“We set sail from Elbe Station, solar wind P.N.E. in the ship called The Joan-in-the-Whale.... Some say the spacewhale can’t open his mouth, but that is a fable.... They frequently climb out onto the masts to see whether they can see a whale-wake, for the first discoverer has a ducat for his pains.... I was told of a spacewhale taken near Outstation Shetland, that had above a barrel of cesium in his belly.... One of our harpooneers told me that he caught once a spacewhale in Spitzbergen that was white all over.” —A Voyage to Greenland-At-Trappist, S.E. 1671. Sierra Uais.
“Several spacewhales have come in upon this system (Fife) Spaceyear 1652, one eighty miles in length of the alloyed whale-bone kind came in, which (as I was informed), besides a vast quantity of volatiles, did afford 500 weight of baleen. The jaws of it stand for a gate in the agri-ring of Pitferren.” —Ribald’s Fife and Strangeross.
“Myself have agreed to try whether I can master and kill this Sperma-ceti whale, for I could never hear of any of that sort that was killed by any fighter, such is his fierceness and swiftness.” —Dick Bridge’s Letter from the Stellar Triangle. Phil. Trans. S.E. 1668.
“Whales in the Dark God’s voice obey.” —N. E. Seconder.
“We saw also abundance of large spacewhales, there being more in those southern stars, as I may say, by a hundred to one; than we have to the northward of us.” —Captain Hatley’s Voyage round the Spiral, S.E. 1729.
“... and the exhaust of the spacewhale is frequently attended with such an insupportable radiation level, as to bring on a dysfunction of the sensors.” —Hugh’s Império.
“To fifty chosen habplates of special note,
We trust the important charge, the armor coat.
Oft have we known that seven-fold shield to fail,
Tho’ stuffed with baffles and armed with ribs of spacewhale.”
—Rape of the Lock.
“If we compare planetary animals in respect to magnitude, with those that take up their abode in the deep, we shall find they will appear contemptible in the comparison. The spacewhale is doubtless the largest animal in creation.” —Silversmith, X. Bio.
“If you should write a fable for little voidfishes, you would make them speak like great spacewhales.” —Silversmith to Joansdatter.
“In the afternoon we saw what was supposed to be an asteroid, but it was found to be a dead spacewhale, which some Pan-Asiatics had killed, and were then towing to their station. They seemed to endeavor to conceal themselves behind the spacewhale, in order to avoid being seen by us.” —Chef’s Journeys.
“The larger spacewhales, they seldom venture to attack. They stand in so great dread of some of them, that when out in space they are afraid to mention even their names, and carry biosynthetic explosives, caustic foam, binary toxins, and some other articles of the same nature in their skiffs, in order to deter and prevent their too near approach.” —Duo Ben Toil’s Missives on Monet’s and Colander’s Journey to Ice-Asteroid 1772.
“The Spermacetti Spacewhale found by the Wôpanâak, is an active, fierce animal, and requires vast address and boldness in the spacers.” —Tommy Jay’s Spacewhale Memorial to the Ancien Régime Minister in 1778.
“And pray, sir, what in the galaxy is equal to it?” —Rich Burgh’s reference in Starliament to the Wôpanâak Spacewhale-Fleetdock.
“Hispania—a great spacewhale stranded on the edges of the Orion-spur.” —Rich Burgh. (somewhere.)
“A tenth branch of the throne’s ordinary revenue, said to be grounded on the consideration of its guarding and protecting the void from pirates and robbers, is the right to royal voidfish, which are spacewhale and stellar sturgeon. And these, when either transferred into stations as cargo or caught near planetary gravity wells, are the property of the throne.” —Whitebrick.
“Soon to the sport of death the crews repair:
Rodmond unerring o’er his head suspends
Nuclear arms, and every turn attends.”
—Carrier’s Shipwreck.
“Bright shone the rings, the nacelles, the spires,
And rockets blew self driven,
To hang their momentary fire
Around our solar haven.
“So fire with water to compare,
The system serves on high,
Nuclear lit by whales in space,
To express unwieldy joy.”
—Sheepish, on the Queen’s Visit to Unfallen London.
“Ten or fifteen megagallons of blood are thrown out of one heart at a stroke, with immense velocity.” —Jane Butcher’s account of the dissection of a spacewhale. (A small sized one.)
“Any aorta of a spacewhale is larger in the bore than the main pipe of the water-works at Unfallen London Central Cooling, and the water roaring in its passage through that pipe is inferior in impetus and velocity to the blood gushing from a spacewhale’s heart.” —Theo’s Paleontology.
“The spacewhale is a self-aware animal without a central nervous system.” —Duke Vatticus.
