Grail

Metasequoia slid in a wide elliptical turn around the broad hip of the planet and into sunlight.

Sunlight that stroked the lighter as the primary star bulged, refracting through atmosphere and flaring like a diamond in a band of light. Perceval raised a hand to cover her eyes until the polarizing filters and her own pupils adjusted—a brief moment, until her colony dropped compensating veils across her irises. Then her palm dropped to press the port, as if she could touch the jeweled thing revealed before her.

“Most people who live here,” Danilaw said, “have never seen it this way.”

Perceval started and half turned, overbalancing herself. She didn’t fall because Danilaw steadied her, one hand on her shoulders.

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m not used to people being able to sneak up on me,” she said. “Usually, there’s an Angel on my shoulder.” Nova was still within range of her thought, but it wasn’t the same as being surrounded constantly by the invisible fog of her colonies.

Danilaw caught Perceval’s eye, and seemed about to say something. Perceval, however, turned back quickly. She wasn’t going to miss any more of her first sunrise.

The star was already free of the atmosphere’s clinging brilliance, burning clear, pale yellow against the blackness beyond and she sighed. “It’s over so fast.”

“We’re moving at a pretty good clip,” Danilaw said. He came up beside her so she wouldn’t have to turn to speak with him, or maybe he wanted to watch as well.

Fortune swelled in the forward port, dayside illuminated, and Perceval gasped as the Metasequoia went nose-down and offered her a lingering view of dark violet and sand gold continents and glittering seas veiled under gauzy drapes of water vapor. Images and simulations had not prepared her for the depth of it, the dewy three-dimensionality. It looked real—of course it was real—but it also looked close and solid, as if it were a blown-glass bauble, superhumanly detailed, that she could put her hand out and pick up, hold, experience the cool solidity of its weight in her hand if only the viewport were not in the way.

A chime warned them to return to their seats. Amanda’s voice followed. “Attention, passengers. We are commencing our atmospheric entry approach at this time. Please assume a seat and confirm that you are properly restrained so we can begin our preliminary trajectory corrections.”

“This way,” Danilaw said, standing aside to permit Perceval to precede him.

She moved toward the control capsule in the nose of the lighter, passing through the open hatchway to find Tristen already seated beside Amanda in the forward row of chairs. Perceval dropped into her seat as Danilaw secured the hatch behind them. The webbing required a certain amount of guidance to fasten properly, leaving her wondering if these strangers would accept nanodrape technology as a potential trade good, or if their cultural opposition to excess energy expenditures and nanotech extended that far.

Fastening the straps was rendered more challenging because she could not stop glancing away from what she was doing to stare out the lighter’s broad horseshoe of windows. She felt the inertia as the craft began to rotate and craned her head back hopefully. Above—a term with meaning, suddenly, beyond “overhead”—the cloud- smeared orb of Favor drifted into view as if suspended in time and space. Perceval lifted her hand to occlude it with her palm, and realized that, as it was both smaller and more distant than Fortune, she could have covered it with her thumb. Her heart made savage with her ribs; her eyes welled up with unaccustomed wetness.

A world. A whole world up there.

She didn’t realize she had spoken aloud until Tristen spoke over his shoulder, through the curtain of his hair. “A living world.”

“If you don’t mind birds that crap hydrosulfuric acid. Strapped in, Amanda,” Danilaw said, reminding Perceval to confirm out loud as well.

“Perfect,” Amanda said. “Contact in ninety.”

Perceval’s hands closed reflexively on the arms of her acceleration chair. It reclined, the restraints contracting comfortably but firmly to snug her into place. She breathed deep, a little giddy on the over-oxygenated air, and adjusted her oxygen uptake and respiration reflex to compensate. Wouldn’t it be something if she passed out from forgetting to respire because the air was too rich?

She’d expected a worse bump when they hit the atmosphere, but it was more of a skipping sensation, and then a heavy drag like water over skin. Rays of dull glow flowed up the windscreen, red shading to orange and then gold, brighter, brighter, until Perceval adjusted her eyesight to compensate as the sky overhead began shading from obsidian to indigo. Heaviness kept her from raising a hand to shade her eyes, but in the front seat Tristen leaned forward, stronger than she. Resisting the acceleration. He let himself slump back a moment later when Amanda gave him a shocked glance, and he tucked his arms conscientiously at his sides. Each bump of the descending lighter swayed him slightly as he settled back into the acceleration couch.

A moment later, the inertial dampers kicked in and Perceval found herself back to something like normal gravity. On the heavy side, but not unbearable.

After that, the ride went smoothly. They sank through the layers of atmosphere like a flat stone slipping sideways into the depths of some ancient tank, the fluid air curling around them, sensor lights green and cheerful on the boards. Something flashed orange for a second. Amanda touched a control and it righted. Or Perceval assumed the emerald glow meant it had righted. It didn’t seem like an opportune time to ask.

The glow receded across the ports. The sound and sensation of air dragging along the skin of the craft dropped to a roar. “That was the tough part,” Amanda said. “Nothing tricky left but the landing.”

They dropped for some time, Amanda reporting what continent or sea they passed over as the minutes went by. A cloud layer crawled beneath them like a wrinkled sea; they passed through its upper layers and dropped into calm air below. Now the sky overhead was a deep transparent cerulean—a color so bright and clear that Perceval felt like she should be able to see through it to the shape of the Jacob’s Ladder up there somewhere in the dark on the other side.

She could see Fortune’s sister planet, heavy on the horizon like a ripe fruit on Mallory’s tree, reflecting sunshine from its blue-violet surface, wearing wispy stratus clouds like a wind-whipped beard.

Below, a band of darker clouds loomed—a towering topography with its highlights picked across in brushed silver by the angled sun. Vast updrafts, kilometers high, whipped the cloud tops to frothy peaks smeared flat at the top by a shearing wind.

“Thunderstorm,” Tristen said, like a Benedickion. “I’ve never imagined …”

“Me either,” Perceval said, and reached forward to touch his shoulder.

“We’ll be going through it,” Amanda said, “so you’ll get to appreciate it up close.”

A blue-white arc of searing brightness flickered between the clouds they fell toward like a snake’s tongue. A bright reverse shadow seemed to follow it, an expanding ripple of fox fire racing along the cloud tops. The boom that followed seconds after shook the little craft like the fragile rice-paper cylinder it wasn’t. Perceval’s dignity alone kept her from squeaking and clutching the armrests.

A half kilometer or so above the cloud tops, the Metasequoia dropped as abruptly as if someone had pushed it off a tabletop. Another arc lit the inside of the cockpit in black-paper cuts and sharp silhouettes, edges without compromise. This time, the rattling, growling rumble followed much faster, and much longer.

The craft pitched up again. Amanda’s hands rested lightly on the controls, though, concentration smoothing her face. Her expression revealed no sign of discomfort or worry. Occasionally she said something brief and cryptic into her mouthpiece; Perceval came to understand that she was speaking to a traffic manager.

They dropped into a sea of gray cotton candy, which opened up and swallowed them entire.

Perceval expected a sound, a shushing, shirring noise as the clouds wrapped them. But there was nothing, a curious hush, the thrumming of the engines and the life-support systems controlling the cabin climate. Tristen sneezed, quite suddenly, and Perceval sniffled as the scent of burning electronics filled the cabin. “Is something on fire?” she asked.

“That’s the smell of the storm,” Amanda said. “We’ve started filtering in some outside air. You’re smelling ozone from the lightning discharge.”

Lightning. She said the word over to herself to memorize it. “It smells like burning.”