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The Cybele was originally a prototype, second generation, planetary scout vehicle. Whereas the first generation of scout craft were built on Earth and launched about the solar system without human guidance, the Cybele was constructed in Earth's orbit and designed for a human crew. RDA intended to build a small fleet of similar crafts in the Alpha Centauri system in order to thoroughly explore its other worlds. Each craft would act as an orbiting command center for satellites and robotic probes while human teams would make expeditions to and from the surface.

Another key feature of this generation of scout vehicles was the modular design. If a mission team discovered that it needed additional or adjusted capabilities, orbital construction vehicles could disassemble and then reassemble the ship with other modules as necessary.

Abe exploited the Cybele's modular construction when RDA gave him a blank check to fund his mission to Pandora. The Cybele's original propulsion was replaced with the kind intended for RDA's interstellar ships and stripped of excess cargo holds. The much smaller mass of the main ship allowed the thrust generated by the engines to propel the craft significantly faster than the interstellar vehicles they were designed for.

However, the Cybele also required longer periods of acceleration and deceleration than the interstellar vehicles, as the same forces which pushed the ship to almost nine-tenths the speed of light also threatened to rip its hull and truss framework apart if applied too quickly.

Nine days before entering Earth's orbit, as far away from Earth as the ancient and long-silent Voyager I spacecraft, the Cybele began its deceleration.

Four days later, the Cybele was beyond the Sun's bow shock. After another three days, the ship was inside Pluto's orbit. Upon reaching this point in its journey, the ship's central computer initiated its preprogrammed sequence to release Abe from his cryogenic sleep.

The straps holding him in place decoupled, and the needles were automatically retracted from his body. He took a moment to let the oppressive headache which resulted from the cocktail of chemicals his body had been infused with for five years subside; but a moment very quickly became an hour. Abe went to the cryobay's control terminal and released Luke from his stasis.

"Rise and shine," Abe said with a smirk. "There's work to do."

Luke kept his eyes closed as he rubbed his forehead and groaned. "I forgot about this part," he said. "But now I'm remembering it way too well."

"Is it true you guys never came up with a good beer up there?"

"We came up with one," he replied as he forced himself to his feet. "It was good, but it nearly killed us. Why?"

"It's just hard to believe that this is your first hangover in decades."

"Well, it is."

Abe and Luke spent the day going through the ship's schematics to find failure points in order to trip the emergency beacon without seriously endangering the crew. With Scott dead and Kim traveling home on the Johannes Kepler, Luke and Abe were the closest people left who could be considered qualified engineers.

One day later, as the ship passed Saturn, and with the failure points rigged with explosives, the rest of the team was brought out of cryo. However, there was one complication. "Tseyo's not waking up," Norm said.

Following a moment of panic among the team, they got him to the medical bay for Max and Matthew's inspection. "He's still in good shape," Max declared. "But putting a Na'vi in cryo isn't what I'd call an exact science. It may just take a while longer for his body to get over the drugs."

"How long?" Abe asked. "We're going to be in Earth's orbit in under a day."

"Like I said, it's not an exact science," Max replied. "It could be in five minutes, or it could be in five hours." He shrugged and added, "He could be a vegetable."

Seven hours later, just before the Cybele passed through Jupiter's orbit, Tseyo woke up – and he had some very harsh words for Norm. When prompted later, Norm told Abe, "Apparently it took longer for the drugs to get him to sleep, too. Those E-E-G spikes we saw were him freaking out."

Abe's eyes widened as a genuine horror overcame him. "Don't tell me he was awake for the whole trip." Devon had remained awake for the entirety of his trip, but with freedom to move about the ship and a required regimen of anti-psychotic medication. Abe could not begin to imagine the Hell that would have been five years of conscious paralysis in an enclosed space.

Norm shook his head and replied, "No, he was knocked out, but he got the full force of the drugs before he went under." He sighed and said, "He was pissed at me because he didn't think I had prepared him enough for that."

Abe breathed a sigh of relief and replied, "It's not like you could have expected it to go wrong." He shook his head and asked, "Anyway, where is he now? Still in medical?"

"No, we set him up in that stateroom at the ship's aft so he could calm down, and maybe he can get some normal sleep."

"Everybody should get some rest once their stuff is stowed in the shuttle," Abe said. "It's going to be a very long day from when we enter Earth's orbit."

"Before that," Norm said, "there's one thing I wanted to talk to you about."

"Fire away."

"You've still got your infiltrator in cryo."

