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Sail the Sea of Stars - chapter 10

 
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Bud Brewster
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Joined: 14 Dec 2013
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 12, 2016 5:24 pm    Post subject: Sail the Sea of Stars - chapter 10 Reply with quote

________________________________

This one is short and only needed a few changes, so here is. It's the beginning of the romance between David and Danceea, and it might not be everyone's cup 'a tea, as they say.

But I like it. I'm still a hopeless romantic . . . even at 68 years old. Rolling Eyes
________________________________




Chapter 10

Sharing Eyes


"Danceea. That's a lovely name. I suppose people try to shorten it to Dancey. You know, like they turn John into Johnny, Bob into Bobby, William into Willy -- which I'm sure all the Williams in the universe hate with a passion."

We were strolling down the corridor, making our way aimlessly through the ship, pausing from time to time at the better paintings that were mounted on the walls. The Candlelight had an art collection that rivaled some art museums. And absolutely none of them showed pictures of space and spaceships. That's what the view ports were for! The paintings were of spectacular landscapes or dramatically posed people or bizarre aliens who looked terrific standing in front of the purple sunset on their home world.

"Dancey? No," Danceea said. "A few close friends have tried to call me that, but I set 'em straight right away." She paused and gave me one of the hundreds of flirtatious looks she had perfected. "Do close friends call you Davey?"

I actually had to think about it for a moment. "Uh. No, actually they don't. "

"Oh. You mean you don't have any close friends?"

Her logic was solid and it hit one of those emotional sore spots which disconnects your mouth from you brain and leaves you looking baffled and mute. She was laughing, but then she saw my expression and she knew right away what the problem was. She quickly fortified her smile and said, "I like your name. David. A good Biblical name."

No man could feel anything but good feelings while looking at that smile. I smiled back to show my appreciation and then said, "You mean King David?"

She chuckled and said, "Of course, silly. That kid who slew the giant with a measly little sling." She spun an imaginary sling above her head and chucked a rock at an invisible giant further down the corridor."

"Yeah, but he had God on his side."

Her smile turned impish. "Right. See how important friends are?"

I marveled at the way she had turned the whole mood of the conversation around in mere seconds. The lady was a magician. We wandered on down the corridor and paid little attention to where we were headed of where we'd been. Several minutes later we found ourselves on the upper observation deck, over-looking the bridge area. There were only a about half-a-dozen people on either of the observation decks, which was amazing considering the crowded condition of the ship. Danceea marveled at the big wrap-around screen that surrounded the forward portion of the bridge area below. The upper edge of the screen was about eye level with the lower observation deck.

"I love the way the data-inserts move around as new ones form," she said, her eyes bright with excitement, darting around on the electronic kaleidoscope.

"A few months ago I programmed the computer so that the data on the screen would slowly flow from left to right, with the newer stuff forming on the left and moving across the screen, while the more important data stayed put to let the other stuff flow around it."

Danceea stared off glassy-eyed as she visualized it. Finally — "Wow. What did the bridge crew think of it?"

"The said is made them dizzy. Gumjaw — the chief helmsman — swore it made him fly the ship in circles. So I changed it back."

Danceea laughed with gratifying volume, the she leaned over the rail and looked down at the helmsman's station below. One of the junior helmsmen, Mickey Davenport, occupied the helmsman's station, steering the Candlelight around the star systems, nebulae, and pulsars which came along at 360,000 times the speed of light. Gumjaw had left his blue baseball-style cap hanging on the small metal handle that adjusted the headrest of the helmsman's chair.

"What's that word on the hat, there?" said Danceea, squinting down.

"Mack. It's the name of a company that used to make large wheeled surface vehicles, back around the year 2000 Earth/standard. The hat belongs to Gumjaw."



_________________



"That's an antique hat?"

"No, just a copy. It was a gift from the captain of Gunjaw's first Alliance starship assignment. The captain, a guy name Paco Estaban, was a twentieth century history buff. He felt that starships like his transector stellashuttle were the direct descendants of the old tractor trailer trucks of the late 1900s."

"What does a transector . . . stella . . . "

"Stellashuttle."

