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Trelandar had a Queen who could fly in a metal bird! Who like the fabled Queen
of Talon was a mistress of the air itself!
"Perhaps later on," Jon answered. I suspected he meant to say something like
"when I'm old and gray, ready to meet Lys", but didn't dare for fear of losing
"face" before everyone there.
"There are legends among my people of such machines," Sa-she-ra spoke up.
"There is even a place where some remain." I suspect that the Nevadas found a
military base missed by the Lorr in The War of
2047. If they weren't so "hostile" a people towards us, I'd like to make an
expedition there, the place being from what I have been able to determine, in
an area of the former United States that was once used by the Air Forces of
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the World Federation. Of course the aircraft would be useless now even if
intact, and the manufacture of the liquid hydrogen fuel would be far beyond my
own capabilities even as the
Queen of Trelandar. I have also plans of visiting Talon, seeing the great
Tarls for my- self. I will of
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course fly there in Black Lady. I am just light enough that a Tarl could carry
me for short distances, I
believe, although it would not be able to launch itself off the ground on the
level carrying a weight as heavy as me from what I have been told by those
knowledgeable about such things. Most Tarl "girls"
being small, usually in their teens, and weighing about a hundred pounds or
so. The women of the royal family of Talon being all women of small statue,
such as Sela Dai, who is only 5'3", 110#.
I slipped my arm around An'na as we walked back to my house, the lovely blonde
obviously having a degree of difficulty walking due to the differences in
gravity between Earth and Mars. While An'na is more capable of withstanding
Earth's gravity than most of the women of Mars, she does find it
uncomfortable, as her body is adjusted to a gravitional pull only 38 percent
that of Earth. I had noticed
"such" the first time I had seen her, but had not paid it much attention then,
as Raspa's appearance was enough to make you forget about just about anything
else! I am used to the Lorr now, and the sight of one doesn't make me
"cringe", but they do terrify most people, perhaps of the "power" that they
possess.
"I didn't see a Lorr disc land," I told An'na, although it was quite possible
that one had during the time I had been on the Janis explaining to its crew
who I was and who they now served.
"I flew Black Lady here," An'na smiled. "It wasn't hard."
"Did you ever fly an airplane before?" I asked, amazed. An'na is somewhat more
intelligent than her mother, perhaps hav- ing an I.Q. as high as mine if not
higher, but still, to fly an airplane and land it without any previous
instruction seemed to me just simply impossible! Something that no one, not
even
An'na would be able to do! Of course An'na flew the Starfire, but that
operated on an entirely different principle than did my airplane! On the other
hand, her own mother did something even more amazing as you will see further
on when she actually managed to fly Black Lady and make takeoffs and landings
with just one flying lesson!
"I used a computer to stimulate flying an airplane and prac- ticed with that,"
An'na smiled back. I
wondered if she felt the same towards me as I sometimes feel towards my own
friends here in the 26th
Century. She came from a civilization as advanced over that of the 20th
Century as the 20th Century was over that of the 26th! A civilization where
anti-matter was used as a pow- er source, where anti-gravity was a common
means of flight, and where one relied upon that technology for nearly
everything else!
"I came here to see my mother, and now I learn that she is dead," An'na said
to me, sitting there on my bed as I changed into something more "suitable"
than a long black silk gown. The crown of the
Queen of Trelandar carefully put away for safekeep- ing. I could see the
moisture in An'na's eyes, but she was of a stoic culture where one made few
close friends and emotion was looked down upon. Yvette dressing me, her dark
eyes glistening.
"I plan to avenge her death," I answered, Yvette buckling my harness around my
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