Chapter No.43. Insanity.

I joined Janet and Sharon the next morning at the command center to see what they had found.

"There's another habitable planet orbiting a K-class main sequence star around a hundred light years away," Janet said.

"That should only require twenty-eight hours in hyperspace," I said. "We may as well get it over with."

COMA sounded the alert that it was going to stop the wheels from rotating. Janet, Sharon, Kali and I were already strapped in when Natale and Bridget came running to join us.

"You two are late. Where were you?"

"We were running around on the agricultural deck," Natale said.

I decided to tease them. "Unless you have a reason to go down there, you should ask permission. I should smack your butts for doing that."

Their eyes grew large. "Oh my God!" Bridget screeched. "I would really love that!"

"I'd have an orgasm if you did that!" Natale cried.

I looked over at Kali. "Can't win no matter what."

She laughed.

We endured a ten-minute burn that put us into hyperspace. After getting out of our G-chairs, I joined Janet and Sharon at the command center, mostly to make sure that the engines were okay.

"I wouldn't mind having my butt smacked," Janet said with a teasing tone of voice.

"Me too!" Sharon piped in.

I stood up. "You two are smart asses!"

They laughed.

Strangely enough, they all settled down for the duration of the trip through hyperspace. I was beginning to think that being in hyperspace had a neurological suppression effect on us.

Natale and Bridget spent more bunk time and they seemed lethargic when we gathered at the food module table. Although they didn't seem emotionally subdued, they didn't say much or try to tease me. I couldn't tell if they were just depressed or frightened.

I welcomed the quiet time, which I spent studying the engineering specs and drawings to see if I could figure out what might be happening to the ship's systems when we're in hyperspace.

After we did the burn to take us out of hyperspace and adjust our course for the planet, Janet and Sharon were better able to get a feel for what sort of planet we were headed to.

"This planet is weird," Sharon said. "It's definitely habitable with enough oxygen and water vapor in its atmosphere, but the land masses seem devoid of trees. I'm getting a decent chlorophyll spectrum but it's not quite the same as the last planet."

"The planet's orbit is also weird," Janet said. "It's elliptical, which would suggest that the climate on this planet is variable to a high degree."

"There's no electromagnetic signals from the planet," Sharon said. "I don't see any evidence of anything in orbit around the planet."

"In other words, you don't rate this planet as having a high probability for being the home of an intelligent species."

"Right," Janet said.

After a short correcting burn, we entered orbit that evening. What we were able to see on the surface made us very curious.

"What the hell?" I said after looking at a magnified image of an object of interest. "That looks like a Victorian house. What the hell is it doing all by itself in what appears to be a meadow?"

"Good question," Sharon said. "I can't find any other structures on the surface."

"I don't like this. It smells like a trap."

"What kind of trap could be in a single house?" Kali asked.

"I don't know, but I have a bad feeling about this." I turned to her. "You're the only one I'll take down there."

She nodded her approval.

After more observations and scans of the locale of the single house turned up nothing, Kali and I went to the hanger and boarded the shuttle. The trip down was uneventful. I flew around to see if anything was hiding and then landed near the house's main entrance.

I decided to forego using bio suits because there didn't seem to be a lot of life anywhere on this planet. We walked up to the front entrance and I pushed the doorbell button. After some time, the door opened to reveal an older human male dressed in a dark suit.

"Come in," He said. "Welcome to Havingshire."

We stepped into a scene from several centuries back, a visual delight that contained all of the accouterments of a long-lost era, including a grand piano, a fireplace, ornate drapery and candles, not to mention a colorful carpet.

The male didn't fit the era. He was definitely more modern, the first sign that this was a trap. The other sign was a tubular object that he held in his hand.

I symbolically looked around before I said anything. "Are you alone here?" I asked him.

"I am J.M. Farnthingswood, first Earl of Havingshire. My wife expired ten years ago."

"Are there any others here . . . here on the planet?"

"I am alone. The others pulled up stakes and went off with aliens."

"Did they take their houses with them?"

He chuckled. "No, their houses were torn down and carted off in the alien ship."

I suspected that he was lying, but I wasn't sure what he was up to.

He pressed a button on the tubular object and I immediately felt my body being paralyzed. Kali had already dropped to the floor. I had to move fast, or I would be unable to stop his attack. I pulled a combat dagger from my belt and slashed his carotid artery. The look on his face was one of compete surprise. He tried to stem the blood flow to no avail. As he fell, I caught the object he had in his hand. With his finger no longer pressing a button on it, I felt the paralysis leaving my body.

Kali stood up and stared at me. "What the fuck just happened?" she asked, her face twisted with anger.

I held the tubular object up. "I think this is a nerve paralyzer. I have no idea why he used it on us, but I had to kill him to stop it."

