Milk Run by Robert Donald Locke

0:00Hey, it's Kelly Rowland. You may not know this, but I have Exema. So I get how it can steal your time. But why let Exema take over when you can talk to your doctor about Epglyce? Epglyce, lubricism app LBKZ, a 250-mg per 2-mg leador injection, is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older, who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kg with moderate to severe Exema. Also called a topic dermatitis that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals or who cannot use topical therapies. Epglyce can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you are allergic to Epglyce. A allergic reactions can occur that can be severe. Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have newer, worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with Epglyce. Before starting Epglyce, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Paid partnership with Lili Respect your time. Ask your doctor about Epglyce and visit Epglyce.com or call 1-800-LiliRX or 1-800-545. Find ways to be financially savvy is a smart move, and knowing you could be saving money

1:05for the things you really want, like that dream home or new ride, is a great feeling. That's why the State Farm Personal Price Plan can help you save when you choose to bundle home an auto. Bundling Just another way to save with a personal price plan. Head to statefarm.com to get a quote. Prices are based on reading plans that vary by state. Covered options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings, and eligibility vary by state. You just got back to your Toyota truck and you can't feel your fingers. You've been out here for 13 days. Now, 16, 15, you've lost track. You're eating something you wouldn't dare look in the eyes while taking directions from a phone that ran out of signal miles ago. Every bone and muscle in your body has filed a formal complaint. And the only gas you've got left is in the tank of your truck. But you know what? You're the happiest you've been in years. Toyota trucks outlast outlive. When you've got a job to do, lows, lows, and a help you keep in moving. Milo's pro rewards members save more with member-value discounts on eligible orders through a quote

2:10of $2,000 or more. Plus, save time with job site delivery and select purchases. Not a member? Join for free today. Exclusions, more terms, and restrictions apply. It can't be combined with any other discount, including but not limited to contract and or special price loyalty programs subject to terms and conditions, details at Loas.com slash terms subject to change. Three ancient aliens awaken aboard a human freighter and neither species can understand what the other intends. With the crew helpless and the ship racing through hyperspace, someone must find a way to turn two terrified enemies into something else. Milk run by Robert Donald Locke. That's next on the Loas sci-fi podcast. We're giving away a Loas sci-fi podcast or Weird Tales Reborn T-shirt. And you get to choose the design and the color. Check out all of our new designs in the merch store at Loas sci-fi.com forward slash merch.

3:15Or click the link in the description. Here's how to enter. Follow the Loas sci-fi podcast on Facebook and subscribe to our free newsletter. Then head over to our Facebook page, find the giveaway post pinned at the top and leave a comment telling us that you've done both. That's it. You're entered. Subscribe to our free newsletter at Loas sci-fi.com forward slash free. Find our Facebook page at Loas sci-fi.com forward slash Facebook. If you're already following us on Facebook and subscribed to the newsletter, you're eligible too. Just leave a comment on the pinned giveaway post and let us know. And it doesn't matter where you live. If you win, we'll ship your new Loas sci-fi podcast or Weird Tales Reborn T-shirt anywhere in the world. The winner will be selected in a random drawing on October 30th. Good luck. This is the first appearance for author Robert Donald Locke on the podcast.

4:20Robert Donald Locke is something of a mystery. We know he served in the U.S. Air Force during World War II. But remarkably, little else about his life has survived. He began publishing science fiction in 1952 and wrote about a dozen short stories in one novel before disappearing from the genre after 1961. Follow along with us if you have a copy of Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy from May 1953. Our story begins on page 92, Milkoron by Robert Donald Locke. Two hours before the vessel plunged into minus point, building up for 150 parsec jump through hyperspace, Captain Jack Warren was so high on Narcaw he couldn't read his own manifest. Not unusual on this, Milkoron.

5:22After two hours inside a minus point, his sober gray cells were functioning like blaster tubes. But by then it was too late. The scags had taken over control of the ship. Every goon's log. The star rover, a rusty freighter that shuttle between Rigel and the home system, hovered above a transfer station some two million miles out from Rigel's twelfth planet, awaiting port clearance. Every crewman knew the skipper was oiled, but they knew the entropy barrier would set him back a full day, shocking him into cold alertness. The head officer Charles Goon knocked at the captain's cabin, entered and saluted. Sir, cargo's loaded and customs cleared. The skipper, his face bagged like the coal sack, his blood cracked eyes possessing chilling steel blue irises that could blister a super cargo's hide at fifty paces was unable to focus on the paper's hand at him.

