My Other Car is a Spaceship (2 page)

“Work, damn you!”

Hal
gave the mower’s pull cord another yank. Still nothing. He straightened and mopped his face with the shoulder of his oil-stained Harley-Davidson T-shirt.

Why do I bother?
What’s the point of spending a fortune to make the grass grow if I have to spend all my free time cutting it? Why don’t I just let it die and save myself the time and money?

He smirked.
Simple. What else would I do with my time—play chess at the community center?
That was just a bit too passive for Hal.

Hal
“Mongoose” Nellis had earned his Captain’s bars during a stint in the second Gulf War. Later,
Major
Nellis flew some of the most bleeding-edge hardware in existence. He was among the best of the best—until a motorcycle accident crushed his hip and left him with a permanent limp and a desk job. Not one to let a minor disability keep him down, he’d kept himself in “fighting trim,” as he liked to call it. But now, four years later, Colonel Nellis was retired and bored.

After
a quarter-century in the military he was on the outside looking in. If the Air Force no longer needed him, he’d find some other way to fill his days. But what?

I guess
I should have developed some interests besides flying and motorcycles.
Hal shrugged. It had always seemed like enough before.

He glanced over at the garage, where his pride-and-joy sat just inside
: a cherry-red 1948 Indian Chief Flathead, partially dismantled for cleaning. The sight brought a fleeting smile to his lips.

He sighed
, bent, and yanked the cord again. No go.

Why didn’t I get an electric-start mower?

He slapped his neck where a mosquito or something had bit him. He went dizzy for a moment.

Seemingly
between heartbeats, he went from bright sunlight and summer heat to dim coolness.

H
is eyes widened in surprise. Where a moment ago he’d faced his house, he now found himself staring at rich, dark wood paneling. He sat in a chair, feet on burgundy carpet, not scruffy half-dead grass.

“
What the hell?”

Hal
stood and turned. He occupied a large, roughly rectangular room dominated by a long conference table surrounded by chairs. He shook his head to clear it of the nonsensical hallucination before him, but the image persisted. The longer walls appeared subtly curved, as if the room were a section of a gigantic bicycle tire. There were no visible light fixtures; instead, the chamber was bathed in a soft rosy glow emanating from the ceiling itself, a good three-and-a-half meters up. The walls held framed images of nebulas and star clusters.

Sitting
before him in one of the chairs was a man. He smiled at Hal.

For a long moment,
Hal stared back with calculating eyes. The man was of medium build, with a narrow face and dark brown hair and eyes. The kind of person you might bump into on the street and ten minutes later not remember. Utterly forgettable. He wore a jumpsuit, medium blue and bereft of name or insignia.

No help there.

Hal spoke at last, covering his confusion with bravado. “All right, let’s get the obvious questions out of the way: Who are you? Where the hell am I? How did I get here? And
why
am I here?”

The other man
’s smile widened. When he spoke, it was with an accent Hal couldn’t identify—odd, but not difficult to understand. “Concise and to the point. Excellent. Please, have a seat.”

His voice was a rich
, warm baritone that contained not a hint of menace. Nevertheless, Hal was not about to drop his guard. There was no telling what kind of scam the other was running.

“I’ll stand, if you don’t mind.”

The man shrugged, now with a wry grin. “Suit yourself. My name is Captain Kalen Jeffries. I go by other names while I’m on Earth, but that’s my true name. Where you are is on my ship,
Adventurer
. Welcome aboard, Colonel Nellis.”

He paused a moment
with a small smile at Hal’s reaction to hearing his name, then continued.

“Y
es, I know who you are. Your being here isn’t random. You were chosen for your exceptional piloting skills.”

Hal stood at attention, staring straight ahead, and enunciated with military precision. “Harold Thomas Nellis,
colonel, U.S. Air Force, Retired. Serial number—”

Kalen held up a hand to stop him. “
Whoa. That’s not necessary, colonel. You’re not a prisoner; this isn’t an interrogation. We’re not a military ship, and except in battle conditions, we’re pretty relaxed about protocol. Call me Kalen. May I call you Hal? I know your friends do.”

Ha
l stared back at the man, relaxing only slightly, and replied with frost in his voice. “
Colonel Nellis
will do for now.”

A thought occurred to him and h
is brow creased. “Your
ship
. While you’re
on Earth
. You expect me to believe you’re some sort of alien and I’ve been abducted?”

He looked around. “
Ri-i-ght. Where’s the hidden camera—or should I expect the obligatory anal probing?”

Kalen laughed heartily. “Good heavens, no! I fear your entertainment industry has
invented all that to build ratings. No, in fact, you’re our honored guest.

“
You see, colonel, to answer your earlier question, we need your help.”

Of all the things
Hal had braced himself to hear, that wasn’t even on his radar.

He
snorted. “My
help
? Why? Call me skeptical, but how do I know I’m on a spaceship and that you’re aliens? You look awfully human to me. For all I can tell, you’re an agent of a foreign government and this is an elaborate ruse to pump me for classified information.”

Kalen nodded
, still smiling. “Quite understandable, given your former occupation. Come with me and I’ll show you.”

He
stood and turned toward the door. As he approached, it slid open with a hiss. On the other side was a corridor that looked much like the room they were leaving, only longer and narrower. Kalen stepped through.

Hal
followed. The slid shut behind them with a sigh.
Big deal. I’ve seen that on TV.