"Devon?" Norm nodded. "What about him?"

"What are you going to do with him?"

Abe chuckled and said, "You've seen his vitals. There's nothing we can do with him."

"Unless you're going to leave him on the ship for the rest of time, you're going to have to do something with him," Norm replied.

"The recovery team will probably evacuate him and send him to a hospital," Abe said with a shrug. "Maybe medicine has advanced enough that he'll make a full recovery."

"And that's it?" Norm asked with a degree of incredulity. "He kills someone, and you're going to give him a free pass?"

"The Devon in that cryochamber didn't kill anybody," Abe said. "He can't be held accountable for that girl's death."

"Why not?"

Abe hesitated before he responded, not sure if he was, in fact, being pressed on this point. He responded slowly, "Because he didn't do it."

"Maybe not in that body," Norm replied, "but you know he's capable of it."

"He was a Special Forces soldier," Abe said. "I don't want to know a fraction of what he's capable of. But no, Norm, I'm not going to have him arrested for murder – especially given the fact that the person who was responsible for that girl's death was himself killed. I consider it a closed case."

"I wonder what Tseyo would think about that."

Abe stepped to within inches of Norm and said sternly, "You don't mention one word about this to him. Not one. We don't need to have his performance compromised right now."

Norm pushed him away and said, "I was just speaking hypothetically, Abe. I get your point. Besides, he may already be compromised."

Brushing off Norm's push, Abe said, "Yeah, I can imagine the way he went to sleep was a trip, but…"

"No," Norm interrupted. "He brought something spiritual with him, and it didn't survive in cryo. It probably suffocated in the stasis gas."

"What are you talking about?"

"The Na'vi consider these particular seeds, woodsprites, to be close to the embodiment of Eywa, short of actually connecting to the planet's semi-sentient, biochemical network," Norm said. "Now that it's now dead has him believing it's a bad omen."

"So tell him to get over it," Abe replied. "Tell him that he shouldn't have expected a seed to live…"

Norm abruptly cut him off. "Abe, he thought it was the spirit of his sister."

Abe stopped mid-thought, and on a moment's reflection, sighed. "How bad is he?"

"He's a mix of angry and confused." Norm paused. "Are you asking because you care, or because you're pretending to care to protect the mission?"

"Yes," Abe replied flatly, allowing silence to fill the gap between the two. "Is he going to be okay?"

"I'll do what I can," Norm replied. "But you probably don't want to push him."

"I don't really have a choice, Norm," Abe said. "We're very literally going to be hitting the ground running, and he needs to be ready for that." He took a deep breath. "Do whatever you have to do to allow him to mourn – again – over his sister, but he needs to have his head straight."

Norm scoffed. "We basically took someone from the Stone Age and put them on an interstellar flight. I can't imagine where his head is at – even before this."

Before Abe could press the argument any further, Doctor Patel joined them. "Sorry," he a said, "but Tseyo's asking for Norm. I think."

Abe nodded, and then indicated for Norm to head off. Before he left the module, Abe said, "He's your student, Norm. How he performs or doesn't perform is on your shoulders."

Abe had given Norm and the others eight hours to rest up, but few of them had managed to take full advantage of it. A combination of nervousness and less-than accommodating spaces in the crew quarters meant that they had a fairly restless sleep. Norm in particular had spent most of his allotted time ensuring Tseyo had calmed down, and so was the last one of the team to retire for a meager few hours of sleep.

Eighty million kilometers from Earth, Abe roused the team and had them assemble in the command center.

"ICA's regulations require that we get boarded and inspected before being allowed to dock with a space station for transportation back to Earth," Abe said. He smiled and said with a nod to Tseyo, "Obviously, we'd fail inspection."

The team chuckled, although Tseyo did not understand the joke when Norm translated it for him. He just glowered at Abe. Abe appeared to do his best not to notice.

"The only way we're going to get down to Earth directly from this ship without having a myriad of authorities hot on our tails is with an emergency evacuation," he continued. "So, the day before all of you were brought out of cryo, Luke and I were busy making sure an emergency would happen."

"What kind of emergency?" Norm asked.

"Assuming we didn't screw up the charges," Abe replied, "there won't be one. We'll just trip the beacon to make it look like we're in distress."

"Charges?" Amy asked. "Are either you or Luke explosives experts?"

"No."

Everyone was silent for a few seconds. Norm shook his head and replied, "So we just have to trust that you aren't going to blow us all up."

