I don't even know where the word came from; everything else I made a conscious effort to name but where the word 'Pendor' came from was beyond me.I don't even know where the word came from; everything else I made a conscious effort to name but where the word 'Pendor' came from was beyond me. But as I passed through the observatory I looked out onto the silently turning ring, complete with land, water, and air... and still lifeless. And this mineral-heavy rock that my operational base sat on, once a tectonicly stable planet in its own right until Fawn and I had mined it clean for its internal resources, slowly orbited the star 'Pin' inside the orbit of the ring. I couldn't help it; just looking at it, only one-third complete but still an incredible achievement of imagination and engineering, brought tears to my eyes. The shuttlecraft 'Destiny' and it's sister ship 'Density' sat side- by-side in the enclosed bay. I climbed into the first one and sat down in the pilot's chair, taking a few moments to refamiliarize myself with the controls. "Ready, Fawn." The airlock opened slowly, and with a gentle turn of the auto-Z dial we rose above the equally airless surface of Ops. "I'm ready for the transition," Fawn announced. "Then do it." Like blinking my eyes, I was suddenly staring out the front viewport at a sky full of stars. "Terra is to plus-x, minus-z. To your left and below, in other words. As always, we have no telemetry," Fawn announced. "Gotcha," I said. Banking with a slight roll, I looked down and located the islands of what would someday be known as Greece. "Can you give me an illustration of Ida on a map, Fawn?" "Right there," Fawn announced. "Screen three." I glanced up and over at the screen she indicated, looking at the map. |