Riley gets to her knees, then notices her hand is still down my loincloth. “Oh! Sorry!” She yanks it out.
“It’s all right,” I tell her as I get up. “You had a good grip there.”
“Where are the jungle?” she asks with a thin voice.
I look up, having to shield my eyes from the light. “And why is there sun this late at night?”
“We travel far,” Riley says and looks down at the panel. “Other side of the planet, maybe.”
“Maybe we should press that same thing again,” I suggest, “and it will fly back. Or maybe we shouldn’t press it at all.”
“I not want to press anything,” she says with the strange, but immensely charming, lilt to her voice, raising both hands. “You press now.”
I stiffen. “Me?”
She shrugs her little shoulders. “You are here too. I am not better at fly than you. Nator’ax is your name? I saw you. You guard us.”
“I have been trusted by the chief to keep the women safe,” I agree. “After this, I doubt he will trust me to even watch the fire.”
She tilts her head. “Why? You did nothing.”
“Perhaps that was my failing. The result is that I am stuck halfway between the sky and the ground with a woman I’ve sworn to not abduct, half a planet away from my village. My explanation will have to beastonishinglygood. Are we not moving at all?”
Riley turns around. “We are not. I want back to village. I press again, as you say.”
“I didn’t actually say that,” I protest as she presses the same flat part.
Nothing happens.
“Maybe I press this,” she says and touches another. “It lights.”
Indeed, that part of the table shines in yellow, although it may be a reflection from the sunlight.
“It’s worth a try, I suppose,” I say, putting one palm on the ceiling and taking hold of Riley’s upper arm in case the ship does unpleasant things.
Riley’s hand shoots out and grabs my waistband again. “We’re going down!”
Indeed, the floor appears to be dropping under us. I manage to stay upright and keep Riley standing, too. “That’s not really what we wanted.”
“I know!” she presses other buttons, then takes hold of the strange contraption in the middle of the table.
Immediately, the ship turns to the left, and only by pushing my hand up against the ceiling and keeping my feet firmly on the floor do I manage to not fall.
The ship turns the other way.
“I think is good,” Riley says tightly as she pulls her hand out of my loincloth.
The saucer shudders again, and the bright clouds outside begin to slide upward along the curved walls.
“Yes,” Riley says with fierce concentration, both hands on the strange stick. “See? I make it go to sides.”
The humming lowers in pitch, and the endless white sea beneath us slowly grows larger.
Then it grows larger faster.
“Riley,” I say carefully, “are you doing that?”
She pulls the stick back a little. The saucer answers by dropping even faster.
