“They’re not fake.”

       “And then you call me! Me, of all people … What did you say?”

       “I said they’re not fake. They’re real.” And then in a quieter voice, “They’re from Mars.”

       The night was rainy and Harry was concentrating on trying to see out of the windshield in between wiper strokes and trying to stay in his own lane. The last words in the conversation made him break from his tunnel concentration mode to listening mode. The words slowly made their way through the wiper strokes and the rain and settled into the assimilation area of his brain. “What’s not fake? Mars? What the hell are you talking about?”

       “The diamonds. They’re from Mars.” It was a simple statement of fact. “I picked them up myself.”

       “Are you still drunk? Maybe I should’ve left you in that jail cell.” Harry took his eyes from the rain and the road and looked at his friend of 15 years. He saw a man of thirty-two, wearing jeans and a rumpled black t-shirt that had a worn Space.com logo on the front. He was clean cut though with the beginnings of a stubbly beard. Albert Einstein Broski. Al was the antithesis of his name sake. Sure, he had loads of common sense. He was usually one of the most level headed folks that Harry had ever known. So what’s up with this Mars crap? After rechecking his position on the road, he took a closer look at Al. He looked a bit hung over and in need of a shower and a meal, but otherwise ok. “Tell you what. We’ll go to my house, and I’ll fix you something to eat.”

       “I’d rather have a Hairy Dog” Al muttered.

       “Can do, Bud. AFTER a shower and breakfast.” He looked back at his friend, but Al was sound asleep.

Chapter One

The Hare Who Lost His Spectacles

       Early on in his career, he had invested nearly every cent he had made in a new computer oriented company called Microsoft. He had a knack for knowing what was to be the coming thing in the country’s ever evolving society. This knack had served him well in his monetary endeavors. He had even seen the dot com bust coming, and had quadrupled his wealth by getting out in time to avoid the fall of the market.

       Harry was just finishing up the eggs, sausage and toast when Al came into the kitchen rubbing his hair dry with a towel and carrying a clean t-shirt over one shoulder. “Well, you look better. How do you feel?”

       He looked at Harry and grinned that winning grin that always seemed to win him a room full of immediate friends. “Better, better. But I still want that Hairy Dog.” He stopped rubbing his hair, slipped on the shirt and made a big show of breathing in deeply, taking in the aroma of the breakfast that Harry was spooning onto plates. “Mmmmm, sausage. I can never seem to get enough sausage.”

       They ate mostly in silence. Al did get his fill of sausage – better than a half a pound’s worth. And Al insisted on clearing the table himself, leaving the dishes rinsed but not washed in the sink. While Al was doing that, Harry got two cups from the cabinet and poured the coffee. Then he went to another cabinet and pulled out a bottle of brandy. He looked in askance at Al, and Al nodded. He poured a shot into each cup of coffee and then sat down, leaving the bottle on the table at his elbow.

       They sipped at their “Hairy Dogs” for awhile and said nothing.

       “When Charlie died last year, I really had a hard time accepting it.” Charlie was his younger brother. “I even had to take a leave of absence from my position at the university. Harry, Charlie was my best friend. And he was so brilliant. I just couldn’t understand how I could have lost him. That’s when I started drinking so hard. I just felt so empty.” Harry already knew all of this, but he let him talk without interrupting.. “Well, while I was stumbling around out at Charlie’s farm, drunk as usual, I found something that changed everything. Hell, it could change the world if anyone found out about it. Anyway, I was tinkering with Charlie’s old, beat up ’52 Chevy, Eleanor. I always thought it was funny how Charlie named those old beaters that he liked to drive. Anyway, when I dropped my box wrench, and it hit the floor, it sounded funny.” He stopped and drained his cup and held it out to Harry. Harry obliged with a fresh refill (Harry still used a percolator) and another shot of Germain-Robin XO. At a hundred dollars a bottle, Harry usually reserved the California cognac for himself, but he really liked Al and what the hell. The story was probably going to be worth the price of admission.

       Al smiled and took a sip. “Good stuff.” Harry grinned back. “So I brushed the hay away from the floor and started knocking on it. There was a trap door under the car! I’d been out there many times, and I’d never seen it. And stranger yet, Charlie had never shown it to me. I went down the stairs, and it was really dark. No, it was darker than that!” He grinned as if he had just made an inside joke. “I went back up and grabbed a flashlight out of Eleanor’s glove box and headed back down. The beam didn’t reach the other side, so I knew it was pretty roomy. There were thirteen stairs. I know. I counted them.” Al lowered his voice just a bit and looked at Harry square in the eye. “I have a touch of OCD. I tend to count things.” Al drained his cup and said “Well, I feel much better now. I believe I’ll switch to iced tea if you have any.”

       Harry smiled a little smile and said, “I’ll show you where it is. You can fix your own now. It’s sweet sun tea, if you can handle that.”

