The Stars Unstuck

The Stars Unstuck is an excerpt chapter from my upcoming book Attack Of The Stone Lava Beasts, a series of adventure stories starring Captain Uli Sullivan. He is a man with a truly uncommon life!

One August night, well after dinner, well after cleanup, well after making love and well after sinking, exhausted into slumber I was awoken by Charles' squawks.  At first I simply rolled over and tucked my head under Eve's arm, covering my ear, but to no avail.  The bird persisted and my annoyance got the best of me.  I pulled on my pants and swifted across the bedroom, through the kitchen, where I paused.  I grabbed an apple which I intended to hurl at the old bird if he didn't shut his confounded beak and let me rest!  In my ire I missed the odd shadows and light that must have been piercing the cabin windows.  It was not until I opened the hatch and climbed out, Charles' name on the angry spearhead of my shout, that I saw them!  The stars!

The stars had come unstuck from the heavens!  Dozens at a time carelessly hurling themselves across the slick sky silently, only to burn to quiet embers, flashing out like spent matches!  Flashes of shooting starlight streaked the ship and my bare chested torso as I watched, mesmerized by the magnitude of the meteor shower.  I had seen shooting stars many times.  As a boy I had tried to make wishes upon them but their duration was so short that I cursed my failure to reach a clear point (particularly in light of the fact that I always wanted the same thing but from a different girl).

In this dizzying swirl of stars I could have wished for the whole world.  I could have read a laundry list of hopes and desires.  Instead I stood, slack-jawed, neck craned and wondered how all this could be happening.  And yet all that I could hear was Charles hopping and squawking.  Oh, and the delicate sea lapping softly at the hull.  Oh, and a light thud as, much like the stars, my apple came unstuck from my hand and collected bruises from the deck.

After some period of being completely inside the moment I pulled myself back.  I could feel my mouth stretched into an idiot's grin and my neck ached as it had held a sky-gazer's angle for too long.  I decided to climb the mast to the crow's nest to get Charles' view of the event, convinced that it must be even more spectacular from above.

And I was proven right!  From that height there was not one, but two light shows!  One clear and stark in the sky and another, mirrored and beveled by the medium of the sea, much like the work of the great impressionists, I thought.  I smiled again, this time purposefully as I took in the sheer scale of beauty I witnessed!  As if Van Gogh himself had been set loose on the easel of the heavens!  I felt the hairs of my arms raise and such a heightened sense of awareness overcame me that I could feel my own pulse as it gently  throbbed at specific nexi throughout my body!  I could feel the night air wash deep into my lungs and mingle there with spent breath as new blood cells were forming and coursing around the globe of my body, adventurers in search of far away places.  And the return of the sailors, eager for the bare-breasted planes of home!  The fact that my body was a machine of considerable complexity was pushed aside as its processes illuminated themselves and I saw myself as a whole, single and completely understandable part of this great discovery!

Long ago such a display from the sky would have brought suspicion of curses, angered gods, mislead lives.  But the world had progressed and no man stood beneath the spectacle of a meteor shower feeling as if it was only doom and, specifically his own actions that lead to the doom.    Superstitious baboonery from a long dead time, I thought.  What I was witnessing was a miracle, A miracle of science but a miracle none the less.  It was certainly not an omen!

And those dark ages had passed.  A man could now stand on the crow's nest of his sailing vessel with his pet gull and stare in wonderment, not dread at such a delight as was occurring before, above and below me!  Indeed, the ignorant barbarism of the past had been replaced with an enlightenment so universal as to be virtually irreversible.

I stood in the victory pose of all humankind!  The pose was not so different from that of a man who has drank just enough scotch to want to make love but just a little too much to succeed!

And then I saw them!  They started out as one star but quickly split into three, moving apart slowly at first and then faster and faster as they approached and their trajectories became separate.  They looked at first as if they might hit three separate points of the ship but my anxiety ebbed as it became apparent they were probably several miles apart from each other.  And, for that matter, their destinies were tied to the atmosphere which would become denser as they descended, eventually tearing them apart and rendering them harmless, specters.

Charles and I watched the great, flaming stones as they continued and began to split in the intense friction.  But something was different!  Only small fractions burned off and all three meteorites were still mostly intact as they pierced the thick lower atmosphere.

They were headed to three points of the sea and I seemed to occupy the co-ordinates in the center!  At this point I could only watch one at a time and so I chose the star to the ship's bow as it and its surreal reflection steaked headlong, destined to meet.  At the very last moment before impact the space-rock burst low in the sky before plunging into the brine.  In that moment I could swear I saw, reflecting that great light, an island!

Where no island should be!

And then relative darkness!  The meteorite and the island dismissed, gone.  I cleared my head and memorized the ship's course and looked aft where the other two stars were mimicking the first.  Had I not climbed the main-mast I might have missed the perspective of height.  I might have gone to bed not realizing the peril we were in.  The meteor shower continued to cast light on the sea and large waves were created, pushing up and out from each impact.  As I turned from on to the next, I saw a pattern evolve!

Ripples, rings, frequencies, apex, synergy, capillary waves, epicenter!

Goddammit!

Doom!

The shower continued as I contemplated two impossibilities: first, there was an uncharted island out here in the periphery of the world, second, three separate impacts were creating three separate shock-waves and my tiny vessel idled on a windless night at their epicenter.

