By Jane Woods

Miguel Ortiz just came to. That was all. One minute nothing was clear. The next, everything was. He could see sunlight. It was as if he hadn’t seen it in years. He stared at it till his eyes hurt. He was lying on his back in a vacant lot. Fine white sand, tall yellowed grass, an old bicycle seat, a few discarded grey roofing tiles and some scattered beer cans shared the lot with him. He rolled over and lazily propped himself up on one elbow to look around. He could barely see over the grass and decided to stand up to get a better view. Then instinct kicked it. The instinct was for survival. After all he’d been through, he was damned well going to survive. Suddenly, he did not feel safe where he was. He was out in the open. He needed to get to cover. He did not want to draw attention to himself but he was in a hurry. He wasn’t sure why.

There was a vague familiarity about this place but it was at the same time strange. Different than it should be. His memories were unclear and confused. He couldn’t trust them. He had to trust his instincts. They took over. Without having a clear destination in mind he ended up in a place he knew. It was a culvert that ran under US 1. He’d played there as a child. He knew which bars in the grate covering it were loose. He pried them free and crawled into the safety that the darkness inside offered.

He breathed a sigh of relief. The cool concrete felt good after the warmth of the afternoon Miami sun. He knew where he was. It was his old neighborhood but it was different. It had been bustling with activity when he lived here but it was dead now. There were no highway sounds over his head as there should have been. There were no buildings. No houses. The only thing left standing were small piles of pastel stucco rubble. Even the ever present gulls flying overhead were strangely silent. It was unreal and it was all wrong. What had happened here? It looked almost like a warzone. Unruly clumps of saw grass grew through the holes in the pavement of what had once been Allegre Avenue, the main boulevard connecting his neighborhood with the rest of Little Havana. Palmetto palms and broken down walls blocked his view but he should have been able to sense the heart of the Cuban community even from here. Traffic, music even voices could be heard when the wind was right. But the eerie quiet was all that invaded his sanctuary.

The hair on the back of his neck stood up. Where was that community? His friends? His family? He had tried not to think of them but visions of their faces flooded his mind. With a sureness that sickened him, he knew that they were all gone. Something had happened and he had not been here to help them. To protect them. Undercurrents of anti-Cuban sentiment had always been part of his life here but it had been a very distant threat made by a radical fringe element of society. Makeshift posters on the remnants of a masonry wall declaring Miami as reclaimed territory by the Florida Restoration Movement told him volumes. They had been a bunch of crackers who wanted all Hispanics out of Florida. There were so ignorant that they never even knew that Florida was a Spanish word. They used to gather out in the Everglades to flex their muscles, race their air boats and drink cheap beer. They had been considered an insulting but generally harmless group by his family. Could the crackers have succeeded?

He had to have answers but he was unarmed and didn't feel safe in broad daylight. He’d wait till it was dark then he’d do some investigating. He tried to ignore the hunger that was gnawing at him. The hunger was easier to deal with than the feeling of dread that was filling him more and more with each passing moment.

It was shortly after 9 pm when he finally dared to leave his shelter. The silence had been broken several times as he hid in the culvert. The sound of a heavy vehicle had come down US 1 almost every hour on the hour. It was a patrol of some sort. A trigger happy patrol. They had taken potshots at several gulls, killing them for sport. The sound of drunken voices accompanied the shooting matches and he did not intend to provide them with a larger target.

When the 9 o’clock patrol left he emerged from the culvert. His muscles were stiff and cramped and had been crying for relief for hours. He stuck to the shadows as he made his way to what had been a mixed neighborhood buffering the Cuban community.

There was severe damage here too but some buildings were still standing and there were some signs of life. Whether or not he could trust that life was another question. He made his way to the only place that might offer him safety and, more importantly, answers.

