The City Who Fought

"A strange way to spend so much effort," Belazir said, as he nodded to the landscape around them. A chuckle passed his lips. "Preferable to expend effort and strength on this than on weapons."

"Who does he think built his ships and the weapons they're carrying?" Simeon whispered in her ear.

Channa shrugged in answer to both.

"Still, it is beautiful," he said. His hand traced the back of her neck, lightly enough that the pads of his fingers just touched the hairs. She shivered involuntarily.

"I am not Serig," he added, stroking the fingers down her spine and away. "This is like Earth, is it not?"

"Mostly," Channa said. Unconsciously she tilted her head to one side away from Belazir as Simeon gave her the relevant information. "A few of the plants and organisms are from Rigel 4, but they're compatible."

"Like looking back into the past," he said. They stopped, out of sight of the tables. He looked up into the sky. "Computer," he said. "Night."

The constellations of Earth's northern hemisphere blazed out, as they had not in reality since men learned to bend electricity to light.

"Yes," t'Marid said, looking upward at the false sky. "Very beautiful, but it seems too much openness. As if a body might fall upward and be sucked out into limitless space."

Well, a weakness, she thought. Many spaceborn were slightly agoraphobic. That could be useful, if Belazir had been spaceborn.

She thought a smile appropriate. "The sensation is called vertigo. I've occasionally experienced it myself when planet-side. I was born and raised on a space station, so I feel more comfortable under a ceiling."

"Something of that," he admitted. "But also… Computer. Night on Kolnar. From Maridapore."

Channa gasped in shock at the change. The dark sky overhead vanished. In its place was a glowing moon-colored cloud full of colored lights from horizon to horizon. She blinked, then realized the light was not that much more brilliant than the Terran sky. Yet this phenomenon was not a sky: it was a ceiling across heaven.

"A dozen times full Luna brightness," Simeon supplied.

Off to the north, auroras circled and moved, scrolls vaster than worlds, electric blue and white and pearl. Beneath them, on the horizon, a volcano was a glowing firestorm spout, powered by its own natural fission reactor. Something gigantic and winged slid across the alien constellations. Smaller things pursued it, diving and tearing as it fluted an intricate song of grief.

"I have never seen this sky," he said thoughtfully. "Not really. Not even a simulation as good as this." He issued a second command and the Earth night returned. "This is more restful."