A Very Strange Trip E-Book

L. Ron Hubbard

• Herausgeber: WS
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 1998

Seitenzahl: 294

Beschreibung

Boldly go to times where no one has gone before. While transporting a contraband Russian time machine and developmental weaponry, Private Everett Dumphee finds himself cast into new settings when the device suddenly activates. What follows are fantastic high-tech experiences that might be called the ultimate off-road adventure. For the determined Dumphee—narrowly escaping with his life and three beautiful women—it is not necessarily a matter of will he make his destination, but when. These four vivid characters trek through this fun and fast-moving journey like there's no tomorrow. Wherever that may be.

Leseprobe

Selected fiction works by L. Ron Hubbard

FANTASY

If I Were You

Slaves of Sleep & The Masters of Sleep

Typewriter in the Sky

SCIENCE FICTION

Battlefield Earth

Final Blackout

The Great Secret

The Kingslayer

The Mission Earth Dekalogy:*

Volume 1: The Invaders Plan

Volume 2: Black Genesis

Volume 3: The Enemy Within

Volume 4: An Alien Affair

Volume 5: Fortune of Fear

Volume 6: Death Quest

Volume 7: Voyage of Vengeance

Volume 8: Disaster

Volume 9: Villainy Victorious

Volume 10: The Doomed Planet

Ole Doc Methuselah

To the Stars

HISTORICAL FICTION

Buckskin Brigades

Under the Black Ensign

MYSTERY

Cargo of Coffins

Dead Men Kill

Spy Killer

WESTERN

Branded Outlaw

Six-Gun Caballero

A full list of L. Ron Hubbard’s fiction works can be found at GalaxyPress.com

*Dekalogy—a group of ten volumes

Thank you for purchasingA Very Strange Trip by L. Ron Hubbard and Dave Wolverton

To receive special offers, bonus content and info on new fiction releases by L. Ron Hubbard, sign up for the Galaxy Press newsletter.

Visit us online at GalaxyPress.com

A VERY STRANGE TRIP

© 1999 L. Ron Hubbard Library. All Rights Reserved.

Any unauthorized copying, translation, duplication, importation or distribution, in whole or in part, by any means, including electronic copying, storage or transmission, is a violation of applicable laws.

The words Mission Earth and Writers of the Future are registered trademarks owned by L. Ron Hubbard Library.

The words Dianetics and Scientology are trademarks and service marks owned by Religious Technology Center and are used with its permission.

Front cover photograph entitled Pyramids of the Moon and Sun, Teotihuacan courtesy of ALTI Publishing.

Print ISBN: 978-1-59212-001-7EPUB edition ISBN: 978-1-61986-000-1Kindle edition ISBN: 978-1-59212-090-1Audiobook ISBN: 978-1-59212-803-7

Published by Galaxy Press, Inc.7051 Hollywood Boulevard, Hollywood, California 90028

GalaxyPress.com

Contents

Map

Preface

A Very Strange Trip

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

About the Authors

Preface

Alittle over fifteen years ago, L. Ron Hubbard published a science-fiction novel, Battlefield Earth, which became one of the bestselling and best-loved novels in its field. (That work has since sold over five million copies and a recent Random House Modern Library readers’ poll ranked it among the top three best novels of the twentieth century.)

At the same time, as Ron reentered the field of science fiction after a hiatus of nearly thirty years, he recognized how closed the genre had become to new authors. I happened to be a new author fifteen years ago, and I well recall studying the markets for short fiction only to find that among the top four science-fiction magazines, perhaps no more than ten new writers might be published in any given year.

As on other occasions throughout his 55-year literary career, Ron came up with a great idea to help aspiring writers enter the professional ranks. He initiated a contest to encourage new writers and call attention to their work. He even arranged for top writers of speculative fiction (science fiction, fantasy and horror) to judge the competition.

