Laurie's Story Idea (Inland Sea)

Another definite plus was the plentiful warm evenings when a fire could be built and people could gather around it for companionship instead of warmth. No one had to bundle up and huddle together to enjoy the winter evenings here on the Disputed Plateau.

The scenery, of course, was the best part of the campsite. From their long, narrow, rocky table of land the travelers could see far back over the territory they had traversed, on a clear day as far as the snow caps of a smaller range of mountains they had, luckily, been able to skirt completely by going around to the south.

Yale, sitting back from the ring of people around the campfire, had been quietly watching the group, listening to their wide ranging conversation and feeling utterly content to be an observer. His family had grown and they were happy, and he, in turn, was very happy to know it. It had become a favorite past time of his to occasionally sit apart and observe the changes which had come about not only for Devon and Uly, but for John and True Danziger as well. They were all his family now, and he was enjoying watching them grow together.

This was especially so for Devon, whom he had known for so much longer than the others, whom he had seen through the ups and downs of her life with a closeness that was paternal on his part. Throughout the past months it almost seemed as if the little girl he had helped to raise was back; that the cold, hard, single-mindedly driven woman she had become since the birth of her son had stepped back and let the true Devon back into the light. This was the Devon only he had ever known.

Yale was quite pleased to see her again.

Her voice caught his attention and he glanced toward the campfire.

"We all knew the time would come," she was saying in answer to someone's question. "We've been incredibly lucky that we haven't had to worry about replenishing our water supply before now. We shouldn't wait too long - you all remember what happened the last time we did."

"Well, I don't see what's wrong with waiting until after the next snowfall or rain," Morgan Martin put in. "We're still using the water from the last ice storm, there's plenty left. We might not have to go wandering around the foothills if we get another snowfall."

"Morgan, it's coming on to spring," John Danziger answered from his seat next to Devon. "Who knows if we'll have another blizzard or ice storm? This area isn't near desert for nothing. It's this way because water is scarce in spring and summer. Nah, Adair's right. We'll need two search parties to go in - let's say three days."

There were nods and grunted assents around the fire, but Morgan didn't look too happy about it, the lone dissenter as always.

Devon was pleased with the response to John's announcement. Already, people were volunteering to go. They always came through for the good of the group and it made her feel good. Luck had given her a good group of people with whom to be stranded.

She turned to John and tapped his arm with the back of her hand. "Danziger," she said in a conversational manner, "how many times do I have to tell you? I have a first name. It's Devon. Remember?"

Danziger feigned exasperation. "All right, all right."
He glanced at Devon. "It's just a habit," he told her. "It'll pass with time. Besides when the colonists get here, they're going to wonder why everything on the planet is named a variation of Adair and when they hear me calling you Adair, they'll know."

"Well, let them wonder," she told him, "and not everything on the planet is named a variation of Adair."

"Oh, right. Forgive me. I forgot about morganite."

"Morganite isn't the only thing! Where we're at now is the Disputed Plateau."

"Which is actually table land, not a plateau, in the West Adairic Range - the Middle Adairic Range being that one," he pointed over the land they'd crossed before winter, "which is just about to disappear to sight. Let's see, there are the Big, the Little, and the South Adairian rivers, Adair Falls, the High and Low Adair Snowpacks, Adair Avalanche pass, countless Adairan chasms, culverts, forests, sand dunes, rock piles, rock falls..."

"There are no such places, and you know it, Danziger!"

"Aha! You said it yourself. I'm Danziger. You're Adair. The end."

"Well, it isn't as if I forced everyone to choose Adair as a name for the few things that bear it. We always voted. Everyone is represented by landmarks somewhere."

"I'm not denying that, Adair. I'm just saying when the colonists get here, I want to be able to say, Adair? That's her. She made us do it."

Taking their cue, several of the others around the campfire did just as he said.
"Adair? That's her. She made us do it!" a chorus of voices repeated, followed by laughter, including Devon's.
"Works for me!"
"We can blame everything on her!"
"Good idea, Danz."
The favorable comments filled the air for a few minutes.

Yale laughed lightly, too, and raised his eyes in time to see the snowcaps of the "Middle Adairics", which were actually named the South Pass Range, fade into darkness. All of the lowlands were in darkness now, and the Disputed Plateau would be next. For now they were still in twilight, and sweeping his eyes around the campsite, he saw most of the tents were glowing from within as lanterns and lumalights were being turned on. The camp would soon start getting ready to close down for the night, but, as usual, the group around the campfire was determined to stay and talk a while longer.

He wondered if he should take the children inside and get them ready for bed, but they both looked happy to be exactly where they were, and since it was a daring trick played on their parents by the youngsters that had gotten the ball rolling for them, he decided to let them sit up with their parents and enjoy having a family. He would wait until John and Devon decided to turn in before he volunteered to help carry them to the tents.

For the time being he would settle back and listen to the others as they began a discussion of who was better at skipping rocks on water...

Well, perhaps he would take a short nap instead.

(Richard)

Trundling along in the dunerail, Danziger and Mazatl, bundled against the chill wind, didn't try to keep one another entertained in any way. It was too cold to talk. Instead, when he spotted a likely area to investigate, Mazatl just tapped the back of his hand against the other man's arm and pointed. Danziger would swing the vehicle in the indicated direction and they'd look around for signs of running water.

The second team, Alonzo and Baines going north, was looking for water for immediate use, and most likely would find plenty of it, but once the camp was struck and the group went on their way to New Pacifica for the final southbound leg of their journey, any water to the north would be of no use to them.
The plan for Danziger and Mazatl, once it was hammered out through long arguments and objections, was to drive south for a week and to mark likely places where they might find water when the group started traveling again.

All indications were the last push for New Pacifica would be soon. Even so, the day the two teams left camp had dawned clear but bitterly cold, with a northwesterly wind that blew constantly day and night for the entire three days Team One had been on the move. The good news was the sun was out and it was warm, and the other team had found water in the form of ice - a lake full of it - on the second day.
The winds hadn't brought a storm into the area, just the cold air that blanketed the terrain day and night, and knowing it could be worse, the duo huddled in the rail and were thankful for the lack of precipitation.
The foothills of the coastal mountain range, either yet to be named, were thick with blue conifers and white bark trees that spread outward instead of upward, and in warm weather shaded the ground below them so completely that undergrowth was kept to a minimum. The ground beneath the dunerail's tires was a soft carpet of fallen leaves and cones, both slowly turning back into the soil from which they'd grown.
In the open areas between wooded expanses, Danziger and Mazatl found an occasional stream freezing over in the chill air and what they thought would be berry bushes growing in abundance in the banks of the streams no matter how small or narrow the streams were.

It seemed water would be the least of their worries as they traveled this season. Mountain snow melt should keep them supplied with water all along the trail they were planning to follow, and they were hoping to find a pass to the coast before spring ended.
On the fifth day Danziger awoke to find he and Mazatl had slept past dawn and the sun was already well above the eastern horizon. The reason was immediately evident.
During the night the stalled weather system had moved out of the area and the temperature had begun to rise. By dawn the biting chill was gone from the air and the wind had changed to a light breeze.

Danziger awoke to near silence, the only sounds being the crackle of the fire, and Mazatl's breathing- he sat propped against a back pack, supposedly keeping watch. Danziger crawled out of his sleeping bag and gave the other man's shoulder a shake.

He stirred and came awake. "Okay, okay. I fell asleep. Like you never have."

"Isn't the point. Where's breakfast?"

"It's your turn to cook. I made tea and passed out the jerky yesterday. Remember?"

"Any of the whistling bird from last night left?" Danziger asked hopefully.

"Nope. It's back to rations," Chris said.

"Well, since you're sleeping on the food, you cook again and I'll check in with the main camp." Danziger got to his feet and stretched his arms and back.
The sun, low in the eastern sky, was already feeling warm on his face. He looked around, searching for his gear unit while Mazatl opened the backpack and withdrew a packet of dried fruit and a handful of Bess Martin's ration bars.

The fresh meat from the "whistler" birds, flightless birds they had accidentally frightened from the shelter of a densely grown thicket, had been filling, and it tasted good.
Pity there is none of the meat left, Mazatl thought as he opened the dried fruit and counted out two ration bars apiece. He listened as Danziger talked to the main camp.

Obviously Devon had been waiting impatiently for this communication, judging, anyway, from the number of times Danziger repeated, "We just overslept, that's all," before the conversation turned to their itinerary for the day.

Mazatl, munched his ration bar, a sweeter, less chewy, but all G889 version of spirolina. It, too, tasted like cardboard. He took the water from the fire and poured it over two cups of pseudo tea leaves.
Ah, breakfast.

"Man!" Danziger said suddenly, flicking off his headset and sitting down on the dunerail's rear tire. "You'd think I was out of touch for three days instead of an hour. Those two women can make the littlest thing seem as if the sun isn't going to shine tomorrow because I did something wrong today! Be right back."
He got up and stalked away.

Shutting off their headsets, Devon and Julia, in the big tent, watched as Yale and Morgan made changes to their map and marked the position of the scouts a little more precisely than it had been marked before.
The rest of the group was trickling in slowly to have breakfast. Belatedly, it occurred to Devon that she had been a little too harsh on John. It seemed several of the group here at base camp had overslept, too.
Well. It was something she'd be able to put right later. Next week, in fact, if things kept going as smoothly as they had up to this point.

"Next week can't get here too soon for me," Morgan muttered as he made the map changes Yale was describing to him.
"What?!" Devon said, startled, wondering if she'd been thinking aloud.

Morgan didn't look up from his task. "Next week," he answered. "That whistler bird sounds good. It'll be a welcome break from dried fruit and dried meat. I hope they bring enough back for a couple of weeks!"
Julia got up from her chair, preparing to join a yawning Alonzo for something to eat. "If this warm up during the night means spring has started, we might be on the road in two weeks."


(e2fanbev aka Beverly)

Regaining her composure, Devon left the map table, too. She had eaten breakfast with Yale earlier, after deciding to let Uly and True sleep in this morning. Now, still feeling a little guilt over her annoyance with Danziger, she thought she'd better wake the kids and get them ready for the day.

She left the big tent and walked across the sheltered center area linking all of the tents being used by the group.

Yale had done more research on cold weather survival than he had the previous year. Though the winter here, so close to the western coast, was much milder than the first winter they had endured, there was no handy biodome or cavern system nearby where the Edenites could have spent the season, so they had to rely on their tents for shelter. Respecting the planet, they had returned the sunstones, the "morganite", to the Terrian caves before leaving the biodome. So, taking a lesson from the Native Americans of the pre-Columbus era, Yale discovered how the American Indians of the Great Plains had stayed warm in similar seasons. They had insulated their tents with grasses and leaves and kept small fires burning within, carefully tending them to keep them small for warmth as well as light.

With the abundance of lumalights in camp, the group needed only to use their fires for warmth, and so it was no problem to design and build small containers to safely hold the fires and channel away the smoke. The generators were not overtaxed, then, and were used to heat only the largest tents where they were most needed.

Arranged in a U shape, the tents' entries faced the inside of the U; and one of the largest sections of parachute material not cut up and used for other things had been stretched over the common area created by the arrangement and it provided added shelter from the elements.

As Devon approached the tent she shared with the children, she was not surprised to hear the voices of True and Uly quietly talking. Stopping well away from the tent flaps, she listened to their conversation for a time.

Uly was telling True of a dream he'd had about Pegasus, the runaway horse from their earliest days on the planet.

"...by a big lake way up high." the boy was saying. "I think we might have passed him, but I'm not sure. It looks like a mountain lake or something for it to be that high above the ground."

True's voice was dubious. "I don't think there can be lakes above the ground, Uly."

"It wasn't! It just looked like it was."

"Well, it was just a dream. I guess in dreams lakes can be above the ground."

"No!" Ulysses insisted. "It was real. He's really alive and he's been living by a lake for water and lots of trees and rocks for shelter. The trees are thick so snow and ice don't get on him and the leaves and stuff make a soft bed for when he needs to rest on the ground. He showed me where he goes when it rains and snows. The trees are so thick it's like a cave where he stays, and it looks like the ground between the tents- you know, covered by the parachute tarp. The ground was covered in leaves and stuff and soft when I walked on it. I think other animals go there, too."

True was still unconvinced. "How did he get water from the lake when it was cold? We had to break a lot of ice to get water from the stream and the lake Alonzo and Jake found."

"The lake didn't freeze. Even when it was cold. It's warm there, now, but I don't think it got as cold there as it did here."

Sensing a disagreement coming on, Devon decided to head it off quickly. Four quick steps brought her to the tent flap and she leaned down to push it open and step into the tent.

"Hey, time to get up," she said. "You're going to miss breakfast, and you've already missed a check-in call from John and Chris."

The kids were still huddled under their coverings, lying on their sides and facing one another across the tent. They both sat up quickly and began to tell her about Uly's dream. Unable to get a word in as they chattered over, under and around one another, Devon resigned herself to hearing the gist of the story again. She pulled the curtain down between the cots and motioned for them both to get up and start getting dressed.

"Can a lake be above the ground like the one in Uly's dream?" True asked, pulling on a clean pair of pants and one of Eben Sinh's old shirts, sized down for her. "Well," Devon answered. "I've never heard of such a thing, but why don't you ask Yale later when he gives you your lessons? If you tried to draw a picture of it maybe he could give you a better answer."

The chatter resumed as the two pulled on socks and boots and hurriedly rolled up their covers and straightened the area around their cots.

"A mountain lake would be high up the side of a mountain, not in the air, wouldn't it?"

"That could make it seem to be high up, though, right?"

"Well, I guess if you looked at it from the right place, it might look like it was up in the air."

"I was riding Pegasus in my dream and he took me right to the edge of the lake and I could look down and see the ground and treetops below us."

"Doesn't sound like anyplace we've seen around here, or in the other mountains we've been through."

The bantering continued across the small common area to the big tent where the children grabbed bowls of food from the serving table and rushed to bombard their tutor with questions.

The early risers had finished their meals and moved on to start on their tasks for the day, and the few members of the group who remained listened to the children with curious interest.

Devon went to the map table and studied the newest changes that had been made to it. The scout team was a good two hundred and fifty kilometers south of the main camp. The cold had kept them from making better time and distance, but now that it was warmer, John had been hopeful they would make up the distance before having to turn back.

If the weather stayed good the next two days, Devon calculated, estimating a rough figure from eyeing the map, he would be just over three hundred kilometers away before he turned back. Well, he and Mazatl, of course. They would both be three hundred k to the south.

"Don't worry, they'll be fine," Yale's gentle voice spoke from behind her and to the left, and caused her to jump with it's unexpectedness.

This was happening much too often lately. She really needed to keep her mind on the matters closer at hand. She glanced at him and smiled with one corner of her mouth. "I'm not worried," she told him quickly. "I was just noting how many changes we've had to make to this old map in the last year and a half. It's a wonder we aren't wandering in circles."

Yale wasn't fooled and she knew it, but neither of them let on to the other what each knew or didn't know.

Devon tapped her finger on the area labeled New Pacifica. "We should be able to reach the coast in good time once we start moving again."

Yale decided to let her steer him away from what he suspected she was really thinking about, and he took the opportunity to give voice to an opinion he'd held for a long time. "Speaking of going in circles, Morgan, Danziger and I have found ourselves of the opinion that is exactly what the Council had in mind when they gave us these maps. We have found too many mistakes in this one small section of the planet that we have traversed. I have wondered many times if the errors were deliberate in order to hinder us if we beat the odds and survived the sabotage of the ship and made it safely to the surface of the planet. G889 had the highest habitability rating of the known earthlike planets. It's hard to imagine such a shoddy mapping job being done on so promising a world as this."

He waved his hand across the tabletop to include all of the map sections. "Twenty odd years of gradual ecological change cannot be used as an excuse to explain such blatant irregularities."

"I know what you mean," Devon admitted. "Sometimes I look at the map and wonder if we are where we think we are. We've encountered rivers where there should be none, open plains where there should be ravines, and these wooded foothills where the map says there is a desert. With all of the changes you made while I was away, how did you ever decide the time was right to turn southwest?"

"I've been following the stars as much as the map. I had to assume the Council did not change the size of the landmass nor the latitude and longitude, only the features of the land itself. Educated guesswork, I like to call it, based on a randomly picked northern star that has cooperated and stayed in close to the same place in the sky throughout our travels."

Yale paused and raised his eyebrows at her. "Of course, if I am wrong, the com dish might be just the other side of these mountains, or far to the north, and on the other side of these mountains. Only time will tell if we have passed it altogether, are very close, or will find we still have a long way to go to find it."

