Payday
The Trumpet is mounted under the Dragon drives, so that everything else
is above it, along the axis of motion, as a futile attempt at ballast.
All of the old bronco-busters load up with rocks all around, as well,
except in front of the horn. You're probably used to seeing
planet-crashers, so you think of a spaceship as something sleek,
streamlined. Stripped, a Snowballer looks like a stack of bricks. With
boost and ballast mass strapped on, she looks like a pile of rocks.
Strapped to a shipment of trade goods, she looks like a moon dragging a
planet.
A War of Perceptions
His eyes still held prisoner by the image in the monitor,
Morczyk's mind fought a losing battle for stability, for
certainty, for confirmation. He watched in raw terror as his
face seemed to grow larger, enormously, hideously larger, until
it seemed to fill the screen, leaving nothing for him to see but
a haunted spectre he could neither endure to look at nor compel
himself to turn from, a reality no image could deflect. "But
what...," he said, trying desperately to make contact. "But how
have you done this...?"
Descent of the Mourningstar
"But they weren't gods, not even close. They were just
ordinary men, some still boys, and they didn't want to have to
live up to her greatness for the sake of a quick kiss between
football games. It was no fault of theirs, really. We are each
of us what we make ourselves, and they didn't feel any strong
pull to make more of their lives. Some tried to live up to her
expectations, but there was no real hope of success. Hercules
himself could not have lived up to what she would have demanded
of him."
Cosette
Or maybe there was... It almost made him smile to think about teaching
a five-year-old self-defense, but he knew he could do it. He knew he
could teach her how to turn her size into an advantage, how to make use
of anything that came to hand, how to make a weapon of anything. It
scared him, a little, to think that he had to teach such things to a
child. But he knew he did have to, and he knew he would...
Crash and burn
But he didn't go to the office of the publisher. Instead
he grabbed his jacket and the bag of personal effects he had put
together Monday morning and left the building. Left it for the
last time. He had gotten himself fired. He had crashed and
burned. And he agreed with Vinnie Junior, god love him: it was
the best way to go...
News I can use...
"But literature is art, and if all printed matter were rendered as
sound, real literature would be music and all the news and
advertising would be no more than noise. But literature is the news,
in a sense, the on-going chronicle of the culture. Good art of any kind
is the record of the life of the mind, and good literature is the
real news."
Weddingsong--A Matthew Story
Matthew hugged him tight under the arms and Greg watched
the sun and the water against the mistiness in his own eyes. He
smelled the water in the air and the sun in Matthew's hair. For
a moment he sang with the tape until Matthew pulled back his head
and said, "You sing like a duck."
The Great Lizard Hunt...
Meri led the way. She was very careful and surefooted. She knew to walk
only on the dirt and rocks, never on the plants. She knew to watch
where her feet were going to make sure she didn't slip--or step on
something dangerous. And she knew to make sure she could get out of a
rough place before she went in.
How Grey scatted the cat
One day Grey was playing outside by herself. She and Mommy had been
playing together, but Mommy had to go inside to fix lunch. Grey was
singing softly to herself and smiling in the sun when all at once a
big, mean cat sauntered up the walk.