Thus L. Ron Hubbard’s Writers of the Future Contest was born. It has since discovered and helped launch the careers of hundreds of talented writers who have gone on to publish over 250 novels and over 2,000 short stories. It is widely recognized as the premier venue in the field for discovering new writing talent. The L. Ron Hubbard Gold Award, which goes to the annual grand-prize winner, has taken its place beside the Hugo and Nebula Awards as one of the most coveted prizes in the field of speculative fiction. There is even a companion contest for new illustrators.

My own involvement in the Contest began with a recommendation from M. Shayne Bell, who had previously received a first-place quarterly prize. Shortly thereafter, I, too, managed a first-place award, then a grand prize in 1987. I will never forget the annual awards ceremony, being sandwiched between the likes of Isaac Asimov, Frederik Pohl and Luke Skywalker himself, Mark Hamill. But more to the point, and just as Ron intended, that award most definitely helped launch my writing career. Indeed, I received a three-novel contract from Bantam Books barely two weeks later.

Needless to say, that award brought something else; for as Ron also suggested to his literary agency, Author Services, Inc., some of those newly discovered writers were to be afforded what amounted to a collaboration with Ron. In other words, some of us were to be given a golden opportunity to place our names on a story by L. Ron Hubbard. Of course, I myself was among those so honored, and found it to be a fulfilling collaboration.

The story Ron originally conceived, A Very Strange Trip, became a full-length L. Ron Hubbard screenplay, replete with detailed directorial notes, character sketches and more. What I initially found most intriguing, however, was the fact that the story concerned the time-traveling adventures of a young West Virginian moonshiner, who inadvertently finds himself purchasing Native American squaws.

It just so happens my grandfather was also a moonshiner from West Virginia, and likewise purchased a half-Cherokee wife, my grandmother. It was all strictly illegal, but Grandpa never worried too much about legalities. Moreover, it was all part and parcel of my grandmother’s cultural heritage, as her mother had similarly been sold to her father and so on … from time immemorial.

To some degree, then, writing this book gave me an opportunity to rediscover my personal heritage. Then, too, I had long dreamed of studying paleobiology, and here was an opportunity to delve rather deeply into the realms of mammoths and dinosaurs. Finally, I had wanted to try my hand at writing comedy, a rare element in science fiction.

But there was another aspect to L. Ron Hubbard’s A Very Strange Trip that immediately intrigued me, and therein lies something of the L. Ron Hubbard legend.

In the name of research, I eventually traveled to the Cahokia Mounds where the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers meet—once home to the temples of the priest-rulers of the Mississippian culture. And what did I inevitably discover? In one sense or another, Ron, too, had made that trek and, I might add, researched these matters to the bone. In point of fact, I found no aspect of ancient life in these lands that Ron did not examine—from a study of Mississippian vegetation to the Mayan pottery industry.

Yet remembering that a screenplay is not a book, and the art of adapting a tale from one medium to another often requires some innovation, let me add one final word of introduction. Because scripted comedy does not always play on paper, I could not always translate, so to speak, Ron’s story word for word. By the same token, however, a novel allows one to read a character’s thoughts, and so I afforded myself a degree of literary latitude in just that sense—interpreting the thoughts of Ron’s characters.

I hope the result is as fun for you to read as it was for Ron and me to write.

—Dave Wolverton

A Very Strange Trip

Chapter 1

The prisoner will now rise for sentencing,” the bailiff of the Upshaw County Superior Court intoned with a solemn expression, stopping in mid-chaw to hold a wad of tobacco in the side of his mouth.

Nineteen-year-old Everett Dumphee stood and smoothed back a lick of his blond hair. He was big and strong-boned. He quietly made sure his flannel shirt was tucked into his new pair of Wrangler jeans, and stared at the judge with a heart brimful of dread.

Beside Dumphee, his girl, Jo Beth, sat quietly and held his hand. Everett’s ma and pappy, and uncles and cousins were all packed into the courthouse. The benches could not have held more of them. Even the old preacher who lived in the cave up by Blue Grouse Creek had come down for the court appearance.

