UNTIL THE MUSIC’S OVER

 A SCI-ROCK NOVEL
 by
 Michael Valentine

  “Thinking is the best way to travel"
 The Moody Blues

                     
                                                                                                                 Prologue – Sol    

Resonance: "The potentially limitless exponential increase of vibration frequency in a mechanical system."
The Universal Lexicon, 2066  
   
       In the early spring of 2020 a homely juggernaut sped through space on a strange and unprecedented mission. The coffin shaped mass of heavily shielded metal (in fact a hideously powerful nuclear bomb) sailed through space with nothing barring its path through eternity but the beneficent yellow star the people of Earth call Sol. Fashioned from one half of the world’s decommissioned weapons grade radioactive materials the monstrous explosive flew on what was being called a “mission of science” even though it had begun its existence as part of a mission of deliverance. The provenance of this grim object encompasses a story which culminated in the most calamitous twist of fate in all of human history.
       It was launched in 2019, days after its exact counterpart, as back up insurance for a mission to deter a large asteroid from colliding with the Moon. Two years earlier it had been discovered that the hitherto undetected, nearly eight mile long object, would impact with and completely fragment Luna. Projected consequences for the Earth were dire; worse than if the object were to hit the Earth itself. Mercifully there had been enough time to prepare and mankind’s defensive reaction was well organized and effective. The first of the two saviors, reaching its target on schedule, detonated with enough force to nudge the threatening interloper far out of the Moon’s path.  It was weeks before the world’s relief and jubilation subsided enough for anyone to give more than a passing thought to the remaining bomb streaking through space with no destination at all; effectively, all bombed up with nothing to blow. Unfortunately this state of affairs was not to last. Roger Shock and John Shaw, a well connected pair of media savvy solar astrophysicists, nightmared up the idea of utilizing this now useless piece of extremely expensive hardware in an “experiment.” Appropriately remembered forever after as the “Shock-Shaw experiment” this splashy piece of “science” called for bomb number two, already traveling in the correct general direction, to be slightly rerouted and detonated at the edge of the Sun’s Corona. The little understood structure would then be carefully observed to detect what, if any, effects the titanic blast might have on variables like X-ray emanation, magnetic field distribution, plasma dynamics and solar wind flow. 
      A few voices of protest were raised as news of the proposed experiment circulated. Some objected to the plan purely on principle, pointing out how ungracious of mankind it would be to give its single most nurturing benefactor what amounted to a stiff slap in the face. One woman, an attorney and latter day Sun worshiper, hearing news of what was afoot, went  to the World Court seeking an injunction against the scientists. She based her motion on the grounds that what they were planning amounted to interference with her religious rights. Her request was denied.  And then there was Silas Standish, a veteran though little known solar investigator, who protested the coming detonation on purely empirical grounds. His recently completed research into what he termed “solar harmonic shell resonance” made him certain of the folly of the proposed experiment. He had even gone into considerable personal debt to pay for a dissenting media  campaign. According to Standish the Sun was a more subtle engine than was generally understood and that, while seeming to be impervious to all but collisions with other stars or immersions in titanic dust clouds, there did exist scenarios in which a much smaller disturbance might have disastrous consequences. Falling well within his parameters for the possibility of causing such an event was the proposed experiment. He had discovered that the Sun was a vast interlocking and interacting series of exquisitely fine tuned incandescently searing, resonating shells within shells. An intrusion of the magnitude represented by Shock-Shaw could, conceivably, attach it‘s sudden intense magnetic pulse to that of an in progress magnetic outburst, push lines of magnetism back upon the antimatter generating layer known to dwell just below the Sun’s surface, and set in motion a titanic backfire. The result: an upheaval growing exponentially in disruptive power until it destroyed the perfection of the Sun’s internal madrigal, perhaps forever.  
      The world was not ready to hear Standish’s message. Still lost in the relief of having recently escaped Armageddon and not terribly concerned with apprehending the subtleties of his scientific inquiry, mankind chose simply not to listen.   In this manner the Earth drifted towards cataclysm. Public opinion sleep walked through the last few weeks to zero hour and the detonation itself went almost unnoticed, eclipsed by a moderate earthquake which occurred just south of Los Angeles on the same day. The earthquake which would soon make itself evident in the life of the human race would be of a vastly different magnitude. For, from that day forward, nothing within the realm of the Sun would ever again be the same.

