow he would start changing a few of the areas in the gardens for fruit and vegetable growing. Maybe in a few weeks he might have corn-on-the-cob with a great New York steak. His mouth watered at the thought as well.

  Finally, after everything was set up, and his saddle bags were packed with the veal and oat feed for the horse, he lead the big, brown mare he had raised into the hallway and back down the miles of corridor to the botanical gardens.

  On this trip he felt better walking the halls in his duster, the horse’s hooves clopping on the hard surface behind him. He now felt like a true pioneer going into the unknown.

  Four

  Fergason sat at his desk in his living room and stared at a picture of Canny, his wife of over sixty years. He missed her more than he wanted to admit. Their children and grandchildren were good company, visiting him often, but nothing could replace the closeness that he had had with Canny.

  They had had a great life together, happy, and had recently been planning trips back to their different home worlds to visit family. Then, without warning, a few months before she had died of a heart attack at the young age of only 104. He had another thirty or forty years of life expectancy these days, yet he couldn’t imagine living those years without her. It was as if everything inside him had been ripped out.