Children of the Old Star Read Online Free PDF Page B

long ago. The photographic plates that had captured images of the heavens now sat collecting dust in the basement of a West Coast museum. Humans, possessing the stars for themselves, were not interested in the antiques. The door opened and a cacophony of voices and music poured out with the people who emerged. Ellis took a deep breath and stepped through the door.
    Inside, the walls were black, but glaring spotlights illuminated stages and tables. The erotic sounds of twentieth century rock music throbbed through the very fibers of Ellis’ being. The air was filled with pungent smoke. It helped enhance his grungy demeanor. He paid a cover charge to a man standing just inside the door and made his way to a table facing one of the small stages.
    A woman wearing enticingly little slunk up to the table and took his drink order. “Scotch, neat,” said Ellis, brusquely.
    Soon, a short woman stepped onto the stage as new musical rhythms began. Ellis recognized the heavy beat of Arabic belly dance music. He looked at the woman on the stage as she began to move in time to the music, thrusting her hips to the pulsing rhythms. Ellis’ drink arrived and he paid the bill.
    Ellis looked back to the woman on stage, watching her taut brown skin and dark eyes. She gave him a smile and reached behind her back, undoing the scanty silver bikini top. She swung the top over her head and dropped it to the stage. Ellis found his eyes drawn to her pert, firm breasts, bouncing to the music. He smiled in a kind of delirious amusement as he saw them jiggle and jump. He noted the little bumps surrounding her nipples and how they were just slightly imperfect, not like the even symmetries of the spheres of the Cluster.
    Ellis frowned, stunned at the thought. He grabbed his glass of scotch and sipped it, then looked back at the dancer. The beat became heavier and she thrust her hips toward him. Still, Ellis’ eyes lingered on her breasts, his thoughts tarrying on how they continued to remind him of the Cluster.
    Finally, the music stopped and there was muted applause. Most of the men in the room sat in a stupor. The waitress ambled by and refreshed Ellis’ drink. Ellis let his eyes wander over the other patrons. He was stunned to see two beings with orange skin and purple mustache-like growths sitting at one of the other stages. “What would Rd'dyggian warriors find interesting in a place like this?” Ellis asked himself. He stood and stepped over to their table. He saw they were wearing translator boxes.
    "Welcome to our humble planet.” Ellis tried to sound enthused.
    The lead Rd'dyggian grunted, his “mustache” wiggling. Ellis recognized the gesture as polite acknowledgment. They remained facing the stage, though and Ellis wondered why Rd'dyggians would even be interested in human women. Their sexual triggers were quite different. For one thing, Rd'dyggian women did not even have teats of any form. Ellis shook his head and sat down at the table ignored by the seven-foot tall warriors. The next woman who took the stage was pale with black hair and large, ebullient breasts. Her glistening red nipples seemed all wrong against the gleaming surface of her pale white skin.
    Ellis swallowed his second drink in one gulp and sighed. He had come to this place to find some sense of release. He tried to let himself be drug into the music and the undulating body on the stage. He was angry, hurt, and lost. In a way, what he wanted was to spend a night viewing women as sex objects and not as colleagues. Yet, these women seemed no more real than the woman in the Cluster vision did. Even more frustrating, he found he could not stop his eyes from wandering to the women's breasts, which also reminded him of the Cluster.
    Finally, Ellis gave up trying to find anything erotic in the figure dancing before him. He looked back at the Rd'dyggians and realized that it was not simple curiosity that had brought him to the table. On Sufiro, the Rd'dyggian warrior, Arepno,