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Sail the Sea of Stars - chapter 15

 
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 09, 2016 9:40 pm    Post subject: Sail the Sea of Stars - chapter 15 Reply with quote




CHAPTER 15

A NIGHT IN PARADISE



"Wake up, you cadaver! You'll miss it!" said an insistent voice. I was sitting at a console on the pirate ship's bridge, trying to get the computer to give me the address of Dr. Carrington's grandson, while Chief Sandusky tugged at my shoulder and pleaded with me to come someplace with him. He was begging so desperately that his voice sounded high and girlish. It sounded like Danceea's voice.

"Get up, boy, or I'll have Narahee kick you out of bed! Move it, Newcastle! You're gonna miss it!"

Danceea started bouncing my head up and down on the pillow, which caused the pirate ship's bridge to fade out and my guest quarters to fade in.

Ah-ha. I'd been dreaming.

"Misswha?" I said in a voice that sounded like an old man who had just crawled in the from the Sahara.

"Miss the eclipse!" Danceea exclaimed. "Dante is going to eclipse the sun just before sunset. Get cleaned up and get dressed, you slob!" I was lying on my belly, and she punctuated her order with a stinging slap on my sheet-covered rump. It brought me awake enough to pull myself into a sitting position, and I swung my legs over the edge of the bed. A colossal yawn took control of my face for a full ten seconds.

When I refocused my eyes Danceea was sitting in an elaborately carved high-back chair against the flanking wall. I had some vague idea of what I must have looked like: hair standing on end, eyes as baggy as old Fernie Mann's, face covered with a five o'clock shadow that was actually a ten o'clock shadow, since it was 2200 hours, ship's time. With a sheet tangled discreetly around my middle, I yawned again while I scratched my embarrassingly hairless chest, and said, “Ah, alone at last.”

"Not quite," said a female voice. A beautiful middle-aged woman entered the room. I scrambled around, trying to gather more of the sheet around me as the woman stepped up to the foot of the bed with a mischievous smile I instantly recognized. It was Danceea's smile, twenty years from now. Ten thousand smiles like that one had softened and wrinkled the woman's skin at the corners of her mouth and around her eyes. The wrinkles were delicate and fine, and they echoed the smile, like faint ripples in a tranquil pool. Her eyes were light green, like Danceea's, and her hair was dark and full, even though it was lightly salted with gray. She wore her hair long and loose, except for a pony tail on one side, a style that would have looked inappropriate on most women her age.

But those green eyes had captured the Spirit of Youth, forcing it to reside within her — without the ridiculous association of chronology. Her body was trim and well proportioned, though it looked somewhat sparse when compared to the youthful abundance of her daughter.

"Hello, Mrs. Aberron," I said, blushing with renewed vigor. Her smile widened.

"Hello, Mr. Newcastle. If sleepiness has made you forget my first name, it's Aldarrin."

"I hadn’t forgotten. I just — "

"You're just naked in the presence of two rude females who are delighted to see that a young man can still blush these days. Come on, Danceea. You can admire him later with his clothes on, and thereby exercise your imagination."

Now it was Danceea's turn to blush. "Mother! After all, he's got his bed shorts on. It isn't as if — "

"No, I don't."

" — he was naked . . . what?"

"I forgot to pack the little devils . . . I didn't think I would be . . . entertaining guests."

Aldarrin's lovely face was succumbing to rising laughter as Danceea and I competed in our efforts to out-blush each other. Danceea leaped up and shuffled towards the door, babbling unintelligible apologies to me and her mother.

"That will teach you not to march into a man's bedroom, young lady," said Aldarrin, her voice fragmented by laughter. "David, dinner is in one hour. We'll be waiting for you in the living room as soon as you're ready."

Still chuckling, she followed her daughter out and left me alone to quietly die of humiliation.

After a shower, a shave, and a little hair combing I didn't look so much like Fernie Mann's older brother. One hour after my disastrous awakening, the Aberrons and I arrived at the open-air dining area near the lake. Norado's twenty acre out-door dining room was another project engineered by the koocathus, those giant "praying mantis" that Danceea and the whylarees told me about. The koocathus had taken Tason's most abundant building material, the gray stone that made up nine-tenths of the planet's mass, and fashioned a kind of super picnic area whose complexity put Stonehenge to shame.

