by Merry Farmer
She breathed deeply, the virgin air energizing her more effectively than coffee. Danny could argue with her all he wanted, but this was what it was all about. This was what she’d given everything up for. Now her job began.
Carrie struggled out into the sunshine, Sean leaning heavily on her for support. His tall, muscular body looked like it would overwhelm Carrie, but Grace knew her friend’s strength better than that.
“Carrie, Sean.” She jogged to intercept them. “Did everyone make it out of the cockpit?”
“We’re all alive,” Carrie answered, voice shaking. “I don’t believe it, but we’re all alive.”
“I’m not sure about Peter,” Sean added, less optimistic. “We have several other injuries.” Sean blinked and squinted in the sunlight, his eyes red rimmed and blood trickling out his nose.
“There’s a ridge up there, on the other side of the ship.” Grace assumed command. “We need to take people up there away from the wreck. I don’t trust its stability.”
Sean nodded. “Good idea.” He pulled himself up to his full height and studied the growing activity around the wreck. “We should organize—”
“Come on.” Carrie tried to haul him away, sending Grace a look.
“I should stay and take charge,” Sean argued.
Carrie snorted. “It’s Grace’s job. She’s the emergency management coordinator, not you. She can handle it, looks like your eyes can’t.”
Grace nodded to Carrie and left her to sort out whether Sean was fit to help. She was needed elsewhere.
Danny, Beth and Jonah carried Peter out into the sunlight.
“Hurry, hurry!” Jonah barked. “He’s dying.”
Grace’s pulse shot up again. She lunged toward them.
“I’ll take him.” She moved to take Beth’s place. “Beth, go sit over there until your eyes clear up.”
Without question, Beth nodded and wandered up the slope of the hill where others were gathering, glancing with red-rimmed eyes over her shoulder at Peter.
“Get him to flat ground,” Grace ordered Danny and Jonah.
Jonah nodded and picked up speed, but Danny held him back. “It’s too late,” he said, barely audible.
“It’s not too late,” Jonah shouted.
“His neck is broken.” Danny looked to Grace, his eyes saying everything.
They rushed Peter to a flat patch of moss beneath two swaying trees. He didn’t make a sound, no groan of pain, no shock of breath, as they laid him down.
“Do something!” Jonah shouted, holding the sides of his head.
Danny bent over Peter. He loosened the top buttons of Peter’s shirt and pushed the fabric aside, feeling for a pulse.
“I can’t tell.” He pinched his lips to a tight line.
“You’re the doctor now,” Jonah panted. “Can’t you do CPR or something? Wasn’t that in your fancy training?”
Grace stood, taking Jonah’s arm. She stared in wide-eyed horror as Danny laid his palm over Peter’s heart, shaking his head. “You saw what happened. He couldn’t have survived that kind of trauma.” He pressed his fingers to Peter’s neck. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re not going to do anything?” Jonah shifted, fists balled at his sides. “You’re just going to let him die?”
“He’s already dead,” Danny whispered. He stood and stepped away. “If there was anything I could do—”
Jonah whipped to him. “You goddamn coward,” he roared. “You fucking geneticist. You’re just going to let him die like a lab rat. That’s all we are to you, isn’t it? Fucking lab rats.”
Without waiting for Danny to reply, Jonah dropped to his knees, grabbing the crushed fingers of Peter’s hand. “Pete! Pete, buddy, wake up. Wake up!”
Grace watched the scene with an odd ache in her chest. She hadn’t known Peter that well until after the explosion. He hadn’t deserved to die like this. Danny turned her aside. She sucked in a breath and swallowed.
“He was probably dead as soon as his neck snapped in the crash,” Danny murmured. “It was quick. I would have saved him if I could.”
Grace shook her head. “We can’t afford this. I cared about Peter. He was a good man. Without him….” She swallowed. There would be time to mourn, but not yet. “Thirty-nine was bad enough, thirty-eight is exponentially worse.”
