{"id":610,"date":"2013-11-17T19:39:44","date_gmt":"2013-11-18T01:39:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/normangilliland.com\/wordpress\/?p=610"},"modified":"2013-11-17T19:39:19","modified_gmt":"2013-11-18T01:39:19","slug":"star-blitzers-episode-5-only-fifty-more-kilometers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/normangilliland.com\/wordpress\/star-blitzers-episode-5-only-fifty-more-kilometers\/","title":{"rendered":"Star Blitzers, Episode 5: “Only Fifty More Kilometers”"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Only Fifty More Kilometers”\u00a0<\/strong><\/h4>\n

It was as if I had awakened from a dream. Suddenly we were deep in the quadrant with rocks coming down all around us and we were still alive. I couldn’t tell how my cohort was taking it–calmly or with numb terror.<\/p>\n

“You starting to feel lucky, Firth? Six hundred and fifty kilometers in this stuff and so far we’ve only gotten a dusting.”<\/p>\n

He kept his eyes on the road ahead. Actually the road was behind us. We were making it as we dashed toward oblivion.<\/p>\n

“Your considerable driving skills have played a part, Bowman, a considerable part.”<\/p>\n

A compliment. I didn’t expect that. “Okay,” I said, “I\u2019ll take my E<\/i> for Effort\u2014and for the rest you can thank your lucky stars. Get it? Your lucky stars.”<\/p>\n

Our lovely rapprochement was at an end. His usual stony charm returned.\u00a0“Only fifty more kilometers to go before we turn around.”<\/p>\n

‘Let\u2019s hope we find that thing,” I said. “This is a long way to come for nothing. \u00a0Anything at all on that receiver?”<\/p>\n

“Something just now. Barely enough to mention. Once it gets through the scrambler, it barely peaks at ten on the meter. It could be ambient noise.”<\/p>\n

“Well, let\u2019s hear it anyway, Firth. I\u2019m up for a little entertainment.”<\/p>\n

It wasn’t much. A lot of white noise with a faint little filigree of syllables on top..<\/i><\/p>\n

That\u2019s it?” I said. “Sounds like Venusian minimalism. Not exactly my cup of\u2014”<\/p>\n

And then there was a complete phrase: \u2026heaven with their tears, did he who<\/em>\u2026<\/p>\n

Firth showed no excitement, but he was very attentive.<\/p>\n

“Did you hear it?”<\/p>\n

“Sure,” I said, coming closer to the console. “I heard it, but what was it?”<\/p>\n

He raised his hand. “Wait\u2026.”<\/p>\n

Another phrase came through the console: : \u2026made the lamb\u2026.make thee\u2026.<\/em><\/p>\n

I watched a dust shower sweep across the windshield. I really wanted out of there, but I was intrigued. “It sounds like the fragment intel picked up, just a different part of the message. Could be a loop.”<\/p>\n

Firth gave up on the fine tuning. “That\u2019s all there is. I’ve lost it completely now.”<\/p>\n

“Well, can you get a fix on it?”<\/p>\n

“I\u2019d need to pull in more of it. We\u2019ll have to get closer.”<\/p>\n

“All right,” I said. “Let\u2019s pick a direction.”<\/p>\n

Taking off like that was a little random, a wild guess since the signal was ricocheting through a meteor shower, but I’ve never been one to sit still, and so I revved us up and away we went.Even that state-of-the-art field buggy made quite a racket in the higher hover mode. Of course, we still had all kinds of stuff knocking into the envelope and occasionally a little something pinging into the hull.<\/p>\n

I’ll give him credit, Firth remained calm through the craziness. In his polite, official way, he asked how the hell I knew which direction to go.<\/p>\n

I was cheerful, frighteningly cheerful, “I don\u2019t! Call it a guess or a hunch or intuition. And if I\u2019m wrong, call it incompetence, but we’ve got to look somewhere <\/i>and my gut is telling me that somewhere between two-seventy and three-oh-five we\u2019ll start picking up that signal again.”<\/p>\n

Now he started to get a little uneasy. “That\u2019s too nebulous for me, Bowman. Why don\u2019t we sit still long enough to re-position the antenna? We\u2019re just burning precious cell power running around like this.”<\/p>\n

I revved it up a little more. “Without a strong signal, all I’ve got to go on is my gut. We\u2019re taking a heading of two-ninety-five. I\u2019m not about to sit still and wait to get clobbered by one of those rocks. If we do get hit, you can have me court-marshaled.”<\/p>\n

From his stony gaze I got the impression that he didn’t appreciate the irony.<\/p>\n

Next: Episode 6: “Serena”<\/span><\/strong>
\n<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Only Fifty More Kilometers”\u00a0 It was as if I had awakened from a dream. Suddenly we were deep in the quadrant with rocks coming down all around us and we were still alive. I couldn’t tell how my cohort was … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13],"tags":[18],"class_list":["post-610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-serial","tag-serial"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3Ouwt-9Q","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/normangilliland.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/normangilliland.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/normangilliland.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/normangilliland.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/normangilliland.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=610"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"http:\/\/normangilliland.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":615,"href":"http:\/\/normangilliland.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610\/revisions\/615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/normangilliland.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/normangilliland.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/normangilliland.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}