New story!

1/13/2005 04:01:00 p.m.

Wrote a challenge story (the challenge topic is "First Contact"), titled "Outside, Looking In". Excerpt:

King Jupiter sat in the center of his vast gravity well like a marble cupped in the palm of a hand, cloud-swirled and acrawl with fierce storms. Tiny moons, named and unnamed, gyred about him, slaves to his immense mass, unable to ever escape their orbits.

I could feel the storms' energy a hundred million kilometers out, lightning strikes larger than planets setting my ethereal body to tingling. I knew without asking that the others felt it too. As one body we turned toward the banded orange world, aimed ourselves at the pulsing channel of pure electricity flowing between Jupiter and Io, and dove, flattening ourselves out as though we were in an atmosphere, as if here, in the cold vacuum, we needed to be streamlined.

We cut the pipe of energy, screaming wild exhilirated cries to all the unwinking stars as we did so, burning not with pain but with raw joy in the torrent of power lashing through our misty bodies. Once, twice, thrice around, gaining speed with every cycle, and then it was time to bid adieu to the king of all worlds.

Full story removed since I've submitted it.