The Best Alternate History Stories of the 20th Century Read online

  Captain Future, Man of Tomorrow. God help us if that were true.

  Ten minutes later a small ship shaped like an elongated teardrop rose from an underground hangar on the lunar surface. It was the Comet, the superswift craft of the Futuremen, known far and wide through the System as the swiftest ship in space.

  —HAMILTON, Calling Captain Future (1940)

  My name’s Rohr Furland. For better or worse, I’m a spacer, just like my father and his mother before him.

  Call it family tradition. Grandma was one of the original beamjacks who helped build the first powersat in Earth orbit before she immigrated to the Moon, where she conceived my dad as the result of a one-night stand with some nameless moondog who was killed in a blowout only two days later. Dad grew up as an unwanted child in Descartes Station; he ran away at eighteen and stowed away aboard a Skycorp freighter to Earth, where he lived like a stray dog in Memphis before he got homesick and signed up with a Russian company looking for native-born selenians. Dad got home in time to see Grandma through her last years, fight in the Moon War on the side of the Pax Astra and, not incidentally, meet my mother, who was a geologist at Tycho Station.

  I was born in the luxury of a two-room apartment beneath Tycho on the first anniversary of the Pax’s independence. I’m told that my dad celebrated my arrival by getting drunk on cheap luna wine and balling the midwife who had delivered me. It’s remarkable that my parents stayed together long enough for me to graduate from suit camp. Mom went back to Earth while Dad and I stayed on the Moon to receive the benefits of full citizenship in the Pax: Class A oxygen cards, good for air even if we were unemployed and dead broke. Which was quite often, in Dad’s case.

  All of which makes me a mutt, a true son of a bastard, suckled on air bottles and moonwalking before I was out of my diapers. On my sixteenth birthday, I was given my union card and told to get a job; two weeks before my eighteenth birthday, the LEO shuttle that had just hired me as a cargo handler touched down on a landing strip in Galveston, and with the aid of an exoskeleton I walked for the first time on Earth. I spent one week there, long enough for me to break my right arm by falling on a Dallas sidewalk, lose my virginity to an El Paso whore, and get one hell of a case of agoraphobia from all that wide-open Texas landscape. Fuck the cradle of humanity and the horse it rode in on; I caught the next boat back to the Moon and turned eighteen with a birthday cake that had no candles.

  Twelve years later, I had handled almost every union job someone with my qualifications could hold—dock slob, cargo grunt, navigator, life support chief, even a couple of second-mate assignments—on more vessels than I could count, ranging from orbital tugs and lunar freighters to passenger shuttles and Apollo-class ore haulers. None of these gigs had ever lasted much longer than a year; in order to guarantee equal opportunity for all its members, the union shifted people from ship to ship, allowing only captains and first-mates to remain with their vessels for longer than eighteen months. It was a hell of a system; by the time you became accustomed to one ship and its captain, you were transferred to another ship and had to learn all over again. Or, worse, you went without work for several months at a time, which meant hanging around some spacer bar at Tycho Station or Descartes City, waiting for the local union rep to throw some other guy out of his present assignment and give you his job.

  It was a life, but it wasn’t much of a living. I was thirty years old and still possessed all my fingers and toes, but had precious little money in the bank. After fifteen years of hard work, the nearest thing I had to a permanent address was the storage locker in Tycho where I kept my few belongings. Between jobs, I lived in union hostels on the Moon or the elfives, usually occupying a bunk barely large enough to swing either a cat or a call-girl. Even the whores lived better than I did; sometimes I’d pay them just to let me sleep in a decent bed for a change, and never mind the sex.

  To make matters worse, I was bored out of my wits. Except for one cy-cleship run out to Mars when I was twenty-five, I had spent my entire career—hell, my entire life—running between LEO and the Moon. It’s not a bad existence, but it’s not a great one either. There’s no shortage of sad old farts hanging around the union halls, telling big lies to anyone who’ll listen about their glory days as beamjacks or moondogs while drinking away their pensions. I was damned if I would end up like them, but I knew that if I didn’t get off the Moon real soon, I would be schlepping LOX tanks for the rest of my life.