(End of prologue) 

               

                  

Chapter One - Taking Delivery   

Oh well I got no time cause I’ takin’ deliv’ry

Call me some other time c’se I’ takin’ deliv’ry

Dey got m’unit at d’port so I’ takin’ deliv’ry

Oh yes I’ takin’ deliv’ry ri now, ri now

Oh yeah I’ takin’ deliv’ry ri now…

From “How Long In Paradise?” by the Forms   

  

     They picked up the new “Earth-Craft 27-X4” at New, New York on a Monday morning. It was hot like every other place on Earth since the “experiment.” Spotting the ship, Velocity Smith

 turned to walk the short distance across the delivery field to where it stood waiting under the shadow of a towering gantry. Reaching the craft she put out her hand to touch the coolness of its pristine brilliant, titanichrome hull. The dark haired beauty turned and smiled.  Mansteen Prophet took a deep breath and smiled back, satisfied. He had waited to see these two together for a long time and the moment was sweet. Leaving her with the space needle he continued on toward the office to complete the transaction which would make their band the only private owners of an X-4 in the Galaxy. 

      Demest, the franchise manager, was waiting at the showroom door. “Good morning, Mr. Prophet, good to see ya! I’ve been looking forward to this; it’s the first time we’ve sold an X4 ya know, and it’s been cool just havin’ it on our pad.” He knew what the deal meant to his career, not to mention his credit manifest.
      Prophet was in no mood for pleasantries, he just wanted to complete the business and be off. Sitting down at the manager’s desk he quickly had credit book and print-pen out and on the table; “C’mon Demest, let’s get this over with, we want to be in that needle and heading for Mars before the solar current changes; it’s been extra unpredictable lately.”
       “Yes, of course, all I need is your sig-print and final credit feed. But, before you sign, I wish you would re-consider leasing this vehicle Mr. Prophet. It just makes so much sense for business people like yourselves, and I could have the papers re-drawn in five minutes.”  Mansteen chuckled and shook his head as he signed the contract.
       “Nice try Demest, but no, I don’t think that, strictly speaking, we’re what you would call “business people anyway.”  At that moment Velocity came gliding through the door. As usual she was tonic to every libido in the room.
        Acknowledging the greetings of the company people with a smile, she walked up beside Mansteen, put a hand lightly on his shoulder, and said silently via her fingers: “Mansteen, hurry!”  Passing the bill of sale to her he answered back through her hand: “sit down ’n sign di’tin’ n’ we be outta he’ya in a sec.” As she sig-printed the sensors, he slid the credit mantra for the staggering amount across the desk to Demest whose hand shook perceptibly as he picked it up and pored over the figures whose immensity even now amazed him.
        They stood quickly, and a few handshakes and slaps on the back later were walking out the door.
       “Good stars you folks…good graphics…” The voices of the sales people drifted out into the heat with them. As they headed toward the glittering space needle they touched hands. It had been a long and sometimes painful struggle, but they had given the Galaxy the music it wanted and the Galaxy had responded with wealth, love, and too much fame. Now they possessed the most perfect magic carpet the race had yet devised. It waited there in the relentless glare of the ailing Sun to take them to the silent places where only gravity and time confab, where music is born in the deceptive stillness of the mother void. It waited to take them to where perhaps there waited a man long missing who could help them to free the man who meant more to them then any other, to free the Galaxy’s only living Menta Blaster, from a terrible curse.
        Through their fingers Mansteen spoke to his wife: “Well V. what shall we call our shiny new ride?” A moment later her answer came threading through his nerves and into the registry of his truly inner ear.

        “She be “Lady Gallant” m’love.”  And so it was... 
                                                                                                                                     (End of chapter one)  
                                                                                                                                                     
      

 

         Chapter Two - Catastrophe

 

 

            “And this too poor Earth; upon you we have brought down a pitiless end.”

