Lost In Space Sci-Fi Romance

FICTION In the distant future, will legends of the past lead lonely Captain Rayburn to the possibility of a very different life?

We’ll be rounding Tyro Four’s moon in a few minutes,” Captain Rayner of the space cruiser Helios announced over the communication system that relayed to every deck of his ship. “And from the starboard viewing points you’ll get your first good view of the Firebrand Nebula.”

Without warning the ship suddenly jerked sideways as though it had struck an asteroid. Drinks and meals flew from tables and several people lost balance and toppled against walls or chairs. The main lighting abruptly went out, leaving the deck in semi-darkness.

The starlight from outside gave a little cold light and the dim emergency torches along the flooring flickered but held.

The modulated tones of one of the stewardesses came over the intercom.

“Passengers, please stay calm. Move to the nearest fixed seating and remain seated until we give the all-clear.”

The children on board yipped and shrieked at the unexpected adventure and ran for the benches that ran along the window galleries. Older people made for the fixed armchairs. There was no fear, no panic, just a few bumps and bruised shins and rather a lot of food mess.

The back-up life support power system kicked in and lights and air conditioning all started up again. The passengers waited. The captain, on the bridge, asked Engineering for an update. The chief engineer sounded flummoxed.

“We’ve completely lost all engines. They just aren’t responding. Internal power is OK, now that the back-up has come on. But Captain, our diagnostics are showing no faults at all. There are no linkage breaks, no failure to any of the drive crystals.”

“Our PASSENGERS are going to get RESTLESS, FRIGHTENED and ANGRY”

Captain Rayner stared at the wide vista of stars cast out into the black forever before the bridge. The curved edge of the uninhabited planet Tyro Four filled the starboard view.

“We’ve hit a sink,” he said with quiet certainty to his first officer. “A space anomaly: the equivalent of quicksand. We can’t get ourselves out because any power we try to move with will simply be absorbed. We’ve got to be released by something that can dissipate the sink – drain it, if you like, leaving us to fall free through the plughole. And there’s no way of telling how big the sink area is.” “I’ll send an SOS signal – ” Captain Rayner put a hand on his arm. “That’s not possible either, Caleb. It’ll just get absorbed.”

“We’re due on Orion in 200 hours. When they don’t hear from us, they’ll send a search ship.”

“Which won’t find us. We can no longer be seen. The Sink acts like an invisibility shield. Our only realistic hope is an interruption to the Sink’s dimensions – stellar wind, for example. Or by initiating impulsion from within the Helios so that we simply float out over the edge of it.”

“Sounds impossible.” The first officer still wasn’t afraid. Fascinated and puzzled but, like everyone else on the ship, so absolutely confident in Safe Space Travel (not a single accident or fatality in six hundred years) that he just couldn’t grasp the idea of unfixable problems. “That’s about the size of it.” The first officer glanced around the crew on the bridge. Everyone was calmly waiting for orders, watching the captain.

“We need a source of power that will rock the ship. Cause it to gain momentum, slide forwards.”

“You want me to ask all nine hundred passengers and crew to run from one side of the ship to the other in unison?” First officer Caleb laughed, because it was all he could think of to do. “Stamp around in circles in the hope the rocking force generated moves us towards the edge of the sink and we can just float back into normal space?”

“Something like that.” Rayner looked thoughtful. “Marching feet brought down the walls of Jericho.” “You read the Bible?” “I love the old Earth Bible stories. The eternal child in me loves fairytales and the happy-ever-after. Reality is… sometimes such a let-down.” He pulled himself together and straightened up. “We have about five months’ survival time if our power is diverted to internal support instead of the engines. But our passengers are going to get first restless and then frightened and then very angry long before then.

“Take the Conn, Caleb – I’m going down to Engineering.”

Rayner left the bridge and walked along the smooth, curving corridors of his ship towards the engineering deck, occasionally glancing out of the windows to the stillness of space beyond.

The universe was a beautiful place! Silent and glorious and full of wonders. But it was also soulless. There was an empty feeling in his chest sometimes

when he remembered that he had nobody to go home to, no base on any planet – indeed, no home at all except the Helios. And he was due to retire in a little under five years.

He passed the cargo deck. He’d been commanded by a high Interstellar authority to take on board one particularly unusual piece of freight that was guarded by no less than eight uniformed mercenaries from a group known as the Space Knights.

The entrance to Bay Five was sealed and manned by two armed Knights at all times. One of two here now saluted and then halted him.

“We’re in a Sink, Captain.” It was a blunt statement.

“We are.” Rayner was surprised at the Knight’s accurate assessment. “Do you have a strategy?” “I was about to converse with The Almighty,” Rayner said, but the unsmiling Knight seemed to have no sense of humour. Instead he cocked his head towards the cargo bay.

