MILK RUN

                        By Robert Donald Locke

              Captain Jock Warren came out of his drunken
            stupor to check the flight of his ship. What he
           found aboard made him dash for blessed oblivion!

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
              Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy
                               May 1953
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


    _Two hours before the vessel plunged into minus point, building up
    for a hundred and fifty parsec jump through hyperspace, Capt. Jock
    Warren was so high on narcol he couldn't read his own manifest.
    Not unusual on this milk run. After two hours inside of minus
    point, his sober gray cells were functioning like blaster tubes--but
    by then, it was too late. The skags had taken over control of the
    ship._

                                                --_Charlie Guhn's Log._

The Star Rover, a rusty freighter that shuttled between Rigel and the
home system, hovered above a transfer station some two million miles
out from Rigel's twelfth planet, awaiting port clearance. Every crewman
knew the skipper was oiled, but they knew the entropy barrier would
set him back a full day, shocking him into cold alertness.

Second Officer Charles Guhn knocked at the captain's cabin, entered and
saluted: "Sir, cargo's loaded and customs cleared."

The skipper, his face bagged like the Coal Sack, his blood-cracked
eyes possessing chilling steel-blue irises that could blister a
super-cargo's hide at fifty paces, was unable to focus on the papers
handed him. He growled, "Blast off, Mr. Guhn! Blast off!"

"Aye aye, sir," Guhn paused, then reported: "I thought you should
know, Captain. We just brought on some skags. Some archeology outfit's
shipping the things to Earth for further study."

"Blasted mummies. Next, we'll be hauling heathen idols." Captain
Warren glanced at his chronometer. "Shove-off time, is it? Go to the
bridge and tell Mr. Caldwell I said to make her grunt."

This was his final utterance. His massive head slumped back into narcol
stupor, his sotted brain dreaming of days when every space lane was a
new frontier and adventure lurked on all unknown planets.

On his way up to the bow, Charlie Guhn poked his head into the
wardroom, thinking it possible First Officer Mark Caldwell might be
getting off one last message to the brunette on Rigel. But no one was
in the lounge. Guhn followed the catwalk over the pulsing auxiliaries
and mounted the starboard companionway to the bridge. There, he found
the astrogator, pouring over a set of star charts.

"The old man says shove off," Guhn greeted him. "Got your DS done?"

Caldwell grinned, without looking up from his desk: "A DS is just
a formality the rule book says you've got to enter in the log.
Hyperspace's too slinky to obey normal laws. That's why we cut it in
fifty parsec slices--to see how far we've drifted."

"You brain boys and your double talk."

"Not at all. Normal Einstein space is curved. Hyperspace isn't. Very
simple."

"Simple like wombat chess, huh?"

"You can politely remove yourself to the deck," Caldwell replied. "I've
got to get our junk pile coasting through the midnight black. Any women
on board?"

"None your speed, Romeo ... unless you like skags." A split second
dodge through the hatchway eluded the waste basket hurled at him.

After his calculations looked satisfactory, Caldwell unhinged his
solar plane compass. Its needle pointed not to Earth, but to that vast
imaginary plane in the galaxy to which the home system was horizontal
and to which a line drawn through the sun and Polaris was nearly
perpendicular. Once a heading was determined, it was possible by
quadrangulation to arrive at an effective course.

The transparent stardome that enveloped the bridge admitted the light
of a thousand molten suns from this crowded corner of space. The
astrogator looked at the clusters and thought how glad he was to leave
the hot dry climate of Rigel's dusty barren worlds, not to mention
the primitive women. Now, Arcturus was an exciting run, he'd heard. A
spaceman's Paradise, with an exotic native culture and a nitrogen-major
atmosphere. Not like the damned helium envelope of the Rigellian
system, in which a man's voice rose to female pitch.

Caldwell rang the engine room: "Prepare to blast."

"Aye aye, sir. Curium piles on 40 plus."

"Open rear vents."

"Rear vents opened."

"Attention, deck. Close all ports."

Throughout the vessel, shutters descended to screen out the cosmic
radiations that would bathe the hull as light speed approached.
Alarm bells rang. The astrogator's slender hands caressed a set of
blue-sheened knobs, while a dozen dials glowed with sudden green
light. Bulbs dimmed as power from the auxiliaries added their load to
the direct blasters. The Star Rover shuddered violently and bulkheads
screamed as tortured metal leaped forward through the void.

And in the hold, the skags still slept.

