In Search Of Kronos: Colonel Landry Series, 4

By Bryan Smith

MORE GRAND SCIENCE-FICTION SPACE ADVENTURE!

This is the fourth novel of the "Colonel Kendrick Landry" space adventure series, nostalgically reminiscent of the "pulp" science-fiction of the 1950's and the original Star Trek of the 1960's.

Bryan Smith has woven a tight and intricate tale of postwar peoples obsessed with finding an elusive, mythical master entity called "Kronos"--a hybrid of man and computer, which is perceived as the solution to life's problems. The suspense builds as Colonel Landry travels in the starcraft Aurora with intergalactic tycoon Maxwell Rheinhardt, who offers "seed money" to rebuild the former Federation worlds defeated in a long-ago bloody war with the First Intergalactic Alliance.

An ulterior motivation of Landry's mission to rebuild is to determine once and for all whether Kronos exists. Landry meets a mystical cult leader named Robert Zilhoff who is bent upon finding Kronos. Zilhoff appears to be a key in the search for Kronos. But what is Zilhoff's true identity, and what does he really want with Kronos?

Landry views an old newscast with a Federation official suggesting that Kronos was mere wartime propaganda. But he is later led to the planet Varcon where he meets "Kronos seeker" Jonathan Farrow. Farrow guides Landry into the modern 25th Century City of Kronos where two of Landry's men have already disappeared amid drone-like people that are joined together into a collective consciousness.

Is Kronos real or a myth? The reader will be going back and forth on this issue until its resolution in the satisfying ending of this novel, peopled with engaging characters and with ample plot twists to keep the reader excitedly turning the pages.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bryan Smith
• Release date: May 14, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311307132

Book preview

FOREWORD

In November of 2008 an independent bookstore owner expressed to me his view of Science-Fiction as a dying genre. At the time the remark might have seemed somewhat apt considering the love affair of American readers and moviegoers with Twilight and other modern retellings of the old vampire story.

But as of December 2007 there had already been a third movie version, no less, of Richard Matheson’s classic vampire story (but still very Sci-Fi) I am Legend. Then in December 2008 came a remake of the great 1951 classic The Day the Earth Stood Still. A new Star Trek movie with all new cast and, in my view, strong on special effects and rather weak on script quality, was released in May 2009. Producer James Cameron’s Avatar (another 2009 release) became a box office phenomenon. The dystopian movie The Book of Eli, was also released in 2009 and performed more than respectfully at the box office.

You know the rest from there. The Hunger Games series (2012-2015), Interstellar (2014), and most recently The Martian (2015) to name just some of the major ones.

So now I am not sure about the alleged demise of Science-Fiction as a genre. Tastes in literature and film are cyclical, and Sci-Fi has swing around in the cycle again. As I am launching my re-vamp of the Colonel Landry Series, one thing is for sure. While traditional sci-fi is not dead, it has continued to adapt to the modern world. My novel Final Battle was criticized by some reviewers as straying too close to the modern world conflict between America and the Middle East. The novel poses an analogous conflict in the Twenty-Fifth Century universe of Colonel Kendrick Landry. If the novel strays too close to the modern world, then nothing could have been any closer to my intentions.

Science-Fiction has always been a vehicle for social and political commentary on the current issues of the day. Producer Joseph Stefano’s stark black and white 1960’s Outer Limits was positively fixated on fear of the atom bomb and the intellectual suppression of McCarthyism. Gene Roddenberry’s original 1960’s Star Trek series questioned, not all that subtly, the rationality of the Vietnam War in thinly veiled dramas of other worlds in analogous conflicts.

Avatar was a green story embracing a so-called tree hugger philosophy which challenges man’s desecration and exploitation of earth and nature, and also the white man’s oppression of native populations for his own selfish gains. Some critics objected that producer James Cameron should have given inspirational credit for Avatar to Poul Anderson’s 1957 story Call Me Joe. Very similar themes were also explored in a 1995 Outer Limits (the New Series) episode called Cultural Relativity.

So much for Science-Fiction as a soapbox for pressing contemporary social, moral, and political issues and causes. It is certainly that. But what about sci-fi merely for the sake of FUN? We certainly haven’t seen too much of that, at least not until recently. There was the Buck Rogers television series in 1979-81, and of course the installments of Star Wars from 1978 to 2016 (actually more a hybrid of science fiction and fantasy). But there has really not been too much of the purer Sci-Fi, in my view, around for awhile. And very little that captures the fun adventure spirit of a Saturday matinee Flash Gordon and the early 1960’s Star Trek episodes that are adventures without all the political overtones.

The book you are about to read is called In Search of Kronos (formerly, The Master Entity in 2010). I am a tail-end baby boomer and those of you in my generation and older will recognize this novel as evoking the nostalgia of the pulp Science-Fiction of the 1950’s and 1960's. That included the old paperback Ace Books and other publishers which showcased great Sci-Fi entertainment talents including Robert A. Heinlein, Andre (Alice Mary) Norton, John Brunner, H. Beam Piper, and others.

I had originally thought that my novel Final Battle would mark the Colonel Kendrick Landry series as a final trilogy. But I soon changed my mind, and turned from the political commentary of Final Battle to satisfying what I believe is still an unquenched thirst for no more than a fun and exciting Sci-Fi space opera that comments little and offends no one. What followed is a fast-paced Sci-Fi space adventure story that strives to emulate to some extent the old Sci-Fi Golden Age pulps.

