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While Natalia related what had happened I heard them break down the door below. I heard them enter like animals. I heard them smashing things, probably the treasures we had seen earlier. By all appearances they were bolded by the fast falling darkness. The night was their time.
While Cira protected her parents, and Natalia shouted at Jill and Mark in the room next to ours, I heard Cira yelling something about yrock, yrock, the word for straw.
Those animals never even tried to break the upstairs door. By all appearances, they were going to burn us alive. The grounds around the house were now swarming with these people. I turned the camera on for one last time and propped it up onto the windowsill.
"The ship can't do a thing for us," shouted Natalia as she saw me.
"No, Natalia, but I can, I think. And you must help me."
I called everyone together. "We must embrace each other, tightly. Natalia, Jill, you must help me with the Bohr/Miller effect!"
We aimed for the ship's control center.
No one there was more surprised than I was that we made it back to the ship that way without Martin's help, or Boh's. And did things get moving after that aboard ship! After merely a second had elapsed there was no doubt in anyone's mind who was in charge of the ship now. It was Natalia. For the first time in my life I realized that there was some justice in giving female names to hurricanes. She was more dynamic now than the fasted whirlwind.
"The whole damn lousy mission is dead!" she shouted. "Our entire lading team has been murdered, including the captain. Bring the shuttle back up!" she shouted at the first officer who tried to hide behind standing orders. "The captain is dead, you hear! Everyone has been killed! No one survived, but us."
Reluctantly the officer gave in to her demand and brought the empty shuttle back to the ship. The video transmission from Mahesh's place amply supported her story. The six of us, Natalia, Jill, and I, and Mahesh, Cira, and Alenaah, together with the control center crew, watched the video projection in utter disbelief, wondering how in heavens we had made it out of this hell ourselves. We watched the screen in this stunned state until the camera was consumed by the flames and stopped sending pictures.
Once the transmission stopped, Natalia ordered the ship to be placed into a higher orbit. Mahesh, Cira, and Alenaah were put up at the captain's quarters. There was little space on the ship for as long the reconstruction after gravity change was still in progress.
Natalia and Jill and I took turns at the bridge.
A full crew conference was set up for the same night, and an alert was issued that we were to be notified whenever the space travelers re-appeared who had previously visited the ship. At the conference all the video images were shown. Natalia related once more what had happened. Especially telling were the images recorded from Cira's window with the crowd yelling below smashing our bicycles to pieces as though they were evil demons that threatened their civilization. The smashed them onto the ground until the spokes broke and the frames splintered and could be twisted into a grosteque mess.
Against this terrible madness as a background a group memorial was held for the people who were killed in this atmosphere of horror. Against the darkness of this background even the captain stood out like a gentle saint and was remembered as such.
The memorial was designed by Jill to quickly became a celebration of our humanity, a celebration of great riches that we all shared in the sphere of our hearts of unspeakable beauty and an endless Soul.
Bohr appeared promptly the next morning. Actually, I should call him Olaf from here on, according to his real name. He appeared with precise timing just as breakfast was being served. He wasn't shocked at the captain's demise, nor at the death of the others.
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Stories about
War
from novels by Rolf A. F. Witzsche
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