After The Kiss. . .
My original idea has nothing happening afterward, but if you really want something to come about I'll be more than happy to change things around.
The stories here and at the web page all link together. Maybe I said that before, but it's true. Remember Danziger's secret in one of the Danz stories? This is it. He had hoped against hope they might find EA members at the other biodome, but not so.
My sister Lauren and I were talking once about what we wished had happened in the series and that got me thinking. I came up with a timeline and a series of events I thought might be fun to see happen. Slowly but surely I'm getting those ideas on paper.

Excuse The Mistakes

This is the latest chapter, written on the fly. The basic idea has always been in mind, getting it on paper, or onscreen, is the problem.
and remember, blog entries run bottom to top, the oldest posts at the bottom of the page.

CHAPTER 2
Three hours into the drive across the meadow, Julia could have sworn they were standing still. If she looked over her shoulder she was sure she'd see the rest of the group right behind them, just starting on their drive westward.
The tableland just didn't seem to be getting any closer.
Danziger seemed to be all right with that fact, though. Every once in a while he would put the dunerail on auto and take a long look through his jumpers at the tree line on the mesa.
After numerous short bouts of small talk, she couldn't stand it any longer. She wasn't going to be able to tough it out, she had to know. "What is it you think you're seeing, John?"
He was looking through his jumpers again and he waited for a while, looking at the high ground, before lowering them and answering her question.
"I helped build both the ship that brought us to this planet and the colony ship still on it's way. I know every part of each ship, inside and out. Those tall, bent and twisted trees in the gap in the tree line look like one of the sensor arms from the Roanoke. I think a piece of the ship is up there on the plateau."
Julia stared openmouthed at him. "Oh...John...that can't be, can it? Surely it broke into pieces and burned in the atmosphere! Right? I mean, Alonzo used to talk about it. He said it would have all burned during entry, only tiny pieces reaching the ground."
"Any other craft, maybe, but Adair went all out for her ships. She and her son would be flying in the Roanoke, after all. Plus, she was never going back to the stations so her personal fortune was there to be spent. The hull was designed to withstand high magnitude meteor impacts. The alloys used to coat the hulls were made of ceramics. And don't forget, we don't know how many of the sixteen cargo pods broke free during the last moments we were on board. If as few as two stayed attached, they could have helped deflect a lot of the heat from the body of the ship. The cargo pods were built to withstand the heat of planet fall. For all any of us know, the body of the ship could have made it through the atmosphere before the ceramics burned away and it could have hit the ground nearly intact. Personally, I doubt it, but I do think we'll find a section of a sensor arm up on that plateau. Either way, there might be something to salvage."
"But, how can it be here? We came to land so far away."
He shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe because we were thrown clear of the ship and the ship itself fell straight down, more or less. The escape pods were probably cast well away from any impact area for safety. I mean, it wouldn't do to have the passengers touch down safely only to have the fiery remains of the ship impact nearby and incinerate them. Right? Hell, I don't know, I'm just guessing."
"Why didn't you tell Alonzo or Baines about this?" Her voice was still hushed.
"What if they're just trees bent and broken by the wind as Yale says?"
"But you don't think they are!"
"I suspect, I'm taking a wild guess, I'm winging it, Julia! Do you really think Solace and Baines could take the disappointment if I'm wrong?"
She was silent for a while. "No, I don't," she had to admit. "They're going to kill you, though, if you're right."
"Hey, it was their ship, they had design input, I just built it. If they don't recognize a piece of it, is it my fault?"
She laughed. "Alonzo won't see it that way."
"I'll deal with him later if I have to. Besides, True was the first one to see the similarities. She spotted it first and they never even noticed."
Julia raised her jumpers to her eyes. "What is it you keep looking at?"
"I'm watching how it changes position in relation to the other trees and rocks around it. The sensor arms are pretty big, maybe six cargo pods in length. If we're looking at trees we should be able to tell before long, but if there is a sensor arm somewhere behind the real trees, it'll start to drop out of sight while the small trees stay where they are."
"Got it."
"Of course, they could still be just a couple of very tall trees farther back on the hill."
"What makes you think they aren't?"
"I worked on the Roanoke for over four years. I built all four, and I attached two, of the sensors. Like my daughter, I know a sensor arm when I see one."

It was well past midday when John and Julia reached the base of the high plateau. Over time, rocks and boulders from higher up the slopes had rolled down and settled into a ring around the base, and small trees and bushes were growing between them in thickets stretching up the side of the slopes. The hillside itself was just that - a steep hill, but one the dunerail could climb if they could find a break in the rock and brush around the bottom.
"Well," Julia said, after finishing the last of her meal. She stood looking up towards the top of the hill. "This is no plateau, or mesa, as we've been calling it. It's just a very big hill, almost a mountain. The bare dirt and the color of the vegetation made it look like it had a high, striated wall from the distance."
"And it was twice as far away from the route we're taking as we thought it was. It's probably closer to a thousand meters high. The dunerail can make it though. At least it isn't straight up." He stopped to stow the box containing their food in the back seat. "We can do things two ways, Doc. Either we split up and look for a break in the rocks while the rail recharges or we both go in one direction. Your call."
"We stick together."
"You sure? We can cover more area separately, save a little time."
"We stick together."
He shrugged and started rummaging in the back seat again, muttering to himself as he did so.
Julia turned and looked at him, shading her eyes from the sun as she did so. "What was that? I didn't quite catch it."
He straightened up, a mag pro in his hands. "I was just saying a feeling of deja vu washed over me like a wave of chlorine."
She couldn't help smiling. "I always thought Devon had the right idea. Cracking the whip around you is the only way to keep your attention. You have an irritating habit of thinking yourself invincible and right all the time."
"Because I usually am."
"In your dreams, Danziger."
"Ha. Speaks the woman as anxious to get up this hill as I am."
"It doesn't mean you're always right. Just, maybe, this time."
He sighed loudly. "One day I'm going to meet a woman who doesn't think the greatest sport in two solar systems is to make John Danziger feel like an idiot twenty four hours a day. Sorry thing is, I've gotten so used to being face down in the dirt that I probably won't know what to do with her when I find her."
Julia laughed and went around the dunerail to get the canteens and a small bag of her first aid materials, should they need them. "I guess you're too confident in yourself, John. It just makes a woman want to knock you down a peg or two. Speaking from personal experience, trying to work with you can be as irritating as hell. Do you want to know what really bothered Devon about you? The ops team didn't start listening to her until you did. The colonists long ago accepted her as their leader, but after the crash she found herself trying to lead a group made up of fifty percent ops crew, and none of them accepted her leadership until you did."
"I kind of figured that. She wasn't real subtle about her anger and hurt feelings in the beginning. That woman had one hell of a sharp tongue."
"Can I ask you why you let her be the leader of the group, instead of taking it for yourself? You could have, you know."
He nodded, watching her fill their canteens. "I know, but she wanted it more than I did."
"That's it!?"
"What?"
"Just, she wanted it more than you?"
"That, and I had my own kid to worry about. After I thought it over, reaching the comm dish was the best chance my daughter had to leave this place. If it meant following Adair, that's what I would do to be certain my kid survived. Besides, she thrived on the pressure, and I never did."
She gaped at him. "Could have fooled me."
"Like you said yesterday - we aren't building a ship here, Doc." He pointed to the east. "Let's try that way. I've been looking at the area below the gap all day and haven't seen a break anywhere. I wonder where all the debris came from? Maybe we'll find something over there."
"Okay. Let's go."

