The Lamplighter Legacy

By Patrick O'Sullivan

When high school student Ernesto Suarez wins the Lamplighter Prize for Best Amateur Space Blog he finds himself thrust into the heart of a hidden conspiracy that will forever change the course of human space exploration.

 

This short story is the 2013 grand prize winner in the James Patrick Baen Memorial Writing Contest sponsored by Baen Books and the National Space Society.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dunkerron Press
• Release date: Nov 9, 2020
• ISBN: 9781625600127

Patrick O'Sullivan

PATRICK O'SULLIVAN was the OHL and CHL rookie of the year in 2002 and the AHL rookie of the year in 2005. He remains the all-time leader in games, goals, assists and points for the Mississauga/Niagara franchise in the OHL. He played 334 games over eight seasons with the Los Angeles Kings, Edmonton Oilers, Carolina Hurricanes, Minnesota Wild and Phoenix Coyotes in the NHL. He played in three World Junior Championships and is all-time second in games played for the USA in tournament history. He scored the gold-medal winning goal for the United States team at the world junior championships in 2004, the first gold medal in the team's history. The 30-year-old now lives in southwest Florida with his wife and two sons. GARE JOYCE is a senior writer for Sportsnet Magazine. A former writer for ESPN: The Magazine and The Globe and Mail, Joyce has won four Canadian national magazine awards and been a finalist 21 times. He is author of seven books of sports non-fiction, including When the Lights Went Out, Future Greats and Heartbreaks and The Devil and Bobby Hull. Under the nom de plume G.B. Joyce, he has written two mystery novels, The Code and The Black Ace.

Book preview

THE LAMPLIGHTER LEGACY

by Patrick O’Sullivan

The Lamplighter Legacy

September 15, 2021

Earth

THE ASTRONAUT GRIPPED Ernesto's wrist. Look, kid, you want to put the phone down and look around? He had to shout to be heard over the helicopter's deafening noise. This is a once in a lifetime experience.

Ernesto adjusted the gain on his aviation headset. Yes sir. He reluctantly pocketed his cloudnode and leaned back in the plush leather seat. He peered out the helicopter's canopy at the broad, open ocean off the coast of Ecuador. They'd passed over the shrouded mass of the Galápagos an hour ago. Now the ocean looked the same as it had ten minutes earlier, and ten minutes before that; wet, and choppy, and indistinguishable from the ocean he could see any day at home in San Diego. It was a wild and memorable experience meeting an astronaut, but that was yesterday. When the astronaut had to shout over the thumping of helicopter rotors it reminded Ernesto not of Captain Weber, a real American hero, but of Ernesto's dad after half a bottle of Captain Morgan.

Shouting and astronauting did not go together. Ernesto would write a blog post on that topic later tonight. He would also mention that too much dollar-store after-shave and astronauting didn't go together either, at least not in the confined cabin of a trillionaire's ramjet helicopter. Ernesto was mortified at his mistake but man enough to admit the truth for once; that he was more enthusiastic than experienced when it came to both astronauting and shaving.

cosmicgrrl wouldn't have made such an egregious error. She would have consulted an expert. She had once messaged to ernesto2003 that admitting ignorance was a virtue, not a weakness. That exposing oneself was the first step to understanding. Then she'd ruined everything by making a joke about his screen name. That was nearly four years ago and Ernesto's face still burned whenever he thought about her message.

Last month, when cosmicgrrl discovered that ernesto2003 had won the Lamplighter Prize for Best Amateur Space Blog, she'd been shocked, shocked, shocked. Ernesto was convinced he'd