Odd Story
I don't remember where I was going with this story. I remember writing it, and I know I had something in mind, but what, I haven't a clue. Probably stringing completely different stories together to make a whole one. (I'm guessing from the title.)





A B C D Etc.
A. . .
Standing inside the shuttle may one day be claustrophobic to anyone born at New Pacifica. But the sights of metal walls, blinking readout panels, diffuse lighting, and the smells of machinery lubricants and hot electronics were sensations she never thought she would ever feel at home experiencing again, yet Devon felt eerily as if she had just walked into her home after a long absence.
She had thrived on this environment once long ago and helped to create structures a thousand times the size of this ship. Though she had willingly given up her life of wealth, fame and power to find the fulfillment of a dream on this planet, deep down in her soul a part of her had actually missed the stations. She felt it now, the need to be inside a manmade structure such as this was where she was born and nurtured and allowed to grow. No wonder people had such a hard time leaving the stations.
A sound of footsteps approaching brought her back to the present and she looked down a hallway to her left. A young man with pallid skin, a shock of white hair and what looked to be a tattoo on his cheek was coming along the passage and intently reading from a data screen in his hands.
"Excuse me," she said, and his head jerked up and his large brown eyes stared at her, startled.
"I'm looking for John Danziger," Devon said. "Can you tell me where he might be?"
He tilted his head in the direction she was facing. "Keep going to the third right and follow the signs to the old cryogenics bay. He's shutting it down."
"Thank you."
He opened his mouth to say ?You're welcome," but she was already running down the passage.
At the third turn she careened around the corner, grabbing the bulkhead with one hand to keep herself on her feet. Another right hand turn, another long passage and a final right , and she was in a large room lined with row upon row and stack upon stack of empty sleep capsules.
"John?" she called and took a few small steps into the room? "John? Are you in here?"
"Just a sec," a familiar voice answered, sounding as if it were speaking around something, and Devon whirled around, seeking a familiar face and form among the machinery. Where was he?
On a catwalk a good twenty-odd meters in the air, Danziger heard his name being called over the hum of the power units winding down. The strap of his datapad was clamped between his teeth to free his hands for turning off a series of switches in sequence. He shut the panel on the control switches, made an entry on the datapad, and walked to the end of the catwalk.
"Danziger!"
Man, that voice was familiar, almost like... He leaned on the rail and looked over and couldn't believe his eyes. "Adair?!"
She whirled around and looked up and wished she could fly for just the few moments it would take to reach the catwalk.
Next to where he was standing, out of the way, was a retractable ladder. He turned and stepped onto the rungs and the ladder dropped quickly. Danziger hopped off at the bottom, dropped the data screen into his jacket pocket and wiped his hands on a rag from a pants pocket.

There was just the slightest hint of ?wear and tear' in her face, a little different hairdo, the same slim body emphasized by the same taste in clothes. Only her eyes were different. The look meant only for her child was literally shining across seven feet of air straight into his soul.
"Devon?" He smiled. "Hey, so how long have you up?"
She was frozen to the spot where she stood. He tucked the rag back into his pocket.
"I've never been very good at this, John. You know that. I'm afraid if I touch you, I won't be able to let go of you."
"Well, that's the way it starts, Adair. You say, ?Welcome back.' . . . sometimes embrace, other times shake hands, and let it go from there."
"Welcome home, John." She threw herself into his arms.
"That wasn't so hard, was it?" his voice murmured next to her ear.
She shook her head, her face pressed against his neck. "The hard part will be twenty minutes from now when you try to pry me off you!"
He laughed and it was so good to hear his voice after such a long time apart. "Well, I guess I'll just have to carry you around. One Adair or the other, seems to be the first thing I do when I land on this rock."
After a time, Devon loosed her grip and stood back just a hair. "You've been gone a long time. I never would have thought exploring the other continent would take so long."
"The Council did a thorough job on the maps. We had to change quite a bit of what was on them. Took a while."
"You were away for more than a year."
Danziger shrugged and nodded his head to one side. "I'm sure Julia explained to you why we need to know the surface of the planet as precisely as possible."
"That's all I've heard since I woke up." Devon looked beyond him to the ladder leading up to the catwalk. "Are you finished? Anything I can do to help?"
"Uh. . ." He looked around. "Everything is done here. The plants and stuff we brought back have been offloaded. I was just making sure they turned off the refrigeration equipment before they left."
She smiled. "Good. Let's go."
They started along the hallways, arm in arm.
"You didn't answer my question," John said.
"About being awake? You know if you checked in once in a while instead of just sending messages back to us, you would know."
He laughed. "We were busy. Besides, when we left, Julia and Vasquez weren't too hopeful of finding out what was wrong anytime soon."
"Julia had a breakthrough four months ago, and after that it was just a matter of days. I still don't understand half of what she told me, how she found the virus, but she did."
The shuttle, actually the bridge and forward cargo holds of the former colony ship, was a big, wide, bulky craft and it had been the home of the mapping expedition for a long time. Heading back for the exit ramp, Devon noticed what she'd missed in her headlong rush to the cryo bay. Small cabins with hammock style beds or hard bunks were all along the longest stretch of hall. All were open, offering little to no privacy to the crew who'd lived in them for more than a Terrian year.
"This is where you've been living?" Devon said, more a comment than a question.
Danziger waved his hand. "We didn't have a lot of time to rebuild the interior. Maybe now that we're going to be here for a while, we might take out the bulkheads and build proper cabins. Depends, really."
"On what?" She slowed her pace and looked into a small sleeping area.
"Oh, mainly on who is going to be part of the next team."
"Won't two continents be enough room for all of us to hide?"
Danziger stopped walking outside a recessed cubicle and reached inside to lift a bag from the floor and heft it over his shoulder. "Has something changed? When I left it was agreed scattering in groups to areas with access to sunstones was the only way to keep the Council's ship from finding us."
Devon matched his pace as they continued toward the exit area. "Nothing has changed," she said quietly.
Danziger laughed quietly. "You don't like it, do you?"
They reached the top of the exit ramp before Devon answered. She turned to face him, stopping just inside the hatch opening."We came so far, John. Accomplished so much. I missed the building of the colony, the devastation aboard the ship when it reached us. The saboteur might still be out there in the wilderness somewhere for all we know. Instead of waking up to find we have our new home ready for the Syndrome families and a thriving colony on this land, I'm here to witness the dismantling of it, the separation of these poor people who came so far for a second chance."
"It isn't your fault, Adair. None of it is. The Council is responsible for all of this. They want this planet badly enough to kill us all in trying to find out how to conquer it."
She looked down at her hands on his arm. "No matter how many times Julia explains the Council's position and their need to stay in power, I can't help feeling guilty for playing into their hands. I brought all of us here to find a better life for the children. Why couldn't it have turned out to be that simple?"
Danziger shook his head and disengaged his arm and wrapped it around her shoulders. "Waste of time doin' that, Dev. Whatever is in the ship they sent after us, and I don't doubt Alonzo's dream of soldiers, we can beat them. We can scatter and hide and leave them to find a vanished colony and no trace of the families who should be here. If we're lucky our plan will set the Council's plans back another twenty years, and scare the troops into running back home to the stations."
Pressing her face against his chest, she was silent for a moment. "This isn't the homecoming I was planning for you. I was actually going to make it a happier affair, not this sorry, solemn talk it's turned into."
"Well, we can go back in and start over."
Devon laughed. "No," she said. "I still don't know how to fly."
Before he could ask what that meant, she'd tugged him into motion and they hurried down the ramp. "Come on. People are waiting at the meeting hall. Let's get the public homecoming out of the way and go somewhere a little more private."
As he was pulled down the ramp, he knew he could have said something about certain people never changing, always being bossy and doin' just as they liked no matter what anyone else thought. . . But, he didn't. Something more private sounded too promising to mess it up.

