Aboard The Skyhook

It took Tony a few days to pull himself together.

The twins did their best to reassure him that they wouldn’t do anything like that again, and Leura lost count of the amount of times she explained it was an accident, and that she hadn’t thought they’d be able to travel more than a few hours forward. The experience had left the twins just as afraid of their powers as Tony, and Leura was being extra careful to not let herself get angry again.

To the twins’ surprise, it was Tony who first mentioned Mika. “I know I’ve let you down a lot lately,” he began, while they were eating dinner together around the small kitchen table. “And I know I can’t protect you from what you are. I think… I think we should go have another chat with Mika. Just a chat!” he added hastily, as both twins almost jumped out of their seats right then and there. “We’ll go tomorrow - hear him out - get some more information about this library and what they teach there,” he said with a vacant expression, nodding along like he was trying to convince himself it was the right thing to do.

Not wanting to say or do anything that might change his mind, the twins just nodded and went back to eating their dinner. But it was hard to hide their excitement, and as soon as they were in the privacy of their own room they finally let it all burst out.

“I can’t believe it! You know what this means, don’t you Wenny. He’s going to let us go with Mika to where the time travellers are… to where mum is!”

“What if… what if I can’t do it, you know… time travel? You’ve done it twice now and I haven’t done it once.”

“They’ll teach you, don’t worry, that’s the whole point of the library he works at, isn’t it?”

They carried on like this late into the night, talking endlessly about what they wanted to ask Mika, what it was going to be like at his library, and how they were going to find their mother. Eventually Wentworth fell asleep, but Leura lay awake in bed. It wasn’t unusual. Most nights Wentworth would toss and turn for a while, then fall asleep, but Leura would be wide awake for hours, unable to shake this odd feeling that she should be up and doing something rather than wasting her time laying down in a dark room.

To quieten her whirling mind, she looked through her photo album of Raya again. This time she imagined how her face would look when they rescued her, and how her voice would sound when she spoke to them for the first time, when she told them how much she missed them, and loved them, and would never leave their side again.

When Leura finally fell asleep, she dreamed of a library filled with beautiful books. But when she tried to pick one up, it crumbled into sand. She kept trying over and over again, panicking but unable to make herself stop, until there was so much sand that she was drowning in it. Then she saw her mother, and she cried out for help. But Raya was trapped in a cage, and all she could do was watch and weep as the sand slowly swallowed Leura whole.

The trip into the city was nerve-racking. Nobody quite knew what was going to happen, and the twins kept glancing nervously at Tony, half expecting him to turn the car around at any moment.

Crossing over the harbour bridge, they could see The Rocks out the left hand window, a sprawling mess of buildings and alleyways. Leura’s heart began to pound. They found a park near the harbour, and Tony hesitated for a moment before opening the glovebox and taking out the timedial. They weaved their way through the narrow streets until they found the entrance to Greenway Lane. As soon as Dials, Springs & Pendulums came into view, Leura’s heart kicked up a gear and her stomach started doing backflips. She couldn’t remember a time when she was more nervous.

The door was closed but unlocked, just like last time. There was no one inside, but the twins knew what to do. Wentworth walked forward and pressed the bell on the desk. Again, nothing happened, and again they only had to wait a few moments before the sound of heavy crushing rang out from the back room, making Tony shudder. Through the back door walked Mika, looking just as he had the last time they were here.

“I’m so glad you came, and all together this time!” said Mika with a broad smile and a nod at Tony. “There’s so much I’m excited to show you.”

“We’re just here to ask some more questions,” said Tony, instinctively taking a small step backwards.

Mika nodded, “yes, of course you are. But you of all people know that the best questions don’t get asked at the beginning of the tour. They come the moment you start showing people something they’ve never seen before.”

“Yes, I mean, that’s true I suppose. But I don’t think we’re quite ready for a tour of… what exactly?”

Mika’s laugh bounced around the small room and seemed to warm them up from the inside out. “The future, the past, my world, Raya’s, and now the twins’ too. It’s the tour of a lifetime, and many more lifetimes on top.”

