Author: Laurence E. Dahners
Date: 2014-09-20T18:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science Fiction
Description: “Impact" is the twelfth book in a series of near future SciFi/Thrillers whose heroine Ell Donsaii has a nerve mutation that makes her a genius and provides her some astonishing athletic abilities. In “Impact,” Ell’s been taken off the “Most Wanted” list and is resuming somewhat of a normal life. Her old friend Phil Zabrisk is on his way to Mars. One of her exploration rockets is about to land on an earthlike world. Then an enormous comet crashes into Tau Ceti three, threatening the lives of the teecees there. Aliens that Ell and others have come to think of as friends. Phil falls on Mars, brea
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

Impact!

An Ell Donsaii story # 12

By

Laurence E Dahners

Copyright 2014 Laurence E Dahners

Kindle Edition

Author’s Note

Though this book can “stand alone” it will be much easier to understand if read as part of the series including

“Quicker (an Ell Donsaii story)”

“Smarter (an Ell Donsaii story #2)”

“Lieutenant (an Ell Donsaii story #3)”

“Rocket (an Ell Donsaii story #4)”

“Comet! (an Ell Donsaii story #5)”

“Tau Ceti (an Ell Donsaii story #6)”

“Habitats (an Ell Donsaii story #7)”

“Allotropes (an Ell Donsaii story #8)”

“Defiant (an Ell Donsaii story #9)”

“Wanted (an Ell Donsaii story #10)” and

“Rescue (an Ell Donsaii story #11)”

I have minimized repetition of explanations that would be redundant to the earlier books in order to provide a better reading experience for those of you who are reading the series.

This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.

Table of Contents

Preprologue

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Epilogue

Author’s Afterword

Preprologue

An unusually gifted quarterback, Allan Donsaii had been widely recognized to be startlingly strong and a phenomenally accurate passer. During his college career he finished two full seasons without any interceptions and two games with 100 percent completions. Unfortunately, the pro teams never drafted him for fear that his size would allow him to be dominated by bigger opposing players.

Extraordinarily quick, Kristen Taylor captained her college soccer team and rarely played a game without a “steal.” Usually she had many.

Allan and Kristen dated more and more seriously throughout college and married at the end of their senior year. Their friends teased them that they were only marrying so that they could start their own sports dynasty.

Their daughter Ell had Kristen’s quickness, magnified by Allan’s strength and highly accurate coordination. The child also had a new mutation affecting the myelin sheaths surrounding her nerves. This mutation produced nerve transmission speeds that nearly doubled those of normal neurons. With faster nerve impulse transmission, she had much quicker reflexes. Yet her new type of myelin sheath was also thinner, allowing more axons, and therefore more neurons, to be packed into the same sized skull. These two factors resulted in a brain which had more neurons, though it wasn’t larger, and a faster processing speed, akin to a computer with a smaller, faster CPU architecture.

Most importantly, under the influence of adrenalin in a “fight or flight” situation, her nerves transmitted even more rapidly than their normally remarkable speed.

Much more rapidly…

Prologue

Washington D.C.—The FBI has removed Ell Donsaii from its most wanted list. It is not completely clear what has led to this change, however, the Ementhal committee’s loss of credibility after journalistic investigations probably had something to do with it. Without Ementhal constantly demanding control of Donsaii’s interstellar technology, the amount of rhetoric about the danger she represents has certainly diminished. The other basis of her original arrest—the argument that her technology is dangerous—would seem to still be a concern, if it ever was.

Rumor has it that Donsaii was involved in the rescue of President Stockton after her kidnapping by the SCDF. There is no evidence that this is the case, no reports of such help from the White House or FBI, nor has Donsaii herself made any claims that she provided aid. However, one could imagine that if she did provide significant assistance to the rescue efforts, that it might have influenced Stockton, who after all had been the main driving force behind her arrest and persecution.

In any case, the press is out in force at D5R and at Donsaii’s home, in hopes that she will make a comment.

Shan stepped into the kitchen and found Ell there, eating a bowl of granola with sliced banana. He looked around, then said, “Where’s the Buddha?”

“He was watching a vid. I dressed him up and sent him out to play with Tanner. If it weren’t for that dog, I swear he’d never move.”

“You look like you’re in a particularly good mood. What’s up?”

“Hmmm, it seems like a certain someone is off the FBI’s most wanted list. I got a call from Sheila Rhodes, Deputy Director of the FBI. As near as I can tell the Deputy Director is often the person who really gets things done, while the actual Director is frequently a political appointee and figurehead. She said that all charges had also been dropped against you and my security team too. I got a message from our attorney, Victoria Nis, saying the same thing.”

Shan raised a hand and they gave each other a high five. “That’s great news!”

Ell gave him a serious look, “So we have some thinking to do.”

Shan frowned, “About what?”

She shrugged, “Do we try to go back to our old life as Raquel Blandon and Shan Kinrais? That way you could go back to work at the University and we could live closer to our jobs. Or do we keep hiding down here in Pittsboro? Some kind of compromise between the two? What’s best for Zage? It’s a pretty daunting set of choices.”