He felt his first ray of hope when he laid eyes on Pop’s Place. It also looked like a ruin but then, it always had. That had been one of the things that had intrigued him about the place as a kid. Pop ran a sort of general store/ fixit shop/ marina combination for the poorer people that Miami had never acknowledged. He had always been a friend to the Cubans. He and his father before him had helped smuggle people out of Communist Cuba breaking the laws of several nations. Pop’s Place had always closed at 9 but, as usual, a few stragglers stood in the shellrock parking lot shooting the bull with Pop. Pop looked exactly as he always had. Barrel chest, white beard, deeply tanned and weathered skin most of which was exposed as he wore only baggy white shorts and flip flops.

When the last of the customers pulled away, Pop went into his ramshackle shop, took down the open sign and shut off the lights around the sign at the edge of the road. It was hot so he didn’t close the door.

Miguel stealthfully left his place of concealment and made his way to the door. He still stuck to the shadows in case a late customer pulled in. He waited at the corner of the shack for even more darkness to fall, then he made his way to the door. He took a quick look inside to be sure that Pop was alone. The door to the living quarters behind the shop was open. Pop was putting two plates on the table. He froze in his tracks. Two? Who else was here? Pop had lived alone since his beloved wife Mollie had died way back when Miguel was in high school. Pop and Mollie had always been a part of his life. They were good friends with his grandparents. Pop had been a fishermen, just as his grandfather had been. They had worked together for years. Pop’s father had helped his great-grandparents get established in America after they left Cuba when Castro took over back in the last century. While Pop had perfected the downhome Southern Boy manner of speaking to help himself fit into his world, Mollie was every inch the Jewish grandmother. Although many of her honorary grandchildren were Cuban, she lavished the same love, the same sharp tongue and the same Yiddish witticisms on them as she did on her other grandchildren.

“Get in here where I can see ya, Boy,” Pop said without looking up. “I expect you’re hungry.”

“Pop?” he asked quietly. His voice cracked with emotion.

Pop squinted out into the darkened shop. “Miguel? Is that you, kid?”

“It’s me, Pop.”

“Git in here, quick. Never know when those fool patrols will decide to stop in.”

Miguel walked into the kitchen area. It was smaller than he remembered but he still felt at home. Pop nodded for him to sit and they began to eat. Miguel had a million questions but he had learned years ago that Pop didn’t talk till he was damn good and ready to do so. Besides he was starving.

Finally when their plates were empty Pop spoke. “You’re Ma never give you up for dead when seaQuest went missing all them years ago.”

“My mother? Where is she? Pop, what happened and what do you mean years ago -- it hasn’t been ----”

“What’s wrong, Boy?”

“I don’t remember. I just don’t remember anything,” he admitted miserably. He diverted his eyes and they fell on a calendar. He gasped when he saw the year. “Is that right?”

“Ya been gone a long time, Boy. Things have changed.” Pop went on to tell him about the pockets of civil and political unrest that had rocked the country for the last ten years culminating in race wars erupting in all the major cities. The radicals had allies in high places. The UEO had changed its tactics and was now taking a hard line with everyone but the radicals had been allowed their small victories as the UEO formed uneasy alliances with them so that they could concentrate on what they perceived as the larger threat that came from outside forces. So Cubans and Haitians and a few other groups had ended up being deported but not before a lot of blood had been shed on both sides.

“My family?” Miguel asked not hiding the tears that teased at his eyes. He felt it very unlikely that they had passively given up and left.

“Most of ‘um are gone, Son.”

“Back to Cuba?”

“Cuba’s gone too. It was supposed to have been an accident but the military needed to have a show of muscle in order to bring others into their new alliance.”

Miguel shook his head in disbelief. “Are you saying that my family are all dead?”

“Two of your sisters and a few of their kids made it to safety.”

“Safety?”

“It’s better you don’t know any details. There’s a shipment going out tonight. You’ll go with them,” Pop told him.

“Oh no!” Miguel vowed. His voice shook with emotion. “I’m not going anywhere. Somebody’s gonna pay for this!”

“Think with your head instead of your heart, Miguelito. How many times have I told you that? Remember when you were a kid and wanted to take on all the bullies single-handed? You got the snot beat outta ya. This is the same thing. It’s more than you can do alone.”

