No Guarantees
This was my Bess and John story written to show my sister it wasn't a foregone conclusion that Devon and John would end up together. With the right circumstances occurring, things could go in another direction. Like the Julia story, this one has Bess discovering something about a friend, too.
There is no real hurry Caine to speak of, but there is reference to a bunch of screaming grandmothers attacking Bess' corn. Now that's a picture I can't get out of my head.
I think all of the corrections are made that needed to be made. If not, I'll find them later and fix 'em before I move the story to my web page.

NO GUARANTEES

Autumn, Looking Back. . .

The chill breeze was a good indication summer was ending, and, looking around, one could see the first hints of fall were beginning to show. Bess Martin stood beneath the arched mess tent and sipped at the cup of water she held in her hand. It was early evening and work for the day was winding down. Outside, just across the grassy field, the first wing of the hospital and a few barracks style living units were bathed in the orange tinged sunlight. She was reminded of the prefab units in which her family had lived on Earth. Sturdy in appearance, bland and virtually identical, the units would hold five families each in relative comfort.
Devon Adair's colony town was taking shape slowly but surely.
Though Bess had long since accepted the group's decision to build their settlement on the bluffs above the beautiful beaches, it didn't stop her from worrying that they were making a mistake for which they would some day pay.
They had reached the com dish in early spring, laden with the tools and vehicles they would need to start building, and, very quickly, the weeks had turned to months, and life atop the bluffs had fallen into a routine. Her companions were happy with that, but she was not. The end of their long journey had brought to a close more than just their nomadic lifestyle.
The teamwork that had brought them across kilometers of the continent became the driving force behind the building of the structures taking shape across the green field. Their dependence on one another for day to day existence, however, had almost immediately started to change.


Spring. . .

"Morgan, you've got to help me make them listen."
Bess and Morgan Martin were in their tent after the evening meal. Bess was agitated. Morgan was poring over his notes and records, getting them in order and trying to make a comprehensive report out of them. Bess paced the small space behind him.
"There is a long, wide valley just ten kilometers inland. It has a fresh water spring and a pond beneath it. It's a better location than this. We're too close to the beach."
Morgan stopped what he was doing and ran his hands through his hair. He turned his head to speak over his shoulder, eyes and hands emphasizing his words even though Bess couldn't see them. "How many times do I have to tell you? It's a losing argument. Devon is determined to build here. It's her worry anyway, Bess." His voice lowered, and the tone changed only slightly and he looked at her out of the corner of his eye. "It's not like we're going to be spending the rest of our lives here, you know. Once we're on our way home, your worries about no one heeding your doomsday advice will be all for nothing."
Bess' step faltered for just an instant. She paced another few steps and then turned to look at her husband's back. "Honey, we're not going back. Remember? We talked about it months ago and decided to stay. You said sending a recorded log back to the stations would be an acceptable report on the Advance team's mission."
She could tell by the way he ducked his head and began to fiddle with the gear chips spread out in front of him that he had changed his mind, that he was going to try to avoid an argument and duck out on her. Well, there had been too much of that lately and she wasn't going to have anymore of it.
Bess crossed her arms and went to stand beside Morgan, putting herself between him and the tent's flap. "When did you change our plans? How long were you going to wait before you told me about it?"
Morgan glanced at her quickly and nervously. "I really have to get these reports in order, Bess."
"No. You really have to talk to me and you'd better have a good explanation for what you just said to me, Morgan Martin."
"But, Bess," he said, waving his hands over the materials on the table in front of him, "you already know how important my report to the stations is going to be!"
Her expression hardened and her voice lowered. "You know that's not what I meant."

There were no guarantees on Earth nor on G889, and Bess Martin was getting tired of trying to drive that point home with her fellow Edenites. Since reaching the com dish and the ocean, everyone's main priority was creating a safe home environment to receive the people aboard the colony ship.
All of a sudden Bess' practical knowledge gleaned from growing up and surviving on the surface of Earth was deemed not as important as it had been when they were on the march to get here. The advance group, intended to be here or not, had reached their destination safe and sound with few sorrows to change them; and now they were all working toward preparing for the arrival of the colony ship, and after that, the departure of the crew members who were going home.
Bess had left the meeting under the big dome tent feeling exasperated and angry. No one was listening to her at all anymore. It wasn't that she was feeling left out or ignored or that her ego was being bruised. She knew she was being ignored and dismissed, and maybe that resulted in a little ego bruising, but she also knew the feeling of euphoria at reaching New Pacifica with time to spare was blinding the others to the dangers found here. What was worse, they were resisting all attempts by her to stop it. Even Morgan, dependable, reliable Morgan who counted on her for so many things, had gotten caught up in the race to have a hospital and living quarters erected soon. After yet another disagreement with him, while the other members of the group pretended to not notice, she'd gotten up and walked out of the tent without a word to anyone.
Of course, getting the hospital ready was their priority. It always had been and Bess didn't want them to not meet that goal. She wanted them to do it all in a safer place. Somewhere a little farther inland.
What difference would it make if they weren't right on the ocean?
Time and again she had tried to talk to them about it, but no one was listening. It was bad enough to be brushed off by Morgan, but even Yale, who should know these things, too, was not taking her views into account. Morgan and Yale were the smartest men she knew, each in their own way, and until now they had both respected and listened to her opinions.
It was like everyone had contracted a bad case of being full of themselves. She hoped it ended on it's own before something bad happened to cure it.
All in all, life on the beach wasn't what she thought it would be. Morgan was once again looking forward to going home to the stations, life on this planet under rustic conditions just wasn't for him, after all. He had learned to survive along with the rest of the group, he explained, but it hadn't changed the basic needs in him. The Martins were going back to the stations when the colony ship arrived.
The trouble was, Bess didn't want to go back, and nothing she said or did could convince Morgan she really meant it. Their decision to remain, made during their stay at the group's last winter camp, was as binding to her as their G889 marriage had been. It was a painful thing to know Morgan had dismissed it so easily without asking for her input.
As the weeks turned to months and the colony began to take shape one structure at a time, Bess was feeling the gap between herself and the group, including Morgan, growing wider. She was alone in her convictions that living a stone's throw from the beach was a mistake.
She scuffed along through the sandy earth, walking past the tents and vehicles, worrying what was going to happen when the group finally saw the worst that living planetside had to offer. Morning dew still coated the grasses and brush and she kicked at them carelessly, watching the droplets coat her boots with a film of liquid.
"Hey," the voice of John Danziger interrupted her thoughts unexpectedly, causing her to jump and turn to give him an annoyed look. He'd left the meeting before she did, after the topics under discussion turned to those he had nothing to do with, as far as implementing them went. "Don't wander too far. Got no time to be looking for you if you get lost."
His tone was friendly, not irritated or angry.
Bess decided he was just making sure she was safe, so she let her annoyance pass. Instead she remembered how he and Devon had managed to lead them across the continent to this very spot despite never having done anything like it before. "Danziger, can I ask you something?"
He wasn't doing anything, just seemed to be sitting on the back of the transrover and looking at the ocean, as bored by the meeting as she was irritated. He raised one knee and hooked an arm over it. "Sure. Go ahead."
"Did you train anywhere else on Earth besides in the Arctic?"
He frowned. What the. . . ? "Uh. . . In the desert on the African continent, in the blue zones on the South American continent."
"Did you ever experience a storm during those times?"
Danziger sighed. He saw where this was leading and made a vague gesture with his hands. "In the desert we had to ride out a sandstorm. Thought the wind was going to blow our tents away, but we managed."
Bess took a few steps closer to him, the fingers of one hand rubbing the other at her waist. "That was a windstorm on an unhealthy planet. The weather patterns have been all screwed up for centuries. This is a healthy planet. So far all we've really experienced is rainstorms, snow and ice storms and a couple of thunderstorms. They were nothing compared to a hurricane."
"Look, Bess. You've been trying for weeks to get Adair to listen to you about building the colony too close to the shore, but this isn't Earth. Yale said?"
"I know what Yale said, but what if he's wrong?" Bess boosted herself onto the rover and sat with her back against one side and looked at Danziger. She drew her knees up and wrapped her arms around them. "We lived in the eastern part of what was called Tennessee in the old days. Still is by everyone but the mappers on the stations. There was a hurricane in the Atlantic to the east of us. Hurricanes are at their strongest when over water, and after they come to land they start to lose power. That hurricane came to land and was headed right toward us, but there was a mountain range and so much land between us and the ocean that no one paid it any attention. What no one knew was it was one of the biggest storms to ever form in that part of the world since the old times. It wiped towns and forests right off the map in one of the green zones along the east coast. It did lose strength, but what was left of the storm that hit us uprooted trees, blew houses off their foundations and poured so much rain on us in so little time there was flash flooding that did more damage than the storm did. I remember it, Danziger. Our town never recovered completely. The damage was that bad, the loss of life was worse. For the rest of my life on Earth, we lived in prefab, steel huts from government relief. There were parts of the mines flooded with water that no one ever was able to pump out." After a moment, she added, "John, there weren't supposed to be storms that big on Earth anymore. No one could figure out how it could have happened, but it did. The right conditions just popped up.""
In the silence that followed, Danziger listened to the roar of the ocean waves and considered this.
"Okay," he said after a while. "I'll admit none of us really knows the variety of weather there can be on a planet's surface. We've been through a lot of storms, though, Bess. Thunderstorms on the grasslands, the rainstorm that kept us pinned down with no shelter for almost a week. Snow, ice. We've come through a lot."
"We were lucky, Danziger!" Bess said angrily. "We were lucky to not see a tornado. We were lucky to not see an avalanche from the snowstorms in the mountains. And the thunderstorms were nothing compared to a hurricane!"
Avalanche? he thought, as he raised a hand to calm her. "All right, all right. So if you could get the others to listen, what would you suggest we do? Besides finding a site farther inland for the colony village? You know Devon will never go for that."
Bess threw her hands in the air. "Any number of things! First we could plant the fields farther in and be sure our food crops are safe. Most of it would be ruined by high winds no matter where we planted if a hurricane did come through, but at least it wouldn't be wiped out completely. The fields we've planted here haven't even got wind breaks from the sea breezes. Without a few trees to protect them all the soil will either blow away or wash away. Do you realize how high the waves can get in a really bad storm? We're only forty or fifty meters above the sea. A wave with the power of a hurricane behind it can get twice as high as that."
Danziger had to admit to himself that made sense. They'd seen a dust storm ahead of them while crossing the pan just before reaching their second winter camp. The dust cloud had stretched for kilometers. The dust had hung in the air for days after the storm ended, getting into everything as they went through the area.
"Is there any particular reason why you're telling me this, Bess?"
"Yes, there is. While everyone is busy with the meeting, I'd like to show you something."
"What?" he asked, suddenly wishing he has stayed under the tent and sat through the rest of the meeting.
"I have a special project I've been working on whenever I have the time."

