The Natural

Excerpted from The Star Dancers by Jeffrey Caminsky, available directly from the Publisher, or from Amazon, or at a bookstore near you.

 From Chapter 18

* * *

“...AND I find that awfully hard to believe.”

Cook just laughed. Like Jeremy’s, his voice was slightly groggy with drink. “I swear, Jeremy— ”

“Nah, no way.”

Leaning back against the soft couch cushions, Cook clasped his hands behind his head and sighed. The observation deck was almost empty. Aside from the two of them, only a few of the younger redshirts had gathered to watch their progress through the sky. The plush sofas were arranged in groups, each group forming twin semi-circles around a coffee table. Cook and Jeremy were just to the center of the viewing screen, looking at each other over a half-empty pitcher of beer, their second of the day. The redshirts were off to one side, just inside the doorway leading to the elevators, their laughter filling the lounge.

“Well, all right—have it your way, then,” Cook laughed.

“I mean,” Jeremy squinted, disbelieving, “you can’t tell me that you don’t have some magic tricks— ”

“No, none.”

“—to help you pull all the stunts you pull on the bridge.”

“I swear. Well, actually....”

“Aha!”

“No, but really. All of that stuff is just showing off. You know, parlor tricks. Nothing magic about it.”

Jeremy snorted. “Like correcting course headings because they ‘don’t look right?’ ”

Cook started laughing.

“Or telling McKenzie exactly how much she’s off by ‘this time’—then making the changes on her screen for her while discoursing on the literary styles of various playwrights and poets none of us have ever heard of before?”

“All right, I guess you’ve— ”

“Or snapping your fingers just as the ready light flashes on Palmer’s weapons screen?”

“How does showing off— ”

“Psshh— ”

“But it means nothing.”

“I’ll tell you what it means. It means that you’ve got more tricks up your sleeve than a stage magician. That, or you’re one of the great geniuses of all time.”

“Nonsense.”

“Skipper....”

“Well,” Cook leaned forward, smiling mysteriously and lowering his voice. “I may have some gifts for navigation— ”

“That’s sure an understatement.”

“— but it has nothing to do with intelligence. Nothing at all. And there are no tricks to it, Jeremy. None.”

“You know, if you don’t want to tell me....”

The captain shook his head, then turned toward the viewer, his eyes looking beyond the stars and into the endless Black. “I don’t understand it myself,” he said at last. “But for as long as I can remember, I’ve just—well, it’s a lot like having perfect pitch.”

“Look, if you really don’t want to explain.”

“It’s either there—or it’s not,” Cook went on. “With pitches…well, I just hear the tone. It comes out of nowhere and it’s just there for me, any time, any place. There’s nothing you can do about it. Well, I can’t explain how I navigate, either. I just do. I just know the course to take. I can feel it in my brain. And I can see it, too. I can close my eyes, and sense it—on the screen, in the air, like it’s floating in space, just waiting for me to come along and grab it. All I do is let my mind relax… and it comes. I don’t have to do anything. It just comes. And I’ll tell you....

He turned to face his first officer and smiled. Maybe it was the beer, Jeremy thought. But for the first time, Jeremy wondered whether, for all the captain’s cocky self-confidence, Cook was as baffled by his own gifts as anyone else.

“I’ll tell you something I’ve told to exactly one other person—whose name is none of your damn business, Jeremy Ashton. But sometimes I wonder how long it can last. How long before it just stops coming. How long before my mind goes blank, just when everyone needs me the most.”

Cook emptied his beer glass with a long deep swallow, then leaned back on the couch and looked again out toward the stars. “That’s why it’s nothing more than parlor tricks and never will be, either. I don’t know how or why I can do it. I just can.

“But whatever it is that makes me the skipper I am—whatever lets me sense things before they happen, or compute course changes in my head—has nothing to do with training, or intelligence, or anything else that promotion boards or military manuals or logical minds consider in making promotions or assignments or any other command decisions. I could have the mind of a child and I’d still see things the same way.”

