“It’s been hours since our last communication with Dr. Somerset,” Commander Darcy announced. “When we last spoke, he said that their leader, Yéré Kisoun or however it’s pronounced, was about to finalize negotiations with us about a colony site – with Somerset representing us.”
“Can you hail him?” Dr. Weiss asked.
“I’m afraid I cannot, even now.” He pointed out the window for emphasis. “The only portable radio is inside his EVA suit, and that cannot be removed.” He crossed his arms. “We’ll have to hear about the results after the fact. I can only hope they’re not exile for us lot.”
“I hope the same myself,” Anton spoke up. “It would be a lot of trouble for us awake, and us in sleep.” He pointed in the general direction of the cryogenic racks. “I do not know if the frozen people can handle a return trip – they were designed to last for seven years. Even approaching that limit may cause. . . how you say, povreždenije mozga? Brain damage, yes.” He sighed. “The best way to avoid it is to revive all of them – which I still now can do – but we do not have enough saccharides to put everyone back to sleep. And to say nothing of Dr. Somerset – how do we get him back? Do we leave him to die?”
“Doctor, you know as well as I do that the TPRU landers are designed for return ascent from the surface. The trouble is, it’s no longer spaceworthy.” He sighed. “Until he’s back where we can contact him, we can’t remind him about that – and until he’s back, we can’t hear the results of the meeting.”
Quite the quandary indeed.
“So now what?” Dr. Weiss asked. “Do we simply drift around in orbit, waiting for him to respond?”
“I’m afraid so.” He crossed his arms and directed his attention outside to Rhysling. “Look, I don’t like it as much as either of you, but we – ”
“Zulu-Alfa, this is Somerset,” the linguist’s voice suddenly sounded through the speakers. “Come in, over.”
“Well, speak of the Devil!” Commander Darcy grabbed up the receiver. “Go ahead, Somerset, over.”
“I have just returned from the Imperial capital,” he explained – “with good news and bad news. The good news is, Yere Kisữ and Yara Ariman have granted me citizenship, and are willing to do the same to the other colonists once they land. Please acknowledge, over.”
A resulting cacophony of cheering erupted from the bridge. Once the noise settled down to the usual level of ambience, Commander Darcy responded. “This is Zulu-Alfa,” he spoke. “That’s excellent news – and I take it you’ve also completed the language part of your mission, yes? Over.”
“Very nearly,” Dr. Somerset replied. “I still need to assemble some lesson plans for the rest of you. Over.”
“So what would the bad news be?” Darcy followed up. “Over.”
“Not so much bad news as it is a slight change of plans,” the linguist responded. “Yere Kisữ has permitted mankind to found a colony within the Empire’s borders, but has rejected your proposed landing site. Instead, she had indicated a plot of land north of Ginzol and Kãtṛlat – a grassy field, one that has never had any Indigenous development. The silver lining to that decision is that the area she designated is larger than in the desert to the south. Over.”
All three of them started looking to one another, realizing that they wouldn’t have to prepare for living in the desert after all. “I would not mind that at all,” Dr. Weiss said. “So long as it is not the forest. . . .”
“Yeah, I don’t like that place much either,” Commander Darcy commented. “Gotta be a real hellhole if Somerset needed a gun to survive it.” Then over the radio, “Roger that Somerset, we’ll be making adjustments to our descent schedule. Thank you for all of your hard work, Doctor – you’ve gone above and beyond the call of duty. We’ll see you on the surface soon. Zulu-Alfa out.”
The commander hung up the radio. “So!” He then turned to the other two. “Let’s get started.”
–·––
“Iiiiiii!”
As Adam came up the path to Njeledirve’s farm, after making the call to Zodiac-Altair and noticing the usual market affairs that were taking place today had been called off, he only caught a glimpse of Njilidi before she squealed and promptly pounced on him. He was knocked onto the beaten ground onto his back, but when he tried to stand back up, he noticed that the pink mare had pinned him on the ground in a tight hug.
Upon receiving the news that Adam Somerset was now a citizen of the Harmonic Empire, Njilidi had apparently decided to celebrate the occasion the best way she knew how: with an impromptu party, with the entire town of Ginzol invited to attend. She had also extended an invitation to the rest of Zodiac-Altair, but for obvious reasons they could not come to enjoy the festivities. Still, it was a nice gesture.