I do hope you like In Search Of Kronos.

G. BRYAN SMITH

May 12, 2016, at Sacramento, California

IN SEARCH OF KRONOS

1

Rheinhardt

Colonel Kendrick Landry, from his command station on the starcraft Aurora’s control deck, surveyed the Earth-like orb of 51 Pegasi D as the planet loomed large in the viewports. Like Earth, the planet was third from its sun.

Standard orbit achieved, Colonel, Major Veronica Winters called out from her station in the astrogation pit below Landry.

As usual, the ever-present Polaris tiger, Jones, sat on his haunches on the deck beside Veronica’s station. The alien telepathic tiger was Veronica’s pet and Landry had often permitted the creature to accompany Veronica on her tours of duty. Always over his objection before, but now always with his approval after the last mission to Sirius V two Earth years ago.

Next to Veronica sat Major Maya Terrazone. Across from the two women on a semi-circular console was Zantu, the squid-like alien exchange officer wearing a transparent bubble helmet which simulated the methane-ammonia atmosphere of the creature’s home world. As part of the same exchange program, on the control deck of some far off Arcturus star vessel, there was a human officer clad in space suit–with an oxygen atmosphere.

Landry’s Chief Science Officer, Major Andrea Varnak, came to stand beside him.

The planet couldn’t be more Earth-like, Colonel. Oxygen atmosphere. Gravity, ninety-five percent of Earth. The proportion of land mass to water is virtually identical to Earth."

Landry regarded the tall, striking auburn-haired science officer. Her bright hazel eyes were riveted to the planet’s image on the control deck’s central viewscreen. The woman appeared to be early forties at most. But like Landry and most of his flight members, she was genetically enhanced and much older than she appeared.

It sometimes amused Landry to disagree with her.

The land masses are entirely different. He had never seen the planet of 51 Pegasi D during his almost twenty Earth years of command on the Aurora. The continents are much smaller than those of Earth and much more spread out across the globe.

A very high concentration of water between the continents. But still, the total proportion of land to water is almost identical to Earth.

Landry shrugged. What a bloody little world. And what an arrogant regime of bastards that have always run it.

The planet had been the center of the colonial planetary Federation which had waged a revolutionary war against the First Intergalactic Alliance some twenty-five Earth years ago. Although the Alliance had abdicated to the Federation’s withdrawal from the Alliance, 51 Pegasi D and the other planets of the Federation in the far away Pegasus galaxies had struggled to survive. Planet 51 Pegasi D was the scene of an economic blight as its citizens unsuccessfully managed industry and agriculture.

Two men in civilian attire stood flanking Landry on the control deck. One was Robert Cohen, a fresh-faced young man of some literal thirty-two years old. He had no need yet for the age suspension of genetic enhancement which, for him, would trigger within just a few Earth years. Cohen was a computer and cybernetic specialist recently graduated as class Valedictorian from the Venusian Science Academy. He silently studied 51 Pegasi D on the viewscreen.

The other civilian exuberantly rubbed his hands together. I can’t wait to get down there and get some seed money in circulation to pull those poor miserable people to their feet.

He was Maxwell Rheinhardt. Intergalactic financier. Tycoon is a better word, Landry thought with some awe.

Rheinhardt was one of the Alliance’s wealthiest men and without question its most accomplished industrialist. He was a good dresser, even rather elegant, clad in a fashionable and semi-casual open-collared business suit. It was the color of the same grey which ringed the sides of his brunette hair. He wore a black onyx ring on one finger of the right hand which raised a pipe to his lips. He lit it with a gleaming gold lighter.

He blew cherry-smelling ringlets of smoke and Andrea looked over in mild disapproval. Smoking aboard the craft was against Alliance regulations, as Rheinhardt must surely know. But Landry said nothing of it.

A very stubborn and unpredictable people down there, Landry said. I do hope they will give you a chance to help them.

Just watch me, Rheinhardt said. They won’t have any choice.

Cohen looked over and spoke.Those people wouldn’t lose an opportunity to find their blessed and venerated master computer Kronos.

Computer Kronos, my right elbow, Rheinhardt snorted. But it is their belief in the myth which will allow us to help them.

* * *

One of Earth’s earliest colonial planets, 51 Pegasi D had been the center of the colonial Federation of Planets consisting of 51 Pegasi D itself and a number of other planets across a rim of stellar groups in the Pegasus galaxies. The Federation had waged an intense and bloody revolutionary war against the Alliance to declare its independence. In the end, the Federation planets were decimated and slumped in an economic collapse with substantial unemployment of skilled technical workers. Still, the former Federation planets steadfastly refused to reunify with the Alliance.

Rather than turning to ambition and industry to improve their condition, the inhabitants of the former Federation worlds succumbed to a vague belief in their rescue by a legendary computer known as Kronos. According to legend, some twenty-five Earth years ago a group of the finest intergalactic minds—a political leader, an industrialist, scientists of various disciplines, and other specialists—on an unspecified planet in one of the Federation stellar groups, had transferred living human consciousness into the cores of a highly advanced