             From Blank Gable's "The Book of Daymares.” All Directions Books: New Cincinnati 2034  

 

 

 

       In the years immediately preceding Shock-Shaw, mankind had been frantically engaged in efforts to stabilize rising global temperatures. The Earth’s average temperature had risen approximately two degrees in the two hundred and fifty years since the beginning of the industrial age and the accompanying onset of the release of manufactured “greenhouse gasses” into the atmosphere. In the first year alone after Shock-Shaw, temperatures world-wide rose an average of six degrees. Silas Standish, it turned out, had been prescient; affronted by the brazen attack upon its unthinkably long history of regal sanctity, the Sun began to change almost immediately. Radiation across the entire solar spectrum increased precipitously. The Earth, caught in deadly tandem, began to change quickly as well. So much immediate destruction ensued that humanity would have done better not to have deflected the recent asteroid threat at all. The polar ice caps were gone in a year. No glacier, sea ice or snowy mountain mantle remained anywhere. Between flooding, tsunamis and other storm related casualties, drought in some places, radiation poisoning, and the concomitant onslaught of famine, insect infestation and disease, billions of souls were wiped out within eighteen months. Civilization crumbled.      

        And then came the spouts.

        Fueled by the rapidly overheating seas, cyclonic storms of previously unimaginable ferocity began to appear. The astonishingly low barometric pressures associated with the behemoths produced conditions beneath them so intense that they began to exhibit a phenomenon more devastating than any ever imagined, even in the Book of Revelation. Roaming over huge swaths of ocean the hyper apocalyptic maelstroms began to violently wrench stupendous volumes of water up into their gargantuan maws catapulting the liquid through the madly vortexing clouds above where finally, having arrived high enough in the atmosphere, the liquid simply dispersed into space. The spouts were funneling the earth’s vast fluid birthright into oblivion. Gaia, goddess of the Earth, driven to fury at the senseless and brutal attack upon her father, proceeded to take from the human race that which had been given freely so long ago. At any moment for nearly two years, ten to fifteen of the howling, siphoning monsters roamed the globe. Sometimes they would make landfall and decimate whatever was left of the former coastal urban mega sprawls. It went on like this until there was no longer enough water to drive the morbid mechanisms of the storms and, one by one, the spouts died away.

       But nature’s terrible spasm was not over; the seemingly safe inner precincts of the various continents where the violence of the spouts had been unable to reach were about to experience their own form of apocalypse. For the loss of the recently removed water mass had perturbed the Earth’s rotation to an extent great enough so that now, major faults under prairie, range, and now dry river bed, long known to have caused catastrophic earthquakes in the deep past, were stressed to new activity. All over the world the very footings of humankind’s reality were suddenly plastic and unsound. Cities, amidst hideous screech, crack and rumble, suffered bridges snapping, tunnels imploding and highways, roads and train lines ceasing to exist. One after another skyscraper and modest home alike shuddered and then collapsed. Soon, as with the coastal spout ravaged panopolis, no two stories of any inland building stood one upon another.  In the end, less than three million scattered survivors of Earth’s once burgeoning population emerged from these terrors to acknowledge the passing of virtually all they had known and to take stock of what they had come to inherit. Confronted with a strangely promising though harsh new landscape the last humans turned to the tasks at hand. With the removal of virtually all open water a different planet had been left behind, one presenting vistas which humans had never before seen. Vast empty tracts descending from what had been coastlines stretched far across former sea beds, past unbroken horizons to dramatic mountain ranges once obscured by thousands of feet of water. They went to work creating a mindful future. Seeking to avoid the re-launching of a wasteful, over consuming, toxin producing society, they began to carefully sort through the overwhelming masses of wreckage, teaching themselves how to cleanly recover or fabricate what they needed from what had been left behind. They found seed and DNA banks scattered around the world and, above all, they became masters at finding water.  Later, breathtaking scientific revelations made by the young techno physicist Paul Standish (the son of the man who had warned of the potential for solar disaster) at resurgent laboratory facilities in southern California would make possible the “Psynco-Graviton pulse drive” and the “Space Needles.”

        New exotic varieties of human and non-human mutations began to emerge. Certain individuals, including some animals, developed the ability to communicate by touch. Others could telepathically cast thought, emotion, and even music for any distance with modest technical assistance. One or two could do so with no support at all. These became the “Blasters” whose nerve systems and soul roots reached so deep into the quantum/string matrix that, for them, distance did not exist. The unique mental (or “Menta”) abilities of this population of altered souls, would prove to be catalysts for the healing reemergence of the arts, including the next incarnation of Rock ‘n Roll. Ever opportunistic, the raucous, death defying musical force of nature would soon appropriate the Mentas’ talents and morph into a more powerful version of itself called “Menta Rock.” 