And, so, Danziger found himself, mag-pro across his lap, sitting in the passenger seat of the dunerail as Bess drove it across the grasslands on the bluffs above the ocean. They were going east at a very good clip.
"You know how I like to get up early and go for a run most days?" Bess was talking loudly over the sound of the rail moving along. "One morning I went a little farther than normal and I found a valley with a spring in it. It was beautiful and I told Morgan it would be an ideal place to build a house for ourselves someday. If we stay here, that is."
She swung the rail around an outcropping of rocks and barreled on.
Danziger set his feet against the flooring and grabbed the side rails as casually as he could considering he expected to be thrown out of the vehicle at any moment. He didn't want to tell her to slow down and take it easy. That would be admitting he was fearing for his life. Instead he tried to keep the conversation going.
"You always run this far out by yourself?"
"Oh, no. Morgan usually follows in one of the little ATVs, but going up and down the hills, it's easy to get ahead of him. Of course, if one or both of the kids are running with me, I only go until they get tired, then we rest and turn back.`"
That was a surprise. "The kids go with you?"
"Sure! Once in a while. Uly loves to run, and True hates to let him get faster than she is, so they come with me now and then." She glanced over at the look on his face. "They're kids, Danziger. They need to let off steam once in a while and just play and be kids."
The dunerail labored up a rocky hillside and at the top, Bess drove through a thick stand of trees where a path had been cleared. When the ground began to drop away at the other side of the hill, she stopped suddenly and turned off the engine. She leaned forward against the steering wheel and waved her hand at the valley floor.
"What do you think?"
Below them was a wide L-shaped valley. The trees under which they parked extended downward and partway across the valley floor, covering the north end of it. The rest of it was open, but the land had been tilled and planted, and moving slowly among the rows of growing produce was the solitary figure of a zero unit. A small tent sat on a section of undisturbed ground next to a small pond. Just above it, watered gurgled out of the ground and flowed over rocks and stones to splash lightly into the pond, and from there it flowed away to the south.
Before Danziger could answer, the whine of another vehicle sounded behind them and one of the ATVs pulled to a stop beside the rail. True and Uly were on it.
"We saw you leave camp," True said. "We thought you might be coming here."
Uly hopped off the back of the ATV and stood beside Danziger. "Isn't it great?" he said.
"I might have known the two of you would be in on this." John pointed at the valley floor. "Is that. . .?"
Bess and the kids laughed. "Yep!" said Bess. "That's the damaged zero from the old ship that kept wandering off and getting lost. After you had him deactivated we brought him up here. True and Uly were able to figure out how to bypass his damaged programming, and then we just gave him instructions on how to care for the fields. We come out to check up on him as often as we can."
Danziger smoothed his hair back with one hand and let out a breath of air. "Look, I don't know how you've been able to keep this a secret for so long. I didn't even notice anything was missing. Why are you telling me about it now?"
Bess sat back in her seat. "I wanted someone from the inner circle to know about it. So if the worst happens and we need this food we can bring it in without Devon building the first jail on G889 and throwing me in it."
"Inner circle?"
She smiled. "That's what those of us in the outer circle call it," she started the engine again and roared down the hill as Uly scrambled back onto the ATV to follow with True.
Danziger felt an adrenaline rush and grabbed the side of the rail as it flew downward suddenly and bounced along the track being worn in the soil.

By the time they returned to the beach camp it was mid morning and people were breaking up into pairs or work crews to begin their labors for the day.
Danziger waited until he climbed out of the rail - which he had driven back - to turn to the other three. "All right," he said. "I won't tell anyone about your special project," he stopped to wave away their relieved and happy looks, "yet. If someone notices seeds or plants are missing, or even that the broken Zero is gone, I'll have to tell them. I don't like keeping secrets from anyone. We're still trying to survive here, and I'll agree with you that maybe we aren't going about it in an absolutely perfect manner. Still, we made it from the crash site to this spot by working together and by being a team. I don't like putting that aside even for a special project as well thought out as yours is."
Bess and True ran around the dunerail to give him a grateful joint hug.
"Thank you, John. You won't regret it. I promise," Bess assured him.
True smiled up at him. "I told her we could count on you. I knew we could!"
"Yeah, yeah," he muttered as they drew away and turned to leave. He wished he could smile back but he felt as if he'd just been suckered into being the fourth hand helping them harvest their crops when the time came.
Footsteps coming around the transrover caught their attention.
"Well, there you are," Devon's voice interrupted the moment. She walked slowly toward the three of them and nodded politely as True and Bess hurried past her with cheery good mornings and big smiles. Uly followed after them with the same look on his face. Odd that Danziger looked as if he'd just been outsmarted at something.
She decided to take a lighter approach to his long absence from the camp, just in case. "What did you do? Tell them another flying man story?"

Summer. . .

