Chapter No.44. Weird.

The journey through hyperspace was a strange experience for me. The women began to treat me as if I were an absolute ruler, not just a ship's captain. I wasn't trained to be that sort of leader. In fact, I was originally destined to be just a lowly engineer. I had to assume that this change in their behavior was an unintentional result of traveling through hyperspace.

However, the effect was diminished by fact that they were attired as if they were vacationing on a casual party boat and the fact that we weren't operating under any authoritarian rules and regulations. It was as if they were making things up as we went along.

What was especially disturbing is the fact that we were in a metabolic limbo of sorts where we were not aging even though we were being accelerated into the future, a future where the loss of billions of humans was no longer important, and worse yet, our importance was fading like a bad nightmare. We were rapidly becoming an archaic metaphor for human folly.

But as long as were able to function, I decided that we would continue our mission to discover the truth even though it had morphed into a three-ring circus.

When we came out of hyperspace the next day, we were a million kilometers away from the planet, and we had to endure another correction burn to put us into an orbital insertion course.

"We can't see all that much from this far out, but it appears that this planet is mostly an ocean world," Sharon said.

"I'm not detecting any electromagnetic or quantum signals from the planet," Janet said. "There's no evidence of anything in orbit."

"Good," I reacted. "Let me know if there is any change."

"Yes, sir," Janet replied.

I went to the engineering deck and found Kali already there at the command station.

"What's cooking?" I asked as I approached her.

She glanced back at me. "I've found a way to increase the power of the laser pistols by just tweaking the code."

"No kidding! That's great."

"Did you want to use this?" she asked.

"Not really. I was going to do some exercising in the pool."

She stood up. "I'm finished here."

I assumed that she was going back to the crew deck, but she followed me to the pool instead.

"I'll take your clothes back up to the cleaning station and get you a new set."

I hesitated for a moment but then stripped. She watched me dive into the pool and begins swimming against the current. Then she did something I hadn't expected. She increased the flow, causing me to swim faster to stay in place. She increased it again, making me work like hell to keep up.

She advanced it again, and I was really huffing and puffing to stay in place. I think she was trying to torment me, but then she backed it down to the lowest setting.

"Did you enjoy testing me?" I asked as I swam to the edge to look up at her.

"You did well," she said with a grin. "I'll be back." She turned and left the pool chamber.

It was sometime before she returned with fresh clothes. I climbed out of the pool and stood under a drying station before getting dressed.

When we arrived back up at the crew deck, we both went to the command station to see what Janet and Sharon had discovered.

"We're in orbit," Janet said. "This is mostly an ocean world, but there's a large island near the equator and it has what appears to be a city of sorts."

I looked up at the main screen. "That's weird. It looks like there's a sizable temple in the middle of that city."

"We also have magnified images of that city," Sharon said.

"They look like humans," I said. "I didn't expect that."

"Maybe they're from the last planet," Kali suggested.

"Could be, but we won't know until we go down there," I said.

"Who are you taking?" Kali asked.

"Just you, and we'll go armed."

She nodded.

No one objected.

We waited until the next morning to go down there. Kali and I went up to the hanger and boarded the shuttle for an uneventful trip to the surface. After plunging down through the atmosphere, I leveled out and made passes over the city to locate a safe landing spot.

"There's lots of space around that temple," Kali pointed out.

"I'll set it down there," I said, pointing to a clear area near the temple's entrance.

After landing in what appeared to be a plaza that surrounded a structure that reminded me of a Roman temple, Kali and I got out and walked toward what we assumed was the temple's entrance.

We were met by an older male dressed in a dark blue suit. We noticed a diverse group of people standing off from us. They were of various ages from toddler to older adult. The adults and older children and teens were attired in what appeared to be white dresses. Toddlers and young children were naked.

The dark blue suited man smiled. "Welcome to the Emerald City! How might I be of service?"

I recalled that reference to the classic movie 'The Wizard of Oz' and assumed that this guy thought he was a wizard.

"We are the survivors of the first three attempts to explore Centauri Optima-b. We're here because we're on a mission to determine where the majority of people disappeared to from Earth."

