New Australia

Chapter 1:

 The hatch in the side of the small freight ship opened as soon
as it was safe. Two men, one tall and thick, the other much
shorter and wiry, started down the gangway, feeling the heat of the
landing motors mingling with the pent-up heat of the planet. The air
was dry but neither man noticed aft er a month within the scarred
and patched hull of their ship.

 As they walked towards the customs shed, they both tried to
work out the kinks that gravity forced into their muscles. The larger
man stepped through the narrow door first, stopping in front of a
desk occupied by a blue uniformed Navy junior officer.

The young man ignored them, playing with his keyboard as his
screen flashed a long column of numbers before him. “Papers!”
The larger man handed him a plastic folder and leaned his weight
on his knuckles, making the officer’s desk creak under the stress.

 “You are the master of this vessel?” There was contempt in his
 voice.

 “You’ve got the papers. You figure it out bright boy!”

 “I have already checked your file, Mr. James and you had better
 not start anything with me. I could hold you right now for that mess
 on Icon last year.”

 “Is that what you want to do, kid?”

 The young man looked at him with contempt. “You’re empty,
 huh?”

 “Yeah. What’s it to you?”

 “Nothing, I was just thinking that you are broke. You barely
had enough credits for your landing fee, which have already been
deducted from your account. If you don’t hit a prepaid load within a
couple of days, I’ll just pick your ass up for vagrancy and confi scate
that rust bucket out there. How do you like that, big shot?”

 The larger man grabbed his friend as he moved toward the desk,
cocking a small hard fist.

 “Are we free to go?”

 “Sure.” The officer handed back their papers. “But I’ll be seeing
 you soon.” Th ey could hear him laughing as they stepped back out
 into the night.

 “You should’ve let me bust him one, Hank!”

 He looked down at the smaller man, then pushed him toward the
dirt road which led from the spaceport to the small town just at the
edge of the horizon.

 The bar was packed and Henry MacCauley James carried the
green colored local beer above the crowd toward a table in the
corner. He was six foot three inches tall, thick and muscular but
carried himself with the grace of a dancer as he sidestepped tables,
chairs and the other patrons of the saloon. Strapped to his hip was
an antique automatic pistol which shot heavy caliber lead slugs.
It was his trademark and he was well known by it on most of the
settled worlds. The weapon was no good in the enclosed sections
of a spaceship or station, where it would do serious damage to the
pressurized walls which were a man’s only protection from the
vacuum of space. On a planet, however, it would do much more
than stop a man without jeopardizing its user.

 “Thanks, Hank.” Johnny MacFerson poured some of the beer
into his already empty glass and drank deeply. He was a dark man
with large brooding eyes and black oily hair. “What the hell are we
doing here? We had plenty of fuel to make it back to Icon. This
planet is really dead!”

 “We’ve got an appointment.” He sipped from the glass. Looking
at his friend, he thought himself lucky to find a partner like Johnny.
He might be small and not have too much to say but in a fight it was
good to know that he was at his side. Probably there was no better
man in the galaxy. “I think this is the chance we’ve been waiting for.
Not just hired gun shit and no more piracy if this works out.”

 Johnny scratched the foam off the tip of his slightly hooked nose.
“What kind of job is it?”

 A trio of sailors was pushing through the crowd. They checked
out the papers of a few miners and the legs of the better looking
prostitutes, making a general nuisance of themselves. They flashed
dirty looks toward the back corner where the two spacemen sat but
it was no different than the attitude they showed the other people
present. It wasn’t long before they tired of the place and elbowed
their way back out into the street.

 “Come on, Hank. What are we doing here?”

 “Hang tight, Johnny, I think this is our man.”