From what he had learned from Twilight, Njilidi was the sort to throw parties for literally any sort of occasion – to the point where the residents of Ginzol actually had a betting pool on the date, time, and place for the next one. Adam took her to be extravagant and over-the-top – but for an occasion such as this? Becoming an Imperial citizen, the first human to do so – not to mention securing a place for the rest of his kind? That was worth celebrating.
Befitting the occasion as well, he also decided to get to know the ponies of Ginzol better – after all, they were the closest town to the soon-to-be colony. After some prodding from Njeledirve, Njilidi let go of him. Adam stood back up and started moving through the crowd. He chatted with the farrier about his trade, reminiscing over when he counted up his horseshoes and detected an apparent miscount. He had a word with the sisters Djuga – all three of them were simply frightened of outsiders, stemming from an apparently bad experience with a gryphon in their youth. Adam could hardly fault them. And then there was Khayay, the local schoolteacher who had sold him the language textbook. He would be forever in her debt, for kickstarting progress in human translation of the Harmonic Voice.
After a short and comical story about her class, Adam found the refreshments table. He noted that the local bakery had prepared a fresh batch of cupcakes and muffins – he wasn’t sure if the frosting was safe for him, since Dr. Weiss was laser-focused on only the things that could sustain the colony in the long term. But he was happy to take one of the muffins – he squinted, and thought he could see small bits of blueberries in them – well, Rhyslinger blueberries, anyhow. Those had been tested and approved, so Adam swallowed his worries and took a bite.
There was just a hint of tart to their taste, just like back on Earth. Adam got about halfway through the muffin before Njilidi noticed him. “Mưl hasarfu?” she asked him, bouncing over to the table. “E? E?”
He nodded. “Em, em! Mưl hasaru!” he confirmed. “Njilidi xurucru.”
But she wasn’t done quite yet. She quickly shoved something into his free hand, before bouncing off into the crowd.
Adam looked into his hand. This was a gift, wrapped in a colorfully-patterned paper and affixed with a ribbon tied into a bow, not unlike what he would get for his birthday. He finished his muffin, freeing up his hand to open the gift. The ribbon came away rather easily with just a simple tug, and the paper fell away along neat and crisp folds, revealing a small square-shaped black-shelled box. Once he found where it was hinged, he swung it open.
Inside was the pocket watch that he had once set his heart on – resting on its blue cushion, ticking away the minutes, hours, and seconds. It also had the picture frame inside the lid, but it was not empty – Njilidi had inserted a message for Adam. Apparently Twilight had let slip that he had his eye on this one specifically, so when he got word that he would be earning his citizenship, she slipped out of town the day before and bought it before he did.
He slipped the watch back into the box, which in turn disappeared into his pocket. “Hõ Njilidi!” he called out into the crowd. I’ve got to give her my thanks for this.
“Em?” she spoke up behind him.
He turned around on his heel to find her standing there, as though she had been there the whole time. He knelt down to her. “Esj ũyatalsail xurucru, hõ Njilidi,” he told her. He brought her into a tight hug, as tight as she usually made hers.
She returned it with just as much vigor. “Ơhestihe deznegi,” she told him. Welcome to the Harmonic Empire. . . .
·–·––
“Careful with that, Anton!”
“Yes sir, I know!” Dr. Konstantinov kept a vice-like grip on a light-blue box, one that had portable refrigeration attached to keep its contents frozen. He carefully brought it out of the bridge, through Altair, braking just enough to turn the mass towards Zodiac, and drifted it into the rotating section of the ship. Once inside, he twisted himself into Cryogenic Rack A, within Taurus. Suddenly he had to abandon the luxury of floating the cargo in microgravity, and grip tightly onto a handle on the side – as the centrifugal substitute threatened to make its contents shatter on the rotating floor. After all, this was a delicate operation, one that needed the people involved to take great pains to ensure it was carried out flawlessly.
