The Last Days of Atlantis, Island Outpost of the Empire of the Gods

Never mind that Alessia was beautiful, Kiel reminded himself. Kiel had a girlfriend back at home, and besides, Alessia was one of the Zadúmchovs, a famous, prissy, well-to-do family back home, a family that was tight with the pseudo-emperor Marankeil (a thoroughly nasty individual). Since he was a boy, Kiel had hated the Zadúmchovs, in particular the pompous General Zadúmchov, Alessia’s grandfather. Of course, for some strange reason no one could figure out, Alessia wasn’t snotty, spoiled, and irritating. She didn’t whine like a baby when she didn’t get her way, as everyone had expected her to do once upon a time. In fact, she had always been rather strangely quiet since the crew first met, and it had taken the entire crew a few hundred years to figure out that she wasn’t also a Supertwit as well as being a Superbabe.

Kiel sometimes still wondered about her history, mostly because she had never provided any details about herself to anybody. She was supposed to be half some kind of alien. Kiel thought she looked pretty normal, though. (Incidentally, only Hinev and Marankeil knew that Alessia was the last half-Enorian in the entire universe, while Kiel, everyone on the Discovery, and even Alessia herself, never had an inkling of it. But that, and the story of who the Enorians were, is an even longer story, and deals with matters that reach back before the Big Bang of the modern universe.)

What matters at present is that upon approaching the captain, Alessia could see that Kiel was in a pensive mood and decided to investigate. After a minute of silence passed between them (Alessia NEVER initiated small talk), Kiel started spouting some general philosophy, forcing Alessia to engage in a conversation. Then they talked for near on an hour about what was going on aboard ship, and about Kiel's concerns for the primitive human peoples they had met on the planet below, and about how weak and silly the primitives were. Land sakes, they hadn’t even invented the wheel yet!

And finally, at some length, Kiel suddenly alighted upon the answer to his earlier question.

"I’ve got it!" he thought, his face lighting up. "Eureka!" hadn’t been invented yet, either.

"What is it?" Alessia asked, infected by curiosity. Kiel was ordinarily extremely self-possessed, and a fine leader. But every man had his off-kilter moments. This was one of those, she surmised. Kiel was almost acting... silly.

"I figured out what we’re going to do next."

"And?" Alessia returned, waiting.

Kiel laughed. "We’ll land Discovery in the middle of the Atlantic ridge, on that uninhabited volcanic continent."

"The one Onracey, Filaria, and Wen-eil like so much with all the hot springs, geysers, and tropical birds?" Alessia asked, open-mouthed.

"The very one." Kiel responded brightly.

"But Kiel," Alessia protested, not liking this at all. And though she usually butted out of other people’s affairs, right now she adopted an uncharacteristic "I told-you-so" look before the fact (This was before people who are always right but are never listened to were called "Cassandra"). "It won’t be long before that particular little continent sinks into the sea. The glacial ice caps are receding, and it will be buried by the flood waters, if the volcanoes don’t reshape it first." She really knew how to twist the word "if" to her advantage in an argument.

"Exactly." Kiel agreed, robbing the wind from her sails. He was supposed to protest, not agree.

"Huh?"