“And I’ll bet you have some swamp land on Isis to sell me, if I believe that one,” snorted Jeremy.

“Then don’t, dammit,” laughed Cook, turning to face his friend once again. “Have another beer instead.”



“Whooshh! Whooshh!”

“Scooter—Scooter! Don’t play with the wheel like that.”

“Andrew , there’s no need to shout.”

“But he’ll— ”

“The ship’s on automatic pilot, son. Nothing he does can throw us off course. Relax.”

Andy Cook shook his head and smiled. Dad was right again. Though awfully precocious for a four-year old, the young boy couldn’t really hurt the ship. Andy could see the Paddington Shoals coming into view again on the screen, the spiraling patch of interstellar rocks guarding what his father called “Paddy’s Pass.” They’d be coming about soon, and heading back home.

“All right—all hands to the control deck. It’s time to come about.”

“Thank God.”

“Andrew Thomas Cook, what kind of example are you setting for your firstborn?”

“Pop, please— ”

“All right, all right. But I want to show you something.”

Andy followed his father back to the control deck. “Okay, Scooter, time to let the grownups play with the controls.”

“But—but Daddy!”

“Scooter.”

“Oh, he’ll be all right, Andrew.”

“Pop— ”

“Come on, Roscoe, want to sit on old Grandpa Tom’s lap?”

“Yeah!”

“Pop!”

“You having fun, Roscoe?”

“Lots of fun.”

“You like it up here?”

“Yeah! Like a woller coaster!”

“Oh—a roller coaster! Did you hear that, Andrew? And it is like a bit of a roller coaster, now, isn’t it, you little monkey?”

As Scooter laughed under a ruthless barrage of tickling, Andy gave it up. His father was having too much fun. And he couldn’t really blame him: Dad loved sailing. He was an accomplished pilot in his day and never lost his love of the stars, but for the last fifteen years he’d had to do it alone. Now, with the new generation, he had hope, and was taking full advantage of the chance. He’d taken Scooter sailing as often as Andy would let him. And even as a toddler, the young boy had loved it.

Andy looked at them—grandfather and first grandson, sailing together through the stars, sharing secrets and dreams. It was so touching, he always felt guilty when he had to insist that they go home.

“You remember what I told you about the controls, Roscoe?”

“Yeah.” The boy nodded his head. “Well, some of it.”

“Some of it—good boy. But you remember all about steering the ship, and coming about.”

“Yeah.”

“All right—watch this Andrew; I’ve been working with him. And he’s awfully good. A lot better than you ever were. But then, so’s his teddy bear.”

“Thanks a lot, Pop.”

Tom laughed. “Roscoe, you want to guess what course we should take to get back home?”

“Okay.”

Andy shook his head. His father had tried the same game with him, trying to get him interested in where they were going. It was fun for a while, seeing how close the two of them could come to the proper course before checking it on the navigational computer, but it was utterly pointless. As good a navigator as Dad was, even he had trouble coming within twenty points of their true heading just by dead reckoning. Andy was lucky to come within a hundred, and he was convinced that it was the biggest single reason why sailing through space scared the wits out of him. All that kept them from getting lost was a finicky electronic brain, one that the weakest ion squall could send fritzing, leaving them to wander about from here to the end of creation.

“All right, Roscoe… how do we get back home?”

Andy chuckled as Scooter crinkled his little brow, the way he did when he was thinking as hard as he could.

“Do you remember what we did to get here?”

The boy nodded.

“Well, just take us back the other way.”

“Pop— ”

“Acchhh!” said Tom, waving his hand disdainfully at his son.

“That way,” said Roscoe.

Andy laughed, more at his father’s crestfallen look than at his son’s mistake. His face all serious, Scooter was pointing just off the port bow—and halfway toward the keel. But that was exactly the opposite direction from Isis. Even a groundtoad like Andy knew that home lay west of the Shoals.