The
corridor clearly had a gentle right-hand curve to it. During the short walk that followed, Hal observed several other people who looked just as human as Kalen.

Aliens. Right.
This has to be a joke or a conspiracy or something. No way these guys are aliens. So what’s their game?

On the other hand, how did I get here
—wherever here is—from my front yard? Drugs?

He shook his head in confusion
and mentally shrugged.
For now I’ll just have to play along. Sooner or later they’ll slip up and I’ll figure out what’s going on.

“Just curious, but why is your ‘ship’ so dark? Dim lighting, dark walls and carpet?
Doesn’t that make it harder to work?”

The lighting and furnishings
seemed better suited to a bordello than an efficiently run ship, whether of space or sea.

I
s the dim lighting intended to hide the flaws in this illusion or mockup, or whatever it is?

“True, if the crew were all human
, like me. But more than ninety percent of the crew isn’t, and some of them can’t tolerate bright light. Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it. This way, please.”

Kalen
entered through another door and Hal followed.

“This is
the bridge of the ship.”

Hal
fought hard to keep his jaw from dropping. Instead, he swallowed. Nothing he’d seen so far had prepared him for what he faced. He stood at the back of an immense chamber full of consoles, viewscreens, and workstations. Dozens of people and…creatures, for want of a better word, scurried about looking busy. They varied in hue from a dull brick red to a brilliant cobalt blue to a shimmery yellow-orange shade. Color aside, the features of these beings were most
un
human in appearance, especially in the number and types of limbs. Hal spotted three-, four-, and six-limbed creatures. Some had hands and feet while others came equipped with pincers or tentacles. And they ranged from the ridiculously tall to the absurdly small.

The room was surprisingly quiet
, considering all the activity going on. Directly opposite Hal’s position was a window, although calling it a window was like calling the Grand Canyon a big hole in the ground. The transparent expanse was at least nine meters high and twice that in width, curving in a gentle arc.

And, oh, the view: all of Europe and the Americas seemed within reach. Snow gleamed in
Canada and eastern Russia. Over the Caribbean, a gray-white patch illuminated by frequent bright flashes revealed a storm.

Hal stood there, mouth agape, taking it
all in. The Pacific was deep indigo; the terminator knifed through North and South America. Cities along the eastern coasts shone like a string of iridescent pearls against a backdrop of blackest velvet.

The sight
reminded him unexpectedly of his ex-wife.
Carol loves pearls.
He smiled at the thought.
No matter how much she resented the time I spent away from her, even Carol would have to be impressed by this. I wish she could see it. No video could be this crisp, this realistic.

Hal
had no doubt whatsoever that he was looking down on the Earth from orbit.

“But how? Why?” He was having trouble getting all the questions
straight in his mind.

Kalen smirked. “How did you get here? Why are you here? W
ho are we and why are
we
here?” His gesture took in the whole of the ship’s crew.

Hal
nodded. “And you said something about battle conditions?”

“It
’ll take a while to explain all that. Maybe we should go to my ready room, where it’s calmer.”

Many of the human faces
seemed worried. The other faces? Hal had no idea.

I suppose it could be makeup and prosthetics, like they do in the movies
. But with that view
…. He looked outward again.
Maybe they
are
aliens.

He followed Kalen into a room just off the
bridge. The door closed behind them.

“Please, have a seat.” Kalen gestured to the comfortable-looking
burgundy chair facing the desk. Hal sat. The chairs appeared to be upholstered in leather and the table was made of something grained vaguely like walnut. The scene could have played out in an office building anywhere on Earth. The matte black walls and the rosy glow to the ceiling in lieu of light fixtures were unusual, but nothing that screamed “alien!” Framed images of worlds Hal didn’t recognize adorned the walls, images that had the clarity of ultrahigh-resolution digital photographs. They certainly weren’t soft-focus artist-conception fantasies.

Hal
could wait no longer. “Okay, what’s going on?”

“You’re a military man, so I’m sure you appreciate brevity.” Kalen paused for Hal’s nod.
“So let me answer all of your questions at once, and maybe a few you hadn’t thought of yet.”

Another nod.

“Good.” Kalen began ticking off the answers on his fingers as he spoke. “First, you’re here because we need a pilot. Both of ours are dead.”

Hal raised a finger. “
If I can interrupt—”

Kalen nodded. “Of course.”

“Good. If you need a pilot, why don’t you just radio home, or whatever it is you do, for help?”

“A fair question. The simple answer is, I can’t. There’s no such thing as hyperspace communications. We use radio, just like you, as well as laser pulses, microwave bursts, and other methods. But they’re all limited by the speed of light. This means each ship is effectively cut off from its home system as soon as it leaps. We’re on our own out here.”

Hal nodded. “Okay. Thanks.”

Kalen smiled in return and continued his explanation.
“Second, you were shot with a quick-acting tranquilizer and brought here. Third, the mission of this ship and others like it is to defend Earth and other pre-interstellar worlds from pirate attacks, and to apprehend the pirates and return them to the nearest Unity planet for judgment.”

Hal
interrupted again, this time with one eyebrow raised. “Pirates? In space? Are you
kidding
me? And say I believe all that—why only one ship? It seems like it would be hard to patrol a whole system that way.”

Kalen nodded. “You’re right. It would be impossible in a more developed system. But as Earth is the only inhabited world in this system, it’s the only planet of interest to the pirates.
And, yes, I’ll get to them in a minute. One ship is plenty to patrol a planet from high orbit.”