Starship Winter (David Conway 03) Read Online Free Page A

from the ruby and struck the faceted surfaces of as many stones located on plinths around the dome.
    There was a gasp from a guest up ahead. I made out a woman in her fifties, who had approached one of the faceted stones.
    Beside me, Hannah grabbed my hand and squeezed. “Look.”
    A nimbus of verdant light surrounded the woman, and within the circumference of that light I could see the shapes of small, moving figures. They were Elan, a trio of the small beings seemingly addressing the woman, phantom figures gesturing with their long, bi-jointed arms as she stared at them in wonder.
    Other guests had approached the plinthed Epiphany Stones and were similarly bathed in light and confronted by the ghostly alien figures.
    I moved to a vacant stone, pleasantly aware that Hannah was at my side. I glanced at her before entering the stone’s activation field. “You first,” I said.
    She touched my arm. “Let’s do it together, David.”
    Side by side we took a step forward. Instantly a bright light hit us – sky blue this time – and I experienced an odd, and unsettling, sensation of being disconnected from my immediate surroundings. Not only did I no longer seem to be in the exhibition centre, but I had the intimation that I was no longer on Chalcedony. I looked out, beyond the central radiance emanating from the stone, but could not make out the rest of the dome.
    I glanced at Hannah. “Do you feel that?”
    She nodded, a pinched expression of concern on her elfin features. She had taken my hand. “It’s… where are we, David? I feel as if I’m on another planet.”
    The odd thing was that, although I knew we were in a nimbus of light no more than two metres across, it was as if we were standing upon a vast plain without boundaries, as if we might set off walking and never step from the encapsulating light.
    I laughed. “Me too. Hey – look.”
    In the distance I saw three alien figures approaching us. They were Elan, and for some reason I gained the impression that they were aged and wise. They came within a metre of Hannah and me, stopped and gazed at us with their big, round eyes.
    And I was flooded with a sensation of… how can I express this without seeming insane or gullible? I felt then that I was in some kind of communication with these beings. No words were exchanged, not even gestures. It was a mind-to-mind thing, a meeting of emotions, perhaps. I was overcome with a sense of peace, of harmony – an intimation of the universal oneness of all things in existence.
    I felt Hannah’s small weight against me, almost as if she were swooning. “It’s like… like music,” she gasped.
    That was, I thought, the best way to describe the sensation. It was wordless, thoughtless, a communication that transcended species barriers and the need for the normal channels of explication.
    The figures gestured, and there was something reassuring and gentle about the grace of their movements. They retreated, backed away, and the blue light surrounding us suddenly vanished, pitching us into the stark reality of the exhibition dome.
    “Good God,” I said as I staggered from the plinth. Hannah was with me, and I realised that we were still holding hands. I looked around, shocked by the fact of my sudden translocation back into the real world.
    All around, others were undergoing the same shocked transition. Hawk and Kee came up to us. They were speechless. We stared at each other, smiling inanely.
    At last Hawk said, pointing to the stone he and Kee had just stepped away from, “Try that one, it’s… it’s magical …”
    Hannah nodded and like an eager child dragged me over to the plinth. We stepped into its embrace.
    This time, the light that surrounded us was cerise, and again I experienced that odd sense of dislocation, as if we were no longer on Chalcedony. Two figures approached us, two bent and stooped Elan, who regarded us with their massive eyes and gestured with their oddly articulated arms. And the mood