The Wellness Plague

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“Why are you traveling to Far Edge?” the pilot asked.

Reynolds Morrill Landers kept his eyes glued to the window, unable to turn away from the empty immensity outside. Wind rushed across the Sunbird’s metal skin, which seemed no thicker than foil With each gust of wind, with each course adjustment, the whole craft creaked and groaned in protest. Above, wispy clouds of ice crystals broke the sunlight into muted rainbows. Below them lay layer after layer of clouds. You could look down through the gaps, sometimes all the way down to the lush darkness of the world jungle that was the floor of Skylandia.

Fear of heights, he told himself, was an absurd emotion on a world where humans could live only on mountain tops. In the past, though, he had always had solid rock beneath his feet. Now there were only struts and metal skin and absurdly long glider wings, their dark topsides drinking in sunlight and converting it to electricity for the lifting fans. An experimental craft whose pilot was a girl no older than he had been when he had been first admitted to the College of Apollo, who could fly legally only because her craft did not exist in the registry of vessels requiring certification.

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