       *       *       *       *       *

On deck, Charlie Guhn sickened briefly as acceleration took hold.
Still, free space takeoffs weren't as tormenting as shaking off six
to eight gravities in a surface departure. More, on some of the big
planets. He wondered vaguely why the skipper preferred a narcol stupor
to reality. Who knew? Perhaps thirty years of probing the black void
and the deeper black of hyperspace would gnaw away any man's defenses.
It took a wife and kids to anchor a man to a world. Guhn, himself, was
grateful for his family on Earth and the days he would spend with his
feet planted firm on terrestrial soil. He was privileged in a way Capt.
Jock Warren could never know.

When the acceleration stress decreased he descended to the hold feeling
suddenly chilled. Close to the beryllium bulkheads heat was lost more
readily than in other sections. Guhn made his way through the dimly
lit, lightly storaged passages, skirting bales of priceless _baka_
silk, hogsheads of delicious platinum-hued wine from grapes grown in
the soil of Rigel IX, and lead-sheathed crates of long-lived curium
isotopes, native to Rigel's fourth planet.

He approached the compartment that contained the skags. Here he halted,
sensitive to the enigma which had baffled the galaxy. The strange
frozen skags constituted the first and only evidence of a non-humanoid
culture yet found.

They were known to have been intelligent. Their cities, lacy things of
steel and plastic, still reached for clouds on the slag-red sands of
Rigel IV, silent and deserted. In vaults beneath cities' surface had
been discovered the last few inhabitants, perfectly preserved in death.

Controlling his repulsion, Charlie Guhn studied the three skags lying
in composed attitudes within their globe-shaped transparent shells.
Blue tentacles stuck out of bulbous heads like medusae. Inhumanly
majestic faces, but lacking nostrils and ears, were supported by strong
granite bodies with abnormally long arms and legs. At first glance,
they appeared to be perverted human mutations. In their repose, they
seemed almost alive.

Unable to look longer, Guhn climbed the nearest ladder. At the top, a
crewman commented to him: "Must've been frightful in life, them skags.
We'd had a battle, then, sir; a real bloody battle."

The ship's speaker vibrated with Mark Caldwell's magnified voice:
"Attention, all hands. We are entering minus point."

In his cabin, Capt. Jock Warren mumbled in his narcol stupor but his
burly body never stirred.

       *       *       *       *       *

Veteran astrogator though he was, Mark Caldwell always dreaded the
approach of minus point. You never could predict what effect the
Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction might produce just before the jump into
hyperspace when the laws of the Einsteinian universe broke down. But
only at minus point could warper coils take over from blast engines.

At minus point, which set in at 186,100 miles a second, time started
to reverse itself and flow backwards. Bending of the space-time
continuum distorted entropy, causing an indescribably extended vessel
and occupants to actually grow younger. Because human minds were unable
to function during this period of cellular regeneration, robot pilots
took over immediately. Two hours past the barrier, the crew would
awake--at least two hours younger than at the moment of plunge.

Relays shuffled and clutches locked, clamping the Star Rover's
directional controls, while Mark Caldwell fed the ship's heading
figures into the mercury vat memory of the pilot. Then, he prepared for
the big sleep. When consciousness returned, his brain would no longer
be fogged.

The astrogator's sensitive fingers closed the last switch. Around the
plowing freighter, the void strained and twisted in the flux of new
forces, squeezing the vessel out of the universe as a grape is squeezed
from its skin.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was at that moment of passing the barrier, that the skags--after a
million years in the dream-barren sleep of suspended animation--awoke
from their life in death. The time-reverting effect of minus point
returned their bodies to that instant in the forgotten past when they
had retreated into mass oblivion.

First to be jolted into life in the Star Rover's dim gray hold was the
mind of K'Gol. Tentacles rustled in violent wriggling activity, then
massive eyelids opened to reveal cold purple eyes. As inhuman strength
massed in his limbs, K'Gol stood erect, found the release to his prison
shell and pressed the button. The transparent envelope collapsed,
leaving him free.

Thought vibrations brought perplexed messages from the two other skags.

K'Gol studied his surroundings and said: "We have failed. The gas
nebula penetrated and we are in the realm of the dead."

"We are dead, yet we breathe."

"Let us look around. We must arrive at the truth."

Stumbling along with heavy tread, the skags made their way from
compartment to compartment until they found a ladder, by which they
mounted. Only the faint throb of the auxiliary engines, now supplying
the warpers, was to be heard. On the deck, K'Gol found two erect
bodies in sculptured attitudes, the unconscious shapes of Second
Officer Charles Guhn and a boatswain. All three skags halted, racked by
uncontrollable revulsion at sight of the alien species.

K'Gol's limbs glowed with yellow light and he reached forth to
death-shock the monsters. But the skag behind him warned: "They may be
harmless. Perhaps, we should wait until they awaken."

