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(Take Me Back to) Dragon's Egg

Words and music copyright ©2000 by Blake Hodgetts
(Inspired by Robert Forward's novels "Dragon's Egg" and "Starquake")

Imagine a world with no day or night
Imagine a world where it's warm and bright
A world where you keep your feet on the ground
With 60 billion g's always pulling you down

Imagine a world with no time to think
Where a day goes by every time you blink
And the friends I made there yesterday
Have long since gone and passed away...

     (chorus:)
     Take me back to Dragon's Egg
     The pulsar home of the cheela
     Take me back -- I don't know why
     They couldn't wait for me to say goodbye.

They came to us a wandering star
A vagabond, come from afar,
And so we sent a ship to see
This pulsar in proximity

With x-ray eyes our ship they spied,
A messenger from the Eyes of Bright,
And minutes later we received
The message that took years to write...

     (chorus)

(bridge:)
We gave their society a jump start
Taught them technology and fine art
Our nucleonic friends were creeping round with spears;
The next day, they launched starships crossing light-years.


They thought of us as gigantic pets,
Repaired our faulty booster jets,
And kindly waved us on our way --
they'd passed us up in just one day --

A sudden starquake shook their land
Restructured our departure plans
Our sacrifice would rescue them
Their fate was in our glacial hands

     (chorus)

(the final "goodbye" is sung very, very slowly...it should take at least sixteen measures to complete.)