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  They had lost much of their race's previous knowledge but took it as their cause to do whatever they could to prevent the rift from disassociating the universe. Their last ship came here, built this facility, made me, and encased the rift in a temporal stasis field to extend the time before the eventual rift expansion. By my measurement, if you and the Zees had not come along just now, we would have had about forty million years left.”

  Dodger spoke up, “Measurements from our side indicate there are only two thousand years left in this dimension before the rift expands.”

  Martin replied, “As I said, everything is a matter of perspective.”

  “So, if you're the guardian,” I asked, “why did you let the Eshalax install a disruptor generator right over your head?”

  “It was harmless, and they were harmless. I had control of the disruptor and communication-shield it as soon as they landed. It was better than foiling their every attempt and have them try harder each time. I hid my home from them. I opened the access point you found shortly after you disabled the disruptor. I let the Eshalax think they had the solution they sought. It was unfortunate that those two human ships arrived when they did.”

  I still wasn't satisfied. I moved my hand around the room. “How do you know so much about human culture to … manufacture all this.”

  “Captain, I have been listening to this galaxy for a very long time. I found much of your human entertainment and histories very enjoyable.”

  He had outlasted me. “Let's get this done.” Martin pointed at one of the walls of his room. A doorway appeared. “Step this way if you will, lady and gentlemen.”

  Following him, I picked up his book from the table. The title on the spine was A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain. I’d never heard of the book or author; probably fake. I put the book down and continued into the exposed room.

  We passed through a shimmering barrier. The cat followed. The room looked empty unless your eyes went to the exact middle, the center of this cubical room. There, your eyes told you it was no different from the rest of the room, but your brain objected, telling you there was a lot MORE nothing there than could possibly exist. A one-meter sphere of a lot more nothing. My brain hurt. Sandy was mesmerized, walking around and gazing up and down. Taking her eyes away, and then returning them to the mega-nothing.

  I watched as Dodger handed the package containing the quantum fabric to Martin. He took it admiringly. Gently he opened the package and unfolded the material. He then shook it out and it floated down to the floor under the rift like a slowly falling bed sheet.

  Turning to Dodger, he asked, “Are the Zees ready on the other side?”

  Hesitating for less than a second, he replied in the affirmative.

  Martin then told us to make our face shields opaque. Apparently, there was going to be something very bright happening. He said to keep them closed for three seconds after he snapped his fingers. We did.

  I heard a snap of Martin’s fingers over my coms. Three seconds later, just before I transitioned my face shield back to transparent, Ranger reported, “Captain, the rift is closed.”

  Face shield transparent again, I saw that everyone, including Martin and his cat, were still where they had been. But there was no longer a Big Nothing in the room anymore, and no quantum sheet.

  I was relieved. We had done it. We had saved the universe. Just two loose ends remained. First, we had to give passage to the navy crews, sequestered on Traveler, and drop them off at a safe harbor. And second, our Mr. Big, whoever he was, undoubtedly was still looking for us in a very violent sort of way.

  Oh, and there was also a third minor little thing. Martin told us about two still intact Surron time-capsules. The contents would go a long way towards solving some heavy pending problems for one of the Zees closest friends, and wouldn't it be nice if we would help the Zees find these library-museums. He knew where they were. Ranger and Martin had been having their own little side-chat.

  Before we left the rift planet, we completely destroyed Martin's home and the navy ships. We used our grav-wave, Thumper. Nothing but gas remained.

  PART TWO

  SANDY

  16 Boat Load

  My name is Kathrine Sanderson, a billionaire many times over. Nobody calls me Kat more than once. Why wasn't I off enjoying the good life? The answer is simple. After we got paid for our three-billion-year-old find, I very quickly found myself not fitting into the Richey Rich scene. I'd spent tons of money just playing around trying to find my footing. After the new wore off, I realized I was trying to put on someone else's life. I was becoming involuntarily committed, cocooned in a hardening shell. I had to breakout or drown.