“Worry about the numbers later,” Danny told her. “For now, let’s just focus on surviving.”
She turned her head and met Danny’s eyes. “We landed because we wanted to live, Danny, to build a civilization, not just survive. No one is coming to scoop us up and take us back to Earth or to Terra. This is it.” She nodded at Peter. “We just lost generations of his descendants. We just lost a valued friend.”
Danny put a comforting hand on her arm. “Worry about it later. Deal with the immediate first.”
His steadiness settled her. It always did. She met his eyes and drew her strength from his confidence, from the support he always gave her.
“How bad are people’s injuries?” She made herself focus.
Danny shook his head as they shuffled away to stand on a mossy patch under a tree.
“I haven’t had time to assess the full extent yet. Looks like the restraints on the seats may have been the one thing that worked on that bucket. Loads of bruises and burns. I think most of the people who were in the cockpit or near it are having trouble with their eyes because of the glare during the descent. Lois has a broken leg and Marjorie has a cut on her arm that’ll need stitches of some sort. I suspect there are a few concussions, but that’s it.”
“That’s it?”
“The folks from the cockpit might have lingering vision problems,” Danny finished, “but everything else will heal. We got lucky. Very lucky.” He met her eyes, concern battling with something darker.
“What do we have to treat them with?” she asked.
“I’ll see if I can find the medical kit.”
“One medical kit. That’s the best we can do?”
“It’s better than no medical kit.” Danny squeezed her arm and headed for the wreck.
Grace swallowed and looked around, assessing their situation. The wooded gully had ample trees, grass, small animals of some sort scurrying through the branches. They could use the trees for fuel and shelter, if they could fell them. There was food, if they could catch it. The resources were there, but could they use them? Interstellar emergency ships were not equipped with axes.
She counted her people scattered across the verdant landscape. More than half of them had already made it out of the ship. They limped and walked in a daze across the rut caused by the crash and up the side of the hill. Hushed talking, coughing, and retching joined the breeze and birdsong as her friends and colleagues adjusted to gravity and ground. Humanity had arrived.
She hitched up her skirt and started climbing toward the top of the hill to get a better sense of their surroundings. Six months trapped in the cabin of an emergency ship hadn’t done her muscles any good, but the abundance of authentic air made up for any weakness. Besides, she had climbed steeper hills at home in Pennsylvania. This was—
All thought stopped when she reached the crest. The wide vista that spread before her was awesome in every sense of the word. The hill dipped down into a larger valley and up again to higher, taller hills. Mountains stretched across the horizon beyond them. The forest gave way to open fields, purple and yellow with flowers, in the valley between her hill and the next one.
Far beyond, curling away to the left, she caught a glimpse of a narrow river sparkling through a thinner section of trees. Beyond that, the river was hidden by forest again. In the distance a herd of what could have been deer or some kind of cattle grazed. Birds flew in formation through the air, jumping up out of the leafy trees. Above it all the vast orange orb of the planet Chronis loomed, impossibly large for someone used to seeing only Earth’s moon above them. Its rings formed thick orange and coral rainbows overhead. The sun of this system seemed like an insignificant
blob in comparison.
A thick trail of dark smoke drifted up across several hills, miles away. Grace raised a hand to her eyes and strained to see more. It was too thin to be a major fire but thick enough to hint that the emergency ship following them hadn’t had such a lucky landing.
She scanned the rest of the horizon. But for the faintest wisp of possible smoke somewhere across the river, there was nothing to see but natural beauty. No other sign of mankind. At least a hundred escape ships capable of holding dozens of people or more had fled the Argo. They had been in deep space, between systems, when it happened. None of them had a plan. But surely more than two small vessels had found this haven in the void. Theirs couldn’t have been the only instruments to alert them to the habitable moon.
“Oh my God.” Carrie’s startled voice lifted Grace out of her thoughts as she joined her on the ridge.
