There is a certain amount of worry now in Mickeytown. My hands have begun to tremble. I see things that aren’t there. I have become excessively forgetful. Possibly Parkinson’s… but not diagnosed by a doctor yet.
Maybe it’s only paranoia… but that’s a Parkinson’s symptom too.
And it worries me because I need to be able to draw new Paffoonies. But it is definitely becoming harder.
Yesterday, when my computer was breaking down again, the scanner miraculously reconnected itself and began to work.
I scanned this old pen-and-ink drawing.
Do I know why I drew it, or what it is supposed to be about?
I do not.
But I can still swirl colored pencils and color within the lines, at least as well as I did when I was nine.
You may remember this one from yesterday,
Of course, forgetful me, I couldn’t remember where I had stored my best art pencils. I had to crack open the bag of old school pencils that I still have from my last hurrah as a Texas pedagogue (a word that means a teacher of children, not that other thing that the evil-minded ones among you were probably thinking.)
So, now I have a colored picture of a young-girl space traveler. What to do with it?
Like any old mad god who makes a girl come to life like this (old mad god of colored pencils, a little “g” god, not a blasphemous big “G” one,) I needed to name her and give her a story, a purpose in life.
So, I called her Cissy Moonskipper (a suitably satirical and comic sort of name playing off of Luke Skywalker.)
And I stranded her on a family-owned free-trader starship, alone in deep space. Her family is gone permanently. The ship has everything she needs to survive. She is a sole-survivor on a deserted island in deep space in an unexplored star system. And all she has is a starship owner’s manual and a copy of the novel Robinson Crusoe.
So, I added a background and now I have started a new book idea. That is essentially what a Paffooney is. Words and pictures by little ol’ me.
She scrambled over the railing and made it hurriedly to her brother’s side. She scraped her right knee in the effort. He was lying where he fell in the middle of the arboretum. The sky portal was still open to the stars, especially Veda 257, the star whose system the ship was now a temporary part of. Bright starlight streamed in to nourish the food plants and her late mother’s flowers.
But when she reached Wosely Moonskipper, he was no longer alive. The Lupin’s slug-thrower had penetrated his energy shield and hit him in his stupid melon of a head.
“How could you do that to me, Wose? How could you leave your baby sister all alone aboard a starship going nowhere in an unexplored star system?”
Of course, the dummy didn’t answer. This was, however, the first time he had an actual good excuse for it.
She looked over at the smoking pile of debris that was all the derfbag Lupin space-werewolf left behind as Wosely had disintegrated him. Stupid Stardog pirate! He got what he deserved.
But, wait! The pirate had brought his vehicle aboard in order to try to get ahold of the Moonskipper family spacecraft.
She lamely spent a dozen extra minutes trying to get Wose to raise himself from the dead. But 53rd Century medicine didn’t work like that. Full resurrections had to be carefully planned ahead of time. Wose hadn’t planned in the early morning hours to accidentally allow a dog-headed alien pirate to come aboard and murder him. At least he had the good sense to shoot back before he went down. No telling what would’ve become of twelve-year-old Cissy if he hadn’t.
Then she went to inspect the Lupin’s remaining possessions. In the docking bay she found the little two-man space skiff, an anti-gravity pod with a sub-light engine. A wonderful thing to have if she hadn’t lost Wose. the only one who could drive the thing. That was the good thing about old Wose. At thirty-five he knew how to build, fix, or repair practically anything that could travel in space.
That was the next problem to think about. She was alone on the starship now. Since Mom died and her father went so crazy with grief that Wose had to maroon him on that jungle moon seven months ago to prevent him from flying the ship into the heart of the nearby star, they had simply wandered. Nobody remaining on board knew how to navigate other than randomly drifting from star system to star system by line of sight.
Food was no problem. The arboretum produced all the organic matter they needed to create food from the replicator. And Wose had taught her how to scoop fuel from the outer levels of the clouds in a gas-giant. But how was she going to pilot the thing? And what would she do when something broke down?
She was moping about in the bridge when she happened to open the right storage drawer in the captain’s table. There were two books inside that immediately caught her eye.
She grinned to herself. She still had to see to Wose’s funeral. But she was grateful that Mom had taught her to read. She now possessed the ship’s owner’s manual that explained enough about everything to make life on a starship possible, and a copy of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe.
Nebulons, known to many in the Imperium as “Space Smurfs” for reasons long forgotten, were the child-like blue people who inhabited deep space in their living starships. Many thought the blue skin, yellow hair, and red apple cheeks showed evidence they were not just humanoids, but human space travelers mutated by the exotic radiations of the nebulae where Earthers and other humans had first discovered them.
