Free The Magister (Earthkeep) by Sally Miller Gearhart

asks that you call her back at 1400 hours."  A pause.  "That will be in forty  minutes."
    Jass muttered an obscenity.  "Hang on one minute, Tung-Po."  He looked around the phaeton, his eyes halting at Zude's.  "Magister, I'd flat-out forgotten.  I'm sorry."
    "Nonsense, doctor.  You must speak with Magister Win." 
    Zude scanned the devastated faces of the children.  Ria looked even more disappointed than the little ones.  "And your conversation could be a long one." 
    "See here," Jass said, "I'll go make the call and the four of you can continue the expedition with Maizie.  She's top of the line as a pilot.  And a great tour guide, too."
    Zude read the look on Ria's face and the renewed hope in the eyes of the children. 
    "Good!  We can do that.  We'll miss you, doctor," she said to Jass, "but I have no doubt that Lieutenant Commander Maiz can carry on.  Right, Commander?"
    Maiz was quick to respond. 
    "No problem, Magister.  I'd be honored to be your pilot." 
    Regina and Enrique whooped with joy. 
    "That settles it."  Jass opened the comchannel.  "Delay launch fill and get me out of here, Tiny." 
    Within seconds Jasper Egarber had thrown them all a kiss and disappeared, the phaeton's hatch had been resealed, and the launch bay had begun its transformation from air into ocean.
    Nicola Maiz, her high white hair occasionally bouncing, spoke smartly into the comchannel with Tiny Nauru.  Zude followed most of the technical language, growing inwardly more and more content with their new pilot's obvious efficiency and comfort in the command chair.
    "The Commander is reviewing the mission orders," she told the others, "just to be absolutely sure she understands all we've planned.  And now she's officially laying in our course."
    "I could handle the holocorders," said Ria speculatively.  She was examining the equipment Jass had left behind.  "If I knew the kind of shots he wanted of the destroyer."
    "Do it," Zude said.  "Use your own judgment and fulfill your old dreams of being a holojournalist."
    Ria grinned.  "Then help me, Zude," she said, fumbling with clips on a microcorder.  "He had his cartridges, ah, there, in the subvention belt." 
    Minutes later Ria was rigged like a media correspondent, with small cameras, flat and laser, each with a different lens,  stuck to her jacket, light sensors banded to her head, and audio inputs secured to her jaws.  "I'm ready!" she declared.
    "We're all ready," said Nicola Maiz.  "Launch bay is filled.  We are cleared for departure. On my say, Mariner Tiny." 
    She scanned the phaeton's controls.
    "Good wind at your back, sailors!"  "Bon voyage!"  Shouts from the control room.
    "Now!" said Lieutenant Commander Nicola Maiz.
    It seemed hours before the bay ports were adequately spread apart, days before the saucer crested at its opening, and an eternity before the full diameter of the vessel was able to clear the ejection canal and ease itself into the great South Pacific.  They were on their way.
    Vastness immediately drew them all into a deep silence, punctuated only by the soft beeps of Maiz's dampened sensors and her lowering of the phaeton's cabin illumination.  Now her passengers could see the Seadrome behind them, its diminishing lights glistening eerily in their wake.  Sojourner spun into the blackness like a brave ember banished from its hearth.
    "Wow," breathed Ria, finally, as they released their stasis fields. 
    Lieutenant Commander Maiz smoothly shifted the phaeton's direction 90º to the right.  Ria, who had been riding sideways, now found herself moving forward.  They swept into the open ocean, losing more and more of the dim surface illumination as they gradually dropped.
    "Commander!"  Zude was sitting upright.  "What are those noises!  There's no animal. . ."
    "Interesting, Ma'am, isn't it?  You expect to have the great silence of the deeps.  But it's constantly sounding off."  Maiz glanced at the bathometer.  "Particularly at