Bess waited by the ATV for quite a while, stretching more than usual before she decided Morgan wasn't coming. Something must have come up. Something was always coming up. He wasn't going to be accompanying her on her run this morning. She started back toward their tent angrily, but stopped halfway there and decided to go alone after all. She went to the line of vehicles, picked one of the small ATVs and drove it past the gap in the lasers she had opened earlier. After getting out and resetting the alarms, she drove away toward the valley in the hills.
This quiet spot with the ever toiling Zero unit for company had become Bess' sanctuary in the past weeks. The carefully tended crops were doing well. She was going to have a bountiful harvest, and her only worry was how to blend her produce in with that of the colony's fields when the time came.
The plants were tall and healthy, well tended and a first picking would be at hand soon. The corn was getting so high one couldn't see the pond from the hilltop anymore, and only the very top of the domed tent still was visible above the gently waving stalks.
Bess had been lucky the children were able to find a way to reprogram the Zero. They were resourceful kids and growing up fast. Uly had the idea to make a small canal system along the farthest rows of plants for getting water to them without having to carry filled containers by hand from the pond. The first irrigation system on G889 was a big success.
At the valley, she drove down the hillside and made a long swing to the north around the crops - the only downside to the irrigation system. You couldn't drive directly to the tent by the pond anymore, you had to circle around the crops.
She stopped beside the pond and climbed out of the ATV. Another little vehicle was already parked beside the tent. She smiled. Well, if the children are going to be getting up this early and coming into the hills, she might as well ask them to accompany her for morning exercise.
Before going inside the tent, Bess surveyed her gardens with satisfaction. Earth seeds and G889 seeds grew and proliferated side by side, unlike the colony gardens where the emphasis was on growing familiar foods from the stations. The plan was to grow a few of the more nutritious native plants in the garden and look for other plants growing in the wild if the need arose.
Not Bess. Those plants had saved their lives - something else the others had forgotten - and she wanted to see if they could be domesticated, if the ones from her garden would turn out as good as the plants they'd found in the wild.
Turning to the tent she walked the few steps to the flap, and leaned down to duck inside.
Danziger, working on the zero unit, glanced at her quickly before going back to what he was doing. "Mornin', Bess."
She straightened up and stared for a few seconds. "John! Good morning."
"Made a spare memory pack for the unit." he said. "Thought I'd fix his voice mod, too. Nothing I can do about the cracked motivation mod, gotta save our spares for the units doing the heavy construction, but he'll be able to answer you now instead of having to hook him to a com unit. You can give him voice commands, too."
She was impressed. "Wow. That's great. Thanks."
He shrugged. "Well. . . In case that natural disaster happens, you can give him a warning over your gear without having to drive out here."
"Good idea."
She dropped to her knees beside him to watch what he was doing. "Sometimes I wish I could just pick up and move out here," she said. "The peace and quiet would be so relaxing after all the noise and heavy work involved in building." She looked at his face and grinned a little. "I notice you feel the effects of the hard work, too. Weightlessness makes a difference, doesn't it?"
He laughed shortly. "Tell me about it." He glanced at her again. "What's the problem? Morgan think this is too far away from the main camp?"
Surprising herself as much as Danziger, Bess said, "I wasn't including Morgan."
In the silence that followed, both searched for something to say.
Danziger could sympathize with her, in a way, but had no idea how to say it aloud. He and Devon had begun disagreeing and arguing as much as they ever did in the early days of their relationship, and everyone knew the Martins were having problems.
The relatively calm period that had settled onto the group after Devon's return from cold sleep was giving way to complacency. The worst was over and it was back to business as usual.
The colony ship was close at hand and half of the group was thinking of going home. The other half was looking toward the future and fulfilling the promise of helping the Syndrome children and their families prosper on G889. Devon and Morgan had found a renewed sense of commitment to the Eden Project.
Bess rose to her feet and began to pace. "You know, Danziger, I was thinking about making this dome into a greenhouse. Something kind of like the biodome, you know? Putting my crops together with what the settlement is growing - we're going to have a lot of food to preserve for winter. When the ship arrives most of our fresh food will be used up immediately, and by mid winter we're all going to be missing fresh fruit and vegetables." Hands on hips she turned around in a circle and surveyed the tent. "Do you think it can be done?"
John was at a loss for a moment. He made a motion with his head and hands. "Well, sure. . . I suppose it could be done. We learned a lot about how one works at the biodome. But, uh. . . Shouldn't you be making plans for returning to the stations instead of for growing food throughout the winter here?"
The look Bess gave him was pure fire. "The final decision about that hasn't been made yet. The Martins returning to the stations hasn't been set in stone."
He nodded slowly and went back to work. Even though it was meant for someone else, he didn't like that look coming in his direction.
Taking a deep breath, Bess let her irritation with Morgan dissipate and she felt a little annoyed at herself for taking it out on Danziger, or nearly so. Making an oh, well gesture with her hands she smiled. "Anything I can do to help?"
She was surprised when he answered, "Yeah, as a matter of fact."
It took a few minutes more to finish the job, and both knew they'd better hurry to get back to the camp before they were missed. Danziger packed his tools and waved his hand in dismissal when she asked again if he needed help.
"No. Better get going. I'll be right behind you."
"Okay. See you later, John."
Bess leaned forward and raised the tent flap, ducking under and looking back as her hand fell away from the stiff material. She turned for her ATV and stopped dead in her tracks. "Ohhhh. . . my!" she whispered. She took a small step back toward the tent and reached her hand behind her, searching for the corner of tent flap she had just dropped. It took a second to find her voice. In a tone more shrill than she intended for it to be, she said,
"Danziger?! There's a grendler out here!"

