IS THAT YOU XELUCHLI?
By DICK HETSCHEL
Orena and Xeluchli meant well. But had
they obeyed the rules, had they remained
bodiless observers, they would have saved
BUP, that .O2F star, a hellaceous catastrophe.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories March 1952.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It was a perfectly conventional tour, once around the Milky Way with stops at several of the major stars. It was supposed to take about eighty-eight million years so they planned to be back for supper.
In the beginning the students had remained in a fairly close knot around mundo Karftahiti, their instructor, but as the tour progressed some of the more venturesome strayed further and further from the rest of the class.
Dro Orena and Dro Xeluchli had wandered a greater distance than usual from the crowd and were jamming experimental thought webs into a large space vortex when Xeluchli signalled to Orena to tune her mind off the lecture frequency. It was against the rules, of course, but then Orena supposed Xeluchli would take the blame for her if they were caught, so she switched over to the conversational band.
"Want to have some fun?" asked Xeluchli.
Orena continued to stare into the space vortex. "How?" she asked.