"If any of you are explosives experts, I'll be happy to take you through the ship to reset the charges," Abe said. Nobody stepped forward to offer their services. "There's your answer, Norm."

"This can't be the only way," Max offered. "There has to be a safer way down to the surface."

Abe shook his head. "ICA reentry regulations are very specific. Except with pre-approved clearance or an emergency, all incoming ships have to be inspected before they can dock with an intermediary station, and from there the crews are cleared to return to Earth. Since RDA didn't pre-clear this flight with ICA, we're subject to those regulations."

"Can't you just declare an emergency?" Matthew asked. "Why do you have to risk blowing the ship up?"

"In about six minutes, we're going to pass through Mars' tracking net, which is going to put ICA's posts on Earth and the Moon on notice," Abe explained. "Once we're within twenty-million kilometers of Earth, in about three hours, we'll be under constant observation for any signs of physical distress. If our emergency beacon isn't activated by then, they may not buy the ruse."

"Won't they just board us anyway?" Norm asked. "They won't let an unmanned ship orbit Earth."

"Yes, but they won't expect us to wait for that team. We'll be cleared to use our shuttle to return to Earth."

"Where are we landing?" Dawn asked. "Obviously we can't use a normal spaceport."

"We'll make a crash landing outside San Francisco, and then make our way to a safehouse to gather the supplies and intel we'll need to launch the main operation."

"And RDA is just going to accept that one of its ships just so happened to come back from Pandora ahead of schedule, launched a shuttle, and then—?" Max asked, his voice trailing off for Abe to fill in the blank.

"We'll let them think whatever they want," Abe replied. "Whatever they think, they'll work with ICA to keep the crash under wraps until they have a cover story in place." He sighed and shook his head, "Look, folks, this is where the danger really begins. I don't have every contingency covered, so don't be surprised if I don't have an answer right away. You're just going to have to accept that we're going to have to think and move at the same time."

"It'd be nice to have more assurances than that we might not get blown up in this ship," Norm said. "And that we might not crash and die in an emergency landing, and that we might not get discovered by an RDA hit squad or ICA before we have a chance to put our plans into action."

Abe shrugged and replied, "I don't have them."

"Wonderful."

Abe brushed him off and continued, "In two hours, everybody's going to board the shuttle, and we're going to detonate the charges. If we do manage to actually compromise the ship's integrity, then the shuttle should offer us a measure of protection." He paused to wait for acknowledgements, and then said, "All right, go check your gear one last time."

At the appointed time, the crew gathered in the shuttle. As with their trip to the Cybele, Tseyo was relegated to the floor – except this time around, he sat upright against the back of the shuttle. He looked at Norm and, in his native tongue, said with a smile, "Maybe this way I won't have to grab your leg."

Norm chuckled and replied, "It's still sore, you know." Tseyo's smile broadened. Norm shook his head and then, more seriously, asked, "How are you feeling?"

"Nervous," he said candidly. "All of this is still very strange to me."

Norm nodded and replied, "If it helps, this is strange to the rest of us, too." Tseyo frowned in response.

At that moment, Abe boarded the shuttle and sealed the door behind him. He had his tablet in hand and called up an application. "Everybody get your masks on," he said. He activated the intercom to the cockpit and asked, "Luke, are you ready?"

"I'm good, Abe. The shuttle's comms are up and running," he said. "If we need to, we can launch right away."

Norm noted to himself that they were more than twenty-five million kilometers from Earth. If the Cybele was torn apart by the explosions – which he considered a real possibility, given Abe and Luke's inexperience – and managed to get a distress call to a lunar or Martian outpost, they would have at least a day to wait before a slower, fusion-powered intrasolar ship could rescue them.

And if the shuttle was also damaged in the explosion, it simply would not matter.

"All right," Abe replied. "We're blowing them in three, two, one–."

The sharp crack of the explosion gave all of them a scare, and they felt the shuttle vibrate somewhat violently. A couple of moments passed before Luke called over the intercom, "Cybele's emergency beacon tripped and there's a shit-ton of warning indicators going off, but none of them look like they're related to structural damage."

Everybody seemed to exhale at the same moment, and then Amy said, "You got lucky."

"Hopefully we didn't use up all of our luck," Abe replied as he entered the cockpit. "We're going to need a lot more."

The team was silent after Abe closed the door behind him. After a few minutes of this silence had passed, Tseyo asked, "Is this normal behavior?"

"Is what normal behavior?" Norm replied.