“Please dad, we can ask questions along the way,” said Leura, trying to keep the desperation out of her voice.

“Yeah dad, don’t you want to see where mum’s from?” added Wentworth, though he looked much more frightened of the idea than Leura was.

Tony seemed to be teetering on the edge, unable to make a decision.

“You graciously took me on a tour of your world, allow me to return the favour,” said Mika sincerely, levelling his eyes on Tony. “I swear on my life, you and the twins will be safe the entire time.”

Leura could still see the doubt in Tony’s eyes, and knew his will to protect them was winning the battle against his curiosity to learn more. But she could not let this chance go to waste. She knew they would never convince Tony to come back here again.

“I think she’d want us to see it… that she’d take us there herself if she could, don’t you dad?” asked Leura, as gently as she dared. Tony looked down at her, and she knew she’d said the right thing. Even after all this time, her father was still trying to do whatever Raya would’ve wanted. He took a long, staggered breath, and nodded.

“Excellent!” said Mika, clapping his hands together. “If you’d follow me into the back room please, and mind your step.” He disappeared through the back door and the twins quickly followed, leaving Tony scrambling to catch up. Inside was a short hallway that led to a heavy looking metal door. It swung open without the slightest sound when Mika approached, and as they walked through, Leura had the impression that she was entering some kind of vault. Inside was a room about the same size as the front of the shop. The floor, walls, and ceiling were made of the same grey metal as the door, and there were no windows or any other way in. Up against the walls were racks that were mostly empty, though there were a few things scattered here and there, including a laptop, a phone, and a wallet that seemed to be stuffed full of cards and cash.

“What is this?” asked Tony, worry heavy in his voice.

“This, my friend, is what we call a time capsule,” said Mika, looking fondly around him. “It’s a safe place to travel from. We’ve got them set up all over time, mostly in the back of a Dials, Springs & Pendulums. It’s how we travel thousands, or even millions of years without having to worry about any of the countless things that can go wrong when you’re travelling those kinds of distances.” Mika walked over to a small display screen built into the right hand wall of the time capsule. “See, this one’s operational between the years 1882 and 101,059, but we’re not going anywhere near that far, we just need the skyhooks to be up and running.”

Leura’s head was spinning, and by the looks of it, she wasn’t the only one. Wentworth had an expression on his face like he was trying to remember his first birthday, and Tony looked like he was stuck between laughing and crying.

Mika however, looked perfectly at ease, and pulled out a timedial from his pocket. It looked similar to the one that had once been Raya’s, but made from rustic bronze instead of silver, and was a fair bit shabbier. It was clear Mika used it a lot.

“Ten thousand years puts us nicely in the Expansionist era,” he said, twisting the rings of the timedial starting from the circle in the centre and working his way outwards. “You’ll learn how to use these when you’re ready but think of them like a guide, they keep you from ending up somewhere you don’t want to go.” Satisfied with the new arrangement of the timedial’s glyphs, he pocketed it again and waved at them to gather in close. “Now for the tricky part. It’s not easy travelling this far with three people in tow, especially when one of them’s a linear.” He gave Tony a sympathetic nod.

“That’s what Frey called me, the night they… what does it mean?”

“It’s just what we call people who can only see time in one direction.” He held out his thick arms in front of him. “I’ll need everyone to grab onto me and hold on tight please.” They all latched onto Mika’s arms. Leura couldn’t help but feel a little silly standing there like that, but she didn’t have to feel that way for long. With his eyes closed and a look of serene focus on his face, Mika made the entire room collapse around them with a crushing sound louder than any Leura had heard before. The next moment the time capsule had sprung back into place, but it was almost unrecognisable.

The once empty racks were now overflowing with items, most of them so strange to look at they made Leura’s head spin. Some of them even seemed to be alive. Leura’s attention was drawn to what she thought was a pile of dark grey sand, until it started swarming into different shapes, creating a hand that waved at Mika, and then turning itself into a perfect sphere that Mika picked up and put in his pocket. “Nanobots,” he explained after seeing the look on Leura’s face, “very handy in a tight spot.” He pocketed a few more items that Leura could only guess at, then grabbed three broad and flat bracelets that were almost entirely transparent. “Put these on,” he instructed, “you’ll need them for the skyhook. Right then, shall we?” and he motioned towards the door.

