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Stories from the Verse
Old Verses New
Chapter 90: Kondor 72
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Chapter 89: Brown 30
When Kondor reached the museum that afternoon, there was a message waiting for him. It seems that Professor Merrick was called away at the last minute, and would be out of town for two days; he would be pleased to make himself available on the third day, at whatever time was convenient. Thus Kondor's plans remained uncertain.
The problem of recharging his kinetic blaster kept coming back from the back of his mind, so after lunch Kondor decided to try to find someone who could help him with this. This, however, did not present so simple a solution as his other weapons had. You couldn't walk into Radio Shack® and ask about a power supply for an alien advanced electronics weapon without at least answering a few questions about it, and explaining what it was and where he got it would not be simple. But it seemed likely to him that someone should be able to figure out enough about it to recharge the batteries. After all, whatever everything else in the system might be, electricity was still electricity, and people in this world understood electrical power supplies, even if they didn't understand kinetic generators yet.
As he wondered where to turn, he remembered a phone book in the desk by the phone, and flipped through it. The yellow pages in this world turned out to be green, but once he found them they were much the same otherwise. On his way toward electronics he flipped through engineers, and then when electronics yielded nothing that looked promising, he tried electronic engineers. This, too, was disappointing, but it sent his mind in a new direction. Perhaps someone in the engineering department of the university–but no, if an army surplus dealer could recognize that this was a weapon, a professor of engineering would probably recognize far more.
He stopped in an electronics store and looked at what they had. The clerk asked if he needed help.
"Thanks, but I don't think so," he said. "I need a battery for this gadget I've got at home, but it's an unusual type and I don't think I would remember the number. I was sort of hoping I'd recognize it, but I guess I don't know quite what I'm looking for."
"O.K., let me know if you change your mind."
Returning to the hotel early in the afternoon, he turned lunch into dinner. This morning he had solved a mystery; now he found himself already wishing something would happen. "Relax, Joe," he told himself as he soaked in the hot tub. "You've been in many places where there was down time, and something always came along. Don't worry about it. Something will happen. It always does."
He retired early. Whether worn out from the excitement or tired from the late nights recently, he had no trouble falling asleep.
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with eight other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #110: Character Redirects. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