B. . .
From the air it was plain to see there had once been a small cluster of buildings near the rusted and partially disassembled com dish that sat on the beach like the actual dot on the map he held in his hands. The site looked no different from the ground. The captain stood beside the bottom of the steps of one of two troop carriers he commanded and watched his company of soldiers spill from both and sweep the area on foot. This should have been the site of the Eden Project colony if they had managed to reach the surface safely over four years ago. Looked like the Council was worried for nothing, as usual. There was nothing left here but crumbling foundations, rusted, ruined vehicles and long overgrown brush. If it wasn't for the pay bonus promised him by the Council, the captain would have called his twenty-two year sleep jump a damned, witless waste of time. Pure Council lunacy. The Bennett message should have been taken seriously. It was pretty damn plain to see there had been no one living here between the time the message arrived at the stations and the moment the first trooper set foot on the beach. Planet rejection, wasn't that what the Bennett message called it? This planet just plain didn't want human beings on it, and yet, here he was with his company checking out a ghost town.
The captain folded the map and tucked it under his arm. He followed his company across the sandy soil to the nearest of the ruined walls. A line of vehicles stood along it, looking as if they had been ripped apart by something. He activated his gear and asked his troops to report. There was nothing to be found but more ruins and a single structure among the trees. The one building partially standing was apparently a hospital at one time. Medical equipment, ripped apart forcefully, littered the sandy floors and stood testament to abandonment of the little town.
After the reports were done, the captain sent the information to the main ship in orbit and told the rest of his crew observing from its bridge, that they would start flying the lander inland to see if their scanners picked up anything in the area. They would report back to the ship before night fell on the coastal region.
The captain assembled his men at the hospital and led them through the trees back to the ruins of the main part of the colony. Muttering to himself about incompetent, inbred Council fools, the captain heartily wished things had changed on the stations. As the troop ship had secretly launched, two years after the fabricated Eden Project disaster, the winds of change had begun to sweep through the stations slowly but surely. If the Heller family, angered by the supposed death of a family member aboard the Eden Advance ship, had continued to gain strength and support ?
Though he'd almost jumped half a meter into the air at the sound of one of the troops yelling out a warning about the shuttles, the captain found himself frozen to the ground once he saw what his subordinate had seen.
Creatures!
Some kind of god-awful creatures walking on two legs and wearing animals skins were ransacking the shuttles. Screaming an incomprehensible order to attack, he ran forward and the men behind him followed.
The scream alerted the creatures, too. Grabbing what they could, the things lifted heavy pieces of the shuttles and equipment onto their shoulders and ran away with surprising speed in all directions.
Seats, electronics, arms and food, not to mention the steps and the hatches of both craft, had all vanished in the few minutes it had taken the company to process the village.

Hidden beneath a camouflage netting among the rocks and foliage of a slight rise a good distance inland, three colonists watched the havoc on the bluffs through jumpers. Cameron lowered his and looked at his companions. "How long are we going to let them walk around in circles before we rescue them?"
Solace chuckled, still watching. "Let's wait and see how well trained they are. They might be resourceful. Never know. They might not need us at all."
Cameron laughed. "Come on! They didn't even set a sentry to guard the ships!"
Magus said, "They will now! I agree with ?Lonz. Give them a chance. Right about now the guy in charge is cursing the Council for not telling him about the grendlers. If he's anything like O'Neill, he'll try to track them."
Alonzo rolled onto his back and looked at the sky. "We better get out of here then. When they find out their com systems are trashed and only their gear is operational, they'll get desperate. I don't want to be found by a desperate soldier."
Magus got to her knees and stowed her jumpers in her pack, sitting back on her heels. "I feel kind of sorry for them. I know how they feel."
"Yeah, well, if the grendlers took only what we wanted them to," Cameron said, looking at the bluffs again, "it should take a week or so for those guys to cannibalize one shuttle to get the other one flying. If they're smart they'll look for food, maybe find Bess' valley and the fresh water spring." He got to his knees, too, and looked at Alonzo. "What the hell are you doing?"
Solace winked. He was aiming his jumpers at the sky through the netting. "The sleep ship is somewhere up there, watching all this from space. They got no way to come down and rescue this bunch, and this bunch will never go back to the ship unless they get lucky and find one of the hatches. If the ones in the air are smarter than these yahoos and are looking at a wider search area than just the village, they've probably picked up anomalous readings from us. They're probably yelling at their monitors right now. ?On the hill! On the hill, you jackasses!' Maybe I'll dream at the guys up there tonight. Give ?em nightmares."
Cameron shook his head, looking at the military sensor he was carrying. "No. If they boys upstairs knew we were here, we'd be picking up readings from their sensor sweep. They aren't looking around. They're watching and laughing at those guys."
Magus barked a short laugh and got to her feet, starting for the bottom of the rise. "They're in for a big surprise when they find out the away squad won't be coming back anytime soon. Might as well go back and report. I still can't believe it all went off without anyone firing a shot."
"This is supposed to be an uninhabited planet except for a few idealistic Edenites - if we managed to reach the surface at all," Alonzo said, rising to follow her. "Bet they didn't even release the safety on their rifles."
The three skittered down the side of the hill to a network of caves well hidden among the rocks and brush the Advance crew had arranged and planted a year ago. A spider tunnel in the cave system would send them home across the continent, to a blackout zone far away from the place on the map called New Pacifica.

THE END

A Horse Story
First of all, thanks to all who have posted comments about the stories appearing here. I appreciate them and I thank you for taking the time to leave them.