“Good boy,” chuckled Andy. “I’ll bet you hit that one right on the nose.”

“Well, run along, Roscoe,” said Tom, hiding his disappointment from his grandson. “You go play astern. We’ll take it from here.”

Scooter skipped playfully down the gangplank and into the hall. Andy watched his father’s hands dance over the controls. The old man mumbled to himself as he set the ship’s computer to take a fix on the navigational beacon orbiting Isis.

“Son of a gun—you know, that kid’s smart, Andrew,” Tom said at last. “Real smart. He wants to know about everything. And he usually does so well. I don’t understand…I just don’t understand.”

“Guess he just inherited his father’s instincts for sailing. Must be something in the genes.”

The two of them laughed, and Andy just sat back and watched his father in action. It always amazed him: at home, Dad could barely fix a leaky faucet. In space, he was a different man—calm, collected, supremely sure of himself. It gave Andy a sense of relief to know he could trust his father to get them home safely. Today, though, the feeling didn’t last very long.

“That’s impossible.”

“What is?”

“We couldn’t have turned ourselves around that much.”

“Pop—what is it?”

His father looked up, half-worried, but with a look of burning curiosity in his eyes. “The computer says that we’re coming at the Shoals from the East.”

“What?”

“She says we’ve been clear around them…and we’re already heading West, toward home.”

“Impossible.”

They looked at the course indicator.

“Heading to Isis,” it read: “790x122 south.” Looking at the pilot’s display, the guide marker showed their proper relative course—just off the port bow, and almost half-way toward the keel. They looked at each other, then back at the course indicator, then at each other again.

Then, ever so slowly, they turned to look aft. For the longest time, they did nothing but watch a small boy play with his toy dinosaurs on the cabin floor.

© 2009 by Jeffrey Caminsky

Aliens in our Midst

Excerpted from The Star Dancers by Jeffrey Caminsky, available directly from the Publisher, or from Amazon, or at a bookstore near you.

Excerpts from Chapter 20

“Ys’Slalt—fetch me the kettle. Bl’Dryna—I will need the stewing spices. Gal’Kisl, the sauces will need constant monitoring. No, no—Slalt, you fool, not the simmering pot! The kettle—the large, black kettle!”

Like his friends, ls’Shen raced about trying to obey Ra’Henl’s instructions, secretly cursing the old foodmaster’s reluctance to see one task through to completion before commencing the next.

“Dryna—Kisl—come. Attend me. Ys’Slalt, pay heed. What we need now is the barest hint of jizril seeds in the sauce....”

As the Foodmaster’s back was turned, and knowing that he would not be missed for quite a while, ls’Shen stepped lightly into the outer cooking chamber and peered through the curtain. The Banquet Hall was filled to capacity. Dignitaries of all ranks and races graced the Table of Honor. At the lesser tables he could see the courtiers in attendance, and smiled to see the jugglers and clowns and acrobats, their faces streaked with ornamental paint, frolicking on the amusement floor in the middle of the room. From the far end of the banquet hall he could hear the palace musicians, playing a sprightly dance.

But what drew his attention were not the entertainers, nor eminences that he recognized by name or by face. What captured his eyes were the four creatures seated near the center of the Table of Honor between Lady Glishenda and her brother-in-law, the Expanse Minister himself. Raptly he stared, his eyes widened like a gawkhen’s, until a gentle tap on his back caused him to jump nearly to the ceiling.

“Shen—Shen,” whispered Jarenda, the foodservant. Ls’Shen’s gill slits paled with fright. He had been so absorbed with watching the Terrans that he had failed to sense her approach. “How come you—”

“Jarenda, please,” he interrupted, vainly trying to recover his dignity. “Never approach a foodmaster or his apprentice in such a fashion. It is entirely too disruptive. And under other circumstances— ”

“You mean,” Jarenda smiled, her eyes laughing merrily, “had you not been gaping at the longnoses.”

