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

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

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

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

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

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