  When I got the call from Hornblower, I jumped at the chance to ship out with him again. Our relationship had been much more than captain and crew. To me, he was a brother of a different mother sort. I was the same for him. Our bond was even stronger than you find in close-knit military cohorts. I know, I had been a Marine, not and ex-Marine, there’s no such thing. I trusted him with much more than my life. What's more than life? A lot more, as I found out. I trusted him more than I did my tools.

  I missed the cold dark, the expanse, the beautiful sweeping majestic nebulae, the infinite noise of silence. At times out there, I would sit in the airlock. Sit quietly with the outer door open. Just sit on the deck, my legs hanging over the edge. Gathering it all in. Wanting to drink it, breathe it, float in it, be alone with it. It was a longing to belong. Belong to the biggest thing that ever was, or ever will be. To be a part of the cold dark.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  On the Rift Planet

  After I transitioned my face plate back to transparent, I checked my suit sensor records. Rewinding. Nothing, nada, zero, zip. Just blank non-data. Two point three seven seconds of nothing.

  Everybody, even the fake cat, seemed to be OK. Gone was the rift and the quantum fabric. I was going to get some of that stuff. Beyond making a dimensional rift disappear, I bet it has more tricks than a circus monkey.

  Hornblower looked relieved, Dodger did too. First time I’d ever seen that look on him.

  I listened with interest as Martin told Hornblower about the technology caches. More toys for me? But, as interesting as it was, I just wanted to get back to the transport, and shed my armored suit. I needed to scratch some itches and pee.

  Male or female, voiding yourself in an armored suit is a weird and unpleasant experience. The suit tech kept it all sanitary, but most spacers I’ve known preferred to wait if they could. The only people who didn't mind it too much were Space Force Marines in combat units. They would spend weeks in their armored suits either in the void or on some nasty planet that had even nastier residents. Mostly the 'I'm gonna eat you' variety.

  That's one of the reasons I resigned my commission in the Marines. Granted, I was a Combat Engineer and not a pointy-end combatant, but I was still a Marine. I grew to hate the hurry-up-and-wait work environment. The upper ranks frowned on us entertaining ourselves by doing things with our equipment they weren't intended for. It's what engineers do. My four-year tour had consisted of see new places and meet things that wanted to kill you.

  After leaving the Marines, it took me a few years to shed a hair-trigger twitch when startled. It had happened last when I first saw Roger and Dodger march their huge hulking frames into the cargo hold.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  We were off the rift planet, back aboard Traveler. Back with my machines I felt comfortable with. This ship was a playground for me. While it had systems that were designed for all the standard stuff, the Surrons had implemented some novel approaches. I had Traveler manufacture special tools so I could do a deeper dive and study this sweet Surron tech.

  Except for their hammers, the Surron tools were not a good fit in human hands. We have five fingers to their six. They also had dual opposable thumbs on each hand. Their other four middle fingers were similar to our middle three. No weak-sister pinky fingers for them. Sometimes, it
saddens me that they're gone. Billions of years gone. Just like we will be someday.

  Martin was coming with us. He'd be getting a human shell-body, similar to Roger and Dodger's, but with a few corporal upgrades, especially in the noggin area. Traveler used several bots to exhume Martin's container. It looked like a three-meter cubed glassy box. I could only guess what the internals were like. While he couldn't do his hard-light hologram projections after he left his home, he could talk to us and listen in via the ship's communication-system until he received his new fleshy-squishy manikin.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Hornblower, Mica, and I were looking at the holo-projection showing the locations of the Surron hidey-holes. The first one was a few galaxy clusters ahead and to the left. I don't get all geeky about interstellar charts and navigation. To me, from where I was standing, it was up and to the left. The other one was so much further away that our galactic cluster shrank to a small dot when the hologram display zoomed out so we could see points A, B and C.

