Monday 8 June 2020

Escape Velocity At Night

Operation Luna, 41-42.

Valeria tries to use the Moon broom for an ordinary air journey but it flies straight up:

"Stars that dawn had been drowning crowded again into sight. The moon stood hard-edged. Sunrise blazed suddenly behind her. Earth fell away as if down a hole." (p. 371)

Stars and sudden sunrise: she is going into space, to:

"...those happy climes that ly
"Where day never shuts his eye,
"Up in the broad fields of the sky."
-see here.

She sees:

Earth big, huge, shrinking fast;
lights of cities;
the sun above a thin, bright, blue and white curve;
more stars than she has ever seen;
the Milky Way "'...clear around the sky.'" (p. 373)




1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

If the stone whose "sympathies" were for Earth's had not been improperly swapped with a space rock, Valeria would have succeeded in her original plan of simply hiding the moon broom.

Ad astra! Sean