Stellar Anivesary
Nov 5, 2022 22:43:01 GMT -5
Post by Radrook Admin on Nov 5, 2022 22:43:01 GMT -5
Stellar Aniversary
by Radrook
by Radrook
On our 50th wedding aniversary, June 17 2230, my wife Maria and I had gone on vacation to the planet Garabula and were headed back home in our FTL personal spaceship. True, our spaceship wasn’t much, but she always got us where we wanted to go on time, and only needed occasional routine maintenance. No big deal! The simpler they are, the less trouble they cause. So even though Maria wanted something fancy, I hunkered down and insisted until she finally had to stop her jabbering.
Of course, she wanted a fancy one because she liked the carapacho, as she called it in her native tongue, which meant that it looked marvelous on the outside. Me? I don't go by that BS since I know that if it looks good, it probably isn't, and if they are desperately trying to sell it, it’s probably on its last legs. Not to say that the cheap space-ships are always better, you know? Just to say that if they suddenly go awry, then at least no big sum was wasted.
Yep, she sulked for a long while after that, and would’t talk much. But in time, she got around to liking the little bugger for the service it was rendering and for the low cost. In fact, she even gave the ship a name Felix. She wouldn't explain why she chose that name and that led to some heated arguments. So I sent us careening through some asteroid belts at 70,000 miles per hour and doing some neat stuff I had learned at the spaceport-school for interstellar pilots, and that seemed to bring the argument to a quick end. She finally explained that it had been the name of her pet dog. Of course, I was forced to sleep on the couch for two weeks. Well, all things come with a price, and I suppose that was one of them.
You know, its things such as those that cause married couples to question whether they still love one another with the same intensity that they originally had when they tied the knot. I mean, I sometimes wondered myself if we were merely together because we signed some papers and nothing more. Before, it was maybe for the sake of the kids, but now that the kids were grown and leading their own adult lives, they could no longer be used as an excuse. Force of habit maybe? Well, who knew, and who cared? If they were going through the motions, I guess that was good enough.
Yet, it was strange how Maria and I would sometimes pause in the middle of a bitter argument, and gaze at one another with the same special spark that we had shown when we first had met. At those moments, it was a matter of who broke the magic of that spell first, her or me.
Sometimes, that very special moment lingered up to a minute, but it was usually over in a few seconds, and then we resumed our bickering as usual. Ocasionally, during our arguments, I would tell her that I loved her, and she would stare at me suspisciously and call me a hypocrite.
“The only thing you love is the food I make and the few times that I let you,” she would say sarcastically. During such moments, I would regret ever having admitted that I still felt a deep affection for her. After all, she never admitted it verbally to me, but only deigned to flash the fleeting sentiment my way during those brief special moments.
Anyway, as I said at the outset, we were on our way back home from vacationing on the Planet Garabula, and were approaching our destination, Earth, when the ship’s warp drive cut off. Suddenly we were at impulse and to make things worse, warps just wouldn’t kick back in. Of course, this wasn’t good. Especially when it happened twenty light-years between our home world and Garabula. That’s why it was recommended that solitary travel of this kind never be undertaken, but that ships should always travel in groups, and that they always stay in subspace-communication with one another. But since I am a tightwad, I tried to economize the fee that space-ports charged for setting up those arrangements, and decided to wing it on my own. Now it seemed that my frugality was coming back to bite me on my buttocks.
“What’s wrong mi amor?” Maria asked me when she noticed that we had suddenly dropped from warp drive to impulse and seemed to remain there for an unusually long time.
“Oh nothing, Maria,” I replied, trying to sound as confident as possible so as not to frighten her, "Just a temporary glitch in the system. Nothing to be concerned about.”
“Oh really Henry? Then why are you as pale as a ghost and breaking out in a cold-sweat?”
“As I said! Just a temporary glitch and nothing to worry about HUN!” The hun part came out sounding more like an imprecation than an endearing term.
