Moonchild, an excerpt from a work in progress

For the last three years, I have been working on a massive work in progress. A novel that started out as a minor side project and has now turned into by far the longest and most ambitious thing I've ever tried to write.

Part of this novel is a short story written by one of the characters, a woman writing under a man's name for professional reasons, published in a 1952 issue of Amazing Stories. I had recently read the Foundation trilogy by Asimov, which consists entirely of men in tweed jackets smoking pipes and saying "ah Gerald, what you don't realize is that my gambit has you defeated." I really wanted to try writing in that very specific 1950s sci-fi style, and this was my attempt to do that. Please enjoy, and I hope someday you can enjoy the entire novel from which it comes.

-Joseph Fink

Moonchild

by Rupert Kip

A rookie detective gets more than he bargained for when a space mystery turns murderous!

Detective 2nd Class Tug Bishop adjusted his badge as the shuttle docked with the massive vessel before him. The badge still felt heavy on his chest, so much more weight than the ones given to grunts working the patrol ships. But he knew he could live up to it. Detective had been his goal, and Tug Bishop always achieved his goals. The starship before him, the Babalon Working, was an engineering vessel, designed to build and maintain other structures in an orbital environment, and so it was both enormous and complex. Tug hardly even knew how his own shuttle worked, and so found himself dazed at the thought of the banks of terminals and switchboards and gears required to power a monster like this. Still, it was easier to think about the simple physics of one ship docking with another than to let his mind linger for even a moment on the monstrous abyss beyond. Tug could never get used to the idea of space, the sheer endless empty of it.

The door opened with a hiss, and he gathered himself, stood as tall as he could manage, and stepped out into the boarding lobby. The lobby was still exposed to the vacuum, and so Tug had to wear an Environmental Protection Hood until the airlock was open.

Another man in a spacesuit sat waiting, a Detective 1stclass badge pinned to his chest.

“Ah, they sent me a rookie,” the man said, nodding good naturedly at Tug. “God, I wish you could smoke through one of these things.” He fiddled with the thin filament of his own Environmental Protection Hood.

“Detective Tug Bishop, sir.” Tug saluted, and the man made a placating wave with his right hand.

“That’s all right. No need for formality on the job. Henry Beauford. Just call me Hank, none of this ‘sir’ business. Any idea what this distress signal was about?”

“No, sir. I mean, no. Details couldn’t be made out. Only the location beacon and the pattern for ‘extreme distress’”

Hank hmmed, and then pulled out a thin silver tool from his belt. “Well, no one is answering the front door, so I’m afraid I’ll have to jimmy it open.” He stooped, and inserted the instrument into the crack of the airlock’s hatch.

“Can those be jimmied?” Tug didn’t know how starships of this size worked, but he had always thought of airlocks less as a door than as an inalterable fact of life. On this side, oxygen and all that was human. On the other side, measureless space.

“Oh sure,” Hank said, twirling the instrument around carefully, with one hand resting on the hatch. “They won’t teach you this one at the academy, but there’s a way around almost everything. In this case, I just have to fool the air pressure sensors into thinking they’ve achieved equilibrium. Then we’ll need to hurry on through before all of the air in the ship gets pulled out.”

Tug nodded, not feeling particularly reassured by the explanation. Everything he knew about investigation (truly everything, since his field experience thus far was limited, to put it kindly) came from Giles Clapton, his instructor at the academy. Tug couldn’t imagine that Giles would have approved of this kind of shortcut. But sure enough, the airlock popped open with a clunk and a hurricane force of wind rushed out of the ship. “Quickly now,” called Hank, and the two officers pulled their way through the hatch, which the older man closed with a slap on the emergency seal button.

“That’s that, then,” Hank said with satisfaction, and pulled back his Environmental Protection Hood.

“Wait!” said Tug, alarmed. “What if the distress signal had something to do with poisonous gas?”

“I’ll tell you a secret kid, it’s never poisonous gas.” The atmospheric detectors on their suits chimed a soft All Clear. “See?” He lit a cigarette. “Just clean air and good tobacco.”

Tug removed his hood too, took a few tentative breathes, but, beneath the smoke, he could only detect the faint plastic odor of new starship. “I don’t hear anyone.”

“No, no signs of life,” agreed Hank. “Did you pull up a roster?”

“Yes, right, I have the list just here.” Tug examined the print out. “A science officer. Two engineers. A galley cook. And the captain. Small crew for such a massive machine.”

“These big ships mostly run automatically.” Hank stubbed out the cigarette with one boot. Bishop winced at the ash marks on the floor. Giles Clapton had always taught him that even the smallest mark on a crime scene had better have been made either before or during the crime. “Sloppy detectives make sloppy arrests,” Giles had always told them. But the detective outranked him, so Tug just nodded and followed after as they went down a corridor. The rooms were eerily empty and quiet. The bunks were all neatly made, no sign of disturbance. The galley and dining area were recently cleaned. Listening closely, Tug could only hear the faint booming echo of the ship’s great engines as they idled, running just enough to keep the power on.

