When I was a boy, a very popular comic book series was Captain Goldshard, a crime fighter from another planet who doggedly chased down thieves and always got what was stolen back to the original owners.
“It was a good thing Captain Goldshard never made it here back in the day,” my parents often kidded, “what with all the artifacts not returned to their place and people of origin until the 22nd century. He would not have gotten to work anywhere else!”
That comment had a deep effect on me as a child, and Captain Goldshard became a deeper kind of hero, the kind that you did not want to have show up in your life except as an ally while you did the right thing by the things of others.
One of the biggest heists Captain Goldshard ever broke up in the comics with the theft of the Hlitterin Jewel Frogs you see above – I had a pair of toy ones that my parents got for me while that story was still new on Earth, and I still had them in middle age. My new bride found them as we were making room for her in my apartment.
I will never forget Khadijah's sweet smile … there was no mockery there, no unkindness.
“Another Captain Goldshard fan,” she said.
“Yep – I read my copies of those things to death as a boy,” I said.
“Let's put Hlitr on our honeymoon list, then,” she said.
“Wait – you mean there is a planet named after the comics?”
“I mean that there are comics named after the planet, Rufus.”
It had never occurred to me after childhood that those stories had been based on reality – of course I thought they were real to a certain age, but then got busy in school and starting a business with my best friend Marcus Aurelius Kirk Jr., and left all that behind. However, he was a Captain Goldshard fan too, and also had been deeply affected by the captain's dogged determination to get everything back to its proper place because “when you steal from people, you hurt them, so now, you get to own the hurt and I'm taking back what is not yours!”
Imagine my surprise when Khadijah got us tickets to a local aquarium and I saw a set of real Hlitterin Jewel Frogs and read the caption about an ancient heist of them, and about the Hlitr police captain who had recovered them and a bunch of other missing items from a crime syndicate in the region!
Then, we rounded the corner, and there was Captain Goldshard, in living color.
In reality, this was a replica of what the Hlitr captain had used to subdue the thieves at last – he had been a ballistics specialist for his nation's army, and he had adapted some of his techniques to make a fearsome weapon, an exploding ball that acted like a shrapnel-shedding boomerang. Each exploded open on its victim and then was recalled to the hand of the captain magnetically – he subdued 20 men in one afternoon with just that weapon.
But that was a story from the early 22nd century, still before Earthlings had even left the Solar System. The pull pin on top of the weapon somewhat resembled a head wearing a captain's hat in Earth terms, and the blue was reminiscent of some regions' police officers. By the time the story made it to Earth, the weapon and the captain who made it had blended into one, and the legend of Captain Goldshard was born.
Khadijah just smiled that sweet smile as I got on the phone with my parents to give them the news … she was happy to see me overjoyed as the dots were connected between my childhood fantasies, maturing thoughts, and real life.
“Thank you,” I told her as we went to our hotel. “That was one of the most thoughtful things anyone has ever done for me.”
“Any time, Rufus,” she said.