Day 52, morning; Jumper; Attn: Enid [F]

[jahjackson]

Jack smiled as the jumper rose into the air, shooting straight up for a while before he leveled it off and started heading upward at a more oblique angle. Outside, the sky turned from the pink-laced blue of early morning to the white of the cloud layer. Soon, it would be dark blue, and then black and full of stars, and they would get their first

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[enid_patel]

Enid sat up straight and blinked. So, it seemed that not all of the strange new world she had become part of came from the Pegasus Galaxy. The man had delivered a great deal of information in that short statement, and though Enid could not honestly say that she had no other questions, she did feel as though anything further would be an intrusion.

Besides, shouldn't they be starting to fly a grid pattern about now? Glancing down at the panel in front of her, Enid saw that they were continuing to gain altitude, at a significant rate.

"You... will be leveling off shortly, yes?" she asked

[jahjackson]

"Nope," Jack answered, grinning. In a normal aircraft at the speeds they were going, their faces would be peeling off their skulls about now. He'd missed the thrill of inertia-dampened flight. "We're supposed to be looking to see if there's a southern continent and that requires a bit more distance."

[enid_patel]

"Oh..." said Enid, a little stunned. She felt stupid a moment later, because she'd been thinking the old fashioned way. These jumpers weren't aircraft, they were atmosphere maneuverable space ships, and it seemed she hadn't quite gotten her head around that.

"Of... of course," she said eventually, and then covered her embarrassment by focusing intently on the readings she was taking.

[jahjackson]

The sky darkened and stars began to emerge until they found themselves in the diamond-studded blackness of space, the planet below them a ball of blues and greens and browns studded with streaks of cotton. It looked much like Earth if a child had attempted it-- the shape of landmasses nowhere close to Earth's. Jack had the vague sense he'd seen it before and remembered the graphic that had flashed before him as he'd landed.

"This never gets old," Jack breathed.

[enid_patel]

Jackson had been silent for so long, and Enid so immersed in the data she was getting, that the pilot's comment almost startled her. Glancing to her left, Enid found herself taken by surprise by the look of quiet ecstasy on his face. Born on an alien ship, Enid thought to herself. He has never felt so at home anywhere else.

And as for herself... Enid was having a hard time convincing herself it was real. It shouldn't be so hard, she reflected, and it wasn't as if she'd not done far more remarkable things in the last few months, but this sight, out the window of the jumper, made it all both more and less real.

"It isn't..." she began hesitantly, "as if I haven't been in space before now.... but this... it feels much more real... and much more impossible."