Read The Princess of Caldris for Free Online

the sky. Below us marshmallow clouds now, subdued and
silent in their perfect patterns and spiral motions over the seas
and the volcanoes of Caldris.
    Far and away…. Below us my world, spinning, turning, its
geographies like abstract speckled studies of color and light;
above us the planets of Caldris System. The
sky becomes black and the sun a star and still; from Parsons,
wonder and joy; ever and always the miracle of flight for primates
such ourselves, the staid gleaming of
dreams ineffable since our dawn of self awareness when our distant
ancestors, worlds away, looked out upon the hummingbirds and eagles
with envy and impossible aspiration; to fly .
    And thus we set upon the
worlds, to fly, in search of our Princess.
    Parsons’ calls to his
co-pilot were less poetic than his joy, but they too were a form of
phonetic poetry of flight: “Apogee reached, increasing thrust,
apparent solar wind five, radiation shields five, current velocity
at target, orbit traffic control clear, flight path gravity assist
off Electra, gravity assist off Maia to jump point
EMC5.”
    And thus we jump skipped
among to moons to point where we could shoot deep through the wall
of space-time and cheat the laws of physics for a fast forward to
the distant corners of the star system in a day instead of months
or years.
    Sleep came again with
Tokushima’s radiant glow (with echoes to another floating world,
Japan, Edo period) on one side of me, and Hammerstein’s
sharp-shooter dead eye dick focus (with echoes of John Henry and a
heavy metal sledge) on the other. They my surrogate parents now,
with badges and high energy particle weapons as big as my
arms.
    I was twelve, and that was as magnificent as
it gets. Gonna be missing school for a while. Sorry (not
really).
    Sleep, dream, sail away,
beyond the tangerine seas and volcanoes, dream, the moons of
Caldris, the daughter of Atlas, sail away.
    Somewhere in the dream Parsons gives the
command, “Swirl the Mesons, Buck! We’re breaking for Hyper!”
    And all the stars in a jewel box,
darkly.

    Neil Thacker
    Standing in the ruins at
the great starport at New Galen I came for the first time to that
nihilistic place where as Ecclesiastes said, all is vanity. Among
the crumbled stones I picked up a broken brick. In the still
radioactive ruins lie the ultimate futility of life and reason, so
many people-come and gone-and where to go from there, and what
should I respond to this inevitable wall of dark and unknowable
fate? Yet Einstein claims time is a continuum; the past in all its
beauty, struggle, folly, and grandeur somehow remains. Perhaps it
is good there come a rest from this existence, and dipping into the
well of quanta we become again?
    Foolish musing!
Still-philosophers and Priest kings debate upon the epochs these
eternal questions-one must answer this present darkness. I didn’t
have an answer, so told my droid to play Gershwin’s Rhapsody in
Blue as loud as his speakers would, back into the ruins. Music came
again to the long era of devastation, a small revolt against man’s
fate. I imagined the ghosts of New Galen danced that day, grateful
that I slapped back at despair. Perhaps they did. –Princess
Clairissa Maggio.
    Parsons woke me with a yell from the
cockpit, “Ba-boomah! Thank you Great Space Ghost we are home and
dry, normal space again, Oort cloud below us, above us only
sky!”His co-pilot (I forget his name, perhaps intentionally, he was
quite the irritant) was lamenting loudly, “I really hate, hate,
hate the OortCloud. What a dump.”
    “ Don’t be a Baby. Man up a
little will you? This is a walk in the park, if you’ve got a
pair.”
    “ I’ve got a pair, and they
both say it’s a royal pain.”
    “ Baby. Just for that I’m
not giving you any phone numbers from my little black book when we
get to Fort Oort. I don’t want you embarrassing me at the base
canteen.”
    “ You’ve got numbers from
Fort Oort?”
    “ Silly wabbit, I have ALL
the numbers from Fort