THE RETURN OF JUBAL EARLY

(Set After Objects In Space)

The cruiser slowed to an abrupt halt, a pair of floodlights washed over the floating figure in the red gravity suit. Small bits of ice crusted over the helmet visor as an extended arm from the craft grasped onto the floater and dragged him inside the airlock.

“Harris?”

Captain John Merlin hit the com sat again. His navigator failed to answer for the third time. The Persephone was an Alliance exploration ship, checking the space quadrants outside of normal shipping lanes. The search for precious minerals and gas deposits on unexplored planets had become big business for the Alliance. The rate of planets terraforming had increased exponentially over the last ten years. After winning the war, the Alliance had to allocate its military resources to expansion, idle hands were one kind of problem, and idle hands near guns was another.

Merlin was like many in his class, a combat veteran who had become slow and fat over time. The kind of man who was once hardened by the reality of space but now softened by the trappings of bureaucracy. His four-man crew had also become pudgy around the edges and lazy. Killers who had no one left to kill became more of a liability than those they eliminated. The quota, which was the golden word now for these small exploration crews. They didn’t need to actually find anything, they didn’t need to be productive, they just needed to check the proper amount of fringe planets and file their reports.

Merlin left his gun belt hanging over his command chair and he walked down the long corridor to the airlock. Then something caused a prickling feeling on the back of his neck. The hum of the engine and atmo processor filled the hallway but there was something else wrong. There was no other noise at all. Hearing his own breath, Merlin reached down to his thigh, feeling for his pistol that was no longer there. Cursing himself for taking off his cumbersome pistol belt, the Captain took a step back. Something wet under his left