Judge Wright was middle aged, slightly chubby, and he was staring hard at Everett with a mean look in his eye, like a hound that’s holed himself a ’coon. Judge Wright glared a minute, then said, “Everett Dumphee, you’ve been found guilty of runnin’ moonshine. Before I sentence you, do you have anything to say for yourself?”

Dumphee cleared his throat, found it hard to talk. “Uh, I didn’t do it, Your Honor, sir.”

Judge Wright made a little snarling face, as if Dumphee had poked him in the belly with a sharp stick. “I don’t want to hear that! I know it was your uncle’s car, and you said you was late for a date. But you was caught red-handed, drivin’ down old Bald Knob at ninety miles an hour with ten gallons of shine in your trunk—and when the police flashed their lights, you revved it up to a hundred and forty!”

Dumphee’s pappy shouted, “Aw, he’s just born with good reflexes, Your Honor! You can’t blame the boy for that.”

“You shut your yap in my courthouse,” Judge Wright said, pointing the gavel at Dumphee’s pappy. “If your boy has such good driving instincts, put him on the racing circuit—not runnin’ shine!” The judge cleared his throat, tried to regain his composure.

“Now, Everett Dumphee, I’m a fair man—or at least I try to be …” the judge said sweetly. “But I’m tired as get-out of you Dumphees running shine. My grandpappy sent your grandpappy to prison for it. My pappy sent your pappy to prison for it. And I’d send you to prison right now, but for one thing: you Dumphees can’t help it that you’re all so inbred that you ain’t bright enough to figure out right from wrong.”

Dumphee’s mother gasped, and Dumphee spoke up, trying to defend the family honor, “Uh, sir, I ain’t—”

“You’ve had plenty of chance to say your piece!” the judge brushed him off. “Now I’m going to say my piece. Dumphee, boy, your problem is that you’re uncivilized. You give West Virginia a bad name. You live up in them hollows with your dogs and your guns and your moonshine, marrying your cousins and playing your fiddles. Jethro Clampett has got nothing on you—”

“Uh, Bodine,” Dumphee said.

“What?” Judge Wright asked.

“Jethro Bodine is his name. Jed Clampett is his uncle. I watched that show on TV, and Bodine is his name. We get 140 channels on our satellite dish, now.”

“Are you trying to be a wiseacre with me?” the judge asked.

“Uh, no, sir,” Dumphee said, affecting a thick accent. Judge Wright always talked with a thick accent, as if he thought that he sounded like some southern gentleman. But the truth was, with modern television pumping educated standard American English into every home in the hills, practically no one in West Virginia spoke like the judge did anymore. Dumphee thought the judge sounded like a hick. Still, it sometimes helped to sound like one of the good ol’ boys.

The judge said, “Because I’ve got a hundred acres of good farmland at home, I don’t need no wiseacre, and if you are being a wiseacre with me …”

“No, suh!” Dumphee said louder, in an even thicker accent.

“My point is, this is 1991. Everyone else up in those hills is trying to raise marijuana and driving Porsches. But you folks—you’re living in the past.” The judge shook his head so woefully, Dumphee almost wished that he were a marijuana farmer, just so he’d get some respect. At Dumphee’s side, his pappy was stiffening, getting red in the face, blood pressure rising so high, Dumphee feared he might burst a vessel.

The judge sighed. “You got to go out and see the world, son. So, I’m going to do you a favor. I’m going to civilize you.”

The judge took a long, deep breath, stared Dumphee in the face. “I hereby sentence you to the maximum penalty for your crime: ten years of watching television in the West Virginia State Prison.”

The words hit Dumphee like a fist in the belly. It was so unfair. He really hadn’t been running shine. He hadn’t known that his uncle had that keg in the back! It wasn’t fair that he’d go to prison. Didn’t the judge know what men did to each other in there?