        A new civilization gradually emerged from the death throes of the old; an enlightened Lazarus endowed with tragedy tempered technological and manufacturing prowess. Never again would humankind misuse or defile the offerings of their mother the Earth. And never again would they lash out in ignorance to torment the face of their father the Sun. Leaving the catastrophic past behind, these new Earthlings on their new Earth would now go on to use their hard earned insight, and their drive, to produce the expertise and hardware that would enable the human race to rapidly colonize its local star system and eventually travel to neighborhoods much further off in its beckoning home city of stars... The Milky Way.

                                                                                                                               
                                                                                                                                                  (End of chapter two)

 

 

 

 

                                  Chapter Three – The Lady

 

       “She was fleet and graceful, a steady rider on the restless edge of time

She could bleed herself out and then back in again.

 She was lightning and faith. She was thunder incarnate…”

 From “Mystic Cruiser” by The Forms

 

        Lady Gallant boosted so smoothly and swiftly away from New, New York that Mansteen thought: “My god, we’ve got wings at last.” In the nearly dark control cabin the status panels glowed a peaceful, deep luminescent blue. It was a cozy pocket of quiet, slicing along the neutrino lanes at half a million miles an hour. On the vid wall Earth receded perceptibly. Watching from across the cabin Velocity, knowing what the planet had once looked like, felt a pang of sadness as it fell into the surrounding night, its small remaining pools of blue lost in vast expanses of yellow and tan. A moment later she was nearly startled as Lady Gallant flung herself past Luna and the Earth’s only satellite flashed huge and white across the screen and was gone. Within the confines of inter planetary space the acceleration produced by a psynco-pulse bolt, even a small one such as employed in planet hopping, was sufficient to take even a well seasoned  spacer by surprise.

       From his place at the status panel Mansteen was also was watching. As the Moon hurtled by he paid silent tribute to Doctor Paul Standish inventor of the Psynco-Graviton Pulse Drive, the elegant hybrid of spirit and technology which had set the human race free to travel the stars.

       Everyone knew the story of how Standish, restless with Einstein’s insuperable dictum that nothing could travel faster than light, overcame that highest of all speed limits. Standish had always imagined that he could travel faster than light. Time and again in waking and sleeping dreams he would enable himself and the human race to make effortless leaps of flight out to the constellations and back again. The fantasies were so real, felt so possible. And yet, there were the equations; the realities of Einstein’s “special theory of relativity” telling him where he could never go.

        In his unique synthetic gravity laboratory late one afternoon Standish was delving into a conundrum which had emerged in his research concerning yet another of Einstein’s mind bolts called gravity waves. Bringing along a cautious thrill of excitement mixed with frustration, his artificial gravity waves had for some months been, seemingly randomly, exhibiting, in albeit small sequences, a hungrily sought after effect: ongoing field reversals; gravity pushing instead of pulling. Mystifyingly though, the reversals occurred independently of the controlled influences to which he had been subjecting the waves in his “quanta interface” processor. Some elusive variable for which he could not account was bringing him a result filled with breathtaking potential. Something profound was trying to dawn upon him. What was it? He could sense it sniffing maddeningly around the limits of his comprehension. What was causing the tantalizing fluctuations? Something, something…for perhaps the thousandth time he studied the experiment logs on his computer screen. But this time it was different, this time, for some inexplicable reason… he knew! Suddenly he could see it. Telltale clues which had never before called attention to themselves now jumped out from the long rows of meticulously recorded data and made the rest of the connection easy. Every episode of field reversal had occurred on succeeding Tuesdays and Thursdays! By realizing that, he immediately also knew why! In order to enable the gravity waves in his laboratory to continue to push instead of pull he need only go on doing exactly what he had been doing, without fail, every Tuesday and Thursday morning before reporting to the lab i.e., spending ninety minutes in Zen meditation. He had found the missing variable; it was… himself. Unbeknownst to Standish, the powerful old discipline he practiced had been enabling him to return to his lab on those mornings spirit brimming with enough inner clarity, focus and calm, to unconsciously impose his will and desire, his longing for unbounded freedom, upon gravity itself, to stand on the brink of becoming the master of its very ebb, flow and direction. The implications went even further, much further

        The light outside his office windows going slowly to twilight, the young techno physicist stared at his screen, seeing far into the future; he had by a divine combination of talent, unrelenting obsession, and luck, unlocked the mystery of the repulsing gravity waves and in so doing established the palpable, quantifiable connection between mind and matter. He had in fact proven the direct physical efficacy of imagination. In a dramatic negation of a haunting phrase of T. S. Eliot’s, the “shadow” between Standish’s ‘idea’ of trans light speed travel and it’s ‘reality’ had simply gone away, and as it went gifted the human race with the potentially unlimited freedom to travel the cosmos. By piggybacking on the controlled flow of gravity, which he and few others realized does not even utilize the concept of speed in its transference of energy, one could go… anywhere, simply as a function of ones attitude toward time.