"All of you are just sitting here, quiet," he said. "Is it normal for Sky People to be together and not say anything?"

"We're just waiting," Norm said with a shrug. "There isn't anything to say."

Tseyo shook his head. "There is always something to say when you're among friends."

Norm smiled weakly and replied, "We're not all friends, Tseyo."

"But we all have a common purpose, right?"

"Right."

Tseyo nodded. "When I undertook Iknimaya, my partners were not my closest friends. But we were friendly with each other, because we were all doing something important together." He looked down and added, "It might have been the last time we got to talk to anybody."

Norm was thinking about his response when Dawn, one of Abe's xenolinguists, asked, "What did you all talk about?"

Tseyo looked up, clearly surprised that another human was speaking in his native language. He looked at Norm as if to ask whether he should respond, and Norm just shrugged. Tseyo turned to Dawn and replied, "We talked about how quickly we would make the bond with ikran, about the warriors we would impress…"

"The women you would impress?" she asked with a grin.

Tseyo laughed and said, "Maybe we would have. But women were part of my group, and none of them were ones who I would have named. I did not want to hurt their feelings."

Matthew leaned forward in his seat and asked, "So, do you guys want to let the rest of us in on the conversation?"

Outside the shuttle, the Cybele's corridors were lit by emergency lights. The airlock doors had closed, sealing the shuttle bay from the rest of the ship. Because of the failure points they had tripped with their explosives, the scanners had no way of knowing whether or not there was actually a hull breach; but that would be something for a recovery team to worry about.

Dawn had routed the Cybele's primary communications to the shuttle in the few hours before she had retired with the others for a recuperative sleep. Several hours after the team boarded the shuttle, and well after they had entered the tracking range of Earth's stations, they got their first alert to open communications with Earth.

Abe activated the intercom and paused when he heard laughter on the other end. He had figured the team was too apprehensive for humor; but he listened to their conversation for a little while longer. He figured it was better that they were in good spirits.

"Sorry to interrupt, folks," he said, "but we're coming into radio range of Earth. We'll declare our emergency, and then hopefully be able to descend to the surface. So get locked down if you aren't already."

He switched over to the primary communications channel. A pre-recorded message provided instructions to open a direct line with a spaceflight tracking station. Abe did as instructed and did not hesitate to say, "Mayday, mayday. This is the Cybele declaring an emergency."

"Cybele, this is ICA Station Three," a woman replied. "We see your beacon has activated. Please describe the nature of your emergency."

"ICA Three, we've suffered some kind of explosion and a major loss of power. There may be hull damage. I have my crew secured for an emergency disembarkation to Earth."

"Negative, Cybele," she said. "Protocol is to have you dock with a recovery ship."

"Since when?"

"That's irrelevant, Cybele," she replied. "It's protocol."

"ICA Three, trace our trajectory and check our ship's travel log," Abe said. "You'll see we're coming from the Alpha Centauri system, having left Earth well over ten years ago. By law, you have to allow us to follow the regulations that were in place at the time of our departure."

"That law does not apply to emergencies, Cybele. You are cleared to disembark your crew, but your shuttle will be given vectors to a recovery ship. Acknowledge, Cybele."

Abe and Luke exchanged a glance, and both of them shook their heads. "Negative, ICA Three. We'll take our chances."

"Cybele, you will face fines of up to two-million dollars and or five years in prison for non-compliance," the woman said. "This is your final warning, Cybele. Acknowledge that you will rendezvous with a designated recovery vessel."

"Cybele acknowledges your final warning, ICA Three," Abe replied. "I have a responsibility for the safety of my crew, however, so you and your penalties can go to Hell."

Abe cut his side of the communication, but he kept the channel open to monitor ICA's traffic.

"That just made this a lot more interesting," Luke said. "I've always wanted to see a police chase in space."

Although the Cybele was still decelerating in preparation for entering into an orbit around Earth, it would be operating at speeds well beyond the capacity of ICA's fusion-powered fleet to match for many more minutes. Even if their fleet did catch up to the Cybele by the time the shuttle deployed, they would not be able to give chase through Earth's atmosphere. At best, they could have local authorities on stand-by to capture them once they were on the ground, but Abe had no intentions of letting them get that close.

"Unless they've invented tractor beams, I'm not too worried," Abe replied. "How long before we're face-to-face with the fuzz?"

"Twenty-five minutes," Luke said. "We just crossed the Moon's orbit." Abe started to chuckle, prompting Luke to ask, "Is there something funny about that?"

