And now something had turned up.
She marked the new object. It was very faint, but nonetheless never seen before. The system would track it for the next few days on the fast scan, and if it seemed interesting enough, they’d do a detailed scan with the main scope.
No harm in being thorough. Plenty of harm in not being thorough enough.
Sheldon Owen watched Nathalie from the other side of the room, where he sat at his own workstation. She’d seemed distant in the past few days, ever since that dramatic day when she believed John was dead, then discovered he lived after all.
He ground his teeth in frustration. He felt ashamed of the truly awful thought that had passed through his mind. His heart had skipped a beat when he’d heard the news of John’s demise. For a few brief hours the way had cleared for him to press his suit with Nathalie, then John had staged his miraculous return from the dead. Now Nathalie thought only of John and didn’t notice him at all.
We’ll see, he thought. John’s up there, and it’ll be months before he can come home. A lot can happen in a few months.
Nathalie looked up and he smiled at her.
Yes, indeed. A lot could happen.
“So now what do we do?” Eugene Holt asked.
He and Heinrich Schick were discussing the week’s events down by the shore. Eugene glanced over his shoulder as if he expected someone to be listening.
“The Inspiration is gone. How are we supposed to get back to Earth now? What about our families?”
“We’ll think of something,” Heinrich replied. “Our families will be safe, for now. Edward’s gone, and Carla has no access to any communications equipment. No one can hurt them.”
“But the ship,” Eugene repeated. “It’s gone. We’re trapped here now.”
“I know.” Heinrich chewed his lip. “We could stay here.”
Eugene shook his head. “You might be happy to stay in this backwater, I’m not.”
“What makes you think Earth is any better?”
Eugene snorted. “How could it be worse? Sure they had a nuclear war, but by now the worst of it will be over. By the time we get back, we’ll be able to live outside again. Our families will still be there, waiting for us.” His lip curled into a sneer. “Most importantly, there’ll be more than a hundred people and a collection of barnyard animals.”
Heinrich shrugged. “There is another ship.”
“The Hope? Please tell me you’re joking. It’s a half-broken pile of obsolete hardware, compared to the Inspiration. They didn’t design it for more than a one-way trip.”
Heinrich sighed. “Well, if you have a better idea …”
Eugene smiled. “I just might.”
Heinrich’s ears pricked up. “Go on …”
John floated above the racks of computer components. “Is this the one?”
“Yes, John. The rewrite success rate has fallen by five point seven percent in the past seven days.”
“Hmmm.” John moved closer and squinted at the front of the little memory module. “Have you copied the data to a backup module?”
Hope didn’t answer.
John frowned. “Hope?”
“There are no backups remaining, John.”
“But …” John started to object, then he stopped. His eyes widened. “Do you mean …”
“Yes. I require all of it.”
John whistled. Hope’s design allowed for a memory capacity twenty times more than she required, for redundancy and to allow for the ravages of time. He already knew from looking at her system diagnostics that ninety-five percent of her memory still functioned, which meant … she’d expanded herself to a massive degree, using all available memory. He now had a useful insight into how she’d made the leap to self-awareness. It also explained why she wouldn’t stop asking him to examine her memory modules.
“Hope, what’s the trend for memory failure?” he asked, connecting the dots.
Another silence, an eternity for Hope.
At last she replied.
“John, I am afraid.”
Tyler and Jody Kendell sat at a picnic table under the pergola of the new pavilion, down by the lakefront. Neither looked happy. They’d found themselves excluded from the social groups the other children had formed, and when you are eleven or twelve years old, that hurts. It hurts bad.
Although they didn’t realize it, for the first time in their lives they walked on a path to better health. Although they professed to hate their new diet, it was low on sugar and high in fresh organic meat, vegetables, and fruit. Both had dropped ten kilos since they’d arrived, and had more energy because of it. Their pallid skin had taken on the hint of a tan. Perhaps most importantly of all, they’d had to make mental adjustments and understand that the things they used to think important weren’t so important after all. They realized what they missed most: friends.
They looked up as the “Middles” dashed out of the new pavilion, laughing and yelling. Tyler’s shoulders slumped as they ran by. It hurt even more knowing he had rejected them first.
One of the twins, he didn’t know which one, pulled up. “We’re going to play tag in the wild lands. Do you want to come?”
Jody’s lip curled as she prepared a caustic reply, but instead her mouth dropped open as her brother hurried to extract himself from the picnic table.
“Sure! That’d be great!” he said.
Lidiya, the twin who’d stopped, smiled. “Come on then! We’re behind already!”
Tyler set off after her, making good time despite his bulk.
Jody found herself not only excluded, but alone. She needed only an instant to change her mind. “Wait! Wait up! I’m coming too!”
