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Lance Steele: Circular Logic
Mar. 15th, 2008 03:23 pm
Circular Logic
By Bill Rogers
Lieutenant Lance Steele of the Galactic Patrol scowled with grim determination. His airship’s engines didn’t behave like diesels, the weather was implausible, the sentence structure was a nightmare, and his characters wanted to pitch the obvious Russian spy overboard, abandon the expedition to the North Pole, and set course for Florida!
He squared his shoulders and narrowed his gray eyes. Picking up his favorite editing stylus, he approached his comp-o-pad, resolved to defeat the demons of passive voice or die trying!
The lights flickered. “What the hell?”
And then, just like that, he was flying. In that insanely long instant before impact Lance looked down upon his narrow, steel-walled cabin and thought “Damn! This is going to HURT!”
But the artificial gravity system’s safety field grabbed him and set him gently on the deck.
Lance growled and got to his feet. He was already opening the airtight door when the tannoy barked. “Lieutenant Steele to the bridge! Captain to the bridge!”
He rushed to the bridge. It wasn’t far; Stiletto was a small ship. “Ensign Bimbeaux! What happened?”
His second in command spun to face him, managing to stop herself before the inertia of her breasts pulled her around in a complete circle. “Lance!” she breathed, wide-eyed. “Something happened!”
“I gathered that,” Lance said very gently, cursing to himself silently. “As science officer, do you perhaps have any idea what?”
“I don’t know, Lance! All I can think is that we hit an area of locally positive spatial curvature, which as you know would overload the hyperdrive, causing the plasma shunts to pop open so as to prevent damage by overheating and overloading critical systems! And I broke a nail!”
“That’s not too serious,” Lance said.
"But Lance!" Linden breathed. "It was on my index finger!"
Lance sighed deeply, sat down in the command chair, and twisted the tannoy control to the engine room position. “Chief? Any damage back there? Can you get us up and running again?”
“No problem, Lieutenant Steele. Everything popped off and shut down back here, but I’ll have us up and running in twenty minutes.”
“Lance?” Linden turned toward him, chest heaving. She had paled all the way to her sensuous pouting lips. “Listen to this!”
She switched the ultrahyperniftycom to the overhead speakers. “Mayday,” it said, in a familiar voice. “This is Lieutenant Lance Steele aboard Stilleto. All power systems are offline. Life support is reduced to critical levels. Any ships, please respond. Mayday!”
Lance paled too. “A message from ourselves? That’s impossible!”
“It’s so scary, Lance! But it couldn’t happen! The only possible way for us to travel back in time and send ourselves a message would be to hit a speed within quantum uncertainty of lightspeed just at the very instant we crossed the event horizon of a black hole!”
Lance looked at her for a moment. Then he grabbed the tannoy knob. “CHIEF! I think we’re in the neighborhood of a small black hole, maybe Class B.”
“That would explain why the hyperdrive shut down.”
“Yeah, but I think we’re about to fall into it. We need power right now! Is there anything you can do to get things going right this instant?”
“I can try to implosion-start the main reactor, but it’s dangerous!”
“Do it!”
#
“Your majesty!” Redbeard the Unlucky shouted, spinning in his seat so he could see her with his one eye. “Passive detectors have recorded an antimatter explosion, bearing 115 down 39, range three light-minutes!”
Dyspepsia the Third, Leather Queen of the Pirates of Orion Alpha Beta Zeta Three, shifted slowly and seductively on her leopard-skin command couch. She managed a sexy smile, hiding her pain with long practice. Damn, if the Pirate Queen’s Handbook (third ed.) had mentioned anything about how badly chain mail bikinis can pinch naked flesh, she might have stayed in the wholesale flower trade!
“Is it the Galactic Patrol?”
Redbeard tapped on his keyboard with his hook. “The radiation spectrum matches detonation of a Type 13 reactor, the kind they use in their Stiletto-class couriers. But whatever it was, it’s dead. Nothing could have survived that blast. From the harmonics, I think some idiot tried an implosion-start.”
“If a Patrol ship blew up, so much the better.” She struck another sultry pose, trying to turn her wince into a come-hither look. “Keep broadcasting the distress call. I know it's an ancient trick, but if we keep at it long enough, sooner or later, somebody's going to be fool enough to fall for it.”
--end--
Copyright Note:
The original copyright owner was me, William J. Rogers Jr. However, I have released copyright of Lance Steele to the public for any noncommercial use. This includes Lance, his companion characters, and his world. You may copy and distribute the Lance Steele stories as you will, and you may write your own.