“How could we possibly go back to Raquel and Shan?! The FBI has surely outed those identities since they tried to arrest us.”

“That worries me… but Rhodes said that the FBI never released anything to do with our identities.”

Shan drew his head back doubtfully, “And you trust her?”

Ell grinned, “Not really, but I had Allan search the net for any linking of Ell to Raquel or Shan. He couldn’t find it. Well, of course, there is the paper that Ell and Shan wrote together and other items like that, but nothing suggesting that Raquel and Ell are the same person or that Shan is married to Ell.”

“Well,” Shan shrugged, “if Allan can’t find it, I’m sure no one can.” After a pause to think he said, “I guess that means we do have the option. I surely never thought we would, but if we do, I think I’d like to be ‘Shan and Raquel’ again. What are you thinking?”

“I’d like to be Shan and Raquel again too…” she sighed, “but there are lots of problems.”

“Such as?”

“What if Stockton changes her mind? What do we tell Zage about why everybody’s names are different, including his? If we move back into our old neighborhood, what do we tell all the neighbors about what happened to us?” She sighed dramatically, “And worst of all… I just got my own lab set up the way I want it here in Pittsboro! I don’t wanna move all my stuff?!”

Shan threw his head back and laughed. When he got the mirth in control, he said, “You… you are the richest person in the world! Hire someone to move your stuff! Or buy new.”

“If I hire some movers, it’s hardly going to be a secret lab anymore!”

“Well, that’s true. But wouldn’t it be nice to have a research assistant for your private lab? If so, couldn’t you hire someone that you trust? Then have them order all new stuff and set it up for you.” He rubbed his chin in thought, “Keep the lab down here in Pittsboro as your ‘spare’ in case Stockton does give you trouble.”

Ell frowned and chewed her lip, “Well, maybe that could work. It would be nice to have some help sometimes. But that still leaves the questions of where we’re going to live and what we’re going to tell Zage?”

“Zage keeps his first name. He’s barely two, I’m not even sure he knows he has a last name yet.”

“I don’t know. After the way he went from not talking at all as if he were…” Ell frowned, not wanting to say what she’d thought about his intelligence, “and now talking all the time…!”

“You know it’s not all that bizarre for really smart people to start talking late, but then begin by using complete sentences.”

“But I swear Shan, a lot of the time he sounds like an adult!”

“Maybe he’s really, really smart?”

Ell shrugged, “Well, I hope so too. But that’s my point, what if he wonders about his last name?”

“If he even knows he has a last name, and I don’t think that’s something he’s interested in, he surely has no idea that it would be unusual for his last name to change?”

Ell looked up at the ceiling for a moment, then shrugged acquiescence on that point. “And where do we live?”

“Somewhere new, but still near Ell’s farm so you can run a tunnel between the two. The security guys can move back into their old houses. Tell the neighbors they were all in Witness Protection for a little while.”

***

Pedro Fernandez gave a command to his AI and twenty-five dime bags of heroin poured out the 2 inch port in his hand to fall into the big bowl on his table. His brother in Chihuahua would refill the 2 inch PVC pipe that was suspended over the other end of the port. That way Pedro could get more whenever he needed it.

Pedro turned to his local dealers Vincent and Alejandro. He gave fifteen bags to Vincent and ten to the Alejandro. Pedro never held product himself. Before he could remind them of what they owed, he was stopped by a knock on the door. It wasn’t the approved three and one knock. Probably that stupid woman in the room next door, he thought. He stood and pulled out his Glock.

His two dealers armed themselves as well and went to stand on each side of the door. Pedro stood a little to the hinge side then leaned to look through the peephole. Damned hotel, too cheap to have door AIs.

A man stood there in a brimmed hat and trench coat of all things. He was holding a badge in front of the peephole which blocked Pedro from seeing his face.

I guess I’ve stayed in this shit hole a little too long, Pedro thought to himself. He felt a little surprise at the cop, standing right in front of the door like that. And all by himself too, must be a rookie.

Pedro turned to Vincent and said, “Time to move my base to a new location I guess.”

Pedro took another look to estimate the position of the cop’s head—it wouldn’t do to shoot him in a bulletproof vest after all—then he stepped back, extended the Glock, and emptied its clip through the door into the area of the man’s head.

Putting another clip in his pistol, he saw something protrude through the hole he’d just blown in the door!

Taser! he thought.

Then it fired and Pedro spasmed. As he felt himself falling he wondered, How the hell did I miss that bastard?! Seconds later his two dealers fell to the floor near him. He heard a ripping sound as the door was forced open and a moment later he found himself looking up at one of those damned waldoes they used on construction sites. There were scratches on its mechanical face, the brimmed hat was ripped askew, and one of the cameras that served it as eyes looked to be broken. I guess I hit it after all, he thought as it clipped plasticuffs on him.

When did the cops start using waldoes?

***

Phil glanced over at Carol as the acceleration eased off. They had nearly reached the 22 km/s speed limit for their Mars Transfer Vehicle. She was holding the female goat while Phil tried to calm the male. The two goats got really distressed when they were weightless.

