Page 2 of Experimental Voyage
One of the doctors believed I’d been given a gift.
I longed to claw free of the silent nightmare trapping me.
What use was being able to jump farther and higher? What use was there in enhanced endurance? Sound mattered, especially for the members of an exploratory team. Even humans relied on sounds to detect approaching predators, and most explorers honed all their senses to survive the harshest conditions.
Explorers adapted, however.
Even without my hearing, I would follow that same path of adaptation.
Instead of regret over what I had lost, I departed from the performance hall determined to somehow reclaim what had once been mine. I would forever remain grateful to the mercy ship and her crew, but I wanted more.
Remaining on Schwana Major would not help me. No, if I wanted to hear, if I wanted to claim my place among the stars, I would need to find a way to venture forth on my own, without the expedition force I had spent so long training to join.
I already fell behind the other survivors, who’d worked relentlessly upon recovering from the accident and mourning those who hadn’t survived. A second, painful truth lingered. My presence frightened them, as I served as a reminder of what they, too, might lose if fate twisted the wrong way. Unlike them, I would need to find a new path.
And somehow, I would.
On Schwana Major,days lasted a period of forty-six hours, considered to be mid-range for habitable worlds. Maintaining three calendars irritated most, but I appreciated the passage oftime between my world, Earth, and the vast universe. The mercy ship operated on universal time, which had modifiers based on galaxy. As a general rule, life longer than minutes or seconds was measured in thirty-two hour segments. A day? Thirty-two hours. A month? Thirty-two days. A year? Thirty-two months.
Why thirty-two? Nobody I knew could answer the question. I’d been bold enough to ask on the mercy ship as well, and they’d only had theories, which they’d enjoyed debating for hours while we’d waited for test results to come in.
Personally, sixty would have made more sense to me, as we counted minutes in sixty second intervals. On Earth, hours had been in an interval of sixty as well. However, I could understand how a sixty hour day might become unbearable. Thirty-two hours pushed the limits of human endurance as it was, although the universe as a whole had determined midday naps were sacred.
Centuries remained hundred year segments, a nod to Earth’s influence on the universe despite her status as uninhabitable.
Mercy wanted me to pay them my final visit at the start of their day. According to my calendars, that meant I had six hours to blow between the concert and leaving for the spaceport. Once upon a time, I would have spent those hours gawking at the ships coming and going. The first time I’d been coherent and able to comprehend the voyage between hospital ship and planet, the wonder had evaporated, leaving me with nothing but pain and dread.
Then, in the span of a few days, the joy of flight had returned, startling everyone, myself included.
I couldn’t hear the ships, but I could feel them deep within my bones and in my head where the shiftgem resided.
If the stone resonated, it soothed rather than hurt.
In my new reality, enveloped in the unending silence, I made the venture to the crash site to begin the process of letting go andmoving on. The doctors and therapists approved of my choice to face my demons with pride, returning time and time again to continue the process of blending my old life with my new.
In the time since the crash, the debris had been cleaned away. Everyone, even the staff of the mercy ship, had participated in restoring the land. Here and there I spotted pieces of bent and melted metal and shards of shiftgem crystals. Those persisted.
Somehow, they evaded most. When I stopped to think about it, I could understand why the broken jewels might wish to remain on my world.
A soul could spend multiple lifetimes exploring Schwana Major without tiring of its beauty.
A sparkle caught my attention, and I crouched, moved away the churned soil, and picked it up. Unlike the shards I’d found, somehow, the shiftgem had survived the impact intact. At a little over six inches long with double termination and a clear body, somebody would have paid a fortune for the stone. I lifted it up, and even the moonlight managed to reflect in its depth and create a warm glow.
As I did every time I came to the site, I pocketed my find to take onto the mercy ship to turn in. Sometimes, the fragment became one of my treasures. Sometimes, it went into a box for later study.
I had no idea what would happen to the intact crystal, but I’d find out soon enough.
The hours passed as they always did, and I filled the moments with my botany journal, sketching night blooming flowers, taking note of their scents, and creating memories of the world I one day hoped to leave behind.
I wentto the spaceport early to bask in its glory.
The thrum of spaceships idling resonated in my bones, and while sound continued to elude me, the sensation somehow offered hope I might one day experience the discomfort of being on the tarmac headed for a ferry ride to the mercy ship orbiting the planet. I would never remember my first trip on the ferry. I’d been battling for my life, every breath a victory for the medical team fighting with me. As they still classified me as fragile, I got to ride on their ferry again rather than a standard shuttle. The mercy ship’s vessel used specialized evolvulite drives to escape the atmosphere of the planet at a stately pace rather than at the high velocities most utilized to enter space.
If all went well, it would be my last journey on the ferry, and I would be cleared to travel to space in the traditional fashion.
Unlike many ships, which used a rocket-shaped body to streamline departure from planets while maximizing their ability to traverse space, the ferry took the form of a strange disk with a curved top and gently sloping underside. All sides of the hull featured thrusters to allow the ship to hover and change directions. Directional thrusters located at the front of the ship allowed it to reverse as well, giving it the general agility of a hummingbird.
I suspected whoever had spotted the first hummingbird on Earth, prior to its destruction, had decided buzzbird lacked the same linguistical grace, as the sound their wings made was more of a buzz than a hum.
