The Criminal Streak Read online

  Regardless of the Corruption Purge, crime still existed in the Megalopolises. He’d heard of students who had robbed people both on and off campus when they’d needed extra money. It was a terrible chance to take but sometimes, if they wanted to continue their studies, they had no choice. Desperation for the examination fee led him to mug a professor one night. The next morning the police were at his door.

  Jawn didn’t want to meet his brother in front of strangers. He turned and stumbled out of the bar. The crowd on the street brushed against him and he moved back until he was against the front of the building. He didn’t know what time the bar closed or when Georg was finished work, but there was nothing else for him to do except wait here.

  The only light came from the moon overhead and the windows of the odd building lit by candles. In spite of the bustle and noise, he drifted into a light sleep, waking every time someone came out of the bar. When Georg finally did appear, Jawn struggled to his feet.

  “Hey, Georg. Remember me?” he asked.

  Georg squinted at him. “Well, well, well. If it isn’t the Smart Kid,” he said, eyeing him up and down.

  Jawn winced at the nickname Georg had given him when he started university. Georg hadn’t passed the entrance exams and had been delegated a menial job with little promise of advancement.

  “What did you do to get here? Cheat on your tests?”

  Jawn shook his head.

  Georg walked away through the throng.

  With dismay, Jawn hurried to catch up. “I was robbed,” he blurted out.

  “So?”

  Jawn could not think of an answer.

  They walked a few minutes in silence. As Jawn’s tired eyes adjusted to the moonlight, he noticed that the people walking on the crumbling sidewalks were wary. They watched the hands of anyone they approached as if expecting a weapon to appear.

  “Dad is dead.”

  “Oh.” There was a pause. Then he asked. “Is that why you’re here? You kill him?”

  “No,” Jawn said, disgusted. “He was working on a multi-block and fell and hit his head.”

  “So why are you here, then?”

  “With him gone, Mom didn’t have enough money to pay for my final exams and I tried to rob a professor.”

  “And got caught. And you were always so much smarter than me.”

  Georg stopped and stared at a large man who was approaching them followed by two equally burly men. The man smiled at Georg. “You still have time,” he said, not slowing his pace. “We’d make good partners.”

  Georg didn’t reply, just pivoted to watch the three pass by. When satisfied there was no danger, he resumed walking.

  “Who was that?” Jawn asked.

  “Just a guy.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “What do you mean ‘we’?”

  Jawn’s heart sank. He’d hoped for a better welcome from Georg, hoped that Georg would help him.

  “Can I stay with you?”

  Georg shrugged. “You can stay anywhere you want as long as you can defend it.”

  Jawn knew he couldn’t defend anything. But Georg hadn’t exactly refused him so he kept walking beside him. They passed one of the waterspouts and Georg stopped to have a drink and wash his face. Jawn did the same and they continued down the street.

  When they reached a tall metal fence, Georg led them along it until they came to a hole that had been punched in it. The hole was covered by a rusted piece of metal. Georg swung the metal up and yelled. “It’s Georg.”

  “It’s about time you got here,” a voice hollered back.

  “My brother is with me.”

  “Your brother?”

  “Yes, and we’re coming in.” Georg climbed through the hole and Jawn quickly followed.

  “Since when did you have a brother?” the man asked, stepping out of the darkness. He was a short, wiry man. Jawn watched as he set down the club he’d been holding.

  “Since he showed up at the bar tonight.”

  “What did you bring him here for?”

  “He was just committed and he has no other place to go.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Jawn.” Georg turned to his brother. “This is Oli.”

  Jawn nodded to the man.

  “Is he joining us?” Oli asked, ignoring the nod.

  Georg shrugged. “Why don’t you ask him?”

  Oli turned to Jawn. “So, are you joining us?”

  Jawn was at a loss as to what to say. He didn’t know who ‘us’ were and what ‘joining’ meant. He looked to his brother for help, but Georg was already walking away.

  “Cause, if you ain’t, you might as well leave now,” Oli snarled.

  Knowing he had no choice, Jawn slowly nodded. “I’m guess I’m with you.”

  Oli turned back to guarding the entrance. After a moment’s hesitation, Jawn hurried after Georg.

  “What is this?” he asked once he’d caught up.

  “A Tech Dump.”

  Jawn had heard of them. “What are we doing here?”

  “This is where you’re going to be living.”

  “In a Tech Dump?”

  “You have a better place?”

  Jawn looked up at the darker hulks looming against the star lit sky as he scrambled to keep up with Georg. Eventually they arrived at what looked like buildings. They rounded one of them and came to a small candle lit area. Men and women wandered in and out of the gloom behind the light.

  Jawn followed Georg into the light.

  “This is my brother, Jawn,” Georg stated, to no one in particular. “He’s one of us, now. And,” he paused for effect, “whatever he had worth stealing has already been taken.”

  The men and women continued their business. There was no welcoming gesture from any of them.

