the way of the north

continued from Part 2

At Cape Canaveral they were prepping for a history lesson. An old tube-looking thing had been refurbished by 20th century Obsessionists, fitted with rocket boosters, and was propped upright to fire into orbit. Willoby suspected it would blow sky high. He was observing primarily for the chance to see that very thing, but he would be impressed if it made it. Of course, the Europans would then incinerate it in orbit. Too bad, Willoby thought, but near Earth orbit was pretty crowded these days and an unauthorized hunk of metal was more than just a nuisance. He had heard they were putting a monkey named Corn Wallace into the cockpit, but was sure that was only a joke. No one in their right mind would put a sentient creature into a death machine.

A green light pulsed mildly in his left eye, then the speaker clipped to his ear chirped.

"Willoby. Willoby, you're on the move."

"Which case?" He asked. Sparks were swirling around the rocket's carapace. Where had they gotten the tons of fuel required to launch this beast? Then the tell tale spark machine shorted out and the reverse magnetic ion system kicked on, lasers flew from the ass end, and the rocket fluidly boosted eighty thousand feet into near space and vanished beyond the cloud cover. "Ohhh," he said. No fuel.

There was a lot of clapping. Willoby felt a bit cheated, though. "Willoby, are you there?"

"Did you see the rocket launched?"

"They blew it up, didn't waste any time. I hope the lot of those idiot Obsessionists were all aboard."

"Rude. So, what's up?" asked Willoby.

The voice on the line hesitated. "The sun mission. Central has found the woman involved mostly guilty, and they want her back at the field office. You're to retrieve, reading show her stationary in Paris. Got that? We'll transmit her beacon with the packet; now."

"Got it," said Willoby as he scanned the data scrolling before his eyes. He disconnected and turned against the crowd back to the shuttle. He figured this retrieval would be little more than hum drum. A mere chore. The widow would be sunning by a pool, sipping a frou-frou drink and maybe taking in the local fauna, she wouldn't expect a visitor from Central Authorities Crime Division. Frankly, if she was 'mostly guilty', then he doubted she was guilty at all. It wasn't Willoby's job to decide that, just to collect the body. Alive and undamaged preferably.

As the shuttle reached the cycle lot, his data beeped. Jasmin Bathelte was on the move, to Nord-Pas-de-Calais, that is, North France. He palmed the cycle handle and once the bubble clicked shut, Willoby rocketed down the highway, watching as meteoric flaming debris fell into the Atlantic Ocean behind him.

continued in part 4