I was doing a FB post a short while ago, it still isn’t done because as I was doing it, I thought about a short story I had written years ago that pertained directly to what I was posting, the second #free audio episode of Star Dancer. The short story was the story that follows below that made me write Star Dancer in the first place. So, I stopped, the post is waiting on me to come back, and I began searching for that short story.
Eventually I found it, but it took an hour or so and I decide to post it here along with linking this to the FB post. Ahhhh, blogging is such organized fun, never in my life. I hope you enjoy this episode of Notes from the Edge, Dell…
COPYRIGHT 2025 Dell Sweet & A. L. Norton Smith
Legal: This is copyright protected material. Please feel free to share the link to this post, but do not copy the text and post it elsewhere. This is old unedited material taken from my notebook and so it most likely contains mistakes and may not align perfectly with the details of the story that came out of it and turned into the novel Star Dancer.
This material does not represent any views except my own. It does not portray actual persons, dead or alive, and it is not meant to represent any city, country, state on the planet Earth. It is purely fiction from my imagination.
Earth 02201 04-11 02:58:27
Los Angeles District Fifteen:
My hand reached across the bedside table searching for the headset as it buzzed. Petra moved beside me, mumbled, obviously displeased that the buzzer was still going off. “Going to wake the babes,” she said as coherently as she could.
My hand finally closed on the headset. I untangled my head from the sheets and jabbed at the on button as I bought the device to my face. I mumbled into it.
“Mike? … Mike?” The voice sounded excited: Overexcited, I opened my eyes fully in the semi darkness, got up and out of the bed. I was barely used to sleeping off ship, it was only my second time; but I had missed Petra and the babes so much. The gravity was horrible. I felt overweight, out of shape. Petra said it passed, but I hated the waiting and the truth was that for me, with only short stays it never would pass.
“Brother… Brother. Listen to me, brother, listen to me… Can you hear me? … Are you there?” The voice was my oldest friend, Tom Richards.
“Tom… Tom, calm down. What is it? Do you know what,” I looked at the clock: A thing I rarely ever worried about shipboard, “time it is? Petra’s upset; you could’ve waked the babes!”
“You’ll have to wake them anyway,” he said bluntly.
“What?” I asked. I made my way out of the bedroom quickly, stumbled to the kitchen and pulled a stool from the serve through and sat down.
“I said you’ve got to wake them… And Petra, this is serious!”
“What is serious, Tom? You’re scaring me more than a little. What’s wrong? … Has it? …” I couldn’t bring myself to say it.
Tom had worked at one of the biggest penal colonies on Mars for several years. Three years before he had fallen in with Petra and I when we had decided to buy our own Star Cruiser and seek our fortune. Even so he kept close contact with the men and women he had come to know, including some that were part of the Federal Planet Association that controlled all of Earth and all the other known planets as well. When things had gone sour for the FPA the year before, Petra and I had decided now might be the time to start a family. My wish was to get Petra off the ship, she had wanted to have children before it became too late. Bring them shipboard in a few years. After all; a Star Cruiser might not be a bad place to raise a family. They were protected after all. The Feds had dozens of cruisers of their own that patrolled what they considered their borders to keep us safe as we delivered supplies and more to distant outposts.
Star cruisers were protected, but with just a few ships to protect hundreds of private cruisers it was becoming a hard job.
We were docked on Earth. More properly put, we were docked at UPT fifteen, twenty-two miles above Earth. I was on the planet with Petra.
“We lost a big chunk… A big chunk,” he was whispering now.
“A big chunk?” My mind was beginning to focus.
“A big chunk… The Feds are pulling out… Right now they’re pulling out. They’ve done their calculations and we just slipped past the point of no return… I got a shuttle on the way, but believe me when I say this is no easy deal… You have got to get them ready… Move fast… You there?” He whispered.
“How much time,” Mike heard himself say. His face felt numb. He stood and trotted back to the bedroom on autopilot.
The end had been coming for generations, but it had been suppressed, kept from the public in the best possible way, ignoring it. After all someone was always yelling about the end coming: There was always some doomsday prophecy being rolled out. The Feds had found out long ago that shaking your head with a crooked smile on your face was the absolute best way to fight it. It said exactly what words could not say. Words that affected the same thing would have fanned the flames. The nod and the crooked grin worked.
And that had been their tactics for the last year since the voices had begun to shout louder and louder. Nod, smile, move on to something else. Meanwhile the atmosphere had been leaking from the planet Earth faster and faster. Tonight it had passed the point of no return. He and Tom had discussed exactly that scenario. In fact he had intended to discuss it with Petra on this visit. Maybe it was time to pack up the babes and go ship board… But they had never found the time. It seemed there were so many other things that crowded in and so little time before Star Dancer had to leave dock again. Time with Petra, time with the babes, talks of the new Star Cruiser and the crew for it with the partners. The year before Tom and Marva had become full partners and they had moved up several notches on the cargo drops for the Feds. Large contracts: Full time work. No or little time off. So they had discussed the possibility of another ship, an even bigger ship than Star Dancer. It was incredible to think it, but collectively they were worth trillions and they could easily handle the loans they needed. And then Earth had taken a sudden turn for the worse. And a turn is what had started it.
