Deep Sky Anchor

by Mary E. Lowd

An excerpt from Voyage of the Wanderlust.  If you’d prefer, you can start with Chapter 1, return to the previous chapter, or skip ahead.

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The Wanderlust sped away at an unthinkable speed, so far beyond the speed of light that ancient human physicists who’d had epiphanies caused by falling apples would have never believed it possible.  They flew away with a large turtle riding piggyback on them.  They left the binary star system and the planet where Risqua was now stranded far behind in the blink of an eye.  Down on the planet’s surface, the traitorous reptile-bird was watching the sky, and she saw the asteroid base explode, or rather it began as an explosion, but after the fiery beginnings breached the base’s containment systems, the entire craggy, asteroid-like moon quickly crunched in on itself, filling the hollow space inside. Continue reading “Discovery of the Wanderlust – Chapter 19: Without a Goodbye”

by Mary E. Lowd

An excerpt from Voyage of the Wanderlust.  If you’d prefer, you can start with Chapter 1, return to the previous chapter, or skip ahead.

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The baby world-turtle and the Tri-Galactic Union spaceship flew towards each other, each shrinking, becoming smaller targets for the Zakonraptor vessels pursuing them.  The Waykeeper’s child’s hyperspatial slipstream shrank in proportion with their body, but also, the ship and tortoise flew closer and closer, making up the difference.  Like in Zeno’s famous paradox, they halved the distance between them, over and over, never quite reaching the other.

All around them, the asteroid base seemed to grow and grow like Wonderland after Alice tasted the mushroom.  Except, of all the beings aboard the Wanderlust, their fungal officer — currently busy playing custodian to a lot of potted plants — probably had the least to do with this particular wild adventure. Continue reading “Discovery of the Wanderlust – Chapter 18: The Strangest Dance”

by Mary E. Lowd

An excerpt from Voyage of the Wanderlust.  If you’d prefer, you can start with Chapter 1, return to the previous chapter, or skip ahead.

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The Waykeeper’s child agreed to the plan as soon as Lys passed it along; in fact, they agreed so fast that the newly-hatched creature couldn’t possibly really understand what they were agreeing to, which caused Captain Carroway to make a much bigger deal about Lys explaining and re-explaining the whole situation and all the possible dangers involved far more thoroughly than would’ve been necessary if the baby world-turtle had just taken a little longer with their response.  Or if Lys had passed their consent along with a slightly longer hesitation preceding it, Lt. Diaz thought rather cynically. Continue reading “Discovery of the Wanderlust – Chapter 17: Shrinking”

by Mary E. Lowd

An excerpt from Voyage of the Wanderlust.  If you’d prefer, you can start with Chapter 1, return to the previous chapter, or skip ahead.

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Lt. Diaz chased after Captain Carroway as the Norwegian Forest cat strutted down the central corridor of the Wanderlust toward the bridge.  A dog chasing a cat.  Tale as old as time.  Except this time, the dog really wanted to know what in the world the cat could possibly be thinking.  The dog didn’t just want to catch the cat; she wanted to change her mind.

Captain Carroway’s tufted ears flicked just enough as she walked to show that she could hear Lt. Diaz following her, but she didn’t stop.  She strutted all the way to the bridge and took her seat in the captain’s chair, paws immediately working the control panel in the arm to pull up status readings about the state of various systems on the ship.  So even though she only beat Lt. Diaz to the bridge by about three strides, the Norwegian Forest cat already managed to look busy and like the Xolo-Lupinian was interrupting her. Continue reading “Discovery of the Wanderlust – Chapter 16: Convincing a Cat”

by Mary E. Lowd

An excerpt from Voyage of the Wanderlust.  If you’d prefer, you can start with Chapter 1, return to the previous chapter, or skip ahead.

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The idea of anti-noise defrag couplers may have been completely fake, something that the two dogs had invented as a way to trick the Zakonraptors into letting them steal the device used for shrinking all those poor, hapless creatures to a microscopic scale, but Lt. Lee really did have an idea for how to make it work better.  If the creatures — or anything else one might want to shrink — were encased in a hyperspatial slipstream, then the folds of that field would protect anything within them from the natural decay that happened when they came into contact with matter still obeying the normal laws of physics.  It wasn’t a permanent solution, as hyperspatial slipstreams require a great deal of energy to sustain.  However, if one could shrink an object like, say, a spaceship, even for only a short time, then it would be possible to apply an external force to that object and — because of its effectively lowered mass — propel it as a much higher velocity than would otherwise be possible. Continue reading “Discovery of the Wanderlust – Chapter 15: A Question of Scale”

by Mary E. Lowd

An excerpt from Voyage of the Wanderlust.  If you’d prefer, you can start with Chapter 1, return to the previous chapter, or skip ahead.