"Well, here's hoping we'll discover we're closer than we think we are. Not that it will do us much good. Without the prefab building materials we brought with us, building a hospital will take much longer than we ever planned." Devon took a deep breath. "I hope the colonists will understand why we're so woefully unprepared when they get here."

"As Danziger has pointed out, Devon, the colony ship belongs to you. It must stay here as long as you need it before the crew can even consider going back to the stations. They signed on knowing the timetable - knowing that without the advance ship to give them a push, their return to the stations will be considerably longer than the trip here, and that unforseen circumstances may apply once they got here. You called it Hazard Pay, remember?"

"Of course." There was a pause. "But I never imagined we'd need to put it into effect before we even left Earth orbit."

"None of us did."

Devon became quiet. After a few seconds, she crossed her arms on the table in front of her and watched the children finishing their meal, and still talking about Pegasus. "Yale?" she asked. "Do you ever wonder how many of the group will be going back to the stations when the ship finally leaves?"

Yale laid one hand on her upper arm and gave it a squeeze. "I'm sure the right ones will stay."


(TerrianKing)

Mazatl climbed the side of the hill on his knees. The surface was so rocky and slippery he couldn't make progress when walking upright. To make matters worse, he had to listen to Danziger's caustic comments from behind and below about his baby slow way of getting to the top. He was gritting his teeth to hold back a sharp retort. It didn't help that the warm sun was making him sweat and the cold air was making his collar feel clammy.

The pebbles, stones and rocks making up the surface of the hillside were not deeply imbedded and the angle of the incline was just enough to make the surface dangerous for climbers. So, he crawled along, distributing his weight over a wider surface, and picking his way carefully to avoid a long slide to the bottom.
He wanted to reach the top. If he slid as far as the bottom he was likely to attack Danziger and beat the hell out of him. By itself, that would be fun, but the consequences were the kicker. He didn't want to get beat up by Adair in retaliation.

Mazatl had to stop a while as a laugh shook him and threatened to set the gravel in motion beneath his hands and knees. He saw himself with one arm outstretched, hand on Devon's forehead, holding her swinging fists at bay as Solace and Walman egged her on.

"You thinking of taking a nap there, or something, man? We don't have all day, you know."

Mazatl muttered darkly under his breath and started climbing. He had a coil of rope hanging from one shoulder and he had half a mind to pretend to drop it and let it slide to the bottom. See how John liked that.

Looking up, he was surprised to see he was actually gaining ground, the top of the hill was almost within reach. Just a few more meters to go...


From a distance of four k, the hill - Danziger and Mazatl hadn't decided for sure if it was a hill, but they called it one for lack of a better word - was an intriguing sight - a wide, long, gray line of something resembling a slash of paint along the horizon to the east, and dotted sparsely on top with scraggly trees. It had appeared to sight beyond a gap in the foothills they were skirting. They decided they could spare the time to check it out. It was the most interesting site they'd seen in a long time, out of their way due east or not.
At first it had appeared to be slightly higher in the middle, exactly in the middle, but as they neared it, they realized it as an optical illusion. The hill was circular and the closest section merely looked higher...

...and then, he had to go and volunteer to climb to the top to see what was there...

Pausing again and looking up to find his next hand and knee steps, Mazatl was relieved to see he was a mere meter from the top. He carefully eased himself to the crest and onto, more or less, level ground. A narrow lip of flat, stable gravel and rocks topped what he could now see was the rim of an ancient impact formation. He sat back on his heels and stared at the sight before him.

Water filled a deep gouge in the planet's surface, forming a long narrow lake that stretched away to become a part of the horizon. He thought it might be a kilometer wide at most.

"So, what?" Danziger called up to him. "Chris? You forget why you went up there in the first place?"

Mazatl got to his feet and turned to his traveling companion. "I'll let the rope down. If this is what I think it is, we're nearly home free."

He went to the nearest tree and tied one end of the rope to it and tossed the other end in a high arc and watched it unravel as it fell. He dug into a pouch at his side and took out his jumpers, and after making sure Danziger was on his way up alright, Mazatl turned around to face the lake and raised the jumpers to his eyes.

Behind him he could hear the rustle of sliding gravel and Danziger's muttered swearing as he probably lost his footing and slid downward with the stones and rocks. Chris Mazatl grinned, but made sure he didn't laugh out loud. Nor did he dare to look.

The surface of the lake had iced over, but hadn't actually frozen, and waves lapping gently on the shore left a thin ring of melting ice in the gravelly surface. It was a fresh water lake and it was probably a brilliant, sky blue in warm weather, but even the thin coating of ice from the last cold snap couldn't completely dull it's beauty.

Nor it's significance to the Eden Advance party. When Danziger finally reached the top of the rim, he stood alongside Mazatl and never said a word, still holding a part of the rope loosely in his hands. After a moment he let go of the rope with one hand and pointed his thumb behind him, over his shoulder.

"The comm dish is right back there, the other side of that mountain range," he said. "We stopped for the winter two hundred and twenty klicks too soon."

"That's what I figure, too," Mazatl agreed, scanning slowly back and forth with the jumpers. "You should have brought the good jumpers with you. There are a couple of islands out there, but these things are distorting their shape at highest mag. They look square."

He lowered them from his eyes and handed them to Danziger, who looked across the water for a long time. Squinting into the lens, as if that would make the images more clear, John finally gave up. "How can you tell there are two islands?" he asked. "It looks like one long one to me."

"What do you mean? Islands don't move!" Then the significance of his words and John's silence became apparent.

The two men looked at one another.
"Yeah. Islands don't move, but some things do. Like cargo pods."

"Cargo pods? Like air tight, intact cargo pods?"
"Are we that lucky?"

They spun around at the same time and jumped off the top of the impact crater rim. They skittered down the rocks and pebbles with the loud rustle of moving gravel.

"The transmitters aren't working or we would have picked up signals from them last fall," Mazatl said. "They must be some of the first to be shaken off the ship. Alex Wentworth must have cut all the connections, the cable to activate the transmitters, too."

At the bottom they quickly got to their feet and ran to the dunerail.

Danziger reached it first and grabbed their gear units from the front seats. "Here," he tossed one to Mazatl. "Go back up and start sending a video stream. I'll call camp. Here's where we find out if the relays we set are working."

"Guh," the other man said around the strap of the good jumpers in his teeth as his hands fumbled inside a pack for more VR chips. In a moment he was heading back to the rim of the hill.

Close to two planetary years on the move, struggling for every scrap of information they knew about the place, working their way past obstacle after obstacle, and enduring the worst luck imaginable when it came to recovering their lost equipment and supplies, Danziger had lived it all in the company of what turned out to be the finest people to ever grace the stations. He knew the pictures and information he was about to send to them would both anger and energize them. If they needed any further proof Yale's idea the Council deliberately changed the maps they gave the Eden Project was right, this would be it. The map had them still 800 kilometers north of the com dish when they had been no more than three hundred away. They could have reached the coast last fall.

He hurriedly set up one of the transmission terminals they'd taken from the Bennett-Anson ship, a far better way of communicating than by gear headsets, and began to activate the relays between him and Devon and the kids.

Between himself and the main camp, he meant, of course.

"I'm ready." Mazatl's voice announced over their headsets. "I can see more clearly with the good jumpers. We'll have to get closer to the pods to see the numbers, John. The parachutes deployed and are covering the sides facing us."

"Okay. Give me a second to patch you in."

Danziger finished connecting their equipment together. There was no way he was going lose these pods - even if he had to swim out to them and push them to shore by sheer force of will, he would. Shallow water, deep water, freezing water, man-eating fish infested water, it was time for the group to get a break. He was bringing the contents of the pods home if it was the last thing he did.

He swung his eyepiece into place and began to talk.

...
By late afternoon the main camp was in a blur of motion. The sun was low in the sky, but just above the mountaintops. Alonzo and Yale, supervising the breakdown of camp, were trying to get as much done before twilight as they could. It was hard working in the cold, but it would be much more difficult trying to work in darkness and cold, but the more they got done today the less they had to do tomorrow. If everything went right, they would be traveling the day after tomorrow.

The pictures of the lake and the cargo pods, and the news they were much closer to the com dish than Yale's maps indicated, were more galvanizing to the people at main camp than the promise of spring had been. It didn't take more than the suggestion of starting on their way again, to get people motivated.

Without the dunerail to carry a share of the camp's equipment, it was up to Yale and Alonzo to decide what would be left behind. They had started their task immediately, anxious to catch up with the advance scouts and retrieve the cargo pods.

Inside the big tent, Devon listened over gear as the activity outside progressed. She was trying to keep the two children occupied and out of the way of the adults, for the moment. The following day, Uly and True would be expected to do their share of the work, but now, as the day wound down to nightfall, there were many things to be done and no one had the time to keep an eye on them or watch for them underfoot. At least that was the reason she'd been given.
Devon suspected she'd been asked to ride herd on them, because Yale wanted her to take it easy. It had been months, two seasons, since she'd been awakened from cold sleep, and even though Julia pronounced her fit and healthy again, she knew the rest of the group went out of their way to make things easy for her. It irritated her and under other circumstances she chose to ignore what they were trying to do and plunged in to do her share of whatever task was at hand, regardless of their good intentions.

She would do so tomorrow, but for now she stayed with the children, looking over the archived video transmissions from Danziger and Mazatl and plotting a course to reach them. That was the most important thing after all - getting to the cargo pods as soon as possible, catching up with the scouts.

Whatever they found inside would surely shorten the last push for the coast. Each cargo pod had at least two vehicles of some kind, medical equipment and prefab materials. These would be two of the first pods to have shaken loose from the ship after dragging it far enough into the atmosphere of G889 to insure it would never leave again. As John said, speaking over the videos of the two pods floating peacefully in the weak currents of the lake, the contents of each were likely to be items the colonists would have needed first if they had landed safely almost two years ago. The last of the transmissions ended and Devon reached for the pad to replay the last one.

Uly and True both groaned wearily.

"Are we going to watch them again?" True asked and laid her chin on her folded arms on the table in front of her. "We've seen them all a million times. More, even!"

Uly slumped in his chair and started swinging his legs up and down.

Devon looked at them both and started the replay. "Well, then we'll look at them a million and twenty-one times. Whatever it takes to figure out what the numbers on the cargo pods are. It'll be a big help to our planning tomorrow if we know what we're going to find inside them. Yale and Alonzo will have a better idea what we can leave behind so we'll travel faster, and we'll know how long it will be before we can come and get whatever we leave. The lighter we travel, the faster we'll reach your father. And the lake. With the cargo pods."

Uly gripped the sides of his chair's seat and started raising and lowering his legs in tandem. "Mom? Why don't we just call John and ask him what the numbers are? They should be close enough to see by now, and we won't have to wait until after dark for them to set up camp and call us."

Just for an instant Devon hesitated, and it was long enough to hear Yale's barely muffled choke of laughter on her gear set. She'd left it on to listen to the progress the others were making outdoors. She should have guessed the others would be able to hear her talking to the kids, too.
Mentally sending a glare in outside and hoping it was in Yale's direction, wherever he was, she nodded her head and sat back in her own chair.

"Okay," she said. "Why don't you and True try to raise them with the transmitter? See if you can do it as fast as Morgan or Yale can."

Every now and then that boy of hers surprised her with his ability to verbalize the thoughts going through her head. It must be the Terrian training he received in my absence, she thought. I know I can't be that transparent.


(Richard)

Devon knew she was dreaming. Suddenly finding one's self walking on the clouds was a pretty good indication one was probably fast asleep somewhere in more mundane surroundings. Even so, she stopped walking and began to turn around in a circle to see if anything in the landscape was familiar. She knew she must be high up in a mountainous area because the clouds hung low in the sky, and while she wasn't really walking on them, they obscured much of the terrian beyond the ridge spine on which she was standing.
The ground fell away to both sides of her, but not sharply. She could see patches of snow in the shaded areas below the ridge. She could see no snow-capped peaks above the clouds, only three craggy peaks with trees and grassy vegetation clinging to the surface wherever they could find purchase. These were mountains only in the broadest definition.

"Over here!" a voice called, and Devon whirled around to face the direction she'd just been walking.

A slight figure, hair blowing in the wind, waving an arm in the air, stood quite a distance ahead. Devon knew who it was and she began to run towards her.
"E!" she called, waving back, and as can happen in dreams, found herself, all of a sudden, at the other woman's side. "E! It's been so long since you've come to see us."

Eben Sinh, the familiar shape the living planet often took to communicate with the Eden Advance group, grabbed Devon's hand and began to pull her along. "You're all doing fine. You haven't needed me, but now I have something to show you. It's just a little farther."

"What is it? Where are we?"
Devon followed her friend without hesitation.
Throughout the long months she'd spent in cold sleep, she had frequently dreamed vividly and her welcome companion in many of her dreams had been the supportive presence of Eben Sinh. Since waking and rejoining the group, she found she missed the nighttime visitations of the young woman.

The Sinh/Mother shape answered over her shoulder. "You'll be at the end of the long march sooner than you think, Devon. If you hurry, as I'm sure you want to, you can be here within two weeks, but you'll lose something wonderful along the way if you do."

"What do you mean?" Devon demanded, suddenly alarmed. "Do you mean another..." She couldn't finish the question.

Eben led her to a point along the ridge where the spine sloped downward in a long, gentle incline; an incline that lead between the almost mountains directly to the ocean far in the distance. The apparition pointed ahead. "There it is. See, to the left, just there? It's the com dish."

Through her dream enhanced eyes, Devon could see clearly across the miles the circular form of the object on a grassy patch of soil in a wide stretch of sand. Just beyond it, the ocean waves lapped the beach in endless succession. She looked at Eben with a smile filled with happiness and relief.

Eben smiled back and took Devon's other hand in hers. "You're here, or almost, anyway. You're all going to make it, but the choice is up to you how you're going to make it. Will it be as the close-knit group, the family, you have become, or as two separate groups of people at odds with one another?"

"I don't understand. What do you mean? We've all worked so hard to get this far! How could we lose that cooperation, that partnership now?"

Eben became very serious. "Devon, what you find in the cargo pods can be used in two important ways. There will be vehicles you can use to move yourselves over this final mountain range in just a few days, or they can be used to answer a question that has been haunting two of the others in the group for a long time. Oh, everyone will give you the final say on how the trip will proceed after you open the cargo pods. They have enough respect for you to give you that. The one thing you must remember is no matter how close you've all become and how happy you all are to be finally in reach of the colony site, before you became the unit you are now, you were two separate groups of people: the Eden Advance colonists who were mean to be here, and the Eden Advance Ops crew who were never meant to be here at all."

Devon looked down at their joined hands and let out a deep breath. "We've been able to move beyond that, haven't we?" She raised her eyes and looked at the other woman, the ghost of her lost friend. "You should know how much we've all changed, Eben. I would trust my life to any of the others, and they all know they can trust me in the same way. Don't they?"

"Listen, Devon," Eben said sternly. "Many things happened on the ship you had no control over, and one of them is going to come back to haunt all of you. I wish I could tell you more, but the mother is concerned that knowing too much will frighten you into making the wrong choice for the wrong reason, and that will be as dangerous as knowing nothing. Just be careful, Devon, very careful about how you handle your role as the leader of our group. Even making the right choice for the wrong reason can be divisive."

Devon shook her head and laughed shortly. ""You are scaring me, E, and you haven't really told me anything!"
"Yes, I have, and when the time comes, you'll remember it. Promise me something, Devon. No matter what, will you listen to all of the options before you make a choice? Listen to what everyone has to say no matter how much you disagree with it? And, more than anything, trust your son. He's your link to the other half of me, the mother. He can help you in ways you'll never guess." Eben smiled. "Can you promise me either of those things?"

Devon looked into her eyes for a long time before answering. "Yes." she said, at last, with a nod of her head. "Weigh all options and trust my son. I always thought I did both."

Eben laughed, her musical, magical laugh, the sound sailing away on the wind. "Most of the time, but when push comes to shove you always put that wall up and block everything out that doesn't conform to your choices. Oh, don't look like that! You know it's true!"

The Eben apparition dropped Devon's hands and began to back away. She pointed behind Devon, at the almost mountains. "Remember those three peaks, Devon, and remember, there are always options to any problem." She looked behind her at the range, and when she turned back, Eben was gone.


....
Devon awoke to the sound of voices speaking just barely above a whisper in another part of the tent. The children were awake and getting dressed as quietly noisy as only children can. Bumps, thuds, hissed warnings, whispered asides, and other noises made by small bodies with too much energy to hold back but trying hard to be quiet, all made her smile and her shoulders shake with repressed laughter. Devon stayed motionless through it all, letting Uly and True think they were going about their business without disturbing her.

