The Suns of Scorpio

Chapter six-1

Chapter six

Zorg and I share an onionThe two onions balanced on Zorg’s calloused palm were not the same size. One was, to speak in Earthly measurements, something over three inches in diameter, plump and round, its orange-brown outer skins shining, crisp, and flaky. We both knew its insides would be sweet and succulent, tangy and rich. The second onion looked like a slave beside a master: smaller, about two inches in diameter, with hard stringy outer skins already extending up into a growing neck of unpleasant yellow-green. It was scrawny. But it, too, would contain food to sustain us within its unlikely-looking skin.

We studied the onions, Zorg and I, as the fortyswifter Grace of Grodno heaved forward on the swell with that blessed quartering breeze filling the sail above us. Sounds of