Neil woke to drool running down his chin. He tried to wipe it away, his mind a little foggy and disoriented, but his hand struck the transparent shield covering his face.
"Drooling on yourself? Don't tell me my newest recruit needs a padded cell." Mr. Chapman looked over his shoulder from the cockpit's front seat. His face shield was raised.
Neil hastily pressed the button to raise the shield and wiped away the drool. As he did so, he remembered why he had been asleep. "What did you do to me?"
"Macab sleeping agent," Mr. Chapman said. "Delivered through the air filtration system. We're coasting behind the moon to conserve energy. Once we're back in direct sunlight, we'll speed up."
"What's sunlight matter?" Neil snapped.
"You'll appreciate the sleeping agent later. For now, I need to focus."
Still angry at being drugged, but unsure what to do about it — after all, he couldn't climb out of the ship and hail a cab home — Neil glanced out the left window and spotted the moon. It was larger than he imagined — a planet itself. The gray, crater-pocked surface loomed like the Death Star. Would the force be with him?
"How long did I sleep?" Neil asked, wondering how the moon had gotten so big so fast.
"A little over eight hours. We're not far now."
A bright light drew Neil's focus ahead where he expected that the sun was emerging from behind the moon.
His jaw dropped.
The sun was present. Behind a city — hovering in space.
Towering structures shone with a legion of multicolored lights. Enormous, gear-shaped edifices were randomly spaced on vertical poles. The constructions were intermixed with other giant, hive-like buildings. And also sporadic, transparent, flower-shaped sky scrapers — a celestial flying city. Like a mighty beacon, it beckoned, drawing them in from the cold and darkness.
"Welcome to your new home," Mr. Chapman said, amusement and a little awe in his voice.
"How? How is this possible?" Neil asked, staring in wonder.
"I remember my first time," the old man said. "I was much older than you, already an adult. Thought I'd died. Asked my recruiter if he'd transported me to the afterlife."
"She's just hanging there," Neil said.
The city stood on a broad surface like the ground when seen from a plane, but below that was a dark metallic surface. Despite his grandfather's many adventures as a fighter pilot, Neil felt positive he also would have stared in wonder.
"Seeing her from space never gets old. I miss her when I'm away too long."
The ship couldn't land fast enough. Was this what immigrants felt when arriving in America and seeing the Statue of Liberty for the first time? Did the sight fill them with hope that today's promises for the future dwarfed the frustrations and disappointments of the past?
The ship approached the city and hit turbulence, similar to when they left Earth, as if they passed through an atmosphere. This time the tumult hardly concerned him and seconds later their flight smoothed back out.
The sky brightened as they descended toward a spaceport filled with numerous ships of varying sizes far from the city's outskirts. The spaceport was surrounded by high walls. The lone exit from the spaceport passed through a sizable garden that led to a campus with four large buildings, maybe five stories tall each, on the four sides of a courtyard filled with people. Numerous other buildings surrounded the main cluster. A couple of miles of open fields separated the campus from the city that Neil had seen from space.
YOU ARE READING
Space City
Science FictionArmed with only his grandfather's coin and a fake ID, sixteen-year-old Neil Ericson is desperate to join the Air Force like his grandfather before him. A flip of that coin instead launches Neil into an academy onboard Space City beyond the moon. His...