  Meanwhile, a new frontier was being opened in the outer system. Deep-space freighters hauled helium-3 from Jupiter to feed the fusion tokamaks on Earth, and although Queen Macedonia had placed Titan off-limits because of the Plague, the Iapetus colony was still operational. There was good money to be made from landing a gig on one of the big ships that cruised between the gas giants and the belt, and union members who found work on the Jupiter and Saturn runs had guaranteed three-year contracts. It wasn’t the same thing as making another trip between Moon and LEO every few days. The risks were greater, but so was the payoff.

  Competition for jobs on the outer-system ships was tight, but that didn’t stop me from applying anyway. My fifteen-year service record, with few complaints from previous captains and one Mars run to my name, helped me put a leg up over most of the other applicants. I held down a job as a cargo grunt for another year while I waited, but the union eventually rotated me out and left me hanging in Sloppy Joe’s Bar in Tycho. Six weeks later, just as I was considering signing up as a tractor operator on the Clavius Dome construction project, the word came: the Jove Commerce needed a new executive officer, and my name had been drawn from the hat.

  There was only one hitch. Since the Commerce didn’t come further in-system than Ceres, and because the union didn’t guarantee passage to the belt as part of the deal, I would have to either travel aboard a clipper—out of the question, since I didn’t have money—or find a temporary job on an outbound asteroid freighter.

  Okay, I was willing to do that, but now there was another complication: few freighters had available gigs for selenians. Most vessels which operated in the main belt were owned by the Transient Body Shipping Association, and TBSA captains preferred to hire crewmembers from other ships owned by the co-op rather than from my union. Nor did they want to sign up some dude who would only be making a one-way trip, because they’d lose him on Ceres before the trip was half-over.

  The predicament was explained to me by my union rep when I met with him in his office in Tycho. Schumacher was an old buddy; he and I had worked together aboard a LEO tugboat before the union had hired him as its Tycho Station representative, so he knew my face and was willing to cut me some slack.

  “Look, Rohr,” he said, propping his moccasins up on his desk, “here’s the scoop. I’ve checked around for a boat that’ll take you on, and I found what you were looking for. An Ares-class ore freighter, outbound for Ceres . . . in fact, she’s already docked at Lagrange Four and is ready to launch as soon as her captain finds a new second.”

  As he spoke, Schumacher punched up a holo of the ship, and it revolved in the tank above his desk. It was a standard rock hauler: eighty-two meters in length, with a gas-core nuclear engine at one end and a drum-shaped crew module at the other, joined at the center by the long narrow spine and open cargo bays. An uprated tugboat, really; nothing about it was either unfamiliar or daunting. I took a slug off the whisky flask he had pulled out of his desk drawer. “Great. What’s her name?”

  He hesitated. “The TBSA Comet,” he said reluctantly. “Her captain is Bo McKinnon.”

  I shrugged and passed the flask back to him. “So what’s the catch?”

  Schumacher blinked. Instead of taking a hit off the whisky, he recapped the flask and shoved it back in the drawer. “Let me repeat that,” he said. “The Comet. Bo McKinnon.” He peered at me as if I had come down with Titan Plague. “You’re telling me you’ve never heard of him?”

  I didn’t keep up with the TBSA freighters or their captains; they returned to th
e Moon only once every few months to drop off their cargo and change crews, so few selenians happened to see them unless they were getting drunk in some bar. “Not a clue,” I said.

  Schumacher closed his eyes. “Terrific,” he murmured. “The one guy who’s never heard of Captain Future and it’s gotta be you.”

  “Captain who?”

  He looked back at me. “Look, just forget the whole thing, okay? Pretend I never mentioned it. There’s another rock hauler heading out to Ceres in about six or seven weeks. I’ll talk to the Association, try to get you a gig on that one instead. . . .”

  I shook my head. “I can’t wait another six or seven weeks. If I’m not on Ceres in three months, I’ll lose the Jove Commerce job. What’s wrong with this gig?”