No one moved. Tony was staring at an item on the rack beside him that was unmistakably a type of gun, though it seemed almost too bubbly to be a weapon, like it was made of multiple balls all squished together. Only the fact that it was locked in a thick, see-through box made Leura think it was more dangerous than it looked.

“There’s nothing to be worried about,” said Mika, catching on to what they were looking at, “that’s only a precaution, they can go a little overboard stocking these things, especially during the Expansionist era, so many useful items to choose from you see. I’ll explain more on the surface, once you’ve seen where we are for yourselves.” With that he walked over to the door, which opened silently as he approached. Leura followed without a fuss, with Wentworth and Tony a few steps behind.

The first change Leura noticed was that the short hallway was gone. Instead, the door opened up to the bottom of a narrow escalator that was so long she couldn’t see where it ended. They hopped on one after the other and rode in silence for a few minutes while the escalator took them higher and higher. Just as Leura was thinking they must surely be far above the city by now, the escalator dropped them off on a small landing with a single sleek white door.

Mika hesitated a few steps from the door. “It can be a bit of a shock the first time you travel a millennium or more,” he warned them, “just remember that while the world around us has changed, the people are more or less the same. A choice was made not long after your own time to keep the parts of us that make us, well… human. Our emotions, both the good and the bad, are still there. And luckily for you, English is the universal language across all fourteen colonies in the solar system, though I doubt you’d recognise the dialect of the Venusians, they went through a bit of a rough patch early on and spent too many years isolated from the rest of us.” And on that confusing note, Mika opened the door by waving his transparent wristband in front of it, and warm sunlight came flooding through.

Leura thought her neck might break, she was swivelling it around so much trying to take it all in.

The white door led them onto a bustling street that was suspended high above crystal clear water, like a pier, weaving around the buildings in elegant curves, and intersecting with other streets as it went. The city was completely unrecognisable. It was like the harbour had drowned it, so they built a new city on top of the water instead, only in a way that felt natural and gave the harbour plenty of space. The buildings rose out of the water all around them like pillars made of polished glass, rising high into the sky, easily twice as tall as anything in the city they’d left behind. In the water on either side Leura could see pods of dolphins swimming near the surface, and thought she could even make out the large shadow of a whale drifting deep below them.

The street itself was just as interesting. It was wide enough for at least ten people to walk along it side by side, but was littered with gardens and sculptures. And there were people everywhere. They walked by in groups of varying sizes, but no one seemed to be alone. They talked, argued, and laughed just like they did in Leura’s own time, although she caught a few words here and there that didn’t make any sense to her. They wore comfortable looking clothes that fit tightly to their bodies, making it easy to see how physically fit everyone was. It seemed people in this time didn’t need to try to be in perfect health, they just were. Leura also noticed how they were glancing curiously at them and Mika.

“Aren’t we a little, obvious?” asked Wentworth, looking down at his baggy jeans and t-shirt, then over at Mika’s flowing red robes.

Mika let out one of his booming laughs, “being obvious is the point. I may look strange in your own time, but here, people know exactly what I am.”

“They know you’re a time traveller?” Leura asked in a whisper.

“Of course they do! We can’t hide from the Expansionists, these people have colonised half the solar system at this point, it would be impossible to keep ourselves a secret from them. The Board of Chronologers work very closely with the system’s government. We have a sort of mutually beneficial relationship between us.” Mika rubbed his hands together and looked down at all three of them excitedly. “Right then, we’ve still got a short walk to the skyport, so now’s the perfect time for some questions, who wants to go first?”

A million questions erupted inside Leura’s head, fighting to be the one that gets asked first, but in her rush to say something before Wentworth or Tony, she blurted out one without thinking.

“Where’s my mum?”

The excitement in Mika’s face wavered. It was clear he was hoping all the wonderful sights around them would distract them from asking a question like that. Nevertheless, he looked her straight in the eyes and answered.

