“What the hell?” Benny asked, more to himself than anyone.
“We’re in orbit above our city,” David said, pointing at the big wall.
Benny turned and damn near dropped to the floor as his knees got wobbly.
They were in orbit.
Holy shit!
How had he got here?
Or someone had done a pretty good fake show of being in orbit on a huge wall. He wanted to try to believe that, but he knew he couldn’t.
He was in orbit.
He could see that sunrise was working its way across the Atlantic toward the East Coast and there were very few clouds in the sky, meaning it was going to be a hot summer’s day below if what he was seeing was real.
A very large if.
His mind would not accept it.
Could not accept it.
“That’s amazing,” Freddy said, his voice almost a whisper.
“I was right,” David said. “The aliens are here to rescue us.”
“Perfect,” Benny said, staring out that window as more people around them noticed the view as well. “Are we in the frying pan or in the fire?”
“I’m guessing fire,” the professor said.
“We’re lunch,” Freddy said.
“I doubt they have a cookbook,” David said.
Benny had no idea what they were talking about, but it didn’t sound good that they suddenly found themselves in orbit in a ship and the two kids who liked science fiction were talking about aliens eating humans.
The noise and the smell stunned him as the people in the room started to shout and panic a little.
Numbers of people just fainted or dropped to the carpeted floor and sat there, their hands covering their faces.
Benny made himself take a deep breath and actually look around.
Except for the giant wall looking out into space, this room could have been any banquet room in any hotel. High ceilings with off-white paint, overhead lights, carpet on the floor.
Benny pushed back the feeling of panic trying to creep up his throat. He wasn’t sure what there was to panic about, since most of the planet below had already been wiped out.
He honestly wasn’t sure what could be worse, but he had a hunch he was about to find out.
Then one of the doors on one side of the room slid back and a dozen more people strode into the room.
They were far from alien.
In fact, one woman looked directly at him and then nodded and smiled as if she knew him.
He managed to catch his breath.
He was on an alien ship, after the world had ended, and he was having a reaction to some woman who walked into the room.
A real reaction.
A lust reaction.
All of the new arrivals looked as human as he was, only they were all clearly more rested and clean.
The woman wore a white blouse with the sleeves rolled up, jeans, and tennis shoes. She had really short, black hair and skin that contrasted with the black hair. She didn’t seem to be any older than he was.
And she clearly worked out.
Around Benny the room quieted and calmed some as everyone turned to watch the new arrivals.
The woman with the short black hair stood to one side of the stage, clearly concerned as she looked around at everyone. One man jumped up on a low stage. You could have heard the old pin drop in that room, even on the carpeted floor.
The guy looked totally human. He had on a dress shirt, business slacks, and dress shoes. He could have been one of the Wall Street clones on a day off for all Benny could tell.
“Fine people of the great city of New York,” he said in perfect English. “Very sorry to startle you like this from your sleep. What caused the disaster you have been living through was a pulsar blast of intense electromagnetic radiation. The next, and final wave off the pulsar will be hitting Earth in just under four hours. We have almost a thousand ships circling the planet pulling all who survived the first pulsar wave to safety.”
“Pulsar?” someone shouted.
“Yes, a very powerful electromagnetic wave from a nearby star is what hit your planet ten days ago. All of you survived because you were protected in some fashion, either underground or behind thick steel walls.”
Benny nodded, as did others around him. As he figured, the vault had saved him.
“How come you couldn’t get here before the first wave?” one guy shouted.
“And who are you, anyway?” someone else shouted.
The man looked pained and Benny could see a deep sadness in his eyes. He clearly felt the loss of life as much as anyone.
“Let’s just say I’m as human as the rest of you,” the man said, “and from a very distant place. We were not able to save anyone or block the first pulsar wave, but we can save all of you who survived and let the second and final wave pass with no more deaths. Then you will all be put back on Earth to rebuild.”
“What happens if we don’t want to go back to that graveyard?” one woman shouted.
A lot of people shouted “Yeah, what happens?”
Again the man smiled and said, “We’ll come to that problem when the time comes. But for now, there is food and drink against the far wall and cots to take naps. There are showers for those of you who would like one, and fresh changes of clothes. This entire process will take about ten hours. Please relax and I will be back to talk with you as soon as I can. I have other rooms of survivors I must address.”
“One last question,” the professor beside me shouted at the man. “How many survived the first wave?”
“Worldwide,” the man said, smiling, “almost two million. And we’ll get them all, I promise.”
As the noise of three hundred people talking at once filled the room like a hard wave, Benny turned to David who had been talking about the aliens.
“Well, now what?”
“I have no idea,” he said, his eyes wide.
At that moment, a girl’s voice called out, “Professor,” and Candice hit the professor’s hug, sobbing.
