The Next Flight of the Icarus

by Rudi Dornemann

You had to know where it was — and when, because it was just solid rock if you missed the moment. But, with a good map and a watch set right, you’d find it: the door in the side of the rocky hill. And inside, the wreckage of the slipship.

That’s what we called it, because we figured it must have been made to pass through solid objects, maybe phase between universes or something. We used to argue about whether it was made by aliens or time-travelers from the future. I argued time-travelers. Everything was human-sized — the chairs at the right height, the buttons not too big or too small, and the screens mostly at eye-level.

“Could be alien time-travelers,” said Dhalya.

“Could be,” I said, even though I didn’t think so.

We named everything — so we could find our way around; so it seemed more cool than eerie. There was the glass altar, the dentist chairs, master control, and the room full of sinks. The whole ship, for obvious reasons, we called the Icarus.

We’d never noticed the lump in the middle of one of the desk-shelves. It must not have had glowing symbols on it before.

“It’s a clock,” said Dhalya. She pressed buttons, held her own wrist up near it.

Shapes flowed and flickered over the lump. They blinked once, again.

“I think it’s on,” I said. The numbers weren’t quite in time to the second hand on Dhalya’s watch, but they were shifting with a regular pulse.

And then I looked up. Some kind of multicolored melting nebula special effect was happening out of the window that we’d always thought was just another wall.

We weren’t alone. Creatures were everywhere on the multi-level deck, hurrying from one station to another on their too-many-jointed legs. It was hard to know if they were always this frantic, or if they realized they’d just been uncollided with a large rock.

“Hah,” said Dahlya, barely squeaking out the words. “Not human.”

One of them stopped to look at us with spinning, faceted eyes.

“No,” it said. “Not for a long time.”

But Wait, There’s More

by David

Warn’t my fault that durn ice shelf cut loose. I was happy as can be to have it stay right where it set. But a man’s got to eat. After the GM plant shut down there warn’t no jobs. I was scraping by when I seen this ad on the TV, all about magic water fountains that never run out. I figured they’d need some salespeople. I rung the number they showed on the screen and sure enough, they had some openings. I went to a training session in a motel room. They didn’t have nothing to eat or drink cept water. Which, ‘cording to them, was free. I never seen such a cheap-ass bunch.

Guess that don’t matter now. I come on back and started travelin’. I talked about them water fountains and I lent one to Justin at the BP cos he said he would tell everybody where he got it. They started a-sellin’. I had four or five at the fourth of July picnic. I took a bunch of orders, and I sold ever one I had there with me. Pretty soon I couldn’t hardly keep up and needed to hire me some help.

That summer was drier than a coal-miner’s throat on Sunday, and the water fountains was sellin’ like crazy.
I knew the water come from somewhere. But I just kept sellin’. No, I ain’t guv it a thought. Don’t think no one else did neither. Not till all hell broke loose. An iceberg bigger than Alabama does attract some notice. I’ll be damned if it’s my fault it run over them islands, though. And it’s not like it run over ever blessed one. They’s more than 700 of them suckers, the way I hear it. I’m sorry about New Orleans, and Venus or whatever that italian city is. I’d make it up to ’em if I could.

Dunno where they come from. Ever’body been askin’ that. I ain’t got no clue. Don’t know nothin’ bout no flyin’ sorcers. I didn’t see nothing but that ad, and the fellow who ran the training meeting. He talked funny and he was real tall, 8 feet if he was a inch, but he warn’t no alien – he didn’t have them big eyes and bald head like they do.

The end