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mention it when I noticed we were just as close to the guy in front.

    “Sit down and connect your seat blelt,” said Mr. Zik. “We are ablout to enter the stratosphere.”

    I did just that, thinking about how pleasantries disappear with the stress of speaking another tongue, and suddenly noticed something.

    All the signs in the saucer, down to the little seat-adjuster, were in English.

    “Why are the signs in English?” I blurted.

    “They are made for explort,” said Mr. Zik. “We will reach the entry ploint in four, three, two, one, now.”

    The gravitational shift felt like a too-tight halter-top. The idiot behind us got even closer and I was sure he was going to be up our ass. I was alternately watching him (his outer shell was starting to glow with the heat of re-entry) and squeezing my eyes shut (they always give me problems during gravitational transitions) so I guess I looked a bit frenzied.

    “Are you OK, Sam?” Mr. Zik said worriedly.

    I wrenched my head to point it at him. “Uh...” I said, staring at the Octavian. The grav did funny things to his skull-free head, pulling back the skin of his face against soft cartilage. His eyeholes were huge and cavernous, his mouth grew larger.

    “Are you sick?” he asked. “The gravity will blee normal soon.”

    His head returned to normal as the gravity lessened, but I could still see it.

    “I’m fine, really. I was just shocked...” I stopped. What was I gonna say? That he looked a bit like a monster?

    “I am sorry. The gravity is very... plowerful.”

    “Uh, yeah.”

    “I am very sorry.”

    “No problem, it’s my fault.”

    He slapped a few controls. “Are you ready?”

    I nodded. We dropped like a rock, aerodynamics eventually turning us sideways. It was hard to gauge how close we were getting to the water, because we were approaching the landless side of Octavia so there were no landmarks to gauge our distance or speed. The viewscreen was a solid blue-green for twenty minutes.

    As soon as we hit the water the thrusters came on. Bubbles whooshed out of the pipes behind us. “Ah, hydro thrusters,” I identified.

    “Yes,” Mr. Zik said. “Hydro. I forgot. My English is not so good.”

    I shook my head no.

    The saucer traffic was just as tightly packed underwater. We were headed down in a diagonal, but there was no scenery to speak of this high up. I tried to keep my eyes open but the drone of the hydrothrusters eventually had their way with my exhausted self, and I nodded off.

    ***

    I had an anxiety dream about being torn apart by aliens with squashed-skull faces, and woke up a little contemptuous of my subconscious’s lack of imagination. We were level now, and were going through what looked to be a small town.

    “Where...” My mouth felt weird. My whole face felt weird, actually. “What?” I moved my arm around and watched Octavia’s atmosphere ripple faintly.

    “I filled the cablin with our water. I was told it was easier for humans to adjust to our atmosphere when they sleep. Are you OK?”

    “Yeah, I’m fine,” I said, breathing in the water oxygen, in and out, in and out, letting it fill my nose and lungs. I had only panicked once, back in orientation, and that was because I was still feeling the side-effects of a chemical cocktail Matthew had made for me the previous night.

    I looked at Mr. Zik, upright for the first time. The points of his headcrest bobbed slightly and were much healthier-looking than when they had been strands hanging limply over his platform in the oxygen atmosphere. The platform had been tucked out of sight somewhere and Mr. Zik reigned supreme from his cockpit chair.

    My feet felt funny, and I realized I was wearing cotton socks. Odd that I would remember to water-treat all my clothes but the socks, but I didn’t mind the discomfort — it drove home the fact that I was somewhere very different.

    “Where are we, exactly?” We were passing the buildings too quickly to see anything