began to brake.
“Course set and locked, Captain,” the Engineer said.
The ship made a long, long, falling arc through the atmosphere for several hours, until, as they approached their destination, they were only a few miles from the surface.
As the ship entered the final stage of flight, its engines released a great blast of heat and light, diffusing the excess energy still left over from the Eschless Funnel drives.
On the ground below, city-dwellers, farmers, artisans, noblemen, and servants living along the Nile River turned their eyes to the sky and caught a glimpse of a large metallic bird with a taillike fire and a cry like thunder splitting the heavens.
The survey crew had arrived.
CHAPTER 6
One Year Ago
The last curtain of gray rolled back, and Pruit opened her eyes in the biofluid of her crib. She was awake again. And this was year seventeen.
She brought her eyes into focus as the biofluid began to drain. Niks was not sitting over the crib. This should have been surprising, but in her barely conscious state, all Pruit felt was a sense of relief. He had reverted to regulation waking protocol, she assumed. He was lying in his own crib and waking simultaneously with her. The life-systems monitoring computer was controlling the cribs automatically, just as it should. But why now? she wondered, as full consciousness began to return. Why now after seventeen wakes?
The plantglass slid back, and the colder air of the ship washed over her. The crib’s arms withdrew into the wombwalls.
Pruit grasped the top of the crib with her hands and pulled herself to a sitting position. She expected to find Niks emerging from his crib at the same moment, his hair dark and wet from the biofluid, his face weak but smiling. Instead, she found herself staring at the closed top of his crib.
No. She saw after a few moments that it was not completely closed. The plantglass was slightly ajar.
She felt a surge of panic. Her mind cleared of sleep, and her eyes whipped to the manual controls above Niks’s crib. There were four blue lights glowing on the panel. Blue meant danger. Or malfunction.
Pruit hauled herself to her feet. The final bloodarms, snaking out of the veins of her legs, snapped out of her skin and recoiled against the wombwall with her sudden motion. She steadied herself against lightheadedness, then swung out of the crib and reached for the controls.
She hit the button to retract his glass. The glass did not move. She pushed the button again, holding it in to reset its function. Slowly, the plantglass slid back.
Pruit stared into the crib. Inside was a shell, a husk. Where Niks’s body should have been lying, encased in biofluid and nurtured by the crib’s arms, there was a dry crib and, resting within, a desiccated human form.
Pruit’s legs gave out beneath her, and she fell onto the edge of his crib.
“Blessed Life!” she breathed. “Niks…”
For it was Niks, without doubt. She touched him. His face, despite it’s contorted appearance, was recognizable. His body was as dry as a reed, thin and tiny, all fluid gone, all life gone. One arm was out of place, as though Niks had reached up toward the plantglass, tried to pry it open.
Before Pruit could control her body, she was turning her head aside, and a wave of nausea hit. She retched and threw up the biofluid left in her stomach.
“Central, wake!” she yelled.
“I’m here.”
“Central, Niks is…Review his crib data!”
“The life-systems computer has not given the data to Central yet.”
Pruit clenched her teeth in frustration. The life-systems computer was an autonomous subsection of the Central computer system. It had been designed that way so a malfunction in the overall ship would not necessarily impact the health of the crew.
“Central, override! Tell me what happened.”
There was a brief pause, and then Central spoke. The computer’s voice, usually blandly pleasant, had dropped to a quiet, firm tone. The voice
“Course set and locked, Captain,” the Engineer said.
The ship made a long, long, falling arc through the atmosphere for several hours, until, as they approached their destination, they were only a few miles from the surface.
As the ship entered the final stage of flight, its engines released a great blast of heat and light, diffusing the excess energy still left over from the Eschless Funnel drives.
On the ground below, city-dwellers, farmers, artisans, noblemen, and servants living along the Nile River turned their eyes to the sky and caught a glimpse of a large metallic bird with a taillike fire and a cry like thunder splitting the heavens.
The survey crew had arrived.
CHAPTER 6
One Year Ago
The last curtain of gray rolled back, and Pruit opened her eyes in the biofluid of her crib. She was awake again. And this was year seventeen.
She brought her eyes into focus as the biofluid began to drain. Niks was not sitting over the crib. This should have been surprising, but in her barely conscious state, all Pruit felt was a sense of relief. He had reverted to regulation waking protocol, she assumed. He was lying in his own crib and waking simultaneously with her. The life-systems monitoring computer was controlling the cribs automatically, just as it should. But why now? she wondered, as full consciousness began to return. Why now after seventeen wakes?
The plantglass slid back, and the colder air of the ship washed over her. The crib’s arms withdrew into the wombwalls.
Pruit grasped the top of the crib with her hands and pulled herself to a sitting position. She expected to find Niks emerging from his crib at the same moment, his hair dark and wet from the biofluid, his face weak but smiling. Instead, she found herself staring at the closed top of his crib.
No. She saw after a few moments that it was not completely closed. The plantglass was slightly ajar.
She felt a surge of panic. Her mind cleared of sleep, and her eyes whipped to the manual controls above Niks’s crib. There were four blue lights glowing on the panel. Blue meant danger. Or malfunction.
Pruit hauled herself to her feet. The final bloodarms, snaking out of the veins of her legs, snapped out of her skin and recoiled against the wombwall with her sudden motion. She steadied herself against lightheadedness, then swung out of the crib and reached for the controls.
She hit the button to retract his glass. The glass did not move. She pushed the button again, holding it in to reset its function. Slowly, the plantglass slid back.
Pruit stared into the crib. Inside was a shell, a husk. Where Niks’s body should have been lying, encased in biofluid and nurtured by the crib’s arms, there was a dry crib and, resting within, a desiccated human form.
Pruit’s legs gave out beneath her, and she fell onto the edge of his crib.
“Blessed Life!” she breathed. “Niks…”
For it was Niks, without doubt. She touched him. His face, despite it’s contorted appearance, was recognizable. His body was as dry as a reed, thin and tiny, all fluid gone, all life gone. One arm was out of place, as though Niks had reached up toward the plantglass, tried to pry it open.
Before Pruit could control her body, she was turning her head aside, and a wave of nausea hit. She retched and threw up the biofluid left in her stomach.
“Central, wake!” she yelled.
“I’m here.”
“Central, Niks is…Review his crib data!”
“The life-systems computer has not given the data to Central yet.”
Pruit clenched her teeth in frustration. The life-systems computer was an autonomous subsection of the Central computer system. It had been designed that way so a malfunction in the overall ship would not necessarily impact the health of the crew.
“Central, override! Tell me what happened.”
There was a brief pause, and then Central spoke. The computer’s voice, usually blandly pleasant, had dropped to a quiet, firm tone. The voice
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