At his side, Jo Beth squeezed Dumphee’s hand and whined. “I’ll wait for you,” she promised, while his ma broke down sobbing. His pappy’s face was so red that Dumphee figured the old man would go out to the truck, get his rifle, and find a shady tree to lay under while he waited for the judge to poke his head out of the courthouse.

But now the judge was shaking his head sadly.

“That’s right, son. I said ‘prison.’ But if that don’t sit well with you, then I’ll set aside that penalty on one condition: you enlist in the United States Army for a period of no less than five years—I do suppose you can shoot?”

“He can knock the eye out of a red-tailed hawk at three hundred yards, Your Honor!” Dumphee’s cousin shouted.

“Yeah, I ought to fine him $500 right now for shooting raptors,” the judge grumbled. “Well, I figured as much. And you look strong enough to wrestle a bear. What do you say? You can avoid prison, and this will give you a chance to get out of them hills, see the world.

“Some folks say you can take a boy out of the mountains, but you can’t take the mountains out of the boy. I don’t know if I believe ’em. You’ll either come back a new and better man, or else you’ll be the Rambo of moonshiners.”

Dumphee stood, seething. It wasn’t fair. He had plans for his life. Plans for him and Jo Beth!

He wasn’t a hillbilly. It was true that his family engaged in moonshining, but this wasn’t unsophisticated hooch stewed up in a bathtub. His pa had a computer, and got orders over the Internet. Some English fellow would send e-mail, telling what he wanted, then send bottles to fill with names like “Boar’s Breath” and “Hair of the Hound o’ Morgan”—sophisticated whiskeys out of Scotland and Ireland.

Sure, the Dumphees were selling forgeries—and had been making a lot of money at it for the past twenty years—but in the past few months the whole family business had begun to go somewhat legitimate. The new “Dumphee Clan” whiskeys were selling better in France than the forged labels ever had.

What did this hoary old judge know about civilization? He probably thought that the Internet was some fancy new device used to catch a trout!

And as for his Porsches, well, the old souped-up T-bird that the government had confiscated could outrun one of them overpriced, unreliable Porsches any day!

The judge stared at Dumphee expectantly. He offered, “What do you say, son? The Army, or prison?

“The Army would be easy for a fellow like you, what with the Soviet Union falling apart. I wish we had a war I could send you into, but I figure, given five years of enlistment, something ought to come along.…”

And if you’re lucky, I’ll get shot, Dumphee thought. He sighed.

“Guess I’ll have to take the Army, Your Honor,” Dumphee said, feeling queasy.

Jo Beth squeezed his hand. He figured he could always send for her after he got out of basic training. They could get themselves on the waiting list for some little dumpy army apartment.

Hell, Dumphee thought with resignation, at least he isn’t making me enlist in the Navy.

“Bailiff, remand this boy to the custody of the US Army,” the judge said.

Everyone stood up a bit dumbfounded. Everett’s uncle came and slapped Dumphee’s shoulder, apologized for getting him in trouble.

Jo Beth fell apart and started weeping. “Oh, Everett,” she said, trembling as she leaned against his shoulder. “This is so terrible. So terrible.”

“It won’t be that bad,” Dumphee said.

She sniffed. “You’re always so positive. ‘If life hands you a lemon, make lemonade.’ That’s the way I’ve got to think. I just—I just always knew you would make it out of these mountains someday, but I never thought it would be like this. I thought you’d go to college.”

“Well, I still can go to college,” Dumphee said. “Just looks like I’ll be doing it on the GI Bill.” He’d always been good in school. Not brilliant, but he imagined himself to be a cut above average. Given that, and the fact that Dumphee was a fighter, he’d always figured he’d do okay in college.

Dumphee’s wrists were cuffed, so he couldn’t hug Jo Beth, but she just squeezed his hands and leaned into him. He could smell the sweet perfume on her neck, feel her pleasant curves through the fabric of her cotton dress. “I’ll join you, after you get out of basic training. I’d wait for you, even if it took till the end of time. Nothing can keep us apart.”

