Kaspar's Box

Within a minute, a huge bearded man, easily two meters tall and dressed in white jacket and black pants, emerged from the house carrying a silver tray with two pitchers and twin cups and saucers on it. Only his gunbelt and holstered pistol seemed unusual. He approached the duo now seated at a small table on the porch and professionally put the cups and saucers on the table and then poured for both of them.

Magda Schwartz turned and looked out to her right, frowning. "Frightful noises over that way, darling! I wonder what in the world that can be?"

Marcouri nodded and turned in the same direction, cocking his ear, as he sipped his morning coffee. "Can't say, but it's not quite anything I've heard before from here."

"Goodness! You can feel the ground shaking a bit! If I didn't know better, I'd swear that was a herd of elephants approaching at full gallop! I hope the vibrations don't set off all the alarm systems!"

"Elephants! Yes, that's exactly what it sounds like!" Marcouri was on his feet. "Joshua!" he shouted. "Come at once! Everyone else to their places! I don't like the sound or feel of this!"

Schwartz looked confused and concerned. "A herd of wild elephants? Why would they be coming this way? My god, there's swamp and dense forest between their area and here! They must be frightened as hell of something!"

"Or being driven! Joshua! Bring me the shotgun!" He turned to his companion. "You wish anything, my dear?"

Magda Schwartz pulled up her flowered print dress along her left leg and withdrew a nasty looking energy rifle from a leg holster. "Not exactly in period, but sometimes one must do what one must do."

Joshua emerged, handing a double-barrelled shotgun of the type approved by the Barnum's World gamekeepers to Macouri and then drawing his own very large pistol. It looked exactly like a large caliber projectile sidearm of the approved sort, but in reality it was a powerful tight-beam ray device that could burn a hole in a hippo at short range. Its only drawback was that its power was quite limited by the need for imitation; although he had more powerpacks in his jacket, he would have only a few seconds of sustained shooting before he'd have to manually eject the dying cartridge and insert a new one.

Georgi Macouri stared in the direction of the steadily increasing sounds and vibration and shouted over the rising noise, "Magda, what would happen if a dozen full-grown elephants hit that outer fence?"

She looked suddenly at a loss and shook her head. "I don't know. It wasn't designed for an entire herd. More worrisome is the inner grid. At that speed, while the lead couple may well be barbecued, it might displace the connector foundations and bring the whole thing down!"

Macouri looked over at Joshua. "Get most everybody out here, now! Leave somebody to look over the guests, but otherwise, emergency! And call in the aerobus!"

The sound and vibration were almost unbearable now, and there was, in addition, the cracking noises and shaking of trees just beyond their direct view, telling them that whatever was coming was almost here. They almost wished that whatever it was, in fact was already here. The suspense was worse than fighting off a threat.

A half-dozen burly gunmen burst from the lodge and began fanning out along the porch, heavy weapons in hand. They were huge brutes, heavily tattooed from head to foot, mostly dressed in work pants and sleeveless undershirts. They looked like nothing so much as a cartoon of someone's vision of an old pirate crew; one or two even had nasty-looking side swords to complement their much more modern laser pistols.

Macouri felt better just seeing them there. Any one of them could blow a couple of rampaging elephants to the next planet.

Magda Schwartz looked very nervous now, waiting for the attack to come at any moment. "Oh, and it was such a pretty morning!" she said, mostly to herself.

Joshua, the clear leader of the staff and guards, frowned suspiciously as he looked out at the trembling bush. "There's something bloody strange here," he said loudly.

"What?" Macouri shouted over the increasing din.

"I said that something's not right here, sir!" the big man shouted. "Nobody controls elephants like that except they be ridden by experts! Particularly not through that bloody swamp! It's a trick of some kind, I swear!"

At that moment, they were all knocked over as a huge blast seemed to strike the lodge from the rear, followed quickly by a series of small, sharp explosions. Instantly, a circular arc of bluish energy was formed by the security grid and seemed to pour to the rear, and there was an incredibly loud clap of thunder and the smell of ozone.

Macouri tried to pick himself off the porch and find where he'd dropped his gun. "All of you! Up and to the back!"

"No!" Schwartz screamed at them as the din of charging elephants continued. "That was the grid shorting out! We've got no security fence!"