The white light was too bright to see through. But as we shot in the direction the ship went, the light faded. We stood on a very dim white platform moving through a sea of stars. At first I didn’t notice a pattern, but then I spotted Orion. The Big Dipper. Cygnus. I only knew those three constellations, but Ir pointed out all 88 of them.

“We don’t have enough stars for constellations on Biehshah—” Ir swept an arm out.

“But Zheien see Mother and Babe, as long as they have two stars in the sky!” Der laughed.

Ir laughed louder. “I am happy Garat didn’t Exclude you for knowing that!”

Der shoved him. “He couldn’t anyway! I overheard a Zheien talking about that when he showed his Earthan girl in Rainbow. The Rules Of Learning say nothing about hearing conversations, if you happen to be nearby and they speak aloud.”

“That is true. I learned much by listening. But Zheien have major telepathy. They have to block everyone’s telepathy. So you can hear a lot in a Zheien colony—”

“They think it’s rude to listen! You didn’t know that?”

Ir turned orange in his cheeks. “I know it, but I get tired and can’t block them.”

“That’s why you need to ask me to help you more often! You’re tired now.”

“I—didn’t ask because I wanted to learn things. But now, I can just ask them. You’re a good friend, Der. Please, help me. Oh, we should go to Fhiah first. Theas has a festival and he expects us to come.”

Ten put an elbow in his ear. “I think all of us should go home and rest. Der, you are not tired, but the rest of us are. Will you go to Theas? That festival will be 81 days, so we can go tomorrow.”

“So many days! Why?”

Ir laughed and brushed Ten’s arm off. “To celebrate 25 worlds coming to Alb, and a lot of Fhiahans saw their futures and married, including his son! There are many things to do in Fhiah like riding through provs and enjoying different customs, as we did when we first settled Biehshah. I wonder what there is to do on Ye~? The last time I visited there were only two cities. Oshfah is where the Yeff live. Noh~La has lorg~ farms.”

“Ugh! A lorg~ bit me and Bekshay apologized for an hour! It hurt until I went home two weeks later!” Der rubbed his right upper arm.

“At least I had persseppa to put on it.” Ir rubbed it, too.

“It helped, but Ten had to force regen on me! I don’t want to go near lorg~er!”

I raised a hand. “What’s a lorg?”

Ir laughed. “You have Great Danes. These are all black, and twice that size. Llsam visited Earth about the time you had pyramids and he found wolves. People never liked them so he collected many. He traded them to Bisillipia and scientists modified them into lorg~er. Aurelonans raised them for meat. They traded them to Elshars. The Mesapan Elshars decided they liked their fierceness so much, they transformed their people to look like them!”

“That’s where the Mesapans came from?” Der made a face. “From Elshars?”

“I didn’t dare tell you when we visited Mesapa. E’jark was offended enough when you asked him about that statue in his cave.”

“They live in caves?” I blinked at Ir.

“No! But I never saw the inside of a Mesapan house, even when I visited them when they looked like you. Mesapans use caves for meetings because they feel you are not worthy to set foot in their houses! They want to control their spaces. Oh, my! There are Mesapans on the Yeff ship!”

All of us looked where he looked. A group of nearly 50 sat in a pretty emerald green ship that made a room. “It’s just flying alongside us, isn’t it?”

“No! Traders combine ships to fly together, to fool slavers.” I realized, we’re seeing it because of our telepathy, not because our portal is anywhere near it. We’re almost to Alb, and the ship just reached Earth orbit.

There’s a ship with slaves on it almost to Earth, and they are going to —

Where is she?! I will find her! A male scream startled me!

Ray traded with an Aryllan for those slaves! A wave of red light passed over Saturn and its moon Titan, and that ship took off. The red wave destroyed Titan, then Saturn blew up, and the wave headed towards Earth!

But Azure, that red-braids girl, she stopped it and the wave went backwards, leaving Saturn and Titan intact.

Eriganh did that, the fella Adia needs to fight! His temper tantrum destroyed half his Cube’s Collective! And those slaves that escaped, they are coming aboard that ship, the Elshar Zheien’s ship. Goes’ orange ship is part of it.

“Ir, we have to go back!”

He startled. “Back to the ship? But we’re to Ye~ right now!” Our portal flew down towards that lake we saw.

“I have to heal our people! There are hundreds—”

As we got near the ground, bodies appeared under us and Ir had to swerve away from the lake! Biehshah and many Bisillips laid on the purple sand. I did that? It wasn’t a portal. They just appeared, like Pinda.

