Two seasons after the bad experience on Below, Bjorn boarded an airship bound for Ulou, the capital city. He planned to pursue higher education.On a few occasions after the happenings on the surface world, he had tried to hash out the incident with his father, but the Captain had hushed him without words. Three times the Captain had returned to the surface world, and three times Bjorn had been left behind. He no longer had a future in trading. One incident had closed all doors for future experience Below.After pondering the problem, Bjorn had requested permission to study techistory at Academia. Anything to keep his mind away from memories of his failure.—Earlier this morning, the Captain had accompanied Bjorn to the harbor for departure. “Your aunt Sumia will be glad to see you,” he said. “She has long wanted to deliver you from my authority.” No humor had laced the words, and the Captain’s eyes had reflected a gaz

For two days, a mighty western gale pushed the Pacer miles off course. Damage to the vessel exceeded expectations, and the captain closed access to the forecastle and the sports deck. Only the restaurant and the main and lower promenade decks remained open to passengers. Through it all, Bjorn battled boredom, motion sickness, and frustration. He wanted to see Crystellia.He considered contacting an officer. Maybe something or someone had harmed her. But perhaps she didn’t want to be found? He was tired, nervous, and starting to feel like a fool. His imagination carried the mental distraction of a soft pectoral tracing his rear spiracle.Then came a knock on the door of his cabin. He almost tripped on the bed while rushing to answer.Crystellia hovered in the gangway, her scent intoxicating. Clad this time in a greenish-yellow netted weave of living kept, she stunned his breath away.“Down at Glory Activities,” she said without p

With Crystellia gone, Bjorn scanned the net for information on his incident with the surface dwellers. To his surprise, an obscure Theo-Arborist chat board contained much detail regarding the event, including a shared video taken by someone on the Amera’s crow’s nest.Bjorn’s name stood prominently in all the conversations. His many followers believed a failed intervention sufficient cause for a strong hurrah. Wow! How strange to be known not as the son of Captain Radoon Gydlin but as Bjorn Gydlin, the one who stood up for the Walkers.He tried joining the website, but they refused him membership. The administrators considered him a scammer, trying to pass himself off as the lead protagonist of the surface world adventure, and the harder he pushed for acceptance, the smaller became his online world.They blocked his access and locked him out. He reached into the fanbase, doing searches according to remembered pseudonyms, seeking to

Bjorn stared down a narrow under-construction corridor of OI floaters stretching outward and away from Ulou. It was a wonder in the works, the likes of which he had never seen.As per the brochure in Bjorn’s hand, at each edge of the living platform, workers dressed in HB-cloaks operated closed-in cranes and installed transparent Rand Solar shielded piping systems along the passage. Bjorn assumed the crew would stock the connected pipes with the latest breed of genetically altered grass carp, thus limiting plant growth, reducing the load on natural Cloud resources, and ensuring a solid and tight access strip. However, how well the system worked was yet to be tested.Off in the distance, Nargis looked like a gray moth floating in blue crab soup. On the Ulou side, within the completed sections of the protected bridge-tunnel, other workers installed expansion links for the RS screen. Remote-controlled water tankers traveled to the unfinished end of the corridor and

As Jamison and Cupun walked side by side, the village in the trees by the solar farm faded behind. Open fields and a thick, red-hazed sky marked their way, but hints of sunshine and blue still peeked above the far northern ranges. So, they flowed north, just as the Airborne, called an angel by Cupun and his people, had warned everyone to do.Healing now, not well but getting along rather nicely, Tulugaak traveled across the open ground that lay ahead. His parents and their youngest daughter remained near to his side. The other hanumans enclosed the originals in a moving circle. Many mutant types remained hostile to humans, and the urge to slaughter the makers corrupted their nature as it had once been in Jamison and all other mutants.But that was long seasons in the past before mutants first modified their behavior patterns. The war of wars had lasted for over a quarter-century. Most of the originals died out because of manufactured viruses, devastating weapons, or th