featureless plain below and a very dark purple sky above. She imagined herself lying down there amongst the dust and rocks, a cold, silent, unforgiving landscape of flint and clay hundreds of thousands of square miles of relentlessly empty, featureless rubble, and many thousands of miles from the nearest settlement. She reminded herself of the warmth and scruffy comfort of the shuttle with its oily bunk and its makeshift clothesline strung across the cabin; the omnipresent smell of coffee and feet; and reminded herself how incredibly lucky she was to be up here and not down there.
‘Can you see it yet?’ Aaron asked with a hint of childlike excitement in his gravel voice.
Ellie continued to study the dark world out in front of her unsure what she was meant to be looking for. But this time she saw something that wasn’t there before. A thin, almost imperceptible, pale line along the horizon to the north separating the ground from the sky, so faint it only registered towards the periphery of her vision and faded to nothing when she focused her eyes back on it.
She looked towards Aaron. ‘I see a pale line.’
He nodded, saying nothing.
Ellie watched as the faint line slowly grew thicker and brighter. It was a pale blue line presently, and as wide as her little finger. She looked at him again, an expression of dawning realization betrayed her. He nodded and smiled, taking pleasure in the look of growing wonder on her face.
‘We’re approaching the arctic belt. We’ll be over it in a minute or two.’
‘Snow,’ she said aloud.
‘Yup, it’s pure virgin snow and ice, untouched by man from here all the way north to the refineries. I’ll take her down low when we get over it so you can get a closer look.’
Aaron watched her as she leant forward and pushed her nose against the glass to get a reflection-free view of the rapidly approaching arctic landscape ahead.
It still caught his breath after so many years. The suddenness of the change, after so much bland rustred, arid terrain, the transition was simply astounding. One second you could be flying over pre-terraformed Mars, the next you could be flying over New Europa’s untouched arctic continents, the transition between two worlds in the blink of an eye.
He took the helm, switched off the autopilot and pushed the shuttle’s nose down. She quickly dropped altitude and was soon skimming fifty feet above the ground. Ahead of them, the pale white line became a shelf of ice that loomed towards them. At the last moment Aaron pulled the shuttle’s nose up and they swooped over the top of the wall of ice and all of sudden the world below was polar north.
The snow glowed luminescent by the light of the stars and the Veil. Ellie couldn’t suppress a whimper of delight.
‘It’s beautiful isn’t it?’ he said.
‘It’s…it…I just can’t believe there’s a place…’
‘…on Harpers Reach as wonderful as this?’ he finished her words.
Ellie nodded vigorously, a smile stretched across her small pale face.
‘Check it out.’ He hit a switch and floodlights beneath the shuttle’s delta-wings suddenly kicked in. The arctic world below exploded - an impossibly brilliant white, and the reflected glare filled the cockpit.
‘Oh my,’ was all she could manage.
‘Enjoy it, because one day soon, maybe in ten or twenty years, it’ll all be gone, and the only people who will have seen it will be you, me and the hundred or so people who work up here.’
She shook her head. ‘That’s so sad.’
‘Terraforming is pretty depressing crap, Ellie. We take a unique world, with its own amazing eco-system and environment full of things you’d never ever see again on any other world….and we trash it all to produce yet another homogenized, 35-degree, O2-rich trailer park. It’s not like anyone even bothers to survey new planets any more, to record how they once were before we wade in and redecorate. We just see another ball of real estate around a star and,
‘Can you see it yet?’ Aaron asked with a hint of childlike excitement in his gravel voice.
Ellie continued to study the dark world out in front of her unsure what she was meant to be looking for. But this time she saw something that wasn’t there before. A thin, almost imperceptible, pale line along the horizon to the north separating the ground from the sky, so faint it only registered towards the periphery of her vision and faded to nothing when she focused her eyes back on it.
She looked towards Aaron. ‘I see a pale line.’
He nodded, saying nothing.
Ellie watched as the faint line slowly grew thicker and brighter. It was a pale blue line presently, and as wide as her little finger. She looked at him again, an expression of dawning realization betrayed her. He nodded and smiled, taking pleasure in the look of growing wonder on her face.
‘We’re approaching the arctic belt. We’ll be over it in a minute or two.’
‘Snow,’ she said aloud.
‘Yup, it’s pure virgin snow and ice, untouched by man from here all the way north to the refineries. I’ll take her down low when we get over it so you can get a closer look.’
Aaron watched her as she leant forward and pushed her nose against the glass to get a reflection-free view of the rapidly approaching arctic landscape ahead.
It still caught his breath after so many years. The suddenness of the change, after so much bland rustred, arid terrain, the transition was simply astounding. One second you could be flying over pre-terraformed Mars, the next you could be flying over New Europa’s untouched arctic continents, the transition between two worlds in the blink of an eye.
He took the helm, switched off the autopilot and pushed the shuttle’s nose down. She quickly dropped altitude and was soon skimming fifty feet above the ground. Ahead of them, the pale white line became a shelf of ice that loomed towards them. At the last moment Aaron pulled the shuttle’s nose up and they swooped over the top of the wall of ice and all of sudden the world below was polar north.
The snow glowed luminescent by the light of the stars and the Veil. Ellie couldn’t suppress a whimper of delight.
‘It’s beautiful isn’t it?’ he said.
‘It’s…it…I just can’t believe there’s a place…’
‘…on Harpers Reach as wonderful as this?’ he finished her words.
Ellie nodded vigorously, a smile stretched across her small pale face.
‘Check it out.’ He hit a switch and floodlights beneath the shuttle’s delta-wings suddenly kicked in. The arctic world below exploded - an impossibly brilliant white, and the reflected glare filled the cockpit.
‘Oh my,’ was all she could manage.
‘Enjoy it, because one day soon, maybe in ten or twenty years, it’ll all be gone, and the only people who will have seen it will be you, me and the hundred or so people who work up here.’
She shook her head. ‘That’s so sad.’
‘Terraforming is pretty depressing crap, Ellie. We take a unique world, with its own amazing eco-system and environment full of things you’d never ever see again on any other world….and we trash it all to produce yet another homogenized, 35-degree, O2-rich trailer park. It’s not like anyone even bothers to survey new planets any more, to record how they once were before we wade in and redecorate. We just see another ball of real estate around a star and,
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