Pleas to the Pleiades

Jimmie and Khlilia returned to Mars, in a very sad mood. They missed Candor, the incredible Prince. They missed Osha. Khlilia missed her Pal, her golden gelding with his ivory-white mane, fetlocks, and tail.

As they prepared for landing in their Brave Brat, Jimmie said, “Khlilia, I need to tell you ... during that final spinning dogfight, somehow, my erased memories seem to have returned. I suppose Candor knew that would happen.”

“Oh, that’s great, Jimmie!” Khlilia was genuinely happy for him.

“Actually, it’s not all that good a thing,” he answered. “But at least Candor knew that I could handle it better now than I could have earlier. The memories, aside from all the irrelevant details, They have come back in great detail, and now I understand why they were erased. They have also come back in the form of early alpha-mercury engine plans and a sort of game.”

“That sounds interesting.”

“Not to me. I don’t much care for games. But the engine design was planted in my mind years ago, as was the music.”

Finally, the couple were back on Mars, which they had missed ... in a way. They disembarked in their resplendent robes that Candor had awarded them for having been good pets.

There awaited them General Beauregard Wood, eating chocolate chip cookies with Helena, the Hesperian matriarch.

Jimmie saluted General Wood.

Wood stood and winkingly returned the salute. “Captain Memnon, I have decided to stay here with you Mars people. And guess who has joined us? Here with us is the renowned Captain Quirk, and his old friend, copilot and conductor Makende.”

Captain Quirk looked and sounded like he was all of three years old. Makende looked trim and sleek, young and vigorous ... but not like a child.

“Captain Quirk, and Conductor Makende, my old friend Osha told me about you.”

“And he told us about you, and how your friendship has endured. Where is he

now? He promised to teach me how to Harmonize. He taught me, but not the right way … now I am three years old.” Captain Quirk was indeed now quite diminutive.

“Osha rejoined his friends the Taygetians, in the Pleiades.”

“I hope he is happy there. Can you perhaps teach me how to Harmonize better,

since we do not know when we will see him again?”

“Gladly, Captain Quirk. It’s as simple as pie. You simply meditate here and then

there, and then on your third eye, listening to the sound of your breath.”

“Fascinating. But I do not really want to be a teenager again. And definitely not age three.”

Makende interjected, “Captain Quirk, you de wa-wa. You always do everything too wa-wa well done. Like that brack juice you been drinking.”

Jimmie calmed everyone. “Okay, Captain, then don’t meditate as long as Osha did.”

Within a fortnight of Hesperian revelry - lacking only the drums and voice of the Prince of Candor, and the bass playing of Osha, Captain Quirk was thirty again, at his preferred age, in a mildly ornate gold uniform. Mildly? The shoulders of his star-suit were laden with leaves like those of gilt grapevines and maples and oaks. He said, “We will wa-wa goldly beau where we wa-wa have not been before. Man, these hormone changes have got me horny.” He scratched himself.

“Then let’s go get that comet that’s parked not far out in an approaching solar orbit. Let’s bring it in and re-green Mars,” said Jimmie.

Captains Memnon and Quirk manned the only remaining Brave Brat, took off, electro-docked onto the main vehicle, and headed out toward the waiting comet. It hung fast in the black depths, already well within the asteroid belt, an elongated adamantine albedo that seemed wihout any motion to mention ... but actually was hurtling toward the Mars orbit at a typical comet speed of ... but wait, Jimmie thought, it’s NOT hurtling, it’s coasting in, like the proverbial pearl dropped into a bottle of shampoo.

But the comet was surrounded by a thick swirling swarm, like a sliced-open watermelon in an open-air market would be swarmed by bees and hornets hungry for its sweetness.

“Captain Memnon, there’s a bunch of bogies dogfighting all around that sluggish comet. Seem to be Thuliban - Thuban-Earth fighters. All conventional dirty-nuke engines. But there’s one spacecraft looks a lot like your Brave Brat gving them hell; that other little Brave Brat is protecting that comet pretty well. Why don’t you go out and help him out?”