The break in the rocks and foliage they found some time later was the first indication there might be water on top of the hill. At some time in the past a torrent of water had rushed down the hill and swept away anything in it's path. An ugly scar marked the hillside all the way to the top, a three hundred meter wide gash of bare rock from which all soil and plants had been stripped away to a depth of seven meters. It continued across the flat ground of the meadow for several hundred meters before losing it's force and spreading out.
"Where have we seen this before?" Julia asked with a sarcastic smile at Danziger. "It reminds me of the holo Yale showed us of a flash flood. The water came down a hillside and left nothing in it's wake. Not even the hill."
"Yeah," John agreed. "Let's get up there."
"Uh huh."
Though they considered it, walking up the gash was out of the question, even though climbing the rocks would have been easy considering how often they'd done so during their travels across the planet. They didn't want to leave the vehicle behind. They decided to drive the dunerail at a westward angle up the hill and try to end up in the gap they'd been looking at all day. While Julia went back for it, John cleared away some of the smaller rocks and vegetation to form a pass.
Nearly an hour later they crested the hill at the extreme left side of the infamous gap and they were greeted by a sight as unexpected as it was breathtaking. They would never forget it as long as they lived.
The hill was, in fact, the edge of an eroded volcanic crater several kilometers across and the almost perfectly circular caldera was filled with water - but the beauty of the lake was completely lost on the duo. Their attention was riveted to a beauty of another kind - a manmade thing of beauty to two grounded space travelers.
A second catastrophe, an impact in this spot had occurred a split second ago, in geological terms.
The ship that had brought them to this planet, their ship, as intact as it could possibly be, (impossibly be!)rested in the water close to the eastern shore of the lake. It's huge, blackened mass was partially covered by the wind tattered parachutes of at least three cargo pods. Still connected to the ship by some miracle and reaching for the sky was the twisted, blackened remnants of one sensor arm, just as John had imagined it.
Julia sat behind the wheel of the dunerail, transfixed by the sight ahead of them as they bounced and rambled toward the shore of the lake.
"Vehicle, stop!" John ordered from the passenger seat and, when it did, climbed out of the dunerail to stare at the end result of his quest. "Will you look at that? She made it down!"
Julia got out, too, and stood and stared. Somewhere in the back of her mind she was aware she'd almost driven the dunerail into the lake, so surprised was she by the sight of the ship on the ground, but all she could think about now were the implications of the great thing before her. She looked across the rail at John.
"You were right," she said, and ran around the front of the vehicle to throw her arms around his neck. "You were right! You found the ship!"
He whooped and swung her around in a circle, both of them laughing like children. "Right, hell! I was looking for a piece of the sensor arm!"
"But you found the ship!" she shouted into his ear again.
"We found the ship!" he corrected. "Alonzo's goin' to marry you on the spot as soon as he gets here!"
"I told you there was a good reason for me to come along!"

After waiting impatiently for most of the day to hear from her father, True Danziger was startled by the sound of his voice in her ear when the call finally came. Walking behind the transrover with Uly and Yale, she was thinking of climbing aboard the big vehicle and taking a nap, but her father's voice caused her head to turn quickly to the north. Two bright specks of light, flares, hung in the sky above the plateau. She flipped the eyepiece of her gear into place.
"What did you find, Dad?" she asked excitedly.
"Are you ready for this, True girl?" he answered with a smile. "Take a look."
He turned his eyepiece away from himself and she saw a blur of trees, rocks, water (water?), and something enormous she couldn't identify at first. True heard Julia's voice telling John to stop and focus. The picture being sent to her sharpened, and she screamed. Then she was running as fast as she could to the head of the small caravan.
Yale and Uly, startled by her reaction, watched her with consternation.
"What's going on, Yale?" the boy asked.
Yale turned on his gear unit and winced as the sharp pitch of True's excited voice met his eardrum. He gave Uly a small shove. "Let's go find out," he said and began to run after the other child. Uly streaked past him.

