A Curiosity of the Solar System by Ian Antony

Author:Ian Antony
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783961127313
Publisher: Atmos Press
Published: 2017-02-27T00:00:00+00:00

Ivor and Isabel had spent their first couple of days or so aboard the Thralianna doing everything they could to find out from Sancho Panza where it was exactly he was taking them. They tried everything they could think of to make their little companion talk, but to no avail. They tried carving the letters of the alphabet onto an old piece of timber they found in the hold with the hope that they could then persuade Sancho to leave the control panel for a moment to point at the various letters in an effort to spell out some sort of communique to them. They even tried to engage him in a simple game of ‘yes or no.’ However, try as they might, Sancho Panza remained unmoved, firmly locked into the ship’s control panel, occasionally whirring, sometimes clicking and of course chiming every hour upon the hour. It was if their little companion had become part of the ship and that by becoming one with its control system had shut himself off to all external stimulus entirely.

At one point, in a fit of frustration, Ivor took a firm hold of Sancho Panza and attempted to drag him away from the ship’s control panel. All this served to do, however, was to cause the ship to lurch violently to one side, resulting in such alarm to Ivor and Isabel that they never attempted to move him again.

Giving up on Sancho Panza, they started to study the ship’s rather limited supply of astral charts, while peering at the mercury gauges, glass-fronted metres, and barometer-like devices that peppered the bridge in a confusing mass of brass-plated operating panels. While this might all have made sense to an officer aboard a ship of the stars, to the uninitiated it was utterly baffling and they could make neither head nor tail of what was in front of them.

Slumping back into one of the bridge’s harnessed chairs, Ivor rubbed his furrowed brow with one hand, a pensive look on his face.

‘Well, I suppose we’ll just have to wait won’t we? Earl said that there was only enough fuel to reach one of the outer planets, didn’t he? That definitely rules out Venus, Mercury, Earth, and Mars…’

This was a conversation that had been replayed many times over during the last few days and Isabel was visibly becoming rather tired of the repetition.

‘Yes, Ivor. How many times? We’ll just have to assume that we’re being taken to the nearest planet to Neptune: Uranus. We’ll find out in a month or so anyway. We’re just going to have to be patient.’

‘Of course, dear. Of course,’ said Ivor in a placatory tone. Isabel had been rather glum since the excitement of their escape from Neptune, a natural reaction to being plucked away from somewhere that she had come to call home, Ivor thought… and, although he would rather not have admitted it to himself, an inevitable consequence of being torn away from a loved one.

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