The bailiff took Dumphee right then and led him down to the recruiter’s office in handcuffs. He got to stop once, outside the courthouse, to say goodbye to the redbone hunting hounds in the back of his pappy’s pickup.

Then he was gone.

Chapter 2

Dumphee had seen the Army propaganda on TV: “Be all that you can be,” the advertisements said.

But, apparently, the Army figured that Dumphee wasn’t fit for much. Some sergeant took one look at his record, and chewed his lip thoughtfully for all of half a second. “Moonshine running? At 140 mph? Boy’d make a hell of a driver!”

So they sent him to basic training down in Georgia.

Yet part of Dumphee recognized that his life was being stolen from him, bit by bit, minute by minute. The recognition first hit when Jo Beth wrote him a letter a week into basic training, telling how his cousin, Montague Dumphee, was being such a sweetheart and comforting her through this lonely transition period.

Dumphee had always known that Montague wanted his girl. Last fall, when they’d been out on the big annual family bear hunt with Uncle Ned, Montague had asked Dumphee all kinds of disturbing questions about “how far he’d got” with Jo Beth. And he’d had an unsavory gleam in his eye. Dumphee fired off a letter forbidding Jo Beth to have anything to do with the boy.

But by the time the US Mail got the letter to her, it was probably already too late. She wrote back and told Dumphee how Montague had taken her on “a couple of picnics,” and how he was a real gentleman, and she didn’t like Dumphee slandering “my Montague.”

Two weeks later, Dumphee got a call from his ma. Jo Beth and Montague had moved into a little house outside Bald Knob.

It all happened so fast, Dumphee felt stung. Something important had been taken from him—twenty-four days of his life. And in that meager time, the woman he’d planned to marry, the woman who’d promised to wait for him through ten years of prison, had run off with his cousin.

It’s amazing how love for a woman can make a smart man act stupid. Dumphee walked around like a wounded critter for half a week, and during a live-grenade practice, for all of two seconds he held on to a live one, wondering how Jo Beth would feel if he just tucked that grenade down his undershirt and let it blow his heart to bits.

Then he figured, Naw, she ain’t worth it, and he imagined Montague’s leering face and chucked the grenade toward it, setting a new camp distance record for hurling a grenade.

For the rest of basic training, the boys in his platoon called him “The Launcher.”

But the appellation didn’t stick.

Dumphee didn’t really mind basic training, and it appeared that being a driver wouldn’t be so bad after all. It beat being on the front lines if he went to war. He was transferred to a driving school in Virginia, where he learned the basics, like how to change a wiper blade and tighten a fan belt.

After that, he concentrated on advanced army driving techniques, like how to “dodge-and-drive” in case someone began shooting out your windshield while you tried to deliver some general to an Arab liquor store.

And he soon learned to spot mines hidden under the road like a pro. None of the driving instructors in the school had ever seen anyone with “instincts” like his. Dumphee figured it came from having to watch out for chuckholes on West Virginia highways. Whatever the reason for his unexpected skill, he soon learned to enjoy showing off his abilities by driving through a live minefield at eighty miles an hour.

* * *

On his first assignment, he was supposed to report to a major whose motto was “Any soldier who isn’t in combat isn’t in uniform unless he’s in dress uniform.”

Dumphee was becoming adept at dealing with quack officers, so he was in full dress, in the driving rain, when he passed a sign beside the road. The rain was pouring so hard that even at thirty-five miles per hour, even with his high beams pointed up and adjusted to the right (he’d gone out in the rain with his screwdriver and turned one headlight so that it shone upward), he still couldn’t read the sign. The pounding of the windshield wipers vied for loudness with the beating of rain on the hood of the truck.

“Lieutenant? Lieutenant Fugg?” Dumphee said. Fugg lay asleep, his head resting on the glass of the passenger door. Dumphee pushed him slightly. “Sir, wake up! I think we’ve lost the convoy. What do we do?”