“We are stuck, arent’t we?” Maria squinted a suspicious eye at me as she usually did when she knew I was lying.
“No we...”
‘Don’t lie to me Henry! I am not an infant. I know when a ship is in trouble and when it isn’t. What do you think I am-stupid?”
“I’ll see if I can raise someone on subspace to give us a hand?” I said as nonchalantly as I could.
“Someone on subspace to do what? To give us a hand? On this God-forsaken trajectory which you chose because they charge less for the access permission license? Do you know how many other people are using this trajectory within the subspace range between us and that planet Garabula that you chose because vacationing is cheaper there? None! Just us.”
“Oh come on now, hun, it can’t be that bad,” I said while furiously attempting to get the warp drived to kick in, but with no results.
“Oh really, then do something!”
“Like what?” I replied cheapishly.
“Like getting the ship going again at warp-that’s what!”
“Can’t you see I am trying, Maria? They only taught us how to fly them, not how to repair them, babe.”
“In other words, you knew that if this happened, we would be doomed, and you took the chance of traveling solo anyway?”
“Well, the ship had never done this before, so how am I supposed to know... Say what is that vessel that just pulled up alongside of us?” I asked, pointing a trembling index finger at a long, sleek silver, cigar-shaped vessel that had the skull and bones pirate emblems prominently displayed on its side. But they were not human skulls nor human bones. They were more menacingly alien. So were the disintegrator cannon that it was aiming our way. Through the other ship’s cockpit circular window, I could see grotesquely shaped humanoid figures moving about who resembled the Krellians, an irrational warlike race that practiced sentient creature sacrifices in an effort to appease their gods. They were notorious for kidnaping other humanoids who were subsequently never seen again, for that gory purpose.
"Dangerous!" Maria said, staring wide eyed at the devils and I sensed the profound fear in her voice. .
“What do you want?” I shouted into the ship-to-ship communicator, which automatically translated it into the Krellian tongue and retranslated their response into English.
“You know very well what we are demanding, Earthling.” the voice thundered back with in the deep, typical, Krellian growling texture.
“Our holiest goddess is ravenous once more, and denmands to be appeased, and a living humanoid sacrifice is in order.”
There was a long silence and then:
“But all is not bleak human. Our goddess is a compassionate and reasonable deity. So only one of you need be offered. Preferably the female human that we found we registered at the Garabula hotel as Maria. Our goddess has a preference for tender, human, female flesh. As for you? You will be transported to wherever is your preferred destination might chance to be. It matters little to us. ”
For the first time in decades, Maria and I were tightly holding hands. I could feel her shudder at the alien's last words, and felt a murderous rage emerging for their causing her to feel that way. If only the ship had been a battle cruiser, then at least we could go down fighting. But with the engines dead, we couldn’t even attempt to flee.
“What are we going to do?” Maria asked me a tremulous voice, with dark-brown eyes full of fear. No, she wasn't afraid of a natural death, but being sacrificed to an alien deity on an alien ship was not her idea of natural.
There was only one acceptable solution to the problem. So I began to hurriedly don my spacesuit in order to make the ship-to-ship transfer that the Krellians were demanding.
“What are you doing Henry?” Maria, who had been nervously eyeing me intently in silence asked suddenly.
“What am I doing? What do you think I am doing? I am doing what any man who loves his wife deeply would be doing, offering my life to save hers!” I said.
“No Henry, I will go, you stay here!” Maria uttered with her typically stern determination while grabbing my arm to keep me there. Then, under the emotion of the moment, we embraced as we had never embraced before and I kissed her tenderly on her lips. Then knowing that it would be our last moment together, we wept in each other's arms. Suddenly we heard a short giggle, and then laughter come over the intercom.
