The Lost Stories: A Series of CoSmic Adventures

... and Found

My name is Thurstle Winston (seriously, your first name is Thurstle, Winston? Why didn't I ever read your personnel file? Actually you're lucky I never did!), and I am first officer of the galactic warship DeVille (not so, old friend, you're captain now). Captain James Kollins has been missing for a full week.

When the captain (you're the captain now) insisted on descending to Eden alone, it went against my every instinct, not to mention a few regulations, to allow him to do so. But the captain (you’re the captain) is a difficult person to disagree with normally, and he was not his normal self: I’d never before seen the kind of energy and determination he exhibited. I let him go alone, taking the quiet precaution of tracking his shuttle and then him himself (“him himself,” Winston? What kind of writing is that?) as he trekked through a forested area on the east side of the planet. He came to a sudden stop in one place, no more or less interesting than any other, and stayed there for the better part of an hour. Just as my fears that something had happened to him began to overwhelm me, but before I could deploy a search and rescue party, the captain (don’t make me say it again) began to move once more, with great speed, back toward the shuttlecraft. But once he was in the shuttle, both signals disappeared.

We've searched everywhere on the planet and in the system, and scanned as far as a shuttlecraft can travel in seven days. James Kollins is missing, and I am at fault. We keep searching, but I grow more despondent with every passing day, and feel that I can delay no longer. Tomorrow I will alert the Board of the situation, and will, of course, take full responsibility.

(Stop sounding so gloomy, Winston! Everything is taken care of. And you're going to make a better captain than I ever did. All the paperwork has been submitted to the Board, backdated so it looks like I sent it in several months ago. Some clerk will discover the file, think the oversight and delay is his fault, and fast-track the approval. Your status will be official in a few days, I'm sure.)

I see that somehow the captain (you're the captain) has changed my log (yes, I have mad hacking skills. In high school, I modified the tabulation program so that any vote as Most Likely to Succeed cast for a close friend of mine was counted as a vote for me. Don't judge me too harshly, Winston; I was young and ambitious and had a conscience the size of a pea. Were I interested in defending my actions (I'm not), I might mention that someone who has the ability to break into the principal's computer and hack the tabulator without attracting attention, then walk away with enough blackmail material to ensure against the principal if his suspicion was aroused, deserves the title more than some goody-two-shoes, school-liking, detention-not-getting, stupid-nickname-not-able-to-let-go-of future admiral, don't you agree?) I appreciate what you've done for me, sir, but I have so many questions. As a start, what happened to you on Eden?

(Well, Winston, when I was down on the planet's surface, I realized something—or, to be honest, I realized a few things. One is that I'd never given my brother and his wife a wedding present. This upset me very much, and I decided to rectify the situation without further delay. I borrowed the shuttle and made my way back to Earth. Hiding my signal from the 's sensors was easy—I rigged them long ago so that I could mask my shuttlecraft with the push of a button, if I ever needed to make an escape. A captain can never take too many precautions to prepare against mutinies, or so I thought at the time. Finding ships that were headed in the right direction, and piggybacking a ride without being discovered, was quite a different story. But once I've set my mind to something, Winston, it takes more than threats of being thrown out the airlock to make me give up.

(I was so focused on getting to Earth that I completely forgot about a gift until I was standing in front of Jack and Marie's apartment door. It was too late, of course—the door had already scanned my face and announced me. For a moment, I hoped no one was home but then the door swung open and my sister-in-law stood framed in the doorway like a goddess in a painting. The three of us spent hours talking, then had dinner together, then talked for a few more hours. It turns out my brother isn't nearly as insufferable when he's around Marie. Not that I forgot about my original purpose in visiting them. Before I left, I pulled Jack aside and made him an offer I thought he couldn't refuse. He should take a break from scribbling vague poetry, I said, and write up the story of my life instead. “I already have the whole thing mapped out in my mind in outline,” I said, “so all you have to do is flesh it out a little.” Who wouldn't want to read my life's story? And his job was about three-quarters done! “I'm living, breathing, pure profit,” I said, and offered that he keep a generous percentage of the gain, which even at twenty or (if he plays hardball) twenty-two percent would be an ever-giving wedding gift to him and Marie. Not a writer in a million would turn down such an offer—yet Jack did! Of course I wasn’t surprised; but Marie is pregnant so I'll be back once the baby is born and will have another chance to convince Jack of his folly. Like I said, I'm not surprised or daunted. The Good Book did warn me about this—a profit is welcome everywhere except at home.)