Aphelion

I think this has what's called a straight-line plot. Nothing really surprising happens. It's all actually rather dull.

I was hoping that the 'Rudy' character or maybe one or more of the 'boyos' were going to do something to screw up the aliens' plans. I was disappointed. Hell, they didn't even screw up each others' plans -- or those of the cops, who also did nothing.

Well written and nicely set up. Too bad it didn't go anywhere. Mr. Rustam missed a chance at producing a memorable story.

Lester Curtis wrote:I think this has what's called a straight-line plot. Nothing really surprising happens. It's all actually rather dull.

I was hoping that the 'Rudy' character or maybe one or more of the 'boyos' were going to do something to screw up the aliens' plans. I was disappointed. Hell, they didn't even screw up each others' plans -- or those of the cops, who also did nothing.

Well written and nicely set up. Too bad it didn't go anywhere. Mr. Rustam missed a chance at producing a memorable story.

In my acceptance note, I said the underlying theme was one of poetic justice, however accidental. Rudy, a manipulator, ended up being used as a puppet... not that the aliens knew this or cared. And in the end, Rudy paid for his past and planned crimes in a rather more extreme way than, say, an assistant college football coach of recent infamy. (One might wonder why the aliens, as advanced as they were, didn't have the means to extract sodium from seawater or table salt (both easily obtainable, as opposed to metallic sodium, which is relatively hard to come by because it reacts so strongly to water or an oxygen-rich environment and a teensy spark...))