“The landscape, Chronis, or the other crash?” Grace asked as she continued to scan for signs of other survivors.
“What?” Carried leaned over and braced herself on her knees as she caught her breath.
Grace let herself smile as she pointed to the column of smoke in the distance. “We’re not alone.”
“Good.” Carrie straightened, continuing to pant. “I hate being alone.”
Grace chuckled. Not once in the time since they had met boarding the colony transport pod had she seen Carrie alone.
“It will take us hours to reach them.” Her mind was already ordering things.
“Who says we have to reach them?” Carrie muttered. “Don’t be reckless, Grace.”
Grace ignored her. “I hope they were as lucky as we were.”
“Are we lucky?” Carrie sent her a sideways look, crossing her arms. She was afraid. She could hide it all she wanted, but Grace knew her better than that.
“We’re alive.” Grace feigned nonchalance for her friend’s sake, sucking in a deep breath of real air. “That’s as lucky as I ever need to be.”
Carrie arched her eyebrow and laughed. “I’ll remember you said that.”
At the sound of scraping footfalls behind them, both women turned to see a disheveled Gil climbing up the hill. They reached out and grabbed his arms, hauling him the rest of the way to the crest.
“Gil, you’re safe,” Grace greeted him as Carrie said, “Where’ve you been?”
“The human body was not supposed to spend six months in a box,” Gil panted. He coughed and grabbed his chest as he leaned against Carrie. “Even a relatively big one. Muscle atrophy could— Whoa, God!”
His jaw dropped open when he saw the view.
“Nice, isn’t it?” Carrie helped him to stand fully on his own.
He ran his hands through his overly long hair and stared. “Nice isn’t the word I would use.” He swallowed, goggling at the sight spread before him. “I’ve never seen a ringed planet from inside the rings before.”
“Leave it to Astrophysicist Gil to notice the planet when nature slaps you in the face.” Carrie shook her head.
Grace was through with sightseeing. “Stop looking at the sky and focus on the vegetation.” He followed her outstretched arm to take in the valley. “Can we eat it?”
“Eat it?” Carrie puffed in disbelief. “Half an hour ago we crashed in the middle of God knows where, and you want to know if we can eat our surroundings?”
Grace shook Carrie’s sarcasm aside. “Danny will treat the wounded. Sean and Dave will probably try to salvage what they can from the wreck. My guess is you and Stacey and half the rest of us will want to explore the area. My job is and always has been coordinating everyone’s efforts. Our food supplies were already starting to dwindle before we made the decision to land, so somebody has to focus on that problem. We need to reach the other emergency ship and bring all of the survivors together. But no matter what we all end up doing, we’re doing it here. The Argo was obliterated. No one is coming for us. Welcome home.”
“Great,” Carrie said. “Love it. Don’t you think you should rest before you tidy the place up for guests?”
“I’m fine.” Grace shrugged and turned to start down the hill. “Don’t go turning into Sean on me.”
Carrie eyed her warily and tromped down the hill after her while Gil continued to gape at the landscape.
The hillside and valley around ES5 was now swarming with people. Grace spotted Danny near the bottom of the hill kneeling beside Lois. He’d found the medical kit and worked splinting her leg. Alvin was now assisting him with treatment. If anything happened to Lois, if any more of them died, they could be in real trouble.
“Help me out, Carrie.” She pushed the emotion aside and focused on the situation at hand. “I think that river we saw from up there crosses below us. We can assume that the ship that was following us crashed across the valley that way. There was some sort of smoke further up on the other side of the river too. It might be a third emergency ship. See if anyone is fit enough to check it out and to bring back water.”
“All right.” Carrie nodded, sending her a brief sidelong glance before jogging off to do as she was told.
Grace continued on down the hill. “Sean,” she called as she drew near to the largest cluster of rocks. Half a dozen of her people sat with their backs against the sizable stones recovering, including Sean and Beth.
