T’sha didn’t understand how the World Portals worked. Pe’sen’s patient explanations of the function of waves and particles, actions at a distance, and the flux-fold model of nonliving spaces brushed past her skin and left no impression. In the end, all she really knew was that Pe’sen understood it and had made it work flawlessly hundreds of times.
Then why am I ready to bolt from fear?
Through her headset, she heard Pe’sen give the activation command. The ring sang, a high, keening note. The metallic-electric taste of the air grew overwhelming. The air below her rippled with pure white light. T’sha clutched her bundle and drew tightly in on herself. The air around her bent, brightened, and pulled her down. And then she was not falling down into brightness but rising up from darkness. Clear air supported her wings, and T’sha could breathe again and look around herself.
All she saw was desert. The candidate world was gold and gray in its twilight. The wind felt firm and familiar under her wings. It was strong with the scent of acid, gritty with dust, and dense with the swirling clouds and smoke from the living mountains. For all that, the wind was sterile. She could smell no life anywhere.
The sterility, though, was not distressing, as it was on Home. Here, the wind felt clean. They could do anything here, plant anything, breed anything, spread all the life they needed. New Home, new life, new hope. Her bones quivered with an excitement that was the last thing she expected to feel.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” D’seun flew from his perch on the edge of the ring and hovered next to her.
“Yes,” she answered, all animosity lost in wonder. T’sha tilted her wings to rise higher. Below all the winds spread a naked crust laced with cracks and ravines and double-walled ring valleys. Twilight dulled its colors underneath her. But ahead, she could see the deepening darkness of the nightside, and there, the crust glowed more brightly than she had ever seen on Home. “It truly is amazing.”
She banked back to D’seun. He was speaking to the mooring cortex next to the clamp that held the portal’s kite. He turned his muzzle toward her. “I am getting a signal from the base. They are not far and are moving slower than windspeed. Shall we go on our own wings?”
“I’d like that.” T’sha felt herself swell at the prospect of traveling through the fresh winds.
“Let us, then.” D’seun launched himself onto the wind, sailing toward the nightside with its blackened air and brightly shining crust. The twilight they flew through turned the wind a smoky gray.
“When I first came here, I never thought to find anything without life beautiful,” said D’seun. T’sha started at the brush of his words. “I keep dreaming that because this world in itself is so beautiful, so balanced, the life we spread will be the same.”
A fine sentiment, one T’sha could easily agree with. The wonder of the place seeped through her skin and settled into her bones, carried by the willing wind. But she could not afford to let the feelings sink so deep that she stopped thinking. That was something D’seun might be counting on.
“The balance will depend on us,” she said.
D’seun said nothing in reply. They coasted together in silence. T’sha tried not to believe that D’seun was plotting strategies in his own mind, but she did not have much success.
“There is our home.” D’seun pointed his muzzle over his right wing. T’sha followed the angle of his flight.
The base drifted steadily through the thickening twilight, heading toward the darkness. They were almost fully into night now. The swirling clouds glowed orange and gold with reflected light, their wrinkles and grooves turning into black patches of shadow.
“Base One,” D’seun spoke into his headset, “this is Ambassador D’seun, approaching with Ambassador T’sha.”
“We are open for you both, Ambassadors” came a vaguely familiar voice. “Approach as you are ready.”
They were now close enough that T’sha could see between the sails. The outside of the base’s shells bristled with antennae and sensors. Their roots and ligaments created a net around ten or twelve bubble chambers that reflected the crust’s light even more intensely than the clouds. T’sha had stayed in similar outposts on many of her engineering journeys when she was part of the teams trying to repair the canopy.
A windward door stood open for them. T’sha and D’seun let themselves be swept inside. The door snapped promptly shut, cutting off the wind and allowing them plenty of time to slow and bank into the main work chamber.
The company inside that room also felt familiar. Researchers and engineer clung to their perches or draped across boxes of supplies and tools, watching their instruments, inscribing their reports, or talking earnestly. She had worked with such people for most of her life, before she had decided to make her opinions public.