"Yeah, actually," Abe replied. "I was just about to complain about how long of a time that was, when it occurred to me that the first guys had to wait three days to get from one place to the other. I guess I'm spoiled."

Luke snorted and said, "Someday people will be wondering how we could be patient enough to wait five years to get to Pandora. Every generation after your own is spoiled by your standards. We're not doing our jobs if they aren't."

The rest of the time passed without another word spoken between the two. Once they were in Earth's orbit, Luke opened Cybele's hatch, and the shuttle dropped away from the ship.

Outside the cockpit window, one-thousand kilometers below the shuttle, Australia was basking in a summer's mid-morning. Abe compared the continent to those he had seen on Pandora, and despite the emotions he harbored for that world, his heart sank. As the ship passed over the continent at more than seven kilometers per second, Abe could see a large dust storm moving from the Outback towards the eastern coast, whose greenery had all but disappeared.

He could not conceive of such a sight on Pandora.

In the meantime, Luke entered the coordinates for the San Francisco spaceport, and the shuttle began to orient itself for reentry. As they passed just south of Brisbane, Luke said, "Five minutes until we hit atmospheric reentry." Abe just nodded.

The shuttle crossed the Kármán line above what used to be American Samoa, back before sea level rise, the deaths of the coral reefs, and more frequent and intense storms eroded the islands into the ocean. From there, the shuttle raced towards North America at more than twenty times the speed of sound.

Abe noticed how quickly the sky darkened as they raced away from the Sun and traveled farther into the short days of winter. When they reached the southern tip of the Baja Peninsula some forty minutes later, night had fallen outside the shuttle.

The autopilot made a sharp turn towards the northwest at the peninsula, at which point Luke disengaged it. "All right, Abe, I've got the ship. What are we doing now?"

"Maintain the deceleration and correct your heading one point five degrees to the east," he replied as he reviewed the shuttle's navigation instruments. It did not take a full minute before the controllers who were watching the shuttle's descent picked up on the course correction and began to insist the shuttle return to the earlier course.

"Cybele shuttle, be advised that you will miss Alameda Station on your current heading," one controller said.

"Cybele shuttle, high risk of encountering populated areas on your current trajectory," another insisted. "Please engage the vectors being transmitted to you."

Yet another was more to the point. "Turn on your autopilot, Cybele shuttle."

Luke chuckled at the traffic. "Man, they really want us alive to slap that two-million dollar fine, don't they?"

"I think they're angrier that we're about to buzz San Diego and Los Angeles at Mach two," Abe replied with a grin.

To Abe's disappointment, they were subsonic by the time they reached San Diego, traveling east of its downtown center at three-hundred meters per second. Twenty-eight seconds later, they shot over downtown Los Angeles at two-hundred meters per second. The journey was so fast that Abe could barely perceive the different cities, even considering that the two southern California cities had become a single, poorly integrated megalopolis many decades ago.

"We're losing speed and altitude fast, Abe," Luke said, a trace of unease in his voice. "Tell me where you want to put this thing down so I can engage thrusters."

"The target should be on your heads-up display," Abe replied. "And don't worry about losing speed. If it's all the same to you, I don't want to crash land too quickly."

Luke turned to him, his eyes wide. "You actually want me to crash the shuttle? I thought that was just a figure of speech!"

"They aren't going to think we're all dead if they find a perfectly landed shuttle," Abe replied. "Yes, we're going to crash land."

Luke was quiet for a moment, his face ashen, and then he said, "I don't think we're going to have to fake it." He got on the intercom and said, "Hold on to your asses, people, we're making a very hard landing."

Seconds later, city lights gave way to a dark landscape. The shuttle had automatically engaged night vision, allowing Abe and Luke to discern the hills and valleys of the Diablo Range as they hurtled towards the ground.

"Find something that looks soft, and then do your best," Abe said.

Luke snorted. "Soft. Yeah, okay, Abe, I'll aim for a fucking mattress store."

A few seconds later, Abe spotted an opportunity. "One-o-clock. Do you see that valley?"

"Got it," Luke replied as he oriented the ship to line up with the to-be landing strip. "Hold on to something."

Even though they had slowed to under seventy kilometers per hour, an imperceptible crawl compared to the speeds they were travelling at less than an hour earlier, the shuttle's impact felt to Abe as though they might as well have been travelling at a higher speed. The craft skidded along the ground to a cacophonous sound of metal tearing apart dry soil – or soil tearing apart metal, Abe was not entirely sure – occasionally skipping back into the air before crashing down again.

