One-Planet-at-a-Time

“I’m telling you, cousin, you need to take a load off!” These words he’d said on and off for the past few hours. For the duration of the journey, Ontoga had hoped to endear me to this, this “Starbase Equador”, and now that I was finally aboard, I found myself no less worn out by it. “You’d better have a better idea than sinking myself in a bottle for this,” was the first thing that came out. Nobody else would have caught the near-scowl that flashed across his face: “I can assure you it’s got better service than the mess hall at the Meios Orbiter. Come on, Ellemaya, just take

Desolation, that was all I could think of looking into those lightless eyes. “Oh, Pekktal, good lord of high heaven, the first and most marvelous of skies, hear our prayer!” I had but gone to the market, to fetch those rare meats though the inn’s-men had fed us well, those to give him the strength he was increasingly lacking. It’s not as if I had denied the inevitable – surely Master’s rests had grown more weary, and the unknowing pallor of sleep had taken more and more from his waking hours – but I had thought that somehow, when glorious Pekktal would deliver him his final epiphany, that I would be