Janet Edwards - Earth Flight

Steen didn’t move.

‘I asked you to sit down.’

There was another moment of suspense before Steen flung himself down in his chair. Playdon nodded, turned, and went out of the door.

‘Why is Steen so angry, Jarra?’ Raven asked in an urgent whisper.

I sighed. ‘Steen hates Petra. One of the students in our class, Joth, was Twoing with Petra. They had an argument and Joth got himself killed doing something stupid. Steen was a friend of Joth. He blamed Petra for what happened, so …’

‘I was Joth’s friend too,’ said Krath, ‘and Steen’s right. We should all insist that …’

He broke off because Playdon was back, with Petra standing next to him. There was an awkward silence and I realized some of the class were looking at me. I took a deep breath, forced myself to stand up, and walked across to Petra.

‘I hope we can make a fresh start.’

She stared at me, her expression changing from defiance to shock. I waited a second, but Petra seemed far too grazzed to say anything, so I just went back to my seat.

Krath frowned at me. ‘Why didn’t you tell Petra to nuke off?’

‘Because Playdon’s done a huge amount to help me since I joined this class. I’m not rewarding him by stirring up trouble when he’s grieving for his dead wife.’

‘Jarra’s right,’ said Dalmora. ‘We must respect Playdon’s decision.’

Krath glanced at Amalie and then Fian, but they both nodded agreement.

‘Fine,’ muttered Krath. ‘Have it your way, but I’m not happy about Petra being back with us.’

‘Neither am I,’ said Raven.

A crowd of figures in impact suits were gathering by our sled storage dome. Impact suits are wonderful things. When a ruined building collapses on your head, or something explodes and sends debris flying at you, the special fabric triggers and goes solid to protect you. The only problem is they’re chaos difficult to put on. I’d been proud that I could suit up in the Military standard time of two minutes, but I’d just seen Raven casually beat my best ever time by ten seconds.

‘I can’t believe how fast you suited up,’ I said.

Raven laughed. ‘I’ve had special training, Jarra.’

The last few stragglers arrived, and Playdon started talking. ‘Now Jarra is able to come with us, we’ll drive to the edge of the island. You can all admire the view from the Land Raft before we start our excavation work.’

A few minutes later, our line of hover sleds was heading along Gap 15. There was an unbroken wall of buildings on either side of us, towering up to about twenty storeys high. In ancient vid images of San Angeles, these buildings were dazzling white, and their long uniform lines had a regal elegance, but time had aged the concraz to a grubby pale grey and scarred it with cracks and holes.

Our sleds kept carefully to the safe zone between the two red lines, so we had the luxury of keeping our hoods down for the trip, instead of breathing the musty, filtered air inside our suits. I was sitting on the bench seat of a transport sled, between Fian and Raven, our three Military impact suits conspicuous among the standard black suits worn by the other students.

There was an excited yelp from opposite us. ‘Alien Contact have announced they’ve finished searching Alpha sector!’ said Krath.

Everyone madly checked their lookups. ‘So the alien home world definitely isn’t in Alpha sector,’ said Dalmora. ‘I must admit I’m relieved. It would have been worrying to think of it being near my family on Danae.’

‘And the General Marshal’s speech was only a few days ago,’ Krath said joyfully. ‘If they can search Alpha sector that quickly, then it won’t take long to find the aliens after all.’

‘Alien Contact started searching Alpha sector the moment the alien probe arrived at Earth,’ said Fian.

‘Oh,’ said Krath. ‘That’s months so … Why don’t they borrow more people from the Planet First teams, or even stop working on the new colony worlds entirely for a while? The Isolationist Party would whine about it of course, because they don’t want us to find the alien home world, but nobody else would care.’

‘My brother would care,’ said Amalie in acid tones. ‘His Colony Ten group are on standby waiting for Planet First to declare the next Kappa world safe for first stage colonization.’

‘Oh.’ Krath shut up.

Raven hastily changed the subject. ‘Why did people go to all the effort of building this Land Raft? Wouldn’t it have been much easier to build San Angeles somewhere else?’

‘They wanted to prove nature couldn’t beat them.’ I sighed. ‘Imagine what it was like living back then, with their incredible cities and fantastic technology.’

‘It wasn’t a paradise back in 2250,’ said Fian. ‘They had some huge environmental problems to …’

He broke off as a block of concraz suddenly tumbled from one of the buildings and crashed to the ground, underlining the reason for the red danger lines. Raven frowned at it for a second before continuing the conversation.

‘Their technology wasn’t as advanced as ours in some areas. They could portal around Earth, but not to other worlds.’

‘Some of us still can’t,’ I snapped. ‘Back in 2250, no one would have sneered at me for being Handicapped. They didn’t even know the Handicap existed.’

‘Sorry,’ said Raven. ‘I was tactless.’

There was an uncomfortable silence for a couple of minutes, while I indulged myself with bitter thoughts about selfishly smug people who weren’t just born norms, but rich Alphan aristocrats as well. Then I calmed down and felt guilty.

‘Sorry, Raven. I’m frustrated and angry at fate for trapping me on Earth, and at the bigots on Joint Sector High Congress Committee for ordering me and Fian out of the Alien Contact programme, but it isn’t fair to take that anger out on you.’

‘If it’s any consolation, Jarra, I think most of the committee members regret that decision,’ said Raven. ‘They were heavily criticized for it, especially after the skunk juice attack. Some people said they were partly to blame for that, because they sent you away from the safety of Zulu base.’

I pulled a face. ‘The committee members obviously don’t regret it that much, because they haven’t ordered us back.’

Raven shrugged. ‘They’ve already backed down once, issuing that clarified order about your removal only being temporary. They’d have to be desperate to totally reverse their decision.’

‘I’ve been as bad tempered as Jarra,’ said Fian. ‘It’s not just the frustration of having to wait to rejoin the Alien Contact programme, but the strain of having someone following us round all day and sleeping outside our door at night. I know you’re doing it to protect us, Raven, but it sometimes feels like I’m Threeing instead of Twoing.’

I frowned. ‘Raven, if you’re sleeping in the corridor, aren’t the autovacs a problem?’

‘They were annoying the first night, trying to sweep me up, but they’ve classified me as a permanent obstacle now,’ said Raven.

I pictured Raven stubbornly holding his ground in the corridor against the autovacs. It was funny, but it also emphasized how hard and how patiently this Alphan aristocrat was working to keep Fian and me safe. Fian was obviously thinking the same thing, because he groaned.

‘I surrender. I’ll try to stop complaining about privacy, but remember I draw the line at a triad marriage.’

I giggled. ‘Since I’m Betan, I suppose I …’

Fian waved a finger at me. ‘No, Jarra! No triad marriage!’

We’d reached the edge of the island now. Ahead of us, we could see two other islands of the Land Raft, each supported on massive legs that went down, and down, and … The sleds stopped and everyone got off and slowly walked towards the low wall that guarded the sheer drop.