Jon_Sauve123
Sci-fi & Fantasy Writer
This is a humorous sci-fi work, originally meant to be a short story, but now I think it should be an actual book. It's a bit strange, but I was in a strange mood when I wrote it.
On to the excerpt
Joey went into the bar at 10:30. Came out at half past Ajanackranakor, just as the sun rays glittered through the dark of space and brightened the asteroid belt. The rough, frosty pieces of rock drifted lazily. And it wasn’t regular frost. It was space frost. No water in it at all. No oxygen.
Saturn’s huge gravitational pull yanked at his soul. Joey grinned in the frigid light of the sun. It had traveled hundreds of millions of miles to get here. He went back inside to celebrate with another beer. As he sat at the bar and drank it the locals looked at him like he was crazy and went back to their cocktails, which consisted of raw praseodymium and a whole bunch of melted krypton. Those things would kill any normal person.
And Superman, Joey thought with a dry chuckle as he drank the last of his beer. But that was kryptonite that hurt Superman. And that stuff didn’t exist. Well, maybe on Astronadium on the edge of the Seventh Galaxy. But who cared about that place. Not Superman, at any rate.
Behind him, some more of the locals chattered about his stark humanness. They couldn’t be said to laugh, but Joey knew the joke was on him.
Go ahead and drink your krypton, you dirty space monkeys.
And all the while the Eternity Tavern zoomed speedily along the asteroid belt at a tidy fifty miles a second, but the whole place was so damn huge that they seemed to be going slow by comparison. The bright light of the sun coming in the windows disappeared, and the overheads were all that lit the tavern again. Ah, just another night.
The same as the locals could not be said to laugh, this time could not really be called night. No such thing as night really, out in space. Either your view of the sun was obstructed, or it wasn’t. That was it.
“And we’re going right around Saturn now folks!” someone said happily. “Maybe we’ll see the sun again in another hundred years or so.”
No, that was a joke. And Joey laughed. It would be quite a while, but a hundred years was pushing it.
Fifty miles a second. Sixty seconds in a minute. Three thousand miles per minute. Sixty minutes in an hour. One hundred and eighty thousand miles per hour. That was more than the planet’s diameter of about seventy four thousand miles. It would probably take about an hour to get all the way around. Less.
“Bartender,” Joey said, raising a hand. “Another beer, please.”
The bartender, a local Saturnian, only grunted in their weird horse-like way as he grabbed Joey's mug and filled it from the tap. He didn’t understand Joey’s speech, of course, but the gesture was universal. And he was a regular.
Obviously, flying along in space at 50 mps was a strange experience. You get this constant sensation that you have a huge amount of pressure on you. It’s hard to get drunk at that speed; the beer you put down your throat is more apt to cower against the back of your stomach than do anything else. But he still drank. Not much else to do in the long hour waiting for the sun to come back out.
And it always does, peeking across the vast blackness of space. The sun is so large, but so small, when you think about it. Just a tiny speck of sand on the beach of forever. You never know when the tide will come in and sweep it away in a brilliant flashing moment. And that one moment, gone forever, so insignificant in something so huge and all encompassing as time. Time…
That brought him back to reality. Time. And here he was wasting his in the Eternity Tavern. It was time to get down to business.
“All right!” he yelled, getting to his feet quickly. The stool he had been sitting on fell backwards and slammed onto the clouded glass floor. He flung his coat aside and pulled out his laser gun. He turned, coming face to face with thirty surprised creatures of different origin; Saturnians, Earthlings, Martians, and even a few Gammateens that had to have come from very far away. “Which one you scumsucking freaks is Rillarad Rackridad!” They all cowered away from his two feet of solid Lunaton steel. And my gun too, he thought with a grin.
Joey felt a burn in his left shoulder, and a shockwave sent him spinning around on one foot like a ballerina. Smoke issued from the charred hole in his coat, smelling like cooked meat. He could already feel the next shockwave coming. He leapt up into the air, his foot knocking over his beer as he launched off the bar and back flipped over the energy ball. He twisted in the air and came back down, facing a standing Gammateen with a less impressive gun in his hand. It was either Rillarad, or Rillarad’s bodyguard. Either way, his knees were shaking in his aqua blue spacesuit, and his greenish face was frightened looking. He’d just seen a full blown Spacehunter dodge an energy ball that he couldn’t possibly have seen coming. He had reason to be afraid. Gammateens were timid by nature anyway.