Dr. Weiss was waiting for him inside Taurus – and for Louis, who was also carrying a similar box himself. She took the cryogenicist’s first, strapping it down with two more at the far end of the module. Dr. Konstantinov squeezed past the commander, pressing his back hard against Dr. Somerset’s now-empty cryo chamber, as he passed his box to her.
“How many more of these, sir?” he asked his superior.
“Just two; we’re almost done.” He indicated the ladder. “After you.”
Dr. Konstantinov started climbing, with Louis right behind. As he looked up, he saw how all the supplies needed for the voyage were now firmly strapped to both walls of Zodiac. Louis had to caution both of them against placing them along the rotating wall, especially the fragile items, despite how tempting and convenient it may have been.
Besides, it left them still with a good place for them to leapfrog out of the rotating environment back into weightlessness – which they both took advantage of. From there, it was a few simple twists and turns to return to the bridge, where the last two refrigerated containers were waiting for them.
Louis took a moment to read the label on the side: “HUMAN EMBRYOS, COUNT 1000 – ЧЕЛОВЕЧЕСКИЕ ЭМБРИОНЫ, 1000 ШТ.” – took the other one remaining, and handed this one off to Dr. Konstantinov.
“I know, sir,” he said unprompted, “I will be careful.”
“Pray you’re right,” Louis replied. “That’s the colony’s Plan B down the drain if you’re not.” He grabbed the sixth and final container for himself, then set off back to Taurus.
And out the bridge they went, carefully minding the gravitational pull Zodiac generated as they got closer to their goal. “There we are, my little ones,” Dr. Weiss muttered as she strapped down Dr. Konstantinov’s crate first. Then she did the same with Louis’s – and with a twang of the straps, she knew none of these crates were going anywhere.
“So let’s review the manifest,” he announced, “one last time. Obviously we have the embryos packed away just now, that’s good. And our sleepers?” He turned to the Russian.
“Still alive, sir,” he confirmed. “They should be able to survive the final part of the trip.”
“Good, good. . . .” The commander started climbing up the ladder back inside the central hub. “We have food, water. . . fuel and power, c’est correct. . . and communications, so we can phone home – how are our plant seeds, Weiss?”
“Fewer than two percent have been lost in transit,” she replied. “You will not miss them. Every species has survived.”
“Excellent!” He continued doing his quick yet thorough survey of the cargo, finishing it with “. . . and some starter kits for mining, building, and so forth.” He made sure to cast his gaze on both sides of the central hub, as a good portion of the lighter-weight cargo was also strapped to what was going to become the ceiling. He sighed deeply at four hours of hard work, well done.
Everything from A to Z had been transferred from A to Z.
“And radio’s in Sagittarius,” he reminded himself. “Good. Good.” He then turned to the other two. “Suit up and drink your brine. Anton – ” he pointed at him – “you’ll be staying aboard with me and the other popsicles. Weiss – ” Louis pointed at her – “you’ll board TPRU-2 and descend that way.”
“Yes, sir.” Dr. Weiss started suiting herself up, with the other two following along. Once they got their own waste garments on, they entered the back of their respective Sokol, slid their legs into their proper places, then their arms, then grabbed lanyards near the base of their spines. One firm tug over their shoulder, and the suits zipped shut. As they worked, each of them checked the others’ fit, making sure the other suits were sealed airtight to prevent decompression in transit.
“Elena, check your gloves,” Dr. Konstantinov mentioned.
“Hm?” Her right glove was correctly attached and sealed, but not her left one. She wasn’t surprised – it was the habit of a lefthanded user. She adjusted her left glove, until it fit more snugly around her wrist. “Thank you, Doctor.”
“Of course.”
Without another word, she separated from the two, leapfrogging back into Altair, where her own lander was waiting – leaving both the commander and the cryogenicist alone.
“Hold on, before you forget – !”
The biologist turned around just in time to catch a packet of clear fluid flying towards her. “Thanks, sir!” She turned back and kept drifting.
“As for us two. . . .” Louis had two more packets of the same fluid, handing one to Dr. Konstantinov. “Et merde, y faut s’qui faut. . . .”
“Is it truly necessary?” the Russian asked cautiously.