Gyro had the red cheeks, the blue skin, and the bright yellow hair, but he also had qualities that were extremely rare in Nebulons. For one thing he was a Psion, a being with the right brain mutation to perform powerful brain functions that seemed like magic to the ordinary space traveler.
His own special psionic ability was even rarer than the usual Psion. He could not only use telepathy, but use the power of his “inner eye” to see and alter the molecular structure and overall organization in any finite piece of matter.
In other words, he could change lead into gold with the power of his mind alone. To Gyro it was just a matter of pushing the funny little atomic balls into new configurations in the creative imaginings of his “inner eye”.
Being a Psion inside the borders of the Galactic Galtorrian Imperium, the so-called “Thousand Worlds”, was a dangerous enterprise. The Imperials were so afraid of psionic powers and what they believed they could do, that having psionic power brought an immediate death sentence.
That was the reason that when Gyro and his family, and Billy Iowa, also a Psion, had to leave the Pan Galactican Union, they had journeyed eventually to the distant world of Gaijin to find the master of Psionics, the White Spider, Ged Aero. Ged Aero-sensei had taken in both boys, given them a home, and taught them how to master the powers of the “inner eye”.
So that was the reason that Gyro now sat on the planet Cornucopea beside a huge dead bug and pondered the possibilities of escape for himself and Billy. Ged Aero-sensei and his White Spider Mutant Space Ninjas had come as explorers to the planet, and run afoul of the living plants, specifically the Throckpods, who inhabited it.
As Gyro and Billy had been heading back to base camp, they were attacked by a large group of the ugly sentient flowers and their pet gargantuan dragonfly.
Billy, being a good student of Ged-sensei’s Martial Arts training, delivered a jump-kick to the chitinous face plate of the dragonfly that put a hole in it, driving his foot right into the thing’s syrupy brain tissue. It dropped dead next to them as Throckpods moved menacingly around them in a huge circle of weed.
“We are totally cut off,” said Billy. “And I think they mean to kill us.”
“They are intelligent flowers. How can you know what they eat and don’t eat? Especially after Sara told us about how they tried to take all of her blood?” asked Billy in return. His Dakota-Sioux features scrunched up into a frown. “I am at the height of my power. Let them come! In a sacred manner I resist them until my very last breath! It is a good day to die!”
Gyro’s eyes got wider. It was a very Native American sort of thing for Billy to say, but Gyro didn’t really want to hear it.
“You give me a few minutes to think,” said Gyro, “and I will find a way out of this mess.”
Billy resolutely turned to frown at the approaching grove of ugly flowers.
Gyro looked all around, and finally settled on the dragonfly. In some ways, the huge insect already resembled an anti-grav cycle. It wouldn’t take very much manipulation to…
Gyro’s imagination started turning chitin into glass-steel. The dragonfly’s bowels were easy to shape into a small fusion-powered engine. The blood only had to be separated to get the hydrogen necessary for fuel. With a few pops and crackles and one big POOM, they had a working grav cycle.
As Throckpods started throwing thorns, and Billy swatted them out of the air with Wushu defensive strikes, Gyro revved the engine and pulled Billy onto the upholstered seat behind him.
“Time to bug out!” said Gyro with a huge blue grin. The grav cycle immediately and silently lifted into the air on anti-grav repulsor lifts. Then, with a roar, they zoomed skyward, not only out of the reach of Throckpods and thorns, but also out of reach from the devilish dragonflies that were swarming towards them from somewhere in the eastern sky.
“I guess it’s a good thing you can change stuff like that,” said Billy, holding tightly onto his Texas sombrero, “but if you had never made that stink-language translator, maybe we would’ve never got into this mess.”
“I don’t think the translator is the big problem,” said Gyro. “These flowers seem to have an agenda that doesn’t include looking pretty and smelling nice. I think they don’t like us as plant-eaters and potential invaders. After all, this is their world.”
“Okay,” said Billy. “Get us back to camp and Ged Aero-sensei, and I’m all for leaving this dirtball to the plants!”
“Yeah, um… maybe you better teach me how to fly this thing first.”
“Oh, Smurf! You made the thing.”
“Yeah, well… Hang on to your hat, then!”
They managed to fly a haphazard corkscrew pattern on their way back to camp. It was unbelievably dangerous and life-threatening. But the boys made it back safely and walked away from the crash. And Gyro had some real fun with his driving skills.