  “Is there something to eat?” Jawn leaned towards Georg and whispered.

  “Did you bring anything?”

  “No.”

  “Then there’s nothing for you to eat.”

  Chapter Two

  The spacecraft hovered above the planet. The two member crew looked down through the windows at the three main colours: green, black, and blue.

  Exploratory Captain Royd sat at the instrument panel. He flipped a switch for the air sensor to suck in some of the atmosphere. The computer immediately began calculating the temperature. The number was a lot lower than the present one on their planet; it was more like theirs had been before the asteroid hit.

  Royd pushed some keys on the keyboard and the computer determined the air composition. “Seventy eight percent nitrogen,” he read out. “Twenty one percent oxygen, plus some carbon dioxide, water vapor and other minor gases.”

  He looked at Exploratory Officer Gwin. “Check the wind,” he said.

  Exploratory Officer Gwin sent out a probe and looked at the readings. “The winds are light,” she said.

  “The air pressure and gravity seem comparable to that on our planet,” Royd said. “And its sun is just like ours.”

  The two looked at each other. “This is the closest one we’ve found so far,” Gwin said. “Are we going to suit up?”

  Royd shook his head. “Not yet. We’ll move over what appears to be water and take samples there.”

  The spaceship drifted leisurely over the land. Gwin gazed out the window. The landscape was different from what she’d seen on other planets but so similar to what she’d read about their planet before the hit. Meadows and trees and hills passed under them. Clouds swirled, creating shade in some areas, rain in others.

  Above the mass of blue another probe was sent for a sample. The computer confirmed that it was liquid with a composition comparable to their water. Winds and temperature were again recorded and stored.

  “Looking better and better all the time,” Gwin said.

  “We’ll check its dark phase.”

  In a matter of minutes the craft was engulfed in darkness. From the windows they could see some of the millions of stars, which mad
e up the galaxy in which their own planet and this one resided. Also in the darkness, they could see a moon. When the samples of the air and water, and the temperature proved to be the same, the ship returned to the sunlight.

  “We’ll float and observe for a couple of days,” Royd said. He set the controls on solar powered, self propel.

  The ship was known as a space clipper because of its small size and speed. It consisted of one octagonal shaped room in the middle of which stood metal cylinder that reached from floor to ceiling. Rings of different coloured, glowing material circled the cylinder. Two of the walls had doors leading to tiny personal berths and one had the door to the intermix air chamber. The upper half of the remaining walls had windows made of a thick, clear substance embedded with rows of little black dots. The lower half of three of the walls had control panels—two for flying the clipper, one for conducting their tests and recording the information.

  Royd stood and walked to the centre cylinder. He touched the red ring and part of one wall beneath a window folded out into a table with two narrow, chairs extended on each side. The chairs consisted of a back support and a section that folded down for a seat. Recessed into the wall were rows of tubes containing all their meals.

  “Are you hungry?” Royd asked.

  Gwin, still sitting at her panel, wrinkled her nose. “I’m getting so tired of eating that tubed food.”

  “Tough,” Royd said. “What will it be? Beef pulp, chicken pulp, or vegetarian pulp?”

  “Chicken, I guess.”

  After the meal, they watched as the darkness enveloped them. The outside lights automatically came on and Gwin pressed a grey ring to dim them.

  “Isn’t this beautiful,” Gwin sighed as she looked out the window. Against the blackness she could see the planet’s moon and the sky full of glimmering stars.

  “I’m going to bed,” Royd said.

  “You’re not going to watch this?” Gwin turned to him.

  “Why should I? It doesn’t look any different from what we’ve seen every night since we began this voyage.”

  “I know, but soon we’ll be home.”

  Royd shrugged and went to his bedroom.

  Gwin looked back at the sight. She never tired of seeing the real night when she travelled. The actual expanse of the sky, the vividness of the moon, the intense brightness of the stars was much more radiant than the artificial night at home. She shook her head. “I wish I’d lived when our nights were like this,” she murmured.

  The clipper flew above the planet for two days. Through powerful external binoculars Royd and Gwin noted many plants and animals. There were colourful flowers, green grasses, insects of different sizes, small rodents, and small to medium size mammals. The larger occupants of the waters that they could see were called fish, sharks, and whales. They were so similar to the ones that had once occupied their planet that they gave them the same names.

  The names, though, came from their pictured history books. All life forms, except those kept for consumption, had been destroyed long ago on their planet; destroyed so there was more room, more air, more chance of survival for their species.

  “It’s strange that with this atmosphere, we haven’t seen any buildings, food crops, or signs of transportation,” Gwin said on their third day. “It is so much like our own I’ve been expecting to see a species like us step out of the trees at any time.”

  “And that’s what worries me,” Royd replied. “The other planets we visited, although not suitable for our species, had some sort of intelligent life form.”

  “They may have detected us and are hiding.”

  “Or waiting to ambush us.” Royd slowed their engines. “Maybe it’s time we found out.”

