Chapter 10

2076 a.d.

An Unscheduled Journey to the Surface

Béla floated in the air, some distance from the great ship. Looking down, she could see clouds moving across the landscape far beneath her. She traced a ribbon of blue from where it emptied into a glistening lake, back across little brown squares and dark green areas, back to its source, a large patch of white near the crystal sun. That was probably snow. The darker green areas were probably groves of trees. The little brown squares were speckled with white and green. They were probably fields, waiting for the grain that was being unloaded from the great ship.

She thought about the ship, their new home, and her father. No one had ever named the great ship or the hollow moon she floated in. Béla realized that a telepathic race would have no need to name objects and things; they simply projected images to each other. She suspected that her father was simply patronizing her when he had allowed her to name their great venture.

Moving her wings slightly, she rolled over and looked 'down' in another direction. There was a small town far below her. The concept of 'up' and 'down' was still slightly disorienting. From where she was right now, everywhere was 'down'. Béla knew intellectually that when she got to the surface, everywhere would be 'up', or 'over', but not 'down'. The idea of an inverted world where the ground curved up to become the sky, even though she was staring right at it, was still disorienting.

She had flown some distance from the great ship, fuming that her father wouldn't let her fly to the surface alongside one of the cargo carriers. She knew, of course, that the only safe passage was via the North or South poles, but she chaffed at having to ride in a cargo carrier like a 'grounder' to get there.

Her thoughts reminded her that she would be expected to show up in the cargo bay for transport to the surface, soon. She looked around for the great ship. She didn't realize she'd drifted so far from it. It was so tiny that she missed the little black dot against the landscape behind it, and had to search for it mentally. Once she knew where it was, though, she could see it and began to fly toward it.

Not realizing it, she was already falling toward the surface far below. Drifting with the wind as it increased in velocity to match the speed of the inner surface, she was being carried away from the great ship faster than she could fly. After several moments of flying toward the vanishing ship as fast and as hard as she could, Béla realized she was in serious trouble.

'Again? Shit!'

The air around her was becoming more turbulent. Béla spread her wings wide, considering her options. She couldn't fly up. The wind velocity pushed her sideways faster than she could climb, and sideways was another direction of DOWN! She was going to have to match her speed to the growing landscape beneath her, or be smashed against the inner surface by the centrifical forces surrounding her.

In her flights around the inside of Deimos, she had encountered this problem a couple of times, but the mass of tiny Deimos and the air turbulence between the center of that moon and its inner surface was miniscule. The dangerous part about flying around inside Deimos was the treacherously uneven landscape and the rapid, wobbly rotation.

Béla knew, from her studies, that there was a relatively calm cushion of air that rotated near the same speed as the inner surface of New Eden. In places, that air cushion could extend up for several thousand feet, depending on its temperature and density.

'I'm flying the wrong way!' Béla realized, tiring as she fought against the increasing wind velocity. 'I should be using the wind to help me speed up!'

She flipped over, stalling out, and began diving even faster toward the surface, picking up speed with the wind behind her, now. That was good, because she needed a lot of speed. She also needed a towering cushion of air to dive into, so she could change her trajectory to skim the inner surface before she slammed into it.

Now flying as fast as she could in the same direction the wind was carrying her, Béla desperately began searching below and behind her for a tower of air she could dive into. The turbulence and air pockets she flew into kept spinning her around and carrying her hundreds of feet up, then down. She'd had to fold her wings behind her twice to keep them from being physically torn from her shoulder sockets. She was now helplessly caught in the same trap she had warned Elaine about just the day before.

Far below, there was a huge cumulus cloud catching up with her. The updraft it was creating as it approached was pushing her up and away from it. Béla realized that she would be sucked down in a deadly air pocket once the cloud tower passed beneath her and there would be nothing she could do to prevent a fatal impact against the surface. She suspected that the smear she would leave on the surface wouldn't regenerate, even with the aid of her father's advanced medical micro-technology.

Béla moved her wings forward in her shoulder sockets, forming them back into arms and dived straight down, watching the cloud rapidly increase in size as it moved toward her. As she dived, she watched the huge cloud approach and realized fearfully that it was approaching faster than she was falling through the violent updraft it was creating. She was going to miss!

'Curl up into a ball, child!' her father's voice sounded inside her head.

Béla curled up into the smallest ball she could make, offering as little resistance against the terrific updraft as she could. Unable to see where she was going, she plummeted downward, desperately hoping that the sensation of falling wasn't the last thing she would ever feel.

She cried out in terror as a solid wall of icy black water smashed against her naked body, blasting her from head to toe. Fighting her impulse to curl up even tighter against the freezing assault, she stretched out to catch herself in the vast, black storm, kiting her wings to match its fearsome velocity as the wind and rain drove her violently down, then up, then down again.

Terrifying, dazzling, deafening bolts of lightning exploded all around her, blinding her, deafening her, and confusing her until she had no idea where she was or which way was up. Béla felt sick and dizzy from all the lightening blasts and the terrible, wild tumbling, her whole body numbed by the horrific shaking just from the thunder surrounding her. She was so freezing cold and wet that she could barely draw in a breath of that icy, water-filled wind and was amazed that she was alive and still flying. Uncertain and disoriented, she wildly flapped her wings, blindly trying to remain aloft.

After several moments of violent tumbling and the desperate fight to keep her wings from being ripped from her body, she suddenly realized that the wind was no longer blasting wetly at her and threatening to flip her over. Daring to believe that she'd actually succeeded in matching the velocity of the inner surface, she spread her wings wide and glided with the wind, resting her burning, cramped wing and back muscles. Her lungs were raw from gasping wet, freezing air and every inch of her bare flesh was burning from the pelting of the cold rain as it whipped around her.

Still forcing her wings and body straight and ignoring every instinct to curl up and protect her bare skin from the freezing, pelting storm, Béla looked down at the cold, damp landscape floating serenely a few hundred feet below her, still blinking away the black spots caused by the lightning. A victorious shout of joy radiated from deep inside her soul. It was radiated back to her from many voices somewhere far above.

Béla realized that everyone on the great ship had become fearfully aware of her desperate situation and found themselves completely unable to help. Even from this distance, she could feel their joy and relief as they celebrated her success and survival.

'If you didn't want to ride with me, you could have just said so... ' Elaine petulantly thought at her, pretending to be annoyed.

Béla could feel Elaine's tearful relief and knew that her sister had been through her own private hell, not knowing if her favorite sister was going to live, or die the horrible death Béla had described to her just the day before.