"These mysterious disappearances are linked to any kind of transportation. Government officials worldwide are urging citizens not to travel unless it is absolutely necessary, until an understanding of the disappearances can be figured out. We have here two experts to explain why--"

"Oh cut that thing off, would you?" Harry said, turning the news program off.

"Harry, this is important. We might have to cancel our eclipse expedition." Jenn said.

"What? No! Of course not! They're saying these disappearances are one in a hundred thousand. I've been preparing for this expedition to Texas for a YEAR now," Harry said, throwing his hands up.

"One in a hundred thousand is a hell of a risk. No one knows what the cause of these disappearances are, no one knows how many go unreported because they take place in cars. Some statisticians are saying it's increasing too," Jenn said, flinching slightly.

"Look. I know there's a risk," Harry said, softening his tone and relaxing his posture, "But there are some things in life that are worth the risk!"

"Like a solar eclipse?" Jenn said.

"Jenn, my 2017 expedition to the mountains got completely ruined by clouds. YOU might have gotten your fill of eclipses for a lifetime, but I haven't," Harry said, turning away and looking down. He turned again to face Jenn. "Besides, we'll be taking the plane--only fifty out of the three hundred thousand disappearances have happened by plane. Most disappearances are by car, boat, and train."

"Only because there's fewer plane flights."

"And less overall travel time!" Harry said. He sighed and looked down. "I'm going, whether you are or not."

Jenn looked down too. She put her head in her hands, held it there, and brushed her hands over her head and back along her hair. "I'd miss you too much if you were gone forever."

Harry looked up and the corner of his mouth creeped up.

-------

"Jenn, wake up!"

Jenn gasped and darted her head up, which had been resting on Harry's shoulder. The subtle pitter-patter of rain and echoes of thunder augmented the low rumble of the plane's jet engines. "whaa..." Jenn said, stretching her arms as much as she could in the small plane cabin, struggling to focus her eyes.

"We're almost landing," Harry said. Jenn looked up at him, and saw that he was visibly anxious.

"Oh don't worry honey," Jenn said, "we're safe once we're down." She put her head back on Harry's shoulder.

After just a moment a loud CRACK jolted her awake again. The other ten passengers gasped. Kent, who had been in the rearmost seat, looked out and shouted, "The engine's on fire! What the hell! The engine's on fire!"

-----------

"Hey Vinnie, hand me the uh, the 32mm," Harry said, eye behind the telrad unit finder, swiveling his Dobsonian to meet a dim faint fuzzy visible in the edge of his vision.

"Uh sure," Vinnie said, fiddling with the eyepiece case locks. When he found the eyepiece, he handed it to Harry, and fished out a barlow lens for himself.

"What are you using the 32 for?" Jenn asked.

"See that faint fuzzy up out of the band of the milky way? It's too big for the 25," Harry said, tweaking the telescope's alignment. "I'll be damned." Harry looked back up at the faint fuzzy in the sky, then back at the eyepiece.

"What is it?" Jenn asked.

"It's not a DSO. It's got an circular limb! It's one of the black disks, but it's covered in lights? It looks like, well it looks like city lights!" Harry said, standing up.

Jenn took a brief look. "Vinnie, your eyes are better than ours. Look at this," she said.

"What is it?" Vinnie said, stumbling over a rock in the dark.

"It's one of the black disks," Harry said, pointing his green laser pointer at it.

"Woah! Looks like a star cluster. Wait. That's not a star cluster!" Vinnie said.

"Harry says it looks like city lights," Jenn said, "and it does look like that, doesn't it?"

"Harry, do you mind if I try the 10? I think I can just barely see some linear features," Vinnie said. Harry nodded, and Vinnie could, just barely in the red light, see. Vinnie went back over to the eyepiece box and came back with a 10mm eyepiece.

"It really does look like pictures of city lights from space. I see linear lighting features which look like roads, or well-lit borders maybe. The lights are all clustered as if they were cities."

"Hmm, we can't draw conclusions so soon," Harry said. "Whatever it is, it's truly remarkable, but we don't know if it's biological or artificial. It might be bioluminescence, and the linear features are river oases on this weird world."

"If it IS artificial, I don't think it's native to this planetary system," Jenn said.

"Why not?" Vinnie asked.

"Think about it. Why would creatures which evolved in darkness need light, at least light that bright?" Jenn said.

"Maybe we could try to contact them, whoever they are. The plane's radio still works, if we could somehow fashion it into a directional antenna..." Harry trailed off.

Harry, Jen, and Vinnie turned to hear some rustling. Bright flashlights were turned to them.

"Aw come on guys! Give us some warning before you shine those things into our eyes!" Harry shouted.

"Sorry!" Kent said, and he tilted the flashlight down. "so sorry!"

"We found something which looks a lot like city lights," Vinnie said.

"Come on guys, is astronomy really the most important thing right now?" Leroy said. Harry and Vinnie audibly gasped.

"We need to know everything about our current situation that we can. It's been forty eight hours since we landed and still no day," Jenn said.

"So?" Leroy said.

"For all we know day WILL arrive, and it'll get very hot. We'll need to know so we can find shelter somehow," Jenn said.

"Or maybe it really is dark forever, and that's what it looks like right now, unless we're in an unusually long eclipse somehow," Harry said.

"Either way we need to figure out the situation astronomically. This clearly isn't a place anything like the Earth astronomically speaking," Jenn said.

Vinnie looked down and said under his breath, "And we're not exactly much help otherwise."

"What did y'all find on your hike?" Harry asked.

"We found lots of stuff which looks like vegetables. And we found some dry leaf-bark-things which might burn well if we need to start a fire. We saw lots of glowing bugs, even more dark bugs, and something which looked like a fish with legs. Didn't try to capture any of it," Kent said.

"Hmm... you know, that's something strange," Jenn said.

"What?" Kent said.

"With all the bugs flitting around, none of them are attacking us," Jenn said.

"Hmm... I hadn't noticed. Maybe we're poisonous to them?" Harry said.

"I hope not," Kent said, "because I feel like that'd imply they'd be poisonous to us."

"Maybe it's just a lack of any organisms to bite," Vinnie said, "if it's just all bugs and little fish, they may have no reason to go after large warm meatbags like us."

"Good point," Kent said.

"I guess the only way to see if we can get nutrition out of these plants is to try them," Leroy said. Everyone fell silent.

-------------------------------------------------------------

"Unless someone can figure out how to make the airplane generator run off fruit juice, we're going to lose power forever real soon. And then it really WILL be dark," The pilot said.

"Fire's easy enough, anyway," Kent said.

"Yes, that's true," Leroy said. "Wait a minute, pilot, what did you say?"

"I said it really WILL be--"

"No, before that."

"fruit... juice?" She said.

"We could make and distill alcohol! Would the generator run off that?"

"I guess it's worth a shot, once we run out of kerosene."