Star quest

was a shrill whistle of recognition from one of them just as he flipped the rockets to full thrust and burned the hill away in takeoff.
    Past the missile danger zone, he deactivated the shield and slammed everything into the rockets. He wanted out fast Very fast. His mind was suddenly overwhelmed with the events of the recent past and with his present position. He was a man without a body. The power of that swept at him like a great dark wave. Reluctantly, he allowed the wave to swallow him. He dreamed:
    Once upon a fateful time, there was a village beneath trees whose leaves were as large as a man, dull red, hiding clusters of luscious yellow fruits that were globular and semi-transparent, misty and sweet and cool. To the left of this village, the clump of trees ended at the edge of a broad grassland that stretched almost out of sight to the foothills of the fabulous purple mountains (which were, naturally, worshiped) where the forests took over. Beyond the mountains were more mountains. Then more forests. Then additional plains. It was a primitive world. But that is not to say an unhappy one. To the right of the village was a beach which dropped gently to a crystal blue ocean. That great mirror of water sank toward the horizon and sparkled every evening with the oranges and pinks, the greens and blues of the sunset.
    Once upon a fateful time, there were people living in this village. They ate of the fruit of the red-leafed tree and of the fishes of the ocean. Now and then, a great god-ship would come from the skies and leave them other and stranger foods. This ship had odd words painted on its side: SCIENCE LEAGUE SHIP No. 454/FOR THE PRESERVATION OF PRIMITIVE CULTURES. That was the only intrusion by the outside world into this Eden, and it was accepted by the simple people of the village as a manifestation of the God of Heavens and nothing else. These people were dark with straight, black hair and eyes like ebony chips that glowed with an inner light Nature had given them. Their skins were bronze, their bodies perfect The men were muscular and agile, the women gentle and graceful.
    Then came the screaming dragons from the sky, violating the halcyon world.
    Moaning, spitting flame…
    Scorching the plains, blackening the beaches, smashing the trees…
    And bringing the men, the pale, chubby, worm-complexioned men in the strange breeches and the ruffled, starched shirts with plumed helmets and jeweled chin straps.
    And guns…
    Flames…
    Pain…
    Roaring as of gods in death throes…
    And when the dragons, coughing, sped away, there was an empty village behind.
    They had taken and would use everyone. But worst of all, they had taken a certain two: Tohm, the most handsome man in the village, the boy-man with dreams at the tips of his fingers and flashing lights in the words that he spoke; and Tamilee, his love, his only, his sweetest. Tamilee of the soft form. Tamilee of the eyes like the velvet of the night and the hair like spun darkness. Tamilee with the body of pleasure and the soul of the earth, of the flowers, of the moons…
    And even worse than that, they took these two and separated them…
    He had not seen his Tamilee since. He was "frozen" and taken to a sunless chamber where he waited until one morning they put him to sleep and he died. For all purposes, he had died, for he woke without memory of having ever lived. He woke as Jumbo Ten, that weird metal entity that fought for the Romaghin cause after being educated (in a manner that was really propagandizement) and imbued with a hatred for Setessins.
    But the Fates, those fickle ladies, will often change their minds and lend a hand to those they have so callously crushed before. His web of life had been spun by Clotho who immediately washed her hands of it and moved on to another loom. Lachesis, who measured the length of his strand, decided to fray it down slowly to whittle it to near nothingness. But now, just as Atropos was coming forth with her golden shears to snip it completely, Clotho had a change of heart. Perhaps, she was unemployed and restless that day, looking for something, anything to do. In any event, she stopped Atropos with a kind word and a cold stare, and began spinning again more thread, a tougher filament for the man named Tohm.
    In a giant machine that lolled, a vial of narcotics began to run dry before its time…
    An imprisoned brain began to divest itself of drug claws that had latched firmly to it…
    Drip-driptty…dry…
    A