Callistan adj.

For some little time the attraction of the little planet had made us independent of our gravity lines. As soon as we should enter the Callistan heaviside layer, the retractible helicopter screws would be broken out to oppose the gravitational pull, so that under the single influence of magnetic attraction we should drift downward in a bee line to our berth in Nunei. And it was in that moment of my premature self-congratulation that I had the first inkling of disaster.

He found the robot at last, motionless, prone, and plastered with mud, but still intact, at the edge of the spreading Callistan colony.

We inspected our pocket Lectronics and left. We didn’t know exactly what to expect and weren’t sure but that our first steps on Callistan soil might not be our last, but none of us hesitated an instant. In the ‘Dime Spacers,’ courage is a very cheap commodity, but it is rather more expensive in real life.

The prop was shoved against the ceiling, and they swung their bodies against it to batten it into place. Then they waited to see. Slowly the beam arced under a pressure greater than the soft Callistan timber was cut to resist; as the men stood aside it snapped with the noise of a gunshot.

The picture changed on the illuminated panel that filled the forward end of the shelf on which Michael lay. A haggard blonde woman sprawled apathetically in a chair. ‘Rundown, nervous, hypertensive?’ inquired a mellifluous voice. ‘In need of mental therapy? Buy Grugis juice; it’s not expensive. And they swear by it on Meropé.’ A disembodied pair of hands administered a spoonful of Grugis juice to the woman, whereupon her hair turned bright yellow, makeup bloomed on her face, her clothes grew briefer, and she burst into a fast Callistan clog.

A deep, recorded voice spoke from a slot beneath the display: ‘This was Vice-Admiral Stephen Murdoch, as he appeared in his last solido, taken only moments before he embarked on his last, heroic mission. Admiral Murdoch is renowned as the hero of the Battle of Ceres and of the Siege of the Callistan Redoubts. He was lost in space in the year eleven thousand, four hundred and two of the Atomic Era.’

What is so newsworthy about President Meacham having an affair with a Neptunian? My own wife is an egg-laying seven-limbed Mercurian porble, and I take extreme umbrage at your pedestrian notion that there is something unsavory about interspecies romance. More to the point, President Meacham has already admitted to youthful indiscretions with a Tritonian sea-slug and a Callistan muuda-muuda, and in fact was once married to an ammonia-breathing trisexual marsupial native of Alpha Centauri III when she served as our ambassador to that troubled world.

I headed for the bridge, sitting down in the captain’s chair. After the influx of Callistan settlers, there were a number of times when I’d wished to see the bridge exactly as it was now, devoid of people. Just me and silence. But the bridge looked so empty. A ship without people was nothing but metal and circuits with no heart or soul.