6:24Stop, Mr. Goon! Blast off! I, I, sir! Goon paused, then reported. I thought you should know, Captain, we just brought on some scags. Some archaeology outfits ship in the things to earth for further study. Blasted mummies? Next we'll be hauling heathen idols. Captain Warren glanced at his cronometer. Shove of time, is it? Go to the bridge and tell Mr. Caldwell I said to Maker Grunk. This was his final utterance. His massive head slumped back in the narcole stupor. His sotted brain dreaming of days when every spacelain was a new frontier, an adventure lurked on all unknown planets. On his way up to the bow, Charlie Goon poked his head into the ward room, thinking it possible first officer Mark Caldwell might be getting off one last message to the brunette on Ragell. But no one was in the lounge. Goon followed the catwalk over the pulsing auxiliaries and mounted the starboard companion

7:27way to the bridge. There he found the astrogator, pouring over a set of star charts. The old man says, shove off, Goon greeted him. Got your DS done? Caldwell grinned without looking up from his desk. But DS is just a formality. The rule book says you got to enter in the log. Superspaces too slinky to obey normal laws. That's why we cut it in fifty parsec slices to see how far we've drifted. You brain boys and your double talk. Not at all. Normal Einstein space is curved. Hyperspace isn't. Very simple. Simple like Wombat Chess, huh? You can politely remove yourself to the deck. Caldwell replied. I've got to get our junk pile coasting through the midnight black. Many women on board? None your speed, Romeo. Unless you like Skags. A split-second dodge through the hatch way eluded the waist-basket hurled at him.

8:32After his calculations looked satisfactory. Caldwell unhinged his solar plane compass. Its needle pointed not to earth. Into that vast imaginary plane in the galaxy to which the home system was horizontal, and which aligned drawn through the sun and Polaris was nearly perpendicular. Once a heading was determined, it was possible by quadrangulation to arrive at an effective course. The transparent star dome that enveloped the bridge admitted the light of a thousand molten suns from this crowded corner of space. The astrogator looked at the clusters and thought how glad he was to leave the hot dry climate of Rijel's dusty barren worlds. Not to mention the primitive women. Now Arturus was an exciting run he'd heard. The Space Man's Paradise, with an exotic native culture and a nitrogen major atmosphere. Not like the damn Helian Enbelo, the Rijelian system, in which a man's voice rose to female

9:36pitch. Caldwell rang the engine room. Repair to blast. High-iceur, curium piles on forty-plus, open rear vents. Rear vents opened. Attention deck. Close all ports. Throughout the vessel shutters descended to screen out the cosmic radiations that would bathe the hull as light speed approached. Alarm bells rang. The astrogators slender hands caressed a set of blue-sheemed knobs while a dozen dials glowed with sudden green light. Bulbs dimmed as power from the auxiliaries added their load to the direct blasters. The star rover shuddered violently and bulkhead screamed as tortured metal leap forward through the void. And in the hold the sky still slept. One deck, Charlie Goon, sickened briefly as acceleration took hold.

10:37Still, free space take-offs weren't as tormenting as shaking off six-day gravities in a surface departure. More on some of the big planets. He wondered vaguely why the skipper preferred a narcole stupor to reality. Who knew? Perhaps thirty years of probing the black void and the deeper black of hyperspace would not weigh any man's defenses. It took a wife and kids to anchor a man to a world. Goon himself was grateful for his family honor, and the days he would spend with his feet planted firm on terrestrial soil. He was privileged in a way Captain Jack Warren could never know. When the acceleration stress decreased, he descended to the hull feeling suddenly chilled. Most of the burillion bulkheads, heat was lost more rapidly than in other sections. Goon made his way through the dimly lit, lightly storage passages, skirting bales of priceless

11:40bockas silk. Hogs heads of delicious platinum-hued wine from grapes grown in the soil of Rijel-9. And led sheathed crates of long-lived Curium isotopes, native to Rijel's fourth planet. He approached the compartment to contain the skags. Here he halted. Sensitive to the enigma which had baffled the galaxy. The strange frozen skags constituted the first and only evidence of a non-humanoid culture yet found. They were known to have been intelligent. Their cities, lacy things of steel and plastic, still reached for clouds on the slag-red sands of Rijel-4. Silent and deserted. Involved beneath city's surface had been discovered the last few inhabitants, perfectly preserved in death. Controlling his repulsion, Charlie Goon studied the three skags, lying in composed attitudes

12:42within their globe-shaped transparent shells. Blue tentacles stuck out of bulbous heads like Medusi. Inhumanly majestic faces, but lacking nostrils and ears, were supported by strong granite bodies with abnormally long arms and legs. At first glance they appeared to be perverted human mutations. In their repose they seemed almost alive. Unable to look longer, Goon climbed the nearest ladder. At the top a crewman commented to him, must have been frightful in life, them skags. We'd had a battle answer, a real bloody battle. The ship's speaker vibrated with Mark Caldwell's magnified voice. Attention all hands, we are entering minus point. In his cabin Captain Jack Warren mumbled in his narcole stupor, but his burly body never stirred.