      Alone in the afterhours hush of his laboratory a drained Paul Standish, only two days shy of his twenty third birthday, later to be called “Gravity Master” and “Avatar of mankind’s second realm,” could sense the future he had so long imagined, beginning to flow forthrightly in his direction.

                                                                          

                                                                                                            . . .

      

 

       Velocity, barefoot, moved across the deeply carpeted control cabin floor closer to Mansteen. Easing herself into a boosting séance sofa near the status panels she curled up comfortably and gazed at her husband. Against the glow of the training wall display lights where he studied one schematic after another she could see his profile with great clarity. His hawklike features were relaxed and peaceful here in the silence of space. The essential boyish enthusiasm of his spirit, revealed as he took in the intricacies of the elegant machine, was tempered by the calm confidence he had gained in another life, as cabin boy, engineer’s mate, then guidance officer and finally as pilot, aboard scores of deep space pulse vessels. As he worked, exploring the nerve centers of the great ship, he began singing softly. Recognizing the song of old Earth, Velocity, singing harmony, joined him:

                              
                               “Far between sundown’s finish ‘n’ midnight’s broken toll,

                                we ducked inside a doorway with thunder crashing.

                                As majestic bells of bolts struck shadows in the sounds,

                                seeming to be the chimes of freedom flashing.”

         
        Singing now with real pleasure, Mansteen turned from the training wall:

                             
                               “Flashing for the warriors whose strength is not to fight,

                                 flashing for the refugees on the unarmed road of flight.”

       
        Soon their voices, so accustomed to one another, began to rise in volume:

                               
                                “An’ for each an’ every underdog soldier in the night,

                                ‘n’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.”

      
        The song of the long gone, well-loved poet filled the pulse cabin, his voice living on in the voices of the two musicians whose destinies were inseparable from the powerful legacy he had left behind. Reaching out for each other and smiling with the sweetness of the moment Mansteen and Velocity let go of the last notes, and spoke in the “Fierce Menta” dialect known as “the cursed slang”. Originating years before among the “Fierce Rocker” coterie of the high priest of late twenty second century Rock ‘N Roll, “Duke Blaster, it now held sway as the everyday language of choice for most Menta Rockers dropping in and out of it nearly unconsciously as the mood struck them.

        “Wa say girl, wanna lay a little boost juice into d’system ri now?”

        “But Mansteen, y’said y’wanted t’loaf back t’Mars, take a couple a days,“shake di’ buggy down.”" She chuckled, imitating his space dog machismo.

        “Yeah, but remember, di’ ship i’ a new game; we c’n store attitude now ‘n’ use i’ f’boostin’ layta, anytime at all, got i’?”

         "Ri, y’did mention da before. i' wonderful; we’ll never get left high n’dry again driftin’ around some hilly billy planet waitin’ for d’inspiration t’get a bolt t’gether, I love da!”

         “Da’ri dollin’; so why don’we start buildin’ our reserves ri now and settle into di needle in style.”

         “A nice idea m’love,” she said, placing her finger tips lightly on his and pushing him gently down to the plush carpet. Her long black hair brushed down around his face and her body joined his as he opened her crimson travel robe and felt her against him. Returning the favor she reached down and loosened his cabin pants. Fitting themselves together they became lost as last exchange passing between. Through his fingers he called to her: “Thank you.”

         Through hers came the reply: “Pleasure’s all mine.”

         A few feet away, amidst a large array of pulsing, blinking lights, one broad, bright pink, line expressing boosting reserves went up and up and up.

 

. . .