Secondly, this is just something I wanted to write down because it made me feel like I'm doing something important in my small corner of the world.
Remember the horses my brother and I got back in April? They were an abuse case? I think I mentioned them in email at some point. When we first got them, they'd spent a good part of their lives confined to their stalls. They weren't physically abused as we think of the term. They were cared for, petted and fed, but they'd never been allowed out of their stalls for long periods of time. All they knew were areas about twelve feet square, the size of an average bedroom.
My horse (her name was Princess and I haven't changed it because my nieces call her Princess Leia, so I'll probably just keep the name) had a habit of staring at the railings around her. She would stand still, looking at the top rail or the top of the gate and her eyes would just move back and forth across it. When I opened the gate to let her go out to the paddock and get food and water with the other mares, she would just stand there or move to one side and find another rail to look at. So for a long time there I would lead her out to the food, to the water, then around the paddock to the gate to the pasture, just kind of show her around. Day after day of this. I'd leave her out and she would go to a fence and stand there and look at the railing. Her eyes just moving back and forth at it. Whenever I saw her doing that I'd pick up a few little pebbles and lob them at her until she stopped and moved away.
After a while she started to leave the stall by herself, I'd open the gate and she'd walk out with the other horses and eat, and after a while she would go to the pasture gate and follow the others out to graze. She stopped rail watching, too, and now stands right up at the gate every morning, waiting for me or my brother, whichever of us is doing it, to open the gates, and when I walk into the barn she looks down the aisle like all the others to see who's coming in.
This morning I let them all out and left them and went on to do other things. I was passing the paddock a while later and saw that two of the other mares were out in the pasture and Princess was in the paddock with my brother's two geldings and my sisters mare and her foal. When Razz, one of the geldings, went to drink some water, Princess rushed over and stood between him and the trough, stopping him. The other mare and the foal were still drinking.
It just made me laugh to see how far she's come since I got her. There is a definite pecking order among the horses and the geldings are at the bottom. Kasey, my first horse, is sort of the queen of the stables. She rules.
It was good to see that Princess has come to know the rules and she's prepared to enforce them when Kasey isn't around to do it!
Poor Razz had to wait until the mare was finished before he could get some water.

This Is An Excerpt. . .
. . .from the penultimate story in this series. This is just to let you know what happened to the colony ship and nothing more. You'll have to wait for the story after this so don't ask anymore questions, Rich!


A Brief Segment of "The Aliens Are Us"...watching the colony ship fall from the sky was awe inspiring, tragic and desperately lonely, isolating each person who witnessed the event from the others around them. The slow moving fireball, nearly as bright as the sun itself, was visible for quite a distance and for quite a long time - first as a bright point of light high in the sky which slowly turned into a ball of fire streaming smoke and flame as it steadily neared the surface of the planet.
It came from the north, crossing the sky from horizon to horizon, and at it's closest point it was a brilliantly burning object behind which a long plume of black smoke billowed and curled and marked the atmosphere with a slowly dissipating tail of gray.
It vanished to the south, falling into the ocean near the southern polar region of G889 according to Yale's best calculations.
The Eden Advance group and the pitiably few colonists well enough to be out of the hospital and walking around, gathered along the cliffs south of the settlement to watch the destruction of the colony ship. It was a sight none of them wanted to see, but it would be a sight none of them would ever forget, both for the spectacle of it and just for being witness when their last link to the space stations was taken away from them by the long arm of the Council.
John Danziger didn't wait for the remains to travel from sight before he broke away from the others and walked towards the sea. Hands in pockets and head bowed, he left the circle of his friends and watched his own footsteps carry him toward the sound of the surf. He stopped walking only when a large rock blocked his way. He went around and sat down upon it. Leaning forward, elbows on thighs, he smoothed his hair away from his face and stared at his boots and the footprints they left in the sand beside them.
He'd thought he'd accepted the fact he was going to be marooned here for the rest of his life, thought he'd truly faced it and accepted it. Maybe one part of him had, but he'd just felt another part of himself die along with the fiery object in the sky. Somewhere in his mind, or in his heart, or in his soul, a little part of him had been hoping they were all wrong and the colony ship would stay in orbit and they would be able to repair it, and it would take him and his ops crew back to the lives they'd left behind on the stations.
He stared at the sand and listened to the waves and wondered how he was ever going to fill the empty spot inside of him that had never had a real home of it's own, and, now, just lost it's only chance of ever returning to the closest thing he ever had to one.
Devon, catching movement out of the corner of her eye, turned to see Danziger leave the group and walk away. She felt a pang of sympathy for him. As silently glad as she was to know she would not be losing any of her friends- her family, really - she understood the disappointment he must be feeling. The one person in the entire EA group she knew from the beginning would be returning to the stations just as fast as he could get the colony ship prepped and turned around, Danziger was also the one member of the group she wanted to stay more than any other.
Of course, she had never let on to him how she felt, never let on to anyone, she thought, how much she needed him to stay. Still, as she watched him sit down on a rock with his back to her, she understood the helplessness he must be feeling. A part of her longed to try to comfort him, but she made no move to go to him. She couldn't. He wouldn't accept her offer without an argument, would he?
Someone brushed past her and she focused on whomever it was for an instant, and fought down the angry feeling the identity of the person caused to well up inside of her.
Not wanting to watch the final moments of yet another ship destroyed by the Council, Julia Heller was, instead, watching a crab-like crustacean dart to and fro in the sand along the beach below the rise on which the group was standing. She, too, caught movement out of the corner of her eye and turned to see Danziger leaving the group and heading for a rock a short distance away. She also saw Devon Adair turn her head to watch him, saw the hesitation in Devon's stance as she considered going after him, saw the slump of her shoulders as she decided to stay where she was.
Julia couldn't believe it. Devon was just standing there letting him go! A golden opportunity to let him know staying on the planet wasn't going to be as bad as he was imagining, and Devon was going to just let it pass!
What is wrong with you, Adair? Julia thought and backed away from where she stood between Alonzo and Tim Cameron. She walked after Danziger, deliberately brushing close enough to Devon to get her full attention. Do I have to show you what to do?
"John? Are you okay?" Julia asked as she neared the unmoving figure on the rock. She leaned forward and placed her hands on his shoulders, giving him an impromptu massage. "John?"
He lifted his head and turned slightly to one side. "I'm fine, Jules. Reality bites, that's all."
Julia moved to his side and dropped to her knees, facing him and sitting back on her heels. She put a hand on his arm. "I'm sorry. I know how much you wanted to take True back for her mother's sake, but if it helps you in any way, I'm glad you're not leaving us. You have no idea how much we all depend on you."
Without realizing she needed to do it, Julia rose on her knees and leaned forward to wrap her arms around his shoulders and give him a fierce hug. "I mean it, Danziger. I'm glad you're staying."
He brought a hand up to give her arm a squeeze. "Thanks, Doc."
She pulled away slowly and sat back on her heels again. "You're welcome. You are needed and appreciated here, John, and not just by Alonzo and me."
He straightened his back and with his hands in his thighs, he looked to his left at the dissipating smoke trail of the dying ship. "You've got the golden touch with words today, Julia. All of a sudden I don't feel so far from home anymore. I might as well face the fact this is it."
He looked at her and poked a finger to her nose. "Alonzo is a lucky man and you tell anyone I said that, I'll deny it."
She laughed and pushed herself to her feet. "Come on," she said and grabbed his hand. "Let's get Mr. Lucky and go somewhere and cry on each other's shoulders because John Danziger can't haul his sorry ass off this rock as planned."
"Well, hell. How can I resist when you put it like that?" He stood and let her pull him back towards the rest of the group.
Noting the look on Devon's face, Julia couldn't stop the imp in her. Letting go of John's hand, she draped her arm around his waist and he naturally curled his arm across her shoulders.
"Lonzo!" Julia called. "I've volunteered us to help John feel sorry for himself. Are you in the mood for a good, hard sulk?"
The laughter greeting her words included only the youngest Adair.
"Self pity is my middle name!" Alonzo answered with a wide grin. "I can show you all the tricks of the trade, my good man."
Danziger laughed. "You know what? I always wondered how you did that staring off into space and muttering to yourself thing you used to do when your leg was broken. Hour after hour of that. Man, you were good."
Alonzo's smile was full of mischief. "I can teach you that, and the curling up into a ball and muttering to yourself thing, too. I drove Julia nuts with that one."
The doctor laughed shortly. "As long as you don't teach him the trying to drive the ATV off a cliff thing, right? Right?"
"That was my best one!"
"Julia's right," John agreed. "We'd better stay away from that one. There isn't a Terrian alive who would pop out of the ground to stop me."
Alonzo, hands in pockets, fell into step with the two of them as they went along in the direction of the village. "You'd be surprised, young man. The Terrians are actually very impressed with you."
Danziger looked at him with skepticism. "Since when, geezer?"
"You know since when."
"Oh." John glanced down at Julia, and as casually as possible removed his arm from her shoulders.
"Oh no," she said and grabbed his arm, putting it back where it was. "You're not getting away. You're not going off by yourself today, Danziger. You're coming with us."
"I agree," said Alonzo. "Seriously, Danz. When it really hits you, you don't want to be alone. Hell, I could use your company when it hits me." He turned and called out to everybody. "Let's get a fire going and have an old fashioned cookout, shall we?"
After reaching the settlement, the group of people dispersed, but most of the EA group and many others followed Alonzo, Julia and John to the long, low structure in which the colony's vehicles were stored. It was a favorite meeting place for them where they could build a fire and gather around it to unwind after the day's activities.
Old habits were hard to break. Some they didn't even try to break. This was an important one that still meant a lot to them.
As time went by and the newcomers adjusted to life on the planet, they would, one by one, begin to join the crew around the fire to hear the stories, share in the joking, and experience the camaraderie of the men and women who made the journey across the continent to found this settlement for them.
That day Devon had hovered in the background with Yale while a fire was built and food was cooked and the destruction of the colony ship became a celebration instead of a funeral...

