Chapter Ten: The Spacing Commission

The strange short building was an odd mix of a kind of hotel and office building. It gave the officers of the spacing commission a place to stay when they were on Port Orpheus, and it also served to dispatch the officers.
Captain Fortworth walked up to the front desk where a very bored looking girl was sitting, swiveling back and forth in her chair. When she noticed Captain Fortworth and Jonathan, she immediatly sat upright, and her face began to glow. She couldn't have been much older than seventeen.
Jonathan stood awkwardly to the side of and just behind Captain Fortworth. He didn't know what to do.
"You're the new secretary?" Captain Fortworth asked, somewhat gruffly.
The girl seemed somewhat taken aback. She shrunk down in her chair and mumbled "yes." She must have felt guilty about being caught bored at her desk.
"How long have you worked here?" Captain Fortworth demanded, out of character.
The girl look up at him and mumbled "a week."
Captain Fortworth broke his hard look and cracked a smile at this point. "Listen, young lady, some officers here take their job very seriously," With this, he leaned on tehe desk and began to whisper. "Too seriously, if you ask me. They don't let anybody have any fun. You're not going to get fired if you load a book on that computer. Furthermore, nobody on this side of the desk can see what you're doing. It makes you look busy, and keeps you from getting bored." He winked, and then stood up straight again. "Captain Fortworth and Initiate Jonathan Brooke reporting for houseing." he said.
"Yes sir," the girl consulted the terminal infront of her. She tapped on the keyboard for a while, and a scoul passed over her face. "The records don't have an initiate Brooke on file, sir."
"Not a problem, just log him in under 'guest' for now."
"Can I do that?"
"If you take any flack for it, just direct your superior to me, alright?"
Captain Fortworth's easy going manner had easily won over the young girl, and she knew that she could trust him. "If you say so."
"He'll be logged as an initiate as soon as I book him." Captain Fortworth explianed to the girl. "He was just appointed by the Elders without training."
"Oh, really?" The girl said, excited. "Thats so strange! Where did he come from?" The girl stopped, seemed to notice her own fault in ettiquite, then, blushing again, said "Sorry."
Jonathan was going to say something, but Captain fortworth beat him too it.
"It doesn't matter - just log us in please."
The girl assigned them room numbers, side by side, and they proceeded upstairs. They did not go to the second floor, but instead proceeded directly to the third, where their rooms were.
"Now, Jonathan, I need sleep. It's been a very long time. You'll find a terminal in your room where you can access a database that should give you answers to any questions you may have." With that, Captain Fortworth walked into his room and closed the door.
Jonathan was left alone in the hall of the strange building. He opened the door to his room and peeked inside. It looked very much like a hotel room. There was a bedroom, a small living area with the terminal Captain Fortworth had noted, and a bathroom.
Jonathan immediately took a shower, then wandered over to the terminal.
He could not accept that he had to stay with these people. It made no sense, why should they hold him here? Why couldn't he go home?
The Elders had seemed to be holding something back from him. What it was he could not say, but he did not trust them. There seemed to be nothing wrong with the information he did give to him, he had no doubt that it was thruthful, there was just something missing from the equasion. Why would they have never gone back to Earth? It didn't make sense. There were a number of things that just were not adding up for Jonathan.
There was essentially no reason taht Jonathan could see that he had to stay here. He had dismissed attempting to steal a spacecraft as soon as he learned how they worked - accessing the Mind and changing the perceptions of the universe seemed a little beyond him.
The best Jonathan could think to do was learn as much about his current position and see how he could best turn it towards his benefit.
The terminal was not unlike machined he had used in the past. Slightly more advanced than anything he had seen, but nothing impossible to use.
He knew he was an Initiate in the Spacing Commission, but he did not know exactly what that meant. His first task was to find out exactly what it did mean.
After playing around with the controls, Jonathan began to learn the system. It didn't take long to find information on the Spacing Commission. It was an orginisation that did not answer to any one of the seventeen colonial families, but rather to each of them equally. They were quasi-military in structure, and carried weapons, but were not technically a military force. Nor were they exactly a police force either, although they did police the space-ways. Their mandate included protecting the colonies from alien races, but, to date Jonathan could not find any records of battles. Part of his adventurous side foudn this slightly dissapointing. The main function of the Spacing Commision was to make sure none one broke the laws of space and that no one familiy tried to take control of Space itself - giving them a huge advantage financially and tactically in space. Jonathan found hints that the colonies had fought each other in the past.
There were various other duties of the Spacing Commision, including shipping of dangerous materials that many civilian corperations would not touch.
The final mandate that Jonathan managed to note was the one that was responsible for his current predicament - The Spacing Commission monitored pre-space flight races. If they were threatening the colonies, the Spacing Commission had a standing order to 'deal with them accordingly'. This is no doubt why Captain Fortworth was monitoring Norton and why he had found Jonathan there.
As for the part about being an initiate, Jonathan quickly learned that an Initiate was merely the lowest rank of the Spacing Commision; other than trainee. Jonathan did know why or how he qualified for his position, but from his memory of Captain Fortworth's ship, he figured it to be a vessle meant to police space and monitor other planets.
Although the job wasn't unappealing, Jonathan did not want to stay on a planet away from his home and be stuck in a foreign civilisation for the rest of his life.
He could not, however, see a way out of his current predicament. He decided that the best option would be to ride it out for the time being and hope that some of the mysteries rising up around him would clear themselves and present an opportunity.
Jonathan leadned back and put his hands behind his head. he stared at the screen which had a read out and description of one of the types of ships the Spacing Commission employed. Norman glided into view on his desk, with some sort of local fruit in his mouth.
"There you are." Jonathan said. "Where have you been?"
As if to answer the question, Norman began eating the fruit.
"Of course, you're always hungry. How do you suppose we are supposed to get off this world, Norman?" Jonathan asked. Norman just continued to eat his fruit.