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While Lt. Diaz had been arguing with Risqua, making sure the reptile-bird understood her place in their little hierarchy, Lt. Lee had been turning his understanding of the Zakonraptor research — illuminated in new ways by Lt. Diaz’s perspective — over and over in their shared mind space, and he was pretty sure he knew what they needed to do.

It was a ridiculous plan.

But if it worked — and it might work — then it might actually get them a lot closer to home. Continue reading “Discovery of the Wanderlust – Chapter 14: Ridiculous Plans are Better than No Plans”

by Mary E. Lowd

An excerpt from Voyage of the Wanderlust.  If you’d prefer, you can start with Chapter 1, return to the previous chapter, or skip ahead.

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In a single stroke, the round, silvery moon had become both more and less of a god, answering Lt. Diaz’s prayers at the same time as breaking apart, revealing itself to be nothing but a hollow shell, housing a creature inside who the half-Lupinian would have never thought to howl or pray to in the first place — a baby world-turtle was a wonderful thing, but it wasn’t the kind of moon she’d been taught to revere as a pup.

And then Lys’s voice echoed strangely in her mind but not her bat-like ears.  Lt. Diaz splayed her ears and looked at Lt. Lee, only to see his butterfly-like ears had splayed as well. Continue reading “Discovery of the Wanderlust – Chapter 13: Combining Perspectives”

by Mary E. Lowd

An excerpt from Voyage of the Wanderlust.  If you’d prefer, you can start with Chapter 1, return to the previous chapter, or skip ahead.

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Only one member of the Wanderlust’s scattered crew wasn’t watching as the great, silvery moon cracked, patches of its surface breaking off in shards.  Some of the broken pieces of shell floated around the rest of the egg-moon, detritus that gleamed with reflected sunlight as the shards turned and twisted, and others flew away, caught in the gravity well of the planet below and spiraled down, becoming flaming meteors soaring across the sky.  And in the middle of it all, a wrinkly green face, pressed against the crack, seeking the wider, open space beyond, liquid eyes blinking as they saw the brightness of distant stars for the first time. Continue reading “Discovery of the Wanderlust – Chapter 12: Less Alone than Expected”

by Mary E. Lowd

An excerpt from Voyage of the Wanderlust.  If you’d prefer, you can start with Chapter 1, return to the previous chapter, or skip ahead.

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On the surface of the planet below, huddled beside a dwindling campfire, Korvax took his turn watching the sky and waiting for his comm-pin to chime to life with the voice of his beloved Ollallan daughter — or one of the other Wanderlust crewmembers who was still on the ship when it flew into a hatch in the side of the craggy moon — telling him everything was better now and to prepare to be teleported back aboard.

Korvax had stuffed bits of moss that he’d gathered between his quills to keep him warmer, and he could hear the various other officers, curled around the campfire, snoring softly as they slept.  But he kept his eyes on the sky.  He kept watching the craggy moon.  In fact, he almost missed the first cracks when they appeared on the surface of the larger, rounder, silvery moon, because his beady eyes were so focused on the moon where his caterpillar daughter had been taken. Continue reading “Discovery of the Wanderlust – Chapter 11: Lunacy”

by Mary E. Lowd

An excerpt from Voyage of the Wanderlust.  If you’d prefer, you can start with Chapter 1, return to the previous chapter, or skip ahead.

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The Zakonraptor brought Risqua, Diaz, and Lee to a quiet area with chairs and tables.  Several other Zakonraptors were sitting at tables in small groups, each with a tray of food in front of them.  It seemed to be some sort of cafeteria.  The tour guide showed Risqua, Diaz, and Lee how to get trays for themselves and fill them with food from a covered buffet.  None of the food was recognizable, of course, since Lt. Diaz knew nothing at all about Zakonraptor cuisine.

There were tureens of thick stews and pots of strange casseroles, everything smelled spicy and gamy.  Lt. Diaz hoped it would taste alright, but also, she wasn’t sure how much she could eat right now anyway.  Her body felt like it had switched permanently into fight-or-flight mode, and the idea of eating seemed like a dangerous distraction that might cause her to miss the exact moment when she should swipe out with her claws or dash away on all fours.  Except neither of those behaviors would actually save her or the Wanderlust from this situation. Continue reading “Discovery of the Wanderlust – Chapter 10: Reconfiguring with Minimal Options”