"I Quit" Is Finished
It might interest some of you to know the final day of "I Quit" is finally up at the web page. I re-wrote the ending so that's what took so long. I decided to give the D&D-ers a little hope after all. It originally ended with a fight, as usual, as this was always the case with this pair, but now it doesn't.

A Short Story
This story was written years ago. It was one of the first in my series of stories where Danziger ended up with anyone except Devon.
They were written to get on the nerves of my sister, the big believer in a Devon/Danziger romance. She was so convinced the two were going to end up together living happily ever after at New Pacifica that I was compelled to write stories to prove her wrong.
Of course, she loved every last story. Thinks I'm so nice for writing stories for her. She knows how to take all the fun out of being mean. Grrrr.

A TIME TO REND
R. Salway




It was by far the most difficult decision John Danziger had ever made in his life, but it was a choice he felt he had no option but to take. What was more, there was no time like the present to start to act upon it.
Leaving the New Pacifica governing complex, a series of wedge-shaped rooms arranged in a ring around a central great meeting hall, Danziger squinted his eyes against the noonday sun and began to search his pockets for his sunglasses. He walked briskly away from the place as fast as he could and had reached the smaller building which was his destination before locating his glasses in a hip pocket.
Hooking them onto the collar of his shirt, he opened the door of the smaller building and went inside.
The lobby, if one could call it that, of the S and B Charter Flight Service was empty. A handwritten schedule of flight departures and arrivals hanging on a wall opposite the door was of no interest to Danziger. He stalked past it without a glance. He was looking for his daughter and had an idea where she was.
True Danziger, now almost fourteen years old, acted as a secretary of sorts for the Solace and Baines enterprise whenever she had the time. She would soon be starting her apprenticeship as a medical student with Dr. Julia Heller, but until then she occupied her time helping Alonzo and Jake run their flight service.
Danziger had taught her how to fly a landing craft soon after the colony ship had arrived, and she sometimes acted as an extra pilot for S and B when business was hot. This was not one of those times.
He crossed the lobby in five long strides and ducked a little to go through the door to the back rooms. One of the drawbacks of using old cargo pod for a building. He could hear his child humming softly to herself in one of the offices. He made a beeline for the small room at the end of a short hall.
Danziger stopped in the low doorway and rapped on the door lightly. "Hey, True sweetheart. We have to talk about something important. It won't take long. Can you spare a minute?"
True looked up from where she was sitting and playing with a VR unit and she smiled as she swung the eyepiece away, ending her game.
"Okay," she said, and as was her habit after so many years of life on G889, she looked at him shrewdly and tried to guess his business. "Does it have anything to do with all the plans you have piling up in your workroom at home?"
"In a way it does," he acknowledged. He ducked through the doorway and went to sit on one corner of the desk she was using to scan frequencies for messages from the landers in flight. He launched directly into what he wanted to discuss. "I've been thinking about making some changes for a while now, and the time has come to do something about it. I've decided to leave New Pacifica and go to live at the biodome."
"What?!" True jumped to her feet and stared at him as if he'd suddenly turned into a monster. "Dad, you've got to be kidding me! I can't leave now! I'll be starting my apprenticeship with Julia in next year! Until then, I have to keep up my studies with her at her school. I thought you
wanted me to be a doctor, Dad!"
"I still do, sweetie. I want you to be whatever you want to be. I didn't say you had to come with me. You can stay here."
Her surprise turned to horror. "You were planning to just leave me here?!" Placing her hands on her hips she glowered at him, horror turning to indignant anger.
Danziger sighed. He might have known she would take that part of it the wrong way. He tried to give her a patient look. She wasn't buying it, but he pressed on.
"Of course, not. I'm not abandoning you, True! The house above the beach is still ours, you can stay there. I'm the one who'll be moving out," he said and added quickly, "but I'll be coming back whenever I'm needed here for something."
True waved one arm dramatically and glanced toward the window and back at him as she spoke.
"You're needed here all the time, Dad! What are you talking about? You can't leave New Pacifica. Who's going to take care of you way out there?"
"Sweetie, believe it or not, I can take care of myself. I'll be fine. There is something I've always wanted to do, and now is the time to do it - before I get too damn old and over burdened with useless jobs to care anymore."
"Who will take care of me, Dad?" The anger had passed and True was beginning to get the picture. Her father was serious.
"You and I both will," John said, making his tone as assuring as he could. "I'll be coming back to check up on you, to visit you. You'll still have Julia and Alonzo close by. Devon and Uly will always be here, and so will all the others. They'll look out for you. You know that."
"I want you to look out for me, Dad! I can't let you go out there by yourself."
"Of course, you can. We'll just be a day's flight by hovercraft from each other."
A worried look had come into True's eyes and she frowned slightly. She stepped closer to him and reached to take one of his hands.
"I don't want you to go, Daddy. Please don't."
"I have to, True." He squeezed her hand gently between both of his. "The settlement is growing and coming together on it's own now. The colonists are getting used to the planet, and they don't need to be led around by the hand anymore. This is turning into a damn town, for pete's sake! If I can't go back to the stations, I want to go back to the biodome. I didn't realize it at the time, but it was the first real home we had on this planet, True, and that's where I want to live the rest of my life. It's close enough to commute back and forth, and just far enough away to be my little corner of the planet."
"Are you sure this is what you want? We can move into the hills like Tim and Diane did."
"A few kilometers inland is good enough for them, but not for me. Now that the colony ship isn't going anywhere, and we're never going to leave this planet, I want to live my life at a place where I think I can be happy."
With tears in her eyes, his daughter nodded her head and threw her arms around his shoulders. "You aren't going anywhere without me."
"We'll talk about that later. You're supposed to be listening for calls from the landers, not playing VR games."
True pulled away and gave her father a disgusted look. "Don't try to change the subject. If you think you're leaving here alone, you're crazy."
She nonetheless returned to her chair at the desk. Seated once more, she looked up at him while turning up the volume on the comm unit.
"Have you told Devon or Julia what you're planning to do?"
It was Danziger's turn to look at her as if she'd just grown another head. "Are you kidding me? No! I had to fight with them for seven months just to build our house half a klick from town!"
"Dad! You can't just leave without telling anyone!"
Danziger looked down at his hands and took a deep breath. Their roles had reversed somehow. As long as he lived he would never figure out how True was able to do that to him.
"Well, I just talked to Devon," he said. "Don't look like that! I did! After the meeting I actually got her to sit down long enough listen to me, but she just brushed me off, like I was telling a bad joke or something. She wants the school up before winter comes and that's all she has on her mind now. She said we'd discuss my plans later."
"But, you aren't going to wait for later, are you?"
"Of course not. If I don't leave now, I never will."