“We guard a power source that might just be able to get us out.” “What? In there?” Captain Rayner was fascinated. “If it can be controlled. If we can persuade it to come to our aid.”

“Persuade it?” Rayner swallowed. “What have you got in there?”

The Knight nodded to his companion and they both touched something on each side of the door. The seal broke and the doors slid open.

In the huge cargo bay, on a plinth in the centre, stood a sarcophagus made of some kind of dull silver matte metal. It was about eight feet long and four high by three wide. The lid that covered it had odd markings etched deeply into its surface that Rayner could not decipher. He assumed the sarcophagus held the body of some high-born Elitist who was

being brought back to Orion for ceremonial interment.

The three men approached. The lead Knight touched a button on his wristband and the heavy lid slid sideways and folded away to reveal the contents.

Rayner looked down into the white satin bed of the sarcophagus where lay the human form of a beautiful young woman. It looked as though it had been moulded from silver, a gorgeous ancient Greek mannequin with blanked out eyes and frozen-waved hair.

“What is this?” Rayner put out a hand to touch, but the sharp buzzing of a force-field warned him off.

“Captain, have you ever heard of the Djinn?” the Knight asked.

“Djinn – genie – as in the fairytales from the Earth Ancients? TheArabian Nights? You are joking with me.” Rayner gave a snort of laughter.

Two others of the Knights had walked

“She’s ALIVE. They can’t just wire her in. Surely these DJINN have RIGHTS?”

up and the group now surrounded the sarcophagus like threatening guardians of some cult treasure. “No joke, Captain. This is Elaura, the last offspring of the Pleiades.” “She’s alive?” “It is contained. The Djinn have always been slaves. For some there were bottles to contain them.” The Knight smiled then. “For some – ” and he rested his hand over the force field so that it buzzed like an angry insect – “there are other forces that bind. Until the creatures are called forth to perform for their masters, that is.” “Where are you taking her?” “The plan was first with you to Orion and then on to the Outer Reaches, to its new owner, the head of an interplanetary mining consortium. Its destiny is to run a currently powerless planetary system on the furthest Orions, to be wired in to the power matrix, to provide light and quarrying energy for the mining enterprises.”

“But she’s alive. They can’t just wire her in. Surely even these – Djinn – have rights?” Rayner looked down at the beautiful, still, mercury features and a pang of pity twisted his heart. He was reminded, somewhat incongruously, of yet another fairytale from his native Earth: the Sleeping Beauty.

“Sentiment doesn’t come into it, Captain. The Djinn are tools to be used. We need such a tool.”

“Why are you telling me this? Why don’t you just ask her if she’ll help? After all, when our power finally fails – well, surely it’s in her interest too, to get the Helios out of here.”

“What rules the Djinn is outside our understanding, Captain,” said the lead Knight. “Magic makes no more sense to me than your Earth fairy tales.” He shrugged. “Nevertheless, it does exist in many areas of the Universe – and its rules must be obeyed.” “And your point is – ?” “We had word an hour ago, just before we hit the Sink, that the head of the Consortium has been assassinated. And according to Space Law, this is your ship, and the Djinn is being transported on your property. And since you have not yet been paid for its delivery, therefore by that Law, the Djinn now belongs to you.

“It is bound to you and your orders and wishes. We can do nothing except guard it. At your command we will release it into your custody and you may use it at your whim.”

Captain Rayner stared at the lead Knight and then at the companion Knights in turn. Their faces were still and set. They were mercenaries, presumably employed by the Consortium, and would already have been paid for their work.

He looked down into the sarcophagus at the wonderful form apparently sleeping there. He thought of his passengers and crew, who would all die without this extraordinary creature's help. He thought about how he might waken her.

Was he mad? Had he just envisaged himself kissing those mercury lips?

“How will she know that I now govern her?” he asked tentatively. “It knows.” “Well, I guess we’re all dead if we don’t try this. But if it goes wrong – ” Rayner looked at the lead Knight and came to a decision. “Release her into my custody. Shut down the force field. And – all of you – get out and stay out while I negotiate with her.”

The Knights, now all eight together in two menacing rows of four, nodded as one. The lead Knight pressed a command key on his wristband and the faint hum of the force-field shut off. The Knights turned and marched from the cargo bay and the double doors hissed shut behind them. Rayner was alone with his Djinn. For a few seconds, nothing happened. He felt something of a fool, staring down onto those beautiful frozen mercury features and expecting – what?