At first we were startled and gazed at one another quizzically. Is that how sadistic these savage aliens were, that our psychological suffering caused them pleasure? Then gradually, we smiled at one another when we finally recognized that the laughter was the familiar laughter of our kids who had paid to set up the whole thing in order to prove to us that despite our constant bickering, true-love still held us together. There they were, waving at us from the cockpit after divesting themselves of the Krellian disguise.
But hey, they were right and never again did we question the sincerity of our wedding vows.
Of course, she wanted a fancy one because she liked the carapacho, as she called it in her native tongue, which meant that it looked marvelous on the outside. Me? I don't go by that BS since I know that if it looks good, it probably isn't, and if they are desperately trying to sell it, it’s probably on its last legs. Not to say that the cheap space-ships are always better, you know? Just to say that if they suddenly go awry, then at least no big sum was wasted.
Yep, she sulked for a long while after that, and would’t talk much. But in time, she got around to liking the little bugger for the service it was rendering and for the low cost. In fact, she even gave the ship a name Felix. She wouldn't explain why she chose that name and that led to some heated arguments. So I sent us careening through some asteroid belts at 70,000 miles per hour and doing some neat stuff I had learned at the spaceport-school for interstellar pilots, and that seemed to bring the argument to a quick end. She finally explained that it had been the name of her pet dog. Of course, I was forced to sleep on the couch for two weeks. Well, all things come with a price, and I suppose that was one of them.
You know, its things such as those that cause married couples to question whether they still love one another with the same intensity that they originally had when they tied the knot. I mean, I sometimes wondered myself if we were merely together because we signed some papers and nothing more. Before, it was maybe for the sake of the kids, but now that the kids were grown and leading their own adult lives, they could no longer be used as an excuse. Force of habit maybe? Well, who knew, and who cared? If they were going through the motions, I guess that was good enough.
Yet, it was strange how Maria and I would sometimes pause in the middle of a bitter argument, and gaze at one another with the same special spark that we had shown when we first had met. At those moments, it was a matter of who broke the magic of that spell first, her or me.
Sometimes, that very special moment lingered up to a minute, but it was usually over in a few seconds, and then we resumed our bickering as usual. Ocasionally, during our arguments, I would tell her that I loved her, and she would stare at me suspisciously and call me a hypocrite.
“The only thing you love is the food I make and the few times that I let you,” she would say sarcastically. During such moments, I would regret ever having admitted that I still felt a deep affection for her. After all, she never admitted it verbally to me, but only deigned to flash the fleeting sentiment my way during those brief special moments.
Anyway, as I said at the outset, we were on our way back home from vacationing on the Planet Garabula, and were approaching our destination, Earth, when the ship’s warp drive cut off. Suddenly we were at impulse and to make things worse, warps just wouldn’t kick back in. Of course, this wasn’t good. Especially when it happened twenty light-years between our home world and Garabula. That’s why it was recommended that solitary travel of this kind never be undertaken, but that ships should always travel in groups, and that they always stay in subspace-communication with one another. But since I am a tightwad, I tried to economize the fee that space-ports charged for setting up those arrangements, and decided to wing it on my own. Now it seemed that my frugality was coming back to bite me on my buttocks.
“What’s wrong mi amor?” Maria asked me when she noticed that we had suddenly dropped from warp drive to impulse and seemed to remain there for an unusually long time.
“Oh nothing, Maria,” I replied, trying to sound as confident as possible so as not to frighten her, "Just a temporary glitch in the system. Nothing to be concerned about.”
“Oh really Henry? Then why are you as pale as a ghost and breaking out in a cold-sweat?”
“As I said! Just a temporary glitch and nothing to worry about HUN!” The hun part came out sounding more like an imprecation than an endearing term.
“We are stuck, arent’t we?” Maria squinted a suspicious eye at me as she usually did when she knew I was lying.
“No we...”
‘Don’t lie to me Henry! I am not an infant. I know when a ship is in trouble and when it isn’t. What do you think I am-stupid?”
