Chapter Eight

"Re-entry sucks. I don't care what the government says about having new and improved inertal dampeners on all their ships. They're lying."

"At least it's better than it was. you should have tried re-entry 40 years ago."

"No, I shouldn't have."

Mila and Hawking were standing in an elevator shaft, waiting to be lowered down onto Earth. They had touched down about an hour ago, in a town called Houston 2 (the first Houston having been destroyed by a backfiring rocket twenty years or so ago.) Mila was excited and nervous. This would be her first time on Earth soil. She had been born and raised a Lucian: she had never set foot on the globe from which her parents came.

The elevator started to descend with a whoosh. Hawking was fixing the zipper on his suit. Mila looked at the elevator doors, as if expecting them to jump open the moment the elevator stopped."So," Mila said, more to break the silence than anything else, "where are you going from here?"

Hawking looked up. "Oh, about and around," he replied vaguely. "I'm doing some work abroad."

"Ah, I see," said Mila, though she did not see at all. Before she could open her mouth to ask Hawking what 'abroad' meant, the elevator came to an abrupt halt, knocking Mila off balance. She stumbled into the wall, then righted herself with a sheepish look to Hawking. He smiled. "It does that all the time. Why, my first time back--" He was interrupted by the elevator's voice, issuing from who-knows-where.

-Welcome to Earth. Please make your way down the landing platform and across to the main building. Our workers are standing by to help. Your luggage can be picked up in the main building's atrium. Have a nice day.-

The doors hissed open. Mila looked around, hardly able to breathe. Everything was so bright, and colorful, and full of life. On LuCA, everything had had gray tones, but here, the grass was green and thick, and the red uniforms of the workers glowed. And the sky--it was blue! Blue with a large, blinding circle in it that Mila knew was the sun. She looked around in awe.

"Well, are you coming or not?" Mila looked over at Hawking, who had descended the white landing platform steps and was now sitting in a little cart. Mila laughed. "Is that the Earth version of a rover?" she asked.

"This? No. Cars are much bigger."

"Caaaars." Mila played with the word. It sounded weird coming out of her own mouth. The C and the long A just didn't go together. "Caaaaaaaaaaarrrrssss."

"Mila, get in the golf cart."

Mila hopped in the other side. "Now there's a funny word. Golf. Golf. Gooolffff."

☯☯☯☯

"Snack baaaaarr."

"I knew we shouldn't have stopped for a smoothie."

"Smooothieeee?"

"Mila!"

☯☯☯☯

Mila was airborne again. She had taken the 2:00 PM flight out of the Houston airport. She was told that she would arrive in Cairo at 4:15 AM the next day. And then it was on to Nyklos. Hawking had said goodbye at the airport. He had been hurrying off "abroad" as well.

Mila looked down at the lights below her. She always felt safer, somehow, when she was in the air. It felt natural to be looking down at the world below her, as she had done on her journey to Earth. She rolled over in her hoverbed. Time to get some sleep.

And so Mila Arwyr slept, as the world passed below and the stars above.