"Alonzo! Alonzo!" True called. "Stop! Put on your gear! Everybody put on your gear!"
Hearing his name being called, Alonzo swung his ATV in a tight U turn and barreled toward the little girl waving at him.
"Put on your gear and look, Alonzo! My dad found your ship!"
"My ship?" he repeated as he skidded to a stop alongside her.
On the lip of the extinct volcano, Danziger and Dr. Heller listened and laughed as the excitement among the rest of the group escalated with each person who joined the gear conference.
"John! Is that really it? The ship?" Alonzo's voice exclaimed over the gear.
"Stay cool, okay?" Danziger cautioned. "Yes. It's the ship and in better shape than it has any right to be, but she's never going to fly again, pal. Got that?"
"Oh, man! Oh, man!"
"Lonz? Jake?" he pressed, getting no reply. "You two understand?" He glanced at Julia. "Maybe you'd better talk to them."
She nodded. "Right." She walked a short distance away to switch to a private gear frequency.
"Yale? Can you hear me?" John said, still looking at the ship with his gear optic feed sending it's image to the others.
"Yes, John. I hear you quite well. What a spectacular find you two have made."
"You can say that again. Yale, stop the group right where you are and set up camp. Don't try to follow us today, start out as early in the morning as you can. We drove without taking any breaks and it still took us this long to get here. You should reach the hill by evening and we'll tell you where to set up a camp then. For now, put Zero, and only Zero, on one of the ATVs and tell him to get over here as fast as he can. There is a cargo pod here he should be able to enter. We can start salvaging whatever is inside it as soon as you arrive."
"I understand, John," the older man said. "How many cargo pods came down with the ship?"
"Near as I can tell from the ?chutes, only three didn't break away. One is still attached to the ship, and I'm guessing two were thrown clear on impact. They're either in the water or on land somewhere close by. Chances are they've been looted if they hit land.."
"Danziger. . . I notice the parachutes deployed even though the cargo pods were still attached to the body of the ship. Is that correct?"
Danziger was silent for a moment. "That's right," he confirmed quietly. "They definitely did."
Yale sighed audibly. "I shall send Zero immediately."
"Thanks. I'd appreciate it."
There was a brief silence as both men considered the implications.
"John, can you tell which cargo pods they are?"
"No, not from here. We'll try to get to the ship tomorrow and get a look at the one still attached."
"All right. I'll send Zero on his way while the others are preoccupied with your video feed."

It was nearly dark by the time Danziger and Heller could power down their gear and begin to think about setting up a campsite of their own. The others had been reluctant to let them go, and were now in pretty much the same fix as the two on the crater lip were. Night was falling and tents still needed to be erected.
It took only a few minutes for Heller and Danziger to fashion a simple but functional lean-to from the materials stored on the back seat of the rail. There was plenty of wood around to build a campfire in front of the lean-to, both for the light a fire provided and to deter any wild life that might be in the area from trying to investigate the campsite while they slept later. With dried fruit and meat for their meal, they didn't need the fire for cooking. Perhaps the rest of the group could see it from the meadow.
John and Julia ate quietly in the dunerail as they watched the ship fade from view as the sun set. The moons would not rise until an hour or two after sunset and until then the ship and the lake were lost to sight in the glare of a lumalight.
"John, what was the last conversation you had with Yale about? Something about the parachutes?"
He took a drink of water and looked at her for a long time.
"Are you going to answer me or just stare like that?"
"I don't know if I should tell you. It might be better to wait until tomorrow."
"Better for me or you?"
"You. I'm pretty sure I won't get any sleep tonight because of it."
"I have enough sedaderms for both of us if it comes to that."
He sighed. "All right. Okay." He leaned his head back against the seat and looked at the stars. Still, it took a while before he began. "When we found the third escape pod. . . Well, I didn't tell Devon, or any of you, everything I learned from Les and Alex. Firestein was still lucid enough to tell me who made it aboard the pod before it launched. Julia, at least twelve people didn't make it off the ship." He shifted position and glanced at her for a moment before looking back at the sky. "There are twelve bodies inside that ship out there. From the look of it, one or more of them lived long enough to tap into the programming for the cargo pods still attached to the ship and instructed the chutes to deploy as usual after entry. Those parachutes were only meant to open automatically if the pod was released from the ship. The release command activates the programming. There's no way those chutes out there could have opened unless someone changed the programming and told them to."
Julia looked horrified. "Doesn't Baines know this?" she said softly.
"I didn't tell him. He was asleep in the tent you'd sent down when I talked to Les. Remember what it was like back then, as a group? We were all still fighting with one another over small stupid things. So I wasn't sure if the Martins, if Morgan would be safe if I told anyone we lost twelve crew and colonists because Morgan took the first pod for himself."
"You've known this all along?"
"What good would it have done to tell anyone? It was bad enough I had to know twelve of the people I worked alongside for six years had burned to death in the ship. Do you think Morgan would still be alive if I had told the rest of you?"
"I. . . I don't know." She looked in the direction of the craft in the water. "That's why you and Yale want Zero here ahead of the others. So he can go inside the ship first."
"Of course. Whatever he finds won't be pleasant."
In the following silence they each avoidedlooking at one another. After a time, Julia seemed to collect herself.
"We'd better get some rest, Danziger. Tomorrow is going to be a tough day." She climbed out of the rail and pulled more of the materials from the back seat. "There is more than enough old parachute silk here. We can use it to sleep on. The ground will still be hard, but not as bad as it could be."
John turned in his seat. "What else is back there? Anything useful?"
"Just the med supplies I brought."
Her shoulders fell and she looked at him helplessly. Her expression seemed to crumbled.. "Oh, god, John, I didn't bring nearly enough medical gear with me! How can I examine the bodies? How are we going to get them out?"
He reached between the seats and grabbed her wrist gently. "Worry about it tomorrow, okay? Who knows? We might find medical gear in the cargo pod out there."
"It's been in the water over a year, John. Do you really think there will be anything salvagable in it?"
"As far as I can tell, yes. The ship's floating, right? Unless this is a shallow impact crater, and I doubt that, the pod is still water tight." He pulled his hand back. "Can you handle that stuff yourself? I want to talk to the kids before I try to sleep."
She nodded. "Sure. Go ahead."