“I’m afraid so.” He broke the seal to his packet. “Santé.” The salt water tasted bitter enough, but he knew, just as Konstantinov did, that they had to drink two liters of it to retain enough fluids for Rhyslinger gravity. Still, he drank it down, holding the packets in one hand, tightly balling the other into a fist – hoping the pain would distract him from the taste. It was another old habit from Maritime Command, one that had served him well aboard the Athabaskan.
Dr. Konstantinov simply contented himself with clicking his boots together, seemingly harder and harder with each succession.
Once Louis had ingested both liters of the foul substance, he pocketed his packet for later disposal and thrust himself into Sagittarius, where a radio and terminal waited dutifully for him. As he strapped himself into one of the seats, he noted Dr. Konstantinov follow along, strapping himself in, packet pocketed. Once they were both secure, Louis reached over to grab the radio. “This is Darcy, calling Weiss,” he opened. “Are you prepared? Over.”
“This is Weiss,” her voice responded. “Sealed and strapped into Tango-2. I can still taste the salt on my tongue. Over.”
“Any last words from you?” Louis asked. “Speak now or forever hold your peace, over.”
“There’s simply so much life to study on Rhysling!” she claimed. “It will take the rest of my life to catalog maybe a single percent that lives on the surface – below the surface, in its seas, and in the sky as well. I hope that my colleagues at ETH Züri are just as ready as I am.”
“Ever eager for a challenge, aren’t you Weiss?” He chuckled. “I’ll pass it on.” Then he switched radio channels, making sure Zodiac-Altair was aligned with Einstein and the Flandro Object. “This is Commander Louis Darcy of Zodiac-Altair contacting Earth,” he opened. “At this time, all cargo has been transferred into Zodiac, and nonessential personnel have boarded their own landing craft. We have successfully completed negotiations with the authorities of the Harmonic Empire, and are about to make planetfall. Before we do so, I have a few words to say to the people of Earth, in case we do not survive the journey.”
He stopped transmitting, to give himself a moment to sigh. “If I do not make it to the surface alive. . . .” He paused again to find the words. “Tell my new niece, Marie, that I have always loved her, the moment I have heard about her first. . . that I miss Mémé terribly, especially since I could not be there for her. To all of Earth, I pray that we have good luck.”
Now for Weiss. “Dr. Elena Weiss wishes to give her regards to her colleagues at ETH Zürich, and hopes they are ready for the burden of work cataloguing Rhyslinger life, as ready as she is.” And how about Anton? He looked up at him.
“Nothing to say,” Dr. Konstantinov shook his head, sensing the unasked question. “I have made peace with myself.”
Louis raised an eyebrow. “You sure?”
“Yes.”
“Suit yourself.” Then to the radio, “Dr. Anton Konstantinov has elected not to say anything.” Louis stopped to clear his throat. “But as I have said before, these may have been my final words. If so, you would hear next from Dr. Somerset, Dr. Konstantinov, or Dr. Weiss. Zodiac-Altair out.” Louis sighed, and placed the radio receiver back with the rest of the unit. He could hear his blood pounding through his ears. This was the most important, and at the same time the most dangerous, part of the mission.
He grabbed the command console and pulled up a text file. This contained a series of commands meant to be executed in the precise sequence given. Instead of copying and pasting these commands, he simply told the terminal to access the pre-written file and execute them for him. He crossed his fingers, and with those crossed fingers, hit the enter key on the command.
With that, the doorway between Zodiac and Altair started to seal shut, using a thick titanium aperture. It finished the process within the minute with a resounding thud, one that reverberated throughout the entire colony ship. A moment later, several explosive bolts fired outside, severing the two halves of the ship.
“Landing on the night side?” Dr. Konstantinov asked. “Is this safe?”
“For us, yes,” he replied. “Whole sequence’s automated, but I can take manual control as needed.” He tapped the top of the terminal. “Not like the ship needs daylight anyway.”
“And the Indigenous?”
“Dr. Somerset should have warned them of falling heat shield fragments,” he answered. “Not that they hadn’t had much prior experience with them.”