I have always cherished science fiction. Not just Jules Verne, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke. Not just Star Trek and Star Wars. But all of it. Buck Rodgers, Flash Gordon, Brick Bradford, Galaxy Quest, Mars Attacks, and E.T.
Space is important to me. I feel like all of mankind will be a failure as a species if they don’t start moving out amongst the stars.
It’s not just that I am ensorcelled by the magical adventures that space-travel stories mixed with a romantic view of facing existential danger with a smile and a ray-gun can provide.
I watched with wide 12-year-old eyes when Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the moon for the very first time.
That was all the way back in 1969!
I am disappointed that my George-Jetson expectations of life in 2021 have not even remotely been met.
Sure, computers are great. But where are the flying cars? The fishbowl helmets for walking on the Moon? Personal jetpacks to get to school and back?
It isn’t the dreamers, it’s the doers that have let me down.
And I know we could well run the risk of meeting something out there that might want to eat us.
But are we truly alive anymore if we are afraid to risk death in the face of Space Exploration and Discovery? We are not immortal. We need to achieve things that outlast us to justify our existence.
So, come on, people! Let’s make the world over again and start building cities on Mars.
Let’s start building what we have dreamt of rather than hiding from what we fear!
Mai Ling had swiftly learning the ninja skills that Ged Aero-sensei taught the students in his dojo. Unlike the majority of the White Spider Mutant Ninja Space Babies, Mai was completely in tune with the skills of movement, attack, and defense she was learning at the dojo because her psionic mutant power was telekinesis, the ability to remotely move things with the mind.
Her mental ability complemented her ninja attack skills in that she could alter the course of projectiles in flight. If she threw a ten-pointed shuriken at someone, it would not miss.
The picture in her inner eye, the secret of psionic control, was always the flower-like shuriken rotating through the air at the target, even if it needed to make a ninety degree turn to hit the precise spot she aimed at.
Shu Kwai, Ged-sensei’s lead student, had worked with her hundreds of times, helping her to see the power to control movement of objects as part of a wondrous dance. He was also a telekinetic and could also do the dance. It was a dance that could protect others from harm, or if the need arose, destroy them.
At twelve years old, Mai was already developing into a shapely young lady.
“You can’t be ashamed of your body when you are doing the dance,” reminded Shu. “We wear hardly any clothes not because we are immodest, but because we do not wish to impede the dance in any way.”
Mai frowned at him. Shu could be such a prig at times. He stood there wearing only a white loincloth, while he himself had made the rule that no one should go un-armored on a potentially hostile planet. Except for the ninja underwear, his light orange-yellow body was functionally nude.
Boys could get away with that, especially scrawny teenage boys with practically nothing to show off anyway.
Shu and Mai were both natives to the planet Gaijin where Master Aero’s dojo was located. That meant that they were descended half from the Japanese humans of Earth, and half from the nearly-human Sylvani of deep space. Mai herself had bare feet, bare legs, and a bare midriff. She was not about to leave breasts exposed, or even her arms. She wore a computerized ring-sleeve on her left arm, which helped give gauss-magnetic acceleration to objects she threw. And the magnetic arm bands on her right arm gave her a magnetic shield she could shape and manipulate with telekinesis.
“I am not going out into this living jungle without any clothes on,” she stated firmly to Shu. “You don’t know if these strange aliens will attack. Besides, I fight better with clothes on. I’m not a pervert like you.”
At fourteen, Shu was definitely vulnerable to insults like “pervert.” He cast his eyes downward to scan the ground and blushed furiously. It was entirely possible, Mai thought, that Shu had a secret crush on her. With the red flower in her hair, she was definitely beautiful, at least, in her own eyes, and possibly those of Phoenix whom she now considered her boyfriend.
“Okay, we all better obey orders while we are on this weird planet. I was just talking about on the practice grounds.” Shu sniffed imperiously for added emphasis. That was okay. Mai accepted the fact that he outranked her.
“It’s just you being a hypocrite like usual,” sniffed Hassan Parker, the boy who had been forbidden from going naked. Shu didn’t even offer a comeback.
Cornucopia was probably the strangest planet Mai had ever visited. A vegetable starship had simply appeared in Gaijin space and announced themselves in need of help. Little Gyro the Nebulon inventor and one of Ged Aero-sensei’s favorite students had discovered that all the intelligent creatures were plants and had a special scent language unlike anything in the known galaxy.
