Aquari by DD White
* * *
Eistia the Investigator arrived in his vehicle at the House of Hanson to arrest him. The car’s door side swung upward to open as Eistia’s kilt flipped embarrassingly up as he waddled out of the car. He looked over the house as he approached. The stuff that passed for grass in the yards had been dry and laid flat in a nice uniform arrangement of velvety leaves. Eistia noted that it indicated that there hadn’t been much rain in Keshdesh lately. It had been dry lately, but when it does rain a lot this grass-like plant soaks up the water to transform into an upward pointing leaf that Uranian’s like to use in salads similar to iceberg lettuce. Eistia admired the silent pod-pollen tree as he approached the door. Hanson answered the door with an expression that knew it to be time for him to get arrested even before Eistia began explaining the reason for his visit.
Hanson invited Eistia in as if giving up while Eistia told Hanson, “Hanson sir, I am here to arrest you,
For energy you’ve been tapping into.”
As they entered the main room, Veldada got up quickly to turn off the television device while noticing that the authorities had arrived. Uranians watched a program device like a television. It only had two channels that consisted of basically the state channel and an entertaining channel, and Uranians really had to fight for their entertaining channel.
Veldada explained. “We haven’t used what we were cut off from.
It’s from the ground, any one can have some.”
Hanson offered to show Eistia how he kept his lights and television on. Eistia became intensely interested. He followed the input wires in the back yard out to the poles in the ground while Hanson explained his theories on the physics of naturally flowing underground energy currents. Eistia didn’t mention the letter he already studied in detail on the subject, which had been written by Hanson, but this theory before him had been put to practical use. Eistia genuinely sympathized with what Hanson had discovered here. It could dangerously minimize the Aungtalli monopoly on this energy market. No wonder Ministry scientists were dying, and Eistia struggled with whether arresting him would keep him under legal protections, or was the law just determined to put him to death? Nevertheless Eistia had been under orders to bring in Hanson who put up less resistance than his wife who, so far, had not been wanted for anything. While Eistia drove Hanson to jail, Grega’s voice came over the radio from headquarters. “Eistia, this is HQ calling for
Reporting Eromot took Morgamor
into his own personal custody.
Request further orders from you to me.”
Hanson took a particular interest in this conversation. Were they going to round them all up just for being scientists?
“No more orders Grega from me to you.
Eromot’s a doctor. The case is through.
Hopefully he can cure the poor guy’s head.
Nothing further for that case I have said.
I think no other order should come down
just as long as they don’t try to leave town.”
Hanson relaxed in his seat at that point, relieved that his friend Eromot would not be in danger, unlike himself.
Eromot had been driving down the narrow highway to the distant city of Gulfang at least a thousand miles southeast from Keshdesh. From Keshdesh, the planet’s capital, the highway followed along steep gullies made by the Keshdesh River just before the road opened up to the flatter farmlands at the southern edge of the Land of the Magites. Eromot wasn’t sure if Gulfang, in the Land of the Swarites where the Aungtalli temple resided, would really be any safer. Morgamor in the other seat provided lots of great data while he divined the mysterious messages transmitting into his brain.
“I can choose any vocabulary I want to judge me.
The smile is in the guile,
the guile is in the smile.
Hide the glad,
mad!
I have returned to spin the world
in the air
in the air
in the air.”
The Planet Urania 7,890 miles in circumference with major cities and some rivers.
Eromot began to slow down for a hitchhiker at the side of the road waving an arm up and down to signal a desire for a ride. The vehicle had become pretty packed with all his stuff, and also a crazy Uranian babbled nonsensically in the car. Eromot decided it would be rude not to help another on this remote lonely road. He figured the fellow probably just needed a lift to a nearby farm.
The hitchhiker ran to the pulled over vehicle. Eromot had to get out of the car in order to let the traveler in the back seat. Soon they got situated and back on their way. The new passenger had been full of gratitude.
“Thank you sir for pulling over the car.
The walk to my dad’s farm is very far.”
Eromot made introductions. “No problem my friend, we’re going that way.
Let me know and I’ll stop at where you say.
His name’s Morgamor and I’m Eromot.
I’m good for conversation, but he’s not.”
Morgamor tried to remain silent but he had been on a roll. “I never read it
fed it
dead it
or lead it.
I just know.
Go!”
As the vehicle winded along the steep cliff of the canyon created by the winding Keshdesh River below, a flying saucer caught up and followed the vehicle from above. It would be the passenger who noticed it. “Above us from here where I have just sat
who in this car can tell me what is that?”
They all looked and saw the flying saucer following them, but only Morgamor offered an answer.
“If you set the world free
religion rules oppressive.
If you set religion free
we’ll all eventually agree
on something and be free.”
There was almost no warning before the saucer swooped down and blasted the side of the vehicle with a laser beam to set it on fire and that melted a hole along the side. The solid rubber-like tires didn’t pop, but melted into distorted shapes that shook the car as it swerved over the perilous edge of the road that overlooked the ravine.
Eromot struggled with the door that had become jammed by the damage done by the laser. “We are going over under attack!
Leap from the car while the door I uncrack!”
Morgamor uttered the last words of his life. “Silence isn’t heard
it’s learned
then burned.”
The whole bottom of the vehicle blazed with fire and smoke as it soared off the cliff side to crash against rocks far below. The flaming car tumbled down toward the river as a blazing ball of wreckage.
Above in the virtual particle driven saucer Volock descended to all that was left of Eromot’s vehicle while scanning it for signs of life. The saucer seemed to sniff at the wreckage like a hound dog for a moment before evidently becoming satisfied at what he saw, and then it flew back to Keshdesh. Volock above in the saucer became satisfied to identify the remains of two dead bodies in the vehicle below. They could have led him to the rest of the rebel scientists, but killing them now had been his orders from the Bishop who knew best. The Bishop would be happy to be told that Eromot and Morgamor were both now dead, and were now unable to be a danger to the god’s mysterious plans.
Meanwhile the mysterious plans of the gods rolled on to tip the stability already bubbling on the surface of the star Tze-Doldus. The gods had been teleporting accumulations of neutrinos into the star in order to cause storms of solar flares. Deep under the North Pole Mountain an energy synch gathered an enormous store of solar power that had been building for months and months of Earth time. The storage of energy gathered to a point where it then released a plasma blast up the North Pole that disappeared in a teleportation flash that suddenly jolted the star Tze-Doldus with an injection of neutrinos to cause a perfect storm on the star. The feedback