"Julia!"
True Danziger rushed into the doctor's work area, and stopped short just inside the door.
Julia Heller looked up from her data pad and raised her eyebrows. True was supposed to be looking after business at Alonzo's office, but. . . The girl looked as if she'd been crying.
"True! What's wrong? What happened? Are you okay? Is something wrong with your father?"
The girl shook her head and took a step into the small laboratory.
"Dad's leaving New Pacifica, Julia. I just talked to him. He's going to move back to the biodome and live there from now on."
"He's what?" Julia immediately got to her feet and walked around the desk to stare at True.
"I can't let him go by himself, Julia. I have to go with him."
"I can't believe this. Are you sure that's what he meant? He's not just going there for a short time? He's been doing a lot of research on something lately. Are you sure he..."
"I know what he meant, Julia!" True said adamantly, and started pacing. "He said he always liked it there and he wants to go back. If he can't go back to the stations he wants to live the rest of his life at the biodome, the only other place he ever felt at home."
"Oh, my god. Um...come with me. We'll go talk to him. Is he at his shop? Uh...wait a minute. I'll call Devon and have her meet us at his workshop."
"It won't do any good," True said softly, but Julia was already snapping on her headset.


"John, what are you trying to do? You've got both True and Julia scared half to death that you're serious about this biodome nonsense. Does this have anything to do with our talk earlier?" Devon demanded, as she marched into Danziger's workshop with Dr. Heller and True following closely behind her. She stopped in front of the work table and crossed her arms, expecting an
answer. Now.
"Nonsense?" Danziger said, putting down the circuit board he was trying to put into a com unit. He straightened up and looked at the three women. "Why is every idea I have ever had
nonsense?"
"Well, I can't believe you're serious about moving over a thousand kilometers away from New Pacifica just when True is about to start an apprenticeship with Julia, and when we're about to start building the new school complex! The buildings you helped lay out and design."
"Doesn't mean I have to build them!" he said and looked into his daughter's eyes, letting her know in a silent exchange what he thought of her bringing his two biggest adversaries to try to talk some sense into him.
Julia stepped in front of True. "Okay, maybe nonsense wasn't the right word to use," she said pointedly, looking at Devon.
Devon gave her a brief look of annoyance, but conceded the point. She willed herself to calm down and speak in a less forced tone of voice. "Okay. Okay. You want to move farther away from the colony than you already are. Alright. Can you tell me why you want to get away all of a sudden?"
"It isn't all of a sudden!" he answered with an impatient wave of his hand. "I've been trying to bring up the subject for a long time now."
"Today was the first time I heard about it."
"Today was the first time I made you listen! Then what did you do? You brushed it off."
"I didn't brush it off! I told you we'd talk about it later, and I meant it."
He sighed. "I know you did, but I can't wait for later. Summer's almost gone and I need to be on my way if I'm going to go at all this year. I need to settle in before winter comes."
Devon stared at him. He was serious.
Julia stepped into the silence. "What are you planning to do at the biodome that you can't do here? John, I know you've been restless lately, but that's no reason to make such a drastic change. Alonzo and Jake have been more than willing to take you on as a pilot with them between construction projects."
"And if I wanted to be a pilot I'd take them up on it, but I'm not interested in that." He walked to the side of the table and hooked one leg over the corner and leaned against it much as he had with True's desk. He clasped his hands together on one thigh. "Look," he began, "It's just that I don't feel at home here anymore. In the beginning, setting up the colony was enough work to stay occupied. After the colony ship arrived, getting the colonists who survived the flight settled in kept us all busy. Now, the colony is a full fledged settlement. It's a community and all the work I can do is done. All the work the ops crew can do is done. We're all getting restless. Don't tell me you haven't realized it yourself, Julia, because I know you have. Alonzo spends as much time looking at the horizon as I do."
"Well, that's different! He has the air service. He likes flying. It's as close as he'll ever get to space again."
"Not all that different. Adair dragging our asses across the planet to get here changed us all. If we'd gotten back to the stations I probably would have become a sleep jumper like Alonzo and Jake just for the change in environment. The only thing I really know is - even though I would have denied at the time - I liked the life we had at the biodome. When I started thinking about moving away from the settlement, I thought going into the hills, like some of the others did, would be what I would do, but the more I thought about it, the more I knew I really wanted to go home. Since home at the stations was out, the only other place where I ever felt at home was at the biodome. I've been trying to find plans or blueprints in the library for building another one like it."
"So that's what you've been doing," Devon said. "With all the maps you've been making and
poring over, we were all joking you might have found buried treasure, or a gold mine."
"In a way, I have," John said with a small smile. "There's something I've been wanting to do for a long time, ever since the crash. It's stayed in my mind through everything, but I never really had a chance to follow up on it until now. All the free time I've had recently has enabled me to research and plan for my future. It's going to be my base from now on."
"A base? A base for what?" Julia asked, intrigued despite her opposition to his plan.
Before Danziger could answer, Devon cut in sharply, holding her hands palms out to both of them. "Wait a minute, both of you. John, I'm sorry if you've been bored lately, but leaving the colony now is out of the question. You know how big the school complex is going to be. We need every available hand to work on the foundations and the support structure. We need to have the walls up by winter so we can work inside through the cold weather."
"You have enough people. The last of the injured colonists from the ship are out of the hospital and ready for work," he told her.
"You're our construction foreman."
"Walman can take over."
"You have the organizational experience."
"We aren't building a station, Devon! Just a school and a couple of other small buildings!"
"I know! It's going to be hard work and we need you to keep the work moving. You've supervised the building of the entire colony, John. Like it or not, that's your job."
Danziger raised one hand and rubbed his forehead, grimacing at his palm as he did so. That was the whole problem. He was getting tired of his job. When he lowered his hand his expression was all patience.
"All right. All right. You win. I won't talk about it anymore. Chalk it up to another harebrained Danziger scheme."
Devon looked exasperated, shaking her head and sighing loudly. "I never said it was a harebrained scheme, and you know it."
"Harebrained, nonsense. Same difference," he said.
"Stop being difficult," Devon told him mildly and patted his arm reassuringly. "I didn't mean it, and you know that, too. You caught me off guard."
It was a classic John Danziger feint, contrition and mock embarrassment to throw Devon off. True knew this tactic and opened her mouth to say something, but her father's look in her direction stopped her cold. Her shoulders slumped. They would be moving to the biodome as soon as possible. Maybe that very night.
The three adults talked for a minute or two longer and then the women turned to leave, walking out together and talking softly about something.
John watched them go. Besides, he thought and looked away, I want a little bit of what Julia and Alonzo have before I'm too old to care anymore. Or for anyone to care about me.
When they were gone, True let out a breath. "What are we taking with us?"
Danziger roused himself from self pity and smiled.

