SUNDAY SCHOOL (TRAMPS Book 2)

by Ray Blackwell

  Terri is going down two paths.

  Perry killed over a dozen grayskulls, BRAVO

  And we have new alien trinkits to play with. Will elaborate when we find out more.

  And, oh, we’re two weeks from nowhere.

  Rand Welsch

  MOVIN’ ON

  Two weeks of travel lie ahead of the wary crew and the beaten and battered small vessel. Shortly after their escape from the Reticulan ship, things seemed to return back to an almost normal state with one exception.

  Mitchell, bored with the normal routine of media entertainment followed by sleep and then followed by bridge duty, remembered something on the third ‘evening’ after his shift.

  He excitedly hurried back to the space suits and removed handfuls of colored glass-like shards. He stuffed his own trouser pockets until they were bulging with the crystalline odd figures.

  After arriving in his own bunk he spread them out on his bed sheet. There was nothing apparently significant about them other than they proved to be amusing and ‘pretty’ as it applied as well as any word.

  They were all closely related in size and shape being flat on the bottom and while the edges were irregular, they all came to a chiseled end or tip. They also came in colors of blue, red, amber, violet, yellow and green or jade.

  On his bed they clanked together, sounding as light as wind chimes, when he bounced the bed. He toyed with them but nothing happened. Mitchell began thinking he had no more than alien knickknacks.

  While other would have still been mesmerized by the little artifacts, Mitchell quickly grew bored and swept them off his bed with one arm. They gleefully and charmingly pinged and chimed as they danced to a standstill, except two. Two that landed just right in the floor. Two that hit the perfect and easily accessible balance if an individual knew what it was. The two being a red and blue shard that the bottoms had faced one another and quickly attached like weak magnets held extremely close to each other. The sound was constant, light, continuous and beautiful.

  Mitchell slowly leaned over to look at the singing duo. Mitchell’s eyes widened and grew. He momentarily locked site with them and was trying to comprehend if what he saw was real. The two shards were attached and remained where they fell. Scattered around the red and blue shards were the other shards. But the floor became invisible in a two foot diameter around the attached shards.

  Mitchell lifted the two shards from the floor and the floor reappeared.

  He lowered the shards and again the floor disappeared, revealing the electrical connections and the grav plating underneath.

  Mitchell then lifted and pulled the shards apart and the singing chime stopped, but when he reattached the bottoms, they quickly resumed singing like a tuning fork.

  He took the dual shards and held them up against the bulkhead. He could see the vacant corridor outside.

  A grin crossed Mitchell’s face. These were not for sale. There were enough colored shards for everyone on board.

  *** The end of Part II***

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