“Is this them, Kia?” Ir’s arm around me trembled.

“It’s them! You can land now.”

Ir pulled on the lip of the portal and sent it below all of us into the sand. We all ran to people lying there. Ir gasped and ran to our right!

Or we tried. Both of us shot up into the air and floated down! People in stasis are fragile, so he ported us kneeling beside an older couple. “Father! Mother! You are home. You are safe.” He ran a prog to repeat it. Stasis is cyclic. People hear bits and pieces when stasis gets shallower.

Slavers made it that way centuries ago to torture Bisillip and Biehshah enemies. Zheien invented a deeper stasis they felt was kinder, so they wouldn’t know what was going on in case slavers were trying to drive them insane. Zheien don’t last long in stasis without going insane, no matter how deep it is. Pirad found ways of taking people out, and he removes memories of stasis so Zheien don’t go insane. Insane Zheien are not useful to slavers, so they use the deeper stasis for them.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

I held my husband and tried to build up my orchestration for a major healing. Ten held my arm until I looked at him. “Kia, you cannot. You are tired. Go to your house and sleep first, then heal them.

“Will they be okay? Zheien have nightmares from just hours in stasis—”

“We are not Zheien. People recover from it in time. When the War ends, you can heal them, but not now, not when we are all fighting—” He used that left ear-flicking gesture. “I should not speak. Kia, go rest, please.” He held his forearm on my forehead.

I held mine on his, an apology for not thinking before—but I really didn’t think I’d be talking about that, anyway. “I’ll go.”

Bisillips came from our colony in large numbers. Laid by everyone. They’re cold anyway, so being near someone in stasis won’t give them frostbite. It’s actually good for them. Maybe they’re related. All Bisillips and Biehshah are, to some extent. Their long lifetimes make for big families.

Ir helped me up and kept me from shooting up six feet, and I realized he used a containment to keep us from stumbling. I still felt light, but able to walk without hopping around like I had to do in Rainbow. I smiled at him.

It bothered me that so many of our new colonists laid there in stasis, but I have to be practical about this. It’s wartime.

With small hops, Ir led us around our frozen colonists and a prog hid them behind a rock formation. People in stasis are fragile. The Bisillips lying with them won’t see the rocks, but they are actually containments to keep anyone from falling on them.

Time to think about other things. “Ir, how do containments work? When I read reviews of science fiction books, people often say force fields or things like that don’t work by the laws of physics.”

He laughed. “Containments work because we found ways of swapping particles. What you call atoms work because there is plenty of empty space for particles to move in. But there are also forces which don’t need space. They work together so we have plasma, gases, liquids and matter. But there are smaller particles. Your physicists are correct when they say the laws of physics do not apply when particles are small enough, but we can swap particles between the plane where laws of physics do not apply and where they do with tiny dimportals. We can change conditions in the area covered by the containment with motion of each particle so it stops a particle in the being moving. Earth does not have this technology, but Elshars do, and we improved it. Elshars do not understand it because they have it from Lerk abandoned worlds. But we helped the Lerk create it and we understand it.’

I sighed. “I guess that’s why I never decided to major in chemistry or anything that heavy. I like science, but I’m not good at it.”

“If I taught you, I think you might like it. People can learn without tests or judgments of skill.”

We passed through a garden and he picked several flowers for me. “Oh, I never saw any of these in Rainbow!” They smelled heavenly!

“The Alb Council asked Biehshah to let us bring plants we export to V’chsan and make them available to all worlds of Alb so they can pay for their moving.”

The garden had a path through it with every kind of flower elsewhere in it, also within picking distance. Holos above each flower gave information about which were okay to pick and which would bear fruit and when. Some plants were very small and some towered above our heads! The trees were all away from the long path.

Plants thinned out near the blue water. Even in the thickest part of the garden, we could see the pink sky. No clouds, just two suns, one blue and one red. And three moons. “What are those moons called?”

“The blue one is Areon and it’s the planet the moons orbit. Ye~ is a moon, and so is Tri~e, the yellow one. The light blue one used to be Beautiful when it had the Areonian colony, and the A’laf colony, but it’s empty now. One Zbbat attacked it and killed everyone. So sad!”

“That is awful!” To our left was a place with little wooden buildings. I saw a wooden sign with Bremen on it. “That can’t be German, can it?”