During the forty minute boost to 22 km/s at 1G the goats had seemed almost ecstatic to be back on their hooves again. As their weight faded away, the female started bleating and the male thrashed about. They had strapped the billy goat down hoping that the restraint would comfort and calm him, but it didn’t seem to have worked.

After about ten minutes the two goats had calmed and looked somewhat resigned to their weightless state again. That was less time than it had taken them when they first became weightless going into orbit, so perhaps they were getting used to it. Phil and Carol went to check on the chickens. Fortunately chickens seemed to tolerate weightlessness much better than goats did.

Phil’s AI spoke in his ear, “You have a call from Major Epstein.” Epstein was in the command capsule of the MTV.

Phil said, “Yes Major?”

“You guys doing okay back there?”

“The goats had conniptions when we went weightless again, but the chickens are fine. Any problems with our burn?”

“No, we’re close enough to spot on track that the AI says it will be able to correct any minor errors that show up even while keeping spin on the MTV. We’re going to go ahead and flip the command capsule. You ready to check your side?”

“Yes sir.” Phil told Carol what was going on and moved to the end of their “farm module” of the MTV. Per his AI’s checklist, he looked to be sure the airlock was fully sealed and locked between the farm section and the connecting tunnel. He could feel and hear the clanking and clunking of the command module disconnecting from its end of the tunnel then turning over and reconnecting. It took about twenty minutes for it to turn over so that its upper side was now facing towards the top side of the farm module with the connecting tunnel again attached to both of them.

“Okay,” Maj. Epstein said, “we reconnected and have no leaks on our side. Go ahead and check your side.”

Phil went over his checklist, rechecking each step. The tunnel itself showed no leak from his side so he opened the airlock door a crack into the tunnel. There was no airflow, which confirmed a good seal. “Everything’s airtight here, Major.”

“Okay, close your airlock again and we’ll put a little spin on this puppy.”

A short beep on the acceleration alarm warned everybody to grab hold. Then a gentle push sideways could be felt as the command and farm modules were started rotating around one another. The amount of spin was very gentle and could only be felt as a very slight pull down towards the floor of the farm module by the time the major came back on the general comm, “Okay we’re going to start lengthening the tunnel. You’ll all feel some bumps.”

They had already practiced this a couple of times while in low Earth orbit so there weren’t any surprises as the command module and farm module began stretching out the collapsed Kevlar tube that connected them. Phil watched the creases in the tunnel gradually extend on his HUD as a set of motors lengthened the graphene straps that held the two modules together.

Eventually the two modules were 250 meters apart and they stopped separating. The acceleration alarms beeped again and jets began to spin the modules around one another at a gradually accelerating pace. Inside the farm module, Phil, Carol and the goats felt gradually increasing pseudo-gravity from the centrifugal force of the spinning. It took about an hour to get up to the full one third gravity that they would maintain during the forty day journey to Mars.

Once they were up to their full rotation, the crew ran another checklist to make sure there weren’t any problems. They found one tiny leak in the connecting tunnel and patched it. Next, ports were opened to fill the Kevlar balloons surrounding the two modules with a three-meter layer of water that would provide radiation protection to the crew.

The crew settled in for a cramped forty days in transit. At least running the waldoes that were building the Mars habitat while they were traveling should stave off some of the boredom…

***

Dressed as Elsa Gardon, Ell stepped through a hidden door at the back of her basement lab at the farm in Pittsboro. There was a bathroom behind the door where she stopped to make her change. Deflating her cheek prostheses, she stepped up to the mirrors and used a specially-treated wet wipe to remove her darker skin color. She put on a strawberry blond wig that she’d had made from her own hair. She checked to be sure it covered all of her own hair—brunette now that she was coloring her hair to be “Elsa” for Zage.

After carefully checking her appearance in the multiple mirrors of the bathroom to be sure she looked like Ell from all angles, she started down a narrow hallway to the main tunnel passing under the barn on Elsa Gardon’s little farm in Pittsboro. She opened the door into the 18 foot wide by 18 foot tall dome shaped tunnel which had been melted by AJ and Carter’s Martian tunneler on its test run last year. The guys had programmed the test tunnel loop to go northwest, but Ell had Allan insert a completely different routine into their program. Instead of going where the guys thought it did, it left the grounds of the D5R facility in Research Triangle Park and turned west to pass directly under Ell’s little farm in the southeastern part of Chapel Hill. From there it went southwest to pass under Elsa Gardon’s farm in Pittsboro then looped back to run straight up to the D5R facility.

After they’d retrieved their tunneler, the guys had poured concrete into the opening of the tunnel near D5R to prevent people from getting into it. Ell had had Allan remove any evidence of his changes from their test program. Later, she’d cut her own little passages off the big loop made by the tunneler. One to her lab at the farm in Pittsboro, one to the tunnels she had under her farm in Chapel Hill and several coming up around D5R. One of the little passages came up into a closet in her D5R office, another entered through the floor of a maintenance closet, and a third came up in the woods just to the west of D5R.