They explored the ship from bow to stern, stopping only to wonder at
the warper coils which they would have designed differently. "It is
clear. We are prisoners in a vessel-between-the-stars."

Presently, they found a control that opened the starboard view ports.
Their eyes were greeted by the wrenching chaos of hyperspace. "It is
a new dimension. Our captors are highly advanced and their minds are
impervious to our probing. We must take over, before they recover."
The skags hurried through the freighter, gathering up all possible
weapons and locking them in the hold. Then, K'Gol mounted the bridge
and familiarized himself with the instruments and controls.

       *       *       *       *       *

Mark Caldwell's mind snapped back into full consciousness. For a
moment, he thought that waitress at Arcturus had followed him; then,
the vision suddenly changed into something horrible and he found
himself facing a living skag who stood watching him with curious eyes.
Caldwell's skin crawled and he started to cry out. A muscle jerk caused
his arms to fail and a yellow glow simultaneously exuded from the
skag, bathing the astrogator in needle-like flame that paralyzed.

Skag and human studied each other, unable to communicate directly and
each filled with horror and disgust at the other's sight. Then, having
made his captive helpless, K'Gol examined the star charts on the desk,
only to discover a million years had exploded the constellations like
dust clouds, and the suns were unfamiliar. Again, man and skag faced
each other. Without communication, the skags could not learn the ship's
destination and so, although they were in power, they were as helpless
as their captives.

       *       *       *       *       *

Charlie Guhn had been thinking of Earth's green fields, a moment before
the Star Rover entered minus point. Now, his mind was snapped back to
terrifying reality with the knowledge that the starboard ports were
unshuttered. No human found it easy to gaze at hyperspace and the
officer rushed to close the ports, wondering who was responsible. He
made his way to the hold and there discovered the collapsed envelopes
of the skags.

His first thought was for the captain. But as he neared Jock Warren's
cabin, his hackles rose as if in warning: there was a new odor in the
air, slimy and deathly ancient. Then at the far end of the passageway,
he saw the back of a tentacled head rise from the steps to the engine
room. Yellow flame seemed to pursue him along the corridor as he fled.
An emergency hatch that led past the fore-castle to the lifeboats
afforded him temporary escape and seconds later he found refuge in a
lifeboat.

When his trembling ceased, he started to formulate plans to regain
the ship. In the lifeboat, he discovered two force band pistols which
he stuck in his belt. If worse came to worse, he could bolt the ship,
risking the unknown dangers of a hyper-universe in preference to the
skags.

       *       *       *       *       *

As the narcol-induced fantasies faded from Jock Warren's brain, the
skipper became aware his ship had passed minus point. Well, the old
tub was on her way now and he'd have to put in an appearance on the
deck ... show the lads the old man wasn't scuttled. He splashed cold
water on his face, afterwards rubbing his red-blotched skin with a
rough towel. Feeling better, he hummed a vulgar space chantey he had
learned as an Alpha Centauri midshipman, following which he danced a
brief jig that evoked memories of an early cruise to Procyon and a
lovely blackeyed wench.

Now completely spruced up, the captain buckled the triple prongs of
his white belt, donned his gold-braided space cap and stepped out of
the cabin.

A live skag stood at the end of the hall waiting for him.

Doubt and disbelief wrinkled Jock Warren's brow as he stared at the
apparition. He knew he was sober because the Star Rover had passed
minus point. His mind groped for an explanation of the skag. There was
no explanation--but there was a _solution_.

The captain backed into his cabin, locked the door and then searched
through his wardroom locker until he found that most precious of all
liquids, a flask of narcol. Several good strong slugs slushed down his
parched gullet, before his space-hardened nerves approached reasonably
good shape.

His skin flushed and his arteries warmed by the narcol, he became
convinced once more that he had suffered an hallucination. Fantasy or
no fantasy, there remained only one way to learn for certain. Jock
Warren strode into the corridor. There the skag waited. "Blast it!"
the captain rumbled. "You're a balmy hallucination. Out of my way, you
scummy dream of a scummy planet!"

He lurched towards the creature and his arms attempted to brush away
its cobwebby image. Sudden contact with its cold firm flesh electrified
him. "Mister Guhn!" his voice rose. "Avast, Mr. Guhn!"

The echoes rolled through the ship without answer.

When the dead silence renewed itself, Capt. Jock Warren lifted his
narcol flask and drank deeply. The skag watched with impassionate
curiosity.

