Epilogue

Conner and his friends offered to help clean up the Sacred Temple, but the priests assured them that the staff had everything under control. They enjoyed one last meal together, Conner, Oliver, Mara, and the priests, talking and laughing. It was serene, not having a mission hanging over their heads. Conner felt light as a feather, and he could tell by the way Oliver and Mara smiled and laughed that they felt the same way. Mara even participated in the conversation just as much as anyone else, no hint of her shyness showing through. After a shower, a change of clothes, and a quick cleaning and sharpening of the racketblade, the three friends said goodbye to the Drumani.

Several hours later, they were back on the Black Fire, shooting down the green hyperspace tunnel toward Proserpine. They had just finished a collect call to Electrobolt, Mara’s parents, and Shoosh the Meysen. They would also have included Joe on Chronesia, but the time distortion due to the planet’s near-light speed course through the galaxy made that impossible, so they sent him a message instead. Now, there was nothing left but to wait the day and a half until the journey was over.

“Make sure you come and visit,” Mara said, looking at Oliver.

“Of course,” Oliver replied. “Once a week, maybe? Or is that not enough. Once every two days?”

“Oh come on you two,” Conner said, “just kiss already!”

Mara turned so that her head was hidden from him by the headrest on the chair. Oliver glanced over his shoulder at him, and then did the same. Neither said a word.

Conner narrowed his eyes. “Wait a minute.” He leaned forward and looked at their faces around the headrests. They were both beet red. “You already did, didn’t you?”

Oliver and Mara remained silent and motionless.

Conner laughed, sitting back and throwing his hands up. “You did! You totally kissed!” He stood up, walked around in a circle and stretched, and then brought his hands down to rest on the back of his chair. “My friends, Oliver and Mara, are in love, and they kissed.”

Mara murmured something which sounded like, “it’s not like . . .” and the rest was unintelligible.

Conner walked down the hall to the bunk room, humming. He took one more look back toward the cabin before going in.

Mara’s parents were delighted when Conner and Oliver dropped her off in Oridion. They expressed disapproval at her running off with two barely adult boys, but they also accepted the choice with humble understanding. After all, regardless of what mischief might have occurred during the journey, getting out and saving the galaxy was a much nobler way to spend her time than being trapped like a prisoner in her house by her own parents.

They welcomed Conner and Oliver to visit from time to time, but warned them that the deep winter was approaching, which would mean heavy blizzards on the surface for months. Once the initial flurries were over, though, the Proserpinene would extend the elevator shaft and transform the deep snow on the surface into something solid enough to stand on and land space ships on, by their traditional melt-freeze process they did after every deep winter’s beginning.

Before they left, Oliver and Mara went into her room to say a more personal goodbye. Conner wasn’t sure what went on in that time, but he had a few guesses. And he would bet quite a lot that they weren’t just talking.

The trip back to Moebius was quieter without Mara. Not because Mara had talked much, but because her absence made Oliver unusually quiet. Conner tried starting conversations a few times, but gave it up when nothing took off. There wasn’t anything wrong with the silence, after all. They had both been through a lot, and now, the unspoken shared experience of quiet rest was enough.

It was like being awakened from a kind of sleep, when the autopilot dropped them out of hyperspace. “Here we are,” Oliver said. “Home sweet home.”

Conner watched the deep blue ball as it grew in their field of vision, its swirls of white clouds and green and brown blobs of land. It was such a small place. So tiny and out of the way, in the great bustle of life and activity in the galaxy. But it was home. His home. And nowhere else in the universe felt quite like it.

The feeling grew once they had entered the atmosphere and the flames of reentry subsided. The distant plane of ocean waters below them. The hue and tone of the sky above. The tiny speck of land in the distance, that grew, until they could see it was actually several specks, in the shapes he knew well from the maps he saw every now and then. The Arguen Islands.

Oliver landed outside of Daylight City, since there was no place to land within the city limits. They said goodbye, promising to take more escapades through the galaxy someday. Conner crossed the bridge that levitated too high, and trod down the path through Cackorey woods. A munkee made a face at him from a tree branch, and then leaped away.

Then, he was home. His village, his house. He pushed the door open, finding everything as he had left it. The kitchen was clean, and his package of tennis balls lay on the counter. Conner took off his backpack and unhooked his racketblade, clicking the sheath open, and then pushing it closed. He smiled. A little exercise would do him good. He grabbed the container of tennis balls, and headed out the door in the direction of the courts, where he could catch up on his practice, or, if he was lucky, run into someone to play a match against.