Compete Read Online Free Page B

seconds.”
    The Atlantean officers and crew standing with us at the observation deck give us silent sympathetic looks.
    “ Ten . . . nine . . . eight . . .”
    Is it really happening? I glance around me suddenly, desperately, at the other young people all around the darkly lit deck.
    “ . . . Seven . . . six . . .”
    The Earth—it is heartrendingly beautiful. Great swirls of white clouds float softly, and the continents pass directly below us.
    “ . . . Five . . . four . . .”
    There’s the Atlantic Ocean, a deep inky blue. And to the left, the shoreline of North America, still cast in night’s shadow at 4:00 AM Eastern Time, and sprinkled with golden lights of populated areas . . . the United States. Just there, the northeastern tip, near the Great Lakes and slightly over, but just below Canada, is the tiny triangle that’s Vermont . . . Mom and Dad and George are right there, contained within that tiny dot of space, my home.
    “ . . . Three . . . two . . .”
    I stare at the spot hungrily, wishing with all my soul to rush toward it, like a speeding bird, a morning lark. My lips part as I whisper silently, gripping my little sister’s cold fingers, tight.
    “ . . . One . . .”
    “ Commence Departure.”
    And suddenly, there is a deep rumble. It builds somewhere all around the hull of the ship, like an immense chord of plural notes, a grand C Major chord.
    And as it builds, the ark-ship starts to tremble. . . . Soon we can feel the vibration all the way to our bones, the buildup of immense unspeakable forces through the floor underneath our feet, the hull walls, the ceiling.
    As we look out through the windows, the other ark-ship disks scattered all around us in orbit start to glow . Their silver outsides emit a faint violet plasma radiance, so that the metallic orichalcum surfaces begin to “dissolve” visually. In seconds all they seem to be are molten discs of lavender light.
    And then it happens.
    Gracie makes a stifled sound and squeezes my hand painfully. Because the hemisphere shape of the Earth outside the windows begins to float away .
    It is so gradual, that at first you experience it as a brief lurch of vertigo, a sudden disorientation in regard to what exactly is moving, you or the world. But in seconds it becomes clear—the movement is external to the self and very real .
    You perceive that subtle motion in the way the entirety of the Earth begins to fill the view as it slowly rises in the window. Soon the partial view transforms into the full shape of the entire planet, as it simultaneously shrinks softly and retreats from us like a balloon lifting skyward, and eventually stabilizes and keeps its relative position in the window.
    With each passing minute the planet grows smaller, gently, softly.
    There is no urgency in this departure, the visual changes microscopic. And yet, it is an optical illusion, because the speed must be incredible.
    In a few more minutes we see the much smaller ball that is the Moon as it emerges from the other side of the Earth, and we pass its orbit, the perspective of distance finally allowing us to see it at that wider angle.
    “Oh God . . .” someone whispers behind us in the dark.
    “Mom! Daddy!” Gracie says. “I want Mom! Mommy, Daddy! No! ”
    And then she is bawling silently, shoving her face against me, no longer holding back.
    She is not the only one. I tremble, holding Gracie against my chest, as the lump inside my own throat pushes at me, but somehow I keep it at bay.
    Next to me, Gordie’s eyes are a blur. I can see the wet glimmer past his smudged glasses. He sniffles with his nose, shifts from foot to foot, bumping my shoulder with his own.
    “Good-bye . . .” teen voices sound in awe and mourning and helpless wonder. Minutes tick away. Half an hour passes, then an hour, and few of us notice.
    I continue to watch the retreating sphere of Earth. It is now the size of a penny, so that you can