Crossing the loosely graveled main street in the direction of the governing center, Julia slowed her footsteps. She squinted against the sun to look back at Danziger's small workshop.
Devon stopped walking, too, and leaned her head to one side. "Don't look so worried, Julia.
John isn't going anywhere. You heard him admit it was just a silly idea."
Julia looked at her. "No. I heard you say it was nonsense. He just said he wouldn't talk about it anymore."
"Julia!" Devon said with a laugh. "You don't really believe he's actually going to leave and take True so far away, do you?"
"Don't you?"
"Of course not! You know John. Once the building of the school gets under way, no one will be doing anything right and he'll be all over the site giving instructions and threatening to do it all himself!"
Julia sighed. "I guess so. You're probably right."
"Absolutely. Thanks to that attitude the hospital will probably stand for a thousand years."
Julia laughed. "It probably will. I'll see you later. I have a few things to do before calling it a day."
Devon smiled at her. "All right. Thanks for calling me, by the way. I really should have taken the time to talk to John after the meeting. Anyway, I'm glad it's settled."
"Yeah. So am I."

It was early evening and Julia was in her office at the hospital recording the facts of her last medical case that day - a young woman with an insect sting on her inner arm just below the elbow. Diagnosis and treatment were simple enough. The Advance crew had experienced any number of such stings and bites in their travels across the continent.
Julia finalized her report and sent a copy of it to her colleague, Dr. Vasquez, whose office was on the other side of the building. She looked at the calendar on her office wall.
Calendars were the first products off the printing press Morgan Martin built a year ago, and one hung across from her desk, letting Julia see how her life would be unfolding from day to day. There were days set aside for her duties at her small clinic; days set aside to teach the volunteers here at the hospital more about their duties as medics and assistants; and, the most important of all, days set aside for Alonzo's next homecoming - as well as all of his departures. The departures matched the homecomings and the clinic days matched the teaching days, all letting her have one day off a week. The calendar told a story of her life she didn't like acknowledging.
Getting up from her chair, she took her gear unit from her pocket and put it on her head. She pulled the eyepiece forward and, after a long time and a couple of false starts, she began to speak and record her words.
Ten minutes later, Dr. Julia Heller entered the children's playroom of the hospital and she spoke quietly to the young medics overseeing the nursery at night. Afterward, she went into the nursery and quietly walked among the sleeping children in their tiny beds. She approached the small cot of a sleeping boy who was just over a year old. An orphaned child who had lost his family as a result of the sabotage aboard the colony ship, he had been born healthy on the stations where an older brother had not.
Julia and Alonzo had talked of adopting the little boy, but always the final decision was put off for one reason or another: he would go away on another cargo pod hunt, or a freight run for food or materials, and when he returned days or weeks later, the subject would be forgotten and brought up later to the same result.
It was now half a terrian year since Julia first brought up the idea of giving the baby a home, and now, she was making the choice alone.
She lifted the sleeping baby from his bead and wrapped his blanket around him. He stirred, whimpering a small protest, but he quieted immediately when she whispered to him in a hushing tone.
One of the student medics in the outer room had a small bag stuffed with clothing, food and other necessities when Julia came out of the nursery ward with the little boy.
The young woman smiled. "I had a feeling you would be along to get him soon," she whispered and helped Julia hang the bag by it's strap on her shoulder. "You and Mr. Solace will adore him."
Julia nodded. "I already do. Thanks for getting the bag ready so fast."
The student smiled wider. "We've had it ready for a long time. I just had to put milk into the bottles. We all knew how much you wanted him."
A second student touched Julia's arm. "What are you and Mr. Solace planning to name him?"
Julia leaned her head to one side. "My father's name was Michael. I think it would be an appropriate name for him."
She left the hospital wing and carried the child through the fading sunlight toward the cabin she and Alonzo shared. If anyone had been watching they would have been surprised to see Julia walk past the rustic little cabin and onward to the long, low hangar for the landers and the hoverlifts.
Julia knew the Danzigers would be there preparing a lander for their departure from the colony site. It was obvious John had made up his mind about leaving and he wasn't about to let anyone stop him - not even the interference of his daughter.
Just before going inside the hangar, Julia paused long enough to look back at the softly lighted windows of the clustered buildings that made up the colony.
"All right, Michael Heller the second," she whispered to the baby and the cooling night air. "Let's go with John and True and find a place we can all call home together, shall we?"


