5.
 “Blue Star Station could send a surprise inspector,” Poseidon suggested. He was the ship’s oceanographer and second in command after Jupiter.
“Bah,” Jupiter said, lifting his beer glass, “we’ll know about it days ahead of time.”
“I hope you’re right,” Mars said. That night, he stopped in the database, to surf through various information feeds. He pictured the object he’d seen, as best he could, and projected it from his mind onto a screen before him. Then he ran a pattern recognition program. After a few minutes of churning gigaflops of information, the program whispered in a unisex voice: “No matches found.”
He started to tell it to shut off, but it added: “Some possible matches should be examined.”
“Affirmative.”
It showed a bread box. “This is a standard ship’s galley bread box. Want more info?”
“No. Next?”
It showed a thing that looked like a darker breadbox. “This is a robot ticket changer for the world-wide subway net on Gimel Aleph. Want more info?”
The shape wasn’t quite right. “No. Anything else?”
It showed the object Mars had seen. “This is a Galaxy Central spy device. Want more info?”
“No,” Mars said with a sinking feeling, “I’m afraid to ask.”
“Thank you,” it whispered as he walked away.
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Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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