The first alien they had been able to communicate with was a strange, onion-like creature that Gyro’s computer translator named, “Luigi the Onion-Guy.” Why the plant-man had an Italian first name was a complete mystery, but there was a clue in the fact that Gyro’s computer also dubbed the language of the Cornucopians “Stink-Talk.” Nebulons were known for weird senses of humor. And Gyro with his unusual Psionic power had programmed the thing as he rearranged its molecules with his little blue brain.
Shu Kwai helped Mai Ling put on shielding-armor and kinetic shock absorbers.
“Are you sure we can’t take any weapons?” Mai asked.
Luigi the Onion-Guy had pleaded with Ged-sensei not to kill any plants, not even the seemingly evil “Throckpods.”
“Master Aero doesn’t want us to anger or even frighten any of the regular flower-people of this planet.”
“Flower people? They look like walking thistles and weeds to me.”
“Still, Ged Aero-sensei only wants us to locate a Throckpod and convince him to come back with us so our group can study it.”
“So, it’s a spy mission.”
“Intelligence gathering.”
“Oh, yeah, that’s different.”
The jungle was different than any other jungle Mai had ever been in. Instead of trees and vines and shrubs, it was made up of salt pillars, living crystals, weedy plants, and mold. Mai’s ring sleeve indicated that large parts of it were toxic and deadly. The two young ninjas proceeded cautiously.
Each time they encountered a carrot-guy or a potato-guy or a corn-stalk-guy, they were told to take a different trail through the toxic jungle. Fortunately, Mai’s ring sleeve was programmed not only to interpret the plant people’s Stink-Talk, but could make a map of their progress as well. Otherwise, Mai and Shu would be hopelessly lost
Finally, a radish-guy with a puffy red and purple face pointed to a large stand of weeds.
“In that spot you will pinpoint a Throckpod.” The ring sleeve translated the smells and spoke the message aloud in a voice that sounded like Mickey Mouse. Darn that Gyro!
Shu looked at Mai and nodded. They walked over to the stand of weeds.
“One of you is a Throckpod?” asked Shu. The translator device made the word “Throckpod” smell suspiciously skunk-like.
“Who is asking?” said one of the flower-headed weeds. With nearly humanoid eyes. “You appear to be skoog monkeys.”
Skoog monkey was an insult on most planets, at least, when used to describe a humanoid. They were vicious little primates from the planet Misko Skoogalia. Human beings were much more like the little poop-throwers than any human was comfortable admitting.
“We are students of Ged Aero-sensei, the White Spider,” said Shu. “We think you may have heard of him, because other Cornucopians came to our world to seek him out.”
“We have heard of your head monkey, yes. But we do not recognize his authority.”
“All we want is for a Throckpod to come and meet with him. We wish to learn more about your planet. And about your people.”
Everything went silent and smell free. Mai wondered if they knew that the translator device in her ring sleeve would pick up and translate any smells they used to talk about the situation. Maybe, however, they used telepathy or something. Mai wished Sarah the telepath was with her at that moment.
One exceptionally large weed came over to Mai and bent down over her head. Mai realized that it was examining her red flower with little seed-like eyes.
“You have killed a seedling!” said the possible Throckpod. “You must be killed in return.”
Mai’s heart leaped. Shu was obviously surprised too. They had no weapons, but both of them could pick up and throw rocks, pebbles, and crystal shards with only a thought. Mai could propel one like a bullet with her ring sleeve.
The rest of the weeds gathered around them too.
“It’s a flower from my own world,” said Mai, lamely. How could she make these plant people understand that, not only was the flower not intelligent like them, it was an artificial hair decoration and made from silk?
“A flower is a flower,” said the Throckpod, “and a monkey is a monkey.”
“Pick up a score of pebbles and rocks, Mai,” said Shu. “It’s time we gave them the old lawnmower treatment!”
“Lawnmower?” asked the Throckpod.
“A machine for cutting grass,” said Shu. “It cuts plants down close to the roots.”
If a weed could turn pale, then these Throckpods were suddenly gray. They knew about human technology apparently, and were completely unsure of what Mai and Shu were capable of. It was at that very moment that Mai had a bright idea.
“Why do you assume the flower is dead?” asked Mai, looking into the human-like eyes of the weed standing over her.
“Because it doesn’t move.”
Mai smiled. She used her telekinetic ability to make the petals of the silk flower move. In fact, she made the delicate little thing do a spinning dance just above her brow. “This flower is alive and it is my good friend and companion.”
“Have it say so,” the Throckpod replied menacingly.
“It is a tiny flower,” said Mai, thinking quickly, “and tiny flowers on my planet have not learned to speak. Can you not see that it is alive?”