“There’s a place, deep in the past, where the Board keeps prisoners. We call it Jotunheim. I won’t lie to you, it’s not a good place, but she’ll be safe. The real punishment is the isolation, being so far from the rest of time, and all the people in it you care about.” He looked away from Leura then, and she was grateful he did because she could feel her eyes beginning to water. She had tried so hard not to think about the horror her mum was going through, but her imagination had conjured up all sorts of nightmarish places, tormenting herself with images of dark pits and screaming prisoners. The way Mika spoke about the real place did nothing to soothe her fears. Leura was sure her mother was suffering, and felt more desperate than ever to find her.

“But, where is Jotunheim?” she asked, her lower lip betraying her with a tremble that made her voice break on the last word.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t know Leura, only those that work for the Warden know exactly where it is, and how to get there.”

A silence fell between them, until Wentworth broke it a few moments later. “I’ve got one,” he said, raising his hand before realising how ridiculous he looked and snapping it back down to his side.

“Ask away my boy, ask away,” said Mika, hopeful for a change in topic.

“What’s a skyport and why are we going there?”

“Excellent question! We’re going to a skyport because that’s where you catch skyhooks from, which is the fastest way to get anywhere you want to go. Before we can time travel back to the Great Library of Alexandria, we need to get to Alexandria. That’s why we’re here, to catch a skyhook. We should only be in the air for about ten minutes tops.”

“But what is a skyhook?” asked Wentworth, looking a little green at the idea of getting to the other side of the planet in ten minutes.

“It’s a tether,” explained Mika, “a giant tether, spinning through the atmosphere, with a weight at one end and a magnetic hook at the other for catching spacecraft. Think of it like a swing in a playground, except it goes all the way around. When the swing’s near the ground, you can jump on it if you’re quick enough, then jump off it again when it swings by the place you want to get to. Earth has dozens of them, the bigger ones are for flinging spacecraft to the other colonies, as far out as the asteroid belt, but the smaller ones are used to travel around Earth.”

“So we’re going to get… flung to Egypt?” Wentworth was now looking like he might be sick.

“Mostly. First we’re going to get shot out of a mass driver, basically a giant electromagnetic catapult. It’s the only way to move fast enough to catch the end of the skyhook.” Mika was grinning ear to ear as he said this, like he was describing a fun new ride at Luna Park. “I know it sounds dangerous to you, just like aeroplanes would’ve sounded dangerous to people using horses and carriages, but it really is the safest way to travel. These days skyhook crashes only happen about once every hundred years, and only in the outer colonies where they use cheaper materials and operating systems. Ah, there’s the skyport now.”

Mika was pointing at a building a short way ahead of them. It was much shorter than the tall glass skyscrapers around it, and covered a large area, creating a gap in the city skyline. It was built with the same tempered glass as everything else, but it was shaped like an oval and had a beautiful curved ceiling that looked like a wave. Rising up from the outer edges of the skyport were dozens of transparent tubes, all of different widths and lengths. As Leura watched, she saw a sleek white pod get shot out of one of the tubes like a bullet, sending it hurtling into the sky where it disappeared from view.

“Tell me that didn’t have people in it,” whispered Wentworth, the colour drained from his face.

“About a dozen, a craft that size,” said Mika happily, “most likely a terrestrial flight to somewhere on Earth, they use bigger crafts for trips off-world.”

They didn’t ask Mika any more questions as they walked up to the skyport. They were busy watching the crafts getting fired into the sky every minute or so, some looking big enough to hold a hundred people, others barely big enough for two to sit comfortably side by side. As they approached the enormous front entrance the people coming and going began to look very different to those that had been walking around the inner city.

Leura saw a group of people with very tanned skin who were so tall and slim that she was surprised they could even hold themselves upright, then she noticed that they had metal braces along their legs, arms and back that seemed to be doing the work for them. Two people walked past in elegant dresses of royal blue and silver, covered from head to toe in jewellery that made Leura’s eyes almost pop out of their sockets. They were speaking loudly to each other but Leura couldn’t understand a single word, except for when one of them said “ska’ook”. The largest group by far was made up of dozens of people who were so short they were only just taller than Wentworth, but were the strongest looking people she’d ever seen, with broad shoulders, and arms as thick as Leura’s body. They had a rugged look about them, but were smiling and laughing heartily as they crossed through the entrance into the skyport.