The lieutenant, a stocky little fellow with bug-eyed glasses, roused a bit and grumbled, “Trenton Arsenal Experimental Weaponry.”

“Yessir, yessir, I know where we’re headed,” Dumphee said. “But how do I get there?”

“Hell, Private,” Fugg said as if he were a general, “you’re supposed to be the best moonshine driver in West Virginia. Just drive.”

“Yessir,” Dumphee said, “but this ain’t West Virginia. I think we’re in Pennsylvania. Or maybe New Jersey—”

“Shut up!” Lieutenant Fugg said, annoyed. He nuzzled up to the fogged glass of his window.

A truck whizzed past in the opposite direction, and just afterward, Dumphee saw a sign, Levittown, Pennsylvania.

“Just keep on this road,” Fugg said, as he closed his eyes to sleep.

Well, Dumphee thought, as pappy always used to say, “If I got to be lost, at least I can be lost faster than anyone else, and maybe I’ll find myself quicker in the bargain.” With that, Dumphee shifted the truck into a higher gear.

Dumphee felt out of sorts. He hadn’t gotten much sleep since basic training, and here he was on his first driving assignment, and his lieutenant wasn’t going to be any help at all. He wished he could stop somewhere and ask directions, or look at a map or something. But he was in a hurry, and this truck sure couldn’t hit 140, so he kept driving, the sweat breaking out on him as he passed sign after sign: Fallsington, Pennsylvania; White Horse (no state listed); Yardville, New Jersey. Heck, he was driving through half the country and all the time his gas tank was draining lower and lower, and he never saw sign of another army truck. Fugg kept snoring. Robbinsville. Windsor, New Jersey.

Then there it was: Trenton Arsenal. Dumphee whistled in relief as the truck coasted into the compound, the gas gauge well below empty. Just as he began to apply the brakes, the engine sputtered and died.

Through the falling rain, Dumphee could see a large truck back into the loading bay of a warehouse. It was a strange truck—typical army olive in color, covered with canvas on top—but the wheels were huge, thickly treaded and shaped like giant balloons. The bottom of the truck looked like a boat, with a rudder on back. Dumphee had seen plenty of hunters with ATVs up in the hills, but nothing this size.

There in the rain, pacing back and forth in front of the truck, was a major strutting around like a Patton wannabe. The major looked on impatiently as the vehicle was loaded, a cigar clenched between his teeth, and slapped at his boots with a swagger stick. Dumphee had never seen a swagger stick outside of the movies, and he wondered where the major had purchased it. Was it government issue?

Dumphee was dressed to the teeth. He didn’t want to get his uniform wet. He rolled down the window.

The major glanced at him, demanding, “Where the hell is the rest of your convoy, Private?”

Dumphee climbed down from the cab of his truck, stood looking at the major, and saluted. He held that salute a long time, letting it shield his eyes from the rain. He’d hoped that the other trucks would be here by now. Dumphee read the fellow’s name tag: Slice. Major Slice. Dumphee didn’t know quite what to say. Weeks of basic training had left him so messed up in the head that he felt more terrified of his commanding officers than of enemy gunfire—which of course was the main reason for basic training in the first place. He swallowed hard and said, “I don’t know where the rest of the convoy is, Major, sir. We got lost in the rain.”

Slice grumbled under his breath, almost a growl. “Where is your commanding officer? Who is in charge here?”

Dumphee almost said, “I thought you were in charge,” but he realized it might sound mouthy. “Lieutenant Fugg is in charge of the convoy, sir. He’s asleep in the truck.”

“Asleep, is he?” Slice asked.

Slice turned and marched through the rain with a disgruntled air. Dumphee was afraid of what would happen next, so he rushed to the other side of his truck, following the major.

Slice went to the door. Fugg’s sleeping face was plastered against the window, looking like some rubber mask.

Slice jerked the door open.

The lieutenant took a clumsy fall from the truck and landed on his head.