It didn't take long for either of them to say their good nights to their own particular loved ones at the larger camp, and Julia was grateful when Danziger relayed the news Yale had sent most her medical equipment on ahead with Zero.
After moving the dunerail to a position where it was directly across the campfire from the opening of the shelter, she and Danziger settled into the lean-to for the night, adding enough wood to the fire to keep it burning for hours.
Sleep didn't seem to want to come in a hurry despite how tired they were from the drive.
"John, can I talk to you?" Julia finally broke the long silence between them. They were bedded down alongside one another, their heads close to the fire.
He looked over at her. "No, I think since there are only the two of us here, we should be as silent as possible. Preserve the pristine environment in any way we can."
Julia gave him a look of mock disgust, but he wasn't aware of it. He had closed his eyes. "I'm serious, Danziger. I've wanted to talk to you about something for a long time."
"This isn't about Adair, is it? I've already told you she and I made. . ."
"This is something else." She rolled onto her side and rested her head on her arm.
"All right. What?"
"Well, it goes back to when the group found out I was working for the Council and they left me behind. Later, Alonzo told me when the group was deciding the matter, you and he were the only ones who refused to vote. Was that because of what happened between us, you and me, after the crash?"
"Maybe a little," he admitted, "but it wasn't all of it. I was in the military for ten years, Julia, I knew mind conditioning when I saw it - especially when yours started to unravel. I knew what was happening wasn't all your fault. That, and you were a part of the group. I couldn't take a hand in voting anyone out of the team."
"Lonz said later, too, it was the way you treated me when he brought me back that helped make becoming a part of the group again a lot easier than it could have been. You acted as if I'd never been gone."
"If you recall, Doc, you kept me from blowing up by making Adair get the ZED's worm bullet out of me."
She laughed shortly. "That didn't take much doing. She would have ripped it out with her bare hands if she had to. I mean, you'd have thought it was Uly who'd been shot the way she worried about finding you."
"We're not talking about Adair, here, remember?"
"I know. Sorry."
"Well, to be honest with you, Julia, I went on reconnaissance that day because I thought it was going to be a tough sell for you to rejoin, and I just didn't want to see it." He gave up pretending to try to sleep and raised both hands to lace his fingers behind his head. "I was already angry with everyone, and I didn't think I could handle watching them try to vote you out one more time. I doubt if I'd have had any friends left afterward if it had happened that way."
"I've always wanted to thank you for doing what you did, but I never knew how to go about saying it, so I've tried to do it in other ways. It did, it does, mean a lot to me."
"You're part of the group, Julia. Always have been, always will be. You know what happened with us after the crash had more to do with being glad to be alive after facing and overcoming so many challenges than anything else. Besides, Alonzo hadn't turned on the charm yet."
She smiled. "Actually, he had, but it happened anyway. I could see what happened to Uly affected you as much as it did me. I needed someone to share that with. Plus, you believed in me. You trusted me to be able to keep the group together while Devon and Yale were preoccupied. I was always glad it happened then before anyone had a chance to really find their niche in the group, because after you stood up to Devon about letting the group vote on major issues, I could see she was interested in you and trying not to be. I think you were the first man to ever yell at her in her whole life and be right about what you were saying. And you were a good father. After we started to travel she started pulling you away from the rest of us."
"She was never really interested in me, Julia. She might have been attracted, against her better judgement, but her better judgement made sure it never went farther than that."
"Did she tell you that, or are you deducing it on your own?"
"We talked."
"Then she lied."
"Why would she lie - even when she knew she was going to die?"
"John, she knew about you and Eben and how far back your history went with one another. She watched you grieve for E, just as you watched her grieve for Shepard. You stepped back and gave her space after Shepard, maybe she was stepping back and giving you space after E died."
"We talked before Eben died, Julia. Before any of us started getting sick."
"She knew about E since the day you quit. She lied to you, even at the end. She was letting you go so you wouldn't grieve for her."
Danziger drew in a deep breath and, finally, turned to look at the doctor. "Is that what you're trying to do, Julia? Make me grieve for her?"
"You should, John. You can't hold it in forever."
"I'm not holding anything in. Take my word for it, I've had my moments. I haven't been taking the ATV to scout ahead alone just for the good of the group. I've had my moments." He turned to look back at the stars.
For some reason Julia couldn't comprehend her eyes were full of tears. "Good," she said, wiping her face. "I was worried about you." She turned onto her back and looked at the stars, too.
"I didn't want True and Uly to see me," John continued. "I don't want them to be any more frightened than they already are. I don't see happiness in True's eyes anymore when I come back from a scout. I see relief. I'm just trying to put the happiness back in my little girl's eyes."
Julia sat up and turned to him. "John, don't put too much meaning into this. Just accept it for what it is."
She leaned over him and kissed him.

To be continued. . .

KEEP IN MIND
Blog entries run from the bottom up. The oldest entries on the bottom, the newest at the top. So whatever chapters I've posted will seem to run backwards.

CHAPTER 1
"We've been on the road for eight weeks. Each day when we stop for a midday break, I watch my fellow travelers and, recently, I've noticed most of us have stopped looking back in the direction we've come every time we halt the vehicles to rest. What it was we used to look back to see, I don't really know. I tried to avoid doing it myself because it made me think, much more than I already was, of the two members of the group we had to leave behind. It was a habit I see the others have let go, too, somewhere along the way. I know it's a good sign, but I also know that looking ahead doesn't mean anyone has stopped thinking about the place where our two friends are each entombed in different ways. The gap left by the two women, Devon Adair and Eben Sinh, has not been filled, and never will be; but, at least, we are learning to see beyond the gap and live life more normally once again. At least as normally as we can now that we know death and illness are bigger foes to the security and peace of mind of the group than Terrians, kobas, grendlers and ZED units have ever been..." Julia Heller, M.D.

