Leap — Part One
By Bret Nelson
This week, The Daily Tomorrow jumps into a story by the multimodal Bret Nelson. We hope it pulls you in. - The Editor
LEAP
By Bret Nelson
Dexter Crenshaw floated across the eastern sky like he was seated on an invisible conveyor belt. This was his eighth circuit, two hundred meters above the surface of Ghalbreen Minor 4. As he passed overhead, the local magistrate and both of her undersecretaries tilted their cube-shaped bodies for a better view through the clear roof of our plexidome tent.
His signal was spotty, so I had the outputs on the comm speakers cranked as loud as they’d go. “Hello to anyone,” he said, becoming clearer. “Can you hear me? Can you see me?”
“We’ve got you, Dex,” I said. “There’s two minutes before you’re out of range again. Here’s the magistrate.”
“Hello, Dexter Crenshaw. This is Lady Grimpen.” She maneuvered her topmost mouth closer to the microphone. “We are now certain you are in a previously undiscovered gravity channel. I have asked members of the Cephalopodian Transit Ministry to assist.” She spoke English well, so we didn’t need to use the translation software. But, like all Stegotheroms, her inner lip made the p’s and b’s a little floppy.
The gravity channel was stable, so Crenshaw wasn’t in immediate danger. Of course, that stability meant he’d be sailing through these four interconnected orbits eternally, and the breathing module on his helmet would fail in three hours.
“I apologize, Magistrate Grimpen,” said Crenshaw. “We Earthers are causing a terrible fuss.”
“It’s all right, Dex,” said the disembodied voice of Walter Valencia, our boss. I’d patched him in from the T.S.U. Central Space Station, just outside this solar system. “There’s no fuss.”
For Crenshaw, the fuss was enormous. As a product of Northern England, he shunned attention. “We don’t do that sort of thing in Leeds,” he’d often say.
We were supposed to do a basic repair job today. Dex wanted to do his work and be invisible. Instead, he was the center of attention as he flew around the Ghalbreen Collective in his colorful G-suit and helmet.
I leaned into the microphone. “Dex, this is Saticoy again. The Transit Ministry is a smart call. The Cephalopodians will get you down safe. Still no dizziness? No motion sickness?”
“I’m fine, Gwen,” said Crenshaw.
“Good. You’re almost out -”
The comm system crackled and we lost audio. Crenshaw went over the western ridge toward Ghalbreen Minor 3, the neighboring world filling most of the horizon. Over the next eighteen minutes, he'd be carried around that planetoid and two others, then he’d pass over our plexidome again. Maybe I’d have good news for him.
Tucked inside the Andromeda Galaxy is a vast, impossible thing called the Ghalbreen Collective. Eons ago, when the Collective formed, it should have become an asteroid belt. Massive boulders in a stony parade around Ghalbreen Prime, a yellow dwarf star.
But instead, a unique gathering of heat, gravity, and life-giving elements rubbed together to create an intergalactic tide pool. Thousands of lush, sample-sized worlds turning in a great ring around Ghalbreen Prime.
And most of them support life.
For fifteen years, the Transgalactic Science Union (T.S.U.) has been mapping the region and contacting the intelligent species. Crenshaw and I maintain the T.S.U.’s gear.
Some of the planetoids are so near one another that they share an atmosphere. The gravity creates loops and wells between the larger and smaller bodies. There are places where gravitational pathways cascade to connect a series of worlds. Some of the local species use them to travel across the system without a propulsion vehicle. These pathways are called gravity channels.
And Crenshaw was caught in one.
Bret Nelson is an Emmy Award-winning creator. When he’s not writing stories, he makes TV shows and games. Over the years, he’s worked with Kermit the Frog, Buzz Lightyear, and Conan the Cimmerian. Right now, he’s busy with projects he’s not allowed to talk about (that’s what the contracts say). You’ll find his books and stories here: www.amazon.com/author/nelsonwrites.
Copyright © 2025 Bret Nelson