That lasted for approximately ten seconds.
Then we emerged from the light, and the warmth and well-being dropped from us—as if we had been banished from Heaven—and I strained to peer into the sunlight flooding through the screen.
Of one thing I was certain. We were no longer on the green and mountainous world of Chalcedony.
“Where the hell…?” Matt said.
A desert stretched out before us, barren and rocky and seemingly lifeless. In the distance, stark against the deep blue sky, I made out oddly familiar mountains. I had seen them somewhere before, in my childhood.
Beside me, Hawk’s suspension cradle was shaking. Our pilot was laughing.
“Hawk?” I said.
“Do you know where we are?” he cried.
“God knows,” Matt said. “Looks like some alien world to me…” “Alien?” Hawk responded. “And where were you born, Matt?
‘Frisco? Well, we’re not a thousand kilometres away.”
I looked at him. “The Nevada desert?” I whispered. Hawk looked at me through eyes filmed with tears. “Not a stone’s throw from the old Nevada spaceport,” he said, “where thirty years ago I killed ninety-five innocent tourists.” Maddie said, “But how?”
In the silence that followed her question, Hawk took us down and eased the ship down near the desert floor. As we were hovering, he turned the ship on its axis and said, “Just as I thought…”
We stared at him, and then through the viewscreen at what was revealed.
Standing before us, rising for kilometres into the clear blue Nevada sky, was an exact replica of the Golden Column we had left behind.
The voice in my head whispered something, and I relayed the information to my friends. “The Gift of the Yall,” I said.
The ship hovered, turned until it was facing the Column. I reached out to Matt and gripped his hand. Beyond him, I saw Maddie reach out too…
“Maddie!” I said.
Tears filled her eyes, streaming down her cheeks.
As Hawk powered up the ship and we accelerated towards the miraculous light of the Golden Column, Maddie’s hand made contact with Matt’s.