Doc Sherwood
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Prelude
Planet Grindotron was the Silicon Valley of the quadrant. Peopled by a race of small squashy life-forms that were to all intents and purposes defenceless, the culture that evolved there had predictably enough been one dependent on technology for physical tasks. Thus had Grindotron gradually established its present standing as a wonderland of gleaming megalopolises and meticulously-maintained expanses of outstanding natural beauty, famed the galaxy over. Grindo science was among the most advanced in the known universe, and its spongy exponents lived in contentment with super-intelligent robots catering to their every need.
By Doc Sherwood5 years ago in Fiction
Abduction of the Farns
Low over Eshcaton’s obsidian crust a blocklike juggernaut brooded, its hover-jets kicking up whirlwinds of synthetic ether which swirled in counterpoint to that planet’s perpetual storm. The Foretold One, stationed at middle-height by the north face of this paraphernalia, was flinging lance after lance of his twilight tint from one hand after the other in relentless bombardment upon the temple entrance. Eshcaton’s ancient sanctum was subterranean, and could not long withstand such a pounding. The quartet of venerable sages who studied there knew as much, and with all the inevitability on which Harbin had reckoned they were presently staggering up the rough-hewn spiral steps and out into the gale.
By Doc Sherwood5 years ago in Fiction
Sisters
The clone 4-H-N was roaming down an open balcony high up amidst Grindotron’s technological towers, happy for Dylan on his recovery and looking forward to seeing him again. Suddenly she was jolted out of these pleasant reflections by a blur of fiery red, which shot past the edge of her walkway and sought an empty spot of sky beyond the megalopolis’s peaks.
By Doc Sherwood5 years ago in Fiction
Neetra's Message
And there she was. It so happened that the small space-lounge was already candlelit, but now this soft illumination was supplemented by a source which for many of the attendees proved more romantic still. For far above the beehive bouffants of girl Mini-Flashes and tables loaded with half-eaten hamburgers appeared the golden-glowing features of Neetra Neetkins, in holographic projection no less lovely than the genuine article. The highlights of her russet locks were like waterfalls that tumbled and twinkled down upon the gazing crowd, while those mysterious inviting depths where Neetra hid her hairpins blended gently with the shadows of this darkened room and framed her shining face.
By Doc Sherwood5 years ago in Fiction
Delinquents, Chapter Four
At the first glowing gusher that would send her in the direction Mini-Flash Bobbypins had gone she ran, to jump straight in with her feet together. Just as 4-H-N had previously deduced, the rushing currents rubbed her bare cheeks and legs a good deal more than you’d expect at Headquarters and she suspected she’d be bringing half the beach back with her in her hair, but there was no faulting the swiftness and efficiency with which she was borne to the floor above. This new segment of their hollowed-out space-rock boasted a monumental arched ceiling which 4-H-N’s feisty thermal was blasting her at. As she barrelled clear of its fountainhead she tucked and inverted so her soles were pointing at the landing-site, then upside-down galloped the span of its dome in a race against her own impending inertia.
By Doc Sherwood5 years ago in Fiction
Delinquents, Chapter Three
On into dark unfrequented space-lanes the Mini-Flash motorists trawled, until they came upon a gargantuan asteroid which to 4-H-N resembled the sort of sea-stone which a myriad marine-worms had burrowed through and through. Like a petrified bath-sponge writ large it hung, each of its million mantle-holes the mouth of a different twisty approach to an interior which looked lit, and not by flame for this amber luminosity tended more to the fade than the flicker. So it all seemed to 4-H-N at any rate, though by now she was starting to suspect she’d had one tappy smell-bomb too many.
By Doc Sherwood5 years ago in Fiction
Delinquents, Chapter Two
4-H-N knew the girls, though she’d never spoken to them. Frequent visitors to the gym such as herself couldn’t but be aware of this widely-storied clique and the magnificent irony they beamed over Flashball courts and flight-simulators. When they trained on the latter they did so without any need for air-jets, and by all accounts played hard. They wore regulation tunics and boots as Mini-Flash Brace did, but unlike him were soon to graduate from these neophyte uniforms whereupon each girl would receive the honour of a Flash Club costume uniquely her own. Even now it went without saying the underwear glimpsed beneath their beige was never anything but the most expensive and absolute best this galaxy’s fledgling lingerie trade could furnish. Almost involuntarily 4-H-N gave her flouncy skirt a last tuck-in check, while concluding the white butt-frills really had been a mistake.
By Doc Sherwood5 years ago in Fiction
Delinquents, Chapter One
The first blast always flipped 4-H-N’s ponytail upside-down so it stood higher than the top of her head. Suspended a foot or so above the floor-vent she pointed her toes at this starting-spot and waited, fast-moving currents rushing past her legs and arms and cheeks. What the wind was doing to her skirt was everything you signed up for when you played Mini-Flash sports, but 4-H-N hoped her opponent was enjoying any quickened heartbeats prompted by that view because she reckoned it was good for one more at most. Turbines and bellows beneath the arena’s deck were fast recovering their breath after the preliminary push, with a view to raging at full fury. Sure enough, subsequent to the interval 4-H-N had estimated she shot heavenwards like a surface-to-air missile, her ponytail now plastered against the back of her sweater and her skirt sleek and streamlined over knickers and thighs.
By Doc Sherwood5 years ago in Fiction
Disqualification Tablet, Chapter Four
Leaving the lost city to the silence it knew best, the racer began to sprint. Joe was fast situating himself in a place light-years away and calendar-years far gone, and this alien road whose psychedelic undulations he was even now negotiating was transforming into what his road had been. That was where the powers of The Four Heroes were to be tapped. Set Joe down on that strip, and nothing could keep pace with him.
By Doc Sherwood5 years ago in Fiction
Disqualification Tablet, Chapter Three
Split-seconds of cannoning on at maximum burn carried our heroes round the Veirls along the wall of the tunnel and unto the night like a scarlet dart. Here the geography of Disqualification Tablet underwent a marked change, for on either side of the track as it wound its way close to the planetoid’s plane, the unmistakable traces of a lost city were rapidly starting to rise. Joe wondered whether it was mere manufactured scenery, or if there might once have been actual life on this outlandish world? Great nocturnal arachnoids perhaps, capable of clinging to their sheer-surfaced habitat and negotiating its perpetual dark, and true to this theory there was something of an insectile feel to the architecture itself, gargantuan hives with interconnecting spurs glooming black against the star-studded sky in Acheldama’s penumbra.
By Doc Sherwood5 years ago in Fiction
