That looks like Rigel over there. And Arcturus. And Canopus. No, wait. That’s Canoli, a most unusual deep space object. Instead of a molten nickel core, it’s filled with almond paste. And that dusting of what looks like dry ice? Powdered sugar.
Oh, hi. Just getting our bearings here out in deepest, darkest space. Kind of hard to do without a map – yes, I’m looking at you, Marvin (my personal robot assistant), who left the map case under his workbench back home. Right, so … chartless, clueless, and nearly devoid of rocket propellant, Big Green is meandering its way to the first stop on our interstellar tour in support of Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick, which is charting in the Crab Nebula this month, I hear. (Yes, I read the trades.)
How did we get into this pickle, this sitch, this hot water, this plate of spinach? Well … it all started when we hitched a ride on the charred remnants of the comet ISON as it made its way out of the solar system. It’s kind of like driving in the wake of a big semi on the Thruway to save gas – doesn’t work real well, but you can pretend that you’re doing something useful. Anyway, we got a grappling hook into ISON as it passed and it yanked us into motion, headed for the hairy edge of all we know and hold dear.
That was the good part. The bad part was when the cable snapped in the vicinity of Jupiter, a hostile world that gave Cowboy Scat a right panning (like I said, I read the freaking trades!). We were caught in the gas giant’s gravitational pull, helpless but for the fading memory of Star Trek plot devices from fifty years ago. Or was it Lost in Space? Well, whatever the source, we used the “slingshot effect”, accelerating toward the planet and using its gravity to hurl us straight out the other side of the solar system.
Gripping drama indeed. Except now we’re, well, lost, and bobbing along practically at random. So if you’ve got friends on Aldebaran, just tell them we may be a little late for the gig next Wednesday.
