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

A TIME TO REND
R. Salway




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


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


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

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

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


THE END

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

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

(Jessica Steen)

(aka Clancy Brown)

And a Bugs GIF simply because I can.

Chapter 3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



To be continued. . .

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

The Happening
OK. I'm not going to go into detail, but the next chapter will open with the definite acknowledgement that it didn't stop with the kiss. Stop jumping up and down now, Bev. ;)
If you look through the blogs on the Movies and TV directory listing you'll quite a few belonging to obviously younger souls, so I'll put a G rated chapter up here and maybe go into further detail when I move the completed story over to my webpage. Sit well with you, Bev?

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

Excuse The Mistakes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To be continued. . .