Benny was glad to see she was still alive, but not as much as the boys in her class. She looked like she had gone through hell, and she smelled awful, like she had been sitting next to a dead body for days.
“Where have you been?” the professor asked, clearly fantastically glad to see her.
“At my apartment,” she said between sobs.
That made sense. She had simply gone home to die beside her parents.
The owners of this big ship in orbit clearly were going to make sure that didn’t happen.
At least not for the next ten hours.
CHAPTER TWENTY
GINA WAS STUNNED. The man was more handsome in person than on her screens, if that was possible. And he had clearly been stunned when he saw her. But she had no idea how she was going to meet him.
But for the moment, that didn’t matter. She had just under three hundred people in this big room she had to take care of. After Chairman Carson finished his introduction and left, she started to work.
First, she made sure the medical staff were dealing with as many of the injured and weak as possible. A good fifty people had just slumped to the floor when they arrived and looked to be in bad condition.
Medical had a few dozen smaller rooms set up to one side of the large room and forty of her people were moving the injured away.
Other ship members were spreading out food along one wall and still others were helping survivors to private showers.
A lot of people stood alone, just looking around, scared to death. Others had grouped up and were talking.
Gina made sure that she quickly had people talking with every solo person, moving them toward a group of other survivors if possible.
And Gina, at times, recorded her impressions of different people as she worked her way around the room. She was going to need to work with and try to help a large number of these people over the next few years. She was only one person and seeing everyone still in the city bel
ow packed into one room, it felt overwhelming to her.
And sad at the same time. The entire remaining population of a once great city now fit into one banquet room.
She pushed that thought away and went back to work. She knew that a large share of these people would not find a way to survive the summer. And that made her mad because she wanted to try to help everyone here.
But it became very clear as the medical staff moved more and more people away to smaller rooms that a lot of people just didn’t want to be helped or survive.
She had never been a person who gave up on anything, but she couldn’t imagine what the people in this room had gone through. It had impacted her and she had only been watching from a safe apartment in orbit.
When the rescue happened, the mass of people had been transported into the middle of the big room and they were now spreading out over the large space.
Many stood in front of the large screen showing the planet below. Many just found chairs and sat down, clearly too shocked or tired to even move.
As she walked around, giving orders, helping where she could, she noticed the dark-haired man from the big building often watched her. She was going to have to talk with him at some point.
He and his group were now all back together, and the girl seemed weak, but very happy to see them. Maybe she had decided she wanted to live after all.
Finally, after almost an hour, Gina moved over to the dark-haired man and the group with him from the big stone building. They were all munching on sandwiches and sipping what looked like a fruit drink of some kind. The dark-haired man and the two boys stood, the long-haired man sat and gave comfort to the young girl in the chair beside him.
Gina walked up, smiled, and stuck out her hand to the dark-haired man. “I’m Gina Helm,” she said.
He smiled and took her hand. “Benny Slade.”
He held her hand just a bit too long and she didn’t mind at all. In fact, for a moment she got lost in his dark eyes and smile. And his touch sent shivers through her. She couldn’t remember ever feeling like that about meeting anyone else.
When he finally released her hand, she felt a jolt of loss.
Wow, she was really going to have to get a grasp on herself.
Benny introduced her to the professor, the two teen-aged boys, and the young girl named Candice.
“It’s very nice meeting you all,” Gina said, reverting to her previous way of meeting and talking with survivors. “Is there anything I can get you while we wait to leave orbit?”
“How far are we going out?” the tall boy with red hair asked. She seemed to remember from the introduction that his name was David.
“About two light years,” she said. “And we’ll wait there until the next pulse passes and then come back. It will take about ten hours total.”
“You have faster than light travel?” the other boy asked, clearly excited.
“It’s called Trans-tunnel Drive,” she said. “Nothing goes faster than light, but that drive bores a hole outside of space and allows long distances to be covered quickly.”
“Wow,” one of the boys said and she smiled.
This kind of discussion was relaxing her a little. She kept glancing up at Benny and he didn’t say a word, just smiled.
“So where have you four been staying?” she asked.
At that question, Benny laughed. “You know the answer to that, don’t you, since you found everyone on the island and brought them up here? I assume this is everyone on the island, and in other rooms are survivors from different areas. Right?”
She was stunned. She knew this man was smart from how he had set out to survive, but she didn’t realize just how smart, and how calm he was in a situation that had most people just mumbling and afraid.
“You are all in the big stone building,” she said, nodding and smiling at him. “And from what I can tell, you are pretty set up for surviving the summer. Well done.”
Damn those eyes of his were amazing as he stared at her and nodded.
“So why do you speak English?” the professor asked.