First the koocathus had leveled off an area of exposed rock to give the dining area a flat floor. Then the industrious insect-like creatures had gone to work with cutting lasers and plasma hammers and sonic sanders to sculpt the tables and benches, chairs and grills, food preparation counters and serving tables needed to equip the area for its intended activity.

The construction crews had conformed to an overall floor plan in the arrangement of the stone furniture, but the exact design of the individual items had been left to the individual designers. Some of the items were gorgeously elaborate, some were brilliantly simple, and some were . . . strange. I don't just mean the chairs and tables that were made for nonhumans. Some of the human furniture was bizarre and unique, with mesmerizing patterns cut into the stone. Most of the furniture had a glassy smooth finish, a high polish that invited one to touch it. Some of it had been left the natural color of the stone, while others had been artistically stained with dyes. Cushions were placed on most of the chairs and benches.

Last but not least, the construction crews had livened up the look of the area by adding things like statuary, raised areas surrounded by rock guard rails, and stone planters of various sizes and shapes. The planters held flowers, bushes, and even trees — the latter of which were large enough to make me wonder if the planters’ bottoms were actually below the level of the stone dinning area.

Woven in among the stone furniture was a carved-out swimming pool which wandered around among the tables and chairs, like canals. Stone bridges crossed the canals at several points. The children of many different life forms frolicked with some of the smaller aquatic forms. The pool was connected to the lake by underground tunnels. Danceea told me that the water-dwellers put in a token appearance at dinner just for the sake of courtesy. The aquatic forms preferred not to dine with the other life forms. Their wishes were respected.

There was no formality or ceremony to the occasion. There were no speeches welcoming us to Tason, and no planned activity that would have made the crew feel like paying customers. It was just a big, sprawling, undisciplined feast, full of life and laughter and conversation. Kids of every species dashed around playfully among the adults. I saw two rambunctious koocathus children run right up the back of a seated pi (the creature that resembled a large bear) and leap clean over the table the big furry alien was sitting at. A whylaree mare called the youngsters back and scolded them for their behavior, after which they marched away timidly, possibly in search of their parents to confess, as instructed.

I saw one of the white, elongated, flipperless "seals" feeding bits of food to a tiny whylaree colt, who approached shyly for each tidbit on hooves that went tock-tock-tock on the smooth stone.

The Aberrons and I found one of the many food-baring tables and we loaded down our plates. Most of the food was unfamiliar, presumably because some of Tason's creative citizens had devoted themselves to inventing new foods (while other citizens were busy revolutionizing everything else). I let Danceea advise me on what I might like, and when our plates were dangerously overloaded we made our way to a table. We wound up sitting with Randy Henson, Bill Jenkins, and several other crewmen, along with a miniature dinosaur (like Hakthh from the polo game), who sat at the very end of the long table.

Actually there was no bench where he was located, which suited the big lizard fine since he just wanted to squat on his leathery haunches. When the blue reptile caught me staring at his plate of bland-looking vegetables, he said (via translator), "It's my ulcer. I'm not as young as I look." I just smiled and nodded and refrained from telling him that he looked to be about two hundred years old.

Suddenly I was aware of a rising commotion among the crowd. Everybody was turning to look towards the lake, and I heard someone say, "There she goes!" The setting sun was visible through the mountain pass, framed by the sheer cliffs, and reflected by the sparkling lake. The sky held no clouds, yet something had taken a bite out of the sun.

"It's the eclipse," whispered Danceea. "Boy, have I missed seeing these."

"How often do they occur?"

"Dante's orbit around Tason — or I should say their orbits around each other — are extremely fast, so these eclipses happen every couple of days. But not every spot on Tason sees them every time."

"Every couple of days? And nobody gets tired of them?"

"Oh, sure. A lot of folks do. Some folks aren't impressed by an eclipse the first time they see one. But we here in the surface leave communities get to see them with our guests. Enthusiasm is contagious."

The setting sun was being quickly swallowed by the invisible presence of Dante. The sky over Norado Valley darkened and the stars appeared one by one until the sky was full of them. Suddenly Dante wasn't invisible anymore as the glare of the sun was removed and our eyes adjusted to the reduced light. Dante looked larger than normal when seen so near the ground, flanked by the cliffs of the mountain pass. Its dark night side smoldered with lava filled wounds. Explosions were visible in the major craters, and super-lightning flashed in the titanic ash clouds that were agitated by the fire storm winds. The planet was surrounded by the blazing corona of Tason's sun — smaller and dimmer than the ones seen during Earth’s eclipses, because of Dante’s larger relative size to its sun. It was like an incandescent crown to console the devil for having the dubious honor of being the King of Hell.