Ls’Shen snorted angrily, only to rediscover that this female found his temper an endless source of amusement. Jarenda was becoming entirely too familiar, he thought, but like all males he found a female’s playful teasing too enticing to resist. And so long as they were alone, he took no steps to disrupt the growing warmth of their bond.

“They look different than I had imagined,” he said at last, peering through the curtain once more. “Not nearly as furry. And their snouts are not at all what I expected. They are pointed, and their faces wear a comical look about them. Calling them ‘longnoses’ is something of a misnomer, I think. ‘Pointy-snouts’ would be more accurate.”

“Well,” Jarenda whispered, poking her own head through the curtains, “the name ‘Strange Ones’ is certainly appropriate.”

“That I do not doubt, but why do you say so? What have you seen?”

“Look at them,” she motioned with her head. “All four of them sweat like wild hogs and yet they insist on wearing clothing. All of them, without exception.”

“Yes, I see,” said ls’Shen. And sure enough, two of them were clad in garments of blue, and two wore clothing of varying hues. But all four of them were fully clothed, though even from this distance he could see perspiration dripping from them like water from a fountain. Even the Veshnans did not carry matters to such extremes, and of all the races of the Grand Alliance, the Veshnan approach to garments was the most impractical.

“And their eating habits leave much to be desired,” Jarenda continued. “See the blueclad Terran male, the one seated next to Glishenda, the Minister’s Consort-of-the Day?”

“Yes.”

“After looking at his sidebowl for the longest time, he finally asked an interpreter the purpose of the washed sand.”

“To aid in digestion,” said ls’Shen, answering the obvious.

“Well, upon hearing the answer, the Terran sampled some—using his spoon to carry it to his mouth, of all things.”

“Incredible.”

“Then he spat it out—all over the table—and started coughing and protruding his tongue from his mouth like a small one with the heaves.”

“Amazing,” said ls’Shen, looking at the one Jarenda had mentioned, who seemed to be viewing his broadleaf salad with some degree of suspicion. The Terran jabbed the greens with his cutlery and examined each fresh pepper carefully before stuffing it into his mouth.

“How can you tell the males from the females?” asked the young apprentice. “I mean, if they are fully clothed and all. It must get rather confusing for them.”

“Well,” agreed Jarenda, “that does pose several problems.”

Ls’Shen closed the curtain and sighed. Much about these Strange Ones simply defied explanation.

“They seem to crop their fur differently, but from what I have observed there appears to be but one sure way to tell them apart.”

“And what is that, my little friend?”

“Terran females are…well, more rounded than their males,” she said, searching for a way to explain the unexplainable. “And they seem to have these—these—bumps— ”

“Bumps?”

“Yes—bumps—little mounds—crests really, right in the middle of their chests.”

Ls’Shen peered through the curtain once more, straining to get a good look at the Terrans. By chance, one of them turned to the right, just enough to give him a view in profile, and a benevolent Fate decreed that it would be one of the Crested Ones.

“Amazing,” he said. For sure enough, there they were, exactly as Jarenda had described. And now that he knew where to look, he saw that the smaller of the blueclads displayed the same prominent features. Less pronounced, perhaps, but unmistakable nonetheless.

“What are they for?”

Jarenda shrugged. “I thought it impolite to ask,” she replied.

Soon, the voice of Ra’Henl came bellowing from the kitchen, summoning his apprentices from all corners of his kitchen to assist in circumventing some new disaster. Beaming with a depth of feeling, ls’Shen nodded at Jarenda, who flushed shyly as she returned to her duties.

“Ls’Shen! Shen, come at once! Where are you, Young One?”

“Yes, Grand One, I am coming.” With a smiling heart, ls’Shen returned to the kitchen, where he had duties of his own that needed tending.

© 2009 by Jeffrey Caminsky