Reaching the western edge of the dry valley beyond the mountain range that had been their winter home, the Eden Advance group had decided it was time to turn south/southwest and begin the last of leg of their journey to New Pacifica. After crossing the long stretch of bare, arid country with little water and less shade, the travelers were once again entering an area of trees and tall grasses, hills and steep prominences. Not that the change was abrupt. For the past ten days, over kilometers of travel, the landscape had slowly changed to a more lush and green setting, though areas of "badlands", as Yale called them, still cropped up here and there. They were getting fewer and farther between, however, and the bright green of mid spring was everywhere. A few trees still held small splashes of color but most springtime blooming was beginning to fade away.
The scouts, Alonzo Solace and Jake Baines, roving ahead of the main body of the group, chose an area to camp for the night at the base of a hill bare of trees. The view to the south was of a vast, wide glade, uninterrupted for, perhaps, five kilometers where a line of uneven hills formed the horizon. To the north was the high, long mesa they were skirting, the top of which was marked with uneven lines of trees and precariously leaning, rocky protuberances the like of which they had never seen before.
Alonzo sat casually in the seat of the cobbled together ATV he drove and looked to the northwest at the strange looking features on top of the plateau. The trees were bent at odd angles and some were almost barren of leaves, and even the rocks looked as if they'd been pushed a little off center. There was a gap in the trees a little farther to the west with some of the sorriest looking excuses for trees he'd ever seen. The twisted trunks and branches looked like gnarled fingers pointing toward the sky. Upon seeing the gear feed Alonzo had sent back to the group, Yale had surmised they might be subject to windstorms, and he'd shown them holos of weirdly shaped trees from Earth that had been twisted and turned by the winds coming from the oceans thereby. If that was the case, this hill would make a fine lookout point to watch for approaching storms during their stopover .
He looked east and thought he could just make out the vehicles bringing the rest of the group to rendezvous with him. Maybe it was them, maybe it was just trees, either way he liked the view better than the one to the north. It was a lot friendlier, less odd. He decided to stay where he was and wait for them. Breaking out his canteen, he took a long drink of water and then climbed out of the ATV to stretch his muscles and look around for Baines.
His fellow sleep jumper was in the habit of soaring his ATV over hills whenever he was safely out of sight of the larger group, most notably out of John Danziger's sight, the man in charge of vehicle maintenance - in charge of everything now - who took his job very seriously. More than once, Baines had overturned his little vehicle and Alonzo had to help him get it upright. Thanks to the design of the little ATVs, he was never hurt, but it sometimes irritated Alonzo that the man was taking so many risks in the name of having a little fun.
Alonzo spotted the other vehicle coming towards him from the south at a rate of speed he couldn't determine, but it was definitely tossing back grass and causing a dust trail whenever it hit bare soil. In spite of his momentary irritation, he had to laugh at himself as the other ATV barreled toward the hill. It wasn't as if Alonzo hadn't done the same thing more than once in the early days of the group's westward trek. He just didn't do it before witnesses...well, not human witnesses, anyway.
He sat down on one of his ATV's wheels and waited for Baines to head right up the side of the hill. A few minutes later, the other vehicle skidded to a halt nearby and Jake Baines, smiling widely, jumped out of the driver's seat.
"I found the water source our scanners picked up at midday," he announced. "Six, six and a half klicks down, there's a spring coming right out of the ground into a shallow basin and a stream flowing from it almost straight south."
Alonzo nodded. "I guess that explains the thin line of trees going off that way."
Baines agreed. "Yeah. They're hugging the banks all along the way, or at least as far as I could see."
"Well, the others will be here soon," he said and pointed his thumb to the east.
The other man nodded. "You sure you want to camp here?" He pointed to the north. "That tableland gives me the creeps. I feel like something is watching us from up there."
Alonzo laughed lightly. "Probably grendlers. I'll bet they've been watching us every foot of the way from the crash site."
"No, that's not what I meant. I know the grendlers are out there. This is something different."
"It's just strange looking, that's all, man. I was just thinking about it myself. You know. Wondering what might have caused the damage. Yale says the wind can do that kind of twisting damage to trees."
"Lonz, we've been skirting that plateau for three days now and the wind hasn't been strong enough to mess up your hair."
"Maybe not down here, but who knows what's going on at that altitude? We're looking at land almost six hundred meters above the meadows we're traveling."
"Maybe, but I still say I feel like I'm being watched."
"You aren't going to lock yourself in the transrover again, are you?" Alonzo teased.
Baines gave him a disgusted look. "You're never going to let me forget that, are you?"
"Something like that."
"Well, at least I know it was me Bess was daydreaming about that one time."
"Ha! You do not!"
Baines grinned. "How do you know I don't?"
They spend the next few minutes in a good natured argument over one of the group's most intiguing subjects.