Ell got into one of the electric cars she kept in the tunnel and started for the farm in Chapel Hill. With no traffic, a straight tunnel, and Alan driving the car, the car ran at 120 mph and made the 10 mile trip in five minutes. It was so fast, she pondered for a moment whether it might not be okay to just keep living in Pittsboro. But she wanted Shan to go back to being Shan Kinrais and working at the University. Suddenly, she realized the big tunnel probably passed under or close to any number of houses that might be for sale. She asked Allan to check.

Entering the basement below her farmhouse, she started up the stairs. When she got to the top she smelled bacon, “Bridget?”

“Hey Ell, I made you breakfast. One of the omelets you used to like so much.”

Ell stopped and stared, “I already ate breakfast.” She sniffed, “But that smells awesome!”

Bridget picked up the plate and waved it near her. In a singsong voice she said, “It’s your fa-vor-ite.”

“I can’t resist,” Ell said, hopping up onto the bar stool and taking the plate.

Bridget’s eyes widened as she watched Ell start wolfing down, not just a little taste of the omelet, but the whole thing. Looking back up at Ell, she lifted an eyebrow and pondered saying something about it. She settled for saying, “It’s going to be great to have you back out at D5R.”

Pointing down at her plate with her fork, Ell said, “This omelet is just as amazing as I remember.” She filled her fork with the last bite, but before she put it in her mouth she said, “I’ll only be at D5R sometimes, not every day.”

“Why?!” Bridget asked, looking dismayed, “You’re off the most wanted list. What’s to keep you from coming in?”

“Other things to do,” Ell winked at her, grinning. “Lots of other things.”

Rolling down to the end of the farmhouse driveway Ell stopped to talk to the large crowd of reporters gathered there. She opened the door and got out to stand in the opening, “Hi guys, it’s good to be back out in public again. I’ll answer a few questions, but probably not all you want.”

“Can you tell us where you’ve been hiding?”

Ell grinned, “Nope.” She arched an eyebrow, “You never know when I might have to go back into hiding.”

Another reporter asked, “Do you know why they took you off the ‘Most Wanted’ list?”

Ell shrugged, “I’ve got a pretty good idea.”

“Uh, and that is?”

“Not public information. Sorry.”

“Will you be entering the Olympics next summer?”

“Oh, no! I’ve had my turn in the Olympics. Time for some new blood!”

“What are you going to be doing?”

“I’ll be doing what I love best. Trying to answer questions. Trying to further our understanding of the universe. Working with the great team I have out at D5R and Quantum Research to figure those things out.” She raised an eyebrow, “Speaking of which, I’m going to be late…” She dropped into her seat, closed her door, and slowly nosed her Ford Focus through the journalists and out onto the road.

When she entered the big room at D5R, someone shouted, “Ell’s back!”

People streamed into the room, crowding around until it seemed like everyone in the building had packed themselves in around Ell. Hugs and teary-eyed greetings quickly consumed everyone. Sheila shouted, “We’ve got cake and ice cream!” Things soon degenerated into a complete party atmosphere.

After having two breakfasts, Ell was glad that saying hello to all of her old friends kept her too busy to have any cake or ice cream herself. When the excitement had settled a little, Ben Stavos climbed up on a table and addressed the group, “So, I know a lot of you are full of questions. In order to keep Ell from having to answer each of you one at a time I thought I’d invite her up here to address the group.” He beckoned Ell and after a moment she climbed up on the table with him. “Now, just don’t ask her how she got off the most wanted list. She’s already said she’s not gonna answer that one.”

Ell was pleased that many of the questions she was asked had to do with prospective directions for Quantum Research and Quantum Biomed. They also asked about what might lie in the future of Portal Tech and ET Resource.

A young man from the ET Resource group asked excitedly, “Now that we’re sending some people to live in the tunnels on Mars, are we going to start terraforming it? It seems like we could just open some big ports from Venus to Mars and let the Venusian CO2 go to Mars. Mars could use the hot gas and the greenhouse effect of the CO2 to warm it up. Then we could deliver microorganisms and plants to break the CO2 down and release oxygen into the atmosphere.” He looked around to judge the effect of his words on the others. “We’d need nitrogen too, but the atmosphere of Titan is over 98% nitrogen so we could start shipping it to Mars also.”

Ell frowned at him for a moment, then said, “It’s a nice idea, but unfortunately it’s impractical.”

With a frustrated look, the young man said, “What do you mean ‘impractical’? I’ve done my research on this. We really could create a breathable atmosphere.”

A slight grimace crossed Ell’s face, then she shrugged and said, “It’s a problem of scale and orders of magnitude that’s hard to grasp unless you actually run the numbers, so let’s do it.” She looked up at the ceiling, “Supposing we opened a 10 meter port from the depths of the Venusian atmosphere to Mars. Now, I must point out, we’ve never built a port even close to that large so we don’t know if it’s possible, but if it is, it would draw… about 600 megawatts of power. That’s enough power for a city of half a million people or a good-sized aluminum smelter… a lot of power, but it could be done.”

