Forbidden Stars

SEVEN

Ganymede, 4113 Common Era

The plain of frozen, frozen water stretched from horizon to horizon. It had never dawned on Ivan that this world was a hell. Most folks' idea of a hell was a hot, fiery, and elementally fierce ordeal. Not to say this world had not the latter, though Ivan always perceived the conditions as more of an elemental serenity, tranquility, or ataraxis. Life on this world doesn't know hell, it knows change, it knows time, and life on this world crawls at the velocity of life regardless the change or time. In a world of ice, movement is a privilege given to those who accept this hellish worldscape for what it truly is, true equanimity.

Ivan acknowledged this as he started outside his eremitic home. A savage wind threatened the security of his thermal jacket, and so he hiked it up and secured its hood. The winds were a bitter caress this evening. It had most to do with the prolonged day-night cycle of Ganymede which spanned one-hundred and seventy-two hours. Warmer air from the day side of the Galilean Moon flows toward the cooler, night side of the world, kicking up great ice storms in the process. Ivan far-sighted the land, found no large storm structures, and continued on.

As he drove onwards across the ice on his sled, he surveyed the sky. The Sun was settled on shimmering air above the horizon, soon to fall in the coming hours. Encircling the Sun was the geometrically beautiful array of orbital mirrors, each individual superstructure appearing as a small Sun of its own. Above the Sun, nearly center-sky, was the great mass of Jupiter. On some primitive, subliminal wavelength of thought, he felt if he stared too long into the body of he Great Gas Giant, he may fall into its deep, abysmal interior. Though, the most intriguing aspect of the sky, and the most recent, was the bright, organic patch of light which had spent half a year glinting in the night air. Ivan knew it to be a Spark bombardment on the Void Wall, over one-hundred and nine light-days away. Jupiter-sized globes of exotic energies seeking destruction on the imprisoner of Mankind. He looked ahead and rode on.

He arrived at his icehole, a small, half-meter-wide hole from where he fishes. The hole is always under the reconstructive processes of the environment, so every time he returns he spends some time chipping away at it with his tools, careful not to create any persistive shattering. He looked to the Sun and determined he only has about an hour before he needs to return for the night, and an hour after baiting, casting, and rebaiting and recasting his line, he caught nothing. That is the way of things, nothing more. He packed up and began the return trip.

Windspeed continued to rise as the Sun met the horizon. Ice fog began clouding the landscape before him, concealing the location of ice trenches, frozen boulders, and slick patches, although he could recall the locations of the most prominent of those at the ease of his mind. He approached his home, a faint glow from the one and only window scattered through the foggy air, illuminating the vicinity. He peered up in surprise at something shadowy in the frozen clouds. A mammoth structure hovered in the air above his home, dwarfing it in size. Streamers of ice particles waved in the direction of the wind, trailing from the aft side of the tear-dropped shaped structure--ship.

He disembarked his ingrav sled as a man teleported onto the ice before him in a flurry of snow.

"Ivan," the man said in his telepathic voice which carried with it an instantaneous recognition.

Ivan removed his face shield and spoke into the frigid air, "John."

"I'm sorry, old friend," Dr. Connor apologized with his real voice, "I know you don't want me here."

Ivan appeared not to acknowledge him. "Come inside."

Ivan lead Dr. Connor into his ice-mounted home. It was nicely furnished and well decorated, a testament to Ivan's secret home interior design abilities. Ivan removed his jacket and he did the same, folding it onto his lap as he sat down in a chair across from Ivan.