M
y thanks to Diana Reiss, founder of the Circe Project to investigate dolphin communication, who reminded me of the Dogon people and their beliefs about Sirius and its companion star. My apologies to Carl Sagan, a very plausible debunker of that and other intriguing myths—which remarkably, I had managed to forget that I first read about in his writings—for pulling gently on his leg.
Data on the physical effects of near-instantaneous deceleration come from a paper of Colonel John Stapp in “Bioastronautics and the Exploration of Space," edited by Bedwell and Strighold, AFSC, USAF (GPO), 1965. And a grisly piece of work it is.