The crowd around me was oo-ing and ah-ing like an audience at a fireworks display. It was a spectacular sight, even to an experienced starship crew. Suddenly I saw a little spark of light move across the face of Dante. It brightened as it neared the exact middle of Dante's face while it raced across a sea of lava. The spark reached the continental shore of the molten ocean and smacked into the high ground in a bright explosion that caused a silent fireball to spread until it was the size of my thumbnail held at arm's length.

"What was that?" said Randy Henson, just as a hundred other crewmen around us voiced the same question. The conversation level rose as the Tasonians answered.

"If it wasn't just a meteorite," said Danceea, "then it might have been a carefully placed missile for the geologists and astrophysicist to observe. Dante's self-destruction is teaching the scientists a great deal about planetary dynamics in general. And there are quite few unsolved mysteries about how Tason and Dante seem to defy the established laws of astrophysics.”

“The data program we all watched while enroute to Tason mentioned that,” said Randy. “It’s part of the magic of this place. How the hell does Tason avoid being ripped apart by Dante, the way it’s doing that very thing to her sister world?”

Danceea nodded slowly while she wore a faint heck, I don’t know either smile. “Figure out the answer to that question, fellas, and you might get invited to live here.”

Randy and Bill were suddenly staring at her with big round eyes and open mouths, then they turned to each other and started talking at the same time in excited voices.

“Damn, if we just had the Wishbone’s computer — “

“That thing could solve any problem! Why didn’t we think of this before?”

They lowered their voices and continued to hold a frantic discussion, ignoring the folks around them. Danceea chuckled at their enthusiasm, then she turned to me.

“Well, anyway, if it was a missile of some kind, you can bet that it was timed to hit just when it did, so that the eclipse would be enhanced."

I gazed at the Dante’s angry face on the horizon. "Tasonians never miss an opportunity to try out a new art form.”

"After dinner we can watch a replay of the impact, if you like. It'll be recorded by orbiting satellites around Tason," said Danceea.

"Hey, good idea!" I turned to Randy and Bill. "How 'bout it, guys?"

Randy and Bill had concluded their impromptu strategy meeting about a way they might earn Tasonian citizenship and were now shovel food into there mouths. Bill spoke around a mouthful, with semi-intelligible results.

"We'll catch it before bedtime, Dave. We've got a date to go night hang gliding, after which we're supposed to take on some guy in a poker game — somebody that the chief swears will clean us out."

"Dear lord . . . did the chief get fleeced?" I said, amazed at the idea that anybody could beat Sandusky.

"He won't say, but he keeps chuckling and smiling and saying things like `optimism only knocks once' — whatever that means."

"We suspect he made a come-back against this mysterious card shark," said Bill, "and he doesn't think we will do quite so well."

"Good luck," I told them both. The setting sun had moved out from under Dante, peeking from behind the planet's lower edge and then sliding into view. The stars disappeared and so did Dante as the sun emerged completely. But we all knew that as soon as the sun had set, Dante would be even higher above the horizon because of its rapid orbit. It would dominate the night, a giant ember in the sky, mesmerizing us with oceans of molten rock, bright flashes of volcanic eruptions, and flares of lightning-filled ash clouds.



Just before dawn it would be almost directly overhead again, one half lit by the sun, the other half a dark smoldering hemisphere of glowing lava.

I understood the determination Randy and Bill have for finding a way to become permanent “Tasonians”, and I watched the two men finish ever morsel of food on their plates before I final ventured a question.

"So what did you two occupy yourselves with today?"

"Holy reenlistment!" said Randy. "Who can remember it all? Ummm . . . we played a game called series relay with a bunch of doragonkas until noon. Then we went hang gliding over the game preserve, down in the lower region, to see what might eat us if the pi take us hunting, tomorrow. We had to fly with jari-cari escorts to pull us back up here when we were ready to come home."

"Which was very soon," said Bill. "You should see some of the lumbering uglies they've got down there?"

"Are you going hunting tomorrow?" I said.

"Only if we can drop bombs from hang gliders!" said Bill.

"Don't listen to him," said Randy. "We're going."