  There were helpful dots and labels on the display showing data links about intervening galactic clusters. Mica was getting excited. All I saw were dots and alpha-numeric name places floating in the holo-cloud.

  We were going to look for the Surron deposits, but first, we wanted more info on Mr. Big. He knew way too much about us and our previous mission than any human should. We knew there was a possibility that he was actually an AI or alien, but I put my credit bet on him being a human. In my mind, I pictured him as a fat, saggy-fleshed, son of a bitch. I wanted him fitted with a choke collar on a chain with my boot on his neck. I'm a Marine, he’s a bad guy. Simple as that.

  We spit-balled and brainstormed ideas. We’d need a way to hide Traveler when we got back to the more densely packed human areas of the galaxy. A home base on a suitable planet would be nice. The kind with hotels and spas as well as wild and open spaces, not too unlike Tanner had been. But we weren't going anywhere near the Tanner system. We were probably still a hot target there. We toyed with the idea of having Ranger use the civilian manufacturing facilities, where he had clandestinely produced Jack and Joan, to make more Zee-compatible body shells.

  Having more and reliable human crew members would be a valuable asset. Ranger said he would ask his fellow Zees back home. I wasn't going to hold my breath. The Zees weren't exactly famous for making quick decisions.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  We still had three days before we could pop into the LaMain system to drop off our navy guests. For those three days, I was the liaison between them and our ship's crew. Marines are trained to patiently baby sit large contingents during ground duty on colonies.

  When I was in their section of the ship, I played the part of a knuckle-dragger. Sometimes, I’d smear a bit of grease on my coveralls and gave my forehead or cheek a slight smudge as type-cast camouflage. To complete my ensemble, I wore a tool belt. I always did that anyway.

  Their captain didn't seem to mind me serving in that capacity, but their First Officer always gave me a nose-in-the-air cold shoulder. I so wanted to tell her that I was the First Officer onboard Traveler and that my ship could brush off her entire space force like crumbs from a table. Navy weenies were always posturing their self-importance, especially around civilians and Marines.

  After jumping into the LaMain system, we still had a half day intra-system travel time. Traveler had sent a stealth EW drone ahead to inject some filters into the scanner systems of the single orbital station. We didn't want the LaMain'ers or whatever they called themselves, getting a real scan of our ship.

  We did all the Q-Com signature handshakes and required data transfer with their orbital station. It wasn't much in this backwater system. All they wanted to know was the name of the ship and captain, where we were coming from, and the number of souls onboard. To avoid a custom inspection, we weren't going to dock or drop off cargo. The LaMain system had no space force, which made things simpler for us. We dropped anchor well away from their station.

  I was in the hangar bay observing the transfer of their still wounded few who had semi-serious conditions or needed help. Several of our bots were moving about the hangar bay, doing things bots do.

  First Officer Amanda Wright was going over to the station on the first transport run. As Officer Wright stepped close to the boarding ramp, I saw a small dog-sized bot stick out an appendage, tripping the posturing bitch. Amanda lost a bit of composure and pride in front of her crew members. I swear I saw more than a few of their crew try to hide their smiles. Thank you, Traveler. I was gonna watch that vid over and over again.

  One more trip, and they were gone. Hornblower came down to see their captain off on the last run. That navy captain wasn't so bad … for a navy puke. As soon as Mica was back aboard, we began our out-system transit to jump-point.

  17 Three Card Monte

  Four days were spent planning. We had what we considered a solid plan outline to find Mr. Big. As a great plus, we weren't going to have to physically hide Traveler. The plan was to set up shell companies, buy an orbital shipyard, and establish a nice dirt-side enclave. Traveler would hide in plain sight at the shipyard.