“Running away never solved anything!”

“Not running away. Regrouping. There’s others who feel the same way you do. As individuals they can’t do a damn thing but together......”

“I’m listening,” Miguel said reluctantly. Pop had been his grandfather’s best friend. He knew he could trust him.

Without giving away too many details, Pop explained that he was now smuggling people out of the country. He was part of an underground movement. Pop never wrote anything down. He had an amazing memory and he knew what had happened to everyone in Miguel’s family. He didn’t gloss anything over. Starvation, lack of medical care or battle had claimed most of them.

“I should have been here!” Miguel’s anger and agony were running together looking for an escape.

“Where were you?”

“I don’t know. I -- I can’t remember. One minute I was on seaQuest. The next I was near the 14th Street overpass. Everything in between is a blank!” Miguel slammed his fist against the wall in frustration.

“Didn’t help a bit, did it?” Pop asked without any sympathy for Miguel’s now sore hand. “That’s about how much good you’d do stayin’ here. But you can help out. The bunch that’s goin’ tonight have no experience on the sea. You can help me and my grandson handle the boat.”

“Okay. I’d be happy to do that. But I’m coming back with it!”

“No you ain’t, Boy. You’d be shot on sight by the patrols and I promised your grandpappy that I’d look after ya like ya was my own. Pop always keeps his word, Boy.”

“Then keep it. Treat me like your own grandson and let me come back and help get others out. I have to do something, Pop.”

“I’ll be shippin’ him out permanently real soon too besides they need you at the sanctuary now. You got skills none of the rest have. You know about the sea, about electronics, about how the UEO works.”

“You want me to betray UEO secrets? I took a pledge when I joined the Navy and then the UEO”

“Seems like the UEO ain’t hardly worrryin’ about none of the pledges they made over the years. It ain’t the same outfit you signed on with 15 years ago. They are part and parcel to the kind of thing that happened here. They have them crackers as a front but it was their operation, make no mistake about that.”

Miguel was stunned. How could he have signed onto the Navy 15 years ago? He would have been 9 years old! Somewhere he had lost 10 years but the world had lost something even more important. Freedom from tyranny. He knew he’d have to do anything he could to stop it. Much as he hated to admit it, he couldn’t do anything alone except get himself killed. He needed to be a part of something larger and stronger than just one man.

“Okay. I’ll do it,” Miguel said with determination. There was a war on and he now knew which side he was on. The UEO had declared war on him and he’d fight back with everything he had. He owed it to the ones who had already laid down their lives.

“I knew he’d come around, Mollie,” Pop addressed Mollie’s portrait which hung in a prominent place in his living quarters. He stared at Mollie’s picture for a moment as if he were having a private conversation with it.

Miguel had to smile at the devotion the old man still had to his wife. Indeed, he too could still almost feel Mollie’s presence here.

“She says she always knew you were a smart boy,” Pop reported. “She also says you should get a haircut, already.”

Miguel laughed. It felt like it was the first time in years that he felt relaxed enough to laugh. Maybe it was. He didn’t want to worry about what had happened to the ten years he had apparently lost. He didn’t want to think about the battle he could sense coming. For these few minutes, he wanted to just enjoy Pop’s hospitality and warm beer and to reminisce about the way things once were.

They had heard the 10 o’clock patrol pass on the highway. But at 11, the patrol decided to pull into Pop’s lot. The minute he heard the crushing of the shellrock, before the engine was even turned off of the humvie that the patrol rode around in, Pop grabbed Miguel’s arm and yanked him to his feet. He pulled back the rug that covered the floor and pulled open a trap door.

Pop’s shop was built directly on a dock. The trap door opened onto water. Miguel barely had time to grab a breath before Pop firmly pushed him into the water. Miguel understood the need for stealth and made almost no noise as he hit the water. It was deeper than he expected. By the time he resurfaced the trap door had been securely refastened and, he was certain, the rug had been replaced to hide it.