She looked back down at the young man, “The flow rate through a large port like that, from Venus’s atmospheric pressure of ninety times that of Earth’s into the essential vacuum of Mars’ atmosphere would be high. It should be…” Ell looked off into the distance distractedly as she calculated, “about 55 cubic kilometers of gas per year, which would mass 3.7 trillion kilograms. That really is a huge amount of gas we’d be transferring.”

Ell paused a moment, still looking into the distance, then glanced down sadly, “Unfortunately, you’d need 2.5 quintillion kilograms to get up to the same pressure we have here on earth. That would take… 650,000 years.” She smiled and shrugged, “If you just wanted to get up safely above the ‘Armstrong limit’ so that people could go around with oxygen alone, not a spacesuit, it would only take 65,000 years.” She frowned, “I suppose if we opened up a thousand 10 meter ports it would only take sixty-five years to get comfortably above the Armstrong limit, but I hope you realize from these numbers that planets are enormous. You’re talking about an immense undertaking. I for one have some other things I’d like to do first.”

The people in the room stood in stunned silence for a moment, then Ben laughed. “Yes, and for those newbies among you who are wondering, she did just do that math in her head.”

***

Stell Simsworth stood beside the stage signing autographs for people at the end of her show. It seemed like every fan had something they wanted to say. Stell felt tired and wanted to go back to her hotel room, but she was determined to sign an autograph for every fan that wanted one. She intended to be the kind of singer whose fans loved her, even if it did mean singing the same songs at every concert until she was sick of them and signing autographs until her fingers cramped.

The next person in line was tall, so Stell looked up. It was a young man, perhaps sixteen, wearing dark glasses despite the dim room. Blind? Stell’s voice caught, “Hello, how would you like your autograph signed?”

“An autograph won’t do me much good since I’m as blind as you used to be,” he said in a richly resonant voice. He pulled something out of his pocket. It looked like a floor tile in a plastic bag. Opening the plastic bag he pulled out a thin piece of wood covered with moist clay, “I was hoping you might give me a hand print on this?” He held it out in her general direction.

“Um, sure!” Stell said, amazed at the effort it must’ve taken the young man to prepare the clay and bring it to the concert for this. She put her left hand underneath it and pressed her right hand into the clay firmly enough to leave a good hand print. She said, “What happened to your eyes? I was blind because of congenital problems with my corneas and lenses.”

“Retinoblastoma. That’s, uh, a cancer of the eyes. I had it in both eyes.”

“Oh!” Stell said, covering her mouth with her hand in dismay. “Did they get the cancer out?”

Putting the clay impression carefully back in his bag, he said resignedly, “Yeah, it was a long time ago and I’m still alive. Still blind too. What they did for your eyes won’t work for mine. One eye is completely gone and the other just quit working after chemotherapy.” He pulled out a small package and tore it open to expose a wet-wipe, “Here, you can clean your hand.”

Stell had just been about to try to wipe her hand unobtrusively on her pants. “Thanks.” she said, taking the wipe and cleaning off the little bits of clay sticking to her fingers. “So, are uh, your nerves okay? The optic nerves?” She looked up at his face thinking that he was probably handsome, but not feeling sure about it, having been blind for so long. He looked good to her in any case, symmetrical face, smooth skin, tall, and muscular.

“I guess. I think when they took it out, they just cut the eye off the nerve on the right.” He shrugged, “The nerve on the left might’ve been damaged by the chemo I suppose.”

Wondering whether she might be giving hope where hope could never come to fruition, Stell said, “The guys that fixed my eyes?” she paused. “Or didn’t really fix them, actually, just bypassed my bad corneas.” She shrugged, a habit she’d picked up since she’d gotten her sight back. Belatedly she remembered the shrug wouldn’t be seen by the young man. “They think they might be able to hook optic nerves directly up to cameras.”

The young man looked thunderstruck, “Someone told me that, but I didn’t believe them. Do you really think they can?”

“Yeah, they are part of Ell Donsaii’s research group. In fact, it was when she was trying to help me with my blindness that she developed the contacts that have become the hot new Heads Up Displays.”

“I wouldn’t know much about HUDs,” the young man said bitterly, “being blind and all.”

Irritated, Stell said, “Don’t forget, I used to be blind myself. I know just how useless an HUD is to a blind person. I was just trying to make a point about their capabilities and was going to ask you if you wanted to volunteer for their research program.” She paused, “But if you’ve got a chip on your shoulder, they probably won’t want to work with you.”

The distressed expression on his face made it evident that he regretted what he’d said. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to be such a jerk. I would like to be on their list if you think you can connect me to them.”

Stell stared at him for a moment or two. She didn’t want to waste Dr. Keller’s time with him if “jerk” was his more normal state. “If I do, you’re not going to make me regret it; are you?”

“No,” he gave a rueful laugh. “Honest, I’m a nice guy. I’m just stupid sensitive about my blindness.” He put out his hand, “My name’s Warren Dawson.”

Stell took his hand and gave it a gentle shake, “It’s nice to meet you Warren. Right now I’d better sign some more autographs, but I’ll let you know if they’re interested in talking to you.”

