Captured

After Doomsday.

Donnan was a prisoner twice before but both of those times were:

"...on a green and peopled Earth." (7, p. 57)

- whereas here, on Mayast II:

the sky resembles "...incandescent brass" (ibid.);

the sun is impossible to look at;

mirages waver on the horizon;

the roaring furnace wind makes branches toss and snap;

the natives resemble giant, scaled, glittering, four-eyed, four-legged, tentacular-armed spiders;

a glittering kite-shaped animal glides above;

Donnan is about to be interrogated by a Kandemirian.

He is at the bottom of his trajectory. Earth has been destroyed. He and his men have fought. Ten are dead. Forty are captured. There is nowhere left to go but up.

At this time of the evening, I reread Stieg Larsson. Sigrid Holmen in the Europa is from Sweden, my favourite other country because of Larsson.