"Maybe you're going," said Bill. "But I ain't goin' nowhere near that place!"

Randy paused and gave his friend a subtle smile. He spoke three words in a soft voice. "Seleena is going."

It was Bill's turned to pause. It took him several seconds to respond. "She is? You sure?"

"Who is Seleena?" I looked back and forth ay Randy and Bill, but they had forgotten I was sitting there right next to them. Bill's eyes never left Randy's face.

"When did she say that?"

"Just before dinner," said Randy.

"Okay." Bill seemed to be wrestling with a difficult problem. "So how come she's not eating with us?"

"Because she's in charge of that food table on the far side. She'll probably be here any minute now. Everybody's been served, so she's done 'till clean up time."

"She'll have to help clean up?"

"Yep. She . . . uh . . . she'd probably appreciated a little help."

At this point I finally understood the situation, so I threw in a jovial comment. "Hey, are you guys breakin' hearts again?"

Randy and Bill looked at me for the first time during the conversation, both grinning and both blushing. Randy answered with a lazy smile. "Ummm . . . well, not on purpose."

I suddenly became keenly aware of the distinguished man sitting very close by. He was, after all, the father of the woman I was absolutely crazy about.

"Sir, I'd keep an eye on these two. They're notorious."

Bill's eyes grew large and his mouth popped open. "What a vicious lie!" he exclaimed.

Carcainon smiled when he turned towards me and replied. "Don't worry, David. All the young ladies have studied up on the life histories of these two. " He pointed at Heckle and Jeckle. "They know all about them."

Randy and Bill gapped at Carcainon with obvious alarm, two men whose past sins had become common knowledge.

"Uh-oh," mumbled Randy. He and Bill exchanged worried looks.

The dinner proceeded without any further celestial phenomenon, and before I knew it I had eaten a frightening amount of food. After fifteen days of this kind of eating I would look like Sid the Brick McWilliams. As the crewmen and their Tasonian hosts finished their meals they started pitching in with the serving personnel to help with the clean-up duties.

Soon the area was bustling with hundreds of industrious volunteers who made short work of the after-dinner chores. Long hoses were pulled from concealed compartments in the rock, and the whole area was washed down so thoroughly that rivulets of water drained off in small, stone-cut grooves. Autonomous drones hovered over the serving tables, hauling away boxes of plates, utensils, and leftover food. The whole operation took very little time, with a minimum of vocal directions.

With our hands wrapped around two huge, steaming mugs of cattail coffee, Danceea and I strolled away from the squeaky-clean stone dining area. The crowd was departing in all directions, at various speeds, and using various modes of locomotion. Twilight in Norado Valley was almost too beautiful to look at. Dante, hanging well above the horizon by now, had acquired a bright crescent of sunlight along its lower edge, but the twilight sky was dim enough to allow the molten planet to show off its hostile nature, an angry red face who envied its bright blue sister world and all the happy inhabitants who lived there.

By the time Danceea and I reached the ship-to-shore ramp at the lake, a game of series relay was in progress out in the middle of the churning water. The huge doragonkas were wearing spotlights to illuminate the murky depths as they dove and leaped. The disk that the contestants pitched back and forth was a dancing orange spark which bounced to and fro above the water.

The submerged Lake Garden had its own bright lights turned on, showing itself to be a long glowing rectangle on the bottom of the lake.

The twilight sky was filled with bright points of moving light, each one marking the presence of a glider or a jari-cari or a small flyer.

At the lake's edge, beneath the mother hen Candlelight, were hundreds of energetic swimmers of every shape and species. I saw a pi riding on top of a dorakonka. (A bear riding on a whale’s back — a sight to behold.)

I saw praying-mantis-like koocathus children in diving gear wading into the water. Humans and white sealsnakes were high diving from the edge of the Candlelight's wings. Five keeagonkas were putting on a show as they swam in formation through the undisciplined mob, leaping high in unison, cruising through the splashing crowd as if it were all just an obstacle course for them to navigate.

Danceea and I spent a few hours swimming with various mixed groups, after which we were taken down to the Lake Garden by two keeagonkas. As we strolled along the narrow, winding garden paths, the keegonkas paced us in the parallel canals, telling us jokes about people who had gotten "lost" in the garden for their own romantic purposes. Sometimes the keeagonka would leap from the water and slide down a straight section of the walkway on their wet bellies.