She opened her eyes just a little and saw it was barely light enough inside the tent to see. No doubt, just past dawn, and the excited duo was anxious to get their day started. They would reach the campsite of the scout team today and the children were looking forward to seeing what Danziger and Mazatl had found.
She waited until they left the tent- rustling the flaps excessively as they went out- before turning onto her back and allowing herself to laugh. She pushed her covers away and swung her legs over the side of the cot. She got up and dressed slowly, taking her time, determined to let the children think they'd slipped out without waking her.

Ducking through the tent flap a short time later, Devon looked around but the kids were nowhere in sight. She made her way to the large mess tent and saw she was one of the last of the group to rise and come to breakfast. True and Uly weren't the only ones ready to start moving again.

By the time the meal was over, Devon had forgotten about her dream and did not mention it to anyone. They were well under way, in nearly constant contact with the scouts, when Devon, riding in the transrover as a passenger, took some time to relax a bit and look ahead and was somewhat puzzled to see a part of the mountain range, far ahead, that looked familiar. It took a moment to realize why. Remembering bits and piece of her dream, she forgot about resting and found she couldn't wait to reach the scout camp to tell Danziger what Eben had told her in the dream.


....
An hour after a midday rest stop, the group left the wooded area they'd been passing through, and came into sight of the long, gray "hill" that had caught the attention of the scouts three days ago. Danziger and Mazatl, keeping watch from their campsite, announced they could see the rover coming out of the trees.

The travelers altered their course eastward toward the slash of gray and moved steadily in it's direction. After a short time it dominated their area of view, stretching from north to south, and it took them no time at all to locate the spot where Danziger and Mazatl first climbed the hill. Their rope was still tied to a tree on the rim and the duo had left a small sign attached to the end of it. "Future site of Mazatl's Landing," it read.

Solace and Baines lost no time in using the rope to help them scramble up the slippery, rocky slope to stand at the top and look out over the lake. They stayed on the rim and ran along it's flat surface in the direction of the cargo pods. The ATV and the transrover kept their steady pace alongside and below them.

Alonzo, leading the way, pointed ahead and looked over his shoulder at Baines. "I see a tent," he said. "It's just beyond the next clump of trees. Can you make out anything on the pods, yet?"

Baines, the only one of the two wearing a gear unit, relayed Alonzo's observation to the people below, and answered him, "I think Danziger and Mazatl are right, the parachutes are covering the pods. Either that or the numbers were burned off during entry. Remember Venus Base? Two hundred and thirty two cargo pods with their identifying symbols and numbers burned off after we dropped them. The scientists had to open them all at once to find out what they contained. Took seven weeks!"

Solace laughed shortly. "Yeah, I remember that. I had to fight to get our flight bonuses from the company. As if it was our fault!"
"You did all right. That's why I always signed up to fly with you after that."
"What a relief! I always thought it was because you liked me!"
"In your dreams, Solace! In your convoluted and Terrian enhanced, perverted dreams!"

Julia Heller's voice broke into the conversation. "Baines, it might be a good idea if you turned down your gear if you're going to be discussing that subject for much longer. And when we have a few minutes, Alonzo, maybe you and I should talk."
Baines laughed out loud. "Sleep jumper's humor, Heller. Nothing to worry about!"

Julia, sitting on the back of the ‘rover with the children, continued to listen to the banter between the suddenly exuberant sleep jumpers and wondered what that meant. She'd never seen this kind of playfulness among any of her companions before now.
It wasn't long, though, before her attention was drawn to something more understandable.

"There's the tent!" both of the children called out in unison and the sound of their running footsteps was heard momentarily over the sound of the big vehicle moving along at it's slow, steady pace.


(e2fanbev aka Beverly)


It came as no surprise to Devon that no one wanted to waste time setting up tents once they reached the lone tent and small fire marking John and Chris' campsite. Everyone tumbled out of the vehicles and rushed up the side of the rim to joing the two men and to get a look at the lake and it's floating treasure, and she made sure she was one of the first to get to the top. Of course, Alonzo and Jake were already there, having run the whole length of the rim from their starting point at Mazatl's Landing.

Mazatl's Climb, she'd thought would make a better name, but Mazatl didn't seem to like her suggestion because it made Danziger laugh out loud and sputter something that sounded like, "You call that a climb?" She couldn't be sure over the gear transmission.

So here she stood, feeling as light as air, not even worried about how they were going to reach the cargo pods, just taking in the sight of the two gently bobbing rectangles and knowing they were intact- whatever they contained, the supplies were in good condition and untouched by grendler hands.

Just to her right and crouching on one knee, Danziger was aiming the sights of one of the ZED's mag pros at the pods, hoping the more finely tuned scope could spot details on the pods more clearly than the jumpers could.

"See anything?" Devon asked, squinting in the direction of the pods. There was a noncommital grunt in reply and she looked down. The fingers of her right hand were idly twining through the long hair at the back of his neck. "What does hmmh mean?"

"I can count the rivets with this thing," he answered, "but the paint is flaking so badly all I can see is what might be a one and a three or a one and an eight on the closest one and a one on the other. The rest of that number, if there's a second digit, is hidden behind the closer pod. Anybody have an idea what might have been in pods thirteen or eighteen? Remember, two pods, three and fourteen, are coming with the other ship."

Yale, eying with curiosity the quietly whispering children a few feet away, said, "Predominantly building supplies and medical equipment. The single digit pods were designated supplies, personal items and transportation. The doubles were for the building of the colony and the hospital. It's unfortunate we do not have the individual manifests. The warrant officer, Navarro, would have had them with her at the time of the tragedy."

Danziger lowered the mag pro scope and rested the weapon butt end down on the ground between his knee and foot. "You know what that means, then..."

"More Zeros to brighten our lives?" Walman asked.

Sounding a more sarcastic hmmmh, John said, "And more vehicles. Maybe s-..."

"Maybe flight units, too, right?" Alonzo asked, cutting in, the excitement clear in his tone of voice. "Say, hoverlifts, or lightwings? Lightwings or sunsails, for sure, right?"

"Possibly," Yale confirmed, and both Alonzo and Jake Baines whooped with joy. Arching an eyebrow at their reaction, he looked at Devon. "We were meant to make use of natural resources in the building of the hospital and the cabins. Hoverlifts and lightwings were included to help find materials and carry heavy loads to the construction sites. There were only a small number of them modified for terrestrial use, however. So it is more likely we'll find sunsails in every double digit pod."

Devon nodded. "I wish I had paid more attention to what we had as far as construction equipment went, but I left that up to Navarro to track. If we do find lightwings or sunsails in these pods, I'd say our first priority would be to fly to and search the inland sea and hope more of our cargo pods landed safely in the water."

Alonzo raised his arms in the air and hopped around in a circle. "I volunteer for that!" he told the sky.

Danziger looked up at him with one eye. "Watch it, Solace. If you fall in the water, I'm not coming in to pull you out. Matter of fact, if you fall in the water just keep swimming ‘til you reach the pods."

Alonzo glanced downward and was surprised by how close he was to the edge of the rim. Stepping back as casually as possible, he turned to seek Julia in the people standing behind him. She was making her way between the others to stand beside Devon and John.

Crossing her arms and leaning her weight on one leg, Julia looked across the water. "So... Anyone have an idea how we're going to get to the pods and recover all of these flying vehicles?"

John laughed shortly. "That's why we waited for you!"

Yale asked, "How far away are the pods?"

"Half a kilometer. The lake itself is just over a klick and a half wide at this point."

"We shall have to fashion a boat of some kind, perhaps a raft."

"Yeah," John agreed, rising and handing the weapon to Walman. "While we were waiting for you to get here, Chris and I found a stand of young trees farther to the east. They should be easy to cut and carry back here. We have plenty of cord from our parachutes to use for lashings."

Devon smiled up at him. "So what are we waiting for?"

He answered with an exaggerated shrug, saying I don't know!


Reaching the cargo pods would be the easy part of the undertaking. Retrieving them would take some ingenuity. It was decided to build two simple rafts to transport two people each to the pods. From there it would take muscle power to move the pods towards the shore. Lacking any other options, they would have to attach the rafts to the closer pod and row it back to shore. Once they were close enough to attach the transrover's winch line to the pod, the vehicle's pulling power and Zero's strength would bring it to land.

They would know quickly if the two rafts would be enough to move the mass of the cargo through the water. All reports from Yale, tackling the problem with his arm's computer simulations indicated the job could be done. It would be hard work, but the pods, still airtight and floating, could be moved. Slowly, to be sure, but they could be moved.

While the dunerail and a team of three went with Mazatl to cut the necessary trees and bring them back, Devon gathered the others around and suggested going over their options, seeking a way to speed up the retrieval of the pods. With her dream of Eben coming to mind, she was reminded of the other woman's insistence that Devon be more open to other ideas.

As the adults talked about their problem, Uly and True climbed back to the top of the lake's rim to look around again.

Uly was beaming. "This is it, True! This is the lake from my dream! The lake up in the air that Pegasus showed me."

True was looking around critically. "Well... It is up in the air, but there isn't a forest around it, or mountains and caves. Your drawing showed trees below the lake where Pegasus took you."

"There is on the other side. See?"

The boy pointed across the lake, past the pods and to the opposite shore where high hills with leafless trees and drably colored evergreen-type trees clinging to the rocky surface marked the horizon.

True squinted and looked across. "Yeah, I guess there could be caves in those mountains."

"It wasn't really a cave, anyway. It was tree branches and things growing on them that made the place where Pegasus lives look like a cave. See? The mountains over here don't have as much snow on the tops as the mountains up north, where we were, have on them."

"Okay," said True, coming to a decision, "I'm convinced. The trouble is, how do we get to that side of the lake to look for him?"

Uly's whole body sagged and he said with a sigh, "I don't know."

Seeing the children going up the side of the rim, John had left the circle of people taking about their problem, stepping away to sit down on one of the ATV's tires to keep an eye on the kids. Close enough to the others to hear what was being said and to voice an opinion if needed, he relaxed a little when the kids sat down on the lip and hunched together talking about something.

The kids had been acting a little peculiar since arriving at the lake. Instead of running around in circles trying to be everywhere at once, they were whispering to one another, huddling head to head and looking at the lake as if it was an illusion they expected to vanish all of a sudden. He wondered what they had been up to in his brief absence.

"I think they're talking about Pegasus," Devon said, as she came to stand beside John and look at the top of the rim and the two small figures there gesturing animatedly as they talked. She crossed in front of him and sat down in the ATV's driver's seat. Her legs over the side and boots still on the ground, she continued, "I heard them talking the other day about the horse, and how Uly dreamed they would find him living beside a lake that was above the ground."

"Ah. Above the ground?"

"I don't know what that means, except they might think this is the lake." She pointed up. "From where they are it does look like the lake is above the ground."

"I suppose it does."

Devon lifted her feet to rest on the bars of the ATV's chassis and she leaned forward to cross her arms on her knees. "I had a dream myself," she said. "Eben came to talk to me."

That caught his interest. Danziger looked at her sharply.

Devon was smiling a little ruefully. "To be honest with you, I think what she told me, basically, was to lighten up!"

"Sounds like her- sensitive to a fault," he said, and continued to watch her closely. "What did she say?"

She looked at him now, finally meeting his eyes. "Quite a bit, really. She showed me three mountain peaks where there is a pass leading straight west to the com dish. I think it was those three peaks just to the south there. I saw them from the other side, so I can't be certain until we reach them." Devon paused before continuing. "She said what we find in the pods will get us over the mountains in a shorter time than we anticipate, but the contents can also break the group apart. She made a point of mentioning how in the beginning we were two separate groups of people who learned to work together to survive. She told me to consider all options before making decisions because our team as a whole will be affected profoundly by any choices I make."

Danziger got to his feet and took a step towards her, reaching out to touch the back of his hand to her cheek. She reached up to hold it there.

"Devon, listen," he said in a quiet tone. "The mother's knowledge of you comes from Eben's memories of you before you got sick. From our first year on the planet. Since you've come back to us from cold sleep, you've changed quite a bit. Eben hasn't been among us to see how much. She has- the mother has nothing to worry about." He looked at the others. "In fact, only one thing I can think of could turn these people away from you now."

Surprised, she looked up at him. "What are you talking about? What?"

"If you dumped me and ran off with Cameron. They wouldn't like that at all."

Devon didn't try to keep the relief out of her short spurt of laughter. The idiot! He'd scared her for a second there! She jumped to her feet and, still holding his hand, roughly pulled him back towards the rest of the group.

"Oh, come on," she said with false exasperation. "I was being serious. We might as well talk about the cargo pods if you aren't going to take me seriously."

"I was being serious!"

As they rejoined the group gathered by the transrover, Bess Martin, who'd seen John and Devon and the kids leave the discussion circle and had watched all of them, got to her feet. "I'm going to see what the kids are doing. I'll be right back."

Devon gave her a grateful look as she and Danziger took their places beside Yale and Alonzo. "Thanks, Bess," she said.

Sitting on the crate he'd left just minutes ago, Danziger gave Devon's hand a squeeze and said to the others, "Well, we have a change of plans. Scrap everything. Devon just told me she dreamed of Eben, who told her what we find in the cargo pods will get us over the mountains, our last obstacle, with no delay. Only one thing I can think of could do that."

"Yes!" Alonzo and Jake Baines yelled at the same time, making everyone laugh as they both jumped to their feet at the same time.

They looked at each other and said, "Hoverlifts!"

"Exactly," Danziger agreed. "The rafts will get us to the cargo pods, but our problem now isn't pulling them to shore. Does anyone have an idea how we can cut through the tops of cargo pods designed to stand up against the heat of atmospheric entry and the impact of landing? Last time I looked we didn't have industrial lasers on hand."

A moment of silence followed his words, and then everyone burst forth with suggestions.

(TerrianKing)

As it turned out, the hardest thing about salvaging the cargo pods was getting John Danziger to keep his gear on his head and in the "on" state. Long-standing habit more often than not kept it in one of his pockets. As a result, Devon held regular conversations with one of the others working with him on top of the cargo pod. Her questions were relayed to him and she heard his answers over the background noise of cutting through the pod's paneling. Not that she had expected it to be any other way.
If getting the door of a badly damaged pod twelve to open had been difficult, cutting through the top panels of this pod with low powered security lasers was slower going. It took the better part of two days to cut an opening in the material large enough to allow the unloading of goods. By the time the triumphant shout of "We're in!" reverberated from the speakers of the large com unit in the mess tent, the waiting had become unbearable. Those in the tent and those working in other areas of the camp grabbed their gear and jumpers and ran to stand on the rim of a lake to watch the proceedings.
Within hours Zero had pulled the bits and pieces of an air boat through the roof of one half of the pod and they were being assembled on the other half. As soon as the first one was ready to go into the water, a second one was pulled from the container and put together, and the wait began for the power cells to charge. The coming of nightfall brought a restless night for everyone. Both of the boats, having been paddled to shore, were attached to a generator for overnight charging. They would be ready for use in the morning.
The children, fascinated by the new craft, were braving the chilly temperatures and the light breeze that never seemed to die away, and each was aboard a small boat's deck checking it out as thoroughly as they could with lumalights. Yale watched them closely. Now and then the breeze carried his voice over the shallow rim to the campfire as he explained what each part of the boats should properly be called because they were not land vehicles.
Devon left the mess tent with a cup of hot coffee made from two-year-old (or was that twenty-four year old?) coffee grounds found with other food stores in the cargo pod. After months of reusing coffee grounds to make their dwindling supply stretch and stretch, it was a treat to taste coffee as they all remembered it to taste before conservation became a way of life for them. Even so, just before coming outside, she saw Bess and Diane in the mess tent carefully saving the used grounds for drying.
If they could only find some flour or other processed grains, they might be able to have some kind of bread with their meals again. Now that would be a real treat!
The gathering of people around the fire was as usual; they were winding down before going to sleep, and speculating on what else they might find in the undisturbed cargo pods.
Devon took a seat beside Danziger and looked at him for several seconds. She could tell he was still tightly wound from the frustration of having the pods so near, yet so far away. It made her feel better when he laughed at something someone else said. She decided she would not start to really worry about him until he stopped laughing at jokes.
She could try to make conversation. She kept her voice low. "You were inside the pod for quite a while today. What did you find besides food and small vehicles?"
Leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, Danziger turned his head slightly toward her. "Uh, mostly building materials, electronics. Lonz thought he saw weaponry near the back of the pod. To be honest, we don't know what a lot of the color coding means, and we really couldn't see much by crawling around on top of everything. This isn't a vehicle pod like twelve was. This pod is packed to the top in some areas. That's where we found the food."
Devon smiled. "I always thought I'd be so happy to eat food from the stations again, but I think the food we've been finding and growing and preserving here on the planet is better than the freeze-dried rations you found. I've developed a taste for fresh food. The pre-packaged stuff was too salty and heavy."
John laughed lightly. "I was thinking the same thing! I hope your planners included seeds in the inventory."
"They did. Corn, wheat, barley, oats, and other seeds from Earth, as well as the hydroponic gardens on the stations. I know that much. We knew we'd need grains and vegetables. Of course, we thought we'd have the time to grow them before the colony ship arrived, but now I think we'll be lucky to have the hospital half built when they get here."
Danziger straightened up and stretched his back and shoulder muscles. "I'd stop time for you if I could, Adair. I think we should just count ourselves lucky we'll be able to get some crops started. Maybe we'll have food ripe enough to eat when the freeze-dried stock starts to run out. It's the best we can do."
He stood up wearily and looked down at her. "I'm going to turn in. I'd like to get an early start in the morning."
Devon got her feet, too. "Okay. I'll walk with you." She grabbed his arm and pulled him toward the tents. "Don't worry about the kids. Yale will get them to bed soon. They're staying with him tonight."

