Aubry’s muscles ached for movement. It had been seventy minutes since the launch, and they were gliding into docking position. There was nothing to see but the confined space of the capsule. There came a gentle, oh, so gentle bump as the ship docked, and then there was, somewhere distant, a series of clicks and hissing sounds. Pressure equalizing, perhaps.
A door opened to his side. A door in the side of the shuttle? It wasn’t the one he had entered through, and he hadn’t really noticed it.
A metal tunnel loomed beyond it.
Aubry unlocked his belts, and pushed himself very gently, afraid of the lack of gravity. He drifted away, disoriented, senses struggling to adjust. Dammit! Who was watching? Who might expect Faakud Azziz to have undergone extensive zero-g practice?
He pulled himself hand over hand along the passageway, his toes grazing the ground.
Above him, the Earth loomed like a swollen blue teat. A pressure-suited woman on a scooter of some sort hovered just outside the tunnel, videoing for a distant audience.
An audience. Aubry’s audience. Again, something uneasy stirred within him, and he took a moment to study the hazy colors of the globe above him.
Wonder stirred within him, and his eyes, inexplicably, misted up. Why should it move him in such a manner? It was the same planet he had seen a thousand times, in globes and newsfax and holos.…
And yet … and yet …
Something within Aubry’s chest felt as if it were going to tear open. Tears welled in his eyes, ballooning without rolling down his face or breaking free. He blinked hard, and a tiny droplet of water floated free of his face, drifting like liquid smoke.