Read "Lie on the Beam" by John Victor Peterson online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Sweeping from perihelion, the black destroyer curved toward the gibbous white ball of Venus, its jets stabbing mocking fingers at the majesty of the sun whose clutching gravity it had cheated. Within the heavily shielded control cabin, the hard skull-face of the commander split into a fleshless smile. From his fanged jaws a single word was spat into the spaceship's intercommunication system:
"_Adrakolarn! _"