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Sue M. Angel
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Star-Crossed
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Starshine had dreaded the approaching week for months. Not only was Venus in Scorpio, but both Mars and Saturn were in retrograde. For a Capricorn like himself, with his moon in Taurus, the implications were unmistakable: five days of terrible luck. Yet when he explained this to his boss at the delivery company, she refused to give him the week off. Sure enough, from Monday through Friday of that week, every day brought a new disaster. Each day at a different time, while using a different mode of transportation, he successfully avoided one mishap only to have, seconds later, what he came to call "another collision with destiny." In one case, destiny took the form of a fountain in a hotel complex. For each day, can you discover the time the accident took place (10:30 or 11:30 a.m.; 12:30, 1:30, or 2:30 p.m.), what vehicle he was using (one was a skateboard), what he narrowly missed, and what he actually hit a few seconds later?
- One day, Starshine successfully avoided running into a painter on a ladder; this happened exactly 23 hours after he crashed into a lamppost.
- Monday's accident wasn't the one at 10:30 a.m.
- By the time he careened into the door of a police cruiser, Starshine had already wrecked his bicycle earlier in the week.
- He avoided running into the painter on a ladder sometime after noon on the day after he avoided hitting the jogger.
- One day Starshine rode his wagon through a storefront window; this accident happened earlier in the week but at a later hour than the near miss with the painter on a ladder.
- The accident that mangled his motor scooter happened at an earlier hour than the one in which he ran into a tree.
- Starshine crashed his wagon sometime later in the week than his near miss with the men carrying the pane of glass, but sometime earlier in the week than his near miss with the woman walking her dog (which didn't happen on Friday).
- By the time he succeeded in missing the couple holding hands, Starshine had already had the catastrophe that ruined his roller skates.