Polaris
\ poh-LAIR-is, -LAR-, puh- \ , noun;
1. Astronomy . the polestar or North Star, a star of the second magnitude situated close to the north pole of the heavens, in the constellation Ursa Minor: the outermost star in the handle of the Little Dipper.
2. a two-stage U.S. ballistic missile, usually fired from a submerged submarine.
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“Daddy, when are we gonna be there?” Shelly wined from the back seat. Her father, Adam, was tempted to rub his
temples, but at the speeds they were traveling, taking his hands of the wheel
wouldn’t be a great idea.
“We’ll
get there when we get there.” He said,
trying not to snap at his very young daughter.
“But
when will that be?” She asked.
Adam
risked a look at his wife, Gina, who was busy with her own tasks. She sighed and turned to look at Shelly. The child looked back at her mother with eyes
that showed her frustrations on being kept cooped up for so long.
“Dear,
we’ve been over this. We have a very
long way to travel, so you need to be patient.”
Gina said, as soothingly as her fraying nerves would allow.
“Than
how come we can’t go faster?” Shelly
asked.
“Because
there’s a lot of rules that tell us how fast we can go. It’s so we don’t hit anything and get into an
accident.”
“Like
what?”
“Well,
other cars for one thing.”
“I don’t
see any cars.” Shelly looked at the
window and saw the family’s surroundings go by at blinding speeds.
“That’s
because everyone’s going so fast that we won’t see each other until we’re
really close. And if that happens, than
we might hit each other.”
“Oh. So we can’t go too fast because we might run
into someone on accident?”
“That’s
right dear.”
Shelly
sank into her seat, suddenly much more aware of what was going on outside the
windows. Gina turned back to her
task. She looked at the small glowing
display in front of her, thankful that her daughter had finally quieted down,
even if it was for an unpleasant reason.
“Honey,
we’ve got some bad weather coming up.”
She said, reacting to the report on the display. Adam nodded and made the needed adjustments to
their course.
“What’s
bad weather got to do with stuff?”
Shelly asked. She had lost focus
on watching for other vehicles, as her mothers words had piqued her
curiosity.
“Well,
dear, remember in school when you learned about all the stuff that’s out here?”
“Yeah?”
“Well
some of it is very bad for the car, especially when we’re traveling like we
are. So we need to avoid as much of it
as possible.”
“Or we’ll
have an accident?” Shelly asked.
“That’s right. So, right now mommy needs to keep an eye out
for stuff in front of us so we don’t run into anything, alright?”
Shelly
nodded and resumed her personal vigil of looking out the window. She had quite a bit more she needed to look
out for now.
“I told
you we should’ve taken a public transport.”
Adam said, speaking quietly enough that Shelly wouldn’t hear. “At least she knows to mind her manners a bit
better in those.”
“Oh
those things are so inconvenient though.
They have to stop at every station along the way. We’ll get there in half the time this way.” Gina said.
“Yeah,
right. It just seems to be taking twice
as long is all.”
“Oh be
nice dear. You know we need this.”
“Yeah,
yeah. A fun family get together and all
that. I just hope Polaris is worth the
trip.”
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Everything is better in space! Well, maybe not everything. That whole dyeing in a horrible, cold vacuum should even the slightest thing go wrong would probably suck. And you know those vast distances make the odds of something happening increase greatly. And well, any number of other horrible things. But hey, it's SPACE!!!
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