“Go pick a pair of legs with your wings” said the flying store owner. Pasne was on treads, but interplanetary modularization standards, meant he could use the local body parts.
“Don’t get anything too expensive, the shlute dwellers can be a bit grabby.” There were downsides to modulrazation standards of course, but Brunji managed to help Pasne pick something that fit his upper physique and yet was relatively inconspicious: carbon black legs and titanium-dioxide-white wings. Pasne was a little concerned that his green bat ears might clash, but Brunji reassured him that acoustical properties were more important than looks on Venus.
Pasne installed the local flight and echo-location package from the Wi-Fi, and they had a few practice flights in the backyard of the store to integrate them into his neural nets. Brunji had all Pasne’s gaskets triple checked in a compression chamber before they dived into the shlute to see Brunji’s family’s aerogel factory.
***
It was night, Pasne’s wings were modeled on a bat, they felt like an extra pair of arms, with elongated fingers that controlled the fabric. He soared with Brunji above the shlute at first, testing his echolocation and infravision. His infravision let him see the terrain vaguely, while the chirping echolocation would momentarily put nearer objects in sharper focus.
“What are those big objects rising out of the valley?” Pasne flashed, but she didn’t see from where she was flying, so he got up his courage and repeated in chirp.
“Those are payloaded balloons begining their trip to offworld customers. We can ride one to the clouds later.” she chirped back. “There is the factory” she pointed to a bright spot in the infrared, they dived into the shlute.
It tried to get in every nick and joint, Pasne could sense it’s slightly increased thickness, but more noticeable was how the dust which had collected in some of his joints promptly dissolved freeing up his motion. As they got nearer, it became clear that it was from the factory that the balloons were rising.
They swooped down and landed on one of the factory building roofs. Some workers looked up, in the monochrome echolocation they looked remarkably like Brunji, but of course they were her sisters. He understood what Brunji meant, that color didn’t matter, when you saw with echolocation.
“Come inside now.” Brunji called from a door on the roof. “The facility tour you’ve been waiting for.”