The Interstellar Police Force, Book One: The Historic Mission by Raymond Klein (ebook reader 7 inch txt) 📕

Old Town. It was basically two thin magnets, one of which had a microprocessor built in. With self-adhesive strips, one was affixed to the door jam, the other to the door. With the door closed and both magnets facing each other, an electric circuit flowed between the two. But, when the door was opened the circuit was broken, and the microprocessor would transmit a signal to a receiver. The receiver that Colus Valda always carried in his pocket.

Valda had been two blocks south sitting on a bench. At this vantage point he could see the vintage automobile parked across from his boarding house. He watched as the tall man and canine crossed the street and climbed back into the vehicle, sat, and waited.

Colus Valda knew that someday the Interstellar Police Force would track them all to this little planet, and obviously they had. Who else could it be? But how, he thought to himself, did they find him? He had Bollar's Electronic Pulse Interrupter, only the size of a small cell phone, out and activated. When he got back to his apartment he realized that he had  forgotten a pack of cigarettes. He didn’t smoke, but he did need them. He put the brown paper bag from the hardware store on the kitchen counter, finished his last bear claw, exited his building through the back door, and walked to the corner convenience store.

As he sat on the bench watching the agent he thought again, this time out loud, “How did he track me?” He started to look around. “There must be something I’ve been missing.” He then saw a large white rectangular box high up on a telephone pole with a shiny black lens on the front. He then saw another one down the street on the side of a building. “Ahh, well, well, there we go. A camera of some kind. Most likely he can tap into the signal.” He stood and dropped the Interrupter into his pocket, being very glad that he activated it just out of habit when his little alarm receiver went off while he was inside the convenience store.

Valda turned his back to the IPF agent and started to walk south on Grant Street. “I think I’m going to let that agent sit there and stew for a while.” He pulled down from the top of his head a cheap pair of sunglasses and put them on. Looking up to the blue sky, he said, “Yeah, I think I will. I’ll go and see if the human female Chloe is around. I’ll spend the night with her, then tomorrow I’ll head down to the Compton Square area and see what kind of fun I can spark up.”

He stopped and looked back at the agent still sitting in his automobile and thought out loud. “Hmm! Why has that agent befriended a human canine? Now that’s odd.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Trent was up early the next morning in the kitchen making coffee when he heard heavy footfalls on the outside stairs. There were three sharp knocks on the front door. Trent walked to the door and opened it to find Mrs. Remke standing there in an old bathrobe with big yellow embroidered daisies strategically placed throughout it and large pink curlers in her white hair. He took one involuntary step backward. “Well, good morning, Mrs. Remke. May I help you?”

“Mister Trent! You have now been here for several weeks, and I have noticed something quite disturbing and very much unsettling,” she said, in her rapid machine-gun style voice.

“Ah . . .  unsettling, Mrs. Remke?”

“Yes, unsettling and unnerving. As I said, you've now been here for several weeks, and I have yet to see you take that animal out to relieve himself.” She raised a bony figure and shook it at him, “If I find that, that animal has soiled the carpeting in this apartment . . .”

Just then she heard the toilet flush. Mrs. Remke craned her neck to her right so she could peer around Jeff and look into the apartment. She thought that she was very clear about her rules concerning overnight guests. Then the bathroom door opened. Genghis emerged from the bathroom with the morning newspaper rolled in his mouth. He stopped dead in his tracks when he locked eyes with Mrs. Remke. Remke’s jaw dropped open, and so did Genghis’s. The newspaper rolled from his mouth and fell to the floor. Genghis continued to stare, then nervously produced a woof.

Trent looked from Genghis, back to Mrs. Remke, and said, “Ah, as you can see, Mrs. Remke, I’ve taught my human canine to use the facilities.”

Mrs. Remke was dumbfounded and just continued to stare at the big dog with her mouth opened. “Yes . . . facilities . . .”

“Yes, well,” Trent said, looking again at Genghis, then back to Mrs. Remke. “Will there be anything else, Mrs. Remke?”

“Ah . . . human ca . . . what?” See looked up at Trent. “Oh, no. No, nothing else, Mister Trent.”

“Very well then, good day, Mrs. Remke.” Jeff didn’t wait for a response and closed the door. They did not breathe until they heard her go down the side stairs and back into her house.

Genghis exhaled, “Geez O’ Cow! That woman scares the crap outta me.”

Trent was still leaning his back against the closed door. “Yes, that she does!

“Do you think one day we’ll have to get rid of her?”

“Perhaps,” Trent said while walking back into the kitchen. He poured coffee for both and grabbed two bowls and the box of Captain Crunch.

Trent was sitting in his normal spot, and Genghis was sitting next to him on the floor with his back against the couch. “FBS has nothing,” Genghis said. “Nothing since we saw him yesterday.”

Trent turned on the television and started channel surfing. Spoons clattered against cereal bowls, coffee was loudly slurped. They found the local news and a report on a fire that was already in progress. “Son-of-a-bitch,” Genghis blurred out. “How did