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“Jan!” Ed shouted over the wind. “Can you hand me the frost welder? I’ve got some ropes loose up here.”

“One frost welder, airborne and ready,” Jan responded, before setting the small handheld tool into a device that resembled a miniature trebuchet. She pressed a button and pulled a lever, and the frost welder flew in a graceful, carefully calculated arc to where Ed hung, upside-down, from a section of the airship’s rigging. He deftly caught the frost welder and put it to work fusing the ropes which hung out of place.

Eduardo Rifern was one of the continent’s best technologists. Nearly thirty, he seemed to have an uncanny knack for mechanical ingenuity. The airship they were in was his design, and although he denies it, many say he had a hand in building the Striding City of the South. His suit lent him the appearance of an average gentleman, if one discounted three things. First, his knee-high boots with sturdy metal toes, to protect his feet from the heat of a forge and the fall of heavy items. Second, his long leather coat, adorned with multiple large pockets to carry various tools and spare parts. Third, his wide-brimmed hat, which covered unruly black hair. If one overlooked these three things, he seemed to fit perfectly into one of the high society clubs.

Janita Callist, one month away from reaching the age of twenty, was Eduardo’s apprentice. Jan wore sandals and an oversuit, because the proper attire of a young lady was highly inefficient for her line of work. She also frequently donned a pair of goggles, mostly to correct flaws in her vision. Her clothing, as well as her short brown hair and slight build, often got her confused for a boy, but that didn’t bother her very much, as it meant she usually got treated like a boy, and that made life much easier for her. The frost welder was her idea, and so far use of the device hadn’t spread beyond her teacher. The current expedition was also her idea, and it was greatly pleasing to Ed that his student was proving to be as imaginative and brilliant as he was.

The current expedition, which put Ed and Jan on the airship and made it so important that the ropes of the ship’s rigging be aligned just right, was a trip to the moons. Nobody had ever travelled to the moons before, and not just because everybody assumed it would be an exceedingly difficult task. The moons were also obviously very dangerous. Once a month the moons moved close enough together for a great arc of lightning to leap between them. This mighty storm lasted for three days before the moons moved once more out of conjunction. While this was clearly a deadly hazard to most people, Ed and Jan were not concerned with the risk. They were possessed with a desire to know why. Since, clearly, the only way to discover that was to go there and look for themselves, Janita suggested that they fly there in Eduardo’s airship.

The primary difficulty in flying to the moons was that, as everybody knew, there wasn’t air any higher than ten miles above the ground, and the moons were farther away than that. Fortunately, within the past decade it had been discovered that a clear, semifluid substance permeated the space around the planet’s atmosphere. This substance, called ether by the trio of scientists who discovered it, would be the key to leaving the planet. As Ed had designed the airship and thus knew the most about it, he reconfigured it to be able to fly in ether as well as air. He assigned Jan the more challenging task of designing a device which would allow them to breathe in the ether. Although when he had assigned her the task he was sure she’d be up to it, the first few days of its development almost convinced him otherwise.

The first day went well, as Jan spent the time composing a number of preliminary sketches, trying to get a feel for the project and the proper way to approach the problem. It was the second day of development when things started to go badly. Ed returned to their house for lunch, having been out all morning working on modifying the airship. As he walked through the door, he heard a scream and the sound of something hitting the wall come from Jan’s room. In her room he found Janita curled up on her bed, sobbing. On her desk were a number of papers, most of them with the sketches or calculations angrily scribbled out. More pieces of paper lay balled up on the floor around the room. Jan’s goggles, apparently the object that was thrown, lay on the floor next to the wall with a large crack through one lens. Ed retrieved her goggles and sat on the edge of her bed.

“Design’s not going well?” he asked quietly. He didn’t get much of a response, although Jan did turn away from him. With a shrug, Ed stood. “I’ll fix your goggles. They’ll be out in the workshop when you’re ready for them.”

Ed had nearly completed the new lens for Jan’s goggles when she emerged from her room, eyes still red. She ran a hand through her hair as she shuffled over to the table Ed was working at and dropped onto the bench opposite him.

“I’m such a failure,” she muttered, glaring down at the table. The trouble with being so brilliant is that everything is easy. Being thus accustomed to success, Jan found it greatly frustrating when faced with a truly challenging problem, because it was one she couldn’t figure out immediately.

“You’re not,” Ed said, reaching across the table to take one of her hands in his own. “You’re one of the most innovative technologists I’ve met. This is just a problem nobody’s tried to solve before. We can work through it, I’m sure.”

“You’re busy with the airship,” Jan said, tugging her hand free and placing both hands in her lap. Eduardo’s reassurances didn’t make her feel any better. It didn’t matter that the problem was hard; it was something she ought to be able to figure out. “I’m going for a walk. Helps me think.”

