Space Magic Read Online Free Page B

bursting, she had to let it go. Her whole body ruffled as the last of the energy passed through her.
    The bomb spun, glowing white-hot but cooling rapidly. The tribe tumbled, overwhelmed, their hemispherical formation torn asunder by the bomb’s power, the solar wind, and their differing orbits. Their senses rang; their eyes were deafened and their motivators dumb.
    Eventually they gathered together in the planet’s shadow. Several had tried to take in too much energy and had been burnt or torn. But they all surged with life. Vibrant and shimmering, they danced a pinwheel of sheer glee in the corona light. Even Teda danced, her mass reduced but the pain banished, the torn parts healed.
    They gathered the carbonized remains of Old John’s body from the bomb housing, and placed them gently in an orbit that would intersect the planet’s surface. Gunai wept, but she wept from joy as well as sadness. Her tribe was strong and healthy, and John’s child flourished within her, bearing an unknown fraction of the old man’s memories.
    Finally they drew together into an elegant shape, a majestic, streamlined thing out of one of Old John’s tales. With a mere fraction of their energies, they leapt into the starbow.
    A whale swam the stars, heading for the untapped regions of the galactic core.

Nucleon

    “Tatyrczinski,” he said, extending his hand. “Karel Tatyrczinski.” His blue eyes sparkled under bushy white eyebrows, set in a round pink face. Wispy white hair tried, and failed, to cover a shiny pink scalp. That clean pink and white head emerged from the world’s grimiest coverall. It was a fascinating contrast; I thought he’d make a great colored-pencil sketch. I liked him immediately.
    I took the hand and shook it. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Tat... um...”
    “Tatter-zin-ski,” he repeated. “Call me Carl. What are you looking for, Mr....?”
    “James. Phil James. It’s kind of difficult to explain. I’ll know it when I see it.”
    “Well,” he said, extending his hands to encompass the piles of objects all around him, “whatever it is, I’ve got it.” I was inclined to believe him.
    STUFF FOR SALE read the sign above the gate, matching the one-line listing in the Yellow Pages that had led me to this place. It was way, way off the beaten path; I was glad I’d called ahead for directions.
    The name was apt. A stolid 1920s Craftsman-style house, with an unfortunate skin condition of yellow 1970s asphalt shingles, sat in the middle of piles and piles of... stuff. Heaps of sinks. Stacks of televisions. Three barrels of shoes. File cabinets labeled CHAINS, DOORKNOBS, ALTERNATORS. A haphazard-looking structure of pipes and blue plastic sheeting kept the rain off the more fragile pieces, but a row of toilets standing by the fence wore beards of moss. The piles went on and on... He must have had at least a couple of acres. Through a window I saw that the house was just as crowded inside.
    “I’m a commercial artist,” I explained. “I’m doing a series of illustrations I call ‘junklets’—gadgets made of junk. It’s for a new ad campaign. The company wants to show how innovative and inventive it is. So what I need is stuff that looks interesting, things I can put together with other things in my pictures. It doesn’t matter what it is, or whether or not it works.” I pulled my digital camera out of my coat pocket. “Actually, all I need is reference photos. But I can pay you for your time.”
    “No need. I’m always glad to help an artist.” He rubbed his chin with a grime-encrusted hand. The work-hardened skin scratched against his beard stubble. “Lessee. I think I had some old dentist equipment...” Suddenly he burst into motion and I had to scramble to keep up.
    Down an alley of refrigerators, right turn at an old monitor-top Frigidaire, hard left at an ancient glass-fronted Coke machine, and there we were at a barrel of dental drills from the early 1900s. All joints and cables and black