THE END

Reminder Banner
I thought I'd really tech out and make a banner for my reminder spiel. I love cluttering up perfectly good sites and blogs with web toys.

Another Reminder. . .
Once again, blog posts run bottom to top, the story starts at the bottom of the page. Excuse the mistakes. I didn't spellcheck or run it through grammatica so kindly overlook the errors. I'll clean it up when I move it over to my web page, etc., etc.
The change in text, BTW, happens whenever I use HTML for any reason.
Hard to figure, these blogs.
Here are cast pics of who is turning out to be the two main characters of this story, though I hadn't originally planned it that way:

(Jessica Steen)

(aka Clancy Brown)

And a Bugs GIF simply because I can.

Chapter 3

Danziger woke early in the morning. The air was chilly, the fire was a small flame slowly licking its way to the middle of a thick log, and the sun was only a hint on the horizon. He didn't have to look to find out what the weight on his arm was. He carefully pulled it out from beneath Julia's head and rolled out from under the folded parachute material serving as a blanket. Using the warm water in the coffeepot, he wet a section of shirt sleeve and washed up quickly, letting the chill air bite his skin as the water quickly cooled. Only when he was dressed did he look at Julia, still fast asleep, to be sure she was comfortable.
Oh, man!? I'm not that far gone, am I? Why didn't I see that coming before it hit?
He stoked the fire, adding some wood and getting the flames roaring. Julia moved slightly, still asleep, and he kept his eyes on the fire. Deliberately he brought another thought to mind.
Springtime. Hah. The nights and mornings were just as chilly as winter sometimes.

So why the hell wasn't he feeling the cold?

Julia awoke some time later, saw Danziger was gone, and quickly sat up and looked around. It was full daylight and the hilltop was alive around her. She could hear John talking to Zero some way off, their voices barely audible above the sounds of nature close by and the lapping of the water against the shore. The box in which they carried their food was placed nearby on her side of the shelter, along with a container of water and a pack with clothing in it. Yale had certainly thought ahead.
She washed and dressed, then, famished, had a meal of dried fruit and meat. When she finished, she crawled out of the lean-to and stood up, uncapping her canteen as she straightened. She looked around for John and Zero.
The back seat of the dunerail was loaded with supplies which she was sure Zero had brought with him during the night, but the ATV was not here.
It suddenly occurred to her the two of them might have gone to the ship and left her behind. Julia spun around in a circle and moved a few quick steps toward the lake to get a better view of the shore.
"Danziger!" she called, and in the same instant she saw the ATV appear out the trees and bushes far along the shoreline and bounce along with just the zero unit inside it as it moved toward the ship. A moment later she saw the figure of Danziger moving through the trees as he walked back toward the camp.
Of course he wouldn't do that to her. The tension left her body and she went back to the lean-to and climbed into the passenger seat of the dunerail and took a long drink from her canteen. It would be a while before he got back. Plenty of time to think about matters and explain to herself what happened.
Matters? That was a laugh. She made herself say it: to think about the night before and what had caused the kiss that wouldn't quit.
Julia laughed shortly at that, surprising herself that she could laugh at all. She'd done a number of things that had surprised herself the last few days.
Behind her back, far to the south, she knew the rest of the group was on their way to the crater lake, probably had been since sunrise. She knew Alonzo well enough to bet on that, and besides which, both times she spoke to him the evening before there had been a light in his eyes she hadn't seen since the first hours after she'd wakened from cold sleep and gone in search of him on the bridge of the Roanoke. Finding the ship had reignited something inside him, the something that had vanished when he thought he'd been responsible for his ship being lost. Not even the news of Alex Wentworth's sabotage had been able to quell his guilt over abandoning his ship.
John knew it would happen and tried to keep Alonzo's emotions in check, and though she tried, too, Julia knew it wouldn't be so easy to do this time. Whatever fueled the drive, the ambition, the desire to be a starship pilot - to explore space and never grow old - whatever it was that made Alonzo and Jake Baines choose sleep jumping as their careers. . .it had come back with a vengeance yesterday.
It was called hope. And the two of them had welcomed it back into their lives like lost souls sighting home after a long time away.
As if that wasn't enough to contend with, Julia wondered how the group would take the news when Danziger told them of the people who'd been trapped inside the ship as it fell, of the person or persons who'd tried to save themselves by re-programming the cargo pods to release their parachutes.
She leaned her head back against the seat and closed her eyes. She couldn't look at the ship anymore.

Somewhere behind her John's voice, carried on the wind, reached her in a garbled form. She climbed out of the rail and looked around.
"Danziger?"
She dug into her pocket for her gear. "Danziger?" she called out. "Where are you?" She put the gear set on her head and her fingers searched for the power up switch. "John? Are you there?"
For once he had his gear on and answered her almost immediately.
"Yeah, Julia. What's up?" His optical unit was in place. Julia could see he was walking through a sparsely wooded area with limited underbrush. Behind the sun was almost hidden by the trees, but now and then a ray from it would halo his hair.
"What are you doing? I heard you shouting just now."
He looked a little embarrassed, but over the gear channel's feed she couldn't be certain. "Just sent Zero ahead to the ship. We went down to the base of the hill to set a beacon for the others, showing them where to stop and leave the transrover. When I get back to camp we'll take the dunerail and follow Zero."
"Have you talked to the others yet?"
"Yeah. They were on their way before full sun up. I saw the transrover's lights when I got up this morning. Zero got here during the night and waited for us to wake up."
"Oh." She paused to consider that. "Anything I can do?"
"Uh. . . Start breaking camp. Let's go to the ship. Zero is going to see if he can get to the cargo pod."
"What do you think the chances are of finding tools or vehicles in it?"
"Pretty good, I'd say. Devon said each one had at least one vehicle of some kind in it. Maybe another Zero unit." He didn't sound too happy about that. "Hard to say without a manifest. Something we never had to begin with."
"Maybe Zero will find one on the ship. If the interior didn't reach flashpoint we might find a lot of things - besides the . . . you know."
"Hmm. Maybe. I'll be there in a little while." He moved aside his optics and his gear unit went off.
Taking down the shelter was not a big job, untying and folding the materials was all it took. Julia threw a few handfuls of dirt on the fire. She rinsed her hands and poured the wash water over the embers to be sure it was out. Satisfied it was, she climbed into the dunerail to wait. The camp was still shaded by the trees but the sun was higher in the sky now and the dunerail was dappled in shade and light. This was truly a beautiful spot.
The ship, which had seemed so beautiful yesterday, was the only blemish on the scenery. She wished it wasn't so, but knowing what was inside chilled her to the bone.