  With Q-Commerce being what it is, we found it simple to set up our companies in a way that couldn’t be traced back to us. Sometimes, lawyers are good for something, but rarely. We would leave one company exposed. We picked several planets, with very loose legal operating restrictions, as well as strongly encrypted corporate and banking privacy protocols, to incorporate our companies along with attendant fictional histories, records and financial accounts. Ranger twisted, flipped, and shuffled the record filings so much that it looked like they had all been formed at different times many years ago. Then we had each corporation establish several subsidiaries in numerous other systems.

  One of those subsidiaries bought a shipyard for us. It was in solar orbit around the Satchel System, a quarter orbit away following the planet by the same name. That planet had been settled over eight hundred years ago.

  It started as a corporate agricultural world to supply more than a half-dozen nearby systems with its produce. The planets in those systems were rich in hydrocarbons, minerals, metals, and water. They were home to large manufacturing facilities. But their soil was next to worthless for growing anything digestible by humans. Agribusiness was the main thrust on Satchel. There were robust civilian support services to accommodate the population, including a few hundred gentlemen farmers.

  Those cowboys had retired from the tops of corporate ladders or had become super rich through inheritance or investments. They emigrated to Satchel for a more pastoral and genteel life, away from densely-packed planets. They just played at ranching and farming. Profit was not their goal. Many had gathered their large extended families to enjoy the largess they had accumulated. Four hundred years ago, Satchel had transitioned from a corporate world to one with a representative government.

  It wasn't only the vacant and decrepit shipyard that made Satchel desirable. There was also a very large vacant estate for sale. It had modern buildings, a main house that was a mansion, mountains, forests, and a very large system of unexplored caverns within the boundaries of the huge land tract. Hornblower, Mica and I all threw in a third. I was a land owner for the first time in my life. Couldn't wait to wiggle my toes in the dirt. Me, a spacer, lusting after dirt, imagine that.

  The shipyard was abandoned and almost a wreck of an orbital platform. It was available at scrap prices. While it had served a purpose in the past as a builder of small to midsize luxury ships it had stopped producing about thirty years ago after the local market dried up. Our plan was to unleash a slew of Traveler-made bots to clean it up and make it look like it could actually function as a shipyard again. Our station would be visited frequently by a freighter named Traveler.

  While we could have just hidden Traveler in an uninhabited system, we wanted her close-by for our travel and manufacturing needs. Ranger was just not big enough. Our concern about Traveler being seen was solved by buying the ri
ghts to another ship building company that had recently gone bust. Its shipyard had been dismantled and the company was in receivership. We bought the corporate body for a song since there were no real assets left. Our purpose in buying it was to have the company records show that a ship of Traveler's basic design had been manufactured and registered there four years ago. If anyone started snooping around, wanting to see the company records, a tripwire would let us know.

  Other companies we established covered technology, legal, real estate, distribution, mining, transportation, and a few other things I can't remember. None had any employees, payrolls, or facilities. It was all just paper. We easily hid our companies in the morass of other shell companies that had proliferated throughout the galaxy. As long as we kept our business licenses paid up, and did nothing illegal, the local systems couldn't care less.

  To make everything look even more legit, we had signed some retainer contracts with other companies to establish credibility for our business ventures. We were buying smoke, mirrors, roadblocks, and potholes. Anyone trying to find us was going to have to come through the front door.

  A month later, we were ready to move into our new digs. Traveler was docked at our shipyard. Ranger was dirt-side and at home in the huge above-ground hangar. I'd previously taken the walk-about tour of the property, but knowing I was one-third owner was a real kick. I did wiggle my toes in the rich loamy soil.

  Other than a significant security upgrade, there had been very little to do before we moved in. We had landed a large unit to create a defensive shield around our property. I was going to find out how the Surrons had learned to make an irregular shaped shield. It covered our ranch acreage to within a centimeter of the property line with another covering just the area around the ranch buildings. No further. And it didn't end at ground level. The shield went two thousand meters deep to encase the entire cavern structure. Hornblower and any of our Zees could activate it if our in-house sensor systems detected a potential intrusion or attack.