The rim formed by the gouging of the earth that created the lake, as they still called it, was slowly crumbling due to the weather and other natural phenomena. Much of it had worn away and in some places vast sections of it had collapsed into the water to form shelves of dirt many meters wide. It was alongside one of these shelves that Danziger and Mazatl chose to place the base camp. The resulting gap in the rim made getting to the lake shore easy. A small rise was all that was left of the rim in this location and the transrover went over it with ease.
Devon Adair could only wonder how high above the water the rim had been in the beginning. On the opposite shore was what appeared to be many cliff formations towering high over the water, and she tried to imagine them ringing the lake.
It must have been an awesome site when the lake was newly formed.
She and several of the others watched the first pod looming closer to the shore, pushed slowly along by the air boats, an awesome sight in itself. It meant the group's luck was changing, for better or for worse it was changing.
Zero and the transrover stood on the rocky, grassy shelf where the pod would touch land. They waited to pull it far enough onto the shore to open the doors without the possibility of water getting inside and taking it under.
As much a she wanted to find a flying craft in the unopened half of the pod, or in the second one still floating far out in the water, Devon was also apprehensive about what other materials and objects they were going to find.
With a hover lift or light wing they would be able to transport themselves and all they had to the com dish on the side of the ocean, and there begin the tasks of building a settlement for the colonists. She hoped the families due to arrive on the second ship would understand why the colony they were expecting to find here was in such as state of disarray and nearly nonexistent. Fly to the coast and start building. It sounded so easy.
Devon folded her arms across her waist and shifted her weight to the other foot. Easy? Eben, the Mother, said it wasn't going to be easy. Something inside the pods had the potential to divide the group into its original factions: those who were supposed to be here . . . and those who were not.
"Devon!" Julia called and started down the shallow rim after the others. Hearing nothing behind her, she stopped and turned back and called more forcefully, "Devon!"
The other woman's head turned toward her sharply, as if she'd been startled. "What?"
"Come on. The first pod is ashore. Time to see what the tide brought in."
"Of course, be right there." She started down, feeling shaken that she had let her fears dull her senses for a few minutes. She hadn't seen the pod hit the shore, nor heard the excited voices of her companions until Julia's call had broken her light trance. The rest of the people who'd gathered on the rim with her were at the bottom of the slope. When she and Julia reached the grassy shelf they ran to catch up with them.
Zero had attached the transrover's winch line to the pod, and Walman, inside the rover's cab, pulled taut the line and the cargo pod was pulled three meters farther onto the shell before the drag on the rocky ground was too much even for the powerful vehicle. Matt locked down the brakes and the winch and jumped out of the cab as Cameron and Magus chocked the wheels with rocks.
As Devon and Julia reached the transrover, Danziger and Solace were climbing off their air boats and pulling them farther onto shore. The children, knowing they would be asked to stay out of the way, ran to the nearest boat and climbed aboard to watch the proceedings from its small deck. True immediately climbed into the pilot's chair and sat back to look around. Uly sat on the deck plate beside the chair and crossed his legs.
"Don't touch anything!"Alonzo told them sternly.

Waiting for him to get far enough away to not hear them, True looked down at Uly. "What else happened in your dream?"
The boy shrugged. "Well, I got to ride him again, but this time instead of going to the lake, Pegasus started running toward the mountains real fast, like he was really flying. We went to a valley past the three peaks where my mom said we have to turn west to reach the ocean. We looked down and there was clouds and smoke below us and we could barely see the ground. Then I heard something beeping and it woke me up. I heard Baines and Alonzo changing watch outside, and I couldn't finish the dream when I went back to sleep."
True pursed her lips in disappointment. "Oh."
The two sat in silence for a time.

When Devon and Julia joined the rest of the group in front of the beached pod everyone turned to look at Devon. Danziger gave her look and a gesture with one hand that plainly said, "Well?"
The rush of emotion she felt at that simple gesture drove her fears away, and she laughed. "Well, she said, "we know what we're going to find in the section where we found the air boats, so why don't we open the other side first?"
Alonzo nodded and turned and ran forward to wave Zero to the access panel for opening the doors.
After almost two years in the water, a ring of minerals and impurities coated the part of the pod that had been in the water. Alonzo ran his hand over the buildup and it cracked and flaked off at his touch.
Meanwhile, Zero had opened the access panel and Mazatl and Walman were attaching a line between his power units and that of the pod. In moments the keypad lit up like a Christmas tree, and the robot entered a code. Immediately, the air was filled with a high-pitched squeal as the door began to slowly inch upward. Zero bent down and grabbed the underside of the door and helped it along. After a short time, the squeal lowered in pitch and the door rumbled upward on its own. At the top the safety clicked on and the door was secure.
Danziger pointed to a stack of red and white striped crates at the front of the pod. "Medical supplies and equipment," he said and looked at Alonzo. "Hey, how much do you want to bet one of them has a case of bone healer vaccine in it?"
"Shut up!" Solace said with a smile, mentally chiding himself that he should have been expecting that. "We're looking for vehicles, man. Look for a hover lift, okay?"
The door to the other half of the pod was opening slowly.
Danziger turned to address everyone at once. "Vehicles and zero units take priority," he said. "Like ‘em or not, the zeros will be able to assemble whatever vehicles we find faster than we can. We didn't see any in the other section so it's possible we'll find one or two in this half. Remember, we'll have to put everything back inside the pod after we get the vehicles out, so don't move anything too far away."
Devon looked around. The kids were sitting in one of the boats and watching from a safe distance. Yale was nearby, keeping an eye on them. She turned to Julia and Diane Denner standing closest to her. "Why don't we go through the pod section and make an accurate list of the contents? Bess! You and Magus catalog everything they bring out of that side of the pod. We'll make our own manifests!"

From the air boat, True and Uly watched for a while, and when no one called for them to help, they turned their attention to other matters.
"Look at this," True said and pointed toward her feet. "The controls are just like one of the voice activated taxis on the stations. Press the left pedal and we turn left, the right one turns right and pushing them at the same time is the brake. This . . ." she put her hand on a T shaped stick on the right armrest. ". . . moves it forward and back and controls the speed. The buttons here under your thumb start and stop the engine. Anyone can drive it. We used to race taxis down on dirt level when I was a kid."
Ready with a sharp remark, Uly looked at her, but decided to let it go. Finding Pegasus was the priority for him and True at the moment, not having an argument. His shoulders slumped and he rested his chin on his clenched fists. He stared at his crossed legs.
"Even if we could drive it," he said, his words affected by the limited movement of his chin on his hands, "no one will let us go across the lake to look for Pegasus by ourselves. Everyone is more interested in getting to the com dish, not in what we want to do. We have to stay out of the way now but after they find a hoverlift or lightwing, we'll have to start helping with the move."
True had to agree. They still had their chores to do, and sooner or later, she and Uly would be needed to help pack, and then unpack at the com dish. Time was running out. Soon it would be too late to look for Pegasus.
"Well . . ." she began. "We could sneak away by ourselves . . . but my dad would just use the other airboat to come after us."
"And then we'd really be in trouble."
"Yeah. The mood he's been in, we'll be lucky to get off with just grounding. He's been very grouchy lately about not being able to get to the pods fast enough. But finding Pegasus might be worth it," True said.
"Maybe. But we won't be able to ride him if were grounded."
"They'll let us take care of him."
Uly straightened up and looked at her. "Do you think so?"
She shrugged. "Maybe."
Uly resumed staring at his legs. "What are we going to do, True?"
"I don't know, but we'll think of something."
Her hopeful answer was followed by a whoop of joy from the front of the cargo pod. The children laughed at the sound, and then excitement got the better of them, and they scrambled out of the boat.
Someone had found a hoverlift, and they wanted to see it, too.

The hoverlift, more delicate than the transrover and the dunerail, had been secured inside a box frame, but the doors, the engine, and the anti-grav units were all separately protected in sturdy crates. Walman and Danziger gave it a thorough examination while the dunerail was brought to the front of the pod to pull the craft out of it. Once it and the power units were pronounced undamaged, the group began to search for more vehicles.
Devon looked across the work area with satisfaction, noting that the activity hadn't stopped completely. Everyone was busy, letting Danziger, Walman and Zero begin the task of assembling the craft.
She and the kids stayed long enough to see the box frame come down, and they climbed inside the cargo bay of the craft to look around before they went back to work or play, too.
Perhaps because it had been enclosed in the pod for two years, the new smell of the hoverlift interior hadn't diminished.
Longer in size than the transrover but about as wide, the lift sat on nonretractable tripod landing gear. The cargo bay had large slide away doors on each side and the cockpit seated two people. True and Uly immediately ran to the front of the craft and began to bicker over who got to sit in the pilot's seat first. Devon ignored them and stood in the middle of the bay and looked around. Danziger climbed in and hunkered down on one knee, a more comfortable position than standing stooped over to avoid the low ceiling.
Devon spread her arms. "Can you believe the grendlers actually carried off a vehicle just like this from the original crash site?" she asked. "I wonder what they did with it?"
"Probably ripped it apart," Johnny answered. "Remember the one who wanted a solar panel from the dunerail for a piece of fruit? Ripped it off with one hand. By the time we found the escape pod the Martins came to land in, it was stripped clean."
Devon dropped to her knees beside him. "It would've been a waste of time to look for our cargo if O'Neill had lived, wouldn't it? The cockpit would've been ripped out piece by piece, and the engine and anti-grav units probably disappeared in five different directions."
Danziger laid a hand on the nape of her neck. "Do you still worry about that? O'Neill had too much bravado for his own good. He was here to conquer the land and that meant conquering whatever ransacked pod twelve, too."
"We'd have never made it out of that valley, would we?" she asked quietly.
"But we did!" Danziger said and moved to the open doorway of the bay and dropped a half meter to the ground. Damn! He said that with a little more force that he intended it to have. He lowered his voice a little. "And we're going to make it to New Pacifica, too."
Devon stood and looked at the cabin where the children were kneeling on the seats and closely examining the control panel "Uly! True! Come on. Time to get back to work."
She went to the open doorway and leaned forward to accept Danziger's help down.
True knew it wouldn't help to argue, so she climbed off the pilot's seat and walked through the narrow doorway to the cargo bay. She could hear Uly's footsteps behind her as he hopped out of the other chair and followed. She stopped and turned around, holding a finger to her lips as she cautioned, "Shhh!" And jerked a thumb over her shoulder.
Ulysses peered around her and pulled back quickly, smiling.
His mother had wrapped her arms securely around John's shoulders and the two of them stood momentarily frozen in a tight embrace.
Being the group figure head had its perks, and it kept Devon occupied when, at that moment, Bess and Julia had the dubious honor of finding two zero units stashed in a corner behind the area where the hoverlift had been found. Their raised voices calling for help interrupted the personal moment, and Danziger and Adair reluctantly parted and went to see what the matter was.
True and Uly jumped out of the lift and raced past them. "‘Scuse us!"
"Break it up, already!"
"Time to get back to work!"
"Yeah! Remember work ?"

Julia and Bess found themselves on the receiving end of jokes and teasing for many weeks as they were held entirely responsible for the increase in the robot population.

The work didn't stop until dusk when the temperature dropped. A hasty meal prepared by tired hands was barely noticed as the group went over the lists of new equipment at their disposal. Tired and ready for sleep, Danziger nonetheless stayed in the mess tent to listen to the discussion of items on the manifests.
"Well," he said, "as much as I'd like to live in something other than a tent the next time we experience a storm, I think all of the prefab materials should be earmarked for Julia's hospital. It won't hurt us to live in tents awhile longer, and even if the colonists have to do the same, Julia needs her hospital ready and waiting for the Syndrome children."
He noticed Julia staring at him from across the table, and he paused and asked, "What?"
She raised her eyebrows and smiled faintly. "My hospital?"
He shrugged. "You're the doctor here, not me. Of course, your hospital," he said, is if that explained it all. The murmurs of assent from around the tent made her want to burst into tears. Just like that John had surprised her and given her the hospital, the most important structure to be erected on this planet. He had simply assumed it would be named for her because she was the doctor. Not the Adair Hospital, nor the Vasquez Hospital, nor the New Pacifica Hospital. Your hospital.
Julia straighten your back and took a deep breath. Damn right, my hospital! And no one is going to take it away.

Morgan Martin was tired and his hands were blistered and aching from the day's work. Meal times were normally a high point of his day, especially since the cuisine had begun to improve, he found that despite his tiredness he couldn't be still. He had eaten the bowl of leftover stew Bess gave to him, barely tasting the whistler bird meat for which he had developed a taste, and he listened for only a few minutes when the others began to compare the list of the pods contents.
He slipped outside as Bess talked about two industrial lasers she and Magus found. She would tell him all about it later, Morgan knew. He went over the crest and wandered through the stacks and lines of crates pulled from the pod. The building materials were not unloaded.
There were crates of medical supplies and equipment and other boxed items piled here and there for further examination. Another large generator was partially unpacked along with several small refrigeration units, and there were cases of rations and foil packed meals. Funny how after the initial excitement of finding the food, no one was eating it. Two cases of spirolina stayed inside the pod even though Morgan and Tim Cameron had offered to toss them into the lake and let them sink to the bottom. Two year old spirolina? The thought made Morgan shudder.
He was restless and he couldn't figure out why. He reached the hoverlift and stopped walking. After a pause he stepped closer and reached his hand out to touch it.
Two years, he thought. It's taken two years to find this craft and we came upon it by accident.
Or was it luck?
Danziger's luck.
Danziger had all the luck.
Morgan knew himself well enough to know if he instead of Danziger had been a part of the scout team and he had seen the unusual gray line on the horizon, he would have insisted on sticking to the plan. No matter who his partner was, he would have kept driving along the foothills until they found the pass Devon dreamed was there, or until they were away from the group for exactly four days. Then he would have insisted they turn back and go straight to the winter camp.
When the group began their final push for the com dish, and they passed by they might have seen the gray formation again and someone might have wondered about it. But it would be too late. The priority would be the com dish and the group would have moved on, probably saying they would come back someday when they had the time to find out what it was. And someday might never have come.
Morgan moved closer, putting his other hand on the lift and turning his head to press his cheek against the cold plastalum surface. He stood there a while. It was as close to the stations as he was going to get for a long time. Finally he stepped away and began to wander back toward the tents.
Still outside the circle of light from the roaring fire, he stopped to sit down on one of the larger crates. He hunched forward, elbows on thighs, and looked at his bandage hands.
Two years. Instead of putting the finishing touches on a colony town and getting ready to go back to the stations, he and Bess hadn't yet laid eyes on the colony site.
At any time Bess would be coming out to look for him, and an hour or two after that he would be asleep. By morning, the power unit on the hoverlift would be fully charged and their priorities would be set.
What was he going to do when they reached the com dish? Well, he knew that first he was going to be turned into a construction worker. They had to build a hospital and some kind of living quarters in the short time they had left, but after that what was there for him?
Morgan was beginning to hate being left out. In the beginning, with the guilt caused by the stress and strain of being alive after the crash landing, all he wanted was to be left alone with Bess to try to learn to cope. The destruction of the ship had compounded his already myriad fears, and guilt coupled with Danziger's hostile attitude, encouraged his paranoia. He was in a losing situation since the warning klaxons on the ship first sounded. Time and events did nothing to allay his fears.
It was the death of Eben Sinh and the temporary loss of Devon Adair that started the changes Morgan knew he had undergone. It was then he noticed he'd accepted his fate, he had become a survivor, a dyed-in-the-wool colonist! And the others in the group were treating him like an equal. He still had his share of gaffes, but it was a learning process for him and as the mistakes became less a less, the attitudes of his companions changed. Even Danziger's had changed, and that was what affected Morgan most profoundly. Danziger's acceptance.
Oh, he knew he was never going to be the kind of man everyone turned to for advice or leadership. He didn't want that anyway. Not anymore, in spite of a lifetime on the stations striving for it. Danziger could have that kind of responsibility. Morgan just wanted things to be normal and safe again.
He wanted to be a part of making it that way. He needed to atone for his past mistakes, his initial selfishness. He had to do something – he wanted to do something to make New Pacifica the safe haven everyone earned after their long journey – for his companions and the Syndrome families, but especially for Bess. She'd never left his side throughout their journey and he wanted New Pacifica to be her safe haven for as long she wanted it to be.
If he had a magic wand, the power to stop time, he would give them all the time to build the hospital and the village around it as completely and as well as the original plans called for them to be built. That's really what they needed. More time. A way to stop time . . . a way to stop . . .
Morgan jumped to his feet and forgot about his aching hands. There was something he could do. There was a way to help his fellow travelers. He could give them the time they needed to do things right!
First thing a morning he would talk Yale and Bess and get their opinions of his idea. Morgan walked quickly back to the mess tent. The discussion was breaking up, and he waited for his wife to walk with her to their tent. Standing just inside the flap, he felt the warmth of the new heating units and realized he was shivering. He slipped around the others and went to see if there was more stew left in the pot.

