One Special Star

Amid a volley of percussive lead-in pummelled out by the robot drummer, spotlights ignited and backing-vocals swelled and with bass and lyre blasting at their lustiest, Cherry began to sing. Every bar she breathed from ruby-glossed lips was sweet sorrow made symphonic, flawless in relation to the melody’s long-drawn-out wails and sudden wracking stops, yet at the same time seeming to crack under the agonies mercilessly invoked.

Petunia, even stuffed into her snuggest sweater with the tips of her shiny tresses teased to flip-up action usually achievable only on low-gravity worlds, was already fighting back the sniffles. With lyrics like that, you’d almost think Cherry had been there the night her heart broke. No wonder people said she was psychic. Surrounded by second-gender specimens all swaying or crooning along to the song, Petunia reckoned she must be unique among her own subspecies for feeling unhappy tonight.

This, though an exaggeration, was not out-and-out self-pity. Most of the sector was in fact celebrating. Dylan Cook had located at last the four abducted wisemen, and even now Alliance ships were on their way for a rendezvous to do battle with The Foretold One and bring the galaxy’s beloved elders home. Such news might have raised Petunia’s spirits at least a petun or two, had she not already known all about it. For the distant twin planets where Dylan waited, beyond which Harbin was holding the farns, hadn’t always been nameless despite what the Interplanetary Broadcasting Service now claimed. Actually these silent celestial sisters had once been called Drenthis and Nereynis, as Neetra’s message made quite clear to Joe and his circle of supporters on that night Petunia could now hardly bear to recall. Nor did she need any other details to be sure that that same star-system out in the remotest rubbibubbacles of the quadrant was where Joe was now.

Petunia finished off her Earth-style hamburger in one big gulp, tears starting to her anguished violet eyes at the memories it stirred, and immediately ordered another.

She supposed she’d just have to travel light-years through the stars above to find her way to her one true love, or at any rate those were the words Cherry was singing right now. Having to put up with rottlebottles like this however was getting a bit much, Petunia thought to herself with another little choke. She was genuinely sorry for the beastly things she’d said about Joe’s jacket, and more than willing to pretend she was sorry for the other things she’d said about Neetra. Joe however had left before he’d had the chance to comfort and forgive her as he doubtless longed to do. If it had been up to Petunia she’d have bounced to him barefoot in her best bikini across the springy short turf of a sunlit lawn, Bominabus blossoms on the boughs above adding their delicious twist of honey to her melting-peanut-butter-and-tinned-peaches perfume-swirl. Wanly Petunia wondered why a girl who smelled as lovely as she did should ever have to feel so sad.

Flashshadow must have gone too, for Petunia noted Cherry’s pink-haired backing-singer was filling in on her friend’s familiar instrument. Flashtease too, Petunia guessed, as she hadn’t seen him around. She missed her devoted little snigglybobbles almost as much as she missed Joe. This evening Petunia had literally and figuratively pulled up her clean white ankle-socks, hoping this would help her get other intimate garments out of the tangle they were in. However, he whose cause she had once been certain she would faithfully follow forevermore still seemed to be making that difficult. Literally as well as figuratively, due to where she’d sewn the logo.

Outside the walls of the dance-club an entire pleasure-belt was alive with merrymaking, ten thousand mega-miles of nightspots glittering in the interstice between open cosmos and the gas-giant Xandreth, for this starlit strip was built upon the rings which encircled that planet as those of Saturn do. Dylan Cook’s smile was everywhere, beaming reassuringly from rolling newscasts that shone from the giant holo-screens, and sentient life-forms peregrinating with pints in pseudopods roared hearty healths to their brave fighting men and girls and robots who were going to sort out this kidnapped farn business once and for all. Not one of these partygoers so much as guessed that thundering headlong on a collision-course with their pleasant revels was a hijacked prison-transport, venting catastrophic gas from a dozen bulkhead-breaches while several smaller assailants speeding freely through space surfed in and out of these plume-trails to harry the hulk on its terminal dive. And as this spinning spiralling spewing chaos bore ever down Xandreth Rings, Cherry was rounding off the first number of her set:

I’ll search through the universe, flying so far;

I’ve only one wish, so where’s that one special star?

Above the penthouse restaurants and rooftop gardens, a rather large wishing-star twinkled into being in the black sky.

I’ve only one wish, so where’s that one…special…

The lights went out, the music sputtered to silence and the dancefloor shook under the soles of Petunia’s sensible shoes. Next second all was back to normal and she was blinking round the restored brightness in some astonishment, the same as everyone else. The manager meanwhile, a pint-sized apoplectic blob, wheezed with relief to see his generator hadn’t been knocked out by that galacto-quake or whatever it was. He reminded himself that even on the Rings of Xandreth, every successful night was allowed one minor glitch.

And really, an alien of his age and experience should have known better than to think things like that.

NEXT: 'GATECRASHERS'