  Schumacher sighed as he reached back into the drawer for the flask. “What’s wrong,” he said, “is the nut who’s in command. McKinnon is the worst captain in the Association. No one who’s shipped out with him has ever stayed aboard, except maybe the google he’s got for a first mate.”

  I had to bite my tongue when he said that. We were pals, but racism isn’t an endearing trait. Sure, Superiors can be weird—their eyes, for starters, which was why some people called them by that name—but if you also use words like nigger, slant, kike or spic to describe people, then you’re no friend of mine.

  On the other hand, when you’re hungry for work, you’ll put up with just about anything.

  Schumacher read the expression on my face. “It’s not just that,” he said hastily. “I understand the first officer is okay.” For a google, that is, although he didn’t say it aloud. “It’s McKinnon himself. People have jumped ship, faked illness, torn up their union cards . . . anything to get off the Comet.”

  “That bad?”

  “That bad.” He took a long hit off the flask, gasped, and passed it back across the desk to me. “Oh, the pay’s okay . . . minimum wage, but by Association standards that’s better than union scale . . . and the Comet passes all the safety requirements, or at least so at inspection time. But McKinnon’s running a tank short of a full load, if y’know what I mean.”

  I didn’t drink from the flask. “Naw, man, I don’t know what you mean. What’s with this . . . what did you call him?”

  “Captain Future. That’s what he calls himself, Christ knows why.” He grinned. “Not only that, but he also calls his AI ‘The Brain’ . . .”

  I laughed out loud. “The Brain? Like, what? He’s got a brain floating in a jar? I don’t get it. . . .”

  “I dunno. It’s a fetish of some kind.” He shook his head. “Anyway, everyone who’s worked for him says that he thinks he’s some kinda space hero, and he expects everyone to go along with the idea. And he’s supposed to be real tough on people . . . you might think he was a perfectionist, if he wasn’t such a slob himself.”

  I had worked for both kinds before, along with a few weirdos. They didn’t bother me, so long as the money was right and they minded their own business. “Ever met him?”

  Schumacher held out his hand; I passed the flask back to him and he took another swig. Must be the life, sitting on your ass all day, getting drunk and deciding people’s futures. I envied him so much, I hoped someone would kindly cut my throat if I was ever in his position.

  “Nope,” he said. “Not once. He spends all his time on the Comet, even when he’s back here. Hardly ever leaves the ship, from what I’ve been told . . . and that’s another thing. Guys who’ve worked for him say that he expects his crew to do everything but wipe his butt after he visits the head. Nobody gets a break on his ship, except maybe his first officer.”

  “What about him?”

  “Her. Nice girl, name of . . .” He thought hard for a moment, then snapped his fingers. “Jeri. Jeri Lee-Bose, that’s it.” He smiled. “I met her once, not long before she went to work on the Comet. She’s sweet, for a google.”

  He winked and dropped his voice a bit. “I hear she’s got a thing for us apes,” he murmured. “In fact, I’ve been told she’s bunking with her captain. If half of what I’ve heard about McKinnon is true, that must make him twice as sick as I’ve heard.”

  I didn’t reply. Schumacher dropped his feet and leaned across the desk, lacing his fingers together as he looked straight at me. “Look, Rohr,” he said, as deadly serious as if he were discussing my wanting to marry his sister, “I know you’re working under a time limit and how much the Jove Commerce job means to you. But I gotta tell you, the only reason why Captain Future would even consider taking aboard a short-timer is because nobody else will work for him. He’s just as desperate as you are, but I don’t give a shit about him. If you wanna turn it down, I won’t add it to your card and I’ll save your place in line. It’ll just be between you and me. Okay?”

  “And if I turn it down?”

  He waved his hand back and forth. “Like I said, I can try to find you another gig. The Nickel Queen’s due home in another six weeks or so. I’ve got some pull with her captain, so maybe I can get you a job there . . . but honest to Jesus, I can’t promise anything. The Queen’s a good ship and everyone I know wants to work for her, just as much as nobody wants to get within a klick of the Comet.”

  “So what do you suggest I do?”