"Right. What do they do?"

"They haul supplies and personnel for the Alliance Armed Forces. They're relatively small ships with a crew of about one hundred and twenty."

"I assume that the tractor whatcha-call 'ems carried military supplies too."

"No, I think they were used to carry . . . well, everything. They were commercial transports which carried food, consumer products — even livestock. Despite the fact that the the trucks were much bigger than most of the ground vehicles from that period, it only took one person to run them, and sometimes the drivers actually owned the trucks. Captain Estaban idealized the drivers because they drove all over their assigned continents, through virtually uninhabited areas, driving big vehicles that were high tech for their time."

I looked down at Gumjaw's cap, hanging on the little silver handle.

"On the inside of the cap's sweatband," I said quietly, "it says From the captain and crew of the T.S.S. Ambition, to the man who got us home safely every time."

Danceea was quiet for a moment, gazing down at the humble cap that dangled from the handle next to the helmsman's chair of the Galactic Stellacruiser Candlelight. Then softly she said, "I like that."

"Yeah. Me too. Gumjaw once told me the slang word for those truck drivers. Lemme see . . . what was that word? Something funny sounding."

"Tell me something, Newcastle. Why did you join the Alliance Armed Forces?"

I gave a quick answer in a theatrical voice. "Adventure!"

"As a computer specialist?"

"That was the only thing I did well enough to get me on a starship. Actually, the computer psychologist part is the interesting angle. I seem to have a knack for thinking like a screwed-up computer."

Danceea wasn't smiling. She smelled evasion. "Don't kid me, partner. I've seen you in action, remember? You're good. Come to think of it you do manage to find a little adventure."

"Well, yeah. I guess so." I started shuffling modestly.

"Is that a knack, too?"

"Sure. Like luring innocent girls away from lecherous high ranking officers who have evil intentions."

"You servicemen are all alike," she said with a little smile on her lips — and a big smile in her eyes. I realized we were standing closer together — but my feet were the same place. So, she was moving closer. Be still my foolish heart.

"A girl in every port," I said softly.

"Are you going to romance a few native girls on Tason?" She gave the question such a sultry deliver I nearly fell over the handrail.

"I hear it's not like that," I answered with a mouth which suddenly experienced a serious drought. We were just inches apart, even though I hadn't moved an inch.

"Maybe you'll get lucky," she whispered, her eyes locked onto mine like two green grappling beams. Suddenly she looked highly amused. "Hey, are you blushing?"

I had to swallow hard before I answered, which gave me time compose a reply. It wasn't great, but it was the first thing I thought of.

"I'm putty in your hands."

She gazed up at my blushing face with all the knowledge that beautiful women possess when they drive men mad with flirtatious looks, shy smiles, or quick winks. She spoke in a voice which lured me into her green eyes like the sirens who sang to Sinbad and lured his ship towards the rocks.

"Nonsense. You're a pillar of stone. A man of great strength. And I'm putty in your hands." She winked like a dance hall girl in a western saloon and then reached up and scratched me affectionately behind one ear. Then she said, "Buy me coffee, Tiger."

She turned and started walking towards the stairs. I made a comic routine of sagging against the handrail, holding myself up while my legs wobbled beneath me. Danceea turned around, saw my act, and laughed so loudly that half the bridge crew looked up at me. I waved and made my get-away.

_______*_________________*________________*_________

It was one of the better evenings of my life. We talked about everything, from sentient computers to the first day of school. I even told Danceea about the girl I had once been engaged to — the girl who had broken it off when she realized how little we really had in common. Danceea, in turn, told me about the man she had been engaged to. That engagement ended when she discovered that the man had an ulterior motive for wanting to marry her. When I asked Danceea what the ulterior motive had been, she became evasive.

It was just one example of her refusal to discuss certain things. For instance, she wouldn't tell me where she was from. After her initial refusal I didn't persist because I didn't know the reasons she had for avoiding the subject. Maybe she was from someplace notorious. I doubted that. Not her. Maybe something terrible happened to her home world. Perhaps her it had dropped into a black hole or been swept by a plague. Despite the scattered pockets of civilization, the galaxy still held vast unknown regions containing millions of star system. A galaxy is a big enough piece of the universe to contain absolutely everything imaginable — and a lot more besides.

