The Last Star [antikvár]

-THE GIRL WHO COULD FLY-MANY YEARS AGO, when he was ten, her father had ridden a big yellow bus to the planetarium.There the ceiling above him exploded into a million glimmering shards of light. His mouth dropped open. His small fingers clamped down on the edge of the wooden bench upon which he sat. Over his head, pinpricks of white fire spun, pure as the day the Earth emerged as a blackened, pockmarked rock, an average planet orbiting an average star at the edge of an average galaxy in a limitless universe.The Big Dipper. Orion. Ursa Major. The droning monotone of the astronomer's voice. The children's faces lifted up, open mouths, unblinking eyes. And the boy feeling infinitesimally small beneath the immensity of that artificial sky.He would not forget that day.Years later, when his daughter was very young, she would run to him, pudgy toddler legs wobbling, solid little arms lifted up, eyes burning with anticipation and joy, crying, Daddy, Daddy, stubby fingers spread wide, reaching for him, reaching for the sky.And she would leap, a fearless launch into empty space, because he wasn't just her fatherhe was Daddy. He would catch her; he would not let her fall.Crying: Fly, Daddy, fly!And up she would go, rocketing toward the immensity of the unbounded sky, arms open to embrace the infinite, her head