Altair would remain in orbit around Rhysling, to serve as a communications relay between the colony and Earth – but Zodiac, with all her cargo and all her personnel, awake or asleep, was on her way to the Harmonic Empire, once her orbit was stabilized. Whether they would make it remained to be seen. Outside, Louis and Anton saw TPRU-2 detaching and heading to the Rhyslinger surface, ahead of the rest.
“Notre Père, qui est aux cieux. . . .”
––·–·
It had been a fun day for Adam.
Besides celebrating his naturalization, he had made friends with a larger part of Ginzol, beyond just who he had met before.
He was also literally able to stomach a much greater variety of local foods, he had found. He chuckled as his mind went back to a dare from Njeledirve, that he couldn’t eat a particular plant leaf. He recognized its local name – to the ponies, it was a mildly toxic species, but after Dr. Weiss ran it through the usual rigmarole, she found that it had a slight painkilling substance within the fibers, and that he could easily survive ingesting it. With that knowledge in mind, he was easily able to chew and swallow it, even noting how it smacked of mint. On the upside, because of the terms, it meant the colony had a new local hand to help with construction.
It had been a fun day – but now it was time to head home. As he left Njeledirve’s farm alongside Twilight, he checked his new pocket watch – both hands were starting to near the top. He then looked to the western sky and noted the sun starting to set beyond the horizon. “Beautiful evening, isn’t it?” he asked her.
“A beautiful twilight, you mean.” She giggled. “It is lovely.” She stopped walking suddenly, eyes still glued on the horizon. “Back in Kãtṛlat, Yere Kisữ and Yara Ariman are turning the day into night as we speak. It always happens, and it will always happen. Yet I cannot help but watch it happen each and every time. It’s. . . magic, but not the kind of magic I use.”
He chuckled. “Yes, it really is magical, isn’t it?”
“Magical? As in, like magic?” She turned to him, a confused look suddenly on her face. “No, it really is magic – how can you explain something like that happening?”
Adam would have launched into a lecture about the heliocentric theory of the system, but two things stopped him. One: he had never seen the Sun and the Moon at the same time in the Rhyslinger sky, save for the brief transitory periods. And Two: it would spoil the moment.
So he simply left the question unanswered.
Twilight stood up and made her way off the beaten trail, onto the wild-growing grass that carpeted the ground. She sat there to watch the sun, and with a tap of her front-right hoof, invited Adam to sit with her.
He felt the grass as he descended – perfectly dry, yet filled with the verdance of life. He took a seat beside the unicorn, extending his legs in front of him while placing his hands and arms behind him, to prop himself up. He breathed deeply, taking in the slight earthy scent of the Rhyslinger evening air. “How often do you watch the sun set, Twilight?” he asked her. “Well, watch the Yere set the sun, as it were.”
“Not as often as I would like,” she admitted. “Usually I’m far too busy with studying – keeping my eyes inside a book, taking notes, and writing back to Yere Kisữ.”
“You keep to your studies so much,” he commented. “Then again, there’s a lot about my kind you still have to learn still.” He tore his attention away from the horizon, to look straight at her. “Do you study with your friends?”
“Not usually.” She noticed him staring at her at last, and returned the gaze to him. “Well, Elzơ helps keep me organized, and manages my time. . . but none of them are as interested in magic as I am.”
“I guess not.” He shrugged. “But then, where I come from, on Earth – we don’t use magic at all.”
“You don’t!?” She looked genuinely surprised. “Why not!?”
“Mostly because we haven’t created it,” he answered. “Or rather, we did, countless times. It’s a little hard to understand.”
She rolled her eyes. “Try me.”
Adam took a breath in. “There is a saying we have among our kind: ‘Any sufficiently-advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’”
“Technology? What is that?”
“It’s. . . .” Oh dear, he thought. It’s something so fundamental to human society, yet I can hardly define it. Maybe that’s the reason why. C’mon Adam, think! Think! “It’s the knowledge of how to make new things, the tools we use to build and fix these things, and the resulting things themselves” was the best he could muster off the top of his head. “That’s technology – and I think you have it, too.”
“We do?” She tilted her head. “How?”
Adam pondered for a moment for a decent example. “Rope,” he eventually decided. “You tie it. You can use it to tie something together, or to keep it near you. You can use it to climb the mountains – ” emphasizing by pointing out the mountains on the horizon – “to sail a ship across the sea, and many more things. Making and tying rope is a technology.”