The dunerail trundled along through the tall grasses of the meadow with True Danziger taking her turn riding atop the equipment stowed in the back seat of the vehicle. Her chin resting on her arms folded along the canopy bar, she was ready to nod off when something atop the funny looking mesa to the right caught her eye. Sitting up straight and fighting back a yawn, she made herself concentrate on something very unusual among the already oddly slanted trees silhouetted against the sky high on the plateau. A wide gap was becoming visible in the tree line, and the few small, stunted looking trees growing in the gap looked very familiar for some reason she couldn't quite put her finger on.
Digging her father's jumpers from a bag beside her, True lifted them to her eyes and took a long hard look at the gap. Some of the things were definitely trees, She could see leaves on their branches, but the taller, twisted things were devoid of leaves of any kind, and through the jumpers they definitely looked like something familiar that shouldn't be there.
After a few minutes of studying the things - they were getting clearer to see as the dunerail moved along and the gap widened from the changing perspective - she lowered the jumpers and looked down at her father behind the dunerail's steering wheel. Uly Adair, the other passenger in the vehicle, was asleep, or close to it, in the other seat.
"Dad?" she called softly. She held the jumpers close to his shoulder. "Will you take a look at the gap in the trees up on the mesa for a couple of seconds? The things sticking out of the ground with the small trees growing around them - well, are they what I think they are?"
John Danziger turned his head and found himself looking directly at his jumpers. He looked past them at the plateau and immediately saw the spot True was talking about. It was ahead of them yet, but clearly evident, and there, a little off center in the gap from this angle, were some of the strangest looking tall trees he'd ever seen. In fact, they looked kind of like. . .
He turned on the auto pilot and grabbed the jumpers. He stared at them much longer than his daughter did, and when he finally lowered the jumpers, he went on staring without them. What in the world. . .?
"Well?" True asked. "Are they trees or not?"
"They have to be whether they look it or not, True, but you're right. They are unusual. They look like they've been burned, though. Maybe that's why they're black in color, but they can't be anything but trees, sweetie."
She looked at him doubtfully. "I guess so," she said, though her tone suggested she clearly didn't agree.
"When we get farther along we'll take another look, okay? Maybe at the camp Lonz and Jake found we ?ll be able to get a good look at them. Alonzo said there was a high hill beside the campsite. We might be able to get a better view." He handed the jumpers back up to her.
"Okay." She spent most of the remaining drive to the campsite watching the gap widen and give a steadily better view of the objects. With some smug satisfaction, True noticed her father kept looking up at them, too. She had a feeling she was going to be right about what they really were, and if she was - well, she found it first.


True to his word, after camp had been set up and the group was relaxing while the kitchen detail prepared the evening meal, Danziger accompanied his daughter on a climb to the top of the high hill dominating their campsite.
The gap in the trees on the plateau was closer and more could be seem of the oddly out of place trees sticking out of the ground. This time after a long look through the jumpers, John finally lowered his hands and looked at True.
"I know what it looks like, and I'm not saying that's what it is, but I think you might be right. I'm going to go check it out tomorrow, " he told her. "I'll take an ATV early in the morning and see if I can get close enough to know for sure."
"I want to go with you, Dad! I saw it first. Why can't I go with you?"
"Because one person can travel faster alone. If it turns out to be trees, I'll have to try to catch up with the rest of you by afternoon. That means no stops except when absolutely necessary. It'll be hard driving and I don't think you can take it."
True frowned. "But, Dad..."
"No," he told her sternly, waving a finger in her face. "You keep going with the rest of the group, but keep an eye on the plateau. If I find what you think it is, I'll fire a couple of flares and call you over gear and you can make the announcement to the others. After that, the whole group is going to turn and follow me. They'll want to see for themselves, so you'll get there soon enough. If not, I'll be back by late afternoon."
"Why can't we tell them now and just all of us go?"
"It might be a false alarm, honey. Everyone seems to be in pretty good spirits now, but if it turns out to be just trees, the disappointment might be enough to make everyone sad again. I don't think we can take another disappointment, do you?"
Her shoulders slumped. "No. I guess not."
"Then let's go back down and see if it's time to eat. Sure smells good from here."
"Okay." She looked up at him and pointed her finger at him. "Remember. You said I get to tell everyone. You call me on gear and I get to tell everyone, right?"
He smiled down at her. "I swear."
"All right. Good enough."
"What!? You're not going to make me swear on the souls of every Danziger who ever lived or who will ever be born? You're just going to take my word for it?"
She smiled at his teasing. "I gotta learn to take your word some day. Might as well be now."
"Well, thanks a lot!"
"No problem, Dad."
"Come on, race you back down the - hey, wait a minute! At least let me finish what I was saying first!"


The problem came from Julia later that evening when Danziger told the group around the fire of his plan to run a recon to the tableland. She flatly refused to hear such a ridiculous idea, standing her ground before him and looking him straight in the eye.
"Look, it's not as if it's going to make a big difference," John tried to point out. "I'm just going to make a wide swing in the direction we're already going. Even if I don't catch up with you until nightfall, the main body of the group won't have lost any time. It'll just be me taking a little detour."
"What if something happens to you, or the ATV?" Julia countered. "Someone will have to go after you."
"I can fix the ATV, and I can take care of myself."
"I know you can, but no one should go off alone, especially not you. That was your idea remember? Two scouts out together at the same time?"
"All right. Matt will go with me. Okay, Matt?"
Walman looked up from his seat on an overturned crate and shrugged. "Sure."
"We need both of you here with us in case something goes wrong with one of the vehicles. Splitting up the group isn't a good idea - that was also your idea, John."
"So Matt won't go. I'll take Zero."
Julia glared at him. "Matt, Zero - it makes no difference. You're just saying this to get me angry, aren't you? I hate when you do that!"
"I'm not kidding, all right? I'm curious. I want to see what the formation on the hill actually is. If it's natural I should be able to tell through the jumpers long before I reach the plateau. I'll just double back. If it isn't natural - well, hell. Are you going to sit there and tell me you won't want to make the same detour to see it for yourself?"
"John, please don't do it. There are penal colonists, more ZEDs, who knows what else out there? If it's something convicts have built they might still be there and you'd be walking right into their territory. We can't lose anyone else, especially not you. We can't take another loss."
"Doc, if that thing isn't a natural formation it has to be checked out. If it is, we can forget about it and just keep going."
"What do you think it is?" she asked, crossing her arms and waiting for an answer.
"That's my point. I don't know. I'm going to head out and see. I can't ignore it."
Julia stared at him for a long time. At last she spoke. "Maybe I should go with you in the dunerail."
"No, you're needed here. I'll take Zero with me on one of the ATVs."
"I think I should go with you."
Danziger looked at Alonzo, but the pilot was enjoying this and just smiled at him, shaking his head as if to say "Don't get me involved!" John cocked his head to one side and looked back at Julia. "One person can travel faster and farther alone."
"Then, one more time: Don't go. Please, John."
He winked and patted her shoulder. "It has to be checked out."
"Send Zero alone on an ATV."
"No. It's the ops chief's duty to take the big risks first."
"It is not! You're not building a station here, Danziger. You're going out into the unknown for a reason you won't reveal."
"Same difference."
"No, it isn't!"
" It's just a recon, Julia. A day-long scout."
"Fine. I'm going with you, then. We'll take the dunerail. That's it. End of discussion." She waved her hands in an ?out' gesture and whirled around and marched straight toward her tent. "We're going to need our rest," she called over her shoulder. "I suggest you get to bed soon, too."
"Julia..."
She stopped and swung around. "End of discussion, and don't try sneaking out alone in the morning. I'm going to tell Zero, you leave with me or not at all."
She changed direction and went straight over to talk to the robot.
Danziger gave Alonzo a hard look, and pointed a thumb over his shoulder at Julia. "Did she just Adair me?"
"Like a damn pro!" Alonzo told him and the group around the fire joined him as he broke up laughing.

