Better to face an entire Roon army than the indignities of old age, she thought.
Teresa rubbed her belly some more. “How many candidates are there?”
Not many. Aside from some officers, some business travelers, and a few elderly immigrants, most of the crew and passengers on the Kamchatka had been under the age of thirty when they had been stranded here. Jodenny took a mental head count. Not old Captain Balandra; her birthday was in January. Not Baylou Owenstein. They’d just celebrated his birthday a few weeks ago. That left—
“Sam,” Jodenny said unhappily.
“Yes,” Teresa said. “Dad’s birthday is tomorrow. I knew you’d remember. I’m making a cake.”
“Mom!” Alton stomped his foot. “Come on! He’s in the water!”
Jodenny said, “Watch your tone, young man.”
Teresa made to stand up despite her swollen ankles. “I’ll go see what he’s going on about.”
“You stay put. I’ll do it.” Even with her arthritis, Jodenny moved more quickly than her daughter. “But if this is another one of his frogs, I’m going to make him kiss it.”
She limped down the stairs and past her vegetable garden. Four grandsons and one granddaughter, who would have expected that? Forty damn years spent stranded in this backwater wilderness with the rest of the crew and passengers. Sam, turning seventy-six. There’d be a cake and maybe a banner, lots of jokes about aging that were funny only to the young, and recycled or homemade presents he had no use for. Certainly he wouldn’t want her there. She didn’t think anyone except Teresa could seriously expect her to go.
Alton had turned and dashed back into the woods. “Hurry up! I think he’s dead.”
“If he’s dead, I don’t need to hurry,” Jodenny said.
Alton’s discovery wasn’t a drowned turtle or half-crushed snake or any other morbid find. Instead it was a man lying half in and half out of the stream. He wore Team Space trousers ripped at the seams and a black T-shirt. His feet were bare but he didn’t appear injured in any significant way. With her bad eyesight she couldn’t tell if he was breathing. If she moved a step or two to the left she might be able to see his face, but her legs wouldn’t obey her.
“Did he come from away?” Alton picked up a stick. “What’s he doing here?”
“I don’t know.” Jodenny’s voice sounded small in her own ears. Her head filled with a buzzing and her knees went weak. Certainly the man wasn’t one of their own. No one these days dressed in a Team Space uniform, or would wander down to this stream to take a nap. He might be from one of the splinter groups that had gone off on their own shortly after their arrival here on Providence, but again, where had he gotten the clothes?
Alton crept closer to the stranger. The buzzing in Jodenny’s ears grew worse. The green of the forest was blurring at the edges. She’d fainted only a few times in her life, but the warning signs were clear.
“Run and get the sheriff,” Jodenny said.
Alton poked at the man’s arm. No reaction. He was probably dead.
“Go get the sheriff!” Jodenny snapped, fear and anger all mixed into it, because the child never listened and here she was going to faint like an old lady. She knew the man in the creek, knew the shape of his head and shoulders, knew him down to the withered fibers of her fading heart. Wasn’t it bitter and horrible that he’d returned from death just as she was getting ready to embrace it?
Alton dashed off up the hill, yelling at the top of his lungs.
Jodenny’s world grayed out and went silent.
TOR BOOKS BY SANDRA MCDONALD
The Outback Stars
The Stars Down Under
The Stars Blue Yonder
Praise for Sandra McDonald
“By turns gritty and lyrical—a thoughtful, well-imagined story with unique cultural elements, an innovative alien culture and technology, and characters that kept me involved and engaged.”
—Rachel Caine, author of the Weather Warden series, on The Outback Stars
“McDonald shows intimate knowledge of the nuts and bolts of what really makes big ships tick—and the careful attention to the elements of Aboriginal culture makes this even more worthy of a reader’s time.”
—Walter H. Hunt, author of The Dark Crusade, on The Outback Stars
“She gets the petty politics, the sexual tension, even the reasons an officer will make a big deal out of badly shined shoes. It’s that realism that makes her novels of a future space navy such absorbing reads.”
—James D. Macdonald, coauthor of The Price of the Stars
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE STARS DOWN UNDER
Copyright © 2008 by Sandra McDonald
All rights reserved.
Edited by James D. Macdonald
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
ISBN 978-0-7653-5556-0
First Edition: March 2008
First Mass Market Edition: July 2009
eISBN 9781466845831
First eBook edition: April 2013
The Stars Down Under Page 33
