Dragons and Stars, Chapter 1: The Stranger

A lumbering asteroid turned slowly in the light of the distant sun. Twenty miles long and eight miles wide, it floated in the great blackness of space like a lost rock. One end of it humped upwards like a thumb.

It was towards a crater on this thumb that a small spacecraft fell quietly, drifting down with perfect grace into the crater and vanishing from sight. All was silent then on this edge of the asteroid, silent as it had been for so many millenia before in the ponderous stillness of space. An hour passed, and then a figure in a red suit struggled above the edge of the crater and out to stand, panting. The person looked down the steep slope of the asteroids’ giant thumb at two distant struggling figures and stood waiting.

After a moment the figure lifted a small screen scanner to its black glass helmet and zoomed in on the approaching figures. They appeared to be two suited miners riding on the backs of two strange lizard-like shapes. The distant riders were laying forward on the backs of the lizard shapes and rushing up the slope of the asteroid in skittering charges.

* * *

“You great cheating shmuck!” shouted Hanna, clutching the side straps on her lizard’s harness as she slid sideways and down into a small crater. “By Abraham, you will pay for pushing me!” She screamed with laughter as she tumbled off her komodo dragon and lay floating on her back, holding the lizard by one strap of his harness.

The great lizard was puffing with exertion and its face plate was fogging slightly. Only its claws protruded from its red suit harness. The claws were wicked, long sharp things that were now digging into the loose gravel of the asteroid’s surface, holding it and her to the wall of the crater. The lizard stood licking out his yellow tongue in the glass bubble of his helmet and eyeing Hanna.

Pulling herself back up and onto her lizard, she looked up. On top of the crater Neal had stopped his lizard to look down at her and smirk happily. Hanna urged her lizard forward with a loud hiss between her teeth, causing the komodo dragon to skitter its powerful legs up the wall at a frantic rate. Her lizard reached over the edge of the crater and pulled itself lightly out, one claw stuck into the gravel as the rest of it gyrated slowly in the near weightlessness of the asteroid. As it pulled itself back down onto all four legs, Neal made a mocking gesture at Hanna and leaned forward on his dragon.

Laughing wildly, Hanna adjusted her grip more tightly on her dragon’s harness and hissed loudly over her radio to it. It began paddling its legs forward at an amazing rate, its claws clinging to the rocks and gravel as it surged forward, waggling its powerful tail behind it and knocking up dust, which floated up lazily into space. The large lizard seemed to sense the urgency of its rider, for it didn’t slow as it came up even with Neal on his suited komodo, but pulled itself slightly ahead. Hanna turned her head in her helmet and looked past her wild black curly hair back at Neal, who was grinning and urging his “steed” with small hisses.

Suddenly Hanna made a loud clucking sound with her tongue. Her komodo swung his head to the left in his helmet to look behind, planted its feet and snapped his tail at Neal. The thick tail caught Neal right across the chest and sent him tumbling off his dragon, head over heels above the gravel ground of the asteroid. He scrambled helplessly for a hold, but he was floating too far off the ground and only managed an awkward slow-motion somersault above the ground as he spun farther away and higher into space. After fumbling a few long moments he flipped open a box on the back of his left wrist and pushed a button on his boot electromagnets. His legs suddenly swung down towards the asteroid and his boots pulled down to the ground. He flexed his legs and landed. Then he began lifting his boots awkwardly step by step to make the long walk back towards Hanna and the two panting komodo dragons.

Hanna waved her hand at his distant figure.

“Told you!” she called. “God rewards the righteous!”

“God shows mercy to the wicked,” Neal shot back over the mic. “And that’s why I’m going to be merciful to you.”

“Merciful to me?” she said, laughing wickedly. “You can be “merciful” to me when you CATCH me.”

She turned her head forward, hissed, and shot skittering forward on her komodo up the slope and was soon out of sight over the top of the ridge.

* * *

The twenty-mile long asteroid turned slowly, unceasingly, until the great king of planets, Jupiter came into view. It was large enough to fill half the star-packed sky. Its great red spot stared like a malevolent eye up at the asteroid. The asteroid ignored the red giant and kept turning, dancing quietly to a song only it knew.

* * *

Hanna rode for several minutes, checking the screen on the back of her left wrist occasionally to measure her distance from Post 3 and adjust her course. Neal and Hanna were being sent to Post 3 to deliver spare drill bits to the team there. Hanna approached a large crater and directed her komodo to skirt around the edge. As she passed a large boulder, a figure in a red suit suddenly jumped out in front of her.

Neal heard a scream piercing his radio headset. “Hanna!” he shouted. He had just started up the steep slope, several minutes behind Hanna. His blue eyes stared up the slope in alarm, his brown hair sticking up in all directions inside his helmet as he looked right and left for a sign of her. “Hssssssssss clock clock clock!” he said to his komodo dragon, an emergency sound. The suited lizard seemed to become a mass of panicked skitters as it hurried forward across the slope, which was slowly turning toward the great red planet far below.