  Schumacher just smiled and said nothing. As my union rep, he was legally forbidden against making any decisions for me; as a pal, he had done his best to warn me about the risks. From both points of view, though, he knew I didn’t have any real choice. I could spend three months aboard a ship run by a borderline psycho, or the rest of my life jacking off on the Moon.

  I thought about it for a few moments, then I asked for the contract.

  The three Futuremen who were Curt Newton’s faithful, lifelong comrades made a striking contrast to their tall, red-haired young leader.

  —HAMILTON, The Comet Kings (1942)

  One-sixth gravity disappeared as I crawled through the carousel hatch and entered the bridge.

  The Comet’s command center was located in the non-rotating forward deck of the crew module. The bridge was the largest single compartment in the ship, but even in freefall it was cramped: chairs, consoles, screens, emergency suit lockers, the central navigation table with its holo tank and, at the center of the low ceiling, the hemispherical bulge of the observation blister.

  The ceiling lamps were turned down low when I came in—The Brain was mimicking Earth-time night—but I could see Jeri seated at her duty station on the far end of the circular deck. She looked around when she heard the hatch open.

  “Morning,” she said, smiling at me. “Hey, is that coffee?”

  “Something like it,” I muttered. She gazed enviously at the squeezebulb in my hand. “Sorry I didn’t bring you any,” I added, “but the Captain . . .”

  “Right. I heard Bo yell at you.” She feigned a pout which didn’t last very long. “That’s okay. I can get some later after we make the burn.”

  Jeri Lee-Bose: six-foot-two, which is short for a Superior, with the oversized dark blue eyes that give bioengineered spacers their unsavory nickname. Thin and flat-chested to the point of emaciation, the fingers of her ambidextrous hands were long and slender, her thumbs almost extending to the tips of her index fingers. Her ash-blond hair was shaved nearly to the skull, except for the long braid that extended from the nape of her neck nearly down to the base of her narrow spine, where her double-jointed legs began.

  The pale skin of her face was marked with finely etched tattoos around her eyes, nose, and mouth, forming the wings of a monarch butterfly. She had been given these when she had turned five, and since Superiors customarily add another tattoo on their birthdays and Jeri Lee was twenty-five, pictograms covered most of her arms and her shoulders, constellations and dragons which weaved their way under and around the tank-top she wore. I had no idea of what else lay beneath her clothes, but I imagined that she was well on her way to becoming a living painting.

  Jeri was strange, even for a Superior. For one thing, her ki
nd usually segregate themselves from Primaries, as they politely call us baseline humans (or apes, when we’re not around). They tend to remain within their family-based clans, operating independent satrapies that deal with the TBSA and the major space companies only out of economic necessity, so it’s rare to find a lone Superior working on a vessel owned by a Primary.

  For another thing, although I’ve been around Superiors most of my life and they don’t give me the creeps like they do most groundhogs and even many spacers, I’ve never appreciated the aloof condescension the majority of them display around unenhanced humans. Give one of them a few minutes, and they’ll bend your ear about the Superior philosophy of extropic evolution and all that jive. Yet Jeri was the refreshing, and even oddball, exception to the rule. She had a sweet disposition, and from the moment I had come aboard the Comet, she had accepted me both as an equal and as a new-found friend. No stuffiness, no harangues about celibacy or the unspirituality of eating meat or using profanity; she was a fellow crewmate, and that was that.

  No. That wasn’t quite all there was to it.

  When one got past the fact that she was a scarecrow with feet that functioned as a second pair of hands and eyes the size of fuel valves, she was sensual as hell. She was a pretty woman, and I had become infatuated with her. Schumacher would have twitched at the thought of sleeping with a google, but in three weeks since The Brain had revived us from the zombie tanks, there had been more than a few times when my desire to see the rest of her body exceeded simple curiosity about her tattoos.

  Yet I knew very little about her. As much as I loved looking at her, that was surpassed by my admiration for her innate talent as a spacer. In terms of professional skill, Jeri Lee-Bose was one of the best First Officers I had ever met. Any Royal Navy, TBSA, or free-trader captain would have killed to sign her aboard.

  So what the hell was she doing aboard a scow like the Comet, serving under a bozo like Bo McKinnon?