Joey adjusted his wide brimmed synthetic wool hat with his free hand.
“Are you him?” he asked.
“N-no,” the bodyguard (or whoever it was) said, and turned slightly, pointing. While he was looking away, Joey reached out and twisted the gun from the Gammateens grip. That moved had taken him three years to perfect. The Gammateen didn’t even notice. He kept his arm up, finger crooked as if he was ready to pull a trigger. Joey followed his pointed finger and saw another Gammateen lounging in a chair close by, drinking the strange, dense water that was unique to worlds like theirs. Where there is so much water, that the stuff at the bottom gets packed down under the weight. He looked relaxed, though he stared at Joey intensely.
“I should have known they would have sent a Spacehunter after me,” Rillarad said. The bodyguard speaking Earthen had been enough to tell Joey that he was in the right place. Rillarad confirmed it.
Joey kept one gun pointed at the bodyguard, and another at his target. “Get up, Rillarad.”
“Why do I need to get up? What is with you people and getting up? Can you not just kill me where I sit? Do I really need to get up and follow you into your ship so that you can kill me there? I see no point in that. I will not get up.”
“Shut up,” Joey said, a headache already beginning behind his eyes. “What is with you people and talking? Can you not just not talk? Do you really need to question and complain about everything? I see no point in that. Shut up!”
“Fair enough, human. But do you not want to have another of your ‘beers’ before you leave?” He laughed, and all the aliens in the room joined him in their own ways. There was only a rasping sound from the Saturnian side. There was another horse grunt from behind Joey, a quiet, suggestive one. He peeked over his shoulder quickly. He was close enough to the bar to see behind it. The Saturnian bartender was holding a cheap looking stun gun, pointed toward Rillarad through the wood. He had an ally.
“If you insist on dying right here and now, Rillarad, I have no objections.” He raised his gun slightly, pretending that he was about to shoot. Rillarad stood up so fast it was probable that there was a fire under his chair. And Gammateens were especially afraid of fire, the same as any human might have been afraid being sucked into a black hole and being turned inside out. It was completely unnatural for them.
“Fine, human. As you wish. Lead the way. Oh, and don’t forget to stop and get one of your ‘beers’ on the way. I’ll wait.” More laughter, or imitations of laughter. Joey could have killed him right then, but that was not his job. Better to have Rillarad keep thinking that it was though.
On to the excerpt
Joey went into the bar at 10:30. Came out at half past Ajanackranakor, just as the sun rays glittered through the dark of space and brightened the asteroid belt. The rough, frosty pieces of rock drifted lazily. And it wasn’t regular frost. It was space frost. No water in it at all. No oxygen.
Saturn’s huge gravitational pull yanked at his soul. Joey grinned in the frigid light of the sun. It had traveled hundreds of millions of miles to get here. He went back inside to celebrate with another beer. As he sat at the bar and drank it the locals looked at him like he was crazy and went back to their cocktails, which consisted of raw praseodymium and a whole bunch of melted krypton. Those things would kill any normal person.
And Superman, Joey thought with a dry chuckle as he drank the last of his beer. But that was kryptonite that hurt Superman. And that stuff didn’t exist. Well, maybe on Astronadium on the edge of the Seventh Galaxy. But who cared about that place. Not Superman, at any rate.
Behind him, some more of the locals chattered about his stark humanness. They couldn’t be said to laugh, but Joey knew the joke was on him.
Go ahead and drink your krypton, you dirty space monkeys.
And all the while the Eternity Tavern zoomed speedily along the asteroid belt at a tidy fifty miles a second, but the whole place was so damn huge that they seemed to be going slow by comparison. The bright light of the sun coming in the windows disappeared, and the overheads were all that lit the tavern again. Ah, just another night.
The same as the locals could not be said to laugh, this time could not really be called night. No such thing as night really, out in space. Either your view of the sun was obstructed, or it wasn’t. That was it.
“And we’re going right around Saturn now folks!” someone said happily. “Maybe we’ll see the sun again in another hundred years or so.”
No, that was a joke. And Joey laughed. It would be quite a while, but a hundred years was pushing it.
Fifty miles a second. Sixty seconds in a minute. Three thousand miles per minute. Sixty minutes in an hour. One hundred and eighty thousand miles per hour. That was more than the planet’s diameter of about seventy four thousand miles. It would probably take about an hour to get all the way around. Less.
“Bartender,” Joey said, raising a hand. “Another beer, please.”