  He gently landed the clipper in an open meadow surrounded by trees. A small river ran through it. He touched the blue ring and the door to a storage area under one of the windows opened revealing their protective suits. They donned the suits and headgear and hooked up their air hoses. Gwin pushed the green ring which opened the door to the intermix air chamber. They stepped inside and the door closed behind them. The chamber slowly descended to ground level. Royd and Gwin surveyed the area around them from the windows. There were no sudden appearances, no attack by planet dwellers.

  Royd nodded and Gwin pushed the button to let in the outside air. There was no noticeable change and since neither pushed the emergency button signalling a problem with their suit, the seal to the outside automatically opened a few seconds later.

  Royd stepped out onto the grass with Gwin following. The air quality sensors on their suits did not beep. Royd reached up and turned off his air supply. He slowly opened the front of his mask. Gwin watched, ready to rush to his rescue if, in spite of the readings, he could not breathe this air. Royd took a tentative breath, then another and when nothing happened to cause him worry, he began to breathe normally. He smiled at Gwin who shut off her own supply and opened her mask, taking a deep breath.

  “Off with the suits,” Royd said.

  They quickly removed the encumbering protective suits and stood in the sunlight in their red skin-tight space suits. Gwin turned her face to the sky. “I could get used to the feel of a sun,” she said. “I wish we could still use ours for pleasure.”

  “Check the soil for nutrients,” Royd said.

  Royd scouted the area while Gwin returned to the ship for the necessary equipment. She pushed the probe of the soil sampler into the ground and watched the readings.

  “Almost an exact match to what is necessary for our seeds,” she told Royd. “Plus, it has rained within the past two days.”

  While Royd studied the numbers, Gwin glanced around her. Everything here was real and alive. Birds glided on the wind drafts, and small animals so much like their squirrels chattered in live trees. At ground level, insects she named butterflies and bees flitted among the flowers.

  “I think we may have found a third potential planet,” Royd said.

  Gwin turned to him. “Do you think it will support our people?”

  “We’ll soon find out. Let’s plant our seeds so we can get out of here.”

  Because of the complexity of their own farming technology they could not bring along the equipment now used for working the land. Scientists, therefore, had had to go back in time and replicate the tools used by early farmers to turn the soil. Even then, because of the small size of the clipper, the scientists had only been able to give them shovels and rakes and instructions on how to use them.

  They each dug and raked three plots of soil, then, using the ancient method of hand broadcast, they sowed the fast-growing seeds they’d been given and raked them in.

  Over the next two weeks, during which it rained heavily once, Royd and Gwin watched the plots. Of the five planets they had been sent to check in different parts of their galaxy, two had been totally unsuitable for supporting their species. On the other two planets the soil had been lacking in some nutrients and the seeds had sprouted slowly. Here, however, the first shoots appeared quickly and they kept a record of how much they grew each day. A daily report of the weather was also entered into the computer.

  When not at the computer Gwin spent much of her spare time exploring the area around them on foot. “This is too gorgeous,” she breathed, as she walked through the trees and beside the river.

  One evening, she quietly sat with her feet dangling in the water. She listened to the birds chirping in the trees and watched the animals come for a drink. They had no fear of her. She even sipped the water, finding it cool but without much taste, unlike the flavoured water at home.

  She walked back to the ship and entered the intermix chamber, which whisked her up to the octagonal room.

  “This would be a great place to spend a holiday,” she said to Royd, who sat in front of the computer entering that day’s information.

  “Why?” He asked, turning to face her.

  “Because it’s so lovely here.”

  “And what would you do all day?”
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br />   “Sit and watch the animals and insects and the scenery.”

  “And you’d be bored within a week.”

  “Perhaps you’re right,” Gwin sighed.

  “We’ll be leaving tomorrow,” Royd said, turning back to the screen. “We have enough information to send home and I think they will be happy.”

  “It does look promising, doesn’t it?” Gwin asked, her voice quiet.

  Royd glanced at her. “What’s the matter with you?”

  “I don’t suppose we could say this one wouldn’t be appropriate.”

  “Why?”

  “It seems a shame to disturb this peaceful place.”

  “Our orders are to find a planet where our species could survive. We’ve done that.”

  “We could survive on the other two,” Gwin said, thinking of the two planets with their somewhat desolate terrain. They wouldn’t be marred by their species’ habitation.

  “Our tests indicate our best chances are on this one.”

  “But they’re closer to our home planet. Ships would only have to make one fuel and supply stop. It takes two stops to reach here. Don’t you think that’s important?”

  “What I think doesn’t matter. I just follow orders. And I think you’d better remember that you do, too.”

  “Could we stay another day, then?” Gwin pleaded.

  Royd looked at her. “You really like it here, don’t you?”

  Gwin nodded. “After the noise and congestion of our planet, this is paradise.”

  “We don’t have time to waste,” Royd said briskly. “We begin our return trip tomorrow.”