Twilight didn’t have a response ready at the moment. She cast her gaze back at the fiery-orange horizon, taking in and processing what he had just said. “So we have technology. . . and magic. You have technology; why not magic?”
“It goes back to our saying,” he replied. “If the technology is ‘sufficiently-advanced’ – which is to say, if it is complicated enough – it can seem like a form of magic.” He watched her turn back to him, and knew to deliver the punchline then: “It’s only magic if you don’t know how it works.”
“So. . . your house, from the stars.” She pointed down the road, across his chest, in the general direction of the lander. “Is it magic?”
“To you, I guess it is magic,” he admitted. “Your horn – it’s magic to me. I don’t know how you can lift things with. . . whatever it is, that light. I don’t know how you can teleport with the same.” And he expected a lengthy lecture from her, one peppered with several hastily-defined borrowings from the Harmonic-Voice.
But she didn’t. Instead, she kept silent, watching Yere Kisữ finish lowering the sun.
Say, what if. . . ? Adam turned around, to watch the eastern horizon. If this phenomenon works the way I think it does. . . it does! Yara Ariman took the reins in the sky, raising the moon behind Kãtṛlat, silhouetting the mountains and the fortress in a silvery-white glow.
He turned to prod Twilight, to tell her to turn around, but found she already had. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” she asked.
“It certainly is.”
“You might not believe this,” she told him, “but Yere Kisữ used to raise and lower the moon as well.”
That got his attention. “Really. What happened to the Yara?”
She pointed at the fortress. “You saw how the sisters worked with each other, yes?”
“I did.”
“They weren’t always like that. A thousand years ago – ” Is that really a thousand, or two hundred sixteen? Or is it just metaphorical? – “Yara Ariman saw the ponies of the Empire liked the day, but slept and ignored her night. One night she did not want to lower the moon to start the new day. Yere Kisữ tried to talk to her of this, but she could not hear her reason. Already she had become Zaraman, darkness itself – the same darkness she would cast upon all the Empire.”
Adam was spellbound. What more secrets does this story hold? Is it real, or is it myth?
“Yere Kisữ did not have many choices. Actually, she had only one: the Ơhseyse. She used the Ơhseyse to cast Zaraman from the Empire, and baniss her – ”
“Banish.”
“Banish. Banish her to the moon.”
To the moon? The idea tickled him. Man, if it was that easy, Neil should’ve tried pissing her off. His mind drifted to the Eagle hovering over the lunar surface, a cartoonish boot kicking Armstrong and Aldrin out, and simply stranding them there. Although I doubt that’s actually what happened. “Had it been a thousand years?” he asked.
“It has,” she responded, “only not long ago. On the longest day of the thousandth year, the stars helped her return to the Empire.” She then looked up to him, with a newfound smirk. “I was there. I saw it happen.”
Wait, was it really that recent!? “How long ago was it?” he asked her.
“It will be two years ago on the last day of Djugaman. That will be next week.”
Two years, two local years before Zodiac-Altair’s arrival. . . clearly the ship was in transit when it all happened. Then Adam had an idea, a radical one at that: Could it be that Zaraman may have created the Flandro Object all the way back then? Then how did we spot it in ’79?
Twilight continued, interrupting his train of thought. “When it happened, Yere Kisữ told me to find the Ơhseyse, and use them on her again. We went into the Kala-Uha Silasa, in the middle of the night. I was joined by my new friends – Njeledirve, Sulfoyarqa, Njilidi, Cesel, and Ṛljilufa, who helped me get to the old lat in the Silasa.”
‘Lat’? Oh. . . I don’t think I taught her that word yet. “Castle,” he translated.
“‘Castle,’ thank you,” Twilight continued. “Together, the te – six of us found the Ơheseyse – which were ourselves, as we discovered – and used them on Zaraman. She again became Yara Ariman.”
It was these six? Scant two years ago? Surely it has to be a ritual reënactment of some sort.
