Uncle Tom's Starship
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Leaving the underground dwelling, Miles found himself on Ballou’s bluegrass. He smiled, brushing the brightly colored mailbox on the doorstep of the hill hiding the main vent of the nuclear reactor. An ancient drop, which had not received a letter since the Earth of old.
When he looked away, he saw Kat, standing in the middle of the small plain with the horizon so close. Her delightsome red hair floated in the filtered air of the moon under a bell. Once done rewinding a cassette in her walkman, she started observing the stormy black sky, studded with stars surrounding ever-brighter Saturn.
Then one of the stars flashed.
“A ship…” said Miles, whose concern grew.
“On approach.”
The answer came not from Kat, but from Beau. His made-in-Venus brain circuits in the air and wearing a red shirt from the Harlem Globetrotters, he stood beside Miles. Right behind him arrived Tatyana, half a peach in each cheek and syrup all over her lips.
“And with it an S.O.S.!” she explained, letting out little bubbles of sugary water she caught with her fingertips.
Kat had turned around, and Beau went back into the house—certainly to look for the old rifle he’d been holding when they landed two days earlier.
“Did they identify themselves?” Miles asked.
“Runaways from Janus from what they say. Verified by the transponder,” Tatyana replied.
“You sure?”
“Geez, buddy! I checked like five times!”
“If they’re not lying, it would seem that word is spreading through the Rings that my moon is now a Noah’s Ark…” Kat grumbled, her worried eyes still focused on the approaching ship.
“We’re going to let them in?” Miles asked.
“Do I have a choice, Monsieur Miles?” There was no resentment in her, and more a deep fatigue tinged with pity.
“You do.”
She smiled. “This is not how I was raised.”
“What is happening?” Fate inquired, also joining the surface with Beau’s company. The noisy robot in search of the gun had caught her curiosity.
Tatyana replied: “Runaways.”
“What do we do?”
Kat motioned for Beau to go down to the control room and set up the remote docking bay. Slipping a few bolts in the process, the android dragged Tatyana along on his new round trip into the depths of Ballou.
“Do you let them in?” Fate inquired. “The S.O.S. could be a trap for us to let our guard down. Odds are high it could be bandits. Technos. Or—”
“Or simply desperate people…” Kat cut her off. “This is our duty to help them. Like we did to you.”
“Them being decent would defy the probabilities.”
“Which are?”
“Low.”
“Just in case, you still have your toy, Fate?” Miles asked. “The P-90?”
Fate lifted her dirty doctor’s coat. The round-finished weapon was hidden in a fold of her medic overall.
“They really did trust you a little too much…” he sighed as he thought about the Technos on the T.M.S. Congo.
“I still believe caution should prevail,” she said, cocking her rifle as Beau went back.
“Well, it’s a good thing you’re not the house lady and that your opinion doesn’t count!” Kat snapped, grasping her rusty gun as well.
The ship emerged beyond the transparent dome. It appeared to be old, and badly damaged by the solar winds. Its charred hull had been dented by dubious landings but also by bullet holes dating back several years. Yet this seventh generation Kudzu was a civilian aircraft of limited autonomy, usually providing supplies to mining stations in the asteroid belt of Kuiper.
“No weapons…” Miles noted.
“We would be dead…” Fate mumbled, pointing her arsenal at the rotative deck.
Several minutes passed, during which Tatyana alerted the others that all attempts to communicate with the ship had failed.
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And with good reason. The dish and its antenna peers had just broken away from the Kudzu-VII, and slid down the dome before being blasted into space at the first impact with the metal honeycomb structure.
After the deck swapped—bringing the spacecraft inside, the airlock finally opened. The click of the safety catch sounded, introducing the echo of the steps on the ladder. There surfaced a man dressed in a frock coat and white pants. When his head appeared, Miles realized that it was a robot; an old ore handler with large forearms like Naamah on Enceladus.
“Who’s there?” Kat asked, pointing her rifle at the newcomer.
Landing near the foot of the ladder, he slowly turned around with his hands in the air. Curiously for an android, he was shaking—remembering Miles of Minsk from the Dead Bunch. “My name’s Uncle Tom, Madame,” he replied. “I—I’m just looking for a place to fix my ship a little. I’m looking to get to—to Laramie Post. A free port.”
“You alone, Tom?” Miles asked.
The robot looked up. At the top of the ladder appeared the frightened face of a second android.