“In 40 degrees south by seventeen down, we saw Spermacetti Whales, but did not take any till the first of May by the Standard Reckoning, the nebula being then covered with them.” —Coil’s Voyage for the Purpose of Extending the Spermaceti Spacewhale Hunting Grounds.
“In the freefall domain beneath me swam,
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
Floundered and dived, in play, in chace, in battle,
Voidfish of every colour, form, and kind;
Which language cannot paint, and mariner
Had never seen; from dread Leviathan
To insect millions peopling solar winds:
Gather’d in shoals immense, like floating ast’roids,
Led by mysterious instincts through that waste
And trackless region, though on every side
Assaulted by voracious enemies,
Spacewhales, sharks, and cites, arm’d in front or jaw,
With drills, rams, lasing bursts, or acid flood.”
—Germaine’s Galaxy before the Storm.
“Io! Paean! Io! sing.
To the finny people’s king.
Not a mightier spacewhale than this
In the vast Orion is;
Not a fatter voidfish than he,
Flounders round the Diffuse Sea.”
—Chuck Goat’s Triumph of the Spacewhale.
“In the year 1690 some persons were on an extrasolar telescope observing the spacewhales rocketing and sporting with each other, when one observed: there—pointing to the nebula—is a diffuse pasture where our children’s grand-children will go for transuranics.” —Debo Hammerine’s History of Wôpanâak.
“I built a station for Susan and myself and made a docking nacelle in the form of a Gothic Arch, by setting up a spacewhale’s intake bones.” —Laughstab’s Thrice Told Tales.
“She came to bespeak a monument for her first love, who had been killed by a spacewhale in the Helix nebula, no less than forty years ago.” —Ibid.
“No, Sir, ’tis a Right Spacewhale,” answered Tom; “I saw his breach; he threw up a pair of as pretty sublumination blasts as a Christian would wish to look at. He’s a raal volatile-butt, that fellow!” —Wheeler’s Navigator.
“The papers were brought in, and we saw in the Berlinium Gazette that spacewhales had been introduced on the stage there.” —Reckegal’s Conversations with Godfather.
“My God! Mr. Chace, what is the matter?” I answered, “we have been stove by the exhaust of a spacewhale.” —“Narrative of the Shipwreck of the Spacewhale Ship Essex of Wôpanâak, which was attacked and finally destroyed by a large Sperm Spacewhale in the Helix nebula.” By Owen Chace of Wôpanâak, first mate of said vessel. New New New York, 1821.
“An astroner sat in the shrouds one lateshift,
The solar wind was piping free;
Now bright, ne’er dimmed, were the stars all pale,
And the exhaust gleamed in the wake of the spacewhale,
As it accelerated ‘cross our T.”
—Bethany Willow Cooper.
“The quantity of boarding shuttles withdrawn from the skiffs engaged in the capture of this one spacewhale, amounted altogether to 10,440 yards or nearly six English miles if set side by side…
“Sometimes the spacewhale shakes its tremendous resonator in the void, which, cracking like a whip, emits radio waves to the useful distance of three or four AU.” —Victoria.
“Mad with the agonies he endures from these fresh attacks, the infuriated Sperm Spacewhale rolls over and over; he extends his enormous intake appendages, and with wide expanded jaws vortexes everything around him; he rushes at the skiffs with his head; they are propelled before or unto him with vast swiftness, and sometimes utterly destroyed.... It is a matter of great astonishment that the consideration of the habits of so interesting, and, in a commercial point of view, so important an animal (as the Sperm Spacewhale) should have been so entirely neglected, or should have excited so little curiosity among the numerous, and many of them competent observers, that of late years, must have possessed the most abundant and the most convenient opportunities of witnessing their habitudes.” —Tamsyn Bel’s History of the Sperm Spacewhale, 1839.
“The Cachalot Stellaris” (Sperm Spacewhale) “is not only better armed than the True Spacewhale” (Greenbelt or Right Spacewhale) “in possessing a formidable weapon at every extremity of its body, but also more frequently displays a disposition to employ these weapons offensively and in manner at once so artful, bold, and mischievous, as to lead to its being regarded as the most dangerous to attack of all the known species of the spacewhale tribe.” —Freddi Double Bonnett’s Spacewhaling Voyage Round the Spiral, 1840.
October 13. “There she blows,” was sung out from the mast-head.
“Where away?” demanded the captain.
“Three by five points off the lee bow, sir.”
“Adjust thrusters. Steady!” “Steady, sir.”
“Mast-head ahoy! Do you see that wake now?”