Overhead we could see spotlight-equipped doragonkas diving right down to the transparent roof of the garden in their efforts to maneuver around their blockers in the game of series relay.

___________ * ___________ * ___________ * ___________

Meanwhile, Randy and Bill launched their hang gliders from the high cliffs around the lake and tried not to collide with one of the other soaring points of light that cruised the air above the valley.

___________ * ___________ * ___________ * ___________

Sam and Beth Kellogg clung to the back of a slowly drifting doragonka, leisurely exploring the bottom of the lake by the light of the aquatic creature's head-mounted lamp.

___________ * ___________ * ___________ * ___________

Ernie Fields, gunners mate third class, watched a taped replay of the object that had struck Dante during the eclipse, and he marveled at the accuracy of the Tasonian engineers who had sent the missile to crack open Dante's crust, relieving a dangerous build-up of internal pressure. Ernie learned that Dante's self-destruction was being guided so that it would fragment harmlessly and turn itself into a series of rings which would eventually orbit Tason. In twenty-five thousand years the job would be complete.

___________ * ___________ * ___________ * ___________

Chief Alex Sandusky joined a mixed group who were learning a strange dance from Tony Thorn. Thorn had the Candlelight's external PA system blasting out 1940s Big Band music for the dancing group on the grass-covered ramp beneath the Candlelight, while he and a seven-foot albino girl of truly heroic physical proportions demonstrated something called the Jitter Bug. Mastery of the energetic dance was a matter of capturing its spirit rather than any precise choreography. It was mostly free-style, with a few classic steps thrown in to give it a little over-all unity.

___________ * ___________ * ___________ * ___________

Fortified with bitterberry wine, Captain Daniel North made an earnest but unskilled attempt to prepare a late-evening snack for Norado's chief administrator and his wife. As the loser of the chess game, North was required to make broiled shrimp and cocktail sauce —and he had to do it completely from the incomprehensible instructions in the cook book which balanced precariously in his left hand while he staggered around the kitchen and read the directions aloud in a slurred voice. The instructions made no sense whatsoever the way North was reading them, and soon he had his audience literally face-down on the breakfast bar where they sat, laughing so hard that no sound came out.

Oddly enough, this nutty bit of camp burlesque was just the sort of thing that Daniel North needed . . . but could never do in front of anyone under his command. It marked the temporary removal of the captain's heavy responsibilities, and the perfect therapy for the captain of the Galactic Stellacruiser Candlelight.

___________ * ___________ * ___________ * ___________

As the evening progressed, the Candlelight's crew succumbed to over-whelming fatigue, and many of them finally stumbled off to there assigned living quarters. However, some of the crewmen had taken long naps in the afternoon, and they were reluctant to end their first day on Tason.

I was also was reluctant — but even though the spirit was willing, the flesh was weak. By ten o'clock I was again staggering and blinking with bleary-eyed weariness, so Danceea and I decided to call it a night. We agreed to get up early and have coffee with Berhera and Narahee on a hill over-looking the lake before riding down to the community breakfast area. Danceea's parents were out somewhere with a few of the Candlelight's senior officers when she and I arrived home, and I realized that this was the first unchaperoned moment we had experienced all day long. The obvious ideas occurred to me, which nearly eradicated my crushing fatigue. We walked through the dimly lit living room, with Danceea hugging my arm affectionately.

As we climbed the stairs towards the bedroom, I asked her, "Has anybody ever died from sheer exhaustion during one of these surface leaves?"

"No, but people have threatened to kill themselves if they weren't allowed to stay."

"Maybe I could hide in the foothills and you could sneak food up to me."

"There's plenty of game in the lower regions," she suggested.

"Uh . . . no, thanks. Food that bites back tends to spoil my appetite. That’s not what I had in mind."

In a soft whisper she said, "Oh really? And what exactly do you have in mind, Lt. Newcastle?"

As we walked down the hall, we were getting close to my bedroom . . . not to mention certain delightfully dangerous subjects. We arrived at the door to my room, and I felt my heart pounding out a Big Band beat which Tony Thorn could dance to.

Danceea turned to face me as I leaned one shoulder against the closed door. She had not turned on the light in the hallway, and her face was illuminated only by the light that filtered up from the living room, downstairs.

In a soft voice I said, "And so, the first day comes to an end."

"It wasn't long enough."