Getting Started. . .
I'm going to post the beginnings of fanfiction I've never finished. I'm planning to finish them here a little at a time. I need the incentive to keep going that I can't quite give myself just using WordPerfect. When others might be reading this junk, I think I might be able to finish them at last.
I will also post a few short stories that I have finished just to show I can do it.

9 WEEKS. . .an Earth 2 story. . .
PROLOGUE

"Something had to be done soon, or the Eden Project is at an end."

Two weeks had passed since the group's co-leader and driving force had been put into cryogenic sleep in a desperate bid to save her life. In the ensuing days, the illness taking Devon Adair's life was no closer to being cured than it was in the hours immediately after her sad incarceration, even though the team's doctor spent her every waking moment trying endless experiments and making up countless theories in her attempt to end the sickness and save her friend.
Though no one wanted to leave their friends behind - in addition to Devon in her cold sleep capsule, another Eden Advance member, Eban Sinh had succumbed to a variation of the illness and was buried on a hillside nearby - everyone knew they had to move on soon in their journey to New Pacifica. It was the unspoken truth hanging over the camp, a guilty knowledge no one wanted to recognize.
Left with a promise to take the group onward to meet the colony ship, John Danziger was loath to make the final decision to pull out and begin the overland trek. He was sure there would be resistance to the command, and while he was not looking forward to a confrontation, he had given his word he would not only be at New Pacifica when the colonists arrived, but he would look after Ulysses Adair and have him there, too.

"Yeah, I know," Danziger said in reply to Yale's comment about the Eden Project. "I've been trying to bring it up for the last week, but it's too easy to let the others change the subject when I try."
Yale nodded. "Yes, and I must apologize for being one of those who has steered you away from broaching the matter. However, I have been thinking and I believe the time is now to talk about it. I think everyone will be receptive to the idea." He paused. "Well, perhaps not everyone, but if you can convince Ulysses it is time to go, Julia will have no reason to disagree."
John wished for all he worth he could push the job onto someone else, but if Yale was right, it was time for him make good his word and get the group started.
All he had to do was find the right words to put things into motion.

The evening gathering around the fire was subdued, as usual. Julia Heller looked like hell and Alonzo Solace was as worried about her as she was not. He hovered around her like a hummingbird, darting here and there, making her comfortable, refilling her cup, coaxing her to eat, wrapping her a jacket against the evening chill.
Danziger, standing in the shadows and watching, wondered if she noticed the fuss at all. Her attention never seemed to be in the here and now.
Yale was right. It was time to get these people away from here.
John approached the fire and stopped next to Julia and Alonzo, and the former pilot smiled a little and pushed a box toward him to sit on. He gave Julia's shoulder a gentle squeeze and took the seat offered him beside her.
Julia tried to respond politely but she was tired, exhausted was more the word, and all she could manage was to brush her fingers against his as he drew his hand away.
He gave Alonzo a concerned look and the one he got back from him told him all he needed to know. John looked around for Uly and spotted him a short distance away, huddled beside Yale, with much the same look in his eyes as the doctor had.
"Uly?" Danziger called softly. "Can I talk to you for a minute? I need your help with something."
The boy looked at him. "What?"
John beckoned him over and slowly, Uly relaxed his muscles and got to his feet to walk a bit unsteadily to him. Danziger took off his jacket and folded it to make a seat for the child. Uly dropped to his knees on it, facing him.
"Uly, listen. You know that one day soon we all have to go on to New Pacifica, don't you? And you also know I don't want to leave your mother here by herself, right? None of us want to do that. We would all take her with us if we could, but if we do, she'll die along the way and be lost to us forever. The best chance she has to live is by staying right where she is in the cryo-chamber until Dr. Heller can find a cure for the sickness she has. You know all of that, don't you? Sure you do," he smiled when the boy nodded slowly. "Well, just before we put your mom into cold sleep, I talked to her for a long time and she asked me to make her a promise that I would take care of you, and that I would see to it all of us, including you, got to New Pacifica to wait for the colony ship to arrive. I made her that promise, Uly, I told her I would do exactly what she asked me to do, and I'm not going to break my promise. Ever. Now, just like you, I don't want to leave her here by herself when we go. So, do you know what?" He paused momentarily to wipe a tear from the boy's face. "I think you might be able to help me fix it so someone is here with her all the time while we're gone."
Barely above a whisper, Uly asked, "How can I do that, Mr. Danziger?"
Around the fire, the others heard every word.
"Do you think you could ask your friends, the Terrians, to keep an eye on her while we're traveling? They could protect her, and Eben, too, in a way, and you and Alonzo would be able to check up on her through the dream plane. Anytime you want to, I'll bet the Terrians will help you dream yourself back here to make sure the capsule is all right and she's okay inside it. I can't think of anyone who would be better at guarding your mother and protecting her than the Terrians. Can you?"
The boy shook his head slowly, but the tears had stopped and he was looking into Danziger's eyes and seeing him for the first time in days.
"Can you ask them for me?"
Uly nodded.
Danziger smiled gently. "Great, and when you do be sure to tell them it will be just for a short time, because we'll be coming back for her as soon as the colony ship arrives."
"Will we? Really?" The desperate hope in his young voice was heartbreaking.
"Of course, we will. Do you think I'd leave her way out here forever? Not a chance." He put his hands on the boy's shoulders. "If Julia hasn't been able to find a way to make her well again before the ship gets here, we'll just bring some of the cold sleep chambers down from the ship and put them in the new hospital we're going to build when we get to the ocean. Your mother may arrive at New Pacifica a little bit later than we do, but I'm going to make sure she gets there, too."
"I've already got it all planned," he continued, putting his elbow on his knee and resting his chin on that hand while gesturing with the other. "The first thing she's going hear when she wakes up is your voice welcoming her back, and the second thing she'll hear is the sound of the ocean in the background. She'll know what the sound is because she heard it before when she went through the spider tunnels and saw the ocean on the east coast. Man, won't she be surprised?"
The little boy launched himself into Danziger's arms.