Nothing could have surprised Danziger more. He knew there were Terrians in the area. Both Alonzo and Uly had confirmed that. And though there were plenty of signs that grendlers were also living nearby, no one had seen one in the months since they'd reached the com dish. The dish itself had taken a beating from the creatures. Peripheral bits and pieces had been ripped from it, but the grendlers either hadn't been able to open the casing and reach the main components, or they hadn't tried.
John dropped his tools on the ground and rushed through the tent flap, hitting Bess in the lower back with his shoulder and sending her a few quick steps forward, toward the grendler, before she could stop her momentum and scurry backward.
Danziger grabbed her by the shoulders and stopped her from plowing into him, as well as helping her stay upright when she stumbled against him.
"What does it want?" he asked.
"How should I know?" she answered. "Maybe we should go back into the tent until it leaves."
"What good would that do? If it wanted to come inside, too, what would stop it?"
"How should I know?"
Danziger looked down at the top of her head. "Well, you've done this before!"
She shook her head. "I traded with one before, sure, but not this one! Besides, I had something to offer then." She turned her head looked at him from the corner of her eye. "You're the one with the tools."
"I ain't trading my tools!"
"Well, we can't stand here all day, Danziger!"
"Why not? It seems to want to." He gestured toward it with one hand. The grendler was, indeed, staying in one place and looking at the two of them curiously.
Bess went silent for a moment, looking at the creature, as if really noticing it for the first time.
Beneath his hands Danziger could feel the tension leave her and she straightened her shoulders, leaning away from him. He dropped his hands and watched.
She started to speak in her most charming manner, gesturing with her hands. "You. . .frightened us. We've never seen any of you here before. We've been living on the beach for a while now and . . .you guys just never come to visit!"
The grendler remained silent, looking at her. It shifted it's position a little, toward the crops and away from the vehicles.
"Bess, I think it's here to see your garden. It might be-"
"Oh!" She stepped forward. "I'll bet you're wondering why we have another field planted here when we have so many larger ones growing over by the beach camp. Well, this is my garden." She placed her hands on her chest. "I planted this over here because I think the fields by the camp are too close to the ocean, the water. I think a storm might come and knock over a lot of the plants there and destroy them."
The grendler moved toward the corn stalks and began to gesture and make rumbling, grunting noises to her.
"This is corn," she explained and hurried over to touch it. "This is a food we humans brought with us from the place where we used to live to see if we could grow it here in this planet. It's something that we can grow ourselves to eat."
In a flash the grendler moved with incredible speed and stood beside her, grabbing a long leaf and leaning forward to bring it's face closer to it.
"Uh, Bess," Danziger said from the tent, waving his hand, index finger raised. "That's an Earth plant. It might be something an anim - a native from here shouldn't eat. We don't want to get it sick and angry."
She looked at the grendler. "That's right! What my friend just said. You should be careful about trying to eat it, because. . . Well, that's not the part you eat anyway. The part you eat is still growing and it might not be good for you."
She touched a small ear just forming along the stalk, but the grendler paid her no attention and began to scurry about from stalk to stalk, grabbing and sniffing the leaves. It took a bite out of one, then another, and another.
Bess looked at John. "I think he likes it. Umm. . . What do you think we can trade it for?"
Danziger took a few steps closer, frowning but looking surprised as the grendler munched on the leaves from the corn stalks. He stopped beside Bess. "As long as it leaves the corn alone, taking a few leaves won't be so bad."
"But what to trade for?"
As if understanding, the grendler began it's growling way of communication and produced a metal object from somewhere within it's layers of clothing and draped materials on it's body.
"That's a signal booster!" Danziger said.
"Okay," Bess said quickly and pointed to the object. "That's good! We'll trade you leaves for more things like that."
"Electronics, like the stuff we use in our camp. Anything like that."
"Yes," she agreed. "Anything made of metal, like this." She rapped her knuckles against the roll bar of the closest ATV. "We'll take anything like that in trade for leaves." She frowned suddenly. "Are they called leaves or fronds?"
"The grendler doesn't care. It's food to him. A new kind of food."
"Okay. Look. We come here every morning to check the garden." She motioned toward the sun. "Only in the mornings before the sun is way up. If you want to trade, come here then and we'll look at what you have to offer. All right?"
The grendler growled and rumbled something in reply and turned back to the corn stalks.
"Hold on, hold on!" Bess said. "Danziger, do you have a knife?"
"Well, yeah. . ."
"Good! Give it to me. I'll cut off some leaves and make a bundle and we'll give it to him for that signal thing. Of course it might not work, you know. He probably tore it out of a crashed prisoner transport or something."
Danziger dug out a pocket knife and gave it to her. "Doesn't matter. It has parts that might still be good."
Bess moved quickly from plant to plant, cutting off leaves until she had a small bundle. "Okay," she said to the grendler. "We can't trade a lot of leaves because the plant needs them to grow, but we can trade a little bit at a time. After the corn, these things, are bigger we can give you more. Taking too many now will make the plant die and then neither of us will have anything we want, will we?"
The grendler eagerly reached for the bundle of leaves, but Bess was hit with a wave of inspiration. She drew it back. "Oh, no. Show us what else you have first."
In the end, they decided the signal booster, an intact looking power pack and a broken wing assemblage from a small hovercraft was worth two bundles of leaves.
After the grendler disappeared over the eastern hilltop above the spring, Bess and John looked at one another and started to laugh. After a moment they could barely stand up under their own power.
Danziger regained control of himself and sat on an ATV tire. "That was quick thinking, Bess. I was imagining us running back to camp while it ransacked the tent and the vehicles."
"Well, you noticed it seemed curious about the garden. It was easy to go from there." She wiped her face and sank to the ground in from of him. "Oh, boy, that was fun!"
They started to laugh again.
"We might have been killed and we're laughing like idiots," Danziger said.
Bess nodded. "Julia said it was a common reaction after a fright."
He stood and reached out a hand and pulled her to her feet. "And speaking of Julia, let's get out of here. We better get back to camp before anyone starts looking for us."
In the days that followed, Bess was never really sure why what happened next did. John was pulling her to her feet, and as she rose, she raised her other arm and grabbed his shoulder for support. How that simple gesture turned into a kiss and a strong, warm embrace between the two of them, was something she wondered about for days afterward.
At the time, it took a few seconds to realize what was happening, and then draw away quickly in astonishment. Neither knew what to say, and after a few false starts, they each turned to a vehicle, climbed inside and drove away.
Bess was back at the main camp for several minutes before Danziger roared in from a different direction. She smiled ruefully to herself and gathered the tools she would be using that day. At least he was still thinking. She had driven straight back to camp, still so surprised by the kiss, she didn't even remember crossing the distance.
After the evening meal, Bess finally went to speak to Danziger. He was working alone, putting away the lasers and locking down the other equipment they used that day.
"Hey," she ventured, looking at him to see if he was still feeling as puzzled and slightly embarrassed as she was. With Danziger one could never tell, really. "I told the kids about the grendler." She shrugged. "You know. They go up there, too."
He nodded. "Good idea. I was thinking about it. You can get out of camp every morning easier than I can. You should have one or both of them go to the valley with you just to be sure. I'll come when I can, but. . . Well, it would be noticed if I started going somewhere early every day." He finished what he was doing and went on as he worked, "I'm going down the beach tomorrow to set-up gear relays. I'll tell Devon I saw grendlers. It'll be an excuse to take one or both of the kids and an ATV with you when you go running in the mornings."
"Great! That'll work. Thanks." She smiled and swung around to march away. She was glad he wasn't going to let that little bobble up there in the valley come between them. It wasn't as if they were interested in each other, after all. Good. Those things happened when people faced danger together, and she was glad he could see that.
It wasn't until she began getting ready for bed, she began to wonder why Danziger found it so easy to put the whole matter behind him. Why was it so easy for him to forget about it?
No, she thought. It isn't me. It's his problem.
Still, it irked her for a long time that he was so easily past the incident.

A storm had begun brewing offshore three weeks after Bess and John met the grendler in the valley. The group had been able to see it taking shape far out on the horizon over a period of two terrian days. At first it looked as if it was a storm that would pass them by and continue northward to eventually dissipate over the ocean.
When it began to swing landward, it was obvious the worst of it would hit well to the north along the coast, but the group had decided to listen to Bess and they prepared for the first real storm they would encounter on G889.
The winds had blown, the ocean had swamped the beaches and pounded the bluffs, trees had bent in the wind, and one of the ATVs had been rolled a hundred meters away from camp. A few tents were damaged and many of the plants in the fields had been broken. The crew had taken shelter in a small cave system Uly and True had found in the early days of the encampment.
When they emerged afterward, the buildings had been slightly damaged, but the walls were still standing. The damage was nowhere near what the Advance group had been expecting after listening to Bess' warnings. It was easy for them to quickly become complacent about the disaster-that-wasn't. To make matters worse, Morgan, her most trusted ally, had swung completely to the camp believing the worst had come and they had survived. Scouts to the area hit by the brunt of the storm showed worse damage, but it was decided to be nothing that would have hurt their existence had it passed over them. Bess hadn't even tried to explain the difference between the plant and tree abundant land the settlement was on and the open area the center of the storm had ravaged. No one was listening.
Only Danziger seemed to notice with any concern the size and the type of flotsam and driftwood that washed up on the beaches for days after the storm. Though they never talked about it, she could see he was thinking about it and wondering.
Everything returned to normal, but it was a normal to which Bess was feeling a stranger.
The days passed and the items the grendler brought to the valley began to pile up even though the creature did not come every day, and Danziger had to make the time to visit the valley and sort through it all and glean the usable items from the junk. He made certain True was with him whenever he came. Bess wasn't sure what to make of this. She continued to do the trading and she continued to find peace within herself by coming to the valley as often as she could.

Autumn, Looking Ahead. . .

Bess drank the last mouthful of water and washed the empty cup in the disinfectant solution for dishes and utensils. Wash, rinse, dry. She'd done it so many times before she barely noticed, anymore. Instead of joining the group gathering around the fire outside, Bess decided to have a shower and turn in early tonight. She had to get up early the next morning and bring some of her vegetables to the caves before anyone else got up and she was needed for work.
Coming out of the bathhouse later, she looked around the camp. It was dark now, the sun was gone so even the ocean was dark and lost to sight. There were lights glowing in the tents and in the windows of the one finished barracks where some of the group were living. Her own tent was dark. Though she and Morgan still shared their living quarters, they were rarely there at the same time. Neither seemed to want to be the one to acknowledge there was anything wrong between them.
Presently, Morgan was inside the mess tent, having taken over one of the tables to spread out his equipment and gear chips so he could continue getting his personal reports in order. With the long hours spent in construction, he was using his spare time to do personal business. Under any other circumstances, she would have chided him for neglecting his rest and order him to come to the tent with her and retire for the night. Just a few shorts months ago, he would have protested halfheartedly and let her coax him to bed.
As Bess walked slowly toward the tent she decided it was time for her to move into one of the rooms in the barracks. Tomorrow after work on the other buildings was stopped for the day, she would ask Diane Denner to give her a hand moving her few belongings.
At the tent, she didn't bother turning on a light, just climbed onto the bed. A folded length of light material was at her feet. She spread it over herself and lay down. The murmur of voices at the fire blended with the low crash of the ocean on the beach and she was asleep long before she expected to be.

The next morning Bess left the camp alone, and reached the top of the hill overlooking the valley and stopped the vehicle. Well, one good thing came out of the whole matter, she thought. My tomatoes and corn are better than anything the colony gardens are producing. And my lettuce? Beats theirs hands down.
She heard an engine coming through the woods behind her, and stopping to her right. "I hope you two aren't neglecting chores to come out here," she said tiredly, assuming True and Uly, or one of them, had followed her.
"I'm neglecting every chore I've got," Danziger answered from the dunerail. "Thought you might need some help sneaking your stuff into camp. I'm supposed to be out looking for rock to quarry,
but I've already found a couple of good sites weeks ago. I can load up the rail with your crops and put it in the caves with the other stuff. Devon's got everyone learning to use the lasers so no one will be going near the caves. I can make as many trips as necessary."
Bess' smile was brilliant.