13:45Veteran astrogator though he was, Mark Caldwell always dreaded the approach of minus point. You never could predict what effect the Lorentz Fitzgerald contraction might produce just before the jump into hyperspace. When the laws of the Einsteinian universe broke down, but only at minus point could warper coils take over from blast engines. At minus point, which set in at 186,100 miles a second, time started to reverse itself and flow backwards. Bending of the spacetime continuum distorted entropy, causing an indescribably extended vessel and occupants to actually grow younger. As human minds were unable to function during this period of cellular regeneration, robot pilots took over immediately. Two hours passed the barrier, the crew would awake, at least two hours younger than at

14:47the moment of plunge. Relays shuffled and clutches locked, clamping the star rover's directional controls, while Mark Caldwell fed the ship's heading figures into the Mercury Vat memory of the pilot. When he prepared for the big sleep, when consciousness returned, his brain would no longer be fogged. The astrogator's sensitive fingers closed the last switch. Around the plowing freighter, the void strained and twisted in the flux of new forces, squeezing the vessel out of the universe as a grape is squeezed from its skin. You didn't start a business just to keep the lights on. You hit a sell more today than yesterday. You're here to win. Lucky for you, Shopify built the best converting checkout on the planet. Like for just one tapping, ridiculously fast acting, sky high sales stacking, champion to check out. That's the good stuff right there. So if your business is in it to win it, win with Shopify.

15:51Watch your free trial today at Shopify.com slash win. At the state farm dot com to get a quote, like a good neighbor, state farm is there.

16:56I don't know about you, but I get pretty excited when football season rolls around. That's why I always make a stop at total wine and more before kick off. Whether it's craft bourbon, cold beer, or ready to drink cocktails, it's easy to build a lineup that keeps everyone happy. And when I'm getting everything ready for game day, it's nice knowing I'm getting the lowest prices. Make total wine and more part of your game day tradition. The first or not sold in Virginia in North Carolina, drink responsibly, be 21. It was at that moment of passing the barrier that the skags after a million years in the dream barren sleep of suspended animation awoke from their life and death. The time reverting effect of minus point, return their bodies to that instant in the forgotten past when they had retreated into mass oblivion. Just to be jolted into life in the starrovers, dim gray hold was the mind of Cagol. Tentacles rustled in violent wriggling activity, then massive eyelids open to reveal cold

17:59purple eyes. As in human strength massed in his limbs, Cagol stood erect, found the release to his prison shell and pressed the button. The transparent envelope collapsed, leaving him free. Bot vibrations brought perplexed messages from the other two skags. Cagol studied his surroundings and said, we have failed. The gas nebula penetrated and we are in the realm of the dead. We are dead, yet we breathe. Let us look around. We must arrive at the truth. Starting along with heavy tread, the skags made their way from compartment to compartment, until they found a ladder by which they mounted. Only the faint throb of the auxiliary engines, now supplying the warpers, was to be heard. On the deck, Cagol found two erect bodies in sculptured attitudes, the unconscious shapes

19:00of second officer Charles Goon and a boason. All three skags halted, racked by uncontrollable revulsion at sight of the alien species. Cagol's limbs glowed with yellow light, and he reached forth to desh shock the monsters. But the skag behind him warned, they may be harmless, perhaps we should wait until they awaken. They explored the ship from Boudestern, stopping only to wonder at the warper coils, which they would have designed differently. It is clear, we are prisoners in a vessel between the stars. Presently, they found a control that opened the starboard viewports. Their eyes were greeted by the wrenching chaos of hyperspace. It is a new dimension. Our captors are highly advanced, and their minds are impervious to our probing. We must take over. Before they recover.