By Bill Rogers
Lieutenant Lance Steele of the Galactic Patrol scowled with grim determination. His airship’s engines didn’t behave like diesels, the weather was implausible, the sentence structure was a nightmare, and his characters wanted to pitch the obvious Russian spy overboard, abandon the expedition to the North Pole, and set course for Florida!
He squared his shoulders and narrowed his gray eyes. Picking up his favorite editing stylus, he approached his comp-o-pad, resolved to defeat the demons of passive voice or die trying!
The lights flickered. “What the hell?”
And then, just like that, he was flying. In that insanely long instant before impact Lance looked down upon his narrow, steel-walled cabin and thought “Damn! This is going to HURT!”
But the artificial gravity system’s safety field grabbed him and set him gently on the deck.
Lance growled and got to his feet. He was already opening the airtight door when the tannoy barked. “Lieutenant Steele to the bridge! Captain to the bridge!”
He rushed to the bridge. It wasn’t far; Stiletto was a small ship. “Ensign Bimbeaux! What happened?”
His second in command spun to face him, managing to stop herself before the inertia of her breasts pulled her around in a complete circle. “Lance!” she breathed, wide-eyed. “Something happened!”
“I gathered that,” Lance said very gently, cursing to himself silently. “As science officer, do you perhaps have any idea what?”
“I don’t know, Lance! All I can think is that we hit an area of locally positive spatial curvature, which as you know would overload the hyperdrive, causing the plasma shunts to pop open so as to prevent damage by overheating and overloading critical systems! And I broke a nail!”
“That’s not too serious,” Lance said.
"But Lance!" Linden breathed. "It was on my index finger!"
Lance sighed deeply, sat down in the command chair, and twisted the tannoy control to the engine room position. “Chief? Any damage back there? Can you get us up and running again?”
“No problem, Lieutenant Steele. Everything popped off and shut down back here, but I’ll have us up and running in twenty minutes.”
“Lance?” Linden turned toward him, chest heaving. She had paled all the way to her sensuous pouting lips. “Listen to this!”
She switched the ultrahyperniftycom to the overhead speakers. “Mayday,” it said, in a familiar voice. “This is Lieutenant Lance Steele aboard Stilleto. All power systems are offline. Life support is reduced to critical levels. Any ships, please respond. Mayday!”
Lance paled too. “A message from ourselves? That’s impossible!”
“It’s so scary, Lance! But it couldn’t happen! The only possible way for us to travel back in time and send ourselves a message would be to hit a speed within quantum uncertainty of lightspeed just at the very instant we crossed the event horizon of a black hole!”
Lance looked at her for a moment. Then he grabbed the tannoy knob. “CHIEF! I think we’re in the neighborhood of a small black hole, maybe Class B.”
“That would explain why the hyperdrive shut down.”
“Yeah, but I think we’re about to fall into it. We need power right now! Is there anything you can do to get things going right this instant?”
“I can try to implosion-start the main reactor, but it’s dangerous!”
“Do it!”
#
“Your majesty!” Redbeard the Unlucky shouted, spinning in his seat so he could see her with his one eye. “Passive detectors have recorded an antimatter explosion, bearing 115 down 39, range three light-minutes!”
Dyspepsia the Third, Leather Queen of the Pirates of Orion Alpha Beta Zeta Three, shifted slowly and seductively on her leopard-skin command couch. She managed a sexy smile, hiding her pain with long practice. Damn, if the Pirate Queen’s Handbook (third ed.) had mentioned anything about how badly chain mail bikinis can pinch naked flesh, she might have stayed in the wholesale flower trade!
“Is it the Galactic Patrol?”
Redbeard tapped on his keyboard with his hook. “The radiation spectrum matches detonation of a Type 13 reactor, the kind they use in their Stiletto-class couriers. But whatever it was, it’s dead. Nothing could have survived that blast. From the harmonics, I think some idiot tried an implosion-start.”
“If a Patrol ship blew up, so much the better.” She struck another sultry pose, trying to turn her wince into a come-hither look. “Keep broadcasting the distress call. I know it's an ancient trick, but if we keep at it long enough, sooner or later, somebody's going to be fool enough to fall for it.”
--end--
Copyright Note:
The original copyright owner was me, William J. Rogers Jr. However, I have released copyright of Lance Steele to the public for any noncommercial use. This includes Lance, his companion characters, and his world. You may copy and distribute the Lance Steele stories as you will, and you may write your own.