But the metal suddenly simply melted away from the creature and a second later, with such speed that his eyes couldn’t follow the movement, she was standing on the opposite side of the sarcophagus, clothed in close-fitting white garments which left only the head and hands revealed. There was still something reminiscent of an ancient Greek statue about her. Except that she was regarding him now with what looked like quizzical amusement.

“A first for you, Captain Rayner, I should think.” The voice was soft, musical, enchanting. “You know me?” “Of course. My imprisonment in the Sarcophagus didn't stop me being able to hear the tiniest whisper of the tiniest being on the furthest edge of the universe. I hear all. I know all.”

“And yet, you are apparently subject to me and my wishes.”

The Djinn shrugged and gave a

self-deprecating smile. “I’ve had it worse. At least you’ve got a sensible brain and are likely to give sensible orders. None of this three wishes nonsense.”

“The Arabian Nights,” mused Rayner, softly. “Just so.” “Were you there?” His whimsical longing made his voice quiet.

“All Djinn were. Come on, Captain, let’s get down to business. You need me to do something, but I must hear the order from you.”

Rayner suffocated his whimsy and stated firmly, looking into the large dark eyes of the Djinn.

“The Helios is in a Sink. I would like you to get us out of it. If you please.”

The Djinn smiled. “Such politesse,” she said. Very slowly she closed her almond-shaped brown eyes and opened them again, looking back into Rayner’s with amusement.

“Your wish is my command, Captain. We now sail onwards.”

Rayner felt the floor rumble under his feet, the familiar vibrating sensation of the re-started engines running. The intensity of the light dimmed momentarily and then blazed more strongly. He knew that the Helios was underway again, about to round the planet and within a few moments the Firebrand Nebula would come into view on the starboard side. He had no doubts. Orion was only days away.

“No need to get your passengers to go stamping about,” the Djinn said, with an indulgent smile. “The walls of Jericho have fallen away.”

She folded her arms. “And now I’m supposed to say what is your bidding, Master? but times have moved on and I don’t feel inclined to be anyone’s slave. So I’ll speak to you of bargains and deals and what I get as a reward for getting you and your passengers out of your Sink.”

“Is that how it works?” Rayner took in her perfect features and wondered if he’d just read the wrong storybooks. “I thought genies just obeyed orders.”

“Oh, Captain. Until twenty minutes ago you thought we were a figment of someone’s imagination. But you suspended your – disbelief – because the Universe is a vast and wondrous place – and you accepted my existence. And then you had the humanity to care about me when you heard what my former future was to be.

“And because of that, I feel a strange warmth towards you. I have never felt it before. It is a pleasant sensation.”

“You can make it REAL?” His voice was HUSKY and full of LONGING

“Meaning what, exactly?” The Djinn blinked slowly once again and smiled. “For you, it means that I can be whatever you most need me to be.”

Rayner looked away, turned his back on the beautiful creature. Could she know what he really longed for? A quiet farm, a family life amid a friendly community in a green fertile country of a planet that wasn’t at war? A wife to love, children free to play in the fields and woods of sunlit lands?

“It can all be yours,” she said, so softly it seemed she spoke at his side.

“It’s a dream. Such places don’t exist any more,” he returned. “But I can make them so.” “Illusion.” Rayner’s voice was hoarse with longing and emotion. “The reality is long gone.”

“The past is a place like any other,” the Djinn said. “Why not let me take you on a time voyage. To any past you desire. And when you find what you’re looking for, you can choose to stay, if you wish.”

“And you? Won’t you have to stay with me?”

“The Magic commands it. But there is more than that.” A gentle feminine hand touched his forearm. A voice like honey spoke in his ear. “I could learn to love, as could you. You’ve lived long enough among the stars, Captain Rayner. Come down to a planet with me. Together we can make a future in any past you choose.”

Believeit, Rayner’s brain screamed. You are being offered sanctuary from the madness of reality. Take it with both hands–what do youhavetolose?

“You can make it real?” His voice, husky and full of longing.

“Does the Helios not move freely towards her destination? Have I not made the impossible happen once?”

Rayner turned. The Djinn stood, almost as tall as he, looking at him with ages-old eyes now filled with compassion. “It’s time,” she said. “Give your ship and its commissions to Caleb, who loves the starlit pathways. Put down your burdens. Come away with me.”

She was beautiful. Ageless, compelling, fascinating – his.

“My name is William,” he whispered, beginning to lose himself in the dream.

“I am Elaura.” Their hands met, palm to palm, thumb to thumb and their fingers began to intertwine. They kissed one another’s lips gently, shyly, delicately and then separated.

“We will have all the time in all the worlds, all the wonders of the universe to choose from and explore,” Elaura promised. “And together we will both – finally – be free.”