Alonzo Solace had come home.
Positioning the hover lift above the second pod, he eased the craft to a stop and flicked the level indicator a couple of times with his finger in an age-old habit peculiar to pilots. He looked over his shoulder through the narrow doorway to the cargo bay where Danziger and Chris Mazatl were lowering the winch line to snag the floating pod and lift it out of the water.
He turned back and looked out of the front window. The lake stretched away to join the sky seamlessly. Somewhere beyond the unseen horizon was the main body of the inland sea that lent the water to form this long, narrow offshoot of itself.
The foothills of the mountain range extended for kilometers eastward, and they had been no match for the object that made the lake. It had cut through the hills, throwing debris to both sides of its path for what might have been a kilometer each way. The sight from higher up would be even more impressive than what he was seeing now.
He pulled his gear mouthpiece into place. "How's it going back there?" he asked.
"We've got it. Get ready to lift," Mazatl replied.
"Give me the word when you're secured." He grinned. His own little made up rhyme – how long had he been waiting to sing song that again? How did the rest of it go? I'll hit forward and fly this bird. Something like that.
It was great to be flying again, even if it was just a construction machine and not even close to a starship. Alonzo had known from an early age he wanted to fly. His father was a hoverlift operator, among other things; a man who expected his children would follow after him in the trade. He broke the rules as all station construction crew members did (John Danziger was a prime example) and let his children accompany him inside the lifts and barges he operated. Alonzo could fly barges and construction lifts, dock and undock them as smoothly as any longtimer, by the time he was twelve.
His parents had not stayed together, another aspect of transitory station life. Together they had two sons, and when their marriage contract was over, they each moved on and individually each contracted again and each had a daughter. He and his brother saw both parents regularly. It was life in the quadrant, life among the working class.
His mother was an information transcriber in the Council's Department of Multi-Station Affairs.. It was no problem for her to change the bio-files of her children to allow them access to the pilot training programs for interstellar travel. She gave him his chance to live forever, opened the doors to the sleep jumper program for him. His brother, a sister – they became intersystem jumpers, hauling cargo and colonists between stations, six to ten month sleep jumps at the most, but mostly just a lot of flying. The other sister worked payload on a supply freighter and eventually became a master pilot, too, but she didn't have Alonzo's ambition nor his taste for adventure.
Alonzo went for the prize, the big paychecks, the prestige of sleep jumping. The price he paid was the loss of his family. While his sleep runs got longer and his paychecks bigger, his family was moving along with their lives. Moving from station to station, wherever their jobs took them, and his long absences kept him out of touch, and they eventually disappeared into an information trail that became longer and longer, and harder and harder to trace. He knew both of his sisters entered marriage contracts and both had two children each, his brother had a child, too, but sketchy information had kept them all out of reach. His father shipped out on a cold sleep run to build a mining station fifteen light years from Earth. No record existed to indicate he ever came back. At least, none that Alonzo could find. His mother continued working for the DMSA until her death at sixty-two, during Alonzo's eighth sleep jump. He had no idea what his siblings had done to commemorate her. All he'd ever had was a message from his sister waiting for him when he returned from a flight – and he hadn't even looked at it until he had free time to kill at the destination of his next flight.
Of them all, he was the one to sign up to fly the first ships that traveled at light speed. He had seen another star system, left behind probes, manned and unmanned, to look for habitable planets just like this one. With any luck he would do it again.
He always supposed that he should've been fairly forewarned about what was to come in his life next. There were hard choices he had to make, choices he had never regretted until now. Alonzo shifted in his seat and turned his head to look out the starboard window toward the lake shore where the base camp was located. He could see the cluster of tents, the other cargo pod, and just two hills beyond them there was a wide green valley tucked between the foothills. There were Terrians in that valley, waking up after a winter of hibernation. He knew it. He could sense them at night in his dreams and when he was awake. They watched the group's progress from afar, maybe because another Terrian group with whom they were friendly had asked them to, or just out of curiosity for themselves. Despite his attempts to explain the matter, Solace was well aware the Terrian population as a whole did not really understand why this group of humans chose to live above the ground and to travel to the ocean to settle.
They were watching now from the highest hill. If he closed his eyes he could probably see and greet them, but he didn't.
If it wasn't for the endless hills, he could probably see for tens of kilometers. His gaze, though, was drawn to the base camp, to the light-colored tents shining in the sunlight.
The Terrians were in the hills, but at the base camp Julia Heller was there, and so were his friends. The people who had become his extended family - who had become his second chance, if it was a second chance he wanted. Danziger's voice, shouting from the back because, of course, he wasn't wearing his gear, brought Alonzo's attention back to the moment. "Okay, Lonz. Take her up ten meters. Let's take her home."
"Copy that." Alonzo said briskly, licking his lips and moving his hands on the controls with a familiarity he would sure he'd forgotten at one time. He felt the cargo pod leave the water, and he slowly swung the lift in a lazy turn toward the base camp. He smiled to himself. He felt the drag as the cargo pod on its tether tried to keep up with the lift. Whether on the ground or in space, in atmosphere or vacuum, he long ago learned to tell by feel how his cargo fared.
Solace was in his element, and he reached out in a waking state toward the Terrians to share with them the exultation he felt. He was flying again and he hoped they could understand how wonderful it was.

Morgan Martin waited while Devon paced the ground beneath the mess tent. He didn't know what to do with his hands. Blisters still bandaged, he picked nervously at the material wrapped around his palms. He was never more grateful then when Bess reached out and took both of his hand in hers.
Yale said across the small table from him and gathered the data chips Morgan had prepared and put them in a tidy row.
Excitement was welling up inside her, but Devon Adair wasn't about to let it show until she knew what Morgan proposed was possible. The words and sights kept ringing in her head – Morgan's nervous, but unwavering facial expression as he spoke:
"Devon, I think there might be away to gain us some time to build the hospital, to have enough living quarters for the colonists ready for them. I think – I know I can use the com dish to send a message to the ship and instruct it to delay waking up the crew and the families with them. We can use the com dish to guide the ship into an orbit around G889 and keep it there until we're ready for the people to come down. If Alonzo remembers the communication codes, we might even be able to release a lander for us to use to go back and forth and manually checked the ship and keep it in a safe orbit."
Devon stopped pacing and walked back to the table. "Is it really possible to do this?" she asked.
Morgan nodded his head. "I just need a transmitter with interstellar range and the codes, and if Solace and Baines don't remember them I can find them with Yale's help."
"Technically, Morgan is right," Yale said. "Our com dish was designed to be adapted for a variety of uses after the colony was established. The landers, after all, were to be used to explore the rest of this system and the dish is capable of inter-system communications."
She ran her hand through her hair. "It would be just what we need if you can do it. I've been worried about how we're going to house and feed so many people with so few resources. The question is, do you think we have the time? We don't know how close the colony ship is."
Morgan freed his hands from Bess's and gestured nervously. "If Alonzo can't help, I should start working on the codes – in my free time – as soon as I can. It won't take long but we'll have to wait until we reached the dish."
Devon looked from one man to the other. "Okay. As soon as John and Alonzo get back with the other cargo pod we'll tell them what you have in mind." She managed a small smile, trying hard to keep it from becoming a hopeful grin. "Until then, I promised to help Julia go through the medical supplies. If the three of you haven't got anything in mind, maybe you can help Diane go through the contents of the bio-gen crates? She's hoping to find food plants in one of them. So far she's found a variety of livestock."
Yale got up from the table. "I have a lesson planned for the children. I think a five day break was long enough for them to be idle. Perhaps too long."
Bess got up and gave her husband's shoulders a squeeze from behind. "Come on, honey. We'll give Denner a hand."
Morgan stood and gathered his data chips, dropping them into a pouch and putting them into his jacket pocket. He carefully closed the zipper before following Bess out of the tent.
Devon walked across the campsite, looking for Julia and the children. One was near the cargo pod, which had been moved away from the lake, and the other two were face-to-face arguing over a round, dark object they both held onto as if their lives depended on getting it from the other. She stopped and watched them for a few seconds. After days of huddling together and talking in whispers, it was somehow reassuring to see them fighting over a toy, back to their old habits. She wondered where they found the ball, but decided to let Yale sort it out. Julia was waiting.
Sometime later Devon's gear signaled and Alonzo's voice announced he in the others were returning with the second pod.

"Flies like a dream," Solace told Jake Baines after jumping out of the hoverlift's cargo bay. "Two years of rockin' in the water – this baby was ready to fly, man!"
Baines let out a long breath and looked at the lift with envy. "Well, I have dibs on the second one we find."
"That's why the smart man stays in the pilot's seat, my friend," Alonzo told him, poking him in the chest with his fingers. "Co-pilots and com-techs always get second dibs. Remember that."
"Hah!" the other man said. "If Danziger wanted to fly that thing, you'd be standing right beside me waiting your turn!"
Solace, hands in pockets and with a slight swagger, walked away as if he hadn't heard. He felt like whistling, but it was easier to just smile.
Zero had both pod doors opened by the time Alonzo reached the cargo pod. The two other zeroes stood quietly in reserve mode outside the first pod. Three units had been too much for John Danziger to take at one time, and he had exploded with frustration as much from their programmed offers to help out at every turn as from the tension and expectations of getting the pods ashore. The need to take that final step was getting to everyone, but the temperamental Danziger had been the first to break. Opening and cataloging, and re-packing the pods for the final flight to New Pacifica was necessary but was eating up their time, and everyone felt the delay, but none more so than he.
On the other hand, he was a lot easier to be around since he'd vented his anger on something. Julia and Devon were standing together looking into the open pod doors, each with a different expression on her face.
Alonzo met Danziger and the two of them, after giving one another a bemused look, watched the women.
Julia, after days of climbing around inside the other pod to find red and white striped crates, recognized the color coding of the cargo. Brown and white meant building materials, and this section seemed to be predominantly brown and white: more materials for her hospital. Or clinic. When she was younger, she had thought of starting a clinic one day, independent of the stations' hospitals, where she could choose the patients she served and accept all if she wished. The second and third parts were moot on this planet, but the clinic part of her dream was still possible. Vasquez could have the hospital – if he could get someone to build it for him that is!
Devon noticed the colors, too, and felt satisfaction. It will be a good hospital, she thought, with the heavy lasers to cut wood and rock, they'd be able to build a hospital as modern and functional and safe as anything found on the stations or on Earth. When the syndrome children arrived, they would transfer down to a wonderful new facility built just for them.
Please let Morgan and Yale be right about their proposal to give us more time to build the Colony! she silently wished.
Arms crossed casually, Devon felt the sensation of being watched. Instead of looking to see who it was, she looked at Julia. She motioned with her head. "Let's go see if all that pre-fab has some windows."
The light laughter behind her back told Devon who had been observing her and Julia.

Alonzo, having climbed up the stacks of crates in the left bay and started crawling over them with a lumalight in hand, found the second hoverlift behind the building materials. There was also a lightwing in the pod.
"Looks like one of the solar panels on the lightwing is broken," his voice spoke over a gear channel. "A smaller crate fell between the box frames and cracked, uh, looks like two panels. It'll be useless until we find replacement parts."
He crawled back to the doorway and poked his head outside. "Better get the zeros cranked up. We have to move most of the building supplies to reach the lift."
During the break for a midday meal, John and Alonzo listened as Morgan and Yale described the idea Morgan had brought up to Devon earlier in the day.
". . . and how much time it will take depends on whether or not you remember the transmission codes, Alonzo," Morgan said. "I can find them myself, but it will take time to crack them, and with the ship so close, time wise, we'll need to contact it as soon as possible."
Danziger looked at Alonzo. "Can we do it?"
Solace smiled. "Sure! I know the key codes, but I can go you one better than that. You won't need to adapt the com dish, Morgan. We already have a transmitter that can send a message to the colony ship, and it isn't that far away now that we have a hoverlift and a lightwing. Back at the valley, the Venus class ship has a powerful transmitter that can send the message to the colony ship. As soon as we reach the ocean, move ourselves and both pods, I can fly you straight to the valley. What you think, John? Two, three-days tops to move all of this?"
He shrugged. "Yeah, about that. How long would it take you to encode a message to send, Morgan?"
"Damn good idea, by the way,"Alonzo said the smiling, still in a jovial mood. ". . . for a politician!"
Morgan, startled, wasn't quite sure if he was joking. "Uh ... Yale and I are working on it now. We just need Alonzo to tell us the codes the ship's computer will accept to make it respond."
Alonzo shook his head. "I know the key codes, but Jake was the com expert. Ask him about that, he knows the language better than me. He was the one who found and cleaned up the Council's disaster newscast about our ship exploding after takeoff, remember?"
Morgan nodded, looking down at the table. He remembered. Thinking of his own reactions at the time, he felt chagrined that he had acted the way he had. He may never be the kind of man he wished he could be, but it least he wasn't that nervous, paranoid, government lackey anymore. Not completely, anyway. He noticed the fingers on one of his hands were drumming his knee and the fingers on the other were closed and rubbing against one another absently. He clamped his hands together and held them tightly against one another.
Devon came through the tent flap and immediately saw the group at a table with Morgan. She hurried over to them and stopped beside Yale's chair. She supposed it was a good sign that they weren't arguing. On the other hand, Yale wasn't using his arm for detailing, either.
"So, can it be done?" she asked hopefully, her apprehension evident in her stance. "Can we signal the colony ship to delay waking the crew and colonists? Can we get it to drop into orbit of the planet until were ready for the Syndrome children to be brought down?"
Yale looked up at her. "I believe we have just reached that conclusion. Morgan's idea is going to give us the time we need to build a proper colony for the Syndrome families."
Devon looked at him and laughed with relief, and the men at the table could almost see the burden of guilt drop away from her slim frame and allow her to stand tall once more. She would have a settlement waiting for the Syndrome families after all.
"Well done,"she said to Morgan, and turned away to get something to eat from the long table across the tent.