Captain Jimmie Memnon did so. He crawled quickly through the narrow portal back into the Brave Brat, and strapped himself in. He started flipping the switches. He gently jet-kicked the Brave Brat a few arm-lengths away from the Feather Dancer, ignited the Brat’s eight main drives that doubled as weapons, and whooshed without sound into the swirling starfight of fireflies. It certainly did seem that there was a Brat-like craft, yes, similar to his own, engaging the Thuban fighters. People on Earth and Mars had long ago begun calling them the Thuliban. Just as Nordic people all over the planet had waxed weary of the Nazi Thule Society, so had almost every Muslim grown tired of the Taliban. Only just this century were people really beginning to wake up to what the dragons had wrought.

While Captain Memnon flew in a spiralling path right into the midst of the scrap, firing nonradioactive alpha beams, while Captain Quirk remained in the spinning Feather Dancer. They each downed several of the Thuliban fighter craft, which were no match for the Brave Brat and Feather Dancer propulsion systems nor weapons. Soon, Quirk and Memnon saw that some of the Thuliban had defected and were now on their side.

Perhaps partially because the contingent of Thubans had created this false Thule-Taliban insurrection that sheared off the protective flanks, the comet remained protected in its deceleration toward Mars. The Thuban-Earth main force dissipated.

The by-now-legendary Captains Memnon and Quirk then used the gravitational attraction system, which Candor had taught Jimmie, to break the huge icy comet into two pieces, which they then guided to the vast northern sea of Mars and also to the Hellas Basin, making two large new seas on Mars.

Too bad it had drowned all those inebriated vacationers dancing disco in Hellas, and Syrtis was swamped by tidal waves that destroyed the city and all its malls. But some

survived in Syrtis. The beetle-browed pawnshop owner set up his shop again, and made

even more money than before, from people trying to pawn or sell their valuables after the

flood.

Within a couple of those long Martian years, after violent storms that kept everyone hiding in their arcovales, rains and snows came to Mars, and cold rains and snows came aplenty. With the rains and snows came some new kind of Van Allen belts of Mars, new electromagnetic barriers that guarded the now-reborn planet from excessive cosmic radiation.

What was the best?

The Prince of Candor landed in his Brave Brat, with red mercury and blue gold

trails. The great dragon lived!

“Hello again, Jimmie, and Khlilia, hello everyone,” he said in his resonant voice.

Khlilia hugged her former captor with genuine love. “What happened, Candor? Why did you wait for two years to come back here to your own home?”

“As to the first, I crashed, but as you know, I’m relatively indestructible. So is our craft. It sank into the Pegasian sea, damaged, but not beyond repair. I held my breath and stayed far below below the surface of the water, far below where any Pegasian could dive. I waited and held my breath for hours.

“Then, during the darkening Pegasian dusk, I came to the surface, took some long-deserved breaths, and swam to the shores of their continent. I snuck in the darkness to where some of them were standing in their sleep. One at a time, I killed them all. I enjoyed eating some of those horse-flesh people. I especially like to eat untalented vegetarians, as you know. I found Laron, and others who had tormented our dear Khlilia. I ate Laron’s leering eyeballs and sneering tongue first.

“Nourished, I swam back deep down to my Brave Brat, having taken some important materials from the Pegasian machines to use in my repairs. I was able to make the Brave Brat almost as good as when we first built it. I did all the work under the water.

“So, I was able to finally re-emerge from the sea, and fly again toward Mars, and now I rejoin you. But there have been some other adventures after the return, getting all this comet climatology calmed down. I know you all, particularly General Wood and Captains Memnon and Quirk, might want to hear of these efforts and what still needs to be done. First, I’ve brought some fresh seafood from Deneb Kaitos especially for you, along with a couple more comets worth of ocean.”

Everybody feasted on huge oysters and fish – Binger Shaker, Jimmie Memnon, Khlilia, Prince Candor, Captain Quirk, Makende, ex-general Wood, and Helena.

“Thanks for bringing these oysters and the smokes, Candor!” Binger was happy.

“Don’t worry, everybody, I’ll provide the oxygen,” the Prince of Candor reassured them, especially Helena the slightly frowning hippie matriarch. She went back to dancing with Beauregard Wood as the band resumed its rocking rhythms.