Inside the building was an enormous hall, filled with all sorts of people jostling around trying to get to one of the gates that spanned the outside edges of the hall. In the air above them hung giant projections of the different launch times, like the display screens at an airport, except without an actual screen. They flashed in different colours and grew or shrunk depending on the message. A large red projection expanded above all the others, alerting the whole skyport that gate nine to New Tokyo (Ma) was about to close.

“There’s our one,” said Mika, pointing to a small green projection that said gate 47 to Cairo (Ea) was open for boarding.

As they made their way over to the gate, which was on the opposite side of the hall, they passed through an area with dozens of food stalls, and the twins caught whiffs of mouth watering smells like nothing they’d experienced before.

“Would be a shame to miss out on some grupple while we’re here,” said Mika, as Wentworth’s tummy let out a loud grumble. “Why don’t you three grab those seats there and I’ll get us some, will only be a minute.” He went up to the nearest stall and got in line to order, while the twins and Tony grabbed the seats. They were made of something that reminded Leura of memory foam, but the moment she sat down it started morphing into the perfect shape for her body, and she felt like she could’ve sat there comfortably forever.

Just as Mika had reached the counter to order, a man appeared in front of them, blocking their view. He had a shaved head and short beard, and was wearing tough looking clothing, heavy boots, thick trousers, and a vest covered in pockets.

“You three look like fish out of water,” he said in a gruff voice, his accent not too different from their own.

“We’re fine, thank you,” answered Tony, glancing nervously around the man’s legs to see where Mika was. The man gave a short, sharp laugh.

“Fine are you? Well, in that case, I guess I’m wasting my time. I only came here to give you some advice, about who you can trust in our world, and who you can’t.”

“Our world?” said Leura hesitantly.

“That’s right, Leura Fall, our world,” and he gave her a smile that made her spine tingle.

“How do you know my daughter’s name?” said Tony, gripping the armrests of his chair so tightly his fingers sunk deep into the material.

“I know loads of things, Tony. So believe me when I tell you, you can’t trust the librarians any more than you can trust the Board. Oh, they’ll tell you they regret what happened to Raya all right, but did they lift a finger to stop it? Did they even want to? No. She’s the only person you can trust out here. You’d best remember that.” And without another word the man slipped away into the crowd.

The twins looked at Tony, and he stared back at them. Leura’s heart was pounding in her chest. She wanted to get up and run after the man, to demand he told her everything he knew about Raya, and why he was warning them not to trust Mika, but she was also afraid. Not of the bearded man, but of Tony. That he might have just been scared enough to bring them home and keep them there forever.

“You’ve got to try this,” said Mika as he strolled back over to them. “It might not look like much but trust me, there’s nothing in all of time quite like grupple.” He held out a plate with four cubes made from what looked like grey jelly, each about big enough for one good mouthful.

No one responded, or reached for the grupple. Mika’s smile slipped from his face. “I know the skyhook sounds scary, but I promise you it’s much safer than driving around in a car, and it’s fun! You really don’t want to miss out on grupple, it’s a synthetic food designed to adapt to each person’s taste buds and give them the single best combination of flavours they’re capable of tasting.” He picked up one of the cubes and popped the whole thing into his mouth. His face seemed to be melting into a look of bliss as he slowly chewed the grupple, swallowing it all in one go and sighing with satisfaction. “Hits the spot every - single - time.”

Still afraid that Tony was about to start panicking at any second, but not really knowing what else to do, Leura reached out and took a cube of grupple. It held quite firmly between her fingers despite looking like soft jelly. It also had a smell to it that immediately made her mouth water. She popped the whole thing into her mouth just like Mika did, and realised just how bad every bite of food she’d ever had up until that moment truly was.