"Danziger!"
Lauren Magus shouted his name from the other half of the pod. He looked toward the open doorway. After a few seconds, she leaned over to see around the wall separating the two halves, and waved her hand in a beckoning gesture.
"Come here, John! Look what we found. You're not going to believe it!" She ducked back to the other side.
Danziger looked at Matt Walman, who was helping him separate food stores from other supplies. "Wonder what that could be?" he said and turned to leave. "Be right back."
He weaved his way between crates and boxes to the doorway and stepped into the afternoon sunshine, squinting against the brighter light.
We should have faced the pod west, he thought. Use the direct sunlight to help us dig around inside.
He went to the other side of the pod. "What have you got?"
"Over here," Magus called, in her hand popped up, waving from behind an open crate.
He made his way closer and saw she was down on one knee beside several crates of the same size with the same color striping. Orange and white. Electronics. Probably more neural net computers, he thought. What's unbelievable about that?
"What is it? More computers?"
She turned her head and grinned up at him. "No! Sonde satellites, John! Military issue adapted for civilian use, but still carrying a military subsystem."
Danziger's eyes widened with each word she spoke. "You're kidding!"
"Like hell I am ! Look at the crate beside you. I opened it and used my lumalight power cell to give it a little juice. Bess went after Devon and to get a generator cord to rev it." She finished was she was doing and stood up. "There are six more at the bottom of this stack of electronics."
Danziger was looking into the open crate at the device, barely paying attention to her use of military terms. "Sonde satellites?" he said wonderingly. "Why the hell would anyone think to bring . . . O'Neill!"
"That would be my guess,"Magus said. "The commander had his own agenda for G889."
Danziger slowly turned his head and looked at her. "Kind of makes you wonder how much that old geezer really knew, doesn't it?"
"And there are seven of them, John. Enough to make a rosette."
"Damn. What did that crazy old man know?"
Magus shrugged. "Career military. I'll bet he had friends or good contacts in high places."
"No kidding. Where's Bess with that cord?" He lifted the corner of the crate, testing the weight. "Give me a hand. Let's carry it out to the light. It's heavier than it looks, but I think we can do it."
Devon and Bess and several of the others gathered to watch as Danziger and Magus fiddled with the object in the partially disassembled crate. Devon glanced at Bess, then back at the others and crossed her arms. It was hard to believe the thing in the box was anything to get excited about and make such a fuss over.
"What is it?" she asked, leaning forward to see further into the crate. "It looks like a hologram generator."
"Far from it," John said. "This is a military ordinance, Devon. Sonde satellites are intelligence gathering devices developed by the military to spy on the enemy."
"What enemy?" she asked.
Jake Baines laughed shortly. "Remember the Pan-Asian uprising? The Council used these things to quell that disturbance within three months. Their shape makes them invisible to radar and scanning pulses. Commander O'Neill never tired of bragging how he went Earthside and fought in that little skirmish on the Indian sub-continent. That's probably where he learned about these things."
"Yeah,"Danziger agreed. "Magus found seven of these. Tell them."
The woman nodded. "I powered up this one with my lumalight cell. It has an agricultural cover program for civilian use, but when I entered a military pass code, I found the normal intelligence program hidden beneath it. I think we can assume the other six have the same type of programming. I was looking at the other boxes. One of those on the floor is labeled for primary use and the rest, including this one, are labeled as backups, standbys for parts or substitution if one fails. It's all a cover, though. You need seven sats to create a rosette, which is the standard deployment pattern to cover a large area. It's too much of a coincidence that there are seven of them here marked for farming."
Baines shook his head. "I'll bet the commander knew none of you in Advance would recognize this thing as a weapon. He could have told you get was a weather device and sent it aloft without any of you knowing he could use it to spy on your movements or on the land around you. Then he could secretly send up the other ones until he had a complete rosette."
"How does a rosette work?" Devon asked.
Danziger turned around and looked down at the ground. "Everyone move back a little."
He squatted down and proceeded to draw in the loose dirt six circles with dots in the center, all in a hexagonal pattern with a seventh circle in the center of the others. "The sonde satellites are deployed in that pattern and depending on how high in the sky they're programmed to hover, each sat can cover an area from ten k in diameter to, what, Baines? A maximum of two thousand?"
"Yeah," the other man answered. "You can push them for more area, but if they get too high the atmosphere begins to distort the sound patterns they send and the triangular blackout areas get bigger."
Magus said, "The outer ring rotates slowly to cover the dark areas and you get a covered area of up to six thousand kilometers in diameter. Anything inside the rosette can be identified, imaged, or cut to pieces with pinpoint laser accuracy. The scanning sensors are strong enough that even underground movements can be followed."
Devon frowned. "But . . . does the agricultural program work? They could have been meant for mapping, couldn't they?"
"Possibly," Danziger said, "but unlikely. The hovercraft could have done that just as efficiently. You don't need to see every blade of grass to make a map, Devon."
She was still disbelieving. "I didn't authorize anything like this, John. Our defense system was to be perimeter lasers and hand weapons. There was supposed to be nothing here of consequence to guard ourselves against except wild animals." She paused for a second. "Which is exactly what the Council wanted us to think, wasn't it?"
"You know," he said, "this might explain why O'Neill was so determined to retrieve the supplies from the first cargo pod we found. I wonder how many other military items he slipped through the cracks?"
Devon shook her head. "Wait a minute. I don't think he knew about these. But if he did he must have had a good reason for bringing something like this along with us."
"Sure," Lauren Magus said. "The commander was a career soldier. He must have had contacts. Maybe one of them who knew a few things didn't want to see his old friend arrive at G889 unprepared, and decided to help him out without telling him. When he got here and started unloading, O'Neill would have recognized these for what they really were, just as I did. Authorization for removing seven sonde sats from a supply depot has to come from high up the ladder. Anyone that high up can make the paperwork disappear, too. Especially if the sat programs were altered and they were marked as farming tools and delivered to a civilian project. Believe me, I know. I was stationed at a supply depot for twenty-nine months."
Danziger nodded agreement. "Whether the commander knew about it or not, someone has done us a huge favor, Devon. It just took us two years to find out about it."
He and Magus, with Baines edging closer to help, began to dismantle the rest of the packing crate to get a good look at the device.
All of a sudden Devon felt a feeling of dread creep over her and she struggled to keep her face from showing it. As she watched the satellite being presented to the onlookers, she knew this was it. This was what Eben Sinh had warned her about in her dream.
She wanted to brush the subject aside and have everyone get back to work, but that would only delay the inevitable.
The implications of what her ex-military friends were telling her were beginning to present themselves in her mind. Just one of the sonde satellites could have kept the group safe and aware of the dangers around them every meter of the way across the continent, if they had found one in cargo pod twelve. Instead they had struggled and fought for every kilometer of ground they covered, and as a result, they had become a unit, a closely knit extended family for one another. In that way, they were lucky to have not found one at the beginning of their journey. They wouldn't be the people they were today if they had.
Now? They could use the satellites to locate their lost cargo pods, to delve underground with sensors and locate grendler caves and see what items they had in their possession, to locate whatever other ZED units might be roaming the planet searching for penal colonists to interrogate and kill, and they could find and locate other people abandoned here on this continent by the Council over the years. They could throw away the maps provided by the Council and make their own reliable maps that were accurate to how many stones were on the ground next her feet.
Devon looked around for Yale and saw him seated at the rear of the crowd around the cargo pod. He was keeping the children back, away from the satellite and away from most of the conversation. She remembered he had decided to resume their lessons today.
Magus snapped the power cord into the unit's charger and stood back.
Danziger did the same. "Lauren, why don't you check out the programs? Let's see how good the agricultural cover program is. We might be able to use it. Especially if Diane finds some plants and seeds to grow."
"Okay. Bess, could you find a monitor screen we can attach to it?"
Devon wished they could just ignore the thing as a useless, overly efficient device for their purposes, but she knew she wouldn't be able to get them to do it. Their curiosity was piqued and she knew John wouldn't let it go until he knew more than he did now.
"Well, okay," she said aloud. "Let's get back to work and let Magus and Bess take care of this."
She made her way through the disbursing crowd and walked up to Yale. She motioned with her head to indicate what took place. "Did you hear?"
Nodding, Yale rose and led her a small distance from the children, first instructing them to finish what they were doing. He and Devon spoke in hushed voices.
"I've never heard of those things, Yale. What are sonde satellites?"
"Military ordinance. I'm not surprised you haven't. They are basically what Danziger and Magus told you – very powerful devices used to spy on the people of Earth from high in the sky. Invisible to detection devices and heavily scrambled, they were the main reason the stations were able to control the planet side population. Devon, the Council discovered the agendas of the radical biologists, such as Mary's parents, through manual labor, through operatives infiltrating Earth societies. The age-old method of spying on others. But the earth is a big planet and the Green Zones were getting larger, and more of them were being created as the Earth healed herself. The Council needed a way to keep an eye on large areas of the planet. Sonde ballons and the satellites were being used in my day, and long before that."
"Balloons?"
"Audio communication only," he recited. "Not actual balloons, but small round units one released high into the air to relay encrypted messages between military units in the field. Also undetectable, the ballons could send messages to one another across a continent with little delay or interference – and virtually no chance of being traced, nor the source found. Small enough to carry in a shoulder pack." He cupped his hands together eight inches apart. "They were about this size."
Devon nodded slowly and drew in a deep breath. "Do you ever have the slightest suspicion the commander knew more than he was telling us?"
Yale shook his head. "No," he said emphatically. "I don't think he knew about the Council's use of this planet for human experimentation. He was too surprised to find Gaal among us. He was not expecting to see another human being on G889 who was not from our group."
At that moment Lauren Magus' voice called loudly through the air and over the gear units at once.
"John! Devon! Get over here! I have a signal!"
Devon whirled around and then turned her head back to Yale. "A signal?" she asked him.
Yale pointed a finger at the children. "Do not move from that spot!" he commanded and followed Devon toward the front of the pod.
Magus and Bess Martin had the screen hooked to a video monitor and excitedly said that as soon as they turned on the monitor screen a simulation had appeared.
"What kind of signal?" Baines asked as he ran to see for himself.
"I think it's from a sonde ballon."
Danziger reach the set up. "What the hell are you talking about?" he demanded and moved in close to see the monitor.
"Look for yourself," the woman said. "That's a signal from something seven kilometers straight up in the air above us! Audio only. It must be a sonde ballon."
"Can you unscramble the message?" Danziger asked.
"I'm trying! Give me a few seconds."
The murmur of voices behind her asked the same question: Do you think it might be Eve?
Julia stood nervously watching Magus fiddle with the satellite's small control panel. It can't be Reilly, she told herself. Not when we're so close to the end. Still, another part of her knew it would be a typical Council tactic to disrupt the Eden Advance team just short of their goal. Eve/Reilly had almost a year to formulate plans and study the group's progress, after all. Then, Magus found the right program and the monitor screen changed to show a simple schematic representation of the source of the signal and the satellite's location on the ground directly beneath it. A steady stream of arced lines accompanied by a steady beeping sound flowed downward from the source to the satellite.
"This is getting better and better," Lauren said and looked at Devon. "It's a ballon, alright, but you're not going to believe this. It's trying to relay another signal to us."
"How the hell did a sonde ballon get up there in the first place, is what I want to know," Danziger said darkly, and voiced Julia's worst fear. "Could the Council, could Eve have had one following us all this time?"
Julia was grateful that he didn't turn to look at her, instead speaking the words to no one in particular. She waited for whatever came next, but she certainly wasn't expecting what did .
Devon suddenly gave a nervous laugh and put her hands on the edge of the crate and leaned forward for a few moments. When she raised her head she was smiling a little. "I think I know how it got there," she said, and turned around. "Uly! True! Come over here, please!"
The children, watching the adults with rapt attention from their spot out of the way, stared back at her with wide-eyed alarm.
"Uly! True!" she repeated.
The two looked at one another and rose slowly from the ground and walked forward.
"This morning after breakfast," Devon began, "I saw the two of you playing with a ball, a round object about this big," she gestured with her hands. "Where is it now?"
The children stared at her and a dawning realization of guilt crossed their faces.
"Do you still have it?" she asked.
True shook her head. "No."
"Where is it?"
"We thought it was a holo-projector," Uly said.
"Do you still have it?" she asked again.
The boy shook his head. "No."
" Where is it? "
"It flew away."
"We thought it was a holo-projector," True said, "but when we turned it on, it flew away."
Yale stepped forward and raised a hand placatingly before either parent could regain their composure and reprimand the children. "I'll take care of this. You find out what is going on here." He grabbed the two kids by their shoulders and steered them toward the mess tent before either Devon or John could say anything.
"How many times, children," he said as the walked away, "did your parents tell you to stay away from the contents of the pods and not to touch anything without asking permission first? I seem to recall . . ."
Julia felt her entire body relax and she uncrossed her arms to rub her face with her hands. The relief she felt was giddiness in it's intensity. She felt a hand squeeze her arm and she turned her head to see Alonzo smiling at her. He, too, looked enormously relieved.
"Can someone find me a comboard?" Magus was asking. "This control panel is too small for fast work. I need a comboard and a line to attach it to the sat. "
"Yeah," Baines said, and started away. "The pod is full of electronics. There should be a comboard in one of those crates."
Devon watched him go with a heavy feeling settling in her gut. This was it. This is what Eben, the Mother, told her was coming. "I've been listening to every option," she said to herself quietly. "I've kept an open mind."
Danziger's hand came to rest gently on the back of her neck. "What are you muttering about?" he asked quietly.
"Remember the dream of Eben I told you I had? This is what she was warning me about. I'm sure of it."
Danziger gave her a little tap. "So what if it is? At least we aren't dealing with Eve."
"How can you be certain?"
"I can't, but I can believe, and I believe Eve doesn't need a sonde ballon to get in touch with us if she needs to. Whatever this is, it isn't Eve."
Devon still wasn't convinced. "You said yourself, the power cells for the cargo pods will have run down long ago. This can't be a cargo pod signal. What else can it be?"
"The comdish. The ballon is high enough to pick up it's signal over the mountains."
"I'll relax when I know for sure."

True sat at a table in the mess tent and watched Yale out of the corner of her eye. He seemed to be calming down now and not as angry as he was a few minutes ago. He'd had the time to think things over and his anger was gone. Her father did that, too.
Of course, she knew she was still in trouble with him for playing with the thing that looked like a holo-projector without asking permission first, and they would probably have a long talk about it later. He never forgot those things, and she was lucky the signals Magus was looking for were more important than bawling her out right way.
The thing was, she and Uly still had their gear on and they could hear what was going on outside. Yale had forgotten to ask them to remove their units, and hearing the adults talking had given her an idea. Or maybe it was an insight. Yale had explained to her and Uly what insights were, and this was feeling more and more like one.
Taking a deep breath, she put a hand on Uly's arm to get his attention, and looked at their tutor.
"Yale?"
"Yes, True?"
"Remember Uly's dreams about Pegasus? The ones that started at the Disputed Plateau?"
"I remember."
"Um . . . this is the lake Uly dreamed about. This is where Pegasus is. He's on the other side where the trees are thicker on the hills."
Yale raised his eyebrows. "Is that so? How do the two of you know this?" He looked from one child to the other.
Uly turned in his chair to face Yale. "I dreamed about him again after we got here and when I rode him, he took me to the top of the cliffs and we could see our campfire across the lake."
"Could you take us over there, Yale?" True asked quietly. "Before we move on to New Pacifica?"
"Could you, Yale?" Uly joined in. "Pegasus wants us to find him because he's all alone. Julia said he was changed to make him more disell , more doss- more . . ."
"Docile," Yale provided. "Yes, I remember her saying this."
"Uh huh, docile, and he has no one to be his friends, and he wants to come home."
Yale looked at the earnest faces of the two children and saw the concern and hopefulness in their eyes as they waited for his answer.
"Is this what the two of you have been talking and whispering about the last few days?"
Both nodded.
"Do both of you understand that reaching the comdish at New Pacifica is the most important thing to your parents and the group at this time?"
"Pegasus is important, too," Uly said flatly. "We brought him here and we woke him up. He got this far before we did, and he waited for us because he wants to come home."
"Please, Yale?" True asked. "He wants us to find him. If we kept going in the vehicles we would have found him. We have a hoverlift that will fly us over him, now, so we have to go get him. We can't just leave him there!"
Yale raised an eyebrow. "If he is just across the lake, perhaps the next time you dream, you can show him the way to reach us."
Uly shook his head. "I tried. He wanted to show me something and wouldn't come this way."
"Did you ask Pegasus why he didn't want to let you show him the way?"
Uly looked surprised. "He's a horse, Yale. He can't talk!"
The tutor struggled to keep from smiling. "What was it he wanted to show you, Ulysses?"
"He took me to a valley past the three peaks. It was cloudy and smoky and I couldn't see the ground. I just saw caves in the hills before the beeping woke me up."
Yale raised his chin and considered this. Devon had dreamed about a place in the clouds. Could this be what Uly's dream was? The pass through the mountains? Devon had described the area alongside it to be covered in cloud and mist, making it impossible to see the ground.
"Uly. Your mother told me of a dream she had when the Mother showed her the pass we should take to reach the ocean. She said some parts of the pass and the valleys around it were sometimes covered by clouds. Perhaps this is what the Mother was trying to show you, using Pegasus as a guide, such as she used Eben Sinh as your mother's dream guide."
"No!" the boy said emphatically. "Pegasus is there." He pointed in the direction of the lake. "The Terrians helped him get this far and they told him to wait for us. I think he was supposed to show us how to get to the valley. If the beeping and Alonzo and Jake changing watch didn't wake me up, I could have seen more."
Yale raised his eyebrows and leaned forward. "Children, there is a reason why we must go directly to New Pacifica, and it is an important reason."

