The flivver descended vertically toward the green planet circling the old, orange sun.
It was a spaceship, but not the kind men had once dreamed about. The flivver was shaped like a crude bullet, blunt at one end of a fat cylinder and tapering abruptly to a point at the other. It had been slapped together out of sheet metal and insulation board, and it sold, fully equipped, for $15,730. It didn't behave like a spaceship, either.
As it hurtled down, its speed increased with dramatic swiftness. Then, at the last instant before impact, it stopped. Just like that.
A moment later, it thumped a last few inches into the ankle-deep grass and knee-high white flowers of the meadow. It was a shock of a jar that made the sheet-metal walls boom like thunder machines. The flivver rocked unsteadily on its flat stern before it decided to stay upright.
Then all was quiet - outside.
Inside the big, central cabin, Grampa waved his pircuit irately in the air. "Now look what you made me do! Just when I had the blamed thing practically whipped, too!"
Genre: Science Fiction
It was a spaceship, but not the kind men had once dreamed about. The flivver was shaped like a crude bullet, blunt at one end of a fat cylinder and tapering abruptly to a point at the other. It had been slapped together out of sheet metal and insulation board, and it sold, fully equipped, for $15,730. It didn't behave like a spaceship, either.
As it hurtled down, its speed increased with dramatic swiftness. Then, at the last instant before impact, it stopped. Just like that.
A moment later, it thumped a last few inches into the ankle-deep grass and knee-high white flowers of the meadow. It was a shock of a jar that made the sheet-metal walls boom like thunder machines. The flivver rocked unsteadily on its flat stern before it decided to stay upright.
Then all was quiet - outside.
Inside the big, central cabin, Grampa waved his pircuit irately in the air. "Now look what you made me do! Just when I had the blamed thing practically whipped, too!"
Genre: Science Fiction
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