Delight of the Navigator - Printable version - Episode III of the Oxbrain in Space Crossword Adventure

oxbrain.com Crossword Adventures with Oxbrain

Episode III:
The UFO turns out to be easy for Oxbrain to fly, and he christens his little spaceship the
"Delight of the Navigator"
by John T Sherman ___This Page is Printable ___ Back to Home Page

_____In our last episode, Oxbrain fumes in frustration when he is left in an abandoned UFO.

_____ It dawned on Oxbrain that he was totally alone in the UFO, and that he had to study the craft if there was to be any hope of his returning home. He peered out of a porthole and gasped: directly below was the Milky Way galaxy, filling half the sky, perhaps a hundred thousand light years away.
_____The galaxy beckoned, like a city at night might beckon to a little boy peering from out of an airplane window as it circles to land, or like a huge amusement park at dusk as seen from atop a ferris wheel. Immense. Wondrous. Lonely. And somewhere, one of the billions of lights below was home... but which one?
_____He turned to the array of computers and screens in the ship. Some showed star positions and flight paths, and rows upon rows of numerical data. (continued below...)

Clues to "Delight of the Navigator"

Across

1. Woolly youngster

5. Puzzle out

10. Alleviate

14. Shape of a planet's orbit

15. Make use (of)

16. Yuletide abbr.

17. Singular prefix before "tude" or "taire"

18. Duckweed genus

19. Life Cereal grain

20. OUTER SPACE FUN !

23. Large wine cask

24. Set up tent and barbecue

28. Indian corn

31. Org. that certifies mechanics

34. More calamitous

35. Horse relative

36. Large bonnet (2 words)

39. Tractor-trailer

40. OUTER SPACE SPORT !

43. First-rate

44. Lake near Syracuse, NY

45. Aflame

46. Irregularly notched

48. Possess

49. What a horse does when spooked

51. Shovels out dirt, again

53. Oinker's den

54. OUTER SPACE LEISURE !

61. Bangkok dweller

64. Assistant

65. Knowledge that's passed down

66. Worked at a loom

67. Her last film was Two-Faced Woman (1941)

68. Cogito follower

69. Porter's tip, possibly

70. With a bad attitude

71. One from Britney Spears' age group

Down

1. Reduction

2. Declare in front of an audience

3. Country in West Africa

4. Thin pancake filled with cottage cheese

5. Hairdo shop

6. Kitchen "hot box"

7. Tibetan priest

8. Wines, in Paris

9. Make happy

10. Ritual to expel evil spirit

11. U.S. doctors grp.

12. Used a chair

13. Feminine suffix (used with lion or baron, for example)

21. Party arrival

22. "+", in English

25. Ring of color around a center

26. Autobiography

27. Operates a press

28. Copyable original

29. On the beach

30. A pill bug is a type of this

31. Taboo (2 words)

32. It has a pointier snout than a mouse

33. "Take out" alternative

37. Alien spaceship

38. Doctor of Theology :abbr.

41. Turns into bone

42. That pale blue dot in space

47. "Self", to Freud

50. Small hole for a hook or cord

52. Smelting stay-behinds

53. Give this dog a home!

55. Money in Milan

56. Poems of praise

57. What water does

58. Angry and pained!

59. Strong desire

60. Gas used in street signs

61. Even prime number

62. Word of endearment

63. ___ Maria

(continued...)

_____ At a small recess to the side was a chair and a screen with the blinking icon of a face with a quizzical expression. Oxbrain sat on the chair and realized that telepathic instructions were being fed directly into his brain, instructions on how to operate the ship. He learned that by pressing the correct sequence of buttons on the main computer terminal, the ship would retrace its flight back to earth.
_____He immediately got up, pressed a bunch of oddly-marked buttons on the keypad, and on the screen a 3-D image of the galaxy was displayed, including a line showing the ship's path back to Earth.
_____ Impreceptibly at first, the ship began its mind-boggling descent. Moving at tens of thouands of times the speed of light, from the ship's vantage point the galaxy seemed to spin around slowly. Old stars glowed red and then extinguished like lights in a Christmas display, while supernovas flashed across the galaxy like lightbulbs at a rock concert. Stars ignited in their cloudy cradles-- the whole galaxy came alive and fast-forwarded in time as the ship hurtled with mind-numbing speed towards it, and into the present.
_____ Oxbrain was ecstatic that he was headed back home, and began dancing around the bridge, twirling like a madman as the Milky Way swirled behind him.
_____ The spacecraft skirted the galaxy and circled it for a while, like a car on a beltway. It swerved left and then swung right at Proxima Centauri. Oxbrain hummed a tune to himself and fancied himself on a giant roller coaster.
_____ Well now, wasn't that easy, Oxbrain? Heading back home? Have fun in space. You're home free (or are you...?)

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