“Do you have any quest – ions. . . .” Adam looked down at her to see what made her stop mid-sentence. Something to the north caught her eye. He waved his hand in front of her eyes; she brought her hoof up to move his arm out of the way. Finally, Adam looked – and saw that it was happening: a large metallic structure, ringed in shape, was coming down from the twilight sky in a fiery blaze.
Zodiac was making landfall at last.
–··–
As the ringed section detached from her propulsive sister, smaller thrusters on the back of the ring pointed the ship into the proper angle – both to avoid skipping the entire structure off the atmosphere, like a stone on water, and to avoid disintegrating during reëntry. Aiding this as well were extensive and heavy reinforcement to the entire structure, and on its bow-turned-bottom, a massive heatshield – the largest mankind had ever conceived and constructed, made to span the entire width of the ring, and then some.
But that would not safeguard Louis or Anton against the shifting of the flow of gravity. Now, it permeated the entire ship, not just the sides, as the naturally-formed Rhyslinger pull overcame the artificial rotation. As tempting as it was to float about in the free-falling structure, he knew not to do so, save for an emergency.
Louis started to hear the slight wisp of atmospheric displacement outside of the hull. At some point, Zodiac had hit the Kármán Line, so he knew he was perhaps ten minutes away, by his reckoning. One way or another, it would soon end.
However, he couldn’t contact Dr. Somerset on the ground – nor Dr Weiss in transit – since the heat of reëntry meant that any radio signals couldn’t travel in either direction. Only now did he understand the linguist’s loneliness.
His anxiety started acting up – simply put, he couldn’t wait to learn more about the language from him. They just had to stick the landing. Below and above him, more explosive bolts fired – he heard the screeching of metal as the heat shield fell away, followed by massive retrorockets firing shortly after, and the fluttering of parachute cloth and cords coming out the top of the ring. By these forces combined, he was nearly flung up into the ceiling. The seat stopped him, keeping him in place – so he resigned to waiting. Still, he could tell by these events that they were nearly there.
·–
“Riwe ħalnjamu!?”
Adam looked up to see that Ħṛylilufa had joined the duo just now. “Zodiag ezegưbưnjemư!” he answered.
“Se? Sulatal?”
“Em, ese!” He pointed due north. Overhead, the ring had sprouted parachutes, to slow the descent now that it had penetrated the atmosphere. The heat shield assembly had been detached, and now four large retrorockets were firing. To Adam, it looked like everything was going according to plan. But just to be sure, he had to remind them – “Esj zanaz hipeyse fasḷkokosasḷ þesơ dolvia!”
“Ħem, serekiqhe ħilaksohoru!” Ħṛylilufa replied. “Qapata!” She flew away, but Twilight stayed by his side.
“Is something wrong?” she asked in English.
“No, nothing’s wrong.” He shook his head. “It will land in about a minute.”
She put a hoof to her chin. “How far away is it?”
“Pretty far.” He crossed his arms. “It’ll take a few hours of walking to reach it.”
“Not for me!” Before Adam could stop her, she lit her horn, brighter and brighter, obviously charging up something fierce and powerful. “I’m going to get us there quickly,” she told him. “Stand still!”
“Are you sure that’s – !?” But that was as far as he got before his surroundings changed. It was as if someone had made a jump cut in reality. The teleportation process was abrupt enough that the force of displaced air caused three apples to fall from a nearby tree.
–··–
Elena yelped when TPRU-2 hit the ground. After she unstrapped herself, she winced from the pain in her backside as she stood up. “Weiss to Darcy,” she hailed over the suit’s radio. “Tango-2 has landed safely on the surface of Rhysling. Did you also arrive safely? Over.”
After a moment, she got a positive response: “This is Konstantinov – Zulu has touched down safely as well. Where are you, Weiss? Over.”
She slithered open the window shutter – only to be met with a great cloud of smoke and dust, as Zodiac’s superstructure continued settling into the Rhyslinger earth. “I am near Zulu, Anton – I am exiting the lander at this time. We should meet outside Zulu. Acknowledge, over.”
“Copy Elena, but keep your distance. The hull is still very hot. Over.”
“Affirmative, out.”
