The Kruton Interface

John DeChancie

This book is dedicated to the original crew of the U.S.S.
Repuls(iv)e

Aleta Akhtar,

Barb Carlson,

Bill Hohmann,

Tom Howell,

Nancy Janda,

Dave Jordan,

Judy Laub,

Patrick Place,

Gordon Rose

PROLOGUE

The Lord High Judge of Tortfeasors’ Court of the Supreme Judiciary of Kruton sat in chambers. Around him were gathered the finest lawyers on the planet Kruton. They were very probably the best lawyers in the universe; for every inhabitant of the planet, from microscopic spoor to full-grown adult slime mold, was either a lawyer or a lawyer-in-training, and Kruton swarmed with billions and billions of inhabitants. Despite this population glut, however, Kruton was united; it was a planetary nation. And it was a nation of lawyers, not of men.

The agenda for this meeting was a discussion of relations between the Affiliated Law Firms of Greater Kruton and various alien species belonging to the Galactic Council of Worlds. Kruton was a member of that august body.

Specifically, talk gravitated around problems with the race called the humans, whose sphere of influence, the “United Systems,” had long been a thorn in Kruton’s side (metaphorically speaking, for Kruton bodies did not properly have sides).

“Let’s sue the bastards!”

The Lord High Judge of Tortfeasors’ Court heaved a liquid sigh and turned his (its) “head,” which at the moment looked not unlike a heap of decomposing garbage.

(Krutons could, and regularly did, appear to be different things at different times. A Kruton was a fluid, changeable sort of creature, consummately protean by nature. By human standards Krutons were, in fact, quite disgusting.)

“That, my dear friend and colleague, is the general idea,” the Lord High Judge said acerbically. “But the question is, what sort of brief can we bring against the humans?”

The Head Prosecutor, to whom the admonition had been directed answered: “We could sue them for never giving us a chance to sue them.”

“Eh?” The Lord High Judge reflected on this suggestion, his interest piqued. “A tantalizing notion.”

“Very progressive,” a deputy prosecutor agreed.

“Oh, not all that progressive, really,” the Head Prosecutor said. “There’ve been precedents. One alien race in the Zantac Nebula sued another for being more technologically advanced than it was—and won. The defendant race had never even heard of the plaintiff race, much less done anything to it.”

“Brilliant legal strategy,” the Lord High Judge effused, spreading out viscously all over his bench. Bits of fur sprouted here and there along his body. “Admirable.”

“The same legal theorem applies to us Krutons,” the Prosecutor went on. “We’re hemmed in by expanding alien species in our part of the galaxy. We need living room. We’re running short of resources and we’re not good at technology, as every one of our number goes to law school. It’s a bad situation.
Somebody’s responsible!”

“Someone must pay!” chimed in another of the best of the seventy-odd billion lawyers of Kruton.

“Well, of course that’s true,” the Lord High Judge concurred. “The trick is to persuade a jury. However, I do think that particular notion is a bit too radical for the Galactic Court of Interspecies Torts and Claims.”

“Possibly,” the Head Prosecutor conceded.

“We will take it under advisement,” the Lord High Judge pronounced. His body slurried and slid, running this way and that like spilled green porridge. “Meanwhile, let’s hit the humans with a big juicy liability case.”

“Yes, let’s!” the others chorused, shifting and reshaping excitedly. There was much oozing and gurgling and splashing about. For a human, the sight would have caused much distress.

“We need an accident!” said a defense attorney who was all fangs, teeth, and tusks.

“That would be unethical,” the Judge said, sucking three newly sprouted foretentacles.

“What would be unethical?”

“Sthaging an accthident… excuse me. Staging an accident. The Law forbids fraud!”

“Oh, of course. I meant, let’s set up the preconditions that could lead to a big juicy, potentially lucrative accident.”

“I thought you were a defense lawyer. Where would this accident take place?”

“Along the Human-Kruton Interface. And I could defend the humans for lots of money.”
 

“An accident like that,” the Judge said, “would be an incident, not an accident.”

“Your Honor, it should be both an accident
and
an incident. Diplomatic, military, political, the whole schmear.”

“I see what you mean,” the Lord High Judge said. “Yes, yes. That’s the ticket!”

“How can we do it?” came the eager question from a prickly, quill-covered shyster.

“Well, how about if one of our military vessels, carrying a diplomatic mission, crosses the Interface and, say, runs into an asteroid?”

“Yes, but it would be fraud if the ship deliberately ran into an asteroid.”

“Oh. Wait a minute, let me think.”

The High Prosecutor clicked his talons. “I’ve got it. Well send the ship out there and have it race around helter-skelter. It’s bound to run into some kind of trouble.”

“It could start a war!”

“We
don’t
want a war!” the Lord High Judge gasped. “We can’t win a war!”

“No, a little skirmish is all I’m talking about. Our ship gets blasted. Wait, let’s just say it gets heavily damaged. On human territory.”