Before Ed could insist that he could modify the airship and help her, she stood and left. Ed just shrugged and went back to fixing her goggles. She was a smart kid, if a bit stubborn sometimes. She’d figure it out.

Jan didn’t bother to retrieve her sandals from her room; the short-trimmed grass was soft and cool in the spring, and she was headed down to the river anyway. There was a spot, just north of the ford, where a number of smooth, round rocks broke the surface of the river. From the ford, she could leap over to the rocks. It was a game she’d played since she was young, hopping from stone to stone and hoping she didn’t fall into the river. At the river’s edge, she rolled up her pant legs to her knees, so she could wade out into the ford and reach the stones. She spent about half an hour hopping around on the stones before she sat on one, feet dangling into the water. She really must come up with some solution, or they’d never make it to the moons. Though a number of designs passed through her mind, she kept finding irresolvable flaws in them. After a few hours the sun was low in the sky and she was cold. It would be best if she got back home.

She spent all day out at the river for the next two days. Although she was thinking furiously, she came no closer to a solution.

“Jan?” Eduardo asked one evening when Jan came inside, shivering slightly. Since she was spending her time out at the river, Janita hadn’t bothered dressing in the morning, instead wandering off in the short pants, sleeveless shirt, and bare feet she slept in. “I fixed your goggles two days ago.”

Jan nodded and mumbled something indistinct. She’d been refusing to talk to him these past few days.

“Janita, I’m a little worried about you. You’ve barely been eating. Are you sure the…” Ed trailed off as the door to her room slammed shut. He really must work on a way to make doors quieter.

On the fifth day, Jan was out at the river hopping from stone to stone. Maybe if they just brought a lot of air with them on the ship. Sunlight glinting off a fish’s scales as it swam near the surface caught her eye, and she nearly fell into the river. Of course! A fish! She knelt on the rock to watch the fish more closely. A fish found a way to get air out of water. She just needed to find a way to get air out of ether.

When he came in to take a break from upgrading the airship, Ed was surprised to see Jan waiting for him, fully dressed, even with her goggles slightly askew on her face.

“Take me into town,” she said. “I need some supplies.”

Eduardo grinned and patted Janita on the shoulder. He knew she’d figure it out.

“Everything better up there?” Jan called to Ed when he had finished applying the frost welder to the wayward ropes.

“Elysian dreams, Jan,” he said, climbing back down onto the deck. “It’s just a little windier up here than I’d expected. We’re nearly out of the atmosphere. It must be a reaction between air and ether that causes such strong air currents.”

Jan knelt and unbuckled the lid of one of the great chests they brought with them, handing a strange, insectoid mask up to Ed and donning one herself. “About time for the ethernaught masks, right?” she asked. The mask distorted her voice, making it warble strangely. Ed still wasn’t sure why she made them look like weird insects, but he put his on as well.

“I need to head below deck and switch the ship over to etheroflight. Shout if anything goes wrong,” he said before disappearing down a hatch.

Abruptly the airship burst free of the earth’s atmosphere. Janita’s first sensation was a brief light-headedness, as the ethernaught mask extracted from the thin ether barely enough oxygen to sustain her. As the wave of dizziness passed, Jan realised that the ship seemed to be falling out of the sky. She turned to give an alarmed shout below deck, but just then the clanking sounds of gears and pistons rumbled into life, accompanied by a low vibration in the planks beneath her feet. Half a second of this machination was required before the airship righted itself and, very slowly, made its way inexorably towards the moons.

Eduardo ran back onto deck, quickly shedding his hat and coat. “I need your help with the next phase, and you’ll probably want your sandals off,” he said, making a prodigious leap onto a large metal box affixed to one side of the ship. Jan jogged over to the other one, kicking her shoes off on the way. Jan realised that she seemed to weigh much less out here in the ether.

“We need to let out the solar sails. Winds in the ether aren’t strong enough to affect our normal sails,” Ed shouted to her as he opened the box beneath him. So that’s what the new rigging was about, Jan mused. Once released from its constraints, the solar sail – made from a thin, filmy material that Janita didn’t recognise, flowed out over the ropes almost as though it knew what it was doing. Jan figured that they must have been folded very precisely. It seemed they needed help getting into exactly the proper positions, so Ed and Jan had to climb out along the ropes to fasten the edges properly. Jan, with bare hands and feet, became unusually aware that the solar sails had almost a liquid quality to them, shifting and flowing coldly beneath her touch.