Outside, Magus had the satellite outfitted to her needs and she was busy entering instructions to it's operating system.
No one had gone back inside the pods to finish investigating the contents. They were all milling around the satellite.
"Okay," she said. "I've got it. The ballon is basically asking ‘what should I do about the signal.'"
"Is it from the com dish?" Devon asked hopefully.
"No," Lauren Magus answered. "It's an automatic signal that repeats itself five times every two hours. The ballon has been in the air since morning and it has picked up four point three five transmissions. All identical."
"From which direction is it coming?"
"I can't tell, but it's close by. No more than eighty kilometers at a guess. This is just a relay device. We'll have to send up the satellite in order to track the transmission. It'll be hours before this one has enough power to stay aloft and self charge."
Feeling overwhelmed by the turn of events all of a sudden, Devon slipped away from the others and sought Yale in the mess tent. The children were seated at a table and dutifully answering questions on a data pad before them. Yale rose and walked toward her as soon as he saw her enter.
"Is something wrong?" he asked her quietly. Even so, the children stopped what they were doing and looked at her, too, listening.
Devon nodded. "The signal the ballon found repeats five times every two hours from a location within eighty kilometers from here."
"It would be a distress call or a request for aid, a military protocol."
She rubbed her hands over her upper arms. "I can feel it, Yale. This is what Eben meant when she came to warn me in my dream."
"Devon, you have made hard choices before and survived the consequences."
"But, I never had as much to lose as I do now!"
"It's very simple, Devon. Be sure that you don't."
"Mom?" Uly's voice made them both jump. He had come to join them and his eyes were wide with excitement.
"I think you're supposed to be studying, Uly," Devon said.
"Mom, I know where the signal is coming from!" he said.
She stared at him for several seconds, the knot in her stomach becoming tighter and tighter until she drew in a sharp breath to calm herself. She tried to smile. "How did you come to that conclusion? We've only been aware of the signal for a few minutes."
"I know! But I know where it's coming from, Mom. Remember the dream I told you about when Pegasus took me to a valley in the mountains and the clouds and a beeping noise woke me up before I could see what was in the valley? I know how to get there! That must be what the beeping was! I thought it was Alonzo and Jake, but it wasn't. Pegasus showed me the way to the signal before we even heard it!"
"Ulysses," Yale said. "I have explained why it is not possible to look for the horse now. We must reach the com dish at New Pacifica to communicate with the colony ship as soon as we can."
"Mom, if we don't find Pegasus and bring him here, he'll die. He's been waiting for us." Uly looked her in the eye with a pleading expression. "Trust me, Mom. I know it's the same place."
Trust your son, Eben/the Mother had said.
It took only a moment for Devon to decide. She reached up and pulled her gear mouthpiece into place. "Danziger? Is everyone still together? Good. There's something we need to talk about, and it concerns the whole group."

Richard

“Tell me again why we’re doing this, Bess,” Morgan Martin said, making his plea known in his expression as well as his voice.
He was sitting on the side of their cot and slumped forward, looking down at his nervously moving fingers.
Bess paused in preparing a pack of essential equipment and straightened her stance. She turned to her husband and raised one hand to her hip. “Do we have to go through this again, sweetie? We’ve already been over this at least a dozen times, and the pluses are always going to outweigh the minuses, at least as far as Devon is concerned.”
He glanced up at her out of the corner of his eye, quickly looking down again when he saw the expression on her face, the one it was no use arguing against. “Oh . . .” he said, “well, I guess not.”
“Morgan, we’ll be alright. Walman and Magus are very capable people and Zero will be with us in case we find a dangerous situation. We aren’t going to be alone with True and Uly. Besides, if we find Pegasus right away, we’ll be back tomorrow.”
Morgan shrugged one shoulder and looked away from his hands toward the tent flap which was open to the cold wind blowing in the early spring morning air. The sounds of voices were muffled by distance and the tent material.
His own plan to slow down the colony ship was, at least, fraught with less danger than going into an unknown situation marked by a distress beacon. It might be other survivors from the Eden Project and it might not. He’d rather be flying back to the Bennett/Anson ship than across the lake.
Let her believe responsibility for the children was what was making him so nervous. In reality it was the possibility of finding the other known survivors of the Advance expedition that frightened him. Were they still alive? Would they be dead? If they were dead how did it happen? Was it something contagious like the virus the group encountered before? Were they walking into a death trap by looking for the source of the signal beacon?
“Morgan?” Bess said softly. “Will you take these outside to the hoverlift? I’ll pack a bag for you.”
Feeling just slightly embarrassed, he got to his feet and grabbed the bags and hefted them waist high. He didn’t look at her as he muttered a thank-you under his breath and ducked through the tent flaps.
She was well aware of what was likely going through her husband’s mind. He made no secret of his fear there might be another “plague” waiting for them - if indeed the other survivors were there. He would be much happier if Julia or Yale was going to be a part of this side trip.
Bess wasn’t worried, though. The other EA survivors had medical equipment with them and they had taken the time to learn how to use it before they left their crash site to find New Pacifica. Plus, and it was big plus, they had a good leader. Warrant Officer Navarro sounded like good, sensible people, and both Danziger and Solace had confidence she could take care of her group. Bess finished Morgan’s bag and looked around their tent. It was true that if all went as planned, they would be back in a day or so, depending on what they found. The horse, Pegasus, was their objective, but the source of the SOS signal might turn out to be more important.
Of course, by then this camp might be packed up and gone. Those who stayed behind today would still be on the move for New Pacifica, and whether the Pegasus team was back or not, they were going to leave for the coast as soon as they were ready.
If there was anything Bess did fear, even a little, it was taking the children with them. If it was just the horse they were going looking for, fine. But since picking up the signal in the same area as Uly’s dreams placed Pegasus, the short expedition became more complicated. Still, she didn’t have the heart to argue against Uly and True coming along. She’d left that to Morgan and he had done a pretty good job of laying out the minuses. Devon had other thoughts, though, and Bess was inclined to let her make the final decision for better or for worse.
Bess ducked under the tent flap and walked away from her collapsible home.

True and Uly were already in the hoverlift, crowded behind the piloting seats and watching Alonzo take Walman through the craft’s warm-up list again. If they had to watch the men go through this one more time, True was sure she would be able to fly the craft herself if she had to. Movement outside the cockpit windows caught her attention.
She said, “The Martins are coming.”
She turned and went back into the cargo area. She leaned against the stall built from the box frames that once held the hoverlift. If they were lucky, they would be bringing Pegasus home in it.
No thanks to Morgan Martin, and she wanted to give him another dirty look for all the arguing he’d done to try to make Devon agree to leave her and Uly behind..
She stood there and watched him lift the bags he carried into the cargo area before he climbed inside. True was glaring at him as unpleasantly as she could but he never looked up, just squatted and turned to watch as Bess neared. He took the bag she carried and stood to help her climb inside the ‘lift.
Bess saw True and smiled. “Here we are All set to go?” she asked and came toward her. Of course, she knew the children had been ready to go since the idea was first brought forth to the group two evenings ago.
True nodded. “We’re just waiting for you.” She gestured toward the cockpit. “I think Alonzo is trying to confuse Walman so he can fly us over instead.”
“I heard that ” Solace said and began to climb out of the co-pilot’s seat. “Won’t say it didn’t enter my mind, but your dad and I have to go back for the stuff we left at the Disputed Plateau. If everything goes right, we should all get back here at the same time.” He looked at Morgan. “And you and I can head for the Bennett ship while the others go for New Pacifica.”
“Okay,” Bess said. “True, Uly, go say good-bye to your parents and we can be in the air and on our way.”
Uly frowned. “I did already I’m supposed to sit with Walman and look for landmarks ” He watched True roll her eyes at him and ease past the Martins and go to the open doors.
“You will,” Bess said sternly, “after you say good-bye to your mother.” She pointed a thumb over her shoulder. “Go.”
“I did already,” he muttered and walked away with heavy steps. How many times was he going to have to do it?

Danziger watched the craft fly away, getting smaller and smaller as it crossed the lake. To one side of him Devon did the same, and on the other side, Alonzo watched with an unreadable expression on his face. Not many of the group knew of his connection to one of the people who might or might not be at the source of the beacon, but Danziger did, and he knew what Alonzo was giving up to remain behind and do a job that would have him fly in another direction.
“You okay?” he asked him.
Solace shrugged, not taking his eyes from the ‘lift. “I’m good with it. You ready to go?” He turned and walked toward the other lift.
Devon watched him go. “Is there something wrong with Alonzo?”
Danziger shrugged. “Well, Britt. You know.”
“Britt?” she asked. “Are you talking about Britt Navarro? The warrant officer on the Advance flight?”
He saw the puzzled expression on her face and suddenly realized she didn’t know. He opened his mouth to speak and hesitated. She had been in cold sleep when some of the group members found out about Alonzo and his past relationship with the EA’s warrant officer, Britt Navarro. It had become old news by the time Julia had been able to retrieve Devon from cold sleep and help her rejoin the group. By then it was something Alonzo had come to terms with and those who knew the facts gave him his privacy on the matter.
Danziger extended his hand. “That’s a long story and it isn’t mine to tell.”
She hesitated and looked at him with a shrewd expression. “You do realize that was exactly the wrong answer to give to my question?”
He stopped in mid gesture and looked puzzled. “What’s that mean?” he asked, his voice dropping to a cautious tone.
“Never mind. I know you like to do it deliberately.” She began to walk away.
“Do what? I’m just telling you the facts. Ain’t my fault Alonzo has issues he doesn’t want to talk about.”
“Stop!” she said and stopped walking but didn’t turn to look at Danziger. “You’re doing it again.”
“Doing what? ”

There were no aft view ports on the hoverlift and the cargo doors were solid, so there was no looking back once the craft was in the air and Walman pointed its nose toward the open expanse of the lake. From high in the air the great distance across became more apparent. This wasn’t going to be a quick hop across and back. It would take a while to get to the opposite shore.
Uly was securely seated in the co-pilot’s chair, leaning as far forward as the security harness would let him. He watched the water begin to slip away beneath the craft as they picked up speed and then turned his attention to the far shore. He couldn’t stop smiling.
True stood behind the co-pilot’s seat, looking ahead with great anticipation. It didn’t matter what they found at the source of the signal they’d detected- oh, she was hoping to find more survivors and not more graves- she was looking forward most to bringing Pegasus home.
Morgan stayed away from the cockpit. He sat on the floor and leaned back against the pen made for the horse. His wife was standing in the hatchway, her hand on True’s shoulder, and Magus beside her. They were both looking forward toward their destination.
But New Pacifica was just over the mountains. Why weren’t they going there? Why did they have to go to the signal first? What if they found another mass of dead bodies and a new plague that stopped them dead in their tracks just a short distance away from the com dish? How bad would it be to just go to the ocean and then come back to investigate the signal later?
He gave a sigh and put his head in his hands. I don’t want to die Not when I’m this close to the end I don’t want the stations to find out I came this close and still failed
The ship jolted and yawed alarmingly before settling into a straight flight again.
“Oh ” Bess and Magus exclaimed together and they both laughed as they stumbled a bit and grabbed for the edges of the doorway.
“What the hell was that? ” Morgan yelled from the floor. He had whirled around and grabbed the bars of the pen.
“Turbulence,” said Walman’s voice inside the cockpit. “Not that bad, actually.”
He shook his head. “Someone shot at us, Bess I told you it was a mistake to look for the signal It’s a trap ”
Bess turned around and came over to kneel before her husband. “It’s okay, sweetie. It happens when you fly through atmosphere in a small craft without the sophisticated stabilizers they have on ground-to-space craft. Updrafts and downdrafts can shake the ship a little.”
“Updrafts? Down- What a little? ”
“It’s just the air, Morgan. We’re over open water and high in the air. There are no windbreaks- trees, hills- up here. We just flew through a downdraft. We’re okay.”
True, gripping the back of the co-pilot’s chair so hard her arms were beginning to shake, listened to Bess calming Morgan, and was grateful all of a sudden to have Bess on the excursion with them. Bess was a lot smarter than she liked to let on, True had decided long ago. She’s probably talking so loud so all of us could hear her in case we’re scared , too.
Looking up at Magus, True smiled a little. “Whew ” she said quietly. “I thought falling to the ground in the escape pod was scary, but it’s scarier when you’re closer to the ground and can see it moving.”
Magus smiled back and raised her eyebrows a little.
Walman looked around at them and laughed. “Are you two criticizing my flying?” he asked.

After a few minutes, Bess got to her feet and returned to her place in the cockpit doorway. Morgan pressed his back right up against the wooden frame and sat there stiffly until his back got tired and he slumped forward. He pulled a packed bag closer to him and leaned sideways onto it. After a time, he settled more comfortably against it and listened to the others pointing out landmarks ahead of them.
He wished he had tried harder to talk Devon into letting Alonzo take him back to the Venus class ship immediately. He was afraid of what they were going to find on the other side of the lake, and he would just rather go back to the older ship where he knew what was waiting than try to find the damned horse and the source of the signal they had detected.
Bess looked behind herself once, but kept her attention on the flight plan ahead. The far shore didn’t seem to be getting closer no matter how fast the rippled surface of the lake sped past below them.
When the far shore finally seemed to be getting closer, Uly squinted his eyes and his finger shot forward to point out the window.
“Go over there!” he said. “Where those trees are by the big rocks.” He turned his head, looking for True. “That’s from my dream! That’s where Pegasus always is when I dream about him.”
True stood on tiptoe to see over his head better.
The trees along the bank were large, tall enough to be seen over the high banks of the lake. Sections of the bank had collapsed into the water, forming narrow shelves like the one beside which the group made their camp. More vegetation, trees and grasses were growing on this side of the bank, though, and a path had been worn through from the higher ground to the shelf and right to the lapping water of the lake.
Walman slowly banked the hoverlift toward the place Uly was indicating and the craft tilted a little. Bess, True and Magus looked behind them in unison. Morgan was asleep, leaning on one of the packs on the floor.

Almost as if on cue, there was movement on the narrow shelf. A small dark colored dot was moving swiftly from one end of the shelf to the other, moving nearer to the side the ‘lift would approach.
“Is that him!?” True said excitedly.
Uly was grinning and feeling too happy to want to answer. It had to be. This was always where Pegasus met him in his dreams. He would climb onto the horse and they would gallop up the slope of the bank and turn to look back. The surface of the water, though below them, would always be higher than the ground on which the trees grew. They would race down the other side and gallop to the trees where the horse found shelter.
This was the lake high in the air in his dreams.
Pegasus was standing straight and strong, head high and ears forward watching the hoverlift coming toward him.
The craft drew close to the shore but before Walman could reduce speed and prepare to land, the horse moved.
He turned away and ran toward the path, going up the slope with ease. He disappeared over the top edge.
“What’s he doing?” True cried. “He’s running away! Uly! He’s running away!”
“The hoverlift is an unusual sight,” Bess told her, grasping her shoulder and squeezing gently. “We might have just startled him, honey.”
Uly, feeling panic for a moment, was speechless. His mind worked frantically for a reason for this turn of events.
Walman eased back on the controls as they arrived above the earthen shelf.
“Wait!” the boy said, an idea coming to him suddenly. “Don’t land yet, Walman. Follow Pegasus.” He drew in a deep breath. “I don’t think we scared him. I think he wants us to follow him.”
Walman looked over his shoulder at Magus and Bess. They both gave him “why not?” looks.
Raising the ‘lift high enough to see the other side of the bank, it took a moment before they found the moving figure of the horse as it ran already quite a distant to the east of the broken area of the bank. Walman cut the speed of the craft and turned it to follow the horse.
Uly looked at Walman with a big smile on his young face. “He’s taking us to the signal,” he said confidently. “We did this in one of my dreams. I rode on his back and it was like we were flying, but we weren’t. I was. Just like now.”
Below them, Pegasus covered distance with surprising speed. He ran easily, following what looked like a well worn trail through the grass and tree covered hills that stretched away from the lake.
He reached an open area of ground and turned gracefully to the south, southwest. Following Pegasus’ turn with his eyes, Walman looked ahead and saw the horse was heading toward a wide pass through the hills. He pointed ahead, into the valley beyond the pass, where the hills began to grow larger and wilder, more densely covered with trees and vegetation. “Look there,” he said, swinging the 'lift slowly to bear.
The others had already seen what caught his attention. Sunlight was reflecting brightly from a shiny surface, several shiny surfaces. “Morgan!” Bess called, loudly, sharply, looking back at her husband. “Wake up, honey! Come and look. Hurry!”