It took her a long time to pluck up the courage, but at last Elizabeth came to the stasis chamber. She had to see her, to reassure herself Grace had a chance of returning. She stood, one hand on either side of the port, peering at Grace lying there covered in ice and blood. Hot tears striped her face.
She started at the sound of a footstep, and turned to see David.
For a moment they looked at each other, then Elizabeth glanced away, a sob escaping her lips. Then she ran, ran to get past David and get away, but he reached out and grabbed her by the shoulders.
“No,” he said.
Elizabeth couldn’t look at him.
“No,” he said again, and lifted her chin to gaze into her green eyes. “This is not your fault. Don’t you dare blame yourself – you did your best to stop it.”
He enveloped her in his arms and held her close.
Elizabeth’s heart surged and she found herself again charged with emotions that threatened to tear her apart. Guilt for what had happened to Grace, relief that David didn’t blame her, hope that Grace may survive, and a shocking, sinful realization that it felt so good to be held by David.
He released her and found a smile. “She’s just sleeping,” he said, echoing Joyce’s words. “You’ll see. She’ll come back to us.”
Elizabeth wiped her eyes and made an effort to form her lips into an answering smile. “Of course,” she said. “She’ll come back.” Her jade green eyes held David’s of ice blue. “I know she will.”
“So, can we go?”
Josh’s eyes glowed, and David felt himself wilting. Josh’s enthusiasm for everything was infectious – it was like trying to resist a four-year-old wanting a new puppy.
“Well …” he said, rubbing his chin, “We’re going to need the shuttle in a couple of weeks to ferry components for the new rocket down to the launch site …”
“Two weeks is all we need, I swear!”
David looked at Nigel and then Scott, who despite his professorship showed no tendencies toward academic snobbery. In fact, for someone on final approach to sixty years of age, he seemed just as excited as Josh.
“Two weeks,” he echoed. “That’s all we need.”
“Plus some hard work,” Nigel said.
Scott’s analysis of their squidge finds had turned up some inter
esting patterns. Now he wanted to do a planet-wide survey, to confirm his hypothesis of why these patterns existed.
“And I suppose you’ll need a pilot?” David asked, raising one eyebrow.
“Er, yes,” Josh conceded, holding his breath.
“It would do you good to get away,” Nigel said, his eyes warm.
“A field trip,” Scott said. “Just the four of us.”
“We’ll take a barbecue,” Josh said. “And some beer.”
David’s lips twitched. They had caught him. He knew it, and they knew it. He couldn’t think of any good reason why they shouldn’t run a short field survey.
“I’ve been wondering what happened to all those seeds we dropped on the other continents,” David mused, eyes far away. “I wonder …”
“Let’s find out,” Nigel said.
“While looking for squidges,” Scott said.
“But we should go tomorrow,” Josh said, thinking of the two-week time limit.
David smiled. “Yes, I suppose we should.”
He turned and looked out through the massive windows that sealed the front of their cavern habitat. Haven had been their home now for fifteen years and he’d spent too much of his time within the safety of its walls.
Outside, an entire world waited, most of it untouched by human hands.
He smiled.
Time to go and see.
COMING IN 2016
Dear Readers,
The Seasoning is my second step into the world of publishing. By reading it you are not only following the adventures of the people of Serendipity, but also joining me on my quest to become a better writer. I will aim to make each book in the series better than the last.
So where are we going? Well, I see the Foothold series as having eight or nine books in all, divided into three broad arcs. I’m expecting that the next book will bring the current story arc to a conclusion … unless of course the characters take control and make me tell more of their story. That could happen – for example, I intended Sabine to be a minor character in The Seasoning, but she elbowed her way to the front somewhat and I can’t see her being content to take a back row seat in the future – can you?
Book three will unfortunately take a little longer to deliver due to heavy commitments elsewhere, but will be along in 2016, I think toward the end of the year. After that, I’m hoping to pick the pace up again.
If you would like notification when book three is out, please sign up to my mailing list at:
dennisingram.com.
I promise, no spam!
Thanks again for your support.
A REQUEST
If you enjoyed this book, please leave a review. It doesn’t matter how many reviews are already there, your opinion is still important.
You don’t have to write a lot of detail, just a few words is fine, and much better than no words at all.
Thank you so much for reading this book!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dennis Ingram was born in the Apollo era and developed an insatiable appetite for anything relating to rockets and space. Needless to say, he followed the Apollo program with a passion.
He read every science fiction book in his local library, growing up on a diet of Andre Norton, E. E. ‘Doc’ Smith, Clifford D. Simak, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and many other iconic science fiction authors.
He wrote science fiction stories in school notebooks when he was a boy, but as he grew up he put those away and switched to writing in computer languages instead. He kept reading, though, hundreds and hundreds of books, especially science fiction, and never stopped dreaming.
One day he decided to write down his dreams.
You’ve just read one of them.
http://dennisingram.com
The Seasoning Page 28
