Space Stations

With a strangled cough, Forste folded over the fist and collapsed to the deck. “You all right?” Drexler asked, pulling Bob out of the other's reach.

Bob got his lungs working again. “I'm fine,” he assured the agent, looking back at the intersection where Drexler had appeared. The other rangers were there, too, crowding cautiously around the corner with broomsticks and other makeshift weapons in hand.

“Any idea where the other two are?” Drexler asked as he cuffed Forste's hands and hauled him to his feet.

“Somewhere at the bottom of the Deck Six renovation area,” Bob told him. “They probably won't be giving you much trouble.”

“I don't… understand,” Forste managed through his painful-sounding breathing. “How did you… manage it?”

Bob shrugged. “I told you. I never lifted a finger.”

“Then how…?”

“But I may have mentioned that the station and its equipment had a few problems,” Bob added, looking again at the approaching rangers.

At the rangers, and at the pale but determined figure of Agent Cummings as he limped along, leaning his weight on Hix's arm.

Forste followed his gaze, and his jaw dropped. “That's right,” Bob said with a nod. “One of the problems is a medpack countdown display that isn't worth a damn.”

The terrorists had been locked up, Drexler and Cummings had made their report, and the rangers had gradually drifted back to duties or meals or bed. And once again, Ranger Bob sat at his desk with his recorder in hand.

“Eighteenth April, 2230,” he said. “Evening report.” He took a deep breath. “Well,” he began. “Space Fort Jefferson won its first battle today…”

REDUNDANCY

by Alan Dean Foster

Alan Dean Foster was born in New York City and raised in Los Angeles. He has a bachelor's degree in Political Science and a Master of Fine Arts in Cinema from UCLA.

He has traveled extensively around the world, from Australia to Papua New Guinea. He has also written fiction in just about every genre, and is known for his excellent movie novelizations. Currently, he lives in Prescott, Arizona, with his wife, assorted dogs, cats, fish, javelina and other animals, where he is working on several new novels and media projects.

AMY was only ten, and she didn't want to die.

Not that she really understood death. Her only experience with it had come when they'd buried Gramma Marie. Now the funeral was a wisp of a dream that hung like cobweb in the corners of her memory, something she didn't think of at all unless it bumped into her consciousness accidentally. Then it was no more than vaguely uncomfortable without being really hurtful.

She didn't recall a whole lot about the ceremony itself. Black-clad grown-ups speaking more softly than she had ever heard them talk, her mother crying quietly into the fancy lace hankerchief she never wore anywhere, strange people bending low to tell her how very, very sorry they were: everything more like a movie than real life.

Mostly she remembered the skin of Gramma Marie's face, so fine and smooth as she lay on her back in the big shiny box. The fleshy sheen mirrored the silken bright blue of the coffin's upholstery. It was a waste of pretty fabric, she remembered thinking. Better to have made skirts and party dresses out of it than to bury it deep, deep in the ground. She liked that idea. She thought Gramma Marie would have liked it, too, but she couldn't ask her about it now because Gramma Marie was dead, and people couldn't talk to you anymore once they were dead. Not ever again. That was the thing she disliked most about death; not being able to talk to your friends anymore.

Thinking about it made her shiver slightly. She knew she was in big trouble, and she didn't want to end up looking like Gramma Marie.