Happy birthday Madeline!
Flash felt happy journeying through space with his child and his friends. He felt fulfilled and content. The time passed quickly, and suddenly one day, he looked up to see Olo shimmering on his viewing screen. The trip back always seems to go so much quicker than the trip out.
Flash held the baby up to the window. She reached out toward the rainbow colored sphere as though it were a toy, and this gave Flash an idea. He called upon the table of elements and asked for a tiny, soft replica of Olo. Out bounced a rubber ball, that was a detailed globe of the actual planet. The closer Flash looked at it, the more detail he saw. With a magnifying glass, he found the cobalt plateau where he had touched down. The baby just put the ball to her mouth, cooing and giggling. Peck looked on with interest, and Lem napped.
Watching the baby with the ball, Flash noticed how quickly the baby was growing. When she first came, she mostly just slept and ate. Now, she looked at things. Sometimes she grasped things and put them in her mouth, as she did with the Olo ball. At times, she looked so intently at Peck and Lem, that Flash felt sure there was an unheard conversation going on between them. Come to think of it, the baby communicated with him non verbally, too.
This all crossed his mind while he gazed out on the surface of Olo. This colorful little planet had changed so much, so quickly. What did it mean? Then he realized how quickly he was changing, too. Like the whales had done with Olo, his daughter had brought color into his life, and he knew he would never be the same again.
Flash thought of how short a human lifetime is, especially as he looked out on the universe. It goes by in the blink of an eye. It seemed to Flash that no time had passed since he was a tiny baby like this one.
Nothing ever stayed the same.
I’m a completely different person than I was when I left Earth, he mused aloud to Peck and Lem. And yet, he said, looking at the baby, in a way, I haven’t changed much at all since I was her size.
I’m just mad about you,
he said to the child who was teething on Olo.
As the mother ship sailed closer to its destination, Flash’s anticipation grew.
He bounced the baby on his knee and read to her from the Ololian book. Lem an Peck listened along. They all longed to set down and experience that world in the flesh.
It was no real surprise to Flash when his radar screen detected a group of objects approaching his ship from behind. What did surprise him was the size of the group. Nearly one hundred whales, from huge bulls to newborn calves gained upon him until finally the pod surrounded him.
These whales looked different than the dozen he had seen when he left. No longer snow white, they sparkled in bright color, each in its own hue.
The little calves, which were about the size of the TNI2, playfully circled the mother ship, and then darted away, flipping their bodies into weightless somersaults before coming back to do it again.
By this time, Olo dominated the view from the mother ship. Superimposed over the brilliant landscape, were rich tones in the shape of whale bodies. At times a large whale came close to the spaceship, eclipsing Olo completely.
Then an enormous yellow whale moved into position facing the viewing screen. The inhabitants of the ship could see nothing but yellow, until the front of the whale began to dip, and The planet seemed to rise above the dorsal horizon of the giant. Once again, the song began. Those ancient tones that Flash knew so well, sounded more joyous than before, and once again, he was spellbound. The baby stared, wide eyed and silent, and it seemed she forgot about the Olo ball she still clutched with her tiny fingers.
The song grew as another whale joined in, magnifying the sound in a way that Flash would never have thought possible.
More large whales joined the chorus. The calves rolled and played, making clicking sounds as they learned the language of their ancestors.