“Accept her word, brother,” said one of the other weeds. “We don’t want to risk this lawnmowing thing.”
The plant-man relented. “Very well. I will go with you to see this master monkey of yours. You will remember that Throckpods are the natural rulers of this planet, and we are to be treated as king-things.”
“King-things?” asked Mai.
“Royalty,” suggested Shu.
“Oh,” said Mai. It was Gyro’s crazy translator program again.
So, finally, Mai’s Cornucopea spy mission was ending as she trudged back to the White Spider Mutant Ninja Space Baby camp. She had found and mastered a walking weed known as a Throckpod, and she left with the melancholy realization that it would be nice to have a talking flower to put in her hair, but that wish could never come true.
Speaking from empirical scientific proof supported by data and experiment… I would have to say NO.
I mean, seriously, the Roswell saucers crashed because of a little electromagnetic interference. And if you think about this planet… Donald Trump? Are you kidding me?
These are Tellerons, not intelligent alien lifeforms.
So there is simply no evidence that intelligent life exists anywhere in this universe.
“You are evidence of that,” you say, “since you apparently believe the government has been covering up the existence of aliens since 1947.”
And you would be right. I am not claiming to be intelligent. I am not monkey-headed stupid either. And the government has been covering up the existence of visitors from other worlds since they took possession of the crashed space ship, or possibly two spaceships, from Roswell, New Mexico. The stupid part is that their efforts to cover it up and change the story are proof that it is true. Nobody goes to that much effort over that many years just for a bit of a goof-play.
The reason the aliens were there looking around at an army air base is fairly obvious. What did the army air corps do in 1945 in Japan after all? The little gray guys were just worried about what their stupid neighbors were up to. Sooner or later, you know, stupid neighbors will mess all over your own back yard. So they came to investigate and stupidly got caught in a lightning storm, or possibly an Earther monkey-people weapon system. We are obviously dangerous enough for that.
So speaking of empirical evidence, you have a chain of stupidity causing event after event, and all of it subverted by dishonest attempts to keep people from knowing the truth. Humans from this planet were stupid enough to use a couple of nuclear weapons to murder other humans. This is documented stupidity.
If you believe the military and U.S. government, then you believe that they were using Project Mogul balloons to monitor Russian nuclear weapons development and crashed one of their super-secret balloons. Then the government officials misidentified their own balloon and okay-ed a newspaper report that the army had recovered a flying saucer. Immediately after being chewed out by a general, they then published a retraction newspaper story claiming the debris was a weather balloon, substituting pictures of crap from a real weather balloon that looked nothing at all like a flying saucer, and removing the top secret balloon crap so the Russians couldn’t learn that they were using balloons in the New Mexico desert. More documented stupidity.
And if you don’t believe the military and U.S. government, then you are probably considering the eyewitness testimony of people who were there and saw things and heard things and were then threatened by military goons to be quiet or be disappeared into the New Mexico desert. Now, eyewitness testimony is not considered absolute proof because witnesses can be unreliable and even tell lies. But hundreds of people? Who corroborate numerous rumors and details? Even people like intelligence officer Major Jesse Marcel who would later reveal stunning details to UFO investigators? And you can’t guarantee silence from witnesses, even with threats, especially over time. But the fact that the government tried? Yep, documented stupidity.
So, is there intelligent life in this universe? There is definitely life. But intelligent life? The evidence says “NO!” And remember, we elected Donald Trump to be our leader.
With Gyro driving, a rather unnerving prospect for those riding with him, the first pink Cadillacko swooped down on the planet Cornucopea out of the clouds. They were supposed to be establishing a base camp on the planet.
Besides Gyro, the Nebulon boy who gave the first Cadillacko its air bubble field and its silly Nebulonin nickname, the grav speeder held Billy Iowa, wearing his cowboy sombrero and leather moccasins, Luigi the Onion Guy, for whom they had no workable space suit, and Mai Ling, scantily dressed in form-fitting battle armor and wearing the ring-sleeve device that could amplify her telekinetic throwing arm.
The second Cadillacko carried Hassan Parker, who had to wear a full space suit instead of being nude like usual, Taffy King and Shu Kwai, all suited and combat ready.
The third grav speeder carried Ged Aero-sensei, Junior Aero, his adopted Nebulon nephew, and Sara Smith, the strongest telepath and healer of the group.
The drop zone looked like a field of flowers undulating in a high wind. But as they zoomed closer, you could see the large daisy-heads and thistle-heads were all ripping into and damaging the other plants.
“What do we do, Sensei?” Billy radioed through the comm dot on his neck.
