PART 7 BLOODPRIDE

The biggest mistake is being too afraid of making one.

—ELBERT HUBBARD

1.

She smelled the aliens coming.

They were above her as she got caught in a downdraft. She tumbled. The draft brought their pungent odor—rank, feathery, ripe, strange. She fought against the current pushing her down, arms churning, her legs kicking with their ailerons. The hinged flaps fluttered as she tried to control her banking, but she rolled, too, getting dizzy—and the ground was coming up fast. Too fast.

Rachel had thought she was a reasonably good flyer, but now she regretted telling anyone about her hobby. Maybe a hundred meters to go below her, and she was too far from the fusor-warmed pink walls where the updrafts flowed. What was that saying?—Flying is the art of falling and missing the ground….

She heard the aliens flap down the wind, calling out their air songs, their scent getting riper—and then they were flashing around her like a singing whirlwind.

What could a Ythri do—grab her? Then they would both fall.

The answer came suddenly. Wings fully spread, the one called Fraq swept close and threw a gossamer strand around her helmet cowling. He pulled. As it snapped straight it jerked her head back, caught. Fraq worked upward and toward the wall. The rope tugged her after him as she thrust hard with her arms, letting her foot flaps straighten along her legs. They stopped fluttering. Sharp cries came from the other Ythri. She was under tow.

Humiliating, but better than a snapped neck any day.

Fraq was heading up and over, angling toward the speckled void walls. That gave Rachel a chance to stare at him, which she couldn’t politely do in the formal, diplomatic sessions she had attended to meet the Ythri. His keelbone jutted beneath a strong neck like a ship’s prow. The towline wrapped around the heavily muscled shoulders. Fraq’s head was blunt-nosed and without external ears. As he turned his head to bark an order to her—“Hold steady offwind!”—she saw that when the Ythri was in full labored flight, the mouth had flushed lips, cherry red. Two big golden eyes stabbed sidewise, checking clearance from the others flapping above, who were blocking the downdraft.

His crest of black-tipped white plumage rose stiffly above, a control surface he could tilt—and protection for the bulging skull, she guessed. The fan-shaped tail flexed with white streamers among gray fan feathers. Fraq’s lean body was mahogany that reddened along the naked legs.

His yellow claws out at the wingtips made palms that canted for lift.

Beautiful, elegant.

The pink wall was close now, and she felt the caress of the updraft winds. Fraq shouted, “Go!” and somehow with a toss of his head sent a wave down the towline that slipped it from her helmet. Smart birds knew a lot of tricks. She was free.

Still she dropped, catching the wind on her arm wings. It would be even more humiliating to tumble now. She strained hard, flexed her body, thrust—and got stable. The aliens were hovering now, watching her, and she had damn well better get this right. She tilted her ailerons and steadied, starting to rise in the warm flow.