       *       *       *       *       *

Failing in his search for Rigel on the star charts, K'Gol tried to
contact his companions who were exploring and making secure the
remainder of the vessel. The skag concluded that the only hope lay
to negotiate a truce with the monsters who had built the ship. His
companions replied:

"That's your task, K'Gol. We must learn the language of these hideous
creatures or teach them ours."

"I have captured one here, who appears to guide the vessel," beamed
K'Gol. "Let me attempt it with him, first."

Blue light flamed from the skag, bathing Mark Caldwell's head and
throat. Discovering the paralysis lifted, the astrogator rotated his
head to exercise stiffened muscles. K'Gol pointed at the individual
white dots on a star chart: "Kuuuh-gu." The tones were like a goat
chewing tin plate.

"Kuuuh-gu," echoed Mark Caldwell. "Oh, you mean stars. Stars."

The skag waved to include the bulkheads and deck. "Saaah-gos."

The astrogator repeated: "Saaah-gos. Must be ship."

"Must be ship," said the skag.

Hysterical laughter gripped the officer. From the skag's throat emerged
identical sounds, uproarious cackles; but the brilliant eyes barely
flickered.

       *       *       *       *       *

From his place in the lifeboat, Second Officer Charlie Guhn had heard
no sound for several hours. He felt cramped in a gray microcosm where
it was hopeless to escape. His mind turned to the cause of the skags'
revivification; it was his knowledge of physics that provided him the
correct answers. The transparent shells surrounding the skags were of
time-impervious materials. Upon entering minus point, the creatures
retrograded in time to a point previous to their suspended animation.

What did they want? What did they plan? Without these answers, Guhn had
no means to deal with them. Rather than dispatch the lifeboat, the deck
officer resolved to attempt snapping the entire vessel back into normal
space. He lowered himself to the foc'sle quarters. Here, the bodies
of six crewmen neatly piled together stunned his eyes. At first, he
supposed they were dead but a confirmatory touch of their flesh showed
they were not. Tortured faces stared at him, as if trying to project a
message.

Guhn stole along the portside catwalk to the engine rooms. Finding no
one, he mounted to the deck. Upon hearing the heavy tread of stumbling
feet, he flattened himself against a bulkhead niche and waited.

Suddenly, words roared out in the still passageway, sung in a
strong-timbered brogue:

    "_Oh, our officers are eager
    And our crew is full of fight!
    And we're blastin' off for Vega
    Where we'll drink and fight all night!_"

It was the captain's voice, bursting with life and very merry.

The chant was taken up by another voice, a throbbing metallic speaker
with slurred tones:

    "_Cause we've got to get her o-o-over,
    O-o-over that hyper hooomp!_"

Holding his body flat in the niche, Charlie Guhn saw the skipper walk
by, keeping time to his own melody by waving his massive arms. Abreast
of him reeled a skag, drenched with narcol fumes. Guhn stepped out
behind them, gripping the trigger of the force band pistol.

"Captain Warren! Step aside."

The skipper wheeled and his face flooded crimson:

"Mr. Guhn, may I ask what you're doing off your watch?"

"Sir, that's a skag. They've taken over the ship."

"You're hysterical, Mr. Guhn. Damned right he's a skag. Been a skag for
a million years. You hear that? Best dream I've ever had. We're going
to get him back to Rigel ... next trip out. Drinks like a blasted fish,
the fellow does."

Incredulity fought fear in Charles Guhn's brain, until the alternate
waves of emotion caused his collapse. Capt. Jock Warren bent over and
raised him. The two men's faces came close together. The skipper's eye
closed slowly, once, twice: "We'll be all right if the juice holds out."

The skag bent over too in an inebriated effort to assist. Then, the
skipper and his million-year-old companion locked arms and hoisted the
flask of narcol.

       *       *       *       *       *

_From Charlie Guhn's Log_:

_The skags were friendly enough, once barriers broke down. They had
suspended their civilization when a helium cloud passed through their
system. Helium was poisonous to their composition and the skag culture
may have to be transferred to a nitrogen-major planet._

_On termination of the voyage, Mark Caldwell, astrogator, promptly
applied for transfer to the Arcturus run. Second Officer Guhn refused
to sign again and took a berth on the Earth-Mars shuttle. Capt. Jock
Warren posed for a "Captain of Distinction" testimonial for the narcol
people and retired on his earnings, protesting a higher fee paid to a
skag for a similar portrait._

_When last heard from, K'Gol and his skag companions had settled down
to conferring with terrestrial scientists, making and discarding
countless plans to revive the Rigel culture, and drinking narcol._

_Frankly, they didn't seem to be in any hurry about reviving their
brethren. Maybe, they felt they had a damned good deal all by
themselves. Who knows the mind of a skag?_