June 23rd lunchtime
A strange trembling sensation swept through Kallandra as she lay on her back, sucking a grass stem. Either her vision was blurred or that single white fair-weather cloud had developed fuzziness. She could have sworn she saw a trio of birds fly into that cloud, but they didn’t emerge.
She spat out the grass blade and tried to lever herself up on her elbows as her body and the hill vibrated. Moments later Glastonbury Hill felt solid once more and the cloud looked clear, but no birds.
“Derek, did you feel that, honey?”
“Feel what?” he mumbled, through a cheese and pickle sandwich.
“I felt a vibration through the ground. Didn’t you?” She looked at him sitting upright in his workday trousers, but a Festival T-shirt Blake bought for him. She looked down at her’s and smiled. Then, as she lifted the hem to admire her tanned stomach, she frowned at bruises. She looked carefully at the webbed pattern as if they’d been made by restraints in one of her test jets during violent manoeuvres. A memory flash hit her as if she’d acquired the damage in the Mars mission spaceship, but they’d only been in the simulator at JPL so far.
“Probably the bass from the Kaiser Chiefs,” Derek said. “Listen, they’re at it again.”
She shook her head to be rid of wrong memories and found she could just make out the beat added to by fifty thousand voices, but she sang along to the lyrics she knew well, and how appropriate for both Derek and her about to embark on the first Mars mission.
“It don't matter to me
'Cos all I wanted to be
Is a million miles from here
Somewhere more familiar
Oh my God I can't believe it
I've never been this far away from home…”
She lay back again but an encroaching shadow cooled her face. She stopped singing and said: “Hey Blake, how’s it going?”
“I’m all right,” the plump teenager said, while holding his spectacles up to the sky, as if looking for smears. “But you two might have a problem. The news said that the orbiting telescope around Mars has seen a metal ball coming out of a volcano.”
“I told you,” Derek said, “to keep off that funny baccy.”
“Blake,” Kallandra said, “what’s that in your right hand?” A spot on her upper left arm felt itchy and warm—a familiar sensation although she couldn’t remember where from.
“Oh, it’s one of those silver chime-balls. Found it down the slope but the chime’s broken.”
Kallandra felt her heartbeat accelerating without knowing why, and then held out her hand for the small sphere.