She came over to me and looked at the dagger in my hand. "Where'd you get that pig sticker?"

"I was a combatant in the African War. I appropriated it from a dead soldier. It came in handy on more than one occasion."

"You never cease to amaze me," she said. "Good job!" She held up her right hand and we did a high five.

I looked around the room. "Let's check out this house, but we had better have our laser pistols activated."

We both pulled out pistols from holsters on our utility belts and turned them on to full charge. Then we began a thorough exploration of the house. However, all we found was just rooms with expected Victorian-like furniture, paintings and décor. It wasn't until we went down in the basement that we found something.

Kali pointed to a door. "I wonder where that leads."

"It doesn't make sense because it's on an outside wall." I went over and pulled the door open. "That's strange. It's a tunnel, and it leads out of the house underground."

We carefully entered the tunnel with our pistols ready for action. It wasn't until we got in quite a distance before we arrived at what was simply unbelievable. Row after row of large windowed display cases with humans posed in typical family settings. However, none of them were moving.

"Holy shit!" I exclaimed. "What the hell is this?"

"It looks like a whole bunch of those display cases you see in natural history museums."

We walked up to them and Kali pulled out a hand-held scanner. "None of these people are alive. They look like they're examples of very good taxidermy."

"So, the humans that were living here didn't get taken away by aliens. That bastard used his paralyzer device to disable them so he could kill and stuff them."

"Why in the hell would he do that?" Kali asked.

"Maybe they all desired to leave and he didn't want them to go." I gestured. "This was his way of keeping them here."

"He must have been insane."

"Yeah, pretty much."

"What are we going to do with them?"

"There's nothing we could do with them now. They're dead."

We walked back out of the tunnel that led to the underground display and then went through the house to the exit. After boarding the shuttle, I flew it back up to the ship.

The instant we walked up to the command station, we were inundated with questions.

"What happened down there?" Janet asked.

Kali was the first to reply. She gestured to me. "You had better obey and respect him. He saved me from being killed and stuffed."

They looked at her with quizzical expressions.

"A guy who claimed to be an earl, used a handheld paralytic nerve device to incapacitate us, but I was able to pull out my pig sticker and cut his throat."

Sharon looked at me with a confused expression. "Pig sticker?"

"It's a combat knife. Anyway, we searched his house and found a huge underground museum display with stuffed humans posed in family settings."

"You mean like they stuff animals?" Natale asked.

"Yes."

"Why would he do something that weird?" Sharon asked

"Evidently, he became insane when the humans that lived there wanted to find another planet and he decided to kill them and put them in displays."

"He claimed that they went off with aliens," kali said.

"How many humans did he stuff?" Janet asked.

"I would estimate it at several thousand. The odd thing about it is that we couldn't find evidence of other houses down there."

"Maybe they lived underground," Kali said. "Maybe that nut built the house after he killed them."

I sighed. "No matter what happened, it still doesn't answer the question of where the billions of humans went."

"What are we going to do now?" Sharon asked.

"Look for more habitable planets."

"We'll get right on it, sir," Janet said.

I hesitated before stood up. "Good. Let me know when you find something."

"We will, sir," Sharon replied.

Kali and I exchanged glances before standing up and walking back to the food station. We sat down to relax, but Natale and Bridget walked up to us and just stood at attention.

I turned to look at them. "Is something wrong?"

"No, sir," Natale said. "We're here to be punished."

I frowned. "What did you do?"

"We went down to the engineering deck without permission."

I gave them a subtle smile. "I assume it was to swim."

"Yes, sir."

"Well, there isn't a duty schedule so there's no infraction."

They glanced at each other before turning back to me.

"We think that you should discipline us," Bridget said.

I turned to Kali. "What do you think?"

"I'll take care of it."

I smiled. "Thank you."

Kali turned to them. "Go to the engineering deck and swim. I'll be there shortly."

They smiled and walked to the ladder that led down.

"So, what are you going to do to them?"

"I'll slap their butts and call it a day."

"That seems rather frivolous."

"Yeah, but they're like teenagers. Trust me, they'll love it."

I shook my head. "That's crazy."

She chuckled. "True, but necessary."

I didn't argue with her. I was relieved that she took care of it.

I went back to the command station and sat down next to Sharon.

"We've located a possible habitable system about two hundred light years from here," Janet said. "It's a rocky planet on the outer edge of the habitable zone of a M3-class red dwarf star Hopefully, it's not tidally locked to the star."

"Okay, we'll go there as soon as you work out the burn."

"We'll have it shortly, sir."

I didn't know what had changed to make them act more formal. Maybe it was because they realized that I came close to being killed. I just hope it wasn't some psychological problem associated with hyperspace.

We strapped into our G-chairs that evening for a burn that would take us to another weird situation.