He kept his head turned so he didn’t have to look at the window, which showed nothing. No planets, no life, only a few faint stars, and limitless nothing. Tug shuddered.

“Where is everyone?”

“Either on the ship or not on it.” Hank shrugged. “People don’t vanish. They only move. You’ll learn that every case is just a matter of making a list and checking off each item. In this case, the list is every room. We check them all off, and…ah.”

He stopped as the smell hit them. A dark smell of flesh, wrong and intrusive. Tug felt his heart hammering and he couldn’t help but jog past his superior in an undignified desire to see what was waiting for them.

It was a brutal scene. The crew lounge was a mess, each body placed just so, forming a pattern, perhaps a symbol, although not a symbol that Bishop recognized.

“I count four,” said Hank, his voice calm and detached. “One’s missing.” Tug was sure that Hank saw scenes like this all the time. Maybe Tug just didn’t have the constitution necessary to be a detective, if it meant keeping cool in a butcher shop like this. Hank noticed his discomfort. “I was just like you at first, don’t worry. You’ll find your legs. Come on, we need to identify these poor souls.”

Tug could hardly believe he was, on his first case, digging through the wet pockets of a corpse, looking for id. But here he was. Between them, he and Hank identified an engineer, a galley cook, a science officer, and another engineer.

“So where is the captain?” asked Hank.

“Do you think he was taken?” replied Bishop. “Or—” His mouth went dry at the thought, his hands clenched. “Or do you think he did this?”

“I don’t like to jump to conclusions, but yes, I’d say he is our primary suspect.” Hank brought up a diagram of the ship up on the lounge terminal, “It seems that the bridge and the captain’s quarters is back to the left and upstairs. Let’s see if anyone’s home.”

The long identical halls of the Babalon Working made Tug feel dizzy, like he was in a dream, the kind where no matter how fast he ran, he stayed exactly where he was. But this wasn’t a dream, and soon enough they came to a bank of stairs. Everything was pristine. If a person trailing blood had come this way, they had cleaned up after themselves. Hank put a finger over his lips, led the way up to the bridge.

As Hank had said, much of the work on a ship of this class was automated, and so the consoles beeped and flashed contentedly, much as they would have if their now murdered crew had been sitting at the ready, listening attentively for their captain’s orders. But the crew was dead, and the captain was gone, and the sturdy efficient quiet of the bridge set Tug on edge. He glanced over the controls, couldn’t see anything set to any unusual positions as far as he knew. Not that he had extensive knowledge of starships, but he had learned enough to tell if a reading was wildly off base.

“Nothing here but the digital rowers,” said Hank. “Used to be ships kept slaves chained to their oars, now they’re bits of information, beeping away in here. Same idea though. They work while we don’t. Come on, kid. Let’s see if we can find that captain.” He nodded toward the captain’s quarters, directly off the bridge. The door was shut, no sign of a disturbance.

“Hold on,” said Tug. “I just want to check something.” A case is never solved in a grand revelation or unmasking, he could hear Giles Clapton lecturing. This was Tug’s first real case, and he was determined to get it right. A case is solved through the slow accumulation of seemingly insignificant details.

“No time,” said Hank, but Tug was already pressing a few console buttons.

“This isn’t right,” said Tug.

“What is it?” said Hank, impatience in his voice as he stood outside the captain’s door.

“Every distress call sent by an F-class starship is logged, with the id number of the officer who sent it. This one was logged with the captain’s id.”

“Ok, sure. He was the only one alive.”

“Well,” said Tug. “If the captain was the one who did that bloodbath, then why would he have called in the authorities?”

Hank sighed. “Listen, kid, I respect your investigative skills, but the truth is stories are simple. Maniacs don’t have complicated motivations, they’re just maniacs. Maybe he wanted us to see what he had done. Maybe some part of him wanted us to stop him. Hell, maybe an intruder did it, and the captain managed to get off a distress signal before dying in his cabin. Point is, we won’t know for sure until we get in there.”

“But sir, isn’t there a chance that this is a trap? That he wants us to go in there?”

Hank nodded solemnly. “Absolutely.” Then he turned and opened the captain’s door with a quick twist of the console. From outside of the room, the captain’s quarters seemed utterly still and silent. “Doesn’t seem that anyone’s home.”

Tug didn’t feel reassured by his superior’s words. The silence of the ship felt very loud now, the rush of his blood and his breath booming in his ears. He loosened the strap on his laser pistol’s holster. Hank, seeing what he was doing, shrugged. “Better careful than dead,” he said, and he did the same.