Slice stood for a moment, as if mesmerized, trying to recount in his head exactly how Fugg had spun during the fall. He twirled his finger in a downward spiral, made a tiny splat sound. Then he said heavily, “Lieutenant Fugg, with moves like that, you could someday make a fine addition to the United States Olympic dive team. But I am not at all sure what kind of soldier you might be.”

“What? What?” Fugg said, looking up groggily.

“Sleeping on duty is akin to treason, boy,” Slice said. “I’d shoot you between the eyes right now, but I’m afraid the recruiters would only send me worse. Now, get in my office!”

Chapter 3

In the shipping office, boxes, papers and packages sat all along the walls from floor to ceiling. Many boxes were marked with Cyrillic characters and featured official stamps with the red sickle and hammer—Russian customs stamps.

In the middle of the floor was one such box, about five feet in length, two in width and three feet high. On top of all the Russian notations, yellow tape with black characters shouted Top-Secret from almost every corner of the package.

Major Slice took a seat behind a table, purposely blanked a screen on the office computer, and then held Fugg’s eye. Dumphee had helped the lieutenant to a chair by the desk. Fugg’s fall had left him somewhat groggy.

Pointedly ignoring Fugg’s current state of incapacitation, Slice said, “Now listen up, Fugg. This is a very important mission!” He swatted the desk with his swagger stick for emphasis.

Lieutenant Fugg’s head nodded to the desk. Dumphee nudged him. Fugg lifted his chin, studied the major from half-closed eyes.

Slice gazed at Fugg menacingly. “Soldier, have you been drinking on duty or something?”

The lieutenant didn’t answer. “No, sir,” Dumphee said. “I think it was the fall. He hurt his head.”

Major Slice chewed thoughtfully on his cigar a moment. “Nonsense,” he grumbled. “He’s an American soldier. A good soldier is born with a bulletproof head.”

Slice went back into his lecturing tone. “Our whole battalion in Denver is waiting for this box. And this box must get to Denver without a jolt! ’Cause if you jolt, jar, bump, tip, bounce—or otherwise disturb—this crate, there will be hell to pay.”

Dumphee, startled by this news, glanced at the box. He wondered what was in it. Some kind of experimental explosive?

“This package is far too sensitive to go by air or rail,” the major said. Then he beamed a smile. “So we’ve provided you with a new transport vehicle. It’s one of a kind, designed to give the softest ride available. And with an expert driver—”

“See, you got it wrong, too,” Dumphee said. “Just like the judge. I’m really not a moonshine driver. Now my uncle Claude—”

“What is your name, soldier?” the major shouted, not bothering to squint to read Dumphee’s nametag.

“Dumphee. Private Dumphee, sir.”

“And your Military Occupational Specialty?”

Dumphee faltered. “I guess I’m a driver.… But I was kind of hoping they’d send me to school to be a computer programmer—”

“You guess you’re a driver? You don’t have to guess about it, son. You are a driver!” the major growled. His tone said that he didn’t want any arguments. “You have been trained by the finest military machine in the world, and if you weren’t one hell of a driver, you wouldn’t be sent on this mission.”

“Yessir,” Dumphee said thoughtfully, unconvinced. He didn’t really want to haul dangerous cargo. He said weakly, “Is there some kind of a backpack nuke in that box?”

Fugg’s head had nodded back down to the table. Dumphee sort of reached over and pulled the lieutenant’s head upright.

Major Slice looked left and right as if to make certain that they were alone in the room. He leaned forward conspiratorially and whispered, “All right, son, listen up. This is all Top-Secret, but you’ve got a right to know.” Slice nodded toward the box in the center of the room and said, “As you may realize, with the fall of the Soviet Union, just about everything is up for sale—MIGs, nuclear submarines, their entire space program. What we’ve got in these packages all came straight from the Russian Army’s research and development teams. This is all very, very secret. Hell, the prime minister of Russia himself probably doesn’t know what half this stuff is.