The zero unit had been busy, as always. Anything that could be used as a container for vegetables was filled and neatly lined up inside the tent. The zero itself was in shutdown and waiting for the sun to climb over the hills so it could recharge. Danziger looked through the latest offerings from the grendler.
"Hmm. I can melt most of this down now we got a working smelter from the last grendler cache we found down south."
Bess looked at him reproachfully. "I really don't think you ought to go raiding anymore grendler caves, Danziger. You might offend our partner. We don't need a pack of screaming grendlers coming in here and taking all of my corn one day."
He shrugged. "I know, but I can't get the point across to the others without telling them about the gardens."
"Oh. Well, I'm going to take three of these back with me and just say I stopped at the fields after my run and picked some food for meals this week. My turn to do meals. I can get away with that the rest of the week."
Danziger nodded.
She said, "I, uh, had an idea the other day, but I thought I?d better ask you what you think before I do anything about it."
Danziger laughed lightly. "You've been doing fine here, Bess. Considering all of the things the grendler has brought to trade, you've been picking the right stuff to keep. The junk pile could be a whole lot bigger than that little handful of stuff. Got sound judgement."
She smiled and shrugged a shoulder. "Well, this is something else. We have a lot of stuff here. I thought maybe the grendler might be able to take some of the harvest and trade it with other humans on the planet. Only thing is, it would alert the people to someone being here who has Earth seeds and stuff. It would be announcing our existence to the world."
"That it would," John agreed, pausing to scratch behind his ear. "Let's think about it a while. There might be a solution."
"I hope so. I've also been thinking about the Elder's people and the people at the second biodome back at our winter camp. If we could send them some of our crops they could start saving seeds for next year."
Danziger sat on the corner of one of the two small tables in the tent. "That would be the best way to go about it. Both of those groups know we're here, and neither is too interested in seeking us, or anyone else, out for any reason. They might appreciate second hand contact through the grendlers, though."
Bess crossed her arms at her waist and began to pace. "The problem would be getting it to them. Our grendler would have to deal with other grendlers and before we know it, we might be making trades with a lot more than just one."
"Not necessarily. I don't know much about grendlers, but I'd be willing to bet the one we're dealing with knows where all the spider tunnels are in this part of the country and exactly where they go." John raised a hand and gestured as he went on. "I've been thinking about that, myself. Maybe we can eventually trade for information on where the nearest tunnel is and where it goes. Never know when one might come in handy."
Bess stopped pacing and looked at him with her head tilted a little to one side. "And here I was thinking you were going to blow up and start hollering about trusting our grendler with a bigger role in the trading set-up. Where is the Danziger who told me, the first time I brought him here, he didn't like keeping this a secret from the others? Do the words we're a team ring a bell?"
"Uh," he ran a hand through his hair and seemed at a loss for words.
Bess closed the distance between them in less than a second. This time she had to doubts where the kiss and accompanying hug originated.
A short time later, Bess watched the dunerail disappear around the fields. As irritable and downright ornery as John Danziger could be most of the time, he had a very sweet side to him, too. She climbed into the ATV and followed after him.
Bess had no choice but to return to camp after taking part of her small load of produce to the cool caves where the yield from the main field was being stored. Throughout the day as she learned to cut stone blocks and plane wood with the lasers, she kept watch for Danziger's return. The zero would do the picking and packing while John did the transporting. It was a private amusement to think of them as employees of her agricultural consortium. She hoped he did know of sites to quarry more rock for the building as he claimed he had. She didn't want him getting in trouble with Devon on her account. Not now.
At midday when he reported in and gave the locations of the rock outcroppings, she had already asked Denner to help her move from the tent into a room in the barracks, and with that settled, the rest of the day flew past.

Finally released from their chores that evening, True and Uly raced across the dusty common area forming between the circle of barracks foundations and made a beeline for the storage tent where they had hidden the materials for a secret project they'd been working on. One of Yale's recent lessons had included showing them holos of things called kites that children on old Earth had played with sometimes. By accident they'd discovered some of the water soaked driftwood on the beach dried without shrinking and when you cut away long strips of it, the strips were light as a feather. Just the kind of wood Yale had mentioned was needed to built a kite light enough to rise in the air. It never occurred to either child the idea might have been planted by Yale and not an original inspiration of their own.
Racing in the lead, True neared the open flap of the tent and all of a sudden skidded to a halt on the trampled grass on front of it.
She had to be seeing things. That couldn't be her dad in there with Bess Martin. They definitely couldn't be kissing each other.
Uly was approaching fast. True looked away and turned. She ran toward Uly and caught him by the shoulders as he slowed to avoid a collision. "We have to wait a while before we get our stuff."
"Why?" the boy asked.
"You're not going to believe this. I just saw the weirdest thing."
"What?"
"You're not going to believe it. Bess Martin is kissing my dad."
Uly's eyes widened. "Whoa!" He took a step in the direction of the tent.
"No!" True said and stopped him. "This was a major kiss."
"Whoa. . . How major?"
"Really, really major. Like when you bump your head and see stars."
"Whoa. . ."
"Stop saying that!"
"Well. . . When can we get our stuff?"
True bit her lip. She wanted to finish that kite and see if it would fly. "Come on, but let's be really noisy." She started to trot toward the tent and called over her shoulder. "I'll get to the tent before you will!"
Uly started after her. "No, you won't!"
If there was a chance to see this major kiss before it stopped he wasn't going to miss it.
"Hey!" True yelled as he streaked past her. She slowed to a walk. Oh well, if that didn't announce their arrival nothing would. She composed her face and prepared to be surprised to see her father and Bess pretending to be putting their tools away. She had a feeling she would be doing that a lot for a while.
There were no guarantees this would be a secret for long.

The End

Your Wish Is My Command
This is someone's autographed picture of Gayheart, so I cropped it pretty close to get as much of the auto out of the picture as possible. (I got permission a while back to use the pics on the Planet G889 site when it was the Definitive Earth 2 Picture Archive. I think it still holds.) The outfit is what counts, not the ink stains, eh guys?
I don't think it's a one piece outfit BTW.

B & J Story
Found a copy of the Bess and John story. I guess I never saved it to a diskette, but my sister had a printout. I don't remember it being so long, but I finally got the time to read it onto my computer. As soon as I get the time to correct the punctuation and the misinterpreted words, I'll put it up. Hopefully by Friday.
Still adjusting to getting back to school and working, so losing a lot of sleep until I hit the right groove.
The voice recognition program I have just can't make any sense of the word grendlers. It keeps interpreting it as grandmothers or grand lawyers, and for some reason hurricane kept coming up hurry Caine. I had to pronounce it hurruhcane to get the program to recognize it.
Anyway, as you can probably guess, this is really just a filler post to keep the blog from dropping off the first page of the Television and Movies section of blog listings.
In the meantime, just to clog up your browsers and send my bandwidth over the limit again, here's a big picture of Bess and a grandlawyer. Grandmother. Grendler.

Favorite Episode, Favorite Scenes
Some of the comments listed under the last post reminded me of what, IMHO, is the funniest scene in the whole series. It might not be funny to others but it is to me.
In Flower Child Julia and Alonzo are in the dunerail chasing after the Martins while Yale and Devon monitor their progress over gear. At the same time the two are also watching over Danziger in the med tent. Julia and Yale are talking about the way the organism is acting and she makes a statement that it seems to be both keeping Bess and John alive and killing them at the same time. All of a sudden Devon gets this alarmed look on her face and immediately gets up and gives Danziger another dose of medication. In his weakened condition he can do nothing to stop her as she literally forces it down his throat!
Good acting, good direction, great scene.
It makes me laugh every time I see it.