Once the airwaves were silent, Elena started on her exit. She had two options: either she could dislodge her own Strauss suit from the suitport – or she could breach the seal on the ceiling, the same way she entered the capsule.
Climbing out would have been an issue for Dr. Somerset, but Elena had the advantage of having rebuilt muscle mass aboard Zodiac. That, coupled with the janky design of the suitport, meant the choice was obvious.
Outside, she heard solid impacting. She wondered what they could be – then remembered they were heat shield fragments. Whether from TPRU-2 or Zodiac itself – who could say?
Looking up, she found that door’s handwheel. Turning it five times, she then crouched down suddenly, to make sure that door did not hit her on the head. Thankfully, the hinges were stiff enough to slow it down considerably. Once it hinged open, her eyes met an alien starscape. After admiring it for a moment, she grabbed the door’s wall, hoisted herself up, grabbed the uppermost ledge, and climbed out of the lander.
She slid off the top surface onto the scaffold. Finding the ladder, she descended down safely. She hit the ground with a slight grunt – here was gravity, but not as much as on Earth, or on Zodiac. She looked forward – the dust cloud had settled down, the heat was still emanating from the hull. She kept her Sokol on, so they could reach each other.
But for now, she flipped her helmet up – something in the darkness caught her eye. When she got a better look – after breathing the fresh Rhyslinger air, of course – she knelt down and found a white lily-like flower. She took her glove off, and reached out to touch it. The petals were tough, leathery, like they could take a beating. Still, it was the first native plant she had ever touched – so she thought it appropriate to pluck it from the ground and pocket it for later. She’d have to ask the ponies what it was – through Adam.
On that thought, something struck her. “Anton, this is Weiss,” she hailed. “Is Louis still alive? Over.”
“Affirmative,” the commander’s voice answered for him. “We’re just clearing out some space to walk around. As tightly as we strapped everything down, of course the cargo’s bound to shift around. Where are you? Over.”
“I’ve just left Tango-2 and am heading to Zulu now,” she answered. “Over.”
“Copy, but keep your distance until further notice. Zulu out.”
She started running – the sooner she got there, the sooner she could see them. As she ran, she scanned her environment – of course she had seen the photographs taken by RPMR-1, but seeing a location and actually going there were worlds apart – literally in this case. For as much as she had discovered, she still had so much work left to do.
Naturally, however, that had to wait – as she drew closer to Zodiac, she could feel the heat of reëntry emanating from the surface of the structure. As it cooled down, she could hear the occasional pop! as the superstructure’s temperatures were still equalizing – even though a lot of it had already radiated away. Everything looked intact at first glance, but she knew that a thorough inspection would reveal the truth.
She got as close as she could stand. “I’ve arrived in front of Zulu,” she hailed. “Is it safe to approach? Over.”
This time it was Dr. Konstantinov’s turn to answer. “External temperature sensors read thirty-five degrees,” he answered. “It is safe, but do not enter yet – Darcy is still working with cargo. Over.”
“I’m working my way to Taurus airlock,” Darcy added. “I’ll meet you outside. Anton, check on all the cryogenic racks, make sure everyone’s unharmed, over.”
“Understood.”
Elena started making her way closer to the structure. As she arrived before Taurus, the airlock’s outer door started opening, and the Quebecois stumbled out. “There you are!” he greeted her. “Good to see you again.”
“Any trouble?” she asked.
“My restraints jammed, so I had to cut myself out.” He patted his pocket. “Other than that, the whole procedure has gone perfectly well.” He sighed, setting foot upon Rhysling. “Quel voyage tabarnak!” he commented. “But I’m glad that’s over now.” With renewed vigor, he put his hands together. “We’ve still got work to do, now that we’re planetside. While Anton’s checking out the freezers, we’d better give Zodiac a once-over, see if she needs repairs. Depending on the severity and extent, I’ll arrange for Anton to pull out engineers. . . .”
Suddenly, as though on cue, there was a pop! and a brilliant flash of violet light. This wasn’t from Zodiac’s hull – before them stood Adam and Twilight. Elena took a moment to note his change of attire – clearly they knew what clothing was, even if they usually went without them.
Without skipping a beat, the commander extended his hand to the linguist. “Dr. Somerset, I presume?”