“A new Red Spot,” Teacher sang out, “fruit of skyfall!”
In an instant of panic-clear revelation Ensign realized what must have happened. There had been two skyfalls last night, the one to the west and one to the north, just across the boundary in this zone and perhaps a little after the first. The convection currents of the zone had shielded them from the shock wave of the northern strike and all day they had been blindly flying into its jaws, seeking safety.
Ensign stared, fascinated and frozen, into the maw of Death. Then Teacher’s voice broke the spell. “Back into the clouds! This thing swirls to the east. Climb and fly east. Let it carry us around to the other side!”
Ensign winged over and dived back into the whiteness. A dark shape loomed in front of him, almost close enough to touch. He swooped below to avoid a collision. “Fly east!” he shouted as he passed.
It became a nightmare. The pod crabbed into the following wind, letting it bear them around the circle but always trying to fight their way to the outside, away from the deadly center and the ever-increasing winds. Clouds swirled around them, stinging with needle-sharp ice crystals and bitter with the taste of foul compounds sucked up from the depths. They dived to gain speed and used the speed to move away from the center. Then they climbed by flapping since expanding their gas cells gave them a bigger cross section and made them more vulnerable to the ravening winds. Usually they gained nothing to the outside, only holding their own and sometimes losing precious distance. Sometimes they were able to get a few wing spans farther out. Over and over again they repeated the cycle and always the remorseless winds pushed them inwards.
Teacher led them on, seeming to pause by each one in turn, murmuring encouragement to keep the formation together in the gloom. And always east, turning east.
“Shouldn’t we try to climb into clearer air?” Ensign asked when Teacher came near.
“It won’t work,” came the strained reply, “If we climb our velocity vector won’t be outward and we’ll be sucked into the center. We can fly out or we can fly up but we don’t have the strength to do both.” Then he flapped away in the gloom to encourage someone else.
On and on they pushed into the murk, driven by tailwinds and their own flying. Ensign knew they must be making tremendous speed but the roiling clouds gave them no landmarks save the huge turning funnel on their lee. Sometimes he could hear Teacher sounding the clouds before them but his damaged hearing could make little of the returns. Occasionally he would catch a glimpse of another pod member, or hear Simon wheezing along behind him, but most of the time he struggled on alone.
Day may have turned into night and night back into day. In the clouds and darkness it was impossible to tell. All Ensign knew was that the flight seemed eternal.
“Ensign, we are near!” Teacher loomed up out of the dark behind him.
“Near?”
“The band edge! This spot must be turning at a furious rate. We’ve reached the edge much sooner than I expected. If the winds are this high, the turbulence will be much worse.”
Ensign felt he had no strength left at all. “What about sharks in these clouds?”
Teacher managed a chuckle. “Sharks are too smart to be caught in something like this!”
Ensign felt the first tentative cross-winds just as Teacher cried out. A gust nearly tipped him on his side as he heard Teacher shout hoarsely, “Turn right! Dive if you must. Vortex cell…”
As Ensign dropped into a descending turn he heard Teacher moan in pain, then a startled grunt from Simon. The roiled clouds thickened until he could not even see his wingtips. Teacher moaned again, nearby. Ensign saw a dim shape off to the right and was about to call out to Teacher when he recognized Melody, flying strongly. Then to the left and above he saw a struggling form. As Teacher approached, Ensign saw the broken wing which had bent double, the wingtip neatly slicing into vital gas cells. Remoras formed a cloud around him as they abandoned their dying host.
Frantically he gathered Teacher’s remoras to him, trying to save as many as possible. The remoras moved uncertainly, confused by the winds. Ensign saw one sucked away by the storm before it could even spread its wings.
Teacher focused on Ensign and for the first time seemed to realize who was with him. He tightened his skin as if to say something. Then he was whipped away, gone in the howling orange murk.
Survival instinct took over. Ensign climbed and climbed against the winds, laboring under the added load of the remoras.
Somehow, sometime, the awful winds began to steady and die. Eventually he heard the pod call ahead and to his left. Almost automatically he turned toward the sound and struggled out to meet the others.
He was the last to make it. Everyone else had formed a loose box to call in all directions. Everyone but Teacher.
“We were afraid we had lost you,” Melody said as he slid into the formation. Her voice sounded unreal, lacking in the overtones in his damaged timpani. “Teacher?”
Ensign only bobbed negation.
Numbly they began distributing Teacher’s remoras among the other pod members. That done they milled aimlessly for a while. Then, because someone had to do it, Ensign moved to the front and signaled them into flying formation.
Once more they flew north. Lesser gusts flung them farther from the center of the Red Spot and buffeted them repeatedly. Once more they sang the Mourning Song, now thin and ragged in their fatigue and exhaustion.
At last they emerged from the clouds and into still air. It was evening, Ensign noted. They had been caught in that maelstrom for—how long?—one day? Two days? Three? Battered and exhausted, what was left of the Bach Choir tried to rest.
“Look!” Melody said, tilting skyward. There, hanging above them, one below the other, were three malevolently glowing sparks. Already the first two were surrounded by the bright haze that meant they were ready to fall.
“One after the other,” Ensign said dully. “One after the other.”
Before dawn one of the glowing sparks disappeared below the horizon. Ensign decided to turn farther north and was about to call out when the whole southwestern horizon lit up. A second later Io blazed bright enough to cast shadows on the cloud tops below. Instinctively the pod huddled together in a defensive box, as if it were a shark and not some force of nature.
As the eerie light died Simon expanded and floated up, trying to get above the haze to get a better look. Ensign didn’t want a better look. He’d seen all of those things he ever wanted to see and then some. Ensign braced for the brutal shock wave but it never came.
To take his mind off what was overhead Ensign began to sort through his load of remoras, both his and the ones that had been Teacher’s.
It was an odd experience. Some of the remoras had obviously been with Teacher for many seasons. They still felt of his body and moved uneasily on their new host. Feeling them against his skin was as if Teacher remained with him and he was invading his teacher’s most personal feelings.
The remoras’ memories reflected their former host. Most of them had very large memories, crammed with songs. There were some with songs he recognized, some with parts of songs, some with student exercises, and a few with what must have been Teacher’s own works in progress.
He never composed much, Ensign thought sadly. Instead he taught. Somehow that made him feel even more lost.
As he worked his way through the remoras, one wiggled ahead of the others and clamped itself to an earmouth. “Ensign.”
Teacher’s voice! “If you are listening to this it is because something has happened to me.” Even through the buzzing voice of the remora Teacher’s personality shone out. It was as if Teacher hovered protectively above and behind him.