The bartender, a local Saturnian, only grunted in their weird horse-like way as he grabbed Joey's mug and filled it from the tap. He didn’t understand Joey’s speech, of course, but the gesture was universal. And he was a regular.
Obviously, flying along in space at 50 mps was a strange experience. You get this constant sensation that you have a huge amount of pressure on you. It’s hard to get drunk at that speed; the beer you put down your throat is more apt to cower against the back of your stomach than do anything else. But he still drank. Not much else to do in the long hour waiting for the sun to come back out.
And it always does, peeking across the vast blackness of space. The sun is so large, but so small, when you think about it. Just a tiny speck of sand on the beach of forever. You never know when the tide will come in and sweep it away in a brilliant flashing moment. And that one moment, gone forever, so insignificant in something so huge and all encompassing as time. Time…
That brought him back to reality. Time. And here he was wasting his in the Eternity Tavern. It was time to get down to business.
“All right!” he yelled, getting to his feet quickly. The stool he had been sitting on fell backwards and slammed onto the clouded glass floor. He flung his coat aside and pulled out his laser gun. He turned, coming face to face with thirty surprised creatures of different origin; Saturnians, Earthlings, Martians, and even a few Gammateens that had to have come from very far away. “Which one you scumsucking freaks is Rillarad Rackridad!” They all cowered away from his two feet of solid Lunaton steel. And my gun too, he thought with a grin.
Joey felt a burn in his left shoulder, and a shockwave sent him spinning around on one foot like a ballerina. Smoke issued from the charred hole in his coat, smelling like cooked meat. He could already feel the next shockwave coming. He leapt up into the air, his foot knocking over his beer as he launched off the bar and back flipped over the energy ball. He twisted in the air and came back down, facing a standing Gammateen with a less impressive gun in his hand. It was either Rillarad, or Rillarad’s bodyguard. Either way, his knees were shaking in his aqua blue spacesuit, and his greenish face was frightened looking. He’d just seen a full blown Spacehunter dodge an energy ball that he couldn’t possibly have seen coming. He had reason to be afraid. Gammateens were timid by nature anyway.
Joey adjusted his wide brimmed synthetic wool hat with his free hand.
“Are you him?” he asked.
“N-no,” the bodyguard (or whoever it was) said, and turned slightly, pointing. While he was looking away, Joey reached out and twisted the gun from the Gammateens grip. That moved had taken him three years to perfect. The Gammateen didn’t even notice. He kept his arm up, finger crooked as if he was ready to pull a trigger. Joey followed his pointed finger and saw another Gammateen lounging in a chair close by, drinking the strange, dense water that was unique to worlds like theirs. Where there is so much water, that the stuff at the bottom gets packed down under the weight. He looked relaxed, though he stared at Joey intensely.
“I should have known they would have sent a Spacehunter after me,” Rillarad said. The bodyguard speaking Earthen had been enough to tell Joey that he was in the right place. Rillarad confirmed it.
Joey kept one gun pointed at the bodyguard, and another at his target. “Get up, Rillarad.”
“Why do I need to get up? What is with you people and getting up? Can you not just kill me where I sit? Do I really need to get up and follow you into your ship so that you can kill me there? I see no point in that. I will not get up.”
“Shut up,” Joey said, a headache already beginning behind his eyes. “What is with you people and talking? Can you not just not talk? Do you really need to question and complain about everything? I see no point in that. Shut up!”
“Fair enough, human. But do you not want to have another of your ‘beers’ before you leave?” He laughed, and all the aliens in the room joined him in their own ways. There was only a rasping sound from the Saturnian side. There was another horse grunt from behind Joey, a quiet, suggestive one. He peeked over his shoulder quickly. He was close enough to the bar to see behind it. The Saturnian bartender was holding a cheap looking stun gun, pointed toward Rillarad through the wood. He had an ally.
“If you insist on dying right here and now, Rillarad, I have no objections.” He raised his gun slightly, pretending that he was about to shoot. Rillarad stood up so fast it was probable that there was a fire under his chair. And Gammateens were especially afraid of fire, the same as any human might have been afraid being sucked into a black hole and being turned inside out. It was completely unnatural for them.
“Fine, human. As you wish. Lead the way. Oh, and don’t forget to stop and get one of your ‘beers’ on the way. I’ll wait.” More laughter, or imitations of laughter. Joey could have killed him right then, but that was not his job. Better to have Rillarad keep thinking that it was though.