This was layers upon layers of taste, each one complementing the last and building into a symphony of flavour that blocked out every other sense she had. She temporarily forgot where she was, what she was doing, and why it mattered for those brief moments she was eating the grupple. She swallowed and felt a pleasantly warm sensation fill her stomach, and she gave Mika a genuine smile.

“It’s also incredibly healthy,” said Mika, beaming back at her. “The only downside is how addictive it is, that’s why we only have it at the library every once in a while, just for a treat.”

“You’ve got to try this,” said Leura, picking up the two remaining pieces and holding them out to the others. Wentworth and Tony ate them, and Leura watched with satisfaction as a look of pure bliss washed away the anxiety that had been etched all over their faces. With any luck, the taste of the grupple would drive the bearded man’s warning right out of Tony’s head.

Just as they were finished eating, one of the projections above them turned red and expanded, telling them that gate 47 to Cairo was about to close.

“We better get a move on,” said Mika, helping the twins out of their chairs. Leura looked back to see the imprint she’d made return to a smooth surface for the next person, then they hurried across the hall towards the large yellow 47 projected high above a pair of frosted glass doors. With a satisfied smile, Leura watched Tony keeping pace with them. If the warning had been an attempt to make them go home, it had failed.

As she passed all the people in the crowd, she kept a lookout for the bearded man, but he was nowhere to be seen. Leura couldn’t help but feel like there was some truth in his warning. That this world, and the people in it, were dangerous. How could they not be? If they could imprison a person like Raya, someone Leura knew in her heart was as good as people get, then they must be dangerous, and she’d be a fool to trust them. But right now, all that mattered was that they kept moving forward. Every step she took felt like it was taking her closer to her mother, and she wasn’t going to let anyone, or anything, slow them down.

As they arrived at the frosted doors, a pleasant voice rang out from no obvious direction. “Please show your ticket for launch number CE 22 to Cairo, Earth.”

Mika held up his wrist with the transparent band on it, and motioned for the others to do the same. Leura had no idea how the doors knew they all had tickets, but a moment later they opened without a sound. Mika led them through to a small waiting room. In front of them was a glossy white craft, shaped like an elongated egg, sitting at the mouth of an enormous tube that disappeared through the wall.

People were already climbing into the craft through an opening along its side that looked like a short, stocky wing, though Leura got the impression that when it closed it would be hard to tell there was a door there at all. Inside the craft was a roomy cabin with six rows of chairs, the same morphing ones as out near the food stalls. There were four chairs in each row, so they all sat down next to each other. As soon as she sat down, the chair moulded itself perfectly to her body, but this time she sunk much deeper in, and when she tried to move she realised that she was stuck.

“I think the chair is trying to eat me,” blurted out Wentworth from beside her.

Mika chuckled, “the chair is protecting you, it’ll let you go again as soon as we land. We’re taking off in a few minutes, look,” he nodded towards another projection at the front of the cabin. It showed a countdown with one minute and fifty three seconds to go.

Leura’s nerves were beginning to turn into excitement. She felt like she was finally getting to go on a ride at Luna Park, only ten times better. She grinned over at Wentworth, but he was looking pale and wriggling in his seat. She looked at her dad instead, but he had a vacant look on his face, like his thoughts were on something very far away. She looked around the cabin and saw only about half of the seats were taken. Most of the people looked like the ones she’d seen on the streets outside, happy, healthy, and sticking in groups. There were also a few of the overly tall and skinny people right at the back, and she wondered what sort of place would cause people to grow like a stick figure.

“Here we go,” said Mika, the excitement radiating off him like a kid on Christmas morning.

The door came down slowly, enclosing them in the cabin. Leura was about to complain that there were no windows when the walls gave a shimmer and turned transparent, showing them a full 360-degree view in every direction.

“It’s just a projection,” Mika reassured Wentworth, who had a look of horror on his face, “there are cameras embedded along the outside, we’re still safely tucked away inside the craft.”