For millions of years the Earth had wobbled in her orbit. Many had thought that was an unfortunate occurrence in the early years of civilization, but they had come to learn that without the wobble there would probably be no way to sustain life. They hadn’t predicted that the hole that had been in the ozone layer, growing wider and wider would suddenly begin to vent atmosphere. The venting of atmosphere was small at first, but like a small hole in a raft the constant rush of atmosphere widened it.
The Feds had known and suppressed the information. The news agencies that were still owned by free stations broadcast it and for once the nod and grin failed them. Even so it was far too late. By the time everyone realized just how late there had been a complete clampdown on the news sources. Tom had feelers out and the news had been trickling in that the situation was untenable. Still, Mike had thought that meant years. Apparently it had not.
“They think it will completely blow out within a year. Apparently once it hit this point it is all downhill from here.”
“My God, Tom,” I said “I meant how long do we have to get there… To make it?”
“Oh… Oh… Fast. Lift off in three hours. I can’t hold it. I had to fight to get a slot. They’re freezing any passenger flights solid. No one leaving at all until they say so; if we weren’t cargo… Still, I don’t know what traffic will be like… Delays… Boarding through the station, so I would just come directly to the ship… Put it in a cargo bay… Petra could do it. And… You’re under an assumed name… I had to lie, pretend to be you to push the flight schedule, so they believe you’re on board with Petra and the babes. It seemed smart… The alternative would have kept you tied up for hours, maybe days and the ship grounded or even ordered to leave without you.”
“I see. I see that… PETRA!” I screamed into the semi darkness. “Get the babes, get ready; we have to go now!” I spoke back into the headset, realized I was still holding it and dropped it to the floor. I tapped my wrist twice and turned on my personal link system. “Where will you be?” I asked Tom.
“Gate Ten; I had to move to the ready line… Fifteen ahead of us right now.”
I nodded, realized the camera link was off. ”We’ll be there in an hour tops… Depending.” I clicked off and began stripping off my sleepwear so I could get dressed.
We had prepared for this possibility, although we had both believed in the government propaganda. Both believed it would be solved. Still Tom had warned it might not be true. The people he had been in contact with said otherwise. The people he had spoken to said the hole could not be fixed, reversed, repaired, it was over. This had happened on many other planets, a few in our own system. It was like the great reset button in the sky, and when it was over everything on Earth would die off. The atmosphere would leave completely. Then a few billion years in the future something would shift in the great mystery that was the universe and the whole thing would start over again. The atmosphere would slowly reestablish itself, then life would reawaken from the frozen seas and it would begin to establish domain once more. Maybe: On some worlds that had not been the case. On Mars the atmosphere had been lost and they had not been able to reestablish it. They had nearly perished before they had managed to reestablish themselves on Earth. And Earth’s peoples had not known that had happened until the discovery of the ship that had bought the seeds of humanity from Mars to Earth all those years before, frozen in the Ice of Antarctica.
Global warming: If not for global warming Standard would not have been in Antarctica exploring on that particular day when the warm winds had exposed the hull of Mayosythia from its frozen tomb. Mayosythia, the pictures and grainy video had been on the news channels for months and then suddenly the story had disappeared from the headlines and a few years later Standard had invented Starlight Drive. Probably not a coincidence, Mike thought now. He was surprised at the random thoughts running through his mind as he hopped, one boot on, one in his hand and finally made the bedroom door.
The bedroom looked like a hurricane had swept through it. The babes were both on the wide bed, quiet, well behaved, a new game they most likely thought. Petra’s eyes met his own, wide, frightened.
“Tom has it worked out. We are prepped and on standby to launch. We have plenty of time to get there, Petra… We do.”
I went to a console in the wall, punched in the names Tom had given me and downloaded the ID we would need if we were stopped. I looked around, there was nothing else here that we needed. Petra gathered the babes as I grabbed the two backpacks she had stuffed full of essentials for the babes and we rushed through the kitchen and into the service port; lights going on and off before and after us, tracking our progress. The babes’ wide eyed and babbling baby-talk as we went: Excited for the new adventure.
I checked the charge meter on the runner, three quarters, more than enough. I punched in the kill code and shut down the juice port on the old runner. Three minutes later we were hovering in the air, rising slowly up through the top of the service port, the port yawning wider as we rose, and finally breaking clear of the port and rising above the house into the darkness of early morning L.A. Fifteen. That was when I saw the pup I had bought home for the babes just two days before. The pup to raise with the babes, looking up at me from the rear yard area; body wriggling.
“It’ll die,” Petra said as if reading my thoughts.
“I know.” I set the runner down on the lawn, levered my door-lock open and ran through the house to the rear yard attachment. The pup came running, her whole body squirming with happiness, as if she knew she had just won the lottery. I picked her up and tucked her inside my shirt. She curled against my stomach. Tucked her nose into her tail and seemed instantly to drift off into sleep before I made it back to the runner.
Petra looked at the small bulge in my shirt.
“Makes you look fat,” she laughed in spite of the fear and tension she must have felt.
“Let’s hope so,” I said. I felt the pup move as I lifted into the air and accelerated into the dark skies.
Check out the #Free #Audio posts from the book on my Geo Dell FB page. Load the page, scroll down and you will find the posts: (2) Facebook
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