Chapter One

Houston, Texas—NASA and D5R jointly announced today the successful descent of the Mars Lander. The Mars Transfer Vehicle remains in orbit above them. In the attached video you can watch the Lander come down on the shelf at the top of the Valles Marineres. The crew then gets out in their graphene Mars suits and enters the habitat itself. Waldoes have been building habitat into the extensive tunnel system which has been melted approximately 10 m below the Martian surface by D5R’s melting tunneler. Inside the habitat the colonists were greeted with a party put on by the Martian waldoes, then they set out to inspect their new home. Hydroponically-grown vegetables and green crops have been thriving in the tunnels. These farms are already producing more than the colonists will be able to eat and the so-called “Mars crops” that have been ported back here to earth have been commanding a pretty penny in specialty markets.

The colonists also brought goats and chickens with them. They hope to use the goats for milk, cheese and eventually meat. The chickens will provide eggs and meat. If these animals thrive, other animals may come out on later trips.

Ell got into bed next to Shan and snuggled up to him. “Guess what?”

Shan’s eyes strayed away from where they’d been studying something on his contact’s HUD, "You find me irresistible?"

She raised an eyebrow, “Well that's usually true. But when you say something pompous like that…"

He grinned, "Self-confidence in a man is simply irresistible isn’t it?"

"Not! Well, unless they’re incredibly handsome." She drew back to look at him, “Hmmm…" She cocked an eyebrow, "perhaps in your case it might be?" She laid her head on his shoulder, "But first I have to tell you my little bit of news."

"Okay, I'll bite. What's new?”

"Well, Allan tells me that the next place south of ‘Ell Donsaii’s’ little farm is for sale. It has 7 acres with a big old house, and it's practically on top of the big tunnel down here to Pittsboro."

"Oh, so that would be close enough for the security team to move back into their old houses in the neighborhood to the west of the farm, wouldn't it?"

"Yup. We’d only have to cut a short tunnel from its basement to the big tunnel. Otherwise we could use the tunnels that already exist."

"What's the bed rock like? Is it hard enough for you to just cut tunnels with your one ended port digger? Or will it need to be reinforced so that you’ll have to bring in your miner friend from West Virginia?"

"Allan says there isn’t enough geological data to know. There are a lot of different types of rock in the Piedmont. We'll have to actually dig a little bit to find out."

Shan shrugged, "Either way, it can be worked out, so it sounds like a good plan to me."

"Me too. Maybe we can go look at it tomorrow?”

"Sure,” he grinned at her, “if you still have the energy after tonight?"

“Hah!” she said, rolling on top of him. "You mean, if you have the energy…"

***

Phil checked Carol’s Mars suit and then she checked his. They walked down the tunnel that would take them to the ledge at the top of the Valles Marineres. Phil glanced up at one of the safety balloons glued in the top of the tunnel. In case of a failure of the three balloons that sealed the habitat’s tunnel and served as an airlock, the safety balloons could be inflated by the colony’s AI to prevent decompression of the remainder of the habitat. Considering how tough the graphene balloons were, it seemed unlikely in the extreme that the safety balloon would ever be needed. However, considering the harshness of the Martian environment, excessive safety precautions seemed completely reasonable to him. More of the safety balloons were scattered around the rest of the habitat, so that if any part of it lost pressure to some kind of rock fault, that section could be sealed off to protect the remainder of the tunnels. Emergency decompression suits were available in each of the sections that might be sealed off so, barring a catastrophic and nearly instantaneous decompression, anyone caught in a sealed off area could get into an emergency suit and wait for rescue. Since there were a lot of earth-connected ports in each section that would start bringing in air as soon as the pressure dropped, it was really hard to imagine it getting that desperate, but they were playing it safe.

He and Carol stopped at the first of the airlock balloons and waited for it to deflate. They stepped past it, and once it had re-inflated, the second of the three airlock balloons began to go down. Finally they were in front of the last one. It deflated a little bit to let Phil and Carol check the integrity of their Mars suits one more time at a low pressure. As the pressure dropped in that last chamber, Phil felt his suit swelling around him. He moved his arms and legs around to be sure that the active system which deflated chambers on one side of a joint and inflated chambers on the other side—thus allowing the joint to be bent without extreme effort—was functioning correctly. Carol did the same and they both checked suit integrity by turning off the inflow ports under their chins that were bringing them air. Their suit pressures stayed up, thus proving they didn’t have leaks. Leaks wouldn’t be the end of the world because they could simply open more ports back to earth. Ports could bring in enough air to make up for anything but a huge rip; they weren’t dependent on tanks. Nonetheless, it was only good practice to be sure their suits were airtight before they started.

The last balloon sealing them into the habitat deflated the rest of the way and they headed out on to the surface. Once they were out on the ledge, they stopped to stare out over the Valles. Where they stood it was 150 km wide and 5 km deep, dwarfing the Grand Canyon’s 29 by 1.8 kilometers back home. “Well,” Carol said after a moment, “probably not a good idea to just stand here soaking up radiation all day. Let’s go exploring.”

