Catch a Falling Star

Into the Belly of the Whale

Cissy was mesmerized by the slow, undulating dance of the oncoming space whales. It was hard to imagine that an entire world, ecosystem, or possibly Nebulon city existed inside each vast space-born creature. They were truly magnificent animals. And there were hundreds of them.

“Tash corridac! Compurac sah, mokkis nah Faldo Mecchanosic!” came a forceful voice over the ship-to-ship communications array.

The grin that had inhabited Suki’s blue face began to fade.

“What are they saying?” demanded Cissy, noticing the hint of distress from Suki.

They are ordering us to state our reason for visiting Mighty Clan Vorranac. But they call us an Imperial ship, and not in a very nice way.”

“Tell them who we are, Suki. And try to be nice about it,” said Cissy.

Suki launched into a long ak-ak-ak-awh session of incomprehensible Nebulonin words. Cissy continued to marvel at the gigantic whale thing coming towards them. It had two huge eyes, each the size of a large domed stadium, and hundreds of surrounding eyes of various sizes.

“They are ordering us to fly inside of the Prince’s space whale,” Suki said, deflated.

“Make it so,” ordered Cissy.

Suki piloted the Happy Luck toward the largest space whale’s slowly opening mouth. It was a gaping mouth more than twenty-five kilometers in width.

“We izzn’t going inna dere, iz we?” Friday whined.

“Yes, we are, Friday.”

As they slowly slid through the mouth they began to see how brightly lit everything was.

“What are the bright lights all around us?” Cissy asked.

Crocodile Guy quickly whurred through data. “The bright yellow ones are called sunsources. They contain actual cold fusion of complex particles to produce heat and sunlight. Crikey!”

“And the bright blue lights?”

“Even more impressive, Cissy. Those are brain cells that communicate with other brain cells via microwave energy streams. They are the brains and computer capability of the entire pod of space whales.”

“Wow.”

The scanner readouts began showing breathable atmosphere and exotic radiation in the environment that now surrounded them. Suki daintily landed the ship on a platform structure that could easily be the space whale’s tongue.

Blue-skinned warriors surrounded the ship. A parade of uniformed officials streamed toward Cissy’s space ship.

“What do we do now?” Cissy asked.

“We go out and meet Prince Porodor, son of a former Vorannac Warlord.” Suki gave a half-hearted smile.

“Is he one of the good ones?” Cissy asked.

“Well, no… As far as I know…” Suki said, “He’s one of the very worst ones we could meet.”

You can control who lives in a doll house pretty easily. The behavior of Trolls and Wishniks and My Pretty Ponies is rather placid and easy to manage. They are all mere lumps of cold plastic given shape by Mattel, Hasbro, Marx, or some other toy factory corporation.

Jade, the family dog, originally supposed to write this post for me, has passed away. Of course, she would’ve pressed the keys with her tongue, so the laptop is grateful that I am doing this post tonight. The dog left me alone in the house on a weekend when I should’ve been able to go with the rest of the family to Florida to see my son’s graduation ceremony from his Air Force special training course. I can’t tell you what he trained in because he is not allowed to tell his family. Probably secrets about aliens and spies from outer space and some junk.

The fact remains, however, that I had to stay home alone like some kind of over-aged Macaulay Culkin to be near the hospital I want to be admitted to if the no-peeing problem I had earlier this week in the middle of the night suddenly gets worse. It is painful to have a full bladder you can’t empty for some unknown reason. And it is potentially life-threatening. Something similar killed Jim Henson. And Florida hospitals are not the place to be when we have a perfectly good ER that we’ve used before when I feared I might be dying only a few blocks up the street.

So, the only badness I had to deal with turned out to be a bit of loneliness… the blues. The no-peeing problem did not haunt me again on either of the last two nights. I usually like being alone, but not when I am missing out on an important family moment.