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into sadness as the planet was now so far below that the only features he could distinguish were the dark mountains and the shimmering seas; it was breathtaking in its beauty.

  “We are approaching sensor range of the station,” said Isla. “I will return to the planet’s atmosphere.”

  Nicholas reluctantly looked away from the planet to see that the little moon now looked like a child's ball, with a thousand pinpricks of light smothering its surface. “There are people there?”

  “Many.”

  “Can they see us?”

  “No, but they will know something is approaching as we will be disturbing the magnetic field, and they monitor that constantly. We must not be provocative.”

  They swept under the station many kilometers distant, and then around the curve of the Earth until the sum’s brilliant orb dawned. Then they dived back down to be enveloped by the atmosphere and early daylight, revealing features so stunning that he saw anew, wonders that he had taken for granted all his life. A haze of brown and white became a mountain: a swathe of green a forest: a filament of blue a large river; specks became villages or towns. As they fell so the curve of the planet flattened out to become the horizon. Roads and individual houses could be seen once more. It was a feeling that excited Nicholas as nothing ever had before.

  They skimmed trees and hill at such speed that everything but the distant horizon was a blur. Isla identified lands, features and cities that he had been told of from travelers and seamen, and many more that none of his kind had ever heard of, but Isla seemed to know everything there was to be known. Nicholas was so overwhelmed, that the realization that it was daylight came as a shock. “We are too late,” he cried out. “Dawn has passed.”

  More Quone-Loc-Sie, and other novels and stories by John Stevenson can be found by visiting

  www.caelin-day.com

  www.Australianstoryteller.com

  www.Australianstorywriter.com