Abe did his best to not panic.

When the event stopped, Abe took a number of deep breaths to ensure that he was still alive. Other than the chest injury he sustained on Pandora flaring up, he did not feel much pain other than a headache, and he soon noticed that the ship's electronics were dead.

He looked over to Luke, who was bent forward and holding his head. "Are you okay?"

"Hit my fucking head," he said. He looked at Abe and, although he was trying to be stoic, his eyes betrayed no small amount of fear. "Does it look bad?"

When Luke removed his hand, Abe saw plenty of blood, but nothing that looked like serious trauma. "Doctor Patel or Cook will be able to patch you up," Abe replied. "Assuming they're still alive." Luke gave him the finger, and Abe grinned.

When he went back to the passenger bay, he was greeted with a number of harsh opinions about the landing. He only had one concern, however. "Can everybody still walk?"

"I think so," Matthew said. "But we have no right to."

"Complain later," Abe replied as he opened the shuttle's door. "Get your things and disembark. We have a long way to go and not a lot of time to get there."

"Where are we?" Norm asked. "We couldn't really make out landmarks."

"Tracy, California," Abe said. "Outside of town, but still too close. We have maybe five minutes before all kinds of authorities are on top of us, so move."

Tseyo remembered the first time he lost control of his ikran. He was trying to keep up with a talioang, but nearly collided with one of his comrades. In the course of evading the collision, he instead nearly ran into a tree. His ikran, deciding in its own panic that he had no idea what he was doing, tried its own maneuver. Ultimately, both Tseyo and ikran ended up on the jungle's floor, worse for the exercise.

What had just happened to him felt a lot like that moment.

As he recovered his bearings, T'ngyute came back and began issuing orders. Tseyo did not wait for Norm to translate the orders for him – he grabbed his sack of belongings and made a quick exit.

The first thing Tseyo noticed when he stepped outside was that the temperature was much colder than he was used to. He had expected, and experienced, the coldness of the Sky People's machinery, but even after all Norm and Jakesully had told him, he had expected their homeworld itself to at least be warmer than the machinery. He was disturbed to have been wrong.

He also noted with distress how dark it was. This was a night that Tseyo would not have believed existed. The sky was starless, and the single moon that hovered low over the horizon paled in brilliance to the moons in his familiar skies. The ground did not glow beneath his feet, and instead he only felt sharp, dying blades of grass digging into him. Indeed, the bioluminescent markers on his skin seemed to do as much to illuminate the ground as the lone moon.

Tseyo attributed the cold to this unnaturally dark night.

The Sky People disembarked the ship while Tseyo absorbed the realities of the world he had set foot on, and he was taken out of his trance when Norm hit his forearm and said, "We have to run."

Tseyo nodded and followed after the Sky People up a hillside. A short time later, the sky glowed as if there were a fire, and then Tseyo heard the unmistakable sound of an explosion. He stopped in his tracks, and he turned about, looking for signs of an attacking force. When he looked behind him, from where the sound had come, he saw the machine in which he arrived at this place in flames.

Again, Norm got his attention by hitting his arm. "We had to destroy it to cover our trail," he said. "Come on, we have to keep moving quickly."

"Where are we going?" Tseyo asked. "I don't see anything nearby. I can barely see anything at all."

"I don't know specifically," Norm replied. "But Abe – T'ngyute – says it will take most of the night."

"How long do your nights last?"

"This time of year, there is more night than there is day."

"Is that why it's so cold?"

Norm looked at him as though he were skxawng. "You're cold?" Tseyo nodded, and Norm laughed and said. "This is warm for us, or at least for this time of year."

"If this is what you consider warm, then I think I understand why you Sky People covet fire."

Norm chuckled and replied, "Well, our world can sometimes be warmer than yours, but let's hope you aren't still here when it gets to be that time of year."

More time passed when, at the summit of a hill, T'ngyute told the team to rest while he checked on their path. It was then that Tseyo noticed another oddity. He looked at Norm and asked, "Why have you not taken off your mask? This is your home."

"The air is too poisonous," Norm replied. "It's safer for us to keep them on."

Tseyo could only shake his head. He could not imagine how air could become poisonous; however, he did know that the Sky People were able to do all kinds of terrible things, and so he took Norm at his word.

He scanned the horizon and noticed a number of areas where the sky appeared to glow red, in some places more brilliantly than others. He nodded towards Norm and asked, "What are those fires from?"