Beverly (At long last!)

For True, the people staring up in awe from the garden were not strangers. She knew every one of them as well as she knew the people currently with her. Nothing could have held her back once the craft touched down and the loading door was moved to the side and fully opened. She rushed past Magus and Morgan and jumped to the ground.

"Britt!" she called and ran toward the garden. "Britt!"

Morgan could hardly believe it. He snatched at the girl's jacket but barely touched her fast moving shoulder with his fingertips before she was gone. "What are you doing!" he hollered after her. He looked helplessly at Bess. "She can't do that! What if something happens to her? Danziger will kill us! Us!"

Bess looked appropriately worried but she followed the little girl out of the hoverlift. "I'll go get her," she said. "Be right back."

"Be-ess!"

Walman followed her and Uly jumped out, too.

"They're all going to be killed and I'll be all that's left to persecute for it!"

Magus laughed. "Relax, Morgan. I'm staying to guard the lift, even though I'd rather be out there. I know those people. We all trained together for this mission. If you hadn't been so stuck-up back then, you might know them, too."

Morgan gave her an astonished look. "I was never stu-…stand-offish to any of you during the preparation! I- I -I was right there supervising as the ship was being loaded for the flight."

"I didn't say the preparation. I said training. You and Bess trained privately, with your own instructors."

"It was the Council who arranged that!"

"You could have said no. I'll bet Bess wanted to."

Morgan looked away. He said quickly, as if it was all one word, "We agreed it was best not to upset the Council."

Magus laughed. "I'll bet you did."

Britt Navarro was rolling a barrel of water toward the garden where most of her companions were at work in the cool hours of the morning. They'd started early. After midday the sun became too hot and work indoors was done then. It was a routine they developed a year ago when their first garden, started late in the year because the crash occurred during the hot month- summer they thought it was called on old Earth- provided them with just enough food for the cold months. They tried to name the seasons but it was difficult when they remembered only "summer" and "winter" from occasional school lessons when they were young. What little they knew about gardening came from the experiences of one of their crew who'd worked in a hydroponics lab as a teenager. Even so, they made do and now it was a year later.

They all heard the sound of horse hooves at the same time but they were so used to the comings and goings of the big, dark animal only a couple of the workers looked up. It was Weigman who spotted the large craft approaching over the trees and shouted,"Intruder!"

"What?!" came the response from several people who looked at him in astonishment. No one could ever call the horse an intruder. He saved their lives.

"Get to the ship!" Weigman cried and dropped his weeding tool before he started running toward the lander. They all looked toward the horse, who was now coming to a stop nearby and turning back to look the way he came.

"My god!" Britt Navarro said. Others either stopped and stared with her, but a few ran for the safety of the ship. "It's a hoverlift!" she said mostly to herself as the dark mass in the sky came closer and then she turned and looked at the others who were still gaping skyward with her. She shouted, "It's a hoverlift! From the Stations!" She shaded her eyes against the bright sunlight. "It's a K series," Navarro continued. "Eight, three, double nine, T… I know that number! That's one of ours! It's an Eden Advance aircraft!"

She started waving and laughing and running toward an empty spot across the large clearing where they lived, to an area where she and the others had cleared rocks and small trees in hopes of expanding their garden.

The craft circled above them, the pilot obviously looking for a place to land as well as to give them a good look at the hoverlift. When Navarro began waving toward the clearing and running in that direction, the craft banked after her and overtook her, turning in the air and beginning it's descent. The cockpit windows faced the downed lander and the port cargo bay doors faced the garden.

Seconds after the hoverlift touched ground the bay opened to reveal several people inside the darkened interior, and the big horse trotted over to examine the flying machine as if he wanted reassurance it was real. Navarro slowed to a jog and heard other footsteps behind her, and then a small figure leapt from the aircraft and her name was joyously yelled into the still, morning air.

"Britt!"

The slender little figure in a white hat and suspendered shorts ran across the grassy clearing calling to her. "Britt!"

From behind her came shouts from the other survivors.

"Hey, isn't that the chief's kid?"

"They made it!"

"The escape pods made it down safe!"

"There are other survivors!"

"It is! It's Danziger's kid!"

Navarro started running again. "True! True Danziger! Oh god! Is that you?" Then she started laughing as the little girl ran into her, locking her in a strong embrace and they both stumbled but stayed upright. "You made it, little one! Your dad? Is he alright? Who else is with you?" She hugged True as hard as she could.

A man and a woman and a small boy were coming from the hoverlift now.

Behind her Holden, Gower and Vergos and the others came up and stopped.

"God help us!" Gower said with a laugh. "Walman! Is that you?!"

True was pulling away from Navarro now but she grabbed onto her hand and turned to pull her toward the others from the craft. "Come on Britt. You know Walman." She stood aside and grinned as Walman greeted his old friends and co-workers with many hugs and handshakes.

True grabbed Britt's hand again. "This is Bess Martin and this is Uly. Ulysses Adair. You remember him, don't you?" She grinned at Uly.

Navarro shook Bess's outstretched hand. She recognized her. "Mrs. Martin. You're the liaison's wife, aren't you?"

True raised her eyebrows and stifled a laugh. It seemed funny to hear Bess called "Mrs. Martin, the liaison's wife."

"Well, yes I am, but just call me Bess. My husband is still onboard. He'll join us soon."

Navarro looked at Uly as if not quite able to place him. She was the ship's warrant officer and even after a year's time, she remembered every piece of cargo, personal item and anything else that was put aboard the Eden Advance ship right down to how many eating utensils there were. She even knew all of the passengers, too, and this boy couldn't be the little Adair boy!

"You're Ms. Adair's son?" she asked, leaning down to offer her hand.

"Yes, ma'am," Uly answered and gripped her hand firmly. "I remember you. You checked us in when we came aboard before launch. You gave Yale some data cards about the ship, but he never got the chance to load them into his arm and he left them on board when the ship crashed."

"Well, what happened to you?" Britt asked. "I know I'm being rude, but you could barely move on your own the last time I saw you."

"The planet cured me. The Terrians helped me."

"The Terrians? Who are they?" She looked quizzical. "That's a story I'd like to hear!" She turned back to True. "Who is that in the hoverlift?"

"Morgan Martin and Magus. She's supposed to be guarding the lift in case you were convicts who might try to steal it from us."

Navarro laughed and waved. "We'll see about that." She ran toward the aircraft. "Hey! Magus! What are you doing hiding in there?!" behind her she heard others repeating the name "Magus" and footsteps soon followed hers.

True found she couldn't stop smiling as she greeted other old friends from the ship's crew, people her father knew and worked with many times before on other projects and other flights. She saw Uly getting an unusual amount of interest by curious people who'd never see him without an immuno-suit before so she walked over and put a hand on his shoulder. "Sorry to interrupt, but Uly has to see Pegasus and thank him for leading us to you." She grabbed his arm. "Come on, Uly, he's over here." She pointed at the horse who was close to the lander now and rubbing his side against a tree trunk.

"Pegasus?" someone said.

"The horse is Pegasus?" Someone else.

"Is he yours?"

Laughter. "We've been calling him Lucky because it was lucky we found him."

“Or he found us!”

"He saved our lives."

Uly beamed at them. "Lucky is a good name, too." He turned and ran toward the horse.

True hung back and listened to the jumble of voices. Lewis put his hand on True's cheek and gave it a pinch. "Hey, little one. So the chief is alive? Everyone made it out?"

The girl stopped smiling and looked sad. "The second cargo pod was overloaded and when it landed some of the people stayed with it and some started walking west. The ones who stayed got sick and died. The ones who left might still be alive, maybe. We don't know but I heard my dad say there were about twelve who started walking, and eight who died." She looked at Britt and said quietly. "Wentworth and Firestein were two of those who died."

Everyone fell silent and Britt put her arms around True. "I'm sorry to hear that, honey. I know you were close to Alex and Les."

True nodded and returned the hug and then was still a moment. She let go of Britt and stepped away to lift her gear off her head and hold it out to Navarro. "Here," she said. "My dad wants to talk to you."

Navarro smiled brightly and took the unit. She looked at it a moment, as if to remember how to use it, or even what it was, then put it on and blinked rapidly to get used to the optics in front of her eyes. "Chief! You have no idea how good it is to see you!"

True took the opportunity to rush over to where Uly and Pegasus were standing in the shade of a tall tree. "How is he?" she asked. "As good as in your dreams?"

"He's perfect. Did you hear what they said?" Uly asked excitedly. "They said he saved their lives! You know what? The Terrians told him what to do to help them because even horses sleep and dream, you know. That's how he knows so much."

True laid a hand on the horse's head and he took a step closer to nuzzle her head gently, making her laugh at the sudden tickle on the side of her neck. "You know, Uly, I was sorry that Pegasus ran away when I tried to give him to Gaal, but now I think that was supposed to happen. The Terrians, and... whatever it is that they call the Mother, wanted that to happen so Pegasus could come here and help these people live." She looked at him out of the corner of her eye.

He was nodding slowly. "Yeah. I think you're right. I'll bet he came here and showed them what was safe to eat and how to get water. The lake is too far away for them to be carrying it without help. I guess he really did save their lives!"

True made a sympathetic face, kind of squinting her eyes as if in pain. "It means we can't take him back, doesn't it, Uly? I mean, what if some of the others are still walking? He could go find them and tell you where they are and we can rescue them now that we have hoverlifts. Maybe the lander can be fixed, too."

Uly looked horrified for a moment, but as he listened to her and thought it over, his expression saddened. He let out a quiet sigh. "Yeah. Yeah, that's right. He's a free horse. He has the whole planet to explore. He can find other people who need our help, warn us about bad people, and he can find our missing people if they're still alive. He has a job, doesn't he?" His voice cracked with a sob and he leaned against the horse's side and laid his cheek against him, softly petting him with his hand.

"He wouldn't be happy penned up, Uly." True put hand on his shoulder gently. "He came all the way across the land faster than we did! I'll bet he knows more about it than we do. I'll bet he can get to New Pacifica before we do!"

He wept softly as he talked. "We'll find the other cargo pods and we'll find another horse, too, won't we, True? My mom said we brought others! We brought a dozen embryos of a lot of animals that would be helpful to us, so there are others still out there waiting to be found."

"Don't cry, Uly, remember Julia has four more embryos in that case Gaal gave us," True said, tears streaking her face. "And Pegasus will come to see us, I know he will, and he isn't going to be alone while he travels. You dreamed the Terrians helped him, so he'll have them if he needs help, always. And he can always visit you on the dream plane to show you things."

Uly nodded, brightening a little as he remembered the case in which they'd found Pegasus and the other pony who'd died. "Yeah."

Bess approached slowly, looking at the weeping children as they stood wiping at their faces. "True? Uly? What's the matter, guys?" She dropped to her knees and put her arms around each of them, though both were getting a bit tall for this gesture now. "Is something wrong with Pegasus? Should we call Julia?"

Uly shook his head. "No. He's perfect. We just decided not to take him back with us. We aren't going to put him in a pen anywhere."

Understanding dawned on her face. "Ohhhh," she said in a long breath and smiled at them with as much pride as Devon or John could have shown them. "I am really impressed with you making that decision on your own. It's a very mature thing to do. I know how excited you both were at the chance to have Pegasus back home with us." She stood. "Tell you what. Let me ask Navarro if they have a rope for Pegasus, and then I'll give you both a lift up and you can go for a ride on him. Your mom and dad are coming with Julia and Alonzo in the other hoverlift. You can ride him before they get here." She smiled. "I'll let you tell them what you've decided to do. Be right back."

As she turned away, Bess realized she'd said the same thing to her husband when she got off the 'lift. Waving to him to join her, she went quickly to talk to Navarro.

"You'll let us take a ride, won't you, boy?" Uly asked, rubbing the horse's head gently. "Maybe you can show us the hill in my dream where we looked over the water from way on up."

Bess returned with one of the others, Holden, who applied the hand made bit to Pegasus and helped lift the kids onto the horse's back.

"Take care of them, Lucky. Or Pegasus," Holden said. "Just go for a short ride." He looked up at the children. "When we landed here, we missed the water but we're over three kilometers away from it and lugging water all that way back was so hard, we nearly died of exhaustion because we were weak from no food, too.” He unraveled the rope and handed it up to Uly. “First, the stealers came right after we landed and tried to take away parts of the ship. We barely had the strength to fight them off. No one was answering our distress calls and on the third day the ground people appeared and we didn't know what they were, friends or enemies, so we decided to stay inside the lander. The lander had only a little food for emergencies and we used it up fast. So we had no food to keep us strong enough to make the long walk to the lake to get more water. We were starving and dehydrated and ready to give up. One day we heard a noise, like boom-boom, boom-boom, boom-boom getting closer and closer. We looked outside and the ground people were across the clearing there," he pointed, "looking at us. Then around those trees over there came this big guy as pretty as a picture. He ran right up to the ground people, then he came to the lander and poked his head inside and looked at us like he was saying, 'What the heck are you doing hiding in there?' He showed us the ground people were friendly. They showed us plants to eat and we built a sled to haul water. He pulled it back and forth from the lake until we filled every container we could find to hold water. Lucky--- Pegasus saved us. He took us exploring all around the valleys here and we found fruit trees and other plants we could eat. We're still alive thanks to him."
Uly smiled. "The ground people call themselves Terrians, and I think the stealers are probably Grendlers. Alonzo, I mean Mr. Solace and I can talk to the Terrians."

Holden raised his eyebrows. This seemed to go beyond his limit of understanding. "Mr. Solace-- you mean the pilot? The ship's pilot? He can talk to them? You can talk to them?"

"Yes. When we're all together we have a lot of stories to tell each other, Mr. Holden."

Bess handed the rope ends up to True. "Take a short ride. The others will be here soon."

True nodded. "Okay, Pegasus. Let's go!"

The horse trotted off slowly, taking the route in which it came, disappearing quickly down the valley pathway he'd made to and from the inland lake. "They're safe," Holden reassured Bess. "In all the time he's been coming to us, Lucky has never hurt anyone, and we've ridden him all over looking for food and game."

Bess nodded. "I know. He was genetically engineered to be gentle. There was a second horse, a female, who died. Maybe when we reach New Pacifica we'll be able to awaken another and give Pegasus companions."

Holden's eyes lit up at the thought. "A herd of horses, other animals. Maybe it won't be so bad being shipwrecked here." He grinned. "I'm from the lunar colonies. We had herds of animals there. It'll be a good thing."

"The lunar colonies?" Bess said and a sad expression came over her face. "There was a young woman onboard the third cargo pod--"

"Sinh?" he said with a smile. "Eben Sinh? She's here?"

Bess shook her head. "She did survive the initial crash landing, but she died a year ago of an illness that almost devastated the whole group."
He looked shocked. "Oh… That's too bad. I knew her from the colonies. I'm sorry to hear that." He was silent a moment. "You know we got sick about a year ago, a real bad illness that had us all down in various states of lethargy, but it passed all of a sudden one day. We just started feeling better and we all got well pretty quickly."

Bess nodded. "We'll talk about it later. There's a long story to it. Like Uly said, we have a lot of stories to tell one another when we’re all together.

To be continued...

Note: I wish it was longer to make the wait for it worth it, but the truth is I couldn't get any farther along. I wanted it to be more but I couldn't get it on paper. I gave Robby permission to change the names of the survivor's to the ones he listed in his story "9 Weeks" so the stories can be close. I also told him to spruce it up if he had to and I hope he does.
Beverly

Note: It's fine, Bev. I did little to it beyond HTML and adding the names. I like that the children decide to leave Pegasus a "free horse." All I have to add is : The end is near!
Robert

To be continued soon....

Footnote:The vehicles and other items found in the cargo pods were all suggested by members of the now closed ezboard forums who took an active role in helping the three of us authors decide what the long suffering Edenites would find. Morgan's idea to buy some time came from Dave Klein, an ezboard member who will get appropriate credit for this story when it is done. So will the following: Alonzo's background on the stations was suggested by CMKerr, another regular visitor to the forum and huge Alonzo fan. ByssBistro, AKA Jim, a frequent visitor to my "Enterprise" group suggested the sonde spy gear and the rosette formation in an email chat about Star Trek. It was an idea that fit with this plotline, so I went back and rewrote that section of one of my segments to use it in this story.

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