 

         

       Elsewhere in the ship, things were stirring: cool things, brilliant things, things of the water,
and things from a world long gone. “Welcome to the Wild Zone,” read the sky blue neon letters
arching above the widening end of the passage way. And once across the threshold there was no doubt that the sign meant what it said for a few steps brought one within view of a lake, a real lake with real ripples lazily spreading out over its surface and the feel and smells of lakeness in the air. Suddenly, a brilliant kingfisher plunged into the cool water and a moment later returned to its perch with a tasty morsel in its beak. A breeze rustled the acacia and birches at the water’s edge and, off in the distance, the muffled pounding of thunder foretold a coming storm. In days to come, a woman named Jessica strolling into the dessert land beyond the lake with its lavender flowered, cacti  rainbow geckos and coyotes would bestow the name “Central Park” upon the unlikely realm residing deep within the mighty space needle, stretching through the entire length of the band's fantastic new vessal .

                                                           

. . .

 

          In the control cabin, a sinuous electric guitar riff threaded its way through the air to the ears of the two sleeping occupants. Not eliciting the response it sought, it slowly gained in volume until Velocity was finally roused from her delicious slumber already tapping her hand to the time of the irresistible notes. “O.K., I give, who’s gettin’ in touch?” Immediately the screen, reacting to her sleepy response to its prodding, was filled with the smiling ebony face of Zamp Peters. Peters was the “deep throbist” who along with Velocity, Mansteen, and three others comprised the Galaxy’s most revered and successful Menta band “The Forms.”

          “Hey, where d’hell y’noggins be? Falls off a cliff? Y’got d’ship? i’ di d’X-4 I talkin’ te? Hey! I wan’ some answers ‘n’ I wannum ri nowww!” Peters laughed at himself as he finally paused to take a breath, giving Velocity a chance to sign in.

           “Hey Zamp, keeper of throb so deep, comes how y’face so far in space be smilin’ on m’wall?”

           “Velocity doll, how i’goin’ m’love? Are y’here, dere or anywhere within dese precincts vast or, as y’name implies, d’y’cruise at speeds exceeding comprehension?”

           “No Zamp, thusly not; within reach we are, loafin’ i’ down t’home. We’ve got d’needle and we fallin’ y’way ‘bout twelve hours. How’s’i’ hangin’ at d’Chateau, m’love? “

            “Not half as well as when you’re here of course, but slidin’ dollin’ jus’de same. Crown and Jessica been down all day dealin’ wi’ d’wizards; sometin’ ‘bout de Crowne man’s chamber attack and Jessica wanted t’try someda’ palladium shielding on her fulcrum jacks. S’cool, ri? dese fierce angels always goin’ f ’p’fection huh? Me? I been sand skiing f’days, out skimmin’ d’slopes of Olympus, tryna suck some d’bottom vibes outta dis monsta hill, y’know? Tryn’ t’catch d’throb f’de new sliver?”

            “Zamp y’already Galaxy’s greatest throbber, y’do that ‘n’ y’be Menta deity straightup!” He was smiling so hard that he couldn’t even reply. “But listen,” she continued: “The ship: What a doll, what a complete doll. Our lives have ju’ gone permanent heaven. i’ all here Zamp jus’ like Mansteen’s been tellin’ us, but even better, cause y’c’n feel da’ she’s like us, somehow she knows.”

           “Oh c’nt wait any more, y’come ri now!”

           “She laughed...wait ‘till t’morrow crazy.”

           “N’where’s Mansteen anyway? Driftin’ around in d’plasma flows again?”

           “Yeah Zamp; ‘n I g’n blow’ up ‘gainst y’front door ju’ like a big pile a y’favorite tilt

weed! ” Mansteen rose up on his elbow next to Velocity where they still rested beneath her discarded robe. “I put us in d’slow lane so we’d have time t’prepare di baby befo’ y’maniacs come ‘board ‘n start a bonding meltdown. Listen Zamp, me ‘n Velo’s gots agenda t’lay down f ’vote ‘bout doin’ a big jump soon. Would y’tell d’others?”

           “Oh Mansteen, always on de case ri? Can’t y’even send hugs and kisses first? No need t’shiver, m’love, I’ll wake d’others da you two is up t’sometin’ But we all know i’ anyway.”

           “OKJ Zampo, tanx. Way d’by; how’s d’lawn lookin’ dee days?”

            Peters’face lit up at the mention of the terra forming project the Forms had

commissioned which one day would result in the complete re forestation of the western slope of Olympus Mons, the titanic extinct volcano upon one flank of which they had built their headquarters, “The Chateau.” “Mansteen you gotta see i, y’will see i on incoming. I’ da big now ‘n’ i’ da green. In fact, ri now I’m organizing a ceremony for d’release of a group of raptors out above d’lawn; your timing is perfect as usual.”