Because his redneck guise was so perfect, the cracker patrol never suspected that Pop was not one of them, thus allowing Pop to continue with his smuggling operation. They had no clue that Pop was really Abraham Levin and he was one of the last remaining members of the once large Jewish population that had called South Florida home. Miami had lost its appeal as a retirement destination long ago and those who had once retired to Miami Beach died off. Their children, who were better educated, wealthier and less inclined to think in terms of community, had retired elsewhere. Some wished to be more chic. Some boycotted the area because of a discrepancy on the 2000 Presidential ballot that had denied the retired Jewish voters their voice in the outcome of the election. Some merely wished to avoid the severe weather and threat of fire that had emerged as the pattern since the late nineties. Some wanted more space and less crime than South Florida could offer. At any rate, the Jewish population went into decline in the early part of the century and it had never rebounded.

Miguel could hear the conversation in the room above him as he silently tread water. He could hear four distinct voices talking to Pop. They had grabbed beer from the coolers in the shop and appeared to be settling down to watch a wrestling match on Pop’s TV which they had taken upon themselves to turn on.

Miguel looked at the luminescent dial of the divers' watch he wore. It was after 11. People were due to arrive to be smuggled out at midnight and it looked like these jerks were settling in to watch a series of wrestling matches that were being aired on the sports channel. The matches were taking place in Las Vegas. They were just starting and they could last for hours.

Miguel decided that he had to get rid of them. Noiselessly he swam to the dock in back of the shop. It was pitch dark here but his eyes had adjusted to it. He groped for the ladder he knew was there. It was slippery with algae, as it always had been, but he had used it many times as a kid trying to spy on his older brother and his friends so he climbed it with ease. Once on the dock he leaned into the back of the building and made his way down it. He ducked as he passed the only window and avoided the light that spilled from it. Once he was passed this he quickly made his way to the el in the building. He pulled himself up onto the small lean-to roof. He had to struggle a little for balance. The building was a lot more rickety and he was heavier than he had been when he was ten. The tin roof was also slick with salt from the spray of the ocean.

He made his way to the top of the lean-to and carefully climbed onto the roof of the shop. He knew he couldn’t make any noise or he’d be discovered. His heart was pounding as he crawled up to the peak of the roof and made his way to the opposite side where the little satellite dish was attached to the building. Pop had had a fight with a cable company almost 50 years ago and had switched to the satellite service at that time. This was what was broadcasting the wrestling match. He had to lose the signal. He knew that they’d come and investigate as soon as the picture was lost but it would be too dark for them to discover what he had done.

He slipped a utility knife from the deep pocket in his trousers near his knee. He sliced the coating off of the wire. Then he snipped it. He heard the curses from inside the house even as he silently slid down the roof toward the darkened corner near the lean-to. If anyone came up here they’d see him but he was banking on the fact that they wouldn’t be that ambitious. He heard them on the shellrock lot. They turned on the humvie’s powerful flood light and shined it toward the satellite dish. The loose wire blew in the slight breeze that came from the water.

They cursed and complained for several minutes before they decided to take the chance that they wouldn’t be caught by their superiors and headed for a nearby bar to watch the rest of the match. They invited Pop to join them but he declined swearing an old man needed to get his sleep. He yawned loudly and headed back into the shop.

They piled back into the humvie and left. Miguel made sure they were not about to return for anything before he eased himself down to the dock behind the shop and went back inside. The clock on the mantle below Mollie’s portrait said 11:52.

“That was cuttin’ it close,” Pop remarked.

He hadn’t seen the old man in the shadows and he jumped at the sound of his voice. “Speaking of cutting -- you’ll need the line to your satellite re-attached,” Miguel admitted.

“Josh can do that tomorrow when it’s light,” Pop said. “Get over here. Mollie’ll kill ya if ya drip salt water on her Persian rug. Yer soaked but I expect you could well be wetter ‘n that before you get where you’re going.”

“Exactly where am I going?”

“You’re going to see Sinbad,” Pop chuckled.

Miguel began to wonder about the old man’s sanity. He talked about Mollie like she was in the next room and now he told him he was going to meet an imaginary character.

