You are listening to a Clarks World magazine podcast with your host and narrator Kate Baker.

Greetings Clark's World Citizens. As always, I hope this podcast finds you well.

As ever, it is my delight to read you

our third and final story for the month of January 2012.

This piece of fiction is entitled All the Painted Stars by Gwendoline Claire.

Gwendoline has another story within Clarks World in March 2011 of last year, entitled Perfect Lies.

I suggest if you like this piece, go read that one as well.

Ms. Claire has a BA in ecology, a BS in geophysics,

and is currently working to add another acronym to her collection.

Away from the laboratory she enjoys practicing martial arts, adopting feral cats, and

writing speculative fiction. Her short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Asimov's

E. Catarina Cadea's Beware the Night anthology, Daily Science Fiction, and Abyss and Apex, among others. Her website is Gwendolin Claire.com and I'm going to spell that

one out for you it's G-W-E-N-D-O-Y-N-C-L-A-R-E-com. as per the usge there is no news to report so I'm just gonna jump right into this so

I'm just gonna jump right into this so So sit back, relax, and let me tell you a story.

All the painted stars by Gwendolen Claire for Clarksworld magazine

Issue number 64 January 2012.

They are not the brights, and so I hesitate to save them.

Part of me is eager and part of me is ashamed.

Even through the haze of plasma blasts dispersing over the shields,

I recognize the ship as a bright construct.

Too much glass arranged in sharp geometric panels so the entire upper

surface glitters with reflected starlight. Still, I know the pilots must not be brights.

...