Another favorite scene involves the Danzigers. I think it's at the end of Promises, Promises. The dead Terrian is taken back into the soil by the planet and the crew turns and walks away. There follows a scene between John and True that is done in one long take, no cuts at all. The acting is dead on and perfectly in character. Good performances by Clancy Brown and young J. Madison Wright. I'm always impressed when I see it.
It's this scene and her earlier ones with Tim Curry as Gaal that have me at the point where True can scream all she wants and it doesn't bother me! :)

My favorite episode is Mooncross. We learn more about the Terrians and the planet in that one storyline than we did in all the episodes that preceded it. We learn that the dream plane can keep restless spirits alive and that is probably why the grendlers never looted the biodome. It was never really uninhabited. We met Mary, a fascinating character who made "human" a dirty word.
I've often wondered if Mary would have turned up in the second season as a replacement in the group for the character, the pretty Edenite in the background, who died in AAE. (I mean if the original creators and writers had not been fired but allowed a second season, and the retooling of the show not taken place)
It is my favorite episode in spite of the fact that the narration is done, poorly, by Antonio Sabato, Jr. who also has a major role in the plot. He is not a good actor and his stumbling on some of the words in the voiceover is irritating, but I can overlook his nearly spoiling everything because Kelli Williams, Jessica Steen and Debrah Farentino just act circles around him throughout the story.

Earth 2
One of the main reasons I'm still writing fanfic for this series is because it has become a stable subject. The 22 hours of episode material is all the information we have and it never changes. Now, unless one of the creators decides to tell us more about what they had in mind for it in some way, or decides to remake the series, or get a reunion movie made, we can consider the episodes the definitive Earth 2 source.
I also write FF about Star Trek and Star Wars and other science fiction universes, but they are changing constantly. New movies, new books, new series, all continue to push fanfiction out of date sooner or later. Some of the best SW fanfics from just 5 years ago are no longer enjoyable because the movies have made their storylines inconsequential. Four years ago we were just finding out who was the mother of the twins. Before that we hadn't a clue.
The same with Star Trek. My sister wanted me to write a story finalizing the relationship between Picard and Crusher - something the series and the movies have ignored. All we got was the possible future where they married and divorced - a thing that will probably never happen because now that they know how it will turn out, they might decide to forego a relationship altogether!
I did start a story and ended up scrapping it after "Insurrection" made it pretty darn clear Picard was interested in playing the field or, at least, playing with Anij.
I might still try to write something later on, but for now I've lost interest.
Earth 2, on the other hand, is a universe I can be certain what I write about the characters won't be negated by something in the reunion movie (hint, hint, hint) or the next novel.
That, and it's just loaded with terrific characters to manipulate. I can make up my own reality for them to live in and still enjoy stories other authors write because the stories will always relate to the 22 hours of episodes we have to back them up. There will always be that common ground. For me E2 is the perfect universe to write about.

Banner Blurb



The story starts at the bottom of the last page.

Chapter 4
Alright. Finally came up with a way to get Mr. Solace out of the way for a short time but that doesn't happen until the next chapter. This is mainly a hit for the J&J junkies - with a little homage to Lynyrd Skynyrd thrown in.




CHAPTER 4

The main group stopped for a midday meal and took a few extra minutes to let the vehicles recharge even though they all wanted to be immediately on their way. Baines and Solace were far ahead of them, a reflection of sunlight in the haze was all that could be seen of them as they pushed farther and farther ahead. In the excitement of the day, no one really noticed the oddly subdued manner of the Martins.
When the solar collectors were sufficiently charged and the group resumed their travel, the couple hung back with the sentry bringing up the rear, and followed behind the ?rover.
"Morgan," Bess said, slipping her hand under his arm, "we've faced this situation before and we were able to get through it. These are good people. When they learn the truth, I can't imagine any of them turning away from us."
"Us? Of course not us!" He looked at her with uneasiness. "It's me they'll start to judge again! You can intervene all you want, but they'll never blame you. They know I was the one who took the pod. I told them so, remember?"
"Things have changed. All of us have changed."
Morgan rolled his eyes. "Bess, we were lucky the first time! Danziger didn't know about the? about the? He didn't know anyone was left behind. Do you really think it would have been the same if he'd known when we told them then?"
"I'm not going to second guess the past, Morgan. I'm talking about now. I believe in these people and I'm sure you're worried about nothing."
"Twelve dead people are not nothing! They're people who died because of what I did. Doesn't that get through to you at all, Bess?"
She gave him a stern look. "Of course, it does. I'm not saying there won't be anger or reproach, Morgan. I'm saying afterward these people will forgive and forget."
"How long afterward?"

The dunerail alternately weaved between the trees or skirted them altogether whenever the beach sand along the lake was wide enough to allow passage. After a while Julia stopped making notes and tucked away her gear. The glimpses of the ship looming closer and closer were far too amazing to ignore. Whenever they left the trees and had an unobstructed view she couldn't take her eyes from the craft.
She had never really looked at the ship when it was in dock at the stations, and while coming aboard in the shuttle her mind had been on other things, certainly not on the ship. Ships were the mode of travel among the stations and she never really took notice of the exterior of the vessels she'd flown aboard, only the interiors. Ships were commonplace, nothing special.
On land, Roanoke was so big it was almost frightening in it's size, and it was getting bigger with every meter as they approached.
Julia tried to keep her attention away from it and her mind off what she knew to be inside.
"Danziger?" she said. "I don't want you to think taking me along on scouts is going to become a habit. Just because my being here was a life altering experience for you this time, doesn't mean I'm going to come along every time."
"Life altering?? What the hell are you talking about?" He gave her a quick, frowning glance, not wanting to take his attention from the trees for too long.
"You said that after last night you were feeling better than you have for months. I heard you yelling around in the woods like a kid this morning. So I just thought I'd better tell you." She didn't look in his direction or she'd laugh, she just followed his reactions out of the corner of her eye.
He looked at her again and made a sound that might have been a laugh - it was hard to tell over the sound of brush, sticks and leaves being crunched under the dunerail's wheels. "Well, you're awfully full of yourself today. We found the ship, Heller! Remember? That might have a little something to do with it, don't you think?"
"Okay. If you say so."
"I'm not getting into this with you."
"Okay." She sat up straighter in her seat. "Okay."
He glanced her way one more time, though.

Danziger stopped their headlong pursuit of the ATV only twice. Once when they reached the rift in the ground where water had poured over the banks and rushed downhill, taking everything in its path with it. The foot of which was where they had found a way up the high hill. The beach sand had filled in the top of the broken area and they crossed a small downward dip with only a few bumps on the rocks sticking out of the sand.
The second time was when it became apparent Zero had reached the area of shore nearest the ship. His tiny white form walked stiffly toward the beach.
John got out of the dunerail and watched. He snapped on his gear. "Zero, can you hear me?"
"Yes, sir, I can."
"Stop on the beach and give me a three sixty visual." He swung the optics in front of his eyes. "Damn! I wish we brought a monitor with us."
"Yes, sir." The robot stopped moving a few steps later and began a slow, counterclockwise turn in place. The ship appeared as a black wall devoid of features directly in front of him, but soon the rippling surface of the lake appeared, and the blackness moved out of sight. From Zero's point of view they could see the water and distant shorelines, the gap in the treeline where they had made camp, the approximate area where Danziger and Heller thought they were now, then a long glimpse of the woods between them and Zero.
The ATV came and went from sight, more trees and, all of a sudden, both Julia and John yelled, "Stop!"
Zero complied immediately. Just off center of the video feed he was transmitting was a large, dark, square shape tucked in among the trees.
"Zero, is that a cargo pod?" Danziger asked.
"Negative. It is a dwelling."
"A what?!" the two of them said at once.
"It is a dwelling."
"Give us a close-up view," said Danziger.
"How can you be sure?" said Heller.
The perspective changed and the dark shape in the trees grew larger, but the image did not show the "dwelling" more clear in any way. The shade from the trees, thicker in that region of the wooded area, was not giving up it's secrets.
Julia was shaking her head. "That can't be, can it?" she asked in a low voice. Then, raising her voice. "Zero, what makes you think it's a building and not a cargo pod?"
"I am scanning power readings coming from the dwelling and a power source outside the dwelling itself."
"Why didn't you tell us before?" she asked.
"The readings are in powered down mode. I did not pick them up until I aimed my scanners directly at the dwelling."
"Okay, Zero," Danziger said. "Do what we planned for you. See if you can reach the ship and get to the cargo pod. We'll be there in a few minutes to check out the. . . The dwelling." He looked at Julia. "That explains why we didn't pick them up on our scans either."