He gestured. "Come and we will submit your inquiry to our wonderous Queen Dorothy."

Kali and I exchanged concerned glances, a subtle signal for us to power up our laser pistols.

We waked with the erstwhile wizard to the temple. The interior was not all that impressive. It consisted of a large round moat surrounding a throne mounted on a central pillar. A plank stuck out over the moat.

Dorothy the queen sat on the throne, but she didn't appear to be alive. My first thought was that she was stuffed like the people in the display on the last planet.

My sixth sense alerted me to incipient danger. I turned just in time to draw my pistol and shoot directly in the head a guy dressed in what appeared to be armor brandishing a sword. His head was the only part of his body exposed.

I turned to watch Kali dispatch another armed attacker.

What I saw next made me shudder. The wizard produced a tubular device from his pocket, which I immediately recognized as a paralytic weapon that we saw on the last planet. I didn't hesitate to shoot him in the head, and he fell before he activated his weapon.

Both Kali and I turned to watch a woman approach.

She held her arms up. "I am not a threat to you," she said. "I am the mother of Dorothy." She gestured to the unmoving figure sitting on the throne. "This monster killed her and made her into a statue."

"Who is this monster?" I asked, gesturing to his body."

"He was the son of the Earl of Havingshire."

"How did you people get to this planet?"

"He brought us here. He wanted to break away from his father's influence. His father killed people and arranged them in displays."

"Yes, we saw those. I noticed that you have children. Did you procreate them?"

"No. We are unable to bear children. They were brought here as children."

I squinted. "How long ago did you arrive at the other planet?"

"I am unsure, but it has been many orbits around the star."

I turned to Kalie. "That means they are very old people in child bodies."

She frowned. "That's crazy!"

I agreed, and it once more proved that hyperspace is totally useless as a means to travel to a new Earth.

I turned to the woman. "We must return to our ship. I trust that you can handle this mess." I gestured to the bodies.

"It will be a pleasure. I will feed them to the flesh eaters in the mote. You have done us a great favor."

Her joyous attitude indicated that she and her people had suffered under the evil wizard. The entire situation here was a trip through the macabre. It was obvious that people were being fed to carnivorous aquatic creatures that lived in the moat as a form of entertainment for the stuffed queen Dorothy.

I assumed that this was the end of it, but my failure to pay attention led to me feeling a sudden stinging pain in my back. I collapsed to the floor and saw Kali blast another guy holding a hand weapon.

The woman screamed, but Kali squatted near me. "You're bleeding," she said without any signs of panic." She reached in her belt pack and pulled out a compression bandage. She pulled off my jacket and shirt and applied it to the wound.

"I'm going to help you up," she told me. With some effort she managed to get me back on my feet. "Think you can walk?"

I offered her a weak smile. "I'll try."

She helped me out of the temple and into the shuttle. I was in no condition to fly it, but she took over and soon had it accelerating up to a rendezvous with the ship.

"I didn't know you could fly shuttles," I said, wincing from pain.

"I'm a space cadet," she said with a smile. "I can do a lot of stuff."

When she got the shuttle into orbit alongside the ship, she waited for COMA to realize what was going on and open the hanger door. Surprisingly, she got the shuttle in and parked without a scratch.

The next problem was to get me down to the crew deck. Again, she surprised me by how she handled that. However, getting me down to the deck floor was going to be a problem. The other women had gathered to help, but Kali decided the best way to get me down was to stop the crew deck wheel and then gently float me down to the floor before starting it back up again. Unfortunately, she had to do the same thing to get me down to the engineering deck where the auto-doctor was.

I don't remember much after I got there. I must have passed out, but I awoke lying face down on the auto-doctor platform.

"It was a pointed projectile," Kali told me. "I don't think it had any poison on it. The doctor has closed the wound with a laser."

"I wonder if it will heal . . . considering that metabolic time has been suspended because of the hyperspace effect."

"I think it already has," she said. "Maybe the hyperspace effect causes things to return to a steady state."

"I want to thank you for . . . for saving me."

She smiled. "Hey, It's an old astronaut unwritten rule."

I tried to laugh, but it hurt too much.

By the next day the wound had mostly healed. I got lucky.