What “faces” there were instantly lit up.

“Negligence!”

“Negligence!”

“Tort!”

“Tort!”

“I like it, I like it,” the Lord High Judge said, in his mind picturing himself delivering the final summation to the jury. (After all, he was a lawyer, too.) I shall speak to the combined chiefs of our military forces.”

“Bumbling, incompetent fools,” grumbled the fanged lawyer.

“Well, of course,” the Judge said. “How much military science can one learn in law school?”

“True, true.”

“We must make allowances,” the Judge said. “Military prowess is not our forte. Tort is our forte.”
 

The cry went up. “Tort! Tort!”
 

“All hail The Law!”
 

“Hail! Hail!”

“The Law is All, The Law is Eternal!”

A lizardlike creature rose. “Let us bow our fluids in prayer.”

All bowed what there was to bow.

“O Great Lawgiver, we humbly petition Thee in this, our billable hour of need… ”

“Amen! Enough,” the Lord High Judge said wearily. “Leave me.”

The lawyers sloshed, skittered, and wriggled out of the chamber. The door contracted and silence fell.

The Lord High Judge of Tortfeasors’ Court sighed as he collapsed into his natural form, a puddle of green, semi-congealed goo that looked like lime gelatin.

“I don’t feel myself today,” the Lord High Judge complained.

CHAPTER 1

David L. Wanker, captain, United Systems Space Forces, stood at an observation window inside the orbital graving dock; from this vantage point he beheld the vast and—to him—obscene bulk of the U.S.S.
Repulse
as it hung in its bottomless repair bay.

There was something in its contours—perhaps in its bulging sensor pods or protruding weapon housings—that made it the concretization of an enormous dirty joke. The
Repulse
was of an odd design: ungainly, ill-proportioned, and almost comically obsolete. Why the Forces had not decommissioned her long ago was anybody’s guess, but one thing was certain: recent United Systems defense budget cuts assured that the
Repulse
would continue to be a ship of the line for some time to come. Replacing her was an enormously expensive proposition (to continue the dirty joke metaphor).

Captain Wanker viewed it all with dismay and a sense of foreboding, his freckled pug nose twitching. He looked younger than his thirty-eight years; in fact, his face was still boyish, and a still-boyish part of him was thrilled with the prospect of a new command. He had bright blue eyes and a receding chin and practically no beard at all. He was lucky to need a shave once a week. He had always worried about this lack of facial hair.

He considered it a shameful genetic defect.

Speaking of boyish thrills—yes, those forward sensor pods, their apexes stenciled in warning red, did indeed resemble voluptuous breasts. From the distended line of the keel, a huge particle beam accelerator hung like the professional equipment of an old stallion at stud, ready for service. At various places along the hull, orifices gaped and buttocklike features protruded. But the whole effect was more tawdry than erotic.

David Wanker sighed. And now he was captain of this space-going bawdyhouse. The prospect of a new command promptly lost its glamour.

He looked down through the repair bay and saw five hundred kilometers to the surface of the planet below. Epsilon Indi II was a world almost without weather, no clouds to obscure its endless wastelands, which made it the perfect space base. “Ship’s liberty” was meaningless here. There was nothing for an able spaceman to do, aside from having an ersatz sexual encounter in one of the base’s few simsex pods. The wait for the use of these ran to days, sometimes weeks. Otherwise, there was nowhere to go and nothing to do; no joy houses, no flesh pots, no diversions of any kind. No drunken spacemen ear-lye in the morning.

No cheap thrills, barring one’s classification of “mud-humping” as a thrill. He had heard about it. The planet’s surface was peculiar. Near the Space Forces base lay great shallow lakes of mud. Bathing in the mud was, according to scuttlebutt, fun and somewhat medicinal—good for a certain few ailments, especially “space crud,” a form of psoriasis induced by long exposure to dry, recycled air.
 

There were other mudholes, however, that offered even better recreational opportunities. The mixture in these shallow and completely safe quicksand pits was of such viscosity, texture, and slipperiness as to approximate … to put it bluntly, the mud sucked; hence, if a spaceman was aroused enough and in a sufficiently advanced state of carnal deprivation (there were simply not enough female personnel to go around, and some of them were—well, never mind), why, he could, trouserless, prostrate himself and let nature take its course.

Not that David Wanker would ever stoop to such a base practice. That was for your common swab. David Wanker was an officer and a gentleman. He had just spent three weeks down there and hadn’t gone near the simsex pods, much less the mudholes.

Again he took in the ugliness of the
Repulse.
Its hull bore the scars of micrometeorite impacts and the constant abrasion of the interstellar gas and dust that any starship encounters as it streaks through space at trans-relativistic speeds. The composite material of the hull was scratched and pitted. The repair crew was busy sanding down the worst of it but the task was endless and hopeless. A special detail was hard at work on the prow of the ship, repairing damage done in a recent mishap: a collision with a tanker. Unfortunately, mishaps were not unusual for the
Repulse.