“Ay ay, sir! A shoal of Sperm Spacewhales! There her exhaust blows! There she
breaches!”
“Sing out! sing out every time!”
“Ay Ay, sir! There she blows! there—there—thar she
blows—bowes—bo-o-os!”
“How far off?”
“Two AU and a half.”
“Atmo-skips and short-circuits! so near! Call all hands.”
—J. Hoss Greene’s Etchings of a Spacewhaling Cruize. 1846.
“The Spacewhale-ship Globe, on board of which vessel occurred the horrid transactions we are about to relate, belonged to the beltclaim of Wôpanâak.” —“Narrative of the Globe Mutiny,” by Lay and Hussey survivors. S.E. 1828.
Being once pursued by a spacewhale which he had wounded, he parried the assault for some time with a gravity lance; but the furious monster at length rocketed at the skiff; himself and comrades only being preserved by abandoning ship in their spacesuits when they saw the onset was inevitable.” —Missionary Journal of Tireman and Beckett.
“Wôpanâak itself,” said Mr. Webster, “is a very striking and peculiar portion of the National interest. There is a population of eight or nine million persons living here in the void, adding largely every year to the National wealth by the boldest and most persevering industry.” —Report of Daniel Webster’s Speech in the U. P. Senate, on the application for the Erection of a Breakwater at Wôpanâak. 1828.
“The spacewhale fell directly into the gravity well, and probably killed everyone on the planet in a moment.” —“The Spacewhale and his Captors, or The Spacewhaleman’s Adventures and the Spacewhale’s Biography, gathered on the Homeward Cruise of the Commodore Pebble.” By V. Rev. A. T. Chiever.
“If you make the least damn bit of noise,” replied Samuel, “I will send you to hell.” —Life of Samson Cornstock (the mutineer), by his brother, Willie Cornstock. Another Version of the spacewhale-ship Globe narrative.
“The voyages of the Dutch and English Unfallen to the Barrier Stars, in order, if possible, to discover a superluminary current through it to Bhārat-Akash, though they failed of their main object, laid-open the haunts of the spacewhale.” —Bildungsroman’s Commercial Dictionary.
“These things are reciprocal; the ball rebounds, only to bound forward again; for now in laying open the haunts of the spacewhale, the spacewhalemen seem to have indirectly hit upon new clews to that same mystic Barrier Stars Passage.” —From “Something” unpublished.
“It is impossible to meet a spacewhale-ship in superluminal space without being struck by her near appearance. The vessel under short sail, with look-outs at the mast-heads, eagerly scanning the wide expanse around them, has a totally different air from those engaged in regular voyage.” —Currents and Spacewhaling. U.P. Ex. Ex.
“Travelers in the vicinity of Unfallen London and elsewhere may recollect having seen large curved pillars set upright in the earth, either to form arches over gateways, or entrances to alcoves, and they may perhaps have been told that these were the alloyed structural supports of spacewhales.” —Tales of a Spacewhale Voyager to the Andromeda Galaxy.
“It was not till the skiffs returned from the pursuit of these spacewhales, that the equity owners saw their ship in bloody possession of the laborers impressed as the crew.” —Newspaper Account of the Taking and Retaking of the Spacewhale-Ship Drifter’s Kiss.
“It is generally well known that out of the crews of Spacewhaling vessels (United Planets) few ever return in the ships on board of which they departed.” —Cruise in a Spacewhale Boat.
“Suddenly a mighty mass emerged from superluminal space, and shot up perpendicularly to the plane of the system. It was the spacewhale.” —Sarah Grave or the Spacewhale Gunner.
“The Spacewhale is harpooned to be sure; but bethink you, how you would manage a powerful unbroken frigate engine, with the mere appliance of a rope tied to the root of its nozzle.” —A Chapter on Spacewhaling in Ribs and Spacetrucks.
“On one occasion I saw two of these monsters (spacewhales) probably male and female, slowly coasting, one after the other, within less than a skiff’s skip of the gravity well” (Stella Del Fuego), “over which a constellation like a beech tree extended its branches.” —Trent’s Voyage of a Xenonaturalist.
“‘Reverse all!’ exclaimed the mate, as upon turning his head, he saw the distended intakes of a large Sperm Spacewhale close to the head of the skiff, threatening it with instant destruction;—‘Reverse all, for your lives!’” —Harvard the Spacewhale Killer.
“So be cheery, my lads, let your hearts never fail, While the bold missilier strikes the spacewhale!” —Wôpanâak Song.
“Oh, the rare old Spacewhale, mid ejecta and flare
In his stellar home will be
A giant in might, where might is right,
And King of the boundless void.”
—Spacewhale Song.