"Those aren't fires," Norm said. "Those are lights from the cities I taught you about."

Tseyo narrowed his eyes at the horizon, looking for any of the structures which Norm taught him made up the Sky People's habitats, but he could not see them. He furrowed his brow and asked, "How are we able to see the lights but not the buildings?"

"Because there are so many lights in so many buildings, each city is powerful enough to light up the sky."

Tseyo had a number of questions he wanted to ask, but before he could, T'ngyute took Norm aside and spoke with him. Norm nodded at the end of their conversation, and then returned to Tseyo.

"We're going to be getting close to Sky People's homes," he said. "And, as I'm sure you've noticed, your skin is not blending into our environment."

Tseyo nodded. "This is not good for stealth."

Norm shook his head, "No, it's not. T'ngyute says that there's a river nearby, and we're heading there. When we get there, we're going to have to cover you in mud to keep you concealed."

Tseyo agreed; but when the group resumed its trek and arrived at the so-called river, he immediately had regrets. The river was less than a stream, and when he knelt at its bank, the water smelled putrid – even through his mask. He shook his head and said, "I won't cover myself in this filth."

"Tseyo, we can't risk having you spotted," Norm replied. "This is the only thing we have available to us."

"Then let's find another river," he said. "This one is more like the runoff from the waste trenches outside Kelutral after a rainfall."

Norm frowned and said, "Actually, Tseyo, it's probably the same thing; but you could search for eight days and not find anything better out here."

If he could take off his mask, Tseyo would spit. Instead, he curled his lips and said, "Your air is cold and poisonous, your ground is dead, and your 'water' is little better than squatted waste. Why are you trying to save this world? I'm no longer surprised that atokirina's light went out – this place is forsaken. There is no hope here."

Norm sighed and lowered his head. "This is our home, Tseyo. What other reason do we need to fight for it?"

Tseyo took a deep breath while he thought about that. He shook his head and replied, "If all the leaves fell from Kelutral, we would take it as a sign from Eywa to move. But, I respect your choice to fight." He sighed, knelt down, scooped up a handful of the acrid mud, and then applied it to his arm. "I hope we get to our destination quickly."

"Good morning, San Francisco!" the announcer said. "It's Friday, February Seventh, and we've got all the news you need for the end of your work week."

"It's also five-o-clock," Natalie muttered into her pillow as she reached over to her nightstand and silenced her tablet-turned-alarm clock. "It's not morning if the Sun isn't even up."

Unfortunately for her, there was a backup to the alarm that she could not so easily turn off – her German Shepherd, Vercingetorix. Despite her best efforts to block out any and all noises and attempt to go back to sleep, she could hear him stirring from his bed. Soon thereafter he had his forepaws on the edge of her bed and began licking what little of her face was not buried in the pillow.

She groaned and pushed him away. "All right, Vertex, I'm up." When she did not move, he let out a short bark. Natalie sat up and said, "Okay! Now I'm up. But be quiet, or else you'll wake Mom."

Vercingetorix just wagged his tail.

Natalie smiled and patted his head. Getting up early in the morning had been a routine for her since she was a young girl. First it was for batteries of medical tests and procedures; and then when she was healthier in her teen years, it was for swimming practice. However, with her competitive swimming days over, she maintained the practice out of habit.

She yawned and said, "Go get my cane, Vertex." He obliged her.

The relapse she had two years earlier ended up costing her full use of her right leg. Natalie had been offered a wheelchair, but she insisted on walking for as long as she could, even if she did not know how much longer that would be.

The doctors, her friends, and family had assumed that she was in a full coma when the relapse hit, but instead she was simply locked in a non-functional body. For six weeks, she was fully aware and able to hear everything that went on around her: her mother's quiet prayers for her recovery, the doctor's grim prognosis, and the male nurse's frequent comments, when he was alone with her, about her "fantastic" breasts. Natalie was also more than aware of the several conversations her mother and father-figure Tom Walsh had about her father's job on Pandora.

Natalie wanted to make it a point when she regained the ability to speak to pin them down on details, but they had expressed such an outpouring of emotion when she did finally break free of the locked-in syndrome that she did not have the heart to tear them down. She thought she could defer it for a few weeks – just until therapy was over – but weeks became months, and months had turned into two years.

Vertex returned from the corner of the room with her cane, and dutifully released it once she had it in her hand. Once Natalie stood up, she looked down at Vercingetorix and asked, "Would you believe I was once a competitor for the Olympics?" He wagged his tail, and she smiled. "Well, that's because you're nice."