My only focus was to survive the oncoming event and find that island!  But first the surviving!  I slid down the rope that hung from the crow's nest guessing I had between ten and twenty minutes before all the ripples converged upon us.  I took that time to shore up the boat and drop the sails.  Next i went below deck and into the galley where I found a bottle of scotch.  Taking a deep pull from the bottle, I tucked it into my waistband, hurried to the sleeping quarters, knelt next to Eve and whispered words I had never said, "I love you." 

She stirred in her sleep, smiling and opening her dusty eyes enough to acknowledge my presence and rolled over, snoring.

Good enough.  I tucked her in snug and returned to the deck where I sealed the hatches and returned to the crow's nest and Charles.  The ripples had grown so vast that they were not easy to detect.  I had to take in much larger portions of the sea to find their outlines.  There!  And there!  And there!

They were closing in fast; there outer rings just now meeting, closing the trap around me!  As they met, huge waves were formed sending spray into the night, causing ominous pale halos to form in the starlight reflection!  In any other situation I would relish in the beauty but fear was pressing at my chest and I roped myself to the main mast as the convergence approached swiftly!

Charles squawked and jumped, flapping himself into hovering for a moment, then landing.  He repeated the motion, seemingly suggesting I do the same.  I tied myself in tighter.

The outer rings of the Great Ripples were heading out to sea and far-off shores but the inner rings were interacting and degrading from their circular form with each contact.  As a child in grade school I recall a particular recess game where the teacher brought out a large circle of parachute material.  We students stood around its circumference holding small portions in each hand as she tossed all of the school's red bouncy-balls into the center.  Then we all began to flap our sections up and down, squealing with delight as ripples formed.  The game was called Popcorn as bouncy-balls were thrust high into the mid-day sky.  Peaks and troughs formed, moved, vanished, reappeared.

That is what I saw before me!  The nice clean rings were gone, replaced by peaks and troughs bobbing and ducking, rising and sinking.  And the only object in the whole sea that resembled the bouncy-balls was my little boat, defenseless and ironically red! 

Charles hopped and hovered again as the first of the Popcorn game reached the hull.  A wave, some twenty feet and trough of equal depth collided as I clamped my eyes hard, waiting for death, or at least something uncomfortable.  Something death-like!  But nothing happened.  Nothing at all.  I opened my eyes.  The wave and trough must have cancelled each other out and my boat floated calm as a summer's eve back in Liar's Town.  A strange giggle escaped my throat pushed by a much hardier laugh as I contemplated the odds of sailing out of there upon a highway of serendipitous canceled waves. 

That was when the free-fall began!

One moment Charles was hovering nervous right in front of me.  The next he was twenty feet above and rising.  Or, to be accurate, myself and the ship were descending into a double-trough!  My stomach had risen to the back of my throat as the boat tilted downward, sliding down a steep hillside of water!  What I saw before me was a deep bowl, the bottom of which was rising fast and relentless at my face and my body, which was inconveniently strapped to the mast!

 Suddenly wind and spray sand-blasted my face and I was blinded!  But mu belly began to move back toward its proper position, and then continued down toward my groin and I knew we were reaching the bottom of the bowl!  The boat leveled out with a tremendous THUD! and then there was a moment of complete calm as I sat like a red bouncy-ball in the cup of a parachute trough.  

The sky was a narrow circle far above the walls of water that stretched like castle-pillars, framing the ongoing meteor storm.  The moment was serene and misleading, for I knew that the game of Popcorn did not end with the last ball resting peacefully in a trough.  This was the false peach of the stretched bow-string.  And what came next was as predictable and it was unimaginable!

SNAP!  the dancing ocean shot us up as fast as we had fallen!  I felt my cheeks sink with the force of gravity and I feared I may pass out!  The double trough seemed to be followed by a double wave!  Perhaps a triple, and the boat rose for dozens of yard as I heard Charles squawk above,  next to, then below me all in an instant!  At the apex I braced myself to be flung up out of the sea like a red bouncy-ball and, indeed, it seemed that we were weightless for a moment but something had occurred!  Another wave-trough cancellation and the boat was entirely still.

The last of the shooting stars slid gracefully across the sky and I made the only with upon one that had not been about girls.  And the only wish that was actually granted.  The seas passed and remained calm.  I watched them gurgle away behind the boat ts the first blush of dawn beautified the eastern horizon.

Eve, as sound a sleeper as existed, pushed open the main hatch and shuffled sleepily onto the deck in her nightgown and bare feet.  She looked curiously down at her wet feet.  "Did it rain?"  Her brow furrowed as she seemed to recall something.  

"I had the strangest dream that I was an astronaut." she admitted.

"Is that so?" I replied and took a long gulp of scotch, exhaling jubilant in my survival!  Charles landed next to me with a heavy plop.

"Uli, are you drinking already?  My goodness!"

"Just a nip, dear.  Just a nip." I smiled broadly.

"Did you tell me you loved me last night?"

"I don't recall doing so." I lied.  "Would you like me to?"

"Not while you're drinking!" she reprimanded.

I took another long pull and threw the bottle off to the calm morning sea.  It splashed down and sent concentric ripples out around it.