The Chronicles of Amon book 1 LINK

  Chapter 15.

  Catriona and Zuri stood together as the bay doors closed. Hand in hand, they stood watching as the old man made his way across the apron toward his shuttlecraft. They could see plainly how the old man chatted with the two young men who assisted him. Every few steps he would point at something or another and make some unheard comment. Finally they made it up the steps of the shuttlecraft. Just before he ducked his head to clear the entrance, he turned to wave good by. Zuri thought she saw the glint of a tear in the old man’s eye. And then he was gone.

  His escorts were the last to enter the craft. The stairway folded in on itself and disappeared under the belly of the craft. Lights inside the cockpit could now be seen as the light on the hangar deck dimmed. Zuri could see the outline of the pilot and co-pilot as they busied themselves going through their pre-flight check lists. She saw the co-pilot’s hand go up toward what she suspected was the power distribution panel. At least that would be where it would be in HER shuttlecraft.

  Sure enough, a pattern of light came on all around the exterior of the space craft. One pattern ran horizontal, along the central axis of the fuselage. The lights pulsed in place a foot or so apart in a row less than a foot wide. Another two ‘ribbons’ of light ran vertically, one across the midsection of the craft and another one going from the nose of the craft, up and over the cockpit, across the top of the craft and back down again, across the belly and back up to meet at the nose.

  The ‘ribbon’ around the horizontal axis began pulsing at a faster rate. Faster and faster it flashed until the pulsations seemed to synchronize into one continuous beam. One by one the lights detached them selves from the fuselage and moved out to form a circle a few feet larger than the length of the craft.

  Next, the ribbon around the belly repeated the same process until the ring it formed was only a few inches larger than the horizontal ring.

  The last ring to form fit just inside the smaller of the two rings, Clearing the nose and tail of the craft by only inches.

  The cockpit windows turned black as the craft began to rise. The horizontal ring changed to a soft yellow color as the spacecraft rose to a foot above the floor. A dotted line the same color as the rings appeared on the floor, extending out to the edge of the bay where it stopped at the huge doors.

  Zuri heard a faint pop as the bay was de-pressurized. Several feet beyond the hovering spacecraft, the doors slid slowly to each side, revealing the crescent of Cygnus 5 below, it’s sun just dipping below the horizon.

  The remaining two rings around the craft also began changing color. When the three colors matched, the craft rotated clockwise 180 degrees facing outward toward the vastness beyond. The craft began moving outward, each yellow light on the floor extinguishing as the craft passed over it.

  Floating motionless in space, other vehicles could be seen queued in line, the planet rotating slowly below.

  The two women continued watching as the craft drifted out ahead of the que. It’s yellow rings turned back to white as the craft took a steep dive down and to the left, dipping below the bay floor. Immediately, the spacecraft at the head of the que was surrounded by the same yellow halo. The yellow line reappeared, this time ending on the other side of the wide bay.

  Ardghal was a man of mystery to most everyone who knew him. Extreme longevity among the space-fairing races was common, but with Ardghal there was something different. No one who knew him had any idea how old he was, or where he had come from.