Wings of Saturn

Part 2

Overall, Jenny Thain was not a peaceful person. Take the current situation, for example. Upon entering the dome she and Terri had ended up on a thin strip of beach. It appeared to curve around to the lock where the shuttle would dock any minute now. A more relaxed personality might have cautiously made their way to the lock and checked out the shuttle or hidden in the little bits of foliage available between the beach and the dock.

Instead, Jenny had managed to find a small canoe that looked like it was used for traveling up and down the beach. She then hauled Terri into it and began swimming behind it to push the canoe forward as quickly as she was able. Soon the beach was nothing more than a dot on the horizon. Once she felt sure there wasn't any pursuit, she pulled herself carefully into the canoe where Terri was lying back and resting. Holding two paddles that had evidently been laying in the canoe.

"You know", Terri began, "fast action has its positives. But taking a moment to think has its plusses as well."

Jenny's ears burned a little at the realization that she might not be so wiped out if she'd thought to look into the boat first. "I don't know. If you had been sitting up in the canoe and I was paddling it might have looked like we were in a swan boat."

Terri refused to take the bait, and so Jenny took a few moments to catch her breath. Whoever had setup this artificial dome had put in a fair bit of money to create clear, blue skies, with nary a cloud to be seen. The water was completely still, and if it weren't for the strangeness of the way they had gotten here, Jenny could almost bring herself to believe that she was on a well-deserved vacation.

But no vacation she had ever been on had included riding in a canoe with an angel. Even if that wasn't odd for Saturn, it hadn't been that long since Jenny had arrived to find the sleep ship she'd been aboard had been diverted. Since she had no idea how long this respite was going to last, she decided that now would be an excellent time to get caught up on...everything.

Terri spent the next half hour filling her in on what little she knew. How Terri had been working there for almost six months, and generally had not minded her new life. How Terri had been excited to find one of her friends from Earth was arriving on the next sleep ship, and then the strangeness of how the ship had somehow disappeared. How Terri had found the "missing" ship, and then been able to sweep in to rescue Jenny just as she was being moved from the ship to a shuttle bound for who knows where.

"That's about where I imagine you really woke up. At first you seemed to be in some kind of trance, as if you were seeing something in a different light. Then you looked at me, then the Battle unit, and I believe you know the rest." Terri finished.

Jenny appreciated that Terri had kept to the facts, and conveniently decided not to discuss just what she had seen, or how she had seen it. At some point Terri would need to know, but it was exhausting to even think about that other side of herself. While she was tempted to shift states to see what threats might be around them, she worried that doing so might also make it easier for them to be targeted again. Jenny added it to a future to-do list mentally, and then took a deep breath.

"I would think that you'd have to be fairly rich to have a floating ocean on Saturn." Jenny suggested.

Terri thought for a minute. "I don't know. If this was a refueling depot and they just added some islands here and there for recreation when they had to do maintenance, it might not be all that expensive for most companies."

"In which case the shuttle we saw could have just been making an automated stop to refuel?" Jenny asked hopefully.

"Possibly." Terri agreed hesitantly. "But even so, it likely would have logged an issue that the dome had a small breach. Depending on who owns it there could be a couple days before anyone notices the entry."