"No, it wasn't. And there're just fourteen more to go. But we’ve got a serious problem, young lady. Even though I now know where your home planet is, I can only stay here for fifteen days."

The look of joy was gone, and she gazed up at me though her lowered eyelashes. "I know. I've got to stay here, and you've got to leave with the Candlelight. I can't even be one of your girls-in-every-port, because this port is accessible by invitation only."

I glanced down at the floor for a moment and carefully considered my next words, then I gave her a forced smile. "Maybe we shouldn't start something we can't finish."

In the dim light I saw one of those squinty-eyed smiles that always come just before the tears. She reached up and caressed my cheek. I leaned down and gently brushed my lips across hers so quickly she didn't have time to kiss me back — a wordless invitation, just to sound out the waters. She leaned against me, and I could feel the considerable warmth of her body. Here eyes were half closed and her lips were parted. She slid her hand from my cheek to the back of my neck and firmly pulled my lips back down to hers.

When our lips finally parted, slowly and reluctantly, an inch at a time, I thought about what I’d said a moment ago — about not starting something we couldn't finish. I'd been given fifteen days in paradise, and I already knew it wasn't going to be enough. I wanted to be with this woman for considerably longer. That, of course, was impossible — and I was crazy for thinking such thoughts. The old cliché was literally true: we were worlds apart. I knew it was sheer lunacy to start making long range plans based on what amounted to a four-day shipboard romance. I had a service career to think about, and Danceea had a home and family . . . on a planet with the tightest immigrations laws in the galaxy. Obviously the smart thing to do would be to take what I could get right here and now, and forgot about all this unrealistic and romantic nonsense.

"I'm . . . probably making a fool of myself," I said in a husky whisper.

She chuckled softly. "Well, not yet, but you will if you don't kiss me again."

There was only one reply to that, so I did exactly what she requested. We leaned against each other with considerable force, able to stand up only by keeping the opposing forces in balance. Some very insistent thoughts were clamoring for attention in my head, such as the fact that the door to my bedroom was just a few inches away . . . and her parents wouldn't be back for several hours . . . and we would certainly get to know each a lot better if we seized this magical moment and enjoyed it to the fullest.

I disengaged my busy lips and spoke in a ragged voice. "This is where you're supposed to pat me on the cheek and say goodnight."

"I'll try," she whispered. "But my true inclinations are a bit less proper."

There were to little creases between her eyebrows. Her jaw muscles clenched a few times. A thin sheen of perspiration had begun to form on her upper lip. Her breathing was as ragged as my own, and her body was fused to mine from shoulder to knees. She had all the earmarks of a woman fully aroused.

The feeling was most definitely mutual. I hungered for the woman, a passion like nothing I had ever felt before. Lips never tasted so sweet, and a body never felt so abundant in a man's arms. I was awed by the force of my own desire.

Danceea slid her lips along my cheek until they nuzzled my ear, then she whispered, "I can't decided what I should do. You're going to have to make — "

Downstairs in the living room the front door opened, and the sound of voices suddenly shattered the mood which had built itself so carefully. Instantly we both felt like school-age kids caught playing doctor. Danceea tore herself out of my arms, took a hasty step back, gave me a wild-eye look of alarm, and then clapped both hands other her mouth just as laughter bulged her cheeks. Downstairs I could hear her father and mother discussing where Danceea might be. The fact that we were standing in a darkened hallway outside our bedrooms seemed mighty incriminating, and I had a lunatic urge to dash into my room and hide under the covers.

Danceea quickly leaned close and whispered, "Goodnight, darling. I had a wonderful time." Then she caressed my cheek, smiled sweetly, and tip-toed quietly down the hall to her bedroom door.

"Hey, wait a second," I whispered. She turned at the doorway. "Tell me what you were about to say when they came in."

I saw her smile in the dim light, flirtatious and coy, white teeth and twinkling eyes putting on a show in the dark. Her whispered reply drifted down the hall to my waiting ears.

"I'll never tell."

She opened her door, ducked inside, and was gone. I just stood there in the empty hallway feeling like a burglar with his hand caught in the wall safe. I opened my bedroom door and looked into the blackness for a moment while I thought about going to bed. Maybe in two or three hours I could get to sleep.

Nope. Pointless to even try.

I went downstairs and joined Carcainon and Aldarrin in the living room. Carcainon and I played chess until well after midnight. I didn't win a single game. Just couldn't concentrate.

________________________________________


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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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