The countdown hit five, four (Leura held her breath), three, two (she let out a little squeal), one…

There was no noise, no fancy lights or anything to indicate the mass driver had been turned on. The craft simply began to move. It entered the tube at a crawl, gliding seamlessly through it, then began to accelerate. Leura was feeling very glad she was locked into her chair. Within a few seconds they were moving so fast the tube had become a blur, then it curved upwards and they left the building behind. Now there was nothing but empty sky around them, and the blur of the city flashed by in less than a second before they were launched out of the mass driver and sent high into the atmosphere.

It had been impossible to do anything other than grit her teeth up until this point, but now Leura let out a happy shriek as she watched the sky begin to dim the higher they climbed.

“Here comes the hook!” shouted Mika, and Leura saw it, streaming through the air in front of them moving in the same direction but slow enough that they were gaining on it quickly. It didn’t look anything like a hook to Leura. It looked like a crescent moon, with its inner curve facing downwards. Within a few seconds they had caught up to it, and the craft fitted smoothly into the crescent shape. She felt a slight shudder as the hook locked onto them, and then nothing happened for a few moments.

“Now the real fun begins,” said Mika.

Leura felt the craft begin to accelerate again, yet she remained comfortable, despite the extreme speed. They were heading upwards, climbing higher and higher into the atmosphere. It was growing darker, and stars were beginning to appear right in front of them. Then suddenly the light seemed to drop away and Leura was staring up at a crystal clear night sky, the stars shining brighter than she’d ever seen before.

“We’ve left the atmosphere,” said Mika, sounding as awestruck as Leura felt.

For a few moments they seemed to just float through space. It was the most beautiful thing Leura had ever seen. Then the Earth came into view. They were hanging upside down at the peak of the tether’s swing, and they could see the curvature of the Earth below them. Leura wanted the moment to last forever, but suddenly they were falling, immensely fast, back into the atmosphere.

Wentworth began to scream. Tony had his eyes tightly shut, and Leura clenched her teeth so hard she thought she might have chipped a tooth. But Mika was laughing and whooping along with many of the other passengers.

The skyhook swung them back towards the planet with a force that should have been impossible to endure, but somehow the craft broke through the thickening atmosphere without so much as a tremor. Flames began to block the view around them, and then Leura felt the crescent hook detach from the craft and they went hurtling off at an angle, heading towards the ground.

Suddenly Leura began to panic. How were they supposed to land this thing? They were moving so fast it seemed impossible not to crash. They were low enough to see the ground beneath them now, a blur of green and yellow as they streaked through the air. Leura thought she could make out a city up ahead. They were heading straight for it.

It happened too quickly for Leura to follow. They were somehow back in a tube, and the seats gripped them tightly as they slowed down. It levelled out and they could see a light up ahead of them, drawing closer and closer until they emerged from the tube at a crawl.

“We have arrived. Welcome to Cairo, Earth. The local time is 9:30am. We hope you had a pleasant launch,” said a voice that sounded very much like the door from their gate in Sydney.

Leura’s seat began to release her, as the door to the craft hissed open. “That was… that was just… I’m doing that again!”

Mika laughed and helped pull her out of the seat. “You will, soon enough.” He helped Wentworth up next but his legs didn’t seem to be working and he collapsed onto the floor.

“Just the adrenaline, it’ll pass in a minute,” said Mika as he lifted Wentworth back to his feet and gave him one of his massive arms to hold onto.

Tony was on his feet now too, looking unsteady but smiling. “Well, it’s certainly faster than planes, I’ll give you that.”

Mika laughed again and led them out into the waiting room. It looked very similar to the one they’d just left, though slightly older and built with less glass. They crossed the room and headed out into the main skyport. Unlike the previous one, it wasn’t a circle, all the gates were lined up along one side, and across from them was a wall made entirely of windows, giving them a perfect view of the Great Pyramids, and the towering skyline around them.

“They look brand new,” said Leura, staring at the pristine stone and perfect tips of all three pyramids.

“They’ve been restored many times. The old stone is nothing but a pile of rubble now, deep beneath the surface. But don’t worry, you’ll get the chance to see the original ones.” He beamed at them all. “Next stop, Alexandria.”