Suddenly a sound made Miguel dive for cover out of line of any of the windows. The crunch of shellrock rubbing against shellrock told him that someone was in the parking lot. He hadn’t heard the sound of an engine or a vehicle but he knew that someone was there. Pop signaled for him to be quiet and he leisurely strolled out of the shop into the night.

Miguel strained to hear what was happening but there was no sound at all. Then he saw two figures in the doorway. He looked desperately around for some sort of weapon. An ancient harpoon gun hung on the wall nearest him and he grabbed it. He doubted it was in working condition but it was mean enough looking that he might be able to bluff someone into respecting it.

“What thee hell you doin’, Boy? Fixin ta make me ‘n Josh into some kinda kabobs?” Pop screeched.

“Well er I felt like a needed a weapon. I know it probably didn’t work ---”

“It sure as hell does work and it’s got a hair trigger! I think Mollie might be wrong about you and ya ain’t got a lick a sense!” Pop complained, taking the harpoon gun away from him.

“Come on, Pop,” Miguel smiled. “You know Mollie’s never wrong.”

“You’ve got that right,” laughed the second man closing the door them turning around. Miguel was amazed that the man looked familiar to him even though he had never met any of Pop and Mollie’s grandchildren when he was growing up. None lived close by.

“You know my grandson, Josh,” Pop told him. “He was on the seaQuest once too.”

Miguel starred harder at the man.

“Josh Levin, I was with the science contingent on Bridger’s first tour with the seaQuest.” The man held out his hand to shake Miguel’s.

“Dr Le-Vin? I never connected Levin with Pop Levin,” Miguel stated shaking his hand. He looked older than he remembered him but he now knew why he looked familiar.

“Well my parents thought it was cooler to sound French than Jewish so they changed the pronunciation but I’ve been going by Levin again for quite some time. I never realized that you were from this neighborhood or I would have put back a few with you on seaQuest -- not that they exactly encouraged us to mix with the military. I’m sure you guys got the opposite advice from Ford.”

“So what is this old homeweek?” Pop asked, sounding more Yiddish than Miguel had ever heard him sound. “It’s just about midnight already. Let’s get this show on the road. The boat is gassed up and ready. Miguel, you go start it. This yutz always floods the engine.”

Miguel ran around the shop to the dockside. Pop’s fishing boat was tied to the dock where it always had been. Miguel released the bowline and hopped on board The Great List. He had always thought it an odd name for a boat since the vessel was completely shipshape and did not list at all.

He started the old motor with ease. The motor and the boat were both older than he was but they were similar to the one his grandfather had had that he had practically grown up on. Once the engine was humming, Josh and Pop joined him. After one final look around Josh closed his eyes in concentration. Miguel knew that he was some kind of psychic. He didn’t know much about that kind of thing and he didn’t want to know much. He didn’t buy into all that hate and fear of scryers but he would just as soon avoid knowing too much about their mysterious world.

He jumped as six dark shapes seemed to materialize out of the mist that was forming at the waters’ edge. He realized that they must have been hiding in a small clump of scrub pine trees that had grown up at the rear of Pop’s place. The City had ordered Pop to cut them back in the interests of beautifying the waterfront years ago. Had Pop ever been inclined to cut them, that inclination left him with the City’s orders. They went round and round over the trees for years. In the end political power had changed hands and no one felt like prosecuting someone who was practically a local legend. So Pop had kept his little jungle and the Beautification Committee had gone on to pester someone else.

Pop and Josh hurried the six figures below decks and into a secret hold designed just for this purpose. Miguel had heard of the hidden room but he had never seen it before. He helped them secure the hatch on the room and replace the false bulkhead that it was hidden behind. He and Josh would ride in the cabin till they were away from the prying eyes of the Coastal Patrols. Should they see Pop, they would just wave him on. He was known by them also as he often did a little late night fishing to collect bait to sell in his marina shop.

All was secure within minutes. Pop went back up on deck, cast off the stern line and eased his trusty boat out into the channel that would take him out to the open sea.

