Prophecy

programmed to return to Atlan from here.'

'Then I will bring you back.'

Rayne sank down on the couch, staring at the screen again as the vast energies of a transfer Net crawled over it. Instead of the ragged, branching lines of crackling power, the screen filled with solid golden light. When it faded, new stars appeared.

She gasped in astonishment. 'You used the transfer Net!'

'Of course.'

'No, I mean you went into the energy dimension!'

'Yes.'

She shook her head. 'I've got a lot of questions for you.'

'Later. I want you to go down to the planet below. You must wear protective attire.'

Rayne glanced at the screen, adjusting the camera until a dull grey orb came into view. 'What planet is that?'

'It is called Elliadaren.'

Rayne stared at it for a long time, her mind reeling.

The guide's voice broke into her reverie. 'You are distressed.'

She shook her head. 'No, just tired. I'll go and find a space suit, if there is one.'

'It is in the locker at the back of the cabin.'

With a suspicious glance at the empty air whence the voice issued, she went to the locker. The bulky suit inside was too big for her, even when she adjusted it. She struggled into it, finding herself entombed and almost immobile. The final catches defeated her, and she sighed with frustration.

'This isn't going well. Can you help?'

A fuzzy ball of golden light appeared beside her, and she staggered away from it in alarm.

'Do not be afraid, it will not harm you.' The voice sounded much closer now, and a lot smaller, to her relief. It seemed to come from inside her helmet, through the communications relay next to her ear.

'What the hell is that?'

'An energy sphere. I will seal the suit for you.'

The ball of light swirled and formed two tendrils, the tips of which solidified into three-fingered pincers. She forced herself to stand still as the pincers fastened the suit seals, then they became tenuous again and shrank back into the sphere. With a flick of her thoughts, she switched on the suit's air and took a deep breath as the stale smell of canned air rushed into her nose. The two tanks on her back contained enough liquid air to last for several hours, and the suit's sensors fed a readout into her brain. The energy sphere vanished, and she glanced at the main screen through the suit's plasglass visor.

'I'm ready, I think. But wait a minute. Isn't Elliadaren radioactive?'

'Yes, but the suit will shield you.'

'Right, okay.'

Even as she wondered if she could trust this alien entity that claimed to be her guide, an energy shell engulfed her, then dispersed. Her boots sank into a thin layer of bitter, greyish snow, and she tottered, struggling to keep her footing on a slippery surface. Legs braced, she regained her balance and look around. A dull, almost uniformly grey landscape stretched away to distant hills and a jagged jumble that could have been the ruins of a city. The sun was a dim glow beyond a dull blanket of clouds that almost blocked it out. A bitter wind tugged at her, and her breath fogged the inside of her visor. The sensor feed in her brain informed her that the air outside was well below freezing, and a heating circuit activated, sending warmth down her spine.

'Okay, I'm here. What am I supposed to see?'

'Turn around.'

With great care, she shuffled around, and gasped. The visor fogged, and she tried to wipe it, cursing when she realised that the mist was on the inside. She waited, breathing slowly, for the fog to clear. The patches of mist shrank, and she tried to make sense of the view.

Giant spires of crystal thrust up from the grey snow, towering kilometres into the air. The crystal glinted with a medley of colours, mostly soft blue, mauve and pink with glimmers of yellow and green. The crystal was, for the most part, clear, and the colours came from refracted light. The faceted columns were broken, their tapering tips lying smashed beneath the snow. The jagged, oddly-shaped mountain from which the spires sprouted had to contain something the size of a moon hidden under several feet of snow, and she shivered as she stared at it.

'What is it?'

'A ship of sorts. It was a sentient crystalline beast capable of using the transfer Net far more efficiently than any man-made ship.'

'What's it doing here?'

'Its master forced it to partially enter the planet's atmosphere, and it was employed in his work when nuclear fire razed the planet. It is the only instance in which one such has been… killed.'

'Why are you showing it to me?'

'I will explain that in due time. I will return you to your ship.'

'Wait a minute!' Rayne cried. 'Can't I have a closer look?'

'There is nothing more to see. The creature has been dead for fifty years. It is frozen solid, and there is no portal through which you could enter.'

'Still, I want a closer look.' She plodded towards the mountain, the stiff, heavy suit and slippery ice underfoot making progress difficult.

After sinking waist deep into drifts twice, she reached the edge of one of the broken spires and touched the frigid crystal. Aware that its razor edges could rip her suit, she moved around it and slogged towards the mountain. It rose high above her in a vaguely dome-like curve, its under parts either flattened or forced into the ground by the force of its impact or its sheer weight. Certainly something so massive and constructed largely of crystal had to be extremely heavy. Whatever shape it had had when alive was hard to determine now. Decades of atrophy had caused it to sink and buckle, and summer thaws had allowed parts to rot. Something told her it had been much larger when it had been alive, and even now, it was so huge that to view it in its entirety was impossible unless she could hover a couple of kilometres in the air.

Radiating lines of buried crystal columns hinted at a vast array of wing-like structures whose purpose she could only guess at. The columns stretched away into the distance, swallowed by snow and mist, but she estimated that they must be hundreds of kilometres long. She climbed up the steeply sloping snow banked against the sides of the mountain, her legs aching by the time she reached an area where it appeared to be thinner.

After resting for a while, she scraped the snow away, hoping to dig through to the skin of this amazing space beast. The snow covering it was a metre deep, and she was sweating by the time her glove scraped crystal. Her suit link warned her that the humidity within it was becoming dangerous, and it vented clouds of steam. Cursing it, she knelt to peer into the hole, where crystal glinted in the grey depths. As her guide had said, there was little to see, and finding a way in would take months and a great deal of machinery. She sat back with a sigh, her visor fogging.

'Okay, you win. Take me back.'

The transfer Net deposited her in the scout ship, and, with the help of another energy sphere, she stripped off the suit, eager to quit its sauna-like confines. Free of it, she revelled in the sweet cool air and towelled the moisture from her face. As her damp clothes dried, she sat on the couch and stared at the grey planet on the main screen.

'What happened to Elliadaren?'

'It was the first, and only planet in this galaxy to be attacked by an Envoy.'

She sighed. The voice seemed clearer now. Evidently the guide ship had found a more suitable waveform to transmit on. 'What's an Envoy?'

'That is a long and complicated narrative.'

'I'm all ears.' She rose and fetched a cool drink from the refreshment dispenser, then settled back on the couch.

'You are tired. You should sleep.'

Rayne yawned and put the glass down before it slipped from her fingers. The black abyss of sleep dragged her into its dark embrace, and she fought against it with every iota of her will.