“So, we’ve bought all this equipment, and now we need to get it to Denver where it can be tested. But there’s a problem.…”

At this, Slice bent forward and whispered. “See, we bought this advanced equipment, but we sort of got it from some middlemen. Understand? It seems that some old Russian generals don’t want it to fall into our hands. I have to be honest, gentlemen. Russian agents could be anywhere on the road between here and Denver.”

Dumphee nodded.

Slice continued, “They won’t hesitate to kill you for the contents of that box.”

Dumphee stared at the box, horror sinking into his chest.

“So I’m counting on you—Dumphee, Fugg.”

The lieutenant made a sound like “Glug.”

Dumphee’s heart pounded. He said, “Uh, Major, uh, sir—what does the box do?”

Slice glanced at his watch. “Oh, it’s sort of a machine that distorts time or something. We’ve got some pinhead mathematicians in Denver who can explain it to you better than I could. You know, you can buy just about anything in Russia nowadays—and I mean anything! If you boys were smart, you’d invest in the Russian mail-order bride business right now! Are you boys married?”

Dumphee shook his head no.

“For about $2,000 they could line you up with a Moscow model so gorgeous, you’d think that Christie Brinkley was her ugly kid sister. I mean everything’s for sale. You wouldn’t believe it.

“Well, I’ve got to go pick up my wife and kids so I can catch a plane to Denver.” Slice stood, slapped his boot with the swagger stick, and headed toward the door.

The major seemed to have another thought. “Oh, and gentlemen,” he said with a scowl, “if you make it to Denver one minute late, there will be court-martials waiting for you.” His voice took a lower, more ominous tone. “Good luck.”

* * *

The major had hardly left the room when Master Sergeant Allred entered the room, a stack of manifest papers in hand. “Oh, there you are. All ready to get this time machine gizmo off our hands, I see.”

Allred turned, yelled through a door. “Off your butts, guys. Truck to load!”

Dumphee asked, “Is that thing really dangerous? The major said—”

Allred grunted, “Officers schmofficers. Ain’t you got a sergeant or somebody reliable with you?” He glanced out the back door, then turned back to Dumphee. “You only got one truck?”

Dumphee tried to get Fugg to sit up straight, but the lieutenant kept slumping forward. Dumphee said, “Uh, ah—there were two more, but I guess they took a wrong turn.”

Allred shook his papers in Dumphee’s face. “Well, hell! Do you think we’re just a dumping ground for your whole goddamned battalion? We’ve got experimental assault rifles, bazookas, fifty thousand rounds of ammunition, grenades!” Allred stared at his papers. “We’ve got to get them shipped somehow! Looks like you’re going to have to carry the whole load.”

A couple of privates shifted the time machine onto a dolly. A sign that had been on the bottom of the box now showed: DO NOT JOLT!

Allred shouted at the privates: “You men, get all the rest of that junk on this truck, too.”

The privates began to hustle. Lieutenant Fugg got up and shook his head slowly, as if to clear it. “Dumphee, you take over here for a moment, I’m going to find me a coffee machine.”

The faint aroma of coffee wafted from the secretary’s room outside the major’s office. As Fugg headed in to help himself to some of the major’s brew, Dumphee watched the fellows load the box with rising concern.

“Sergeant,” Dumphee said to Allred. “That box we’re hauling is marked Do Not Jolt, but your men are just going to throw it on the vehicle!”

“Oh, they’ll be careful,” the sergeant barked, loud enough to warn his loaders.

The privates carefully set the crate in the middle of the ATV, came back in for some of the Russian experimental rifles, and one of them smiled wickedly at Dumphee as he tossed the bundle of rifles atop the box.

Dumphee’s heart pounded. If anything got damaged, he’d take the blame.

“Sergeant,” he appealed to Allred, “I don’t think they ought to do that!”

The sergeant made brutal slashing marks with his pen as each package was thrown atop the others, then glared at Dumphee. “That’s the load!” he called, when the last package landed in the ATV.