Béla was on the bridge, again, mostly searching for a distraction from the problems in her life that she was having trouble solving right now. She was surprised at how calm she felt after spending an hour crying into Elaine’s shoulders. She smiled as she thought about how much Elaine loved her. Even though her blond sister had been aroused and frustrated, she hadn’t forced her needs onto Béla despite the fact that they often made love several times a day.

After arriving on the bridge and volunteering for an extra watch, Béla soon became fascinated by the events occurring around her and was glad she’d volunteered. She held on to the handrail at her station while the great ship shuddered and heaved as it slowed. They were making minor course corrections almost constantly as they aimed at the North Pole entrance of their new home.
Passing from outer space to inner space, the shiny surface of the metal moon vanished as the great ship moved into the pitch-black maw of the artificial moon’s entrance. As the entrance spiraled closed behind them, the distant stars disappeared from the rear view screen and they were surrounded by utter blackness. Nothing happened for several minutes.

“Are we still moving?” Béla asked nervously. “What if we hit something?”

Her father and the several of the Bridge crew simply smiled at her.

‘Peace, Child,’ she heard in her head.

Béla forced herself to stand still, staring intently at the forward view screen covering the front of the bridge, then blinked in surprise as a long crack suddenly appeared in the blackness. The multicolored light that shone through the crack soon became a landscape as the interior entrance widened.

The great ship shook slightly as wind and vapor visibly rushed into the huge chamber. After a few more minutes, the ship began moving forward again. As they exited the enormous chamber, bright sunlight began to fill the side and rear view screens. As the ship moved further into the interior of the artificial moon, the rear view screen began to show the outline of a giant glowing crystal off to one side, just next to their entrance. Béla’s father explained to her that the crystal was collecting sunlight, then amplifying it using radiation from Jupiter, itself, and diffusing it across the landscape.

“Jupiter radiates?” Béla asked, surprised.

“Of course it does, Child,” Sibilius told her. “There are stars smaller tha Jupiter and they radiate quite a lot. Jupiter simply hasn’t been compressed enough to ignite, or it would be a star, too.”

Béla had never seen anything so beautiful as the view they had of the landscape surrounding the great ship. The viewscreens were a panorama of greens, browns and whites in every direction – forward, up, down and sideways! The rear viewscreen displayed a very bright white, overloaded by the glare of the giant solar crystal lighting up and heating the interior of this magical place. There was a giant crystal embedded into the surface at the ‘South’ pole, too, but because of the inclination of the tiny moon, the South Pole was still on the ‘night side’, so the Southern crystal remained unlit.

“What’s all the white stuff?” Béla wanted to know, gazing raptly at a screen.

“Some of it is clouds, Child, but most of the white you see is snow,” her father said. “It’s been winter here for the last five months. We had to time our journey to arrive in the early spring, so that we can plant the grain we’re carrying.”

“It’s like the Garden of Eden,” she said, staring at the viewscreen in awe. “This is like a new Eden.”

“Then that’s what it is, Child,” her father told her, “We’ll call it New Eden.”

Passengers and crew, he mentally broadcast to the entire ship, I welcome you to our home – New Eden!

After another twenty minutes of travel, the great ship arrived at the gravitational center of the hollow moon and ceased its forward motion.