The flitter rose from Occupied Earth like a stone thrown from a blue bowl. The little cylindrical craft tumbled slowly as it climbed, sparkling.
Jasoft Parz had been summoned to a meeting, in orbit, with the Qax Governor of Earth. Parz scoured a mind worn into grooves of habit by his years in the diplomatic service for reasons for this summons. It must be connected with the arrival of the damned wormhole from the past, of course—that had stirred up the Qax like a stick in a hornet’s nest.
But why summon him now? What had changed?
As his distance from the planet increased, so grew Parz’s apprehension.
Alone in the automated flitter Parz watched shafts of cerulean Earthlight thread through the small ports and, twisting with the craft’s rotation, dissect the dusty air around him. As always the glowing innocence of the planet took his breath away. Two centuries of Qax Occupation had left few visible scars on Earth’s surface—far fewer, in fact, than the damage wrought by humans during their slow, haphazard rise to technological civilization. But still it was disturbing to see how the Qax-run plankton farms bordered every continent in green; and on the land, scattered and gleaming plains of glass marked man’s brief and inglorious struggle against the Qax.
