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Stories from the Verse
A Dozen Verses
Chapter 102: Cooper 106
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Kondor 289
Orange wispy clouds drifted against a purple sky as the smell of new-mown hay filled his nostrils and warmth penetrated his body. What planet was this, anyway? He had seen Venus and Mercury, and neither looked like this. They had been headed for, where was it? Somewhere beyond the asteroid belt, some moon of one of the gas giants where there was another alien civilization. This must be there--although it was terribly comfortable for a moon in a distant orbit. He vaguely remembered a theory that Jupiter radiated a significant amount of heat, and had it been a little larger our solar system might have been a binary star system--which of course was nonsense, because God had created Earth, Sun, Moon, stars, and planets to be the ideal home for the people He wanted to make for His own. Besides, if Jupiter were verging on becoming a second star, how could anyone live there? He had met a Jupiterian, hadn’t he? Yes, it was--it was--
He sat up abruptly. This was definitely not one of the moons of Jupiter. Indeed, none of what he had just seen in his mind’s eye was the reality here. Blue skies, white clouds, fields of what might be wheat or hay, he was not a farmer, but this was Earth, or very like it. He had once again versed out to another world, and had been dreaming of an alien landscape undoubtedly because he had been visiting them for a while. It was time to get oriented to his new world.
Once again he had made the mistake of dying some distance from his possessions. He had fallen out of an accelerating spaceship, and that meant that he had fallen while the ship was rising and moving away from him until he had hit the ground and shifted himself and his belongings to this dimension. Relaxing, he got a direction from the scriff sense which should be where the ship was when he left, where he would find the rest of his gear. Mercifully, it was not above him somewhere; hopefully that did not mean it had crashed to the ground.
He didn’t even have his walking stick.
Well, there was nothing for it. He rose to his feet, brushed himself off, and began the hike. At least the weather, what he made a comfortable September at northern temperate zone latitudes, was good for the walk. He removed the helmet from the suit and took a deep breath of the fresh air, wondering what God had in store for him this time.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