“Actually,” she said, “we are all speaking a form of what is called Standard, but when you were transported, we gave you all the ability to understand and speak Standard. It will always sound like we are talking in the same language. But I speak English just fine as well.”
“So where exactly are you from?” Benny asked.
She laughed. “Hard to explain.”
Benny pointed to the two boys. “I’m sure these two will understand, so give it a try.”
She nodded, doing her best to not stare into his eyes too much. “My home world circles a planet in the Lesser Magenelic Cloud.”
Both boys reacted at once, excited. “That’s a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way,” David said to Benny.
“It’s a very, very long ways away,” the other boy said.
“Are there aliens there?”
She shook her head. “There are no alien civilizations at all in this galaxy or in many others that have been seeded with human life. Only humans like us.”
“So this is your real form?” David asked. “Not some sort of image?”
“Everyone on this ship is human,” she said, smiling at the young man. “I am very real. The ship is called Star Conscious and has a crew of about two thousand, including families, all from human worlds spread over four or five galaxies.”
Now even Benny seemed a little shocked, but he said nothing, so she took that as a good moment to move on. Even though she really wanted to stay here, she had a job to do.
“I have to keep moving and checking on everyone,” she said. “But I will be back to talk more shortly.”
“Looking forward to it,” Benny said, smiling a half-smile at her.
Damn, it was everything she could do to just walk away without looking back. Luckily, not more than twenty steps away was another group she hadn’t talked to.
And a minute later, when she glanced back, Benny was still watching her as she had watched him the last few days.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
BENNY HAD NO idea how the hundreds of other people in the room felt, but after the little speech by some man in charge, he kept verging on sheer panic that came close to cutting through the trained calm in his head.
He made himself focus on what was happening around him as people spread out, some going for food, others being helped by medical staff, others moving for showers and fresh clothing.
He asked Candice if she needed any medical help and she just shook her head. “Just some food and something to drink.”
The professor found her a chair and one for himself after he sent the boys off to get them all something to eat.
In the big room, the five of them were closer to the big window or view screen showing the planet below than most others. After the first few minutes, most everyone had moved more into the big room or to the far walls.
The woman that had shocked him when he saw her with his attraction for her was clearly someone in charge. She was working her way around the room, talking with survivors, getting some of them help, sending someone for food for others.
More than likely, these survivors, probably all from Manhattan, were her responsibility.
And if he had to guess, she had been studying everyone ahead of time. That’s how he would set it up if he knew this was coming.
As he watched her, he became more and more attracted to her. She was clearly in shape, strong, and moved like an athlete.
And she was smart, in control, and smiled easily, even under these circumstances.
The boys got back with the food. He took what looked like a roast beef sandwich and a bottle of orange fruit juice that tasted wonderful.
As they ate and he watched the black-haired woman, David asked the professor, “Why the question about the number of survivors?”
“Because there is a magic number of humans that it takes to build a population,” the professor said between bites and encouraging Candice to
eat slowly. “The human race, at least on this planet, would need population to survive and have a large enough gene pool to make the effort even worthwhile.”
“And you know this how?” Benny asked.
“It’s my field,” he said, smiling. “Or it used to be.”
“Is two million enough?” David asked.
The professor laughed. “Far, far more than enough.”
Benny figured that at least that was good to hear.
Then, like a shining light in the darkness, the woman with short black hair walked toward them and stuck out her hand, saying her name was Gina Helm.
In all his years, Benny had never felt a touch so electric, a look so attractive as hers.
Up close she was even better looking than she had been from across the room. Her eyes were a deep green and just seemed to see everything about him.
He flat didn’t want to let go of her hand, but managed to and then introduced her to the others.
They talked for a far too short a time before she excused herself to move on. Clearly she had been watching everyone in this room for days ahead, and was the person in charge.
After she moved on to the next group, Benny moved slightly so he could watch her and then asked David a question. “Can you explain to me what she meant when she described where she was from?”
“There are billions of stars in this galaxy, most would have planets,” David said.
“But not all would hold human life like Earth,” Freddy said, “But at least hundreds of millions would be able to.”
“Think of this galaxy like the sun and there are other smaller galaxies circling it like planets,” David said.
“She is from one of those other galaxies,” Freddy said. “And she said that the crew on this ship is all human from thousands of worlds.”
Benny shook his head, not even slightly capable of understanding what the two boys were saying. “So she’s from another planet?”
“Yes,” David said, “One so far away it’s impossible to imagine traveling that distance.”
“So she’s an alien?” Benny asked.
David and Freddy both shook their heads. “There has always been a theory that humans didn’t originate on this planet, that we were seeded by other more advanced humans. That’s what she said, so she would be as human as we are.”
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