“The band is back together! This is de wa-wa!” Makende was dancing in excitement.

“Two drummers, one a redhead wa-wa human, the other wa-wa one a dragon! All here but Osha. I always wa-wa wanted to hear him with a full band.”

But we have another bassist who does well enough,” said Helena.

And then ... the Prince of Candor spoke. “Osha was always afraid I would eat him,

as you humans all should be. Osha is away on a Taygetian planet where he always

wanted to be. He is in love, or at least he thinks he is. Ah ... such a human weakness,

this feeling you all call love. I hope he enjoys the music there. Music is more reliable

than love anyway.”

Khlilia said, “Although I got tired sometimes of his pleas to the Pleiades in his

whining voice, we’ll all miss him greatly.”

“Yeah. The least argumentative bass player I’ve ever played with,” agreed Binger Shaker.

The Prince of Candor cleared his throat with a fearfully resonating rumble that

silenced everyone. “I have here a way to deal with that question.” He brought forth

a human-sized aquarium-like tank. In it was suspended in a fluid a humanoid body,

a ghostly-white color like cartilage.

Everyone but Candor and the cartilage ghost gasped.

Candor reassured everyone. “No, it’s not alive. I say it, because it is an it. It’s not

alive, it’s one hundred percent cartilage, which is not a living material, but rather

is a substance secreted by certain living cells in all advanced animals’ bodies. Does

anyone object to my animating this ghost-body with the genetic material and the musical

memory of Osha?”

Khlilia objected, “But you cannot make it so there are two Oshas, no matter how far away the first one might be!”

Candor reassured her, “Khlilia, my dear pet, it will not be a second Osha. It will be like a person who is Osha’s identical twin in terms of innate abilities. He will have

all the musical memory, but as you can see by the form of this ghost-body, he will not

even look like Osha. He will not know any of us, either. He will have only the musical

memories of Osha, but no other memories whatsoever. He will be like a blank slate.”

“Alright, Prince Candor,” Khlilia agreed. “Animate him.”

Candor drained the aquarium-like specimen tank of fluid, and then injected other fluids into the rubbery white body. “This is the DNA, the genetic material, of Osha.

Within a matter of a few hours, an Osha of sorts was pumping away on a

borrowed bass. The dancing got even more exciting for everyone.

When the band took a break, Jimmie slapped his own forehead, and said to Khlilia, “Oh, now I remember!”

Khlilia said, kissing him, “Oh dearest, don’t worry about your memories of that

terrible Chatterquot facility in Florida and its alligators, snakes, and other reptiles!”

“No, Khlilia,” Jimmie chuckled, “I forgot a surprise gift for you.” He called

the Prince of Candor over and whispered to him, “Candor, could you maybe provide

me with a ghost-cartilage horse?”

“Of course, I have several of them. What type would you like?”

“A quarter horse, a palomino.”

“Coloration, pigmentation is genetic, it’s all in the DNA.”

“I have the DNA right here.”

Candor and Memnon excused themselves from everyone, and prepared an injection and administered it, then went back to the party.

A few hours later, Jimmie went around back to the dressing room of the Hesperian Hippodrome, then returned, leading a beautiful palomino to Khlilia, who shrieked with joy, hugging her new horse.

Beauregard Wood asked Candor, “You were going to tell us something, Prince?”

“Yes, General. Although you may have resigned your commission, there was still a possibility that your life or freedom could be in danger if the Thuliban found you.

As I am sure you have learned, the Thuban draconians had infiltrated the various

terrestrial governments long ago.”

“Yeah, the normal patriotic militaries of both the Soviet Union and NATO knew that. And my grandfather, who also became an American general, hated it. After the Cold War ended, he became good friends with Soviet Afghanistan War veterans. But none of them were ever able to do anything about the Thuliban, which, as a terrorist group, had

instigated terrible attacks that had killed innocent people all over the world.

“The Thuliban had cynically - cold-blooded as they were and are - manipulated the political and religious differences of humans toward their own purposes.”

