Catch a Falling Star

Since I have stopped writing two other novel projects for the sake of the current novel fixation, that means I have two other unfinished novels that I have to find a use for.  I thought perhaps I could post a novel chapter every Tuesday until I either finish Recipes for Gingerbread Children or use up all the chapters I have written on the other two novels.

So, let’s start with;

Stardusters and Space Lizards

A novel by Michael Beyer

Canto One – Aboard the Base Ship of Xiar the Slightly Irregular

Commander Biznap was the most over-worked Telleron aboard Xiar’s mother ship.  Given the fact that he was the most competent spacer on board, in fact the ONLY competent spacer on board, it was easy to understand why.  None of the other fin-headed, green, Telleron frog-people could do even half of the necessary spacer tasks that made a starship run.  (Of course, there was Farbick, the yellow-skinned Fmoog, but you couldn’t count him, at least Biznap didn’t want to count him, because the possibility existed that Farbick was actually more competent than Biznap and merely the victim of Telleron anti-yellow-skinned racism.  That couldn’t be allowed to get around to the green-skinned Tellerons.)

Corebait was gone.  The foolish Fmoogian foul-up had gone and disintegrated himself while on Earth using a skortch pistol and an Earther mirror.  That meant no one on board was competent enough to do the astrogation calculations it was necessary to complete for the Tellerons to travel from the ancient Mars Base in Earth’s solar system, back to Barnard’s Star where their orbital living complex was located.  It was very possible the entire crew would have to learn to live on the space cruiser in orbit around some other fool planet in the Earther solar system.

“If you don’t want to live on Earth, dearest,” said Harmony Castille, Biznap’s new Earther “wife”, “then maybe we should just live on Mars.  There’s a perfectly good planetary base there.”  She was an Earther primate known as a “human being”, so Biznap had to forgive her for monkey-based-life-form thinking.

“You must forgive me, honey, but I don’t want to live anywhere even remotely near your people.”  Biznap’s frown told it all.  He had learned to love this woman of another species.  Now that he had used the de-evolutionizer to make the old Sunday School teacher young again, she was ravishingly beautiful… so much so that Bizzy had decided to take up the same strange Earth custom that had so appealed to Captain Xiar and his new Telleron wife Shalar, and married her, binding her to him for the remainder of their lives together, however many centuries that would be.  But Earth people were strange primates with such weird customs.  They didn’t eat their own young, but they ate meat, even (shudder) frog legs.  They used machines on a regular basis, but they also relied on muscles and physical labor far more than any Telleron could stomach.  And since they didn’t absorb moisture through their skin like a Telleron, they preferred dry rooms and refused to run about the spaceship naked the way Tellerons preferred.  Harmony insisted that Biznap wore clothes at all times, except when they actually had time to be intimate.  She was a bit of a prude (a word Biznap had learned meant that she deeply loved to copulate, but had to pretend that, not only did she not like it, but she couldn’t stomach the thought of other people even thinking about it).

“Well, what will we do, then, if we don’t find a way to get back to your Bernie’s Star?”

“Barnard’s Star,” corrected Biznap.  “You people named it, after all.”

“Okay, okay.  But it will just be living on a space station, won’t it?”

“Um… yeah…  The artificial swamp in the interior is very realistic, though.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to live with real ground under our feet?  I mean, I think I’m going to miss the birds singing in the early morning, and the lovely fall colors of maple trees.”

“I really don’t think so.  I mean, I don’t even know what those things are.”  Being a Telleron who had lived his entire life aboard some form of space vehicle, a frog-like sentient life form, and her being a planet-raised monkey-person instead of a proper amphibianoid, might just not have been ideal for getting “married”.  Bizzy loved her bare legs and the wonderful Earther invention known as “breasts”, but did that really make up for having to live your love-life with an alien monkey-person?

“Look here, Bizzy.  You forgot to carry the one in this equation.”

Biznap looked down at the tablet computer.  “I think I know a little more about Sleer Mechanics and Advanced Sylvanian Geometry, thank you.  …Oh, look at that.  I, um, forgot to carry the one.”

“Does that help our problem?” she said sweetly.  “I mean, the same mistake is right here in Corebait’s old equations?”

“Yes… yes, I think our problem is solved!  The numbers match and flow properly for a change.  Thank you, dearest one.  Now we must try it.”

Biznap went to the primary jump control board and began inputting the numbers just as Harmony had corrected them.  The machine purred and glowed with its inherent bioluminescence.  It was a happy machine for the first time since Biznap could remember.  It chugged and farted, and then they were physically lifted through space and time and light-years of travel.  Suddenly a planet appeared on the view screen.

“Oh, no!” gasped Biznap.

“What’s the matter?” asked his lady love, gaping at the blue, green, and brown ball of dirt slowly rotating in space before them.

“This is Galtorr Prime!  The one planet in the area of the Telleron Empire that’s more dangerous than Earth!”

“It’s that bad?” asked the clueless Sunday school teacher.

“They are reptile-men!  With big teeth!  And they’re more aggressive than humans.  If they ever learn space travel, we’re DOOMED!”

“Yep,” she said.  “Maybe we don’t want to live here either.”

Biznap smiled a crazy smile.  A thought had occurred to him.  Living on Galtorr Prime couldn’t be any more difficult than being married…

*****

Okay, so that is chapter one.  I call it a canto.  And I am aware that it is a bit on the lunatic end of the science-fiction spectrum.  But hey, I’m a devotee of Douglas Adams and the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.  So. whatever you do, “DON’T PANIC!”