“Clear the landing zone. Weed-killer weapons and mowers! We have to cut the weeds down to size.”
Gyro, being Gyro, nose-dived the pink-and-white Space Cadillac into the soft dirt of the field of fighting flowers. It plowed a deep furrow in a semi-circle in the middle of the large open space. Shu-Kwai landed his gray-and-white Space Cadillac much more gently beside it.
The telekinetics, Shu and Taffy King, leaped out of their vehicle with weapons that were more like chainsaws than the lawnmowers they were supposed to be. Each had two, one controlled by each hand. So, four flying blades whirled through the air, slicing and dicing, turning Throckpods into salad.
Mai-ling leaped out with a razor pistol in her hand. She fired round throwing-star-like objects in groups of five, then whipped the blades through the air sawing thorns neatly off of every violent flower-person she saw.
Hassan manned the spray-gun with the toxic weed-killer in it, spraying withering death upon Throckpods to a range of fifty feet.
Soon an army of violent flowers was reduced to smoking piles of flower-chips and salad-squares.
By the time Ged-sensei and Sara and Junior disembarked from their pink-and-white Cadillac, the battle was already over.
Luigi the Onion Guy came bouncing furiously across the field to confront Ged.
“nO! Oh, nO! You muSt nOt spILl, ChloroPhyll!” he shouted in his weird little Onion-guy accent.
“But you wanted help in driving away to evil Throckpods and their master, did you not?”
Luigi just stank out a lot of foul smells that the translator couldn’t begin to translate. It is well known that bad words are more a matter of disgustingly figurative language that does not translate well to beings who have no reference for flower emotions, flower body parts, flower behavior, or flower-based bad thoughts.
“Luigi is swearing at you, Sensei,” Gyro tried to explain while adjusting the translator’s many translation-equivalents adjustment bars.
“We need to understand him better. Can anyone read his mind?”
Sara looked at Ged with a sorrowful expression on her face. “I am beginning to sense some of the stronger emotions coming from plant-minds. He is upset because to them, all flower-life is sacred, including the Throckpods. That’s what he wants us to cure about the Throckpods. Their leader makes them render and kill other plant-life sacrilegiously.”
“Very well, then. We will set up base-camp in this cleared field and try hard to understand these flower-people better.”
“Yes, we need to study them and do some research,” said Hassan Parker. “I can get out of this space suit and start research immediately as the rest of you set up the camp.”
“I think I have seen enough of your naked body. And you really should join us in the physical labor before doing the mental work.” Shu Kwai was not making suggestions. He was issuing commands. “And while we are here, everybody wears protective body coverings. There are many unknown plant-based dangers here, and we want no one to be at risk.”
So, eight student ninjas, their ninja sensei, and one irate Onion began building a base camp.
While Ged Aero-sensei and Naylund Smith-sensei were busy flying the Super Rooster towards the planet Cornucopea, the White Spider students gathered in the recreation room with the forward view on the holoscreen.
Mai Ling and Taffy King sat together on the floor, missing their third since Jadalaqstbr hadn’t returned from her mission until after they had collectively left.
Shu Kwai, wearing his white vest and white pants stood on the starboard side of the viewing screen. Hassan Parker, nude except for the goofy red fez on his head (since he was dedicated to the goofy nudity notions of the Classical Worlds, also known as Space Nudists,) stood next to him.
Gyro Sinjarac, the blue-skinned Nebulon, and his best friend Billy Iowa both wore their cowboy hats, boots, and space-cowboy clothes sitting in the middle of the floor.
Junior Aero, blue-skinned Nebulon, and his beloved young lady friend, Sara Smith. Stood together at the back of the group holding hands.
The planet kept looming larger and larger in the viewing screen. It was amazingly green compared to similar planets where life wasn’t merely thriving, but exploding with life. Most such planets were blue from immense bodies of water.
“So, this is a dangerous planet, huh?” asked Mai Ling.
“Yes, those Throckpods were trying to rip my head off and drink my blood,” said Sara.
Taffy King shivered. “I hate the idea of plants that can move and talk… and eat you.”
“Yeah, and it will be worse for us than it was for you, Sara,” Mai Ling said.
“Oh, how so?”
“You had your boyfriend there to protect you,” she said. “Our boyfriends… Taffy’s and mine, are not along to protect us.”
“You two have boyfriends?”
“Taffy loves Rocket,” Gyro blurted out with accompanying giggles.
“But… you, Mai Ling?”
Mai Ling blushed deeply. “Yeah, um… Phoenix says of all the girls he’s met before, I’m the one he likes the most.”