For example, there was one planet near the galactic rim which had been off-limits to everybody for two hundred years. Five expeditions had gone down into its gaseous atmosphere, and the last four had each hoped to find out what had swallowed up the expeditions before it. Even deeprange radar wouldn't penetrate the atmosphere, for reasons unknown. Unmanned probes that went down never came back up. One probe was even lowered on the end of a thousand mile cable, but while the probe was still descending, the line suddenly went slack. When the cable was reeled back up, the end had been cleanly cut.

Theories about the nature of the planet included the idea that it wasn't a planet at all, it was a dimensional rift or an unusual wormhole entranced or a temporal gateway. It just happened to looked like a planet. Eventually the Alliance just decided to leave the whole planet (or whatever it was) alone. Forever.

Danceea was happy to talk about her father, Carcainon Aberron, who was a well-respected psychologist and statesman. She talked about her mother, Aldarrin, who was an actress and an artist. Danceea obviously loved them both, and she soon had me dying to meet them. All I had to do was find them in a galaxy one hundred thousand light years across.

I told her about my advanced computer science instructor, old Zinswabin Ira Ka. He was a Denebian, like the statue on Admiral Rishaw's desk. The Denebians average twenty five feet in length and they weigh over a ton, but they manage to tip-toe around on their six massive hippopotamus feet with surprising grace. Ira Ka (the first name, Zinswabin, was his family name) was a terrific teacher, and during the time I had studied under him we had discussed the possibility of my becoming his assistant. But Ira Ka's wife died unexpectedly and he went into a comatose state of mourning, like many members is his sensitive race do under such circumstances. Ira Ka stayed in his coma for over two years.

How about that for romantic?

Danceea told me what it had been like aboard the Rembrandt, with the Beltherians walking around smiling and killing, as if it was a party. She told me about a fellow hostage she had met on the Beltherian ship, an elderly woman who had been severely beaten.

Danceea had treated the elderly lady's damaged face, wounds caused by several blows the Beltherians delivered because she hadn't moved fast enough to suit them when they herded a group of hostages to their holding area.

I found out where the woman had been assigned and we visited the old gal's cabin. We spent an hour talking with her, both of us acting like complete fools, doing everything we could to lift her spirits and make her laugh. Her battered eyes were swollen and discolored, but she was high on pain pills, so making her laugh wasn't very hard.

We roamed all over the ship and we talked until our voices were hoarse. Our conversation was of that rare and special type that only comes when both parties find it easy to see the meaning behind the spoken words, and more — the meaning behind the meaning. To put it another way: We not only understood what was being said, we understood why it was being said. Ideas weren't just exchanged, they were discovered together.

By two a.m. we were old friends, seeing the world around us with four shared eyes instead of two separate pairs. We finished each others sentences — and even the sentences we finished on our own were unnaturally brief. If we saw a painting we both liked, our discussion sounded like this:

"Hey, look . . . "

"Yeah. Oh, yeah."

"Good lord, look at the sky."

"Right. And look at this strange effect down here."

"Here it is again on this side."

"You're right! Hey, didn't this guy paint the one we saw upstairs?"

"I'll bet it was. Let's go see."

And off we'd go to prove that our four shared eyes were in perfect synchronization. and to confirm our feeling that the same things had been seen and remember and valued.

Finally, in the wee hours, we started yawning in harmony. As I walked her to her cabin I knew with absolute certain that any attempt to seduce her would be highly inappropriate, that it would shock her if I even tried, as if somewhere along the way I had missed an important point. And besides, she was sharing a cabin with three other women.

At the door she turned and said, "Breakfast?"

I just nodded, then I said, "Dinner?"

She smiled above drowsy eyes. "Sure."

We looked at each other for an eternal moment, then she said, "Lunch?"

I held her gaze for several seconds, then I replied, "Surprise me."

This set us both to giggling, mostly because were punch-drunk from fatigue. Finally she heaved a big sigh, stifled a colossal yawn, and said, "Well . . . good night."