At Hanna’s scream her komodo had stopped in its tracks, its claws dug into the ground. For the second time that day Hanna had lost her seat, flying head over heels towards the red figure. It caught her and held her to the ground. Hanna struggled and kicked, one kick connecting squarely with the figure’s stomach and sending it flying back into a boulder. Hanna turned a graceful jump in the air that put her beside her komodo and with a quick pull she pulled herself onto it.

The figure in red came running back again from the boulder, waving its arms. Suddenly it stopped, holding its arms up as though Hanna had a gun aimed at it. Cautiously it lowered one hand to a knob below its helmet. Hanna backed the large lizard back a step. The figure’s black texaglass helmet seemed to lighten, its dark tinting dissolving into clear glasslike material. Hanna sat staring on her lizard, her mouth open.

The figure wearing bright red was a woman. Her hair was also dyed a bright red and hung limply down the sides of her head. Her face was worn with wrinkles, though she was only perhaps forty years old. But in her green eyes and the upward tilt of her lips something shone out at Hanna, a sort of powerful joy.

Hanna stared at her a moment, mesmerized, then remembered herself. She held up two fingers, then four, then one. The woman nodded and adjusted some numbers on the screen behind her left wrist.

“Roger, echo five, hello,” said Hanna. “Roger, echo five, hello.”

“Hi there!” the woman said.

“Hanna!” interjected Neal over the radio. “What’s going on?”

“We’ve got a visitor,” said Hanna. “She scared me when she stepped out.”

“She?” said Neal. The asteroid belt was known for its high male concentration.

“Yes, she,” Hanna said. “But I think you’re a little too young for her….” Hanna heard a murmur of indignation.

The woman took a step toward Hanna and her komodo.

“Amazing! I’ve never actually seen one of these komodo dragons before. I thought no one still used…those.”

Hanna patted the lizard beneath her. “Independents do. A lot cheaper than paying out the goyim prices for land scooters. And land scooters take more biofuel than a lizard eats in a lifetime.”

She studied the woman. “How did you get here?”

The woman broke into a huge beautiful smile. “I just landed, praise God, right down there in that crater. Are you Jewish?”

Hanna tugged her large lizard toward the edge of the canyon and looked down.

“Yes,” she said. Far below, a small black spacecraft sat on the floor of the crater like a quiet beetle.

“Why did you come here?” Hanna asking, turning back.

The woman stepped forward, careful not to avoid the lizards claws, and touched Hanna’s suited arm.

“I don’t know,” she said. “But God told me in a dream that I should come here. To Eros.”

“God?” said Hanna, looking more closely at the woman.

She caught a movement in the corner of her eye and saw Neal rushing around some boulders on his lizard. He pulled to a stop near them and stepped off, staring at the woman.

She looked back at him earnestly. “You are a follower of Jesus,” she said, raising her suited arms.

Neal stared at her. “Yes,” he said. “How do you know?”

“I saw you in a dream,” she replied, and turned to Hanna. “Is there anywhere I can park my ship properly? I didn’t see a base signal. So I scanned for life signs and found you two.”

“We try to keep a low profile,” said Hanna, “in case of unwelcome visitors.”

“Am I unwelcome?” the woman asked, suddenly looking tired.

Hanna took a step closer, grabbed both of the woman’s hands in hers in the way asteroid miners have, and stared the woman in the eyes. She considered a moment, searching the wrinkled face and kind eyes.

“No,” she said. “You are welcome. Fly around to the other side of Eros and I’ll radio someone to light’ your way to the base.”

“Thank you,” said the woman. She gave Hanna a clumsy hug and waved to Neal. “See you later, Neal,” she said. “Oh, hallelujah! God is sooo good!”

She turned and pushed herself off the crater ledge to float down towards her ship far below.

Neal switched his radio to private communication.

“She knew my name,” he said. “Did you tell her?”

“No,” said Hanna. She looked thoughtful. “Maybe she knows your granddad from somewhere and heard about you. Anyway, don’t be a grumpy puss. You can ask her more tonight at the Meal.”

Neal scowled. “I don’t like her,” he said.

“You don’t even know her!” Hanna said. She touched her radio button. “Providence, this is Dragon Two. I just sent a visitor your way in a small black spacecraft, a woman. Please light the way for her.”

“Dragon Two, this is Providence,” a man’s voice echoed back. “We’ll have the lights on.”

Their helmets beeped suddenly.

“This is Post 3, paging two yahoo’s,” said a voice in a thicker accent. “This is Post 3 paging two young and useless yahoo’s. Where in the comets are you two?”

“We’re on our way,” said Hanna, “There in ten minutes. At least I will be, I think Neal might be twenty.”

She gave Neal a push but failed dislodge him from his dragon.

Neal sighed and seemed to forget his mood. “Post 3, this is young and useful yahoo number one. Please be advised to have tissues ready for all the tears Yahoo Two will cry when she arrives second.”

“Roger thet, Young Yahoo One,” said the voice. “I’ll have my very own pink tissues out and ready for her.”

Neal turned to wink at Hanna but she was already gone in a cloud of dust.