The Stork Factor

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Scanned by Highroller. Proofed by the best elf proofer. Made prettier by use of EBook Design Group Stylesheet. The Stork Factor by Zach Hughes CHAPTER ONE Just four years previously Richard Skeerzy had taken the Funland, Ltd., tour around the moon. The tour ship didn't land on the moon, of course. No one went to the moon any more, just around it. The moon was a dead globe of space debris from which the last iota of scientific value had been extracted during the decades before and after the turn of the twenty-first century. Viewed from the tinted ports of a ship such as the Nebulous, the moon was a cold, empty wasteland. However, Skeerzy considered his trip into space to be the apogee of an otherwise ordinary life. Not that Richard Skeerzy wasn't satisfied with his lot. As he had told LaVerne many times, the glory of being one of His creatures in His magnificent universe was reward enough. If, to the pleasure of mere existence, he added the smug knowledge that he, as a relatively young member of the ruling Christian Party, was a Brother on the way up, then that made life only slightly more satisfying. The tourist ship Nebulous started final deceleration thirty minutes out of the Funland Gate, North America. There was no warning. LaVerne, not prepared for the gentle force of it, emitted a surprised squeak as she drifted slowly from her couch. Richard, laughing with the air of an experienced space traveler, engaged his wife and retrieved her as if she were a helium balloon. He placed her on the couch and helped her strap in, smiling on her with a great and doting pride. She was a particularly lovable child and she had learned a lesson.

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