Right in the middle of my own yawn I suddenly blurted out, "Gear-jammers!"

She looked at me for a moment and then said, "You can tell me tomorrow why they call the truck drivers that. Sleep well, Davy."

All the way back to my own cabin I was amazed that she had instantly made the connection between my sudden outburst and our previous conversation about Gumjaw and the old tractor trailer trucks. I vowed then and there that tomorrow I would tell her about the crush I once had on my 5th grade teacher, Miss Hickey. I had never told anybody about that before.

________________________________


_________________
____________
Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


Last edited by Bud Brewster on Sun May 06, 2018 5:03 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Gord Green
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 12, 2016 9:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Great dialogue, good change of pace chapter.

I bet it's based on some past personal experiences of your own! lol!

I know I felt some "deja vu" myself----Although I've never been aboard a starship.

The whole thing felt very real.

More!
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Gord Green
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 13, 2016 1:38 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ok, as an aside to Bud----

A possible explanation of the Beltharian edge toward aggression etc.---

There is no easy explanation for why some people commit crimes and others don't.

Similarly, there's no easy answer to the question of why some people end up in jails and prisons while others do not. It's a mathematical reality that the American criminal justice system disproportionately punishes poor people and black people.

But at the same time, the population of people who end up in prison do share some traits. And scientists have now traced one common criminal trait to specific genes.

Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD) is wildly overrepresented in prisons. Take a crowd of 100 people of the street, and chances are just one to three of them will have ASPD. Take 100 people from a prison, and you can expect 40 to 70 of them to have the disorder.

That's significant, because ASPD has been linked with aggression, irritability, disregard for rules, disregard for other people, and dishonesty.

It's a controversial diagnosis — broad, ill-defined, and overlapping heavily with other disorders like psychopathy.

But there's reason to take it seriously. Twin studies suggest that genetics explain about half of the variance in ASPD diagnoses, and environmental factors the other half. And a new study has begun the task of identifying which genes are most likely involved in ASPD, with significant success.

An international team of Finnish, American, British, and Swedish researchers examined data from the Finnish CRIME sample — a database of psychological tests and genetic material from 794 Finnish prisoners taken between 2010-2011.

The findings of this study cannot be implemented for any prediction purposes, or brought into courthouses to be given any legal weight.

Of the 794 prisoners, a full 568 screened positive for ASPD. By comparing that group's genetic material to a large control sample from the general population, the researchers identified a number of genes that may play a role in at least some ASPD cases.

The study's results are interesting in and of themselves — advancing our understanding of ASPD from Genetics seem to play a role to These genes seem to play a role. This seems to be the first time researchers have made this leap with a personality disorder.

But just as interesting are the concerns the researchers express about how their research might be misused.

"The findings of this study cannot be implemented for any prediction purposes, or brought into courthouses to be given any legal weight," they write.

In the past, claims about specific genes and violence have been — in the researchers' words — "misused" by prosecutors as evidence that defendants are violent. And as more studies like this one link specific genes to the potential for violence, that danger only grows.

There are valid, important reasons for scientists to deepen their understandings of disorders like ASPD, but also real dangers of people's genes being used as evidence that they are criminals.

The Beltharians bred these genes to be dominant.
In other words. this is their natural nature, as natural as ours may be toward empathy and goodness, theirs is towards a total disregard to others and "evil".

Just a scientific basis for their behavior.And why they may just be the ultimate villians in all literature.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 13, 2016 8:47 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Wow! Very impressive, Gord.

Although I based the Beltherian's history on Nazi Germany (obviously), I based the Beltherian nature on a big burly fellow I worked with the 1980s when I was a baggage handler for Eastern Air Lines. He was a large, scary, generally "happy" guy, but not because he had a sunny disposition. It was more like he was quietly wondering if your head could be crushed with his bare fist, like a melon .

I should say that I never actually saw him do any harm, but he seemed to enjoy intimidating people. I got along with him fairly well — as did everybody else, probably because we were all scared of him! Shocked

The guys who went out drinking with him from time to time said he liked to get tanked and start bar fights.

I think he was a candidate for ASPD.

_________________
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)
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