Lifeseed Inc.

By Jim Spencer

Prolog: I have run into a serious problem in writing Lifeseed. How to measure things. How do I express time and distance. The speed of light is 186,000 miles per second based upon our determination of what a mile is and the length of time that is a second. A lightyear is the distance light travels in a year, based upon an Earth year and Imperial miles. So, to avoid inventing a whole system of totally unintelligible terms based upon, say interstellar or planetary movements of an exo-planet in Alpha Centauri, I will rely on the common terms we use here on good old Earth. Sorry for being so lazy.

Call me JJ. Jerome Jones to be sure. Yes. that Jones. My dad is Keaton Jones, CEO, and head dude of Comet Wranglers, a wholly owned subsidiary of Lifeseed Inc., All Hail Lifeseed.

One day my dad said to me, “JJ, you need something to do.”

Well, I had something to do. I was busy convincing a lovely female of sliding into a close orbit of a nearby star.

“Yes,” he continued, “You need an activity that matches your talents and ambitions. I want you to fetch me back T35.”

“What?”

“Yes,” he said, “Fetch me back T35.”

I couldn’t believe my sensors. “T35? T35 is way on the other side of the galaxy. Besides, we lost three wranglers trying to get it back here and its orbit is so eccentric and unstable that it has disappeared.”

“Ha!” he said. “I have discovered T35. It is about to enter a system only a single parsec away.”

“But, dad, T35 is so small it won’t hold more than one seed. Is it worth the effort?”

“Beats me,” he replied “Corporate said go get it and I have to go after F554, which is in the opposite direction. Get with it.”

I was so close with the female. We were a mere Au from beginning our descent to a close orbit.

“Dad, I will have to be in sleep for six and a half years just in travel time. In six and a half years I will have lost the luster of my youth and no female will look at me.”

The comet Dad was towing outgassed a little puff and Dad had to flex an extensor to bring it back into close control. He could normally sense when a tow was about to outgas and counter the force. He shifted the comet away from the direct light of the sun near us.

“You bring T35 in and I will pay for a resurface.”

“A whole re-surface, not just a spot?”

“A whole re-surface.”

“Deal,” I said.

There would be no lack of females when I was re-surfaced. I shut down or moved all my systems to standby and prepped for hibernation. Dad downloaded T35’s coordinates and I was ready. This was the scarry part, if the coordinates were wrong or entered incorrectly, I would wake up who knows where and could be in real trouble. It was only a parsec, but we are still looking for my older brother Riley. I Aligned with where T35 would be in three years and punched the go button. I went to sleep and jumped to lightspeed instantly.

On a bluff above the Mississippi River, in a grassy meadow filled with fireflies as plentiful as the stars in a clear night sky, Emily Swanson lay next to Tom Gerad marveling at the number of stars. Their hands entwined and their softly mummering voices brought peace and satisfaction to Emily after her bruising and stress-filled shift in the Dancing Delight club.

The Dancing Delight had been through many owners and names in the ten years since it had opened it had been the Booby Trap, Sign of the Ram, Zodiac, and Gentleman’s Retreat, but the show was the same. Usually, the crowd of horny drunks were well behaved, at least for a strip club, but tonight, Emily who served tables, a particularly obnoxious drunk accosted her. Normally customers might tease Emily but the drunks respected her no-nonsense attitude and especially her weight-trained physical attributes. The Big River Body Building Championship is but weeks away and Emily is working out three days a week in preparation. Her off days, Tuesday, and Thursday she is in the dojo earning her jujitsu black belt. The regulars at the Dancing Delight know four things about Emily, she regarded touching as an assault on her person, she is lovely, she is deadly, and she is madly in love with Roy Gerad. Gerad too is a body builder and they work out together. She regularly beats him in the dojo by being a step quicker.

The obnoxious drunk grabbed her left bicep in a crushing grip and whispered fiercely in her face, “Where are our drinks, bitch.”

The grab jolted the two bottles off her tray onto the floor. Glass and beer splashed on the drunk’s feet.

“Stupid bitch,” he growled and drew back his left hand to strike. Drawing back was as far as the hand got. With her right, Emily whipped the tray off her left hand and drove him to the floor with its edge. Roy, bouncer for the night, appeared at her side and dragged the now whimpering drunk out the back door.

“Arm still hurt,” Roy asked.

“A bit. I hope it fades in time.”

Makeup will cover it,” Roy said.

A tug signaled its approach on the river bend below them. The soft hoot emphasized the softness of the evening.

“Look about a hand’s width to the right of the moon.”

Emily held her hand up. “See that light?”

“A star.” She asked?

“No. I think it is getting brighter and bigger.”

“Satellite?”

“Satellites do not get bigger.”

“A bird, a plane, superman?’

“Whatever. It seems to headed for us. Right here.”

They leaped to their feet. No roaring rockets or engine noise. The object simply settled on the grass. In the dark, the thing looks about the size of a basketball only silvery and has a big dent in the top.

They both heard a disembodied voice. “Be not afraid beings. I mean no harm.”

They looked at each other than stepped a few feet apart and settled into a defensive stance.

The voice continued, “I fell afoul of your clever defense system, and suffered damage that caused hydrogen to leak. I need to sit here a few fractions of your planetary rotation to make repairs and refill the tanks from your atmosphere.”

Roy recovered first, “What defense system? We got the ISS but that is it.”

“Oh, I saw the orbiting habitat, but all the small bits and pieces you have placed in orbit that is genius. Such small pieces are very hard to detect against the planetary background. I was catching up with T35 and needed to slingshot around your planet but got too close.”

The dent in the top of the ball quivered and pop up leaving a smooth but very slightly ridged circle. A pump began sucking air.

“Where, where are you from,” Emily asked?

“Only a parsec away on the 0135-0087 radial.”

“Huh,” Roy said.

“What are you doing here,” Emily said?

“Two more ticks and the hydrogen tanks are full. I am a Comet Wrangler. My father is a Wrangler and so was my grandfather. We work for Lifeseed Inc,” they bought us out so we work on contract of course.”

It was Emily’s turn, “Huh?”

“This delay may have cost me catching T35. Repairs complete. Tanks full. Ta, now. I am away.”

End

Lifeseed Inc.

By Jim Spencer

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