“You are looking at part of the Areonian Colony! It has two cities, Bremen and Stuttgart. People speak English and call it Areonian. But they came from Earth in 1764 from a sinking ship!”

That sounded interesting! To the right, there was empty land, but a sign that said Ry Pethe. “What’s that? Are they going to build something there?”

“Ry Pethe is where Greg’s people will live! There are homes underground, but some people might want houses. The ones who came from Areon didn’t want homes like they had, so they made different ones until Greg Wenh Cet comes. A few live in the Areonian Colony.” When I looked closer, I noticed little entrances with ramps down.

“Where’s our house?” I looked straight ahead but gardens made it hard to see past a bakery right ahead.

“We are behind this bakery. Are you hungry?” Ir smiled.

“But, Biehshah don’t have bakeries, do they?” A Zheien smiled at us, holding a platter with pastries and shakes.

“We have one because we expect many visitors! Fahnar lived as an operative on Esteerr for a year, so he knows herbalry and baking for many species. Hello, Fahn! Here is my wife!”

He bowed but held the tray steady. “Lady Kia! I hope I have your favorites, but if I do not, I will make them!”

In the center of his tray was Japanese Fruitcake, my absolute favorite cake! I picked up a slice and gobbled it. “Mmm! This is perfect!”

Ir had two shakes. “Your opennarranhan is wonderful! I really needed some!”

“Ten always makes good suggestions. Now that we have trade with Areon, I can make many things with milk.” His delight tingled on me.

“Oh, but when Earth trades with you, you’ll have a lot more!” I thought of cheeses, yogurt flavors, and all the foods we eat with dairy in them.

The man’s yellow eyes opened very wide! “O, I hope the Alliance Treaty passes! Our Earthans will need many ingredients when we have festivals. I sent much this day already! Sun1 is almost set and Sun2 will soon.” The red one sat on the orange mountains and long shadows had two angles. I expected it to be dark red, but it was almost pink. The little blue one was higher, but not by much.

Short sleeves kept me cool. “Is it always this warm?”

“We are still learning about changes to our world. I was very uncomfortable to have a shop near water until I tried bathing. My healer went first and needed his healer!”

Then I remembered that people had to be careful near Ryonne~ that they didn’t touch him with sweaty hands. “Water hurts you?”

“O, not now! I can bathe in wet sands and is pleasant. Our sky has more stars. We only had 4 in the Seventh. Here in the First, we have 22!”

I looked up and the suns set already. “Sunset is quicker here than on Earth. It’s dark already. How long are days here?”

“Nine hours.”

Ir looked uncomfortable. “My friend, Earthans measure time differently. On Earth a day is 24 hours. Here it is 22, so a bit shorter, but sunlight is always 11 and night, 11. There are no seasons on Ye~.”

I frowned. “No seasons? Do trees lose their leaves? Will there be rain?”

“Late at night, friends say there is mist and some stay up for that because it’s pleasant for us. But there won’t be rain like on Earth, or snow. There was snow Sunday before we came today, and I think some of us might have died! Der and I lost a friend on Esteerr because it rained. The sameness here will help us, Kia.” He looked a bit worried.

I smiled. “It might be nice not to have weather surprises. I sure won’t miss thunderstorms, or getting wet because I didn’t bring an umbrella!”

Fahn waved up an emerald green umbrella without a handle that floated above my head. “Areonians call this a ‘brella’. They use them when they must walk in rains. There is so much rain on Areon, it only stops for 20 min twice a day! People there tell us because of rains, they have beautiful flowers. Many flowers you see in gardens are from Areon, but they ne grow big. Areon has ne trees, but flowers as large as they are.” He waved up a holo. Some looked like thornless roses, tulips, sunflowers and irises! But as tall as pine trees! Blooms were over people’s heads for the most part.

“Wow! Did you do okay there, Ir?”

He smiled. “Yes! I knew of the 20 min pauses in the rain, so they did not surprise me. There are no storms there. Progs collect energy. We do this in Minharha. Rain is scheduled. I do not go to Otarpahanahn, near our ocean. Rain can surprise us because it takes too much energy to control weather there, though now that we have the Nefcot Ring, everyone can use as much energy as they need.”

“Earth agreed to let them activate it?” Earth argued a lot that it would take our resources, as if Earth owned the Milky Way Galaxy!

Ir looked anxious. “Earth did not know about it before we activated it.”

“Good!”

He relaxed. Those brown eyes still watched me.