Josh sat down at the small table in the galley.

Miguel sat across from him. He felt the ocean under him once more. He had missed that feeling. Seamanship was in his blood. There was no denying it. He was deep in thought and jumped when Josh spoke to him. “ Ah what?”

“How long have you been back?”

“Back?”

“Here. On Earth.”

Miguel blinked at him quizzically. Was he nuts too?

“Don’t you remember where you were?”

“Hell no!” Miguel swore in frustration. “ I don’t remember a damned thing. Pop says I’ve been gone for what - ten years.”

“A little more than that actually. Let me fill you in on what I know. Ten years ago the seaQuest mysteriously disappeared. The last word anyone had was that they were answering some sort of distress signal in the place we called the Christmas Tree Trench. When they failed to report in again the UEO mounted a massive search but no trace was ever found. It was like the whole ship just vanished with all hands.”

“Boat,” Miguel said absently.

“What?”

“You said ship. A submarine is always a boat, no matter how big it is.”

“I stand corrected.”

“How in the hell could that be? I remember that much but after that it’s a blank till this afternoon when I found myself at the 14th Street overpass. How did I get there? What happened to ten years of my life and where the hell’s the seaQuest and the rest of the crew? You say no one has a clue where she is?”

“Well no one did till a couple of weeks ago. The seaQuest just re-appeared too. In the middle of a corn field in Iowa.”

“Come off it!”

“Nope. The crew all turned up in various places - all but two -- you and Wendy Smith. Neither of you showed up and neither of you were listed as missing.”

“How could that be?”

“Wendy has some theories on that. She’ll be so happy that you are okay too.”

“I thought Wendy was missing,” Miguel’s head was swimming. Flashes of memories were flooding his brain but he couldn’t latch on to any of them long enough to make any sense out of anything.

“Wendy showed up in Cassadaga two days ago and contacted me at Cape Quest University.”

“Cassadaga isn’t that where all those nu-- fortune tellers and fake psychics live?”

Josh laughed. “What better place for a real psychic to hide than among charlatans? There have always been people there who had the gift. In fact, most of them did to some degree. Wendy thinks that she ended up there because it was the first place on earth that she really felt at home. You came to your home too.”

“Only it’s gone. Wiped out along with most of my family,” Miguel choked on the words.

Josh leaned across the table and put his hand on Miguel’s forearm in a show of support. “I’m sorry for your loss, Miguel. There have been a lot of witch hunts these past ten years. Most of the psychics were arrested and many were executed. Anyone that could even loosely be considered an immigrant was deported.”

“Immigrant! My family has been in this country for three generations -- no four. My sisters have kids. We’re NOT immigrants!!”

“I know that, Miguel. I don’t agree with it or condone it. I’m just trying to fill you in. It was almost worse for people from the Pacific Rim. We are on the verge of war with that confederation. They were treated as enemies of the state.”

“How could this have happened? How could the UEO have let it happen? That was the opposite of what it stood for?!”

“Well after the loss of the seaQuest, there was a lot of in fighting and laying of blame within the UEO. There had been corruption -- even in your time -- General Thomas, Secretary Dre and a few others. There was confusion at the top and opportunists made a grab for power. Order was breaking down everywhere. Several world leaders were assassinated -- including Secretary General McGaff. The public demanded that the UEO get tough with terrorists and others who were causing all the upheavals. About that same time the weather started going haywire. Famines, droughts, floods, fires, earthquakes even volcanic eruptions all added to the chaos. And while the world’s attention was on these things, the UEO regrouped and became a center of power again, only the focus was different now. They enforced order with an iron fist. Anyone or anything that stood up to them was destroyed. Oh, they have their puppet enemies like Macronesia but I have long suspected that the Macronesian threat was an invention of the UEO to give itself the excuse to be armed to the teeth and tyrannical in its rule. People figured that the devil that you know is worse than the one you don’t know. People cocooned; looking out for only themselves. They turned a blind eye to the persecution of others and gave thanks that it was not them the UEO had it in for,” Josh explained.