“The Thuliban had divided and conquered,” said Jimmie, as everyone joined in

listening to the conversation.

Candor continued, “Although the combined efforts of the Earth Space Forces -

in which General Wood loyally served - and their secret Draconian allies had tried to attack our Brave Brats and Feather Dancer here in our solar system, they had not succeeded, and they were absolutely unable to follow us light-years out on the Rigel-Alcyone limb of our galaxy. Their spacecraft were simply way too slow.

“The alpha-mercury fission that Jimmie and I developed was and is faster than light, and the new hybrid gravity-lens system was and is even faster than that ... it is

faster than gravity itself, which is propagated far faster than light.

“The Thuliban Draconian Space Force had a reluctant contingent of Earth spacemen with them. This splinter group was composed of loyal military officers who had grown to question the Emperor-who-has-no-clothes Thuliban. It became obvious to all of them that the Thuliban were not serving the interests of Earth as a whole, or of any of its nations, religions, or ethnicities.

“Although our esteemed General Beauregard Wood had already resigned his commission and holed up here on Mars in Hesperia, other Earth spacemen had been ordered to accompany the Draconian Thuliban in their illegal dirty-nuclear rockets.

Participation in this illegal black operation had not sat well with the multinational

Earth force. Their dirt-nukes were fast, but not as fast as ours. The worst thing for the Earth people on this apparent suicide mission was the risk of exposure to radiation levels lethal to mammals but not to adreno-reptiles. Rads, barns, that really messed with mammals.

“American, Russian, Ukrainian, French, British, Chinese, Malaysian, Japanese -

am I leaving anyone out? Oh yes - the newly emergent Luna nation.”

“Wa-de-wa-wa! The Loonie faction!” Makende enjoyed that.

“Right,” Candor rumbled. “Among the group of pilots was a Maori tattooed in his

traditional way. And there was one who had volunteered for this illegal black operation out of patriotism for Mars and the Syrtis colony. This guy had a rather megalomaniac streak. He apparently hoped to install himself as Emperor of Mars under the Thuliban. He hated the hippies of Hesperia.

“And so, tensions mounted among elements of the mission that was seeking to

destroy our mission to the Pleiades, and to prevent us from greening Mars with our gift comet. My cousin the High Prince of Thuban had foreseen a possible insurrection. For this reason, he had separated the Earthlings, placing only one of them on each of the seventeen Thuliban craft.

“The High Prince of Thuban had always hated me for my rebellious abdication

from the Thuban hierarchy on Mars. He had always urged my assassination after my self-imposed banishment to the great Valley of Candor where Jimmie and Khlilia found me. I am glad I did not eat you, my pets,” Candor said aside to the couple.

“This is perhaps why the High Prince of Thuban had placed the megalomaniac

pilot from Syrtis directly under his command and in his own fighter craft. So, when You, Captains Memnon and Quirk, entered into the space battle around the comet, the Maori and his splinter group were already fighting it out with the Thuliban, and I joined them in my newly modified Brave Brat. Someday, I will find the High Prince of Thuliban and fight it out with him claw-to-claw.”

Everyone sighed. The struggle always continues. Mars was left with a grouchy genetics expert god one again. The only guy who knows the Thuliban cool and cold code.

What was really nice was that now you did not even need a tank-suit, just some

insulation in the cold seasons, which still prevailed almost everywhere. There was better air on Mars now, and it got better and better every year, every sol.

A lot of snow fell those first few thirsty years, but they still call them the thirsty thirty. There was some ice that got formed.

The biggest miracle was the water. It took a long time to build up and get stable. We learned that it is not the molten nickel core, but swirling waters that generate the protective Van Allen Belts of Earth and now Mars, and other largely liquid-surfaced planets everywhere driven by rhythms.

People began to grow trees. Almonds grew near the sea, and Hellas became a great sea, the other side of which you could not see.

Although the Sea of Hellas had turned into a sort of morass, it was real hard not to have a good mood.

“You going to Mars, kid? Aren’t you a little young to be travelling so far all alone?”

“Let’s have a drink of fresh comet-water,” Captain Quirk said to Captain Memnon. “It’s better than brack juice.”