Doc Sherwood
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Thundering Across the Stars, Chapter Two
Most of the galaxy’s old warlords, including Antroar, lacked direction in an era of peace. They had joined the Solidity, because there at least they’d known where they stood, but the Alliance had proved a bitter disappointment and the general feeling among warlords was one of anger that such promising potential despots as Toothfire and The Flash Club should have sold out. Antroar in the aftermath of his return from Earth had been investigating avenues whereby he might recoup former glories when he’d stumbled on records of the experiment which created Contamination, and in the process acquainted himself with several of the latter’s fellow victims who were likewise at a loose end. Together they had stripped down the old laboratory complex and ferried its equipment to the pocket-dimension for some experiments of their own. Contamination on discovering this had given chase, even though the crisis that sent him in search of his old contemporaries had since been and gone, for there were answers he sought as well as a threat to the galaxy to be overcome.
By Doc Sherwood4 years ago in Fiction
Convention
Raquel Welch in her fur bikini towered arm-in-arm with the cosmic character-actor Rulan Oa’Lumb, while elsewhere the latter’s frequent costar Lotham Pemris was juxtaposed alongside Jaws. Beneath such cardboard giants as these, heads belonging mostly to Mini-Flashes navigated lesser islands bearing movie memorabilia from two different galaxies, or ventured through cavemouths in the conference centre’s bulkhead walls whence glowed screenings of the known and the never-before-seen. Joe, on a stage for musical entertainment which was otherwise deserted, took up the microphone.
By Doc Sherwood4 years ago in Fiction
The Flash Club Galactic Wildlife Revue
Joe called an emergency conference at once. He’d never known Mini-Flashes to riot, but one thing he did know was that in this galaxy you could afford to rule nothing out. This programme from the past that the boys were so noisily demanding couldn’t be the one our hero sought – he could see already it was far too widely and vividly remembered for that. None of which helped Joe to any revelation on what his event’s most requested show so far might be.
By Doc Sherwood4 years ago in Fiction
Creating Some Content
Grindopolis was equatorial, but the climes to which Neetra and Joe’s interplanetary teleport brought them would on Earth have been somewhere in the darkest South Pacific. Waves blasted themselves white against a coastline of sheer basalt cliffs, while volcanoes grumbled redly in the distance. All Nereynis would have been thus before the world so much as froze, and the universe itself was still cooling. Lingering vestiges of sunset hung on a sky of luminous black.
By Doc Sherwood4 years ago in Fiction
4-H-N
The first sun of Grindotron was still some hours from appearing above the horizon, and in the general grey of 4-H-N’s room the tiny square ink-bottle sitting on the nightstand looked blacker even than something black had any right to look. 4-H-N supposed that was not surprising, given what she knew of its contents.
By Doc Sherwood4 years ago in Fiction
The Special Program
At Flash Club Headquarters was an unfrequented wing where the dormitory and refectory doors had lately been magnetically sealed. From the practice-room, which was the only area still lit on a daily basis, one exit not barricaded likewise led to individual stasis-pods for out-of-hours use. Arching overhead, emergency blast-shields had been promoted to a permanent post. The Special Program was in lockdown.
By Doc Sherwood4 years ago in Fiction
Masterclass
The land lay level, gold gradually mellowing to amber, and here and there the foamy jets of irrigation-hoses seemed as still as scattered brush-strokes on an oil-painting rendered in sun. Against a sky whose blue bore the first deepening tints of afternoon was suggested Nottingham’s distant outline, each slender rectangle blocked-in with the same hue of haze. Through the flat fields the road ran, and parked haphazardly along its grass verges were a black space-racer and a red, the occupants of each sitting atop their hoods.
By Doc Sherwood4 years ago in Fiction
Pursuit
Auntie Green shrugged off the hunk of roof that had fallen on her. There were times she was almost willing to swear that one of these days she was going to get too old for this. Not today though. Nor had Auntie Green reached the age she was now by being unprepared. She hastened through the ruination to the discreet private exit she’d insisted on having installed immediately after the first Special Program incident, and flinging aside with her bare hands the rubble in front of it finished her swing by caving in the closed hatchway with the sole of one boot. Possibly the manual release still worked, but why waste precious seconds finding out?
By Doc Sherwood4 years ago in Fiction
The Incursion, Chapter Four
Picking up speed the Silver Cat Lord seemed to tense its suspension-springs. Powerful pneumatic hind-legs slammed tarmac and in one phenomenal pounce the mobile mass careened clear over beachside apartment complexes, its spinning tank-treads passing penthouse gardens while a purposeful prow and flying forepaws pointed to the path of inevitable descent. Landing in an explosion of sand the Silver Cat Lord growled about to face across open shore the stalking Grindostater unit, for the etherium actualizor had replicated geography as faithfully as it had architecture, and an inland sea shimmered as far as this new Nottingham’s crest. Above the waves Heaven’s arch was all but taken up by the orb of Nereynis, like a moon far nearer than Earth’s own, and whose celestial ring made the Mini-Flashes think of Xandreth while Joe’s reflections, as they had done earlier that day, ran on Saturn. A relatively recent astronomical feature, it was made of rubble which had been a sister-world called Drenthis before Dylan cracked that planet.
By Doc Sherwood4 years ago in Fiction