“Her name’s Eliza, Monsieur. We both flew for Uranus. She was a maid. As for myself, I was a chrome miner. We can make ourselves useful, you’ll see—to pay for the repairs. We’ll do anything.”
Fate immediately interjected. “They are runaway bots! They will certainly attract all the vultures of the Rings with their S.O.S.!”
Kat ignored her, and passed her rifle to Miles.
“Tom, we’ll get you another ship,” the moon owner said after shaking hands with the fugitive and inviting his partner to join them.
“Which one?” Miles asked.
Kat pondered. “We’ll custom the ambulance with the spare parts from theirs. And send the latter down on autopilot to Saturn—to keep out the few bounty hunters lurking around. I will take you to the closest satellite, Miles. You and the others.”
“You would do that, Madame?” the robot interjected. He then helped Eliza adjust to the hazardous gravity. “Here!” He held out his paw to his companion of misfortune, who opened her patched purse. She cautiously gied him a few meticulously folded Separatist bills.
Kat took one to examine it in the Saturn glow. She laughed as she placed it back in Eliza’s hand. “I didn’t even know they printed this silly stuff. This money is as worthless here as it will be around the Jovian worlds.”
“I’m so sorry! We—we also have Techno dollar-credits,” Tom apologized, gesturing to his panicking wife.
“Good,” Kat smiled. “Keep them.”
The robot’s photoreceptors flickered.
“We—we can’t thank you enough! Madame…” Eliza expressed.
“Ballou. Kat Ballou.”
Kat then invited the two fugitives to join her underground paradise. Before they disappeared below, she instructed Miles and Fate to set the Kudzu for a one-way flight to the gas giant’s heart—after they could salvage some spare parts to disguise the Techno-ambulance.
“That woman does not realize the risks she is making us take!” complained Fate as she opened the ship’s airlock. “Even the Technos did not dare get in the way of the Plantations when it came to their robotic personnel going underground…”
“I thought the Technos care about the machines?” Miles reacted.
“Mars only cares about Plasticland becoming too powerful.”
“Oh.”
Leaving Fate to sabotage the nuclear reactor, the former rebel pilot scraped away the celestial dust covering the front thrusters he tried to pick up. Between two pressure sensors, the name of the ship was engraved: the Lowly.
“You need me to set a destination in the instrument panel?” he shouted from the airlock. The echo of his voice sent chrome grime flying off the walls. He coughed. “Damn chrome.”
Fate’s head appeared through the hatch leading to the Baltimore room. “The Blue tank has been dry for days. This ship will explode before even reaching the spokes.”
“Good. We can steal the flaps then. Need help inside?”
“I can handle that.”
“You sure?”
“Yes,” she said, pulling herself up. “And I will program another S.O.S. once far from this moon. I would rather make sure Miss Ballou is not signing our death warrant.”
Fate seemed just as determined to survive as he had been during the previous encounter on Enceladus and the confrontation on Old Dodge. Miles stopped her as she headed for the cockpit. “If this ship still had Blue? Would you have bolted?” he asked.
She pouted. “The thought had crossed my mind.” She paused. Miles’ hand slid down her arm, where larger chrome spots dotted her skin.
“It’s getting worse.”
“I can see that.” She coughed. “This place is not helping.”
“How long do you have?”
“I need to take off, Miles.”
“We’re taking off. To Jupiter. I told you that already.”
“You do not have a FID. How will you survive on Jupiter? You are a traitor to both sides, now.”
“You do not have an FID either.”
Fate waved at him the device a Gandahar mechanic crafted her.
Miles smiled. “Ayrelle and her shady business…”
“You did not figure a fake FID out? While deserting.”
“Like you said on the Congo, thinkin’ ain’t much my style.”
Fate set the ship’s final course on the instrument panel. “I will take the ambulance, Miles. And with me the angsty teenager,” she declared. “You are staying here for the sake of everyone.”
“You’re ditching me cold. But maybe it could be for the best…” Miles replied as he exited the ship. He bolted the airlock from the outside, then manually released the pressure on the clamps. “Until Pierre’s back on his feet he lost in space.”
“The stubborn sister still does not fit into your equation?” Fate opened the hatch leading to Ballou. Miles joined her, leaving the drifting ship.
“Maybe so…” Miles heaved with a smile, as he let himself slide into the dancing grass.
From below resounded some rousing blues. Elvis. The King. Kat had great tastes.