“Yeah?”
“How are your eyes?” She lowered her voice to a soft inquiry.
“They’re doing better.” He proved it with a warm smile. “The glare of the hull on the way down was pretty bad, but at least the heat-shielding held up. Dave’s worse off than I am.”
“Is he going to be all right?”
“Yeah, we’ll make it.” He stood to prove his point, stretching his broad shoulders, and finishing by planting his hands on his hips and looking down at her. “How ’bout you?”
“Never better.” She smiled, took a quick breath. “I need you to do something for me. We need to—”
“Hold on.” He stopped her, laying a hand on her arm. She stared at his hand, then met his eyes. “I don’t think I’ve seen you stand still for one second since we landed.”
“Crashed.”
“You need to take a moment and just sit, okay?” He rubbed her arm.
She shrugged away, pulse rising. “It’s not my job to sit. It’s my job to make sure everyone is safe, together, and taken care of. I’ll sit when that’s done. There’s every indication that the ship that was following us crashed across a valley on the other side of the hill that way.” She pivoted to point up the hill where Gil could still be seen standing on the crest. “And I suspect that there is another ship somewhere across the river, although it could be a natural fire, I suppose. What we need to do is—”
“The Project is over, Grace.” She snapped her mouth shut at Sean’s interruption. “This isn’t Terra. You’re not on duty. Give yourself a break. Let someone else—”
“Whether this is Terra or not,” she spoke over him, crossing her arms, “people need help. We need help.”
“Looks like the crisis is over to me.”
“We don’t know where we are, Sean.”
“We’re on the third moon of Chronis in the Ovid system, and—”
“But we do know what we need.” She refused to be bullied. “We need to gather everyone in a single camp. We need food, clothing, and shelter. Or do you not remember day one, lesson one of the Project?”
“Of course I remember, but—”
“Then you also remember that the Argo is the only ship in existence capable of interstellar travel. Correction, was. It’s gone. We’re here. Our new settlement isn’t going to build itself.”
Sean shifted his weight and crossed his arms to match her stance. “Look, all I’m saying is that you’ve done your job, fulfilled your training, and someone more….”
She raised an eyebrow, challenging him to finish the sentence in a way that wouldn’t make her throttle him.
“Someone more experienced should take over.”
“Experienced,” she repeated flatly. “You’re a lawyer, Sean.”
“I’m ex-military.”
“Okay, an ex-military lawyer, then.”
“You’re not the only one who trained for a leadership position.” The familiar light of stubbornness shone in his eyes. “This is my job too.”
“I’m not saying it isn’t.” She inched away, looking around for something more productive to do than argue.
Danny was watching them. When he saw the expression on her face he stood slowly, eyes narrowed behind his glasses. His blank curiosity dropped to a protective frown. He left Lois to head toward them.
Sean dropped his arms and hissed, “Shit. The last thing we need is his interference. He’s not even part of the Project.”
“No he’s not.” Grace pursed her lips. “But like you said, Sean, the Project is over.”
“Is something the matter?” Danny asked in his most soothing, scientific voice. He met and held Sean’s eyes with sharp warning.
Sean was over six feet, fit, and handsome. Danny was barely taller than Grace, over forty, with glasses that hid his startlingly blue eyes, but he carried an air of authority that even Sean sensed.
“No.” Sean shook his head, backing down without a fight.
Grace considered the argument won and moved on. “There’s smoke, presumably from the other ship, across the valley that way.” She pointed up the hill again. “But there’s also some kind of smoke, I think, coming from somewhere on the other side of the river. We need to investigate.”
Danny nodded with a half shrug. “So where do you want to go first? It’s up to you.”
A thick pause filled the air as Grace considered. Sean glanced between her and Danny.
“I want to go up the river,” she decided.
“Shouldn’t you stay here and rest?” Sean said.
Grace ignored him. “Someone else needs to lead an expedition across the valley.”