Everyone laughed awkwardly, more from embarrassment than anything else. But no one argued either. They all instantly realized that Phoenix did treat Mai Ling differently. He wasn’t cruel to her.
“So, what about Billy, Gyro, Shu, and Hassan?” Junior asked. “Who are they supposed to protect.”
“Well, it’s rather obvious that Gyro and Billy are in love,” said Taffy with a cruel grin. “And Shu Kwai is more of a monk than a man. And who’s even gonna get near the naked kid?”
Shu Kwai frowned at the teasing, and Hassan looked quite sad for reasons unknown.
“Well, my clairvoyance is pinging right now with answers to all of it,” said Billy Iowa. “I see Gyro with an Earther wife and ten blue kids of varying ages. And Junior and Sara will marry and have a pair of blue twins, a boy and girl… Robert and Valerie, I think.”
“Oh, what about Phoenix and me?” squeaked Mai Ling.
“Well… you do get married… but…”
“Oh, no! What?”
“You can’t have kids of your own. You have to adopt… I think.”
“And what about Rocket and me?” Taffy asked.
“One son, Alfred Einstein Rogers. He’s such a handful you both decide never to have any more.”
“What about Shu?”
“Well, he’s going to be a great teacher, and first among all the White Spider Disciples.”
“Of course he is,” scoffed Taffy.
“And Hassan?”
Suddenly Billy’s face grew pale and the look on his face was the kind of horrified you associate with seeing ghosts.
“No! Don’t say it. I don’t want to know.” Hassan folded his arms across his chest and glared at Billy.
“Do… do you already know it?”
“The curse? It isn’t really any of your business. Take your time-snooping nose out of my future. Don’t you dare tell anyone.”
“Okay. Okay… I wish I could forget it… myself.”
“I’ll take care of it for you,” Hassan said, putting his first two fingers of his right hand to Billy’s temple and pouring blueish telepathic energy into the side of Billy’s head. That, of course, left everyone so stunned about Hassan’s terrible secret that all the romance and future-children stuff was promptly forgotten.
King Killer stared out the main viewport of his Flagship, the Sherman Hemsley, looking intently at Grand Admiral Cloudstalker’s new flagship, the Giant Leaf-eater.
“It seems like such an insult for legendary pirates like Arkin Cloudstalker to be flying a dinosaur-shaped space ship. Certainly, the brains behind this new fleet coulda come up with something more respectful. It’s so silly… and green!”
“You are complaining for Cloudstalker? Or f0r yourself?” asked Wicked Wanda.
“Yeah, yeah… I’m not happy for me either. His just has to sit there like some kinda brontosaurus, and he don’t have to charge about like a bison in a stampede.”
“You didn’t have to accept a triceratops ship, you know. And that thing Cloudstalker has is a brachiosaurus. There never was such a thing as a brontosaurus. It was actually an apatosaurus.”
“So, you are now the ship’s dinosaur expert?”
“You know I’m not. I’m your fleet communications officer… and paramour.”
“Yeah, I know it.”
King glared around the bridge at all of the snickering crewmen. All seven of them on the bridge of the Hemsley.
“What? You subordinates have opinions?” He growled menacingly. Everyone ceased laughing instantly.
And then a gray and black trash dumpster materialized on the bridge of Admiral Killer’s flagship as if some gigantic material synthesizer pieced it together from random atoms there.
“What’s this on my bridge?”
“Um… a dumpster?” a timid crewman ventured.
They all heard the familiar snap-hiss of a sealed airlock opening, and then the thing morphed into a 1950s telephone booth. It was almost a familiar sight to Admiral Killer.
“Dr. Hooey?”
The character who stepped out of the time-ship Star Wars was completely unrecognizable to King.
“Yes, it’s me. I ran into some difficulties in Outpost’s near future. I had to be reborn again, as Galagoans do, but at least I get to be younger in this body.”
“Um, why are you different from the old Hooey?”
“I understand perfectly,” Wicked Wanda said. “Having been a holovid star myself, I definitely understand the need to change faces as you start a new season.”
“So glad you get it, old girl. Forgive me if I turn out to be a bit cheekier than the old me.”
“So, why is the new you even here?” demanded King.
“Ah, yes! To make sure you, Admiral King Killer, don’t give up in the coming battle of Outpost. All you have to do to win it and establish the New Star League, is do what you intended to do before you started to have second thoughts. If you just do the things you were supposed to do all along, the plan Ham Aero carries out will work and you all will be victorious.”