Standing on deck again, Jan made note that the wood of the ship was rather colder than usual, and she shifted her weight from foot to foot slightly uncomfortably. She mentally added a fourth entry to her list of reasons to wear more efficient sandals. Or, perhaps, if she had some form of gloves for her feet – such could also allow her to grip objects with her toes, and…

“I think we’re steady for the rest of the trip out to the moons,” Ed said, interrupting her thoughts. “Keep an eye on the sails, though, just in case. I’m heading below decks to check on the engine.”

“Eduardo,” Jan said. “We’re lighter here. I’m a little worried we might fall off the ship.”

She couldn’t be sure, because of the ethernaught mask, but she thought he grinned at her. “I’ll activate the anti-repulsing field magnifier while I’m down there, then. Should keep us nice and snug to the airship. Are you cold? You don’t have a coat. You never wear a coat.” Ed flourished his own long coat, as though emphasising the innumerable attributes such an accoutrement provided. “I’ll see if I can get some warmth up here, too, while I’m at it.” Before Janita could protest, he was below-decks again. Come to think of it, Jan couldn’t remember when Ed had put his coat back on. She made her way to one of the storage chests and sat on it, keeping an eye on both the new sails and their destination. As they forged deeper into the etheric space surrounding the planet, it seemed that a thick fog enveloped them, misty waves obscuring her vision beyond about a metre. They wouldn’t be able to work well if they couldn’t see; she’d have to ask Ed about it.

It didn’t take long before a new humming, the sound of something spinning very quickly, Jan determined, emanated from within the airship. Janita felt heavier, like the ship was trying to draw her into it. That must be the field magnifier. When Ed re-emerged from the inner workings of the ship, he had a few small metal objects in his arms. Although the fog made it hard to tell, Jan thought he was arranging them around the edges of the ship. When he was done, the air began to warm noticeably.

“Ed?” Jan said. “How can you operate those with all this fog?”

“Fog?” Ed sounded perplexed. Suddenly he was standing in front of her. “There’s no fog.” He sounded a little worried, and leaned down to peer at her goggles. When he slid them off her face, her sight abruptly returned, albeit slightly blurred. Her surprised exclamation let him know that those were the source of the problem. “Something in the ether’s messing with your goggles. You can see mostly well without them, right?” When Janita nodded, he continued. “I’ll just have to remember you can’t do any detail work.” He smiled reassuringly at her. “No worries, right?”

“I guess,” Jan said. She didn’t feel entirely convinced. Most of the mechanical work she did required that she be able to see properly.

“Everything’s oiled, kid,” Eduardo said. He only called her “kid” when he was trying to cheer her up. “Why don’t you go get some rest? I think it’s night down on the surface now. I just have a few more things to get ready while we travel.”

“Yeah, okay,” Janita said. Now that it was warmer, she was feeling a little tired. “You’re sure…”

“I’m sure,” Ed said, interjecting as she trailed off. “Sleep. I’ll get you when I need your help again. Or if we’re about to arrive.”

With mumbled acquiescence, Jan picked up her sandals and wandered belowdecks. With her fuzzy vision it took her a couple tries to find the room with a couple hammocks slung from the ceiling, into one of which she crawled to sleep.

“It’s funny, don’t you think, that we don’t remember the names of the technologists who rebuilt the sun.”

“Hmweh?” Jan sat up, blearily rubbing her eyes.

“Do you think they’ll remember us in a hundred years? We’re the first people to ever set foot on the moons.” Eduardo was standing in the doorway. They had arrived.

On deck, Janita saw that their ship had landed on the dusty surface of one of the moons. “Be careful,” Ed said. “I don’t think the lunar dust would be good for your ethernaught mask. And I don’t have any anti-repulsing field magnifiers installed down there, so we’re going to be pretty light. I’m pretty sure we can’t fall off the moon, though. Okay, let’s find out what’s up here.” With that, Ed jumped over the edge, drifting down to land, with the faintest thump, on the surface of the moon. Janita, with a frustrated squeal, was quick to follow.

“Let’s check those mountains,” Jan said, pointing somewhere behind Ed. “I have a good feeling about them.”

“Mountains?” Ed said, turning to see where she indicated. “By Lush’tao, Jan, that’s a small cluster of buildings! Come on, then.”

Running across lunar soil was an unusual experience. With their lower weight, each stride was metres in length, and it felt almost as though they were springing across the terrain. Jan had never been a good runner, but she wasn’t out of breath when they arrived at what, now that she was closer, were clearly blocky structures, not at all the shape or size of a mountain range. “How do you think a little town like this got here?” she asked.

“Clearly someone built it. Let’s hope there’s some indication as to whom.” Eduardo led the way into the midst of the buildings, looking back and forth in a way that seemed very arbitrary to Jan.