“Cowards!”

“I’m afraid that’s just human nature. And that's how tyrants and other madmen come to power. Like Hitler in the last century. He went after my people and the rest of the populace looked the other way. No one did a thing to try and stop him. Well almost no one. There were a few brave souls who fought the Third Reich covertly by smuggling Jews to freedom. People like Oscar Schindler, for whom this boat is indirectly named.”

“The Great List?”

“Yes. Schindler had a list of people who needed help getting away. One of the people that he helped to escape was a little boy named Jacob Levin - my great grandfather. To repay that debt he and later Pop helped smuggle Cubans out of Communist Cuba in the 1960s and for the next forty years. Now today we are helping people escape from the tyranny that the UEO has become. Those people in the hold are the last of the so called scryers that I have been harboring. It is getting too dangerous for them even hidden at a large University. They have to leave and take sanctuary elsewhere.”

“Is Wendy with them?” Miguel asked hopefully. He suddenly wanted to take to his shipmate about all that had happened.

“No. When she returned she wasn’t alone. She had a wounded man with her. He is not yet able to travel. As soon as he has recovered they'll both be joining you at the sanctuary.”

“Who was this wounded man?” Miguel found himself feeling suspicious about everything.

“Scott Keller.”

“That’s who we got the distress call from. I remember that much, but I had heard that he had taken off for space with that LeConte guy right after---” He interrupted himself as thoughts of his own encounter with an alien on board the seaQuest came flooding back to him. He’d seen it kill three other guys and he had been helpless to stop it. It had made a grab for him but he’d gotten away. It had gouged his leg though and those deep cuts had become so infected that he had ended up in Med Bay once the crisis had passed. He’d been so feverish and delirious that he wasn’t quite sure what had really happened and what he had hallucinated. He had tried to just forget the whole thing.

“What’s wrong?” Josh became concerned at the change in Miguel’s complexion. He was suddenly very pale.

“There were aliens,” he said in a hushed whisper. “One anyway. It attacked the boat. Killed some of the crew. It was out to get LeConte. That was why he left the planet so they wouldn’t track him and find Earth. Nobody talked much about it afterwards. Parts of it were top secret I guess. I just know I wanted to forget it. I was one of the ones it almost killed. Slashed my leg pretty bad. I was laid up for weeks.”

Before Josh could ask him any more questions, The Great List suddenly swerved, as if trying to avoid an obstacle in the water that had suddenly come into view. Both Josh and Miguel were tossed onto the deck.

“What the--” Miguel asked as the boat cut throttle and came to a dead stop.

“Shhhh,” Josh hushed him and moved closer to the open hatch without showing himself. If all was well Pop would say so.

The voice he heard was not Pop’s. It was orchestrated by the whine of a pulse weapon.

Josh moved back over to where Miguel now crouched by the bulkhead. “It’s a patrol. They are going to board us. We have to hide you. Help me open up the secret hold!”

“There’s no time. All those people will be discovered. I’ll take my chances.”

“You don’t have any chances, Miguel. You're an illegal alien and you'll be shot on sight!”

“Yes I do,” Miguel said, smiling broadly. He pulled the cushion off the bench he had been sitting on. Then he pulled the false bottom out of the storage compartment. It was still there, as he knew it would be. It was an old fashioned semiautomatic rifle that had belonged to his grandfather. Grandfather Miguel had helped Pop with his smuggling operations and this had been his gun. He’d willed it to Pop but Pop had no use for guns. He had taken it for sentimental reasons only. Pop had kept the gun cleaned and oiled because it had belonged to his old friend but it was not loaded. A box of clips lay next to the gun and Miguel loaded it.

“Miguel, you can’t--”

“I won’t unless I have to,” Miguel promised as he climbed into a small locker to hide. The only criticism that he’d ever heard his grandfather voice of Pop was about Pop’s complete unwillingness to use any kind of weapons. It seemed that Josh shared that sentiment but Miguel knew that sometimes you needed to use weapons and he’d been trained to do it in the military. Pop felt that weapons only escalated the situation. Like his grandfather, Miguel felt that you had to fight fire with fire. If the other side had weapons, you needed them also.