20:02The skags hurried through the freighter, gathering up all possible weapons and locking them in the hole. Then Cagol mounted the bridge, and familiarized himself with the instruments and controls. Mark called Welles' mind snapped back into full consciousness. For a moment he thought that waitress at Arturus had followed him. Then the vision suddenly changed into something horrible, and he found himself facing a living skag, who stood watching him with curious eyes. Called Welles' skin crawled, and he started to cry out. A muscle jerk caused his arms to fail, and a yellow glow simultaneously exuded from the skag, bathing the astrogator in needle-like flame that paralyzed. Cagol and humans studied each other. Unable to communicate directly, and each filled with horror and disgust at the other's

21:04sight. Then having made his captive helpless, Cagol examined the star charts on the desk. Only to discover a million years had exploded the constellations like dusk clouds, and the suns were unfamiliar. Again, man and Skag faced each other. Without communication, the Skags could not learn the ship's destination, and so, although they were in power, they were as helpless as their captives. Charlie Goon had been thinking of Earth's green fields a moment before the star rover entered minus point. Now his mind was snapped back to terrifying reality, with the knowledge that the starboard ports were unshutted. No human found it easy to gaze at hyperspace, and the officer rushed to close the ports, wondering who was responsible. He made his way to the hold, and there discovered the collapsed envelopes of the Skags.

22:09His first thought was for the captain. But as he neared Jack Warren's cabin, his hackles rose as if in warning. There was a new odor in the air, slimy, and deathly ancient. Then at the far end of the passageway, he saw the back of a tentacled head rise from the steps to the engine-room. Yellow flames seemed to pursue him along the corridor as he fled, and emergency-ats that led past the foaxal to the lifeboats, afforded him temporary escape. And seconds later he found refuge in a lifeboat. When his trembling ceased, he started to formulate plans to regain the ship. In the lifeboat, he discovered two forceband pistols which he stuck in his belt. If worse, came to worse, he could bolt the ship, risking the unknown dangers of a hyper-universe in preference to the Skags.

23:12As the knock-all-induced fantasies faded from Jack Warren's brain, the skipper became aware his ship had passed minus-point. Well, the old tub was on her way now, and he'd have to put in an appearance on the deck. Show the lads the old man wasn't scuttled. He splashed cold water on his face, afterwards rubbing his red blotch skin with a rough towel, feeling better. He hummed a vulgar space-shanty he had learned as an Alpha Centauri midshipman, following which he danced a brief jig that evoked memories of an early cruise to Prosihan, and a lovely black-eyed wench. Now completely spruced up, the captain buckled the triple prongs of his white belt, donned his gold-brated space cap and stepped out of the cabin. The skags stood at the end of the hall waiting for him. Doubt and disbelief wrinkle Jack Warren's brow as he stared at the operation.

24:14He knew he was sober, because the star rover had passed minus-point. His mind groped for an explanation of the skag. There was no explanation. But there was a solution. The captain backed into his cabin, locked the door, and then searched through his wardroom blocker until he found that most precious sivall liquids, a flask of narcole. Several good-strong slugs swished down his parched gullet before his space-hardened nerves approached reasonably good shape. His skin flushed and his arteries warmed by the narcole. He became convinced once more that he had suffered an hallucination. Fantasy or no fantasy, there remained only one way to learn for certain. Jack Warren strode into the corridor. There the skag waited. Blast it, the captain rumbled. You're a balmy hallucination.

25:15Out of my way you scummy dream of a scummy planet. He lurched towards the creature, and his arms attempted to brush away its cobwebby image. Sudden contact with its cold, firm, flesh-electrified him. Mr. Goon, his voice rose. A vast Mr. Goon. The echoes rolled through the ship without answer. When the dead silence renewed itself, captain Jack Warren lifted his narcole flask and drank deeply. The skag watched with impassionic curiosity. Failing in his search for Rijal on the Starcharts, Kagall tried to contact his companions, who were exploring and making secure the remainder of the vessel. The skag concluded that the only hope laid to negotiate a truce with the monsters who had built the ship. His companions replied, That's your task, Kagall.

26:17We must learn the language of these hideous creatures, or teach them ours. I have captured one here who appears to guide the vessel, Beam Kagall. Let me attempt it with him first. Blue light flamed from the skag, bathing Mark Caldwell's head and throat. Following the paralysis lifted, the astrogator rotated his head to exercise stiffened muscles. Kagall pointed at the individual white dots on a Starchart. Cogoo. The tones were like a goat chewing tin plate. Cogoo? That code Mark Caldwell. Oh, you mean stars? Stars. The skag waved to include the bulkheads and deck. Sagos. The astrogator repeated, Sagos. Must be ship. Must be ship. Said the skag.