       The both got up, and Harry pointed Al to the ‘fridge and the cabinet where he kept the tall glasses. Harry wasn’t going to show it, but he was definitely interested in the story now. He had known Charlie fairly well, but from a distance. Charlie didn’t take to too many folks. Probably a side consequence of his brilliance. Brilliant people tend not to open up to many.

       Al continued his story as he got his ice and poured dark brown tea from an icy pitcher. “When my foot touched the bottom step, the lights came on. Not too bright, but enough to see that the place was pretty damn big. In fact, it was like a warehouse down there. I looked around, and just in my line of sight, I saw about every kind of tool or piece of manufacturing equipment I could imagine and then some.” He took a long pull from the huge glass he had filled. “Mmm. Sweet and good. You know that you’re the first person that I’ve told any of this too.”

       Harry nodded. “Consider it repayment of your bail fee.” They both chuckled a bit at that. “I want to hear about diamonds from Mars.”

       “I’m getting there. Don’t rush me.” Al put the glass down, looked at Harry again and then continued his narration. “When I stepped down on the floor proper, I didn’t really know what to expect. But nothing happened. I started looking around, and I found a notebook on one of the benches. It had a rubber band around it, and there was a piece of paper stuck in it with my name on it. It was Charlie’s handwriting. I picked it and pulled the paper from the rubber band. On the other side was a note from him.” Al stopped and took a deep breath. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded, ragged scrap of paper. He handed it to Harry, but Harry shook his head.

       “You read it, Al,” Harry said.

       “Al took another breath, unfolded the paper and began, “’Hey Pup’,” Al didn’t look up, “that’s what he called me. Pup. ‘Hey Pup. I guess this means that I’m gone, eh? Well, don’t worry about it. I may be gone, but I’m not dead. In this note book you will find my adventures in Time and Space. Ha ha. I know you won’t be able to grok it until you’ve read it and then seen the secrets of my little lab.” Al looked up, grinned and said, “He drew a little happy face here. Only it’s a hand written sideways ASCII happy face. Only Charlie would hand write something like that. Well, you won’t believe a thing I tell you from here on unless you see it for yourself.”

       Harry sat up. “Hold on there, Bud. You can’t leave me hanging like this. You’ve GOT to at least tell me what the hell he was talking about!”

       “Ok, ok. But after I give you the short of it, I’ll have to take you out there and show you. Deal?”

       “Deal.”

       “Well, it would seem that my brother invented what he called an ‘inertia dampening drive.’ It allows a person to travel the cosmos at impossible speeds by not moving.” Al stopped to let that sink in.

       Harry didn’t bite. He sat nearly stone faced, looking right at Al. The only hint of emotion was his left eyelid dropped down like a stroke patient trying to wink. It gave the effect of an evil eye.

       “Here’s how it works,” Al went on, ignoring the eye. The Earth is rotating on its axis and revolving around the Sun. The Sun, meanwhile, is revolving around the galaxy, and the galaxy is accelerating away from the Big Bang all at the same time! The speeds HAVE to be fantastic because look at how far the expansion of the Universe has gone in a mere thirteen billion years. Well, if you were to stop dead relative to EVERYTHING, the Earth would shoot out from under you and the entire Solar System would disappear in a matter of seconds.” Al licked his lips, warming to it even though he didn’t truly understand everything about it. “Well, Charlie learned to do just that. Only he could control the direction in which he didn’t move, so he would stop relative to the opposite direction he wanted to go.”

       Harry put his hand up and said, “Ow! I think my head just exploded!”

       Al hurried on, “And that’s not all of it! The inertia dampening field that his device generates is impervious to everything. Even Time itself!” Al giggled a little. “See, ‘inertia’ is defined as the resistance to change. One of Newton’s Laws of Motion: ‘An object in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted on by an outside force,’” he quoted. “Conversely, ‘an object at rest tends to stay at rest unless acted on by an outside force.’” Al was out of his chair, waving his arms around as if this would help Harry to see it better. “By dampening or increasing inertia, he could travel as a sailor travels, only instead of using wind to push, he used motion to relocate, so to speak.”

       Al looked happy for a second then frowned. “No, well, sort of. If you only wanted to travel from the front of the skate board to the back of the skate board, then that would be more like what I’m trying to wrap your brain around.”

       “Hmph. I’ll have to munch on that concept for a while.” His stroking fingers slowed down just a bit.

       Al tossed him the notebook and said, “Look at that diagram. It might help.” Then he headed for his jacket that he’d thrown in a corner by the front door.

       “Hey! Where are you going?” Harry called after him.

       “Come on! Let’s go! I know you think I’m bullshitting you, so I have to clear my honor. Let’s go to Charlie’s farm. It’s only about thirty miles west of here out I-10. And besides, the desert is beautiful this time of the morning!”

       Harry said, “Jesus H., the sun isn’t even up yet.” But he was ready to go. If Al was as level headed as Harry thought him to be, this was something he wasn’t going to miss. “Just let me find my reading glasses.” Now where did he put those glasses? Ah, on top of his head, as usual. He pulled them down to his eyes and looked at page that the notebook was opened to: