A Toaster on Mars

PRAISE FOR DARRELL PITT AND THE JACK MASON ADVENTURES

‘A fun story, easy to read and full of action.'

Books+Publishing

‘Lots of mechanical mayhem and derring-do—breathless stuff.'

Michael Pryor

‘Non-stop action, non-stop adventure, non-stop fun!'

Richard Harland

‘Set in a fantastical London, filled with airships, steam cars and metrotowers stretching into space, this fast-paced adventure and homage to the world of Victorian literature and Conan Doyle offers an enjoyable roller-coaster read.'

Magpies

‘The writing is intelligent and Darrell Pitt has created characters that challenge and provoke readers.'

Diva Booknerd

THE JACK MASON ADVENTURES

Book I
The Firebird Mystery

Book II
The Secret Abyss

Book III
The Broken Sun

Book IV
The Monster Within

Book V
The Lost Sword

DARRELL PITT
began his lifelong appreciation of Victorian literature when he read the Sherlock Holmes stories as a child, quickly moving on to H. G. Wells and Jules Verne. This early reading led to a love of comics, science fiction and all things geeky. Darrell is now married with one daughter. He lives in Melbourne.

textpublishing.com.au

The Text Publishing Company

Swann House

22 William Street

Melbourne Victoria 3000

Australia

Copyright © Darrell Pitt 2016

The moral right of Darrell Pitt to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication shall be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

First published in 2016 by The Text Publishing Company

Cover design by Imogen Stubbs

Page design by Text

Typeset by J&M Typesetting

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

Creator: Pitt, Darrell, author.

Title: A toaster on Mars / by Darrell Pitt.

ISBN: 9781922182869 (paperback)

ISBN: 9781925095760 (ebook)

Subjects: Detective and mystery stories.

Dewey Number: A823.4

To Aimée

As promised

A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR

I'm Zeeb Blatsnart.

Yes,
that
Zeeb Blatsnart. No doubt you know me from my appearances on the Interplanetary Nature Channel—
Prodding Exotic Creatures
,
The Glecks of Totalis Four
and
The Rhinorats of Sirius.
There are few corners of the galaxy to which I have not travelled, and little I have not seen with my five eyes. Some may consider me a know-it-all, but I prefer to think of myself as being better informed than anyone else in the universe.

I've been asked to edit this adventure about Blake Carter, a law-enforcement agent living on Earth. Oh, you haven't heard of Earth? I'm not surprised. It's a rather polluted blue dot suffering from global warming, overpopulation and not enough people using deodorant.

Some may see my editing of this book as a demotion, but nothing could be further from the truth. It is true: I was recently suspended from the Interplanetary Nature Channel for killing Tosho Twelve's last rhinopig—but there were extenuating circumstances. I hadn't eaten all day! And what would you rather have: a happy celebrity or a live rhinopig?

I will return to the Interplanetary Nature Channel. It's just taking some time to renegotiate my contracts.

Meanwhile, I have chosen to earn a few trifling credits as an editor.

Ah, the trials of life…

First, I should make clear that at no point in this story does a toaster appear on the planet Mars. Nor on Jupiter, Venus, Mercury or any other planet local to Earth. There isn't even a toaster in any nearby star system, although there
is
a waffle maker on Rygil Five and a rather nice casserole dish on Xypod Nine, but these culinary devices have nothing to do with our story.

I should also point out that reading this book prior to the 26th century is breaking the law. The penalty for such a crime is nine years in jail and 300 hours of listening to
The Greatest Hits of Looloo Jones and his Singing Dachshund Quartet.

So don't blame me if the Time Police come bursting through your door and drag you kicking and screaming into an inter-dimensional black hole.

Oh, and for a limited time only, the first ninety-seven seasons of my program,
The Tarbils of Sataris
, are available as a boxed set. Ring 555-334-455-663-322-441-0107 within sixty seconds to receive a complimentary slice of rhinopig.

Zeeb Blatsnart, Editor

1

‘Blake! It's time to get up!'

Groaning, Blake Carter peered at the owl-shaped alarm clock. He hated everything about that clock—its leer, its bright mustard-yellow eyes—but most of all he hated its voice; it sounded too much like his mother.

‘You'll be late for work,' the clock said. ‘And you know how grumpy that makes you.'

‘Shut up,' Blake muttered.

‘See what I mean.'

The night before, Blake had drunk not one but eight or nine too many Plutonium Supernovas at the Pink Hyperdrive, his local bar. Afterwards he had still been able to walk, but not in a straight line.

Blake's eyes swept towards the window. His apartment, wedged between two buildings, looked over a narrow slice of Neo City. Last night he'd forgotten to turn on the blind and now he could see space elevators rising into orbit, lines of flying cars, and an advertising blimp flashing on and off.

New at the movies!

Star Trek 159: The Wrath of Khan's Clone!

Starts Friday!

‘Just give me a minute,' Blake said.

‘You said that five minutes ago,' the alarm said. ‘If you don't get up now, I'll have to turn nasty.'

‘You don't mean—'

The alarm clock gave a laugh that Blake didn't like. ‘I'll sing,' it said. ‘And you know what my singing's like.'

This got Blake out of bed. The alarm had once woken him with a version of ‘Dancing Queen', sung in Icelandic and badly out of tune. Blake's ears had rung all day.

‘In the old days,' he muttered, ‘alarms used to buzz or chime.'

‘Well, now it's the 26th century,' the clock said, as if Blake were a dodo. ‘We live in a more enlightened age.'

‘Really?' Blake snatched up a shoe and hurled it at the clock, knocking it off the bookshelf. ‘Enlighten that.'

The plastic owl smashed to the floor. ‘Now look what you've done!' it wailed. ‘You've broken my—'

Whatever Blake had broken would forever remain a mystery as the clock died with a gasp.

Blake lurched across the room and hit the switch for his coffee pot. He wasn't a fan of technology. Once upon a time, people had hunted, gathered, and worn animal skins. It was a system that worked—apart from the small risk of being eaten by sabre-tooth tigers. Everything these days ran on fission power, resembled something it shouldn't and was always looking for an argument.

His attack on the clock had knocked a few books off his shelf.
Real
books. Not plastic or electronic or those Immersion Books where you were part of the story. These were actually made of paper.

Blake's home was four-metres square, with a sonar-shower in one corner and a kitchen nook in another. Blake liked his humble abode, although his ex-wife, Astrid, had once described the style as a cross between early ugly and eternal damnation.

Now that Blake was up, the bed had automatically folded back into the wall, revealing his wardrobe. His clothes were all identical: seven pairs of cobalt blue pants, seven amber-coloured shirts and seven long trench coats. Blake didn't like variety.

A flat-screen television and family vids decorated the other walls. Most of the vids were of happier times with Astrid and their daughter, Lisa—a week at the Lunar Zoo, the holiday on Titan and their day at the Wet'n'Wild park at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

His heart gave a lurch when he thought of Lisa. She was the one thing Blake missed about his marriage. He still carried a souvenir with him wherever he went—a tube of water from their holiday on the ocean floor. Lisa had bought it for him. On the side was a slogan,
How Deep is Your Love?

Sighing, Blake caught sight of himself in the mirror. He was ten pounds overweight, his hair was starting to thin and he had deep lines under his eyes. His knees weren't in great shape and his back ached when it got cold.

Nobody lives forever
, he thought.
Except maybe Pleck Wilson
.

‘Good morning, Blake.' The television had now flickered to life, having been activated by the percolating of the coffee machine. ‘It's another beautiful day!'

‘If you say so.'

‘Would you like bad news, really bad news, or catastrophically bad news?'

‘I'll go with catastrophic,' Blake replied. ‘Things can only improve after that.'

The screen flashed to a pair of blue-skinned news anchors. ‘
Two billion people dead as the Tyrus Five sun unexpectedly goes supernova! Rescue ships are being sent from Tyrus Four to search for survivors
.'

They were trying to look horrified, but it was clear they were barely able to contain their glee at breaking such a huge story.

‘They'd better take suncream,' the female anchor joked. ‘It's going to be really
toasty
on the surface!'

‘Off,' Blake told the television and it sputtered back to silence.

After thirty-eight seconds in the sonar shower, Blake emerged clean, and feeling almost human. A minute later he was dressed.

His wristcomm rang.

‘Yeah?'

‘Blake Carter?' It was dispatch. ‘There's a special briefing at 8am.'

As an agent with the Planetary Bureau of Investigation, Blake was used to receiving calls at all hours. With branches in every city on Earth, the PBI's role was to investigate crimes too big for the local authorities.

Blake frowned. ‘But the daily briefing's always at 9am.'

‘That's why it's called a
special
briefing.'

‘What's it about?'

But dispatch had already disconnected.

Must be something big
, Blake thought.
There hasn't been a briefing that early since the assassination of Kennedy's clone.