She sighed and went about her normal routine. Natalie let Vercingetorix out – the only time he would go out today as, when she checked the weather, they were calling for another code black air quality day – showered, dressed, and let him back inside.

When she began to prepare a breakfast of imitation bacon and eggs, Natalie looked down to her side, expecting to playfully scold her companion for begging. To her surprise, however, he was not there. She looked around the kitchen, but ultimately found him in the living room, where he was staring intently out the floor-to-ceiling windows into the backyard.

"Vertex?"

He looked at her briefly, and then resumed looking out the window. A moment later he began barking.

"Vertex! No!" She took the frying pan off heat, and then made her way into the living room to grab his collar. "No barking in the house. You know better."

Normally, he would allow her to guide him away from the windows. This time, however, he whined and resisted, continuing to bark.

"You're going to wake up Mom!" she said. "And the neighbors."

"I don't know about the neighbors," Natalie heard her mom say, "but yes, I'm awake."

The living room was open to the ceiling, and Natalie's mom was leaning against the railing of the second floor hallway that looked over the living room. She looked up at her mom and said, "I'm sorry, I don't know what's got him spooked."

"Have you taken him out?"

"Of course."

Her mom yawned and shrugged. "Well, maybe put him out again."

"No, the air's going to be bad again today," she said. "I'll put him in the basement."

Her mom nodded, and then went back to her bedroom. Natalie did as promised, very much over Vertex's objections, and then she returned to the kitchen. She was about to put the frying pan back on the heated stovetop, when she noticed something in one of the windows.

A tablet had been set on the windowsill, leaning against the window itself, and a word processing program was on the screen. It had a simple message: "Hey, Stranger. Open the garage."

Natalie's eyes nearly bugged out of her head, and she shouted, "Mom! Mom, call the police!"

Her mom came running out of her room and leaned over the railing. "What's wrong, Natalie?" Natalie repeated the note's message, but her mom's reaction was far from what she expected. She took a deep breath and stepped away from the railing, as though in shock. "Open the garage door, Natalie," her mom said. "Now."

She raised an eyebrow. "Mom?"

"Now!" she repeated as she ran back to her bedroom.

Natalie did as ordered. She walked through one of the guest rooms, the laundry room, and then entered the garage. She hesitated before she walked towards the door leading to the backyard, and again when she put her hand on the doorknob. She took a deep breath and opened the door.

As soon as she saw the face of the man standing there, Natalie did not need to wait for an introduction or explanation. He looked exactly like the picture she had taken of him over a decade ago, and which she returned to often. She threw her arms around him and said, "Daddy!"

He smiled, held her close to him and said, "Hey, Sweetie. I'm home."

She did not see any point in trying to hold back her tears. "I've missed you so much, Daddy. We've missed you."

"I've missed you, too," he said, kissing her cheek. "You grew up on me."

A moment later, her mom, wearing a coat, entered the garage. She screamed and almost knocked Natalie off of her father when she ran to hug him. "Hey, Stranger," she said. "Where have you been?"

He responded only by giving her a full kiss on her lips which, even for the circumstances, caused Natalie's stomach lurch at watching her parents engage in an impromptu make-out session – especially as her father still had an arm around her.

Looking for a way out, Natalie said, "I hate to break up the moment, Daddy, but you stink."

He broke from the kiss and looked at her with a shocked expression. "What?"

Her mom chuckled and said, "It's true, Abe. You smell like you haven't showered in – like you haven't ever showered."

His expression faded, and he laughed. "Yeah, I'll take care of that in a minute." He took a deep breath and continued, "In the meantime, I need you two to do something for me."

"Anything," Natalie said.

"I need you to close every blind and curtain in the house," he replied. "We have guests."

Natalie exchanged a glance with her mother, and it was her mom who asked, "Since when do we do that for guests? And who are these guests?"

"You'll see why in a second."

He leaned out the door and motioned for someone to come forward. Six more people entered the garage, the last of which, a man, leaned out the door and said in words that Natalie faintly recognized, "Za'ivu."

"You might want to stand back," her father said as he and the other man stepped farther into the garage.

Her mother looked at him warily and asked, "Abe?"

A moment later, a four-digit hand grabbed the doorframe, and then a mud-covered Na'vi male forced his way past the doorway into the garage – and then promptly hit his head against the ceiling.

Natalie went slackjawed at the sight, but her mother was more to the point: she fainted.