Re: Phil Phantom Storiesl
Marika Szala
Dan and Phil were a package deal. They moved in together, and would make videos featuring the other. Being a fan of Phil and not knowing Dan was impossible, and viceversa. There's a reason most people know them as Dan and Phil and not danisnotonfire and amazingphil.
"Anyway, it's a good thing for us," Arthur Jerome was saying, "thelittle Seven Stars ought not to be much of a prize for the phantomraider." He grinned, with his hand ruffling his sandy hair. "Let's hopewe escape."
She tried to smile. My heart went out to her in that moment. Herbeauty, I suppose; but somehow she seemed horribly pathetic. Thatmention of Asteroid-9 mysteriously frightened her; and now this mentionof the phantom spaceship terrified her even more.
"Hell, no." Captain Wilkes was a choleric fellow. His ham-like fistcrashed down on his desk. "I was told to run this cargo to Mars, andby Heaven, Fanning, that's what I'm going to do. Make a run for it."He swung for his controls. "I can use a greater Earth-repulsion andonce we get past Asteroid-9, by a little jockeying I can use that, too.We'll see if there's any damn' phantom-ship going to overtake us."
What, in Heaven's name, could that mean? Were these two spies, plantedhere on the Seven Stars by the phantom-bandits? Were they discussingthe attack which Captain Wilkes and I feared? Certainly it did notseem so. Young Philip Carson wasn't much older than his sister. Slim,handsome, rather effeminate-looking fellow, with a weak jaw and slackmouth. He wore black and white trousers, somewhat like hers. He and sheseemed devoted to each other. Rankin had told me that Philip Carson hada bad record of gambling and bad companions. Was the girl entangledbecause of him?
Had he been building the phantom space-raider? The thought was obviousnow. Brenda and Philip had denied knowing, when the authorities hadquestioned them. And now they were going to Mars, on this of allvoyages, and for no reason that they had been able to give. Was thevanished eccentric Professor Robert Carson the Phantom raider? My heartleaped as I heard another fragment from the girl.
And then he told me gloatingly how easy it had been for him to dona pressure-suit and hide in the pressure-room while he wrecked theair-valves and let the air out of the doomed Seven Stars. Ship of thedead, on which he was the only living human until his phantom raiderhad come with a boarding party. Then the Seven had been taken toAsteroid-9, her cargo of electronic weapons transferred to the arrivingX-flyer, and here we were.
Horrible, chaotic seconds as the showering electronic sparks from thedoomed phantom flyer enveloped us. Indescribable glaring confusion ofderanged electricity and fusing, bubbling, flying metal-fragments.Prismatic light that blinded.
This book has had a strong impact on my intellectual as well as my spiritual
development. Lewis not only taught me to think critically about my earlier bias against
Christianity; he also trained me to think more critically about philosophical assumptions in
general, including those underlying my discipline.