27:18Historical laughter gripped the officer. From the skags throat emerged identical sounds, uproarious caccles, but the brilliant eyes barely flickered. From his place in the lifeboat, second officer Charlie Goon had heard no sound for several hours. He felt cramped and a grey microcosm, where it was hopeless to escape. His mind turned to the cause of the skags' revivification. It was his knowledge of physics that provided him the correct answers. The transparent shells surrounding the skags were of time impervious materials. Upon entering minus point, the creature's retrograded in time to appoint previous to their suspended animation. What did they want? What did they plan? Without these answers, Goon had no means to deal with them. Rather than dispatch the lifeboat, the deck officer resolved to attempt snapping the entire

28:23vessel back into normal space. He lowered himself to the foaxal quarters. Here the bodies of six crewmen neatly piled together stunned his eyes. At first he suppose they were dead, but a confirmatory touch of their flash showed they were not. Tortured faces stared at him, as if trying to project a message. Goon stole along the portside catwalk to the engine-rooms, finding no one. He mounted to the deck. Upon hearing the heavy tread of stumbling feet, he flattened himself against a bulkhead niche and waited. Suddenly, words roared out in the still passageway, sung in a strong timbreed brogue. Oh, our officers are eager, and our crew is full of fight, and we're blastin' off for Vega. Where we'll drink and fight all night. It was the captain's voice, bursting with life, and very merry.

29:27The chant was taken up by another voice, a throbbing metallic speaker with slurred tones. As we've got to get her, oh, oh, over, oh, over that hyper-whoop! Holding his body flat in the niche, Charlie Goon saw the skipper walk by, keeping time to his own melody by waving his massive arms. A breast of him reeled a scag, drenched to it in narcole fumes. Goon stepped out behind them, gripping the trigger of the force band pistol. Captain Warren, step aside! The skipper wheeled in his face, flooded crimson. Mr. Goon, may I ask what you're doing off your watch, sir? That's a scag! They've taken over the ship! You're hysterical, Mr. Goon. Sam'd right, he's a scag, been a scag for a million years.

30:29We hear that? Best dream I've ever had. We're going to get him back to Rhygial, next trip out. Drinks like a blasted face of fellow-duz. In credulity fought fear in Charlie Goon's brain, until the alternate waves of emotion caused his collapse. Captain Jack Warren bent over and raised him. The two men's faces came close together. The skipper's eyes closed slowly, once, twice. We'll be all right if the juice holds out. The scag bent over two in an inebriated effort to assist. Then the skipper and his million-year-old companion locked arms and hoisted the flask of narcole. Them Charlie Goon's lawd. The skags were friendly enough once barriers broke down. They had suspended their civilization when a helium cloud passed through their system.

31:32Helium was poisonous to their composition, and the scag culture may have to be transferred to a nitrogen major planet. On termination of the voyage, Mark Caldwell, astrogator, promptly applied for transfer to the Arcturus Run. An officer Goon refused to sign again and took a birth on the Earth-Mar shuttle. Captain Jack Warren posed for a captain of distinction testimonial for the narcole people, and retired on his earnings, protesting a higher fee paid to a scag for a similar portrait. When last heard from, Cogal and his scag companions, had settled down to conferring with terrestrial scientists, making and discarding countless plans to revive the Rigel culture, and drinking narcole. Frankly, they didn't seem to be in any hurry about reviving their brethren. Maybe they felt they had a damn good deal all by themselves.

32:33Who knows the mind of a scag? Next on the Lost Sci-Fi podcast, a desperate warning from ten years ahead lands in the hands of man who pride themselves on knowing almost everything. They laugh at the messenger, but one name may prove that the future has already begun. DP from Tomorrow by Mac Reynolds. Did you know that psoriatic arthritis may progress over time and could cause permanent joint damage if left untreated? What does it sound like to be a million miles away? Turmphaya, Guselcomab, taken by injection, is a prescription medicine for adults with active psoriatic arthritis. Serious allergic reactions increased risk of infections or lower ability to fight them

33:34and liver problems may occur. Before treatment, get checked for infections and tuberculosis. Know your doctor if you have an infection, flu-like symptoms, or need a vaccine. Imagine being a million miles away. Explore the possibilities. Ask your doctor about trimphaya. Tap this ad to see new joint data and learn more about trimphaya, including important safety information. You've never been one to settle. Stand down or stand still. You're a lifelong learner. You can't ignore. You've got competition to outrun, momentum to build on, and your own high standards to meet. Stop now? Not a chance. At Capella University, we help you catch what you're chasing, because you've always had the drive. Now go earn the degree. Capella University, what can't you do? Visit Capella.edu to learn more. A snarl, and they're upon him.

34:34An ancient forest spirit at his heels. The only escape is in the Toyota Beasy Woodland. John Cho stars in. Camping. Test drive Toyota's new all-electric family today. Toyota, let's go places.