Schism

     Paul looked back along the scar that marked their landing or - to use the better word - crashing. The individual bounces appeared as darkened dimples with shards of broken earth and pod debris radiating from each. The final klick or so was one long furrow, as if a fingerful of icing had been removed from the top of a cake. Each time he looked upon the visible evidence of the force of their arrival, he wondered that none had died in the attempt… Yet.

     The burned man still clung to life, alternating between delirium and unconsciousness. Liz's face told of the man's chances, but she continued to nurse him and the now catatonic Kayla.

     Milla and Paul salvaged power units, building materials, and whatever else they could pull from the wreckage. Ben managed the food supplies, and supplemented the packs with vegetation scrounged from the scrubby plant life. The roots supplied some of the water that the hot dry days stole from their skins.

     Creeping backward from the short tunnel to the pod's underbelly, Milla swore as she bumped her head for the thousandth time.

     "The light, Paul. In here. Not at the sky or my face or the noises in the dark."

     "I heard something, a rumbling," Paul said and redirected the beam to the torn access panel.

     "Relax. I'm watching." Liz's voice came from the far side of the pod. "There is an odd light on the butte."

     Paul and Milla clambered out of the trench and joined the woman and her sleeping companions. Lightning forked up and down from clouds scraping the ridge to the south.

     "What is it?" she asked. "Maybe the other pods are signaling?"

     Milla laughed. "Lightning."

     "I've seen pictures of lightning. That doesn't look the same." The disbelief was plain in her tone.

     "Pictures?" Paul asked. "Where are you from?"

     "Europa LaGrange B." There were a dozen tin cans floating there. Anyone with a few credits and a cause could buy a simple ecosphere to park at the Ugly-B. Paul had never met anyone from the area for the simple reason that only the rare Granger ever relocated to the 'mains' - the outside.

     "Oh," said Milla. The flat syllable expressed every preconceived notion each of the Earthborn felt.

     Liz glanced up at the two and smiled. "Somebody thought a sociologist from a closed society would be better able to predict the actions of another one."

     Milla sat down beside the woman to watch the light show and he joined them on the rocky ground. Ben's light snore made a comfortable sound. Paul knew the night's work was over as they waited for the next installment of Verdant's pyrokinetics.