Against all probability, the structure in the trees was indeed a thing built by beings and not something natural. And, it was not among the trees at all, Danziger and heller discovered, but in a shaded, small clearing and alongside it was a solar collector much like the one the group used to power their lasers and equipment. It was a storage facility, one of many such snap-together units that had been packed into the cargo pods for use by the Advance team after they arrived at G889 to begin work building the colony. And the door was locked.
Julia didn't know whether to laugh or curse, but, thankfully, Danziger still seemed to be feeling the effects of the last eighteen hours. After staring at the lock in disbelief, he motioned her back a few steps and blew the door open with the mag-pro. It flew open on its hinges and hit the wall with a thud. Inside the dark interior of the storage unit the unmistakable sound and flicker of medical bioscanners glowed faintly.
"What is this? Danziger, I need a luma?" She got no further. She'd no sooner stepped over the threshold than the inside of the small building was flooded with light. Though dim, perhaps from low power, a motion detector must have activated the lights. Whatever they might have thought would be inside, they certainly didn't expect to find five stasis chambers lined against the left wall, all operating within normal parameters. A single zero unit, in shutdown mode, stood at the end of the line of chambers. There appeared to be lines running from it's chest area to the floor. Along the other walls were gray lengths of material covering what appeared to be stacked freight.
The doctor rushed to read the life signs on the displays, glancing inside the chambers at each occupant. "I don't believe it! They're actually alive! Slow but steady. . . everything! Heartbeats, respiration." She gave Danziger a look of wonder. "The chambers are experimental, John! We were bringing them to perfect, to work the bugs out on animals or plants. Not humans. Well, volunteers, but only after experimentation." She knew she was babbling and made the effort to stop. "After extensive experi . . mentation."
Danziger was looking at the people and nothing else. They were in various states of undress with bandages or synthetic skin covering their flesh. "These two are crew. I know them. Don't recognize her or him. Colonists. That one is crew, too. They're all injured."
"I can see that! Burns, I'd guess," Julia answered, looking from one to the other as if trying to decide what to do. "If they were on the ship it most likely would be that, you know. Burns."
"Yeah." Danziger looked around, brushing his hair back as he did. "How the hell did they get off that ship?"
"I don't know!" she answered. "You tell me! You said you spent four years building the ship. How could anyone survive the heat and the crash?"
He shook his head slowly, still looking around the interior. "They couldn't have. The ship was shaking so badly it had to be breaking apart. We thought it was breaking apart. With all the pods gone, they would have? They would have? They must have made it to the lander! The ship out there is still in one piece, so if they were able to get the lander away ?"
"The lander?"
"The landing shuttle you and the rest of the Advance team were going to use to be brought to the surface." Danziger turned to look directly at her. "Come on, Doc. Why do you think Baines and Solace are in such a hurry to get here? They know about the shuttle. It was supposed to be the primary vehicle for the ground team to travel place to place on the planet."
Julia nodded. "Of course. I don't know why I didn't think of it. They think they're going to find it here." She started to look around the interior, too. "Well, there must be a record somewhere. Whoever erected this shed and put these people into the chambers must have left a message. Alonzo is going to want to know what happened to it; who took the lander."
A single gear chip lay under a draped cloth that also covered a stack of small crates, on top of which was a small com unit similar to the one the group used. The message was short and simple. When Danziger hit the power switch and placed the chip in the unit's slot, the face of the crew's warrant officer, Britt Navarro, appeared immediately on the screen. Her blond hair was tied back away from her face which was bandaged along one side and showed reddened areas across her forehead and the uncovered cheek and jaw. She was wearing a crew jacket over what appeared to be a dirty and torn jumpsuit. Part of her neck seemed to be bandaged, too.
Always by the book, Danziger thought. Never out of uniform. He looked at Julia. "Navarro was a sleep jump veteran. Good head on her shoulders. Whoever is with her has a chance."
Julia nodded.
The image on screen was saying:
"I am Britt Navarro, warrant officer aboard the Eden Advance ship Roanoke. It has been nine planetary days since we reached the surface of planet G889. I speak for the survivors of the ops crew of the Eden Project's advance ship, and for the members of the Eden Advance Team who didn't make it off the ship in the escape pods. Twelve crew and advance members were unable to reach them before they were jettisoned from the Roanoke. We were on our way to the lower decks to prep the lander and load personal items when the alarms went off. We could see the chaos on the decks above us after the ship started to shake. We wouldn't have been able to make it back up to the main decks. We were closer to the lander so I took it upon myself to order everyone with me into the shuttle. While we were powering up the engines, a couple of the mechanical engineers from the crew and some of Advance were worried we wouldn't be able to launch ourselves before we hit atmosphere. We heard over our gear that the cargo pods were not being jettisoned and were pulling the ship down. The five people you see in the stasis tubes volunteered to try to reprogram the codes to release the parachutes on the stuck cargo pods in the event the ship was to make it through the atmosphere in a stable enough condition to allow us to jettison the lander. They were inside the shuttle bay at the comp consoles through most of the ship's fall and they were badly burned by the rising heat. Fortunately the ship held together by some miracle and the interior didn't get hot enough to ignite. It was uncomfortable, but not what we expected. Some of us were able to get them back into the shuttle, suffering minor burns from touching surfaces in the bay in doing so. Whatever those five did, it worked. By the time the shuttle was ready for launch, the ship was through the atmosphere and the pods still attached to it were able to slow our descent just enough to give us a few seconds to launch the shuttle. We think the shuttle's engines might have helped slow the ship's descent somewhat, too. We were tossed around, but someone had the presence of mind to hit the auto-landing cycle of the shuttle before we crashed. We had a hard landing, but the craft stayed intact and we suffered only minor injuries. We did what we could for the injured, while those of us who were in better shape explored outside the lander. We came down about two kilometers east of this structure. We decided to call the sunrise east and the other directional points as they do on Earth. We found one cargo pod on land, another was in the water and a third is still attached to the ship. Seven days ago we got the nearby cargo pod open. We found some emergency rations inside, no doubt meant for Advance until they could start growing crops. We also found medical equipment and some enclosing chambers one of the colonists says are experimental stasis tubes. We have five people with severe burns on their hands and other burns on their bodies. We've been treating them with synthflesh from the med supplies, but we are running out of it fast, and it doesn't appear they are getting better. We decided two days ago to clean their wounds as best we can and bandage them with what supplies we have left and put them into the chambers. We built this storage unit for the tubes and we're going to power it with a solar collector one of the advance team knows how to erect and operate."
The image on the screen paused for a moment, as if to gather her thoughts. "It took us four days to get the lander's com equipment to work. The craft has damage somewhere we haven't been able to locate. We immediately picked up signals, nine in all, some to the south of us, more to the east and southeast of us. The ship is dead, no signal, and we were able to silence the signals on the pods. Over the last couple of days we've lost the signals to the east of us. They all went out one by one. We're still getting two steady signals from the southeast., and a very strong one is coming from the south. Gower, one of the colonists believes it to be the com dish which, he said, was supposed to be released first to provide a beacon for aiming the cargo pods when they were released and for the shuttle to follow down. We have no reason to believe it wasn't. As I said, the shuttle is damaged, so we talked it over and decided to try to fly to the com dish. Looking for the escape pods, whose signals we might not be receiving anymore, would take us farther away from the dish, and with no beacons to follow we might search in the wrong places. We're going to leave the stasis pods here and come back for them later. There is no room aboard the shuttle and no way to power them inside a cargo pod. We used the lander to pull the one out of the water. We're going to take as much as we can from the pod on the ground, the one we've been living in, and pack it into the second one. The building materials will stay here. We'll carry it beneath the lander and try to reach the com dish. If we can do it, we'll be back for the five who saved us, and then the pod still on the ship. We're hoping the escape pods came down safely. If they did, then we figure the people in them will know to look for the com dish signal, too, and try to reach it. If at all possible, when we're finished we'll try to fly the lander east, in the direction we heard what could have been the escape pod signals and look for survivors, or more cargo pods. We're leaving a damaged zero unit behind with all additional information we can think of. It will be hooked up to the tubes to monitor them and open them if anything happens to the structure while we're gone. We are leaving tomorrow, the tenth day since we made it to land. The five in the tubes are Stockwell, Mason, Hernandez, Lynch and Austin. The seven of us who will try to reach the com dish are Holden, Weigman, Kauffman, Gower, Vergos, Beach and Navarro."
With an audible intake of breath, Navarro deactivated the recording and her image disappeared. The monitor went dark.