“Been a long time,” came a thin, wavering voice from one of the buildings, “since man came here.” Ed and Jan were both startled by the voice, Jan more so because she couldn’t see clearly. The voice was shortly followed by a form, feminine in nature and slightly diffuse in appearance. The form was wrapped in tattered lengths of ethereal-seeming cloth, and her face was obscured by a jarringly solid silver mask. “Over two thousand years.”

Jan leaned into Ed and muttered, a little hard to make out due to her breathing mask, “She doesn’t seem any older than I. And who lives that long?”

“Mask,” Eduardo said, loud enough for the strange woman to hear. “Remnants of the Mythic Age. They’re very rare now. Wonderful craftsmen, though. Why are you up here?”

“Why are you?” the woman responded. “You are not the ones who remade the sun.”

“See? We’ll be remembered,” Janita said.

“We came exploring,” Ed said. “We seek knowledge of the world.”

“You have left your world.”

“It’s the lightning,” Jan said. “And, of course, a sense of exploration and accomplishment. But the lightning is the big thing.”

The woman moved closer, and it became distinctly clearer to Ed that the mask she wore was the only decidedly real thing about her. Everything else seemed faded and translucent. “There is something you must know. It is quite imperative that you properly understand that which I can impart.” She gazed, so it seemed, at Ed and Jan very piercingly, until they both nodded their assent. “I have a tale to tell about Ragnarok. Come inside.”

Upon following her into the building she came from, Ed and Jan were led to sit on stools that looked as though they were formed from the local moondust. The Mask paced before them, as though collecting her thoughts. “I presume you have a basic knowledge of the Mythic Age?” she said eventually, and Ed nodded. “And you know, then, that Ragnarok was a battle between the gods of your world and the entities that lie outside of it?”

“That’s the basic story, yeah,” Jan said.

“Have you noticed that the old gods are dead and your sun was destroyed? If all your champions were slain, how can you think that you won the war?”

Jan’s eyes widened, and Ed said, “You can’t be saying…”

“They’re still out there,” the Mask said with a nod. “War wages still, among the other worlds. I gave this story to the last humans to come here – the people who made a new sun.”

“Then why didn’t they—” Jan started indignantly.

“They did. Let me explain more. These outer beings cannot merely assault a world at a whim. If they could, I am sure we’d all be dead. There is a force in the universe that binds them. Only at times of certain celestial alignments are they able to act freely. Being ingenious enough to craft a mechanical sun, the scientists were also able to create some devices that disrupt the celestial alignments near your world. This disruption comes, mainly, in the form of the lightning you see between the moons.” The Mask stopped pacing, now, and turned to face them.

“Fascinating,” Ed said. “Do you know the nature of these machines?”

Jan stared at him, astounded. “Were you paying attention? Our world is at risk!”

Ed waved a hand dismissively. “Nonsense. The machines have protected us for thousands of years. You never worry about the sun failing, do you? Besides, we haven’t learned what we came for yet. We merely know the lightning is made by machines. I won’t really be happy until I know how they function. And, in the unlikely event that they’re wearing down, we can repair and maintain them. I’m surprised nobody was told there were machines on the moon.”

“That would involve telling the rest of the story, wouldn’t it? And I’m sure not everybody would take it as lightly as you do. I guess we should go investigate them, though.” Jan stood up. “Can you tell us how to get to them?”

“Do you think they’re dangerous?” Jan asked when they stood half a kilometre from the strange lightning generators.

“Probably not. We’ve still a good ten days before they should be active. I’m sorry you’re without your goggles, I could use your help and opinions on these things.”

Despite her vision being blurred, Jan insisted on helping Ed investigate. After a few times of being gently corrected on her perceptions she flushed angrily and stalked off, sitting in the moondust and crossing her arms to stare off at the horizon.

“I’m going to need some time to figure this out,” Ed said nearly an hour later. “But I’ve taken rather copious notes, and I think I can do most of the work at home. Shall we return to Alzhrin?”

Once they were back on the surface and Jan’s goggles worked again, she eagerly dove into all Ed’s notes on the lightning generators. A week later, Jan felt she had it figured out.

“The lady on the moon said that the point was to disrupt some kind of celestial convergence, right? So I think the lightning is made as a form of temporary starlight. It breaks up the patterns of the sky so that the right alignments are never possible.” Ed nodded at her theory, and prompted her to explain the technical aspects of the machines. She did so, but with a bit less enthusiasm. “I don’t think they need any repair, though.”

“They don’t,” Ed said. “They seem as good as they day they were made. Sleep well tonight, Jan. We’re going out in space again tomorrow.”

“What for?” Janita asked.

Ed grinned at her. He was clearly excited. “The Mask said there were other worlds out there.”