On Wheels Six-Gun Planet by Jakes John

Author:Jakes, John [Jakes, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 9781453263327
Amazon: 1453263322
Goodreads: 15814816
Publisher: Open Road Media Sci-Fi Fantasy
Published: 2012-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

Chapter Three

A MILE THIS SIDE of the Fort gate a flaking signboard of more modern design clarified matters for any who happened to be interested. The sign identified the sprawling facility as Cosmic Confederation Commercial Freeport Number 1127, (renamed Fort Propulsion at the insistence of the locals).

There were three such ports on the north continent of Missouri, all widely separated by a lot of forlorn geography. The official re-naming—the date on the board showed it had happened over eighty years earlier, in the first decade of the twenty-third century—was just another indication of the way in which the galaxy’s far-off central administrative structure bemusedly let the natives of Missouri go their own way, indulging in their aberrative antics unmolested because Cosfed did not consider the antics a menace to the rest of the galactic structure. Zak had long concluded that had the economic value of Missouri been of significance, Cosfed would have had a far stronger hand in matters. But the mines were nearly worthless. The value of the planet had become negligible in the galactic scheme now that the clock was firmly set back.

Little remained in the way of interplanetary commerce. There were occasional carefully guided tours. Off-worlders who wanted to visit a little town like Shane could see, from behind protective invisibility shields, what they presumed was an authentic gunsmoke adjudication of a local dispute. And then there was the anemic souvenir trade. Hokey pseudo frontier items were manufactured by old-fashioned methods in a clutch of seedy factory buildings at the edges of some of the little towns. Somewhere in the galaxy a market for that kind of dreck existed, Zak knew. And Shane had such a clutch of facilities. He turned his main cartwheels by handling the town’s dribble of souvenir trade. His was a minor civil service post, humiliating in its way. He often wondered whether events had conspired to end him up here on Missouri, or whether he had simply found his own level.

The cartwheels from his job, together with the extra ones he turned guiding groups through Shane for Tip Top Tours, helped him scrape along. An occasional Living Antique deal helped out too. It was one of those which had, by going sour, forced him to make the perilous overland journey to the Fort just ahead.

A long ocher plume drifted upward at one side of the rocket facility. A gantry was being slowly rolled back. Zak noted the position of the orange sun. Realized it was later in the day than he’d imagined. That must be the twice monthly freight packet to Zapoleon fueling.

Save for that rusty rocket, the freeport seemed barren of activity. Few vessels called at Missouri. She was a remote world, both in terms of galactic location and the larger pattern of galactic life. Damn but he’d love to dance with a clean woman, ride up in a tower to the two-hundredth story, watch a government-inducted multimedia sunset on one of the really civilized worlds. But even Zapoleon, the closest,

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