The Sky Trail

He entered the clearing just past a great green pylon, but failed to see the taut cables it suspended or the pulse gondolas that hung from them. The right skid of the vertibird hooked the first one-and-a-half inch cable it struck. The inertia of the clotheslined autogyro pitched it forward. Its rotors disintegrated on a parallel cable.

The onboard computer cut power, and a burst of shock foam filled the cabin. Explosive bolts fired, the cowl separated from the fuselage, and a chute deployed uselessly. He anticipated impact with the ground, but the vehicle only swayed. Through the greenhouse window, he saw the forest floor tracking a hundred fifty feet below. The vertibird hung precariously from the gondola cable, which conveyed it toward another pylon.

He heard the sedan pass above, and the vertibird was buffeted by the wash of its fans. He clawed through the foam toward the door release. He disengaged the cabin door and kicked it open. Cold rain soaked him as he extricated himself. The rain carried the scent of the forest; mouldering redwood, bracken, and skunk cabbage. He held fast to the struts as he clambered onto the upturned belly of the fuselage. The rain rinsed stinging hair groom into his eyes.

Hindsgaul Acquires Alcatraz Island

2051. "Lensbaron" Mogens Hindsgaul acquires Alcatraz from the Bureau of Land Management with support of the International Indian Treaty Council, representing Ohlone interests.

Cat Picture

Some Other Thing

Mazinga Playing Guitar

Things Were Not Too Simple in This Safari

Things were not too simple in this safari because things had changed very much in East Africa. The white hunter had been a close friend of mine for many years. I respected him as I had never respected my father and he trusted me, which was more than I deserved. It was, however, something to try to merit. He had taught me by putting me on my own and correcting me when I made mistakes. When I made a mistake he would explain it. Then if I did not make the same mistake again he would explain a little more. But he was nomadic and he was finally leaving us because it was necessary for him to be at his farm, which is what they call a twenty-thousand-acre cattle ranch in Kenya. He was a very complicated man compounded of absolute courage, all the good human weaknesses and a strangely subtle and very critical understanding of people. He was completely dedicated to his family and his home and he loved much more to live away from them. He loved his home and his wife and his children.

"Do you have any problems?"

"I don't want to make a fool of myself with elephants."

"You'll learn."

"Anything else?"

"Know everybody knows more than you but you have to make the decisions and make them stick. Leave the camp and all that to Keiti. Be as good as you can."

There are people who love command and in their eagerness to assume it they are impatient at the formalities of taking over from someone else. I love command since it is the ideal welding of freedom and slavery. You can be happy with your freedom and when it becomes too dangerous you take refuge in your duty. For several years I had exercised no command except over myself and I was bored with this since I knew myself and my defects and strengths too well and they permitted me little freedom and much duty. Lately I had read with distaste various books written about myself by people who knew all about my inner life, aims and motives. Reading them was like reading an account of a battle where you had fought written by someone who had not only not been present but, in some cases, had not even been born when the battle had taken place. All these people who wrote of my life both inner and outer wrote with an absolute assurance that I had never felt.

Almost Blue

Almost doing things we used to do.

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