"Julia!"
She heard her name being called and opened her eyes, and was surprised, because she didn't remember closing them. Still absorbed in her reverie, Julia stood and called out, "Over here!" before it clearly registered in her mind the voice was that of a woman, and a very familiar voice it was, too.
A smiling figure was walking towards her from the west and Julia caught her breath sharply when she recognized the young woman. She stood frozen as the apparition of Eben Sinh neared the dunerail and walked around it. Shouldn't a ghost walk through objects in her way? Julia thought wildly and took a step backwards.
The ghost of Eben stopped walking and leaned her head to one side, giving her an exasperated look. "Oh, come on, Julia," it chided. "I thought you'd be one of the few in the group who wouldn't get scared and run away if you saw me. Where's your scientific curiosity?"
The apparition stopped in front of the dunerail and lifted one foot to rest on the front fender. The boot made a soft clang as it touched the metal.
Julia stared at the boot, then raised her eyes to look at the face of the other woman. "Eben? Is that really you?"
The ghost laughed. "Of course, it is! I wanted to talk to you before John gets back."
"How...? Oh, my god, how can this be?"
The other woman lowered her leg and slowly walked forward, holding her hands out. Her feet made scuffing and crackling sounds in the dirt and stones and dried grasses on the ground. She stopped in front of the doctor, still holding out her hands.
"We're not on Earth anymore," she said gently. "Please. Don't be afraid. Take my hands."
Julia stood frozen.. This had to be a dream. Definitely a dream She was having a terrian dream because. . . Eben Sinh simply could not be here!
Not only that, but, oh god, Julia thought, this has happened before!
Julia stared at the hands held out before her for a long time before she could will her own to reach out and touch them, first tentatively , and then, with astonished curiosity. She looked up and Eben smiled at her. She touched the face of the young woman, her hair and her clothes.
"I don't know how I do it," she said with a rueful smile. "I just know that for a short period of time, if I really concentrate hard, I can be as real as I used to be. Wishful thinking, perhaps. I know I'm dead, or my body is, anyway, but the rest of me is still here."
"Eben, how is this possible?"
"That's what I came to talk to you about. I'm to tell you, to remind you, this isn't Earth and it isn't the stations. This is a living planet and you should keep that in mind, first and foremost from now on. Start thinking like a citizen of this world. You've seen enough strange things in your short time here to know that anything is possible. I'm proof of that, wouldn't you say?"
Julia felt a wave of sorrow come over her. "I'm sorry, Eben. I'm so sorry. I didn't know. . . I didn't know until it was too late."
Eben shook her head. "Don't be, Julia. I have a purpose here. I don't know what it is yet, but I know I died to make a difference. Wherever it is I am at now - well, it's wonderful. Don't be sorry for my sake. I chose to be here." She drew in a deep breath. "We'll talk again, Julia. I have to go. I'm still learning to hold this form and I can't stay for long. I'll see you."
With those words the image of Eben Sinh vanished and Julia opened her eyes again. She was standing in front of the dunerail and she was alone at the campsite. Even so she could hear Eben's voice in her head, though she didn't remember the apparition saying anything more to her.

"The Mother is worried about Uly. He misses his mother, and in spite of his genetic changes and his strong bond with the Terrians, the Mother is worried he might lose his ability to communicate with them. She doesn't want to lose him as a link the way she lost Mary. He must be allowed to contact them physically. Not just in dreams. Alonzo can help. Julia, remember this."

And then she remembered why those words were in her mind.

Danziger came out of the trees and saw that Julia had been busy. The lean-to was dis assembled and the dunerail was packed with all the materials they'd used for camp. Julia was standing at the front of the rail and facing the lake.
"Hey!" he called and almost stopped short in surprise himself when the doctor jumped and spun around, her eyes wide and mouth open as if to scream.
She relaxed, looking a trifle embarrassed as she tried to sound annoyed. "Danziger! Don't sneak up on people like that!"
He smiled, not wanting to laugh out loud. A startled Julia he could take, but an angry one? Not this early in the day.
"I told you I was coming."
"Twenty minutes ago!"
"Five minutes," he corrected. He pointed over his shoulder with his thumb. "I was right back there when we talked."
She was about to protest, but she didn't want to tell him about her dream. She would let it go until she could think about the odd message the ghost of Eben Sinh had brought to her. Instead, she indicated the campsite with a sweep of her arms.
"All packed. We can be on our way."
Danziger shrugged. "Okay."
They both climbed into the dunerail, but when John reached to manually activate the engine, Julia reached out and clasped her hand over his wrist.
"John, we need to talk about last night," she said, looking and sounding apologetic. "Look, I don't. . . I don't know why. . ." She gestured helplessly with her other hand.
"You don't know why it happened?" he asked. "Hell, I do."
She looked at him sharply and opened her mouth to speak, but he raised his other hand to stop her. "It happened because we're alive, Julia. It might feel like we died with Eben, you trying to save her, me watching her ebb away, but we didn't. Sometimes it feels as if we're back there, suspended in time with Devon, but we're not. We're alive. Something inside of us - I don't know what - decided it was time to give our brains a clue. We're still among the living, Julia, and I haven't felt this good in months. It's time to get rid of the guilt and the sorrow and get on with life. I don't know about you, but I'm more than ready."
Damn if he didn't make sense. Julia smiled and nodded her head once. "I think you're right."
"Well, you say that with such enthusiasm. Now I don't know what to do with myself."
She laughed. "Let's go after Zero."
Danziger started the engine. "That's what I want to hear. The old pioneering spirit Devon said we all had in us."
Julia settled back in her seat. "I thought we weren't going to be talking about Devon," she said over the sound of the vehicle' tires moving over the ground.
"Why not? It's time to stop talking about her in the past tense. She's still a part of the group."
Swinging the dunerail around in a circle, Danziger aimed for a path through the trees and they were on their way.

As Danziger drove the dunerail through the woods, I turned my head toward the lake and, through the trees, I saw the ship that had fallen into it. I thought of, and marveled at, the extraordinary luck that helped keep it intact through it's deadly fall from the sky. It was the same luck that led Danziger and me to it's resting place when the group could easily have walked past it - when I could have easily persuaded him to let it go if I'd tried hard enough.
That same stroke of luck put us on this lakeshore for one night away from the rest of the crew. One night when the two of us could help one another face life again as confident and determined individuals. From going through the motions and forcing ourselves to live from day to day, we have wakened from our grief and cast aside our guilt and we have found the reserves of strength within us that will take us to the ocean, and that will help us both welcome Devon Adair back into our midst. And she will be rejoining us soon. I know it." Julia Heller, M.D.



To be continued. . .

Don't Remember Earth 2?
Maybe this will jog your memory. I believe this was originally posted on the official network site for the series.