Through the ventilation slits in the door, Miguel could see four men push their way into the galley, shoving Pop in front of them.

Pop was cussing up a storm but Josh remained cool. “What is the meaning of this?” he demanded indignantly.

“Who the hell are you?” the potbellied leader demanded back.

“I’m Dr Josh Levin of Cape Quest University. You are interfering with the gathering of windspeed and ocean current data for NOAA and you’d better have a pretty good reason for it. This IS hurricane season, you know!”

Miguel noticed that Josh pronounced his name the French way. His presence and baring took the patrol aback for a minute. Miguel wondered if they’d be able to bluff their way out of this. That was Pop’s modus operandi for all these years. He still had his gun ready, just in case.

“Maybe we’d better check with Colonel Rinehart. We don’t want no trouble with the Atmosphere Department,” another man suggested.

Miguel saw that this patrol, unlike the one he’d seen on land, wore a uniform. It consisted mainly of a black jumpsuit with white luminescent letters on the back reading UEO COASTAL PATROL. They did not strike Miguel as military people and wondered if this was another of the citizen soldier initiatives that Pop had told him about. It served to assimilate people into the UEO and instill an “us against them” mindset in them.

The first man looked around the galley for a minute. “I don’t see no scientific equipment. What were you gonna take them so called reading with, Professor? That is if you even are a professor.”

“Would you like to see my credentials?” Josh’s voice was still calm. He reached inside his jacket pocket to get his ID. It was a tragic mistake.

“He’s going for a gun!” the group’s leader declared.

A second man swung around, aiming the pulse rifle he carried at Josh. Before he could fire Pop threw himself onto the weapon and they both hit the deck.

Miguel heard the sound of the pulse rifle firing. Josh charged toward the spot where Pop and the patrolman grappled.

“Fire!” the leader shouted.

Before any of his men could obey his command, Miguel burst out of the locker firing his grandfather’s gun. His head was completely clear. He knew exactly what he was doing. He even remembered to fire above the water line so that none of the old fashioned bullets in his weapon would put a lethal hole in the boat or the people huddled beneath the deck in the secret hold.

The patrol had expected no resistance and within minutes all four lay dead on the deck of the galley. Miguel ran to the open hatch and waited till two more patrolmen ran into his line of fire. He dropped them both.

He stealthfully made his way to the deck keeping well with in the cover the gunwales provided. He made a quick search for more of the enemy but he found none. He jumped into the runabout that the patrol had arrived in and made a quick search. There was no one on board. They had a small comlink computer and he could see that they had been ordered to stop and search all vessels. They were looking for smugglers of undesirable contraband like foreigners or scryers.

In anger, Miguel smashed the screen with the butt of the gun. They dehumanized their enemies. The oldest trick in the book of warfare. If this was war then this vessel belonged to his enemy. He grabbed the large duffel bag that was under the pilot’s seat. He dumped out the man’s belongings and began filling it with anything that looked like it might be of value. He took mostly electronics and communications equipment. When his sack was full he jumped back onto the Great List and fired into the small boat till there were enough holes in it to sink it. Then he went back down to the galley of the Great List.

His heart jumped into his throat when he saw Josh kneeling on the deck cradling Pop’s head in his lap and singing softly in Hebrew. Miguel knew that Pop was dead. Tears filled his eyes. It was like losing his own grandfather all over again.

He didn’t want to intrude on Josh’s moment of grief so he stowed his sack in the locker he had been hiding in and set about removing the bodies of the patrol from the galley. Once he had them topside, he stripped the jumpsuits off of them. He was thinking like a warrior now and having enemy uniforms might come in handy sometime in the future. He also did not want these bodies to be easily identified if anyone found them.

He strapped some weights to the bodies and tossed them overboard without ceremony. He, too, had to dehumanize his enemies. This was war.

To Be Continued..........