            “Alri, I li da. Save us a spot Z. we see y’very soon.”

            “And Zamp,” added Velocity, “please tell Jessica that I got her d’orbs she wanted, I tin’ she be very pleased.”

            “OKJ, will do, I love y’crew, bye, bye.” The vid-wall went deep lavender and then black as Zamp’s ebullient presence faded from the room leaving Velocity and Mansteen alone again, flashing through space aboard the new needle.

            “Hey doll, do you remember the conversation we had sitting at the side of the pool at Duke Blaster’s, the night we met?

              “Of course Mansteen, you know I’ll never forget that. I can close my eyes and see how furious you were telling me the story of how the Witches of Charon took away Duke Blaster’s music.”

              Reaching back to a moment shared early in their relationship the two had slipped

into formal “Solar interspeak”.

             “Well then, I guess you know what’s on my mind.”

             “Yes, and mine as well; I’ve always known that once we had the ship we would be going after the curse.”They were silent for some time until Velocity spoke: “Mansteen, I think it’s time we woke the ship, I’m sure her input would be strategic and…well, aren’t you dying to say Hello?”

             “Yes, you’re right, it’s time.” Putting his hand out for Velocity to join him, Mansteen rose from the soft carpet and moved to the middle of the cabin. “You do it babe, you wake the ship.”

              Velocity looked at him and then, lifting her eyes to the interface wall, took a soft breath

then said: “Lady…Lady Gallant, if it please your soul be with us now.”

              For a long moment the two stood silent, staring intently, breathless. Then there unfolded and took shape before them a set of golden wings so magnificent they could only have belonged to an angel. Fully unfurled they beat softly for a time testing the completeness of their elegant deployment. A female spirit slowly raised her head, glorious red hair streaming down her long neck and finally, amazement hinting through enormous amethyst eyes she gazed at them and spoke: “Who is it, please, that calls me to service?”

              “It is I, honored spirit, Velocity Smith. My mate, here, Mansteen Prophet and I, with our spirit bound companions, have arranged for long running aboard this needle. We request and would be grateful for your support, insights and guidance from this time forth.”

              Lady Gallant lowered her eyelids and bowed her head for a moment. Velocity and Mansteen looked at each other, smiled quickly, and then looked back at the screen. The ship rustled her wings slightly, opened her incredible eyes, and in a voice like evening rain said: “I accede to your request with humility and a spirit of joy, as I sense in this moment the beginning of great undertakings. Be confident, I am henceforth at your disposal.”

             Mansteen joined in: “Thank you and welcome to our tribe. Know that we jump for Mars to conference our comrades and then hopefully to places of your choosing where we may encounter influences never before brought to bear upon the creation of a Menta sliver recording. We seek also, the fulcrum which will enable us to lift the heinous curse of these many years from the soul of Duke Blaster.”

            “Of course; may the moments proceed only favorably for all of these things. I will retire and prepare. By the way, do you people always stand around in the nude?”

              With that the wall went empty. They looked at each other and burst out laughing.

             “Wow, the ship must think we’re completely gone!

             “I know Mansteen, I totally forgot we were naked!

             “Hah! Me too... well, it’s good to know that she has a sense of humor Velo, she’s g’na need it around here.

             “And you’re right too my love, the time has finally come to do something for the Duke, the ship’s already onto it."

             “Yeah, I’m glad she’ll be watching out for us now. It’s always good to have an angel at your back.”

             “And Mansteen, don’t we look the angels standing here hand in hand with no clothes on.”

             “Yeah… tell y’what dollin‘, let’s go check out the Wild Zone, just like this, walk around ‘til we find an apple tree. I wan’see who picks one first ‘n starts a world a trouble."

             Smiling, still hand in hand, they turned to leave.

            

             Outside in the elemental cold the solar wind blew itself into a fury, bearing Lady Gallant along like some slender leaf from the long autumn of a planet of silver. In the very far distance a ruby speck gathered itself against the darkness. It was Mars; once a mysterious, even menacing focal point of the human imagination now, after the Sun had been tampered with to the ruin of the Earth, it was far more populated than even the mother planet. 
            Herself very much a world apart, the wondrous vessel shot toward the red planet on her maiden journey, a brilliant arrow taking Mansteen and Velocity home.

 

                                                                                                                                  (End of chapter three)

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