Deep Space
The Leghk Sector
Aboard ISS Belfast Windfall
Arella Newark sat comforably in her primary science lab, situated several compartments abaft the bridge. It was fairly generous as the caravel's cabins went, and Arella had adorned it over the months in the vein of a musty library, complete with shelves of books, glass-cased parchments and a collection of palms from the watery veldts of the Nassau Town Colony.
In the light of a dimmed lamp -- she hated the sterile fluorescent bulbs Biggs had installed all over the ship -- Arella thumbed through the pages of an old Imperial history. It was written in English, which she had been learning since she was a girl. Meanings came with time and raw analysis, but pronunciations were still a matter of conjecture, much as with hieroglyphics in another age.
On schedule: a clanking noise from out in the passageway.
It was Ux and Grix, performing some ritual marching ceremony, chirping and buzzing up and down the corridor that ran the long axis of the starship. Arella set her book down and poked her head out the hatch to witness the latest spectacle.
The two Veloxi were marching in short choppy steps, raving on about something called The Mighty Mandalay. Ux, under a too-large crown, led the way, weilding a bejeweled, golden sceptre with the stately pomp of a drum major. Grix followed closely in trace, his appendages clasped with sublime dignity behind his back, his small head tilted back and adorned by a Wayne Newton godmask.
(Arella suppressed a smile and feigned reverence until the two had passed forward: Veloxi excavators on Old Earth were making excellent progress in what had been an administrative region known as Nevada.)
The insectoid creatures were a marvel. In all things related to mechanics, motion and construction, their aptitude surpassed all other species by an order of magnitude. Culturally, they were strikingly shallow. They had no capacity for layering or development, or anything resembling organic growth -- they simply rolled from one civilization-wide fad to the next; only queen worship was constant.
The procession disappeared behind an airlock.
The hatch whishing closed behind her, Arella reached for a volume on her shelf, this one a relic from Ares. It was a Latin-Enlish dictionary. She flipped to the rear of the dusty old tome, tasting Martian soil each time she moistened her fore-finger.
There. Velox. She grinned at the irony. The Empire hadn't been humorless -- how else could humanity have survived?
Arella gingerly slid the book back onto the shelf. Then she turned out the light and returned to her small quarters for some sleep, the ship humming all around her.
- fin -
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[Curio: A good Latin dictionary will clue you in on "Velox." With "Numlox," you're on your own...]
