Short Story Fiction Contest May 2014 | Page 186

IF PIGS HAD WINGS

by William Alan Ritch

My parents almost caught us at it again last night. My sigpair, Hank, and I were up in my room when they came home ten kilosecs early. Immediately we switched the light, moved the bookdiscs, and adjusted our clothes before they shifted through the door and...

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Hank says I should start at the beginning. OK. My name is June Bulmer. I’m 442 Megasecs old, and in the fourteenth form. And I’m a groundhog stuck here on New Bohemia!

If you’re listening to this diary and not familiar with Federation worlds, New Bohemia is an “Artists’ Colony”. Which means we export the official art for the Federation. Everyone here is supposed to be some sort of artist, musician, dancer, whatever. There are some transient Fed workers here who maintain the automated equipment and do the stuff that the computers can’t. They’re not Bohemians so they don’t count. Of course the Jeffersonians run the spaceport here, like they do everywhere else.

That’s where I was yesterday for my ComServe. I was on the grunt run when the Free Spacer’s ship landed. At first, I didn’t know what it was. It was like the sound of a million gears grinding against each other coming from somewhere in the sky. Looking up from the hovercart, I couldn’t find the source of the noise. Odd. When a Jeffey ship lands you don’t hear anything until it’s less than a kilometer from the ground.

I searched the cloudless sky for several seconds while the horrible sound got louder. Finally, I spotted a strangely colored ship warping the atmosphere as it descended. I still couldn’t see it very well, but it wasn’t like any Jeffey ship I’d ever seen.