Danziger hesitated only a moment before he started for the zero unit. "Tell you what. I'll hook up the zero and you look at whatever information he has. I'll go out and see how our zero is doing."
"One by one the signals to the east went out." Julia stood watching at the static flicker on the monitor. "I wonder what they thought."
He shrugged and spoke over his shoulder. "Don't know. Must have been when we stripped the pods for parts. We took a lot of wiring and power units from ours and the one the Martins had, not to mention the cargo pod we found."
"John, they left and never came back."
"You heard Navarro. The lander was damaged. Maybe they couldn't risk getting it back in the air." He was busy with the zero's interface panel. "Hand me the monitor cable, will you? I'll send the zero's data directly to the desk unit."
Danziger finished what he was doing and approached the doctor's still form. She was looking at the monitor, standing still with her arms crossed at her waist. From behind, he gripped her upper arms and gave her a reassuring squeeze. "Don't lose it on me, okay Doc? I'll talk to Yale while I'm outside. You find out if there is anything you can do for these five, and if there isn't, that's okay. They're alright where they are."
She nodded her head, and spoke in a low voice. "I know. But when we leave they'll have to stay behind. We can't take them with us either."
"You're always jumping ahead in the story, Heller. Just this once, take things as they come."
"I know, I know. Use my imagination."
He patted her shoulder. "What a good idea. See you later."
She sat on a box close to the com setup and listened as Danziger left the shed and walked away from it. Some things were easier said than done. It was too easy to feel an empathy for the people who had come to land here. Julia remembered all too well the first few hours after her own group found themselves in a similar situation.
Well, there would be time to think about it all later. There were things she had to do now.
She reached into her pocket for her gear unit and remembered she'd left it in the dunerail. She'd have to call Alonzo and tell him the news. She wasn't going to let Danziger handle all of the difficult parts when talking to the others. He'd handled them for too long as it was. Getting up from the box, she followed John outside.
Danziger went as far as the edge of the lake before stopping to snap on his gear and beep in a private channel to Yale. He looked upward at the ship to see if the robot was making any progress reaching the cargo pod. He didn't hear Julia behind him when she approached the dunerail and grabbed the jacket with her gear in its pocket.
"Is Morgan with you?" Danziger asked as soon as Yale answered his call. "What have you told him? Anything yet?"
"Yes. Last night after we stopped and set up the camp, I took the opportunity to talk to him and Bess at that time." The older man sighed deeply. "I found it difficult. They were stunned, as you can imagine."
"Yeah, well, things have changed. Tell Morgan to put on his gear. I need to talk to him."
"Of course."
When Morgan's image replaced that of Yale on the gear channel, Danziger lost no time in getting to the point.
"No one died on board the ship, Morgan. Everyone got off," he said and paused. "Everyone got off."
Julia listened and watched through her gear; saw the fear on the face of Morgan Martin turn to disbelief, to relief, to joy and then to nothing as he put his hands over his face and knocked his gear off his head.
Never taking her eyes off Danziger, she made the call to Alonzo.

Alonzo kicked the ground and raised his fist helplessly before swearing under his breath and stalking off across the grassy meadow in frustration. Behind him Baines sank to the ground beside the ATV and leaned his back against it, raising his face to the sky.
"Damn, damn, damn, damn!" Solace shouted at the clouds. "This can't be happening!"
Oh, it wasn't that he was cursing those who took the shuttle for saving their own lives. He was too disheartened for that. He'd been so sure the shuttle would be there.
It had been a long shot from the beginning, but seeing the ship in the water as close to whole as it would ever be again, had been electrifying to the two men. They had realized at the same instant that if the ship was down in one piece, the landing shuttle would have to be in it's docking port. From that moment on, nothing could have stopped Solace and Baines from reaching the site of the fallen craft in as short a time a possible.
The shuttle would have been their salvation. Assuming it was undamaged and not underwater, they might have been able to get it working and been in the position to reach New Pacifica in a matter of days.
Alonzo walked back to the ATV and sank to his knees in front of Baines. "Well. . ."
"Yeah." Baines looked at him. "I heard."
He had the grace to look embarrassed by his outburst. "It never once entered my mind that not everyone made it to the escape pods. We waited. . . we waited that extra few seconds and the passageways were empty. I thought I was the last one out." He drew in a breath. "I was at the hatch. I saw the ship hit atmo. I thought it was burning."
"Lonz," Baines said softly. "Britt Navarro might still be alive."

"Hey, come on, Julia, be sensible. The old snake charmer is almost here. We can't be doing this." Yet even as he tried to not follow her toward the shelter, he knew once begun only a change in their circumstances was going to end it. The trouble was, the change was not arriving fast enough.
"There's plenty of time," she told him over her shoulder. "That was a nice thing you did for Morgan. I can see everything so clearly now. Why you've been so hard on him. Why you've never tried to settle things with him. In spite of all of that, you did a good thing, John. I'd even call it a noble thing."
He made a ?come off it' gesture with his hands and head. "I told him the truth. You want to get all crazy over the truth, fine." He stopped in the doorway of the storage unit knowing he was going to continue inside, but making the effort to stop to ease his own conscience. After all, once begun. . .
"I'm talking about all of it," she said. "Not just what you did a minute ago, but how you kept the secret for so long. In spite of what you might have been feeling about Morgan - and I never understood why your antagonism toward him lasted for so long, until now - you protected him. Don't deny it!" She moved her hands upward and laid them on his shoulders. "That's exactly what you did."
Once begun. . .

Julia stayed on the padding made of fallen fabric, eyes closed, letting her respiration and heartbeat return to normal. She could hear Danziger getting dressed. Chicken! she thought, making herself smile. As if he couldn't take the old snake charmer if it ever came to that. Which it wouldn't. There would be no more opportunities for them once the others?
Wait a minute!
She opened her eyes and sat up quickly. "Danziger, did you call me a snake?"
Amusement immediately flashed into his eyes, but he tried to look nonplussed. "Just give me a three step head start. That's all I ask."

To be continued. . .

Story Ideas
I didn't start writing E2 fanfic until a year after the show went off the air. I had access to good computers and the internet when I started attending college, and that was when I discovered other people had put up their own sites with pictures and stories and background information about the show. There was a site to try to save the show at that time and many individual sites that are no longer around. Most of them had URLs ending with .edu. Most have been lost to inactivity by the owners, but some have been moved and are still available and even updated now and then.
I read the fanfic and decided, hey, I can do this, too. I started writing out my ideas and letting my siblings read them and rip them apart. Instead of taking the opportunity to pound me into the ground, they'd say, "Write another one."
We were raised on Star Trek and Star Wars and we all have our particular favorite science fiction stories. We all agreed Earth 2 was a cut above anything that had ever been shown on television before and we would talk about the show and wonder where the writers would have taken it next had the show returned for a second season. We all mourned it together and were stunned when there were no summer reruns to tape the episodes we'd missed during the first run airings. There were 5 shows I never saw during the NBC season and four I had seen only half way, either the beginning or the ending, and I didn't see the completed episodes until the SciFi channel began reruns.
My sister, Laurie, my brother, James, and I used to have huge arguments over this show. My sister is a D&D shipper, nothing can change her mind about that. As far as she's concerned TGLSNT remains untold to this day. That's an episode that just doesn't exist in her view of Earth 2. (And that's one of the main reasons why I refer to it as often as possible in my stories. [evil laugh])
My brother is a fan of future technology and has always been amused by the fact that these people have super sophisticated weapons and scanning equipment at their fingertips and yet the crash leaves them roughing it. Doing things for themselves nearly does them in.
I like putting the characters - all the characters - into the kind of situations you wouldn't see on the series because of the show's need to exhibit drama, peril of some kind, and a last minute resolution week after week. I like to look at them from different angles, have them do things you wouldn't see happen in the series: breaking up the realtionships, letting them see the planet in different ways, and giving different interpretations to what happened in the show.
There are writers out there who have written some great stories following the episode formula, so I really don't feel the need to do that, too.
("Danziger's Ghost", BTW, is at the top of my all time favorites list.)
Danziger'sGhost
So, my ideas come from looking at the show from behind the scenes instead of in front of an imagined TV screen. I use narration now and then, but for the most part I like to write about the characters and not so much situations.
If you like my stuff, great. If you don't, you don't. There is a lot of fanfic out there to look through and find some you'll enjoy.
Personally, I like it all. Earth 2 should have had a longer run with it's original premise. I miss the show and live for new original stories.
This is a link for Andy's archive, in case you don't have it:
Andy's

It's a good place to start looking for stories you DO like.

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.