Karina fingered her pendant of opalescent moonstone set in silver and visualized a pink light of love all around herself, reaching out to envelop Acoma in its roseate glow. She felt an answering pulse, alien and surprisingly strong, and definitely welcoming. Wonderful! The shuttle couldn’t be more than halfway to Maganos, and already she could feel Acoma’s presence … it had to be the unicorn girl, didn’t it? Karina willed herself to sink deeper into trance. It was awfully hard to concentrate with that silly speaker squawking at them about minor course corrections and telling her not to panic. Of course she wasn’t going to panic … strange! The seat felt as if it were dropping away from her. She must be achieving a really good trance, almost levitational. And there was definitely a sense of an alien presence, very close now and quite different from the babbling, grumbling minds all around her.
A firm tap on her shoulder and a warm, mint-flavored gust of breath broke the trance.
“Have one of these, dearie,” her seatmate said, holding out a mint that had suffered from being clutched too long in a hot, sweaty palm. “Wonderful for the motion sickness, they say.”
Before Karina could explain that she never permitted her mind to experience such illusions as motion sickness, the shuttle gave a sickening swoop and a sideways lurch that took her breath away, then steadied. Someone across the aisle made retching sounds. Karina had to close her eyes and remind herself firmly that she -was thinking of Higher Things and that motion sickness was a false messenger. Someone farther up the cabin gave a faint shriek that -was echoed from various seats around the body of the shuttle. Karina concentrated fiercely on her mental image ofAcoma, tall and silver-maned and welcoming her partnerto-be, before she allowed herself to open her eyes and see what the screaming was about.
Which was -why she, alone of all the shuttle passengers, was neither frightened nor amazed to see a tall, silver-maned being with a golden horn stepping lightly through a door that should have been closed and double-locked until the shuttle entered the artificial atmosphere of Maganos. Outside the open door could be seen a stable, sourceless, golden glow where there should have been empty space, blackness, and immediate death for all the shuttle passengers.
“Don’t scream, you idiot, it’s only Lady Lukia!” one of the passengers admonished another, using one of the names by which Acorna had been known during her brief stay on Kezdet.
“She’s comin’ to take me, and I don’t want to be took!” cried the girl who’d first screamed, burying her head in her trembling arms.
The unicorn-person said something in a liquid, slightly nasal language, and touched the girl’s head. She looked up, trembling, and met those golden eyes. Immediately her body relaxed, and she sat back in her seat, limp and smiling slightly.
Whatever had been done to the girl appeared to be contagious, for within seconds, the people sitting on either side of her were similarly relaxed and vacant-eyed.
The old lady beside Karina was clutching the arms of her seat, white-knuckled, and saying prayers under her breath. Karina realized that the other shuttle passengers had no idea what was really going on.
“Excuse me,” she said tightly, pushing herself out of the seat and starting for the aisle. “Excuse me, please, thank you, if you could move your knees a little, sir, thank you. Sorry about that, there’s nothing to worry about, it’s me they’ve come for. …”
Finally, disheveled and breathless, she reached the aisle amid disgruntled murmurs about people who didn’t have the consideration to go before they got seated and people who ought to pay for two shuttle seats if they were going to take up all that space.
foiots, Karina thought. We’ve been lifted into Another Dimension a.n2 Acorna has come personally for me, an<) all they can think of if their paltry human bodies. Throwing up, screaming, anD kvetching about having their toes stepped on - what must she think of us7 It’s up to me to show that some of us are Above All That.Smiling resolutely, and ignoring the tiny part of her that squeaked that it, personally, was worried about its paltry human body and didn’t want to go away with aliens no matter how benevolent, Karina walked down the aisle and held out one hand gracefully to the unicorn-person.