“I’ll see if I can raise someone on subspace to give us a hand?” I said as nonchalantly as I could.
“Someone on subspace to do what? To give us a hand? On this God-forsaken trajectory which you chose because they charge less for the access permission license? Do you know how many other people are using this trajectory within the subspace range between us and that planet Garabula that you chose because vacationing is cheaper there? None! Just us.”
“Oh come on now, hun, it can’t be that bad,” I said while furiously attempting to get the warp drived to kick in, but with no results.
“Oh really, then do something!”
“Like what?” I replied cheapishly.
“Like getting the ship going again at warp-that’s what!”
“Can’t you see I am trying, Maria? They only taught us how to fly them, not how to repair them, babe.”
“In other words, you knew that if this happened, we would be doomed, and you took the chance of traveling solo anyway?”
“Well, the ship had never done this before, so how am I supposed to know... Say what is that vessel that just pulled up alongside of us?” I asked, pointing a trembling index finger at a long, sleek silver, cigar-shaped vessel that had the skull and bones pirate emblems prominently displayed on its side. But they were not human skulls nor human bones. They were more menacingly alien. So were the disintegrator cannon that it was aiming our way. Through the other ship’s cockpit circular window, I could see grotesquely shaped humanoid figures moving about who resembled the Krellians, an irrational warlike race that practiced sentient creature sacrifices in an effort to appease their gods. They were notorious for kidnaping other humanoids who were subsequently never seen again, for that gory purpose.
"Dangerous!" Maria said, staring wide eyed at the devils and I sensed the profound fear in her voice. .
“What do you want?” I shouted into the ship-to-ship communicator, which automatically translated it into the Krellian tongue and retranslated their response into English.
“You know very well what we are demanding, Earthling.” the voice thundered back with in the deep, typical, Krellian growling texture.
“Our holiest goddess is ravenous once more, and denmands to be appeased, and a living humanoid sacrifice is in order.”
There was a long silence and then:
“But all is not bleak human. Our goddess is a compassionate and reasonable deity. So only one of you need be offered. Preferably the female human that we found we registered at the Garabula hotel as Maria. Our goddess has a preference for tender, human, female flesh. As for you? You will be transported to wherever is your preferred destination might chance to be. It matters little to us. ”
For the first time in decades, Maria and I were tightly holding hands. I could feel her shudder at the alien's last words, and felt a murderous rage emerging for their causing her to feel that way. If only the ship had been a battle cruiser, then at least we could go down fighting. But with the engines dead, we couldn’t even attempt to flee.
“What are we going to do?” Maria asked me a tremulous voice, with dark-brown eyes full of fear. No, she wasn't afraid of a natural death, but being sacrificed to an alien deity on an alien ship was not her idea of natural.
There was only one acceptable solution to the problem. So I began to hurriedly don my spacesuit in order to make the ship-to-ship transfer that the Krellians were demanding.
“What are you doing Henry?” Maria, who had been nervously eyeing me intently in silence asked suddenly.
“What am I doing? What do you think I am doing? I am doing what any man who loves his wife deeply would be doing, offering my life to save hers!” I said.
“No Henry, I will go, you stay here!” Maria uttered with her typically stern determination while grabbing my arm to keep me there. Then, under the emotion of the moment, we embraced as we had never embraced before and I kissed her tenderly on her lips. Then knowing that it would be our last moment together, we wept in each other's arms. Suddenly we heard a short giggle, and then laughter come over the intercom.
At first we were startled and gazed at one another quizzically. Is that how sadistic these savage aliens were, that our psychological suffering caused them pleasure? Then gradually, we smiled at one another when we finally recognized that the laughter was the familiar laughter of our kids who had paid to set up the whole thing in order to prove to us that despite our constant bickering, true-love still held us together. There they were, waving at us from the cockpit after divesting themselves of the Krellian disguise.
But hey, they were right and never again did we question the sincerity of our wedding vows.