Saturn’s ammonia clouds stretch into an infinite horizon, the Sun casting long shadows across the platform’s deck. Lucky Cricket rests silhouetted against the sky while shimmering aerostat lights hang suspended in the distance, waiting. 

Sarah pushes the Pintail’s flight stick forward and the aquamarine sky rolls away. Below, the cloud deck is an impossible swirl of cinnamon and gold with pockets of flickering lightning. Thunder rumbles in bursts, its audio out of sync with the light show. Through the cockpit windows great banded rings fade into the horizon and the scale of it is almost too much to take in at once. Motion catches her eye as a silver glimmer carves a vapor trail across the sky. It changes course, the vapor trail bending, then corkscrews a white spiral before matching her altitude. Saturn’s moons are an audience of bright stars behind it.

“Well, now you’re just showing off,” Sarah says to her helmet mic.