Three days later, John Danziger stood before the cold sleep crypt in which his friend and fellow traveler has been placed in order to save her life. Beside him, the small son of the woman in the chamber clutched his hand.
"I love you, Mom. I'm going to miss you," he whispered to her.
Danziger looked down and squeezed the boy's hand gently. "We all will, Uly, but we'll make sure it doesn't get too bad for you. I promised her I'd take care of you. I made the promise for the whole group."
The boy reached out his other hand and placed it against the chamber's transparent shell. "Bye, Mom. We'll come back for you. I promise."
Danziger raised his eyes and looked once again at the barely recognizable features of the woman and felt grief wash over him. Within days of one another he had lost the two women in his life who meant more to him than he ever knew. Eben Sinh had been his friend, his lover, his confidant and her presence in his life had spanned light years as well as kilometers. Her freely given friendship had been a comfort to him as he struggled to define his place in the order of things on this strange, but awe inspiring planet.
Devon Adair, the woman in the cold sleep unit, was an enigma to him, and, now, probably would always be one.
There was a time not too long ago when he might have spoken the same words to her that her son had just uttered, a time when he could have sworn she might have answered him in the same way. The attraction to one another had been there, and everyone knew it! The verbal sparring and challenging they'd practiced had been a sounding board for them. A way to test the other, to see how far they could go, how much they could learn, how long they could go before the barriers fell and drew them together.
It wasn't meant to be, however. Reality had a way of bursting bubbles, and when reality reared it's head for John and Devon, they'd both made choices, and those choices did not include one another.
Uly pulled his hand back and sniffled, and John bent down to lift him into his arms and let the boy cradle his head on his shoulder. Danziger ruffled his hair gently and muttered reassurances.
As he did so he reached and placed his palm against the crypt, too.
"I'll miss you, too, Adair," he said, his strong voice low and respectful. "I don't know why, but I will. All we ever did was get on each other's nerves. How the hell did we ever stay friends for so long?"
He shook his head slowly as he lowered his hand. Too bad, Adair, he thought, I think we might have let something get away from us.
Danziger smoothed his hand over Uly Adair's head. "You ready to go, kid?"
The boy turned his face toward him but kept his head on his shoulder. He nodded. "Yes. I know she would get really mad at us if we stayed here and didn't keep going like she wanted us to. We'd better go. She's not strong enough to be sick and mad at us at the same time."
"You're right, Uly, absolutely right." He turned slowly and walked away from the crypt.
Alonzo Solace was standing silently at the foot of the ladder leading up and out of the grounded ship they were in. He stepped aside and nodded at the ladder. "Go on up. I'll power down to safe mode and set the alarms."
"Okay. Thanks, Lonz."
"No problem. You did good, Uly. She'd be extra proud of you today for being so grownup and brave."
Danziger started up the ladder and handed Uly to waiting arms reaching for him from the top. Even so, when he climbed out of the ship, the boy returned to clutch his hand again. They walked together to the short line of vehicles packed and loaded and ready to continue the journey to reach an almost fabled land called New Pacifica.
John's daughter, True, looking worried, was sitting in the passenger seat of the dunerail. "Is everything okay, Dad?"
He smiled and nodded and lifted Uly high, to seat him atop the folded tents stacked across the ?rail's rear seats. From his perch in the center of the stack, Uly's legs dangled between the two front seats.
Danziger walked around the rail and surveyed the subdued group of people waiting in the other vehicles. Two more one passenger ATVs like the one he had prepped for Uly soon after crash landing on the planet, had been built from scrounged parts found aboard the Bennet ship. No one had to walk now if they didn't want to.
Alonzo was out of the ship, now, and he and Cameron were activating the perimeter lasers that would protect the ship until they could return for Devon.
Danziger stopped for a moment and looked beyond them, to the simple grave marker not far from the ship where the body of Eben Sinh had been buried. The wooden cross used to mark her gravesite was just visible from where he stood. Good-bye to you, too, E, he thought. I'm going to miss you most of all.
"All set!" Alonzo's voice called out and broke his reverie.
"Let's go then," he answered, and got into the driver's seat of the dunerail. He looked at True. "Everything all right with you, sweetheart?"
She looked back at him with a small smile. "Yes, I'm fine. I miss Eben, though. We knew her almost as long as Alex and Les. I miss all of them."
"So do I," John told her. "But losing them wasn't their fault or ours."
"I know. I just wish we could come back for them some day, like Devon, and wake them up, too. Especially E."
"I know how you feel." He started the engine of the dunerail and the vehicle lurched forward, as if impatient to move. He reached back and tugged one of the small legs hanging beside his shoulder. "It's time to go, kids, but we'll be back as soon as we can."
The vehicles started to move and Ulysses Adair rested his arms on the dunerail's awning bar in front of him. Resting his chin on his arms he closed his eyes and imagined himself being lifted high and then unceremoniously flipped onto John Danziger's backpack the day after they crashed onto the planet. In spite of his sadness he smiled. If he couldn't have his mother with him, he couldn't think of anyone else he'd rather have taking her place than John Danziger.