“Um, ah… what?”
But not even Wicked Wanda could interpret that one for him. Because when did the second thoughts he was not supposed to have actually begin? Were these old second thoughts? Were they second thoughts that happened after the present time? And what the heck were the first thoughts he actually had to do to win?
“Oh, never mind. You’ll figure it out when the time is right.”
“And if I don’t figure it out?”
“Well, I guess, then, that the universe we know dies this time… once again.” King Killer glared at this new Hooey. Yes, it really was a new Hooey. Just like the old Hooey, only dumber.
The Super Rooster’s docking bay was filled with all the air/rafts, grav speeders, and small vehicles that Shen Ming had been able to muster from the city of Kiro and surrounding areas on the planet. They were not exactly the most up-to-date technology in space, but they would do.
Four of the grav speeders were designed by an old interstellar vehicle company called Space Cadillacs. Two of those were gray and white, while the other two were pink and white.
Shu Kwai was busy lifting boxes of equipment with his telekinesis and placing them into the cargo spaces of the speeders.
Hassan Parker was busy watching and “supervising.”
Gyro looked at the pink Cadillacs with considerable curiosity. “These things have a cockpit open to space. How do we ride in something like that?”
“In our space suits, Smurf,” said Billy. “The ones you altered to fit us.”
“Oh, sure. I hope we don’t get swallowed by blossoms again.”
“That was actually a spaceship’s air lock, Gyro.”
“Oh, yeah. But it was certainly icky.”
“Ha, where did you get a word like icky?”
“Some of you guys are real nerds, Billy. You use lots of weird words like that. And the Galactic English was put directly in my brain by Sara’s telepathy.”
“These pink Cadillacko thingies, Billy… I kinda like the look of them. Do we get to drive them?”
“Well, I might. You would just crash one, Gyro. You can’t drive to save your life. Remember that grav-bike on Pan Galactica Five during the War?”
“It’s not fair to bring that up. We crashed because it took too long to figure out what you were saying to me.”
“Yeah, it’s much easier to talk to you now. It’s like you were born speaking Galactic English.”
“And that stupid bike thingy wouldn’t fly when I gave it a command.”
“That’s because you have to turn it on and use the proper controls in the proper way.”
“Nebulonin kanjeriey are so much easier to use. You just tell them what you want to do or where you want to go and they fly there.”
“Those are the space-bird things that Nebulons use to get from the space-whale cruisers to the planet, right?”
“Or anywhere else you want to go. They are much smarter than your Cadillackos.”
“It’s pronounced Cadillacs, Gyro. And your space-birds are alive, aren’t they?”
“Very much so. Born on gas planets, they fly in space, or they fly in atmosphere. They carry their own oxygen-nitrogen fields with them. Hassan could ride one through space totally naked and be fine, protected from the vacuum of space.”
“Yeah. I don’t understand Classical Worlders either. Why would anybody prefer to be naked all the time?”
“You remember we almost had to live like that back at Dr. Crushcracker’s school? It was a boarding school for Classical Worlds kids. They wanted you to go to school naked.”
“My worst nightmare. I’m glad your dad got us out of there. It was just too weird.”
“Yeah, well… we had to leave there because of our skin color. We were hated for it.”
“Really? Because of my brown skin?”
“Not really. Because of my family’s blue skin. We were hostile aliens to them. They wanted to treat us as no better than the faceless ones.”
“I’m sorry about that. It’s just stupid to think you and Jor and your Mom are not like the rest of us just because your skin is blue.”
“Well, and you and I are different too because of our Psion heads. That’s what the Zaranians wanted to hang us for.”
“Yeah. Thank the gods for Shan’s Prophecy and the Zaranian who saved us with it.”
“Anyway… Billy? Would you teach me to drive one of those cool Cadillackos if I could make it have an energy-field and an atmosphere just like a space-bird?”
“You can do that?”
“I can now that Ged-sensei has trained us to get everything we possibly can out of our Psion powers. It should be easy to make a field-generator that mimics the field-gland of a Nebulonin kanjeriey… um, space-bird.”
“In that case, I can teach you drive anything. Especially a pink Cadillac. I’ll have you driving it even better and with more style than Elvis the Cruel.”
“That famous pirate pilot?”
“Yeah, that’s him.”
“Thank ya, thank ya very much!”
“Oh, stop it! You didn’t do that right.” As the driver’s training plan ended, Shu Kwai nearly dropped a crate on Hassan’s head, not because he couldn’t control it, but because the boy who was supervising was simply insufferable.
Catch a Falling Star 