The bleeding red ink across [Dad’s Plot-Spoiler Notebook] had barely finished drying when the temperature outside the courtyard’s golden dome plunged by three hundred degrees.
CRACK-HISSSS!
Three miles behind the back garden wall, the white ring of Planet Canglan’s Ancient Orbital Star-Gate shrank to the size of a silver coin. Ahead of them stretched the raw, airless outer vacuum of the Lower Astral Corridor.
Streams of dark-blue cosmic radiation swept off the nearby dust clouds like an invisible blizzard. Where the radiation brushed against the outer rim of the [Gu Family Flying Courtyard Star-Cruiser], needles of blue star-frost crept across the golden defensive array.
Underneath the flagstones, the repurposed flagship thrusters coughed twice.
Chug-chug-wheeze.
A thin skin of cosmic nitrogen rime crawled up the front gateposts and froze the brass hinges solid. The forward speed of the five-acre estate dropped from a brisk cruise to a sluggish crawl.
“Brrr! Look at the gateposts!”