The first thing Tug noticed about the captain’s room was that same sour smell of blood. There had been slaughter here too, and he braced himself for what they would discover. He followed after Hank, and the two of them crept around the captain’s desk to find a man in a ship’s uniform, with his throat slit from ear to ear.

“Here’s our captain,” said Hank. But Tug didn’t think so. Because Tug had noticed something desperately wrong. He knew this man. And this man could not be here. It was Giles Clapton, Tug’s instructor at the academy. Giles, who had requested to be Tug’s partner on his star pupil’s first case. Giles, who believed that the role of the mentor did not end at the classroom’s door. Giles, who had planned to surprise Tug when Tug arrived at the scene.

Coincidences do, in fact, exist, Giles had told Tug once. But when investigating a case, it is better to act as though there were no such thing. “Why, he can’t be our captain,” said Tug. “Giles knows the law enforcement handbook down to the page numbers, but he doesn’t know a thing about steering a behemoth like this.”

“You know him?” said Hank, and there was a queer turn to his tone. The iron had gone out of it, and now the words slithered out like snakes.

“Sure, I know him. Giles Clap—” Which is when Tug finally noticed a portrait by the desk. It was of Hank, standing dignified, in a very different uniform. Hank followed his gaze and sighed.

“Darn it, son. I thought this would go differently.”

Tug had been a fast shot his entire life. Working patrol on mining planets had taught him to be ready for attack at any moment. And the prickling on his neck urged his laser pistol out of its holster and into his hand. But Hank was still faster than him, mainly because he didn’t go for his laser pistol at all. He just picked up the letter opener from the captain’s desk and planted it in Tug Bishop’s throat. Tug managed a shot, but it only hit the portrait, blasting a hole right through the painted face. Hank laughed. “Why, if you were as good at shooting people as you are at shooting pictures, I’d be in real trouble right now.”

A brilliant pain radiated out from Tug’s neck and he tried once again to aim his laser pistol, this time right at Hank’s midsection, but his hands just wouldn’t do it. The pistol was so heavy, and getting heavier by the moment. Soon his fingers could no longer keep their hold, slick as they were with his own blood, and the laser pistol clattered to the floor. His vision was dark at the edges. It felt like the terrible void of space muscling in, like he was looking at the world from the wrong side of the airlock.

“Hey now,” said Hank, helping him into the captain’s leather chair, “take it easy. You’ve sustained a nasty wound.” He lit two cigarettes, put one in Tug’s mouth and one in his own. “I was sorry to have to call you boys in. But I needed another two bodies. These big ships have such a surprisingly small crew. There just wasn’t enough blood.” He put a hand on Tug’s shoulder and shook his head sadly. “Not enough blood, you see.”

The badge felt heavy on Tug’s chest, so much more weight than the ones given to grunts working the patrol ships. If he had only stayed in those patrol ships, if he had only shrunk his ambitions to the size of three rations a day and a weekend leave every four weeks, then he wouldn’t be in this monster of a ship, dying, in front of what he now knew was its captain.

“Name really is Hank, case you were wondering. Captain Henry Beaumont. Sorry to play the little farce with you, but it was just lucky happenstance that your partner, uh what was his name?”

Tug tried to say it, but his lips were no longer taking orders from his brain. Hank held up a placating hand. “I don’t suppose it matters. Save your strength. Anyway, it was a lucky thing he got here well before you. Gave me a chance to take care of him and do this little switch with our uniforms.”

Tug felt enough life left in him for only one more word, and he gathered the air and said it. “Why?” He slipped from the chair, fell to the floor next to his old academy instructor. Hank crouched over him, took the cigarette out of Tug’s mouth. “Oops. Don’t want you to burn yourself now. The why is a little complicated. But basically it was all necessary for the ritual. A body isn’t a body, you see. A body is a doorway.” He traced a little doorway on Tug’s chest with his finger and winked. “Been preparing a long time. It’s all in the tomes. But you need so much blood, you see.”

The black of space invaded Tug’s vision more and more. He was fully on the other side of that airlock, and would never be on the side with the oxygen and the warmth of humanity again. And it was all for nothing. All for some mad man who believed he needed blood for magic. He heard his mother, clear as anything, in his ear. “Come on home, Tug,” she said. And so he did.

Hank looked at Tug’s body for a while, then closed the young man’s eyes and took a seat in the chair. There was still a lot of blood on it, but he didn’t mind a little blood on his clothes. After all, that was the elixir that was going to change everything.

“No, a body isn’t a body,” he repeated. “A body is a doorway.” And he smoked, and he waited. In the big windows, the stars glittered coldly, thousands of them. Then the whole of the universe rippled. “Ah, aha,” he said to the two bodies lying at his feet, “now watch this. No one in all of history has seen this before.”

Through the window, the stars opened up, and the entire universe began to give birth.