Phil extended his arms and had his AI fire the jets under his upper arms. He lifted a meter or so and practiced moving back and forth on the jets to make sure he really knew how to fly them here in Mars’ low gravity before he turned and flew back up onto the plateau behind him. Landing, he felt a combination of exhilaration and depression. He was on Mars! However, all he could see was an unending flat, dirty brown plain, littered with unexciting dirty brown rocks…

***

Olympic Stadium, Rome, Italy —Traditionally, the lighting of the Olympic flame honors an Olympic athlete of the host country. The athlete who will carry the torch on the final leg and use it to light the flame is kept secret until the torch is handed to them in the stadium. This year a great deal of excitement has swirled around the ceremony. It is rumored that the flame will not be lit by an Italian, though no one seems to know who it might be…

Shan lifted Zage and carried him into the living room. “Kid, I swear you get heavier every time I pick you up!”

Zage turned to look up at him and said curiously, “I am getting bigger. Don’t children normally do that?”

“Um…” Shan grinned down at his serious son, “they do…” He thought for a moment. He didn’t want to injure his son’s self-esteem, but on the other hand the kid was overweight and was probably going to catch flak about it from other children soon. At two and three-quarters years old, he seemed too young to have to worry about his weight, but Shan worried about it. Kids could be mean and wishing it wasn’t so didn’t make them treat each other nicely. With resolve, he decided to be as straight with his son as he could. “But you’re heavier than most kids your age.” He shrugged, “People everywhere have been getting heavier and heavier for quite a while now.”

“Do you mean I’m fat?”

Shan glanced down at him, wondering if Zage had been insulted and said that in anger. However, Zage looked as if he were merely curious. Shan said, “Well, ‘fat’ is kind of a rude term, but yeah, a lot of your weight is fat. You’re not taller than other kids, just heavier. ‘Obese,’ is the medical term for it. They say there’s an ‘obesity epidemic’ because a lot more people are obese nowadays than there used to be.” Shan glanced up at the big screen in the living room and asked his AI to bring up the opening ceremony at the Olympics.

Zage said, “Why am I fat?”

Shan shrugged and looked back at his son, “Well, the short answer is that it’s because you eat more than you need to. When you eat, your body uses the food to help you grow and to give you the energy to do things. If you eat more than it takes for you to grow and do the things you do that day, your body stores the leftover food energy as fat.”

Shan felt really weird to be talking to a child who wasn’t even three about something like this. He felt uncomfortable that he’d even brought it up because it seemed like Zage shouldn’t even have to think about dieting at his age. On the other hand the kid didn’t run around as much as Shan thought kids his age should—maybe thinking about his weight might motivate him to engage in a little more physical activity? Shan turned his attention to the screen for a moment. The athletes had finished marching into the Coliseum themed Olympic Stadium. Some chariots were carrying people dressed as gladiators around the track at the periphery. “Chariots of Fire” was playing and fireworks were going off. A little worried about how Zage might be taking his own father telling him he was overweight, he looked down at his son.

Zage had been looking up at his own HUD. After a moment he looked down at his stomach, then up at Shan again, “‘Epidemic’ means a widespread outbreak of a disease that spreads from person to person. Did I catch obesity from someone else?”

Shan’s eyes widened. For a moment he thought back to how he and Ell had worried about Zage for so long, first because he didn’t walk, then because he didn’t talk. Now Shan felt uneasy that a child Zage’s age was talking to him like… Like what, he wondered. Like a little adult, or maybe how a kid ten years old might ask surprisingly perceptive questions? Should a kid Zage’s age be saying things like, “widespread outbreak of a disease?” He snorted softly to himself, no he shouldn’t. A kid his age might be able to repeat it, but wouldn’t understand it. Shan had the distinct impression that Zage knew what it meant.

To Zage he said, “Well, that’s what epidemic usually means. But, I think when they say ‘obesity epidemic,’ they just mean that a lot of people have become obese. So many people are obese that it seems like a disease that’s spreading from person to person, but really, it’s probably just because there’s so much food available nowadays and people don’t get much exercise.” He pointed up to the screen, “I thought we could watch the opening of the Olympics together. The Olympics is an event where the best athletes from all over the world get together to compete to see who’s the best. These people get a lot of exercise.” It’s too bad I can’t tell Zage that his mother is the world’s most famous athlete. Maybe that would inspire him to take up a sport himself?

On the screen someone carrying the Olympic torch jogged into the Coliseum. The runner passed the torch to someone dressed in light armor and a Roman helmet, evidently to represent a gladiator. The gladiator jogged out into the middle of the stadium. Shan had his AI turn up the sound. The announcer said, “Tension is building here at the Coliseum as everyone wonders who’s going to carry the torch up to light the cauldron where the Olympic flame will burn for the duration of the games. The fact that the cauldron sits far above the wall of the Coliseum has led to speculation that an archer will light the cauldron with a flaming arrow, but as of yet there is no bow in evidence.”

Out in the center of the stadium the gladiator who had carried the torch from the entrance stopped at a pedestal on which stood a short Roman column with a discus mounted on edge atop it. The announcer said, “A discus? A flaming discus would certainly be interesting, but certainly no one could throw a discus high enough to light the cauldron.”

Holding the torch, the gladiator drew a sword and dropped it point first to stand in the turf. Two attendants stepped forward to catch greaves, vambraces, pteruges, and curiass, all of which fell away into their hands to leave a slender young woman wearing nothing but a helmet and a leotard.

She reached up and lifted the helmet off, revealing strawberry blond hair.

Momentarily speechless, the announcer suddenly said, “It’s Ell Donsaii! Much has been made of the fact that she has said she is not participating in these games. Although, at the last games her participation in both the gymnastic and the track and field events was kept a secret until the last moment. Could this be a signal that she is going to participate? And the question still remains, how is the cauldron going to be lit?”

For a moment, it seemed to Shan that the world held its breath. Then his wife stepped forward and extended the torch towards the discus on the little column. The screen split, showing the disc on one side and the cauldron on the other. The center of the discus suddenly vanished and Ell leaned forward pushing the flaming torch through the port which had just appeared on the front of the discus. On the other side of the split screen, the torch appeared through a port at the edge of the cauldron.

The cauldron burst into flames and applause thundered through the stadium. “Just like the rumors had it,” the announcer said, “Ms. Donsaii is not Italian. However, she is certainly an Olympian, and Olympia could be argued to be the host country of every games. Lighting the cauldron through one of the ports she invented in her life away from athletics was certainly an innovative way for it to be done!”

Suffused with pride, Shan looked down at his son, wanting desperately to tell him that that was his mother up there on the screen opening this Olympic ceremony. Shan had been thinking that someday, when Zage knew who his mother was, Shan would be able to remind him of watching this ceremony featuring his mother. However, Zage probably wouldn’t even remember watching this when he got older, though Shan wondered if his precocious speech, reading, and comprehension indicated a brain that might actually remember big events from such a young age.

He needn’t have worried, Zage had been studying his HUD rather than watching the events on the big screen anyway. It looked like Zage would just have to watch recordings of this Olympic ceremony, like he’d have to watch the vids of his mother’s astonishing performances in the two Olympics she’d actually entered. Shan smirked at himself for his backhanded and clumsy attempt to get Zage to watch his mother in the ceremony when he couldn’t even tell the boy it actually was his mother up there on the screen.

Zage turned and looked up at Shan, “There’s some research showing that obesity might actually be an infectious epidemic. An ade…” He grimaced at the unfamiliar word, “adenovirus… called AD-36 makes lab animals obese. It’s commonly found in obese people also, which suggests that at least some people may be obese because they are infected with the virus.” His eyes flicked momentarily towards his HUD, though it was so brief he couldn’t have gotten more information, only a reminder of what he’d already read. “There are also differences in the bacteria that grow in the intestines of obese and thin people. Gut flora might be affecting people’s weight as well, and they might also change in a contagious manner.”

Shan blinked at his son. He’d been thinking that the fact that his son could read and use multisyllabic words was pretty astonishing at this age. These last few sentences, however, made him feel like those accomplishments were as nothing. Inside, he felt like his mind was gibbering. Outside he tried to appear calm while he wished that Ell could have been here to witness this in person. He wondered whether someday Zage might even outshine his mother. Taking a deep breath he said, “Well, that’s interesting. If obesity really is a disease that can be transmitted from one person to another, maybe you can find a cure for it someday.”

Zage tilted his head curiously, “You don’t think someone else’s already working on that?”

“Well, obesity has been around for a long time and nobody’s cured it yet.” He winked at his son, “Maybe they just need for someone smart like you to work on it?”

Zage looked back at his HUD and murmured to his AI for a second. “Oh,” he said in his child’s voice without looking away from his HUD, “you’re right. There’s a paper here about the obesity virus from 2002. You’d think they would have done something about it by now wouldn’t you?”

Shan found he had goosebumps. Of course, like any parent, he’d always thought his child was special, but he was pretty sure no other child had ever held a conversation like this before he’d turned three. Until today, he was pretty sure Zage had never had a conversation like this either… but, wow! To his son he said, “Sounds like a pretty good project for you then, huh? If you need any help, just let me know.”

That night in bed, as Shan waited to fall asleep, his mind kept coming back to that conversation with Zage. He felt a sense of extreme wonder. Then he worried about his offer to help. He knew virtually nothing about biology, viruses, gut bacteria, obesity, or the human body! Although, he should know enough to help a three-year-old…

Shouldn’t he?

***

Austin, Texas—Governor White has conceded the presidential election to President Stockton. A little more than a year ago Stockton’s approval rating was so low that a change of administrations seemed a foregone conclusion. However, since that time Stockton was kidnapped and rescued, an event which gained her a great deal of public sympathy. Subsequently she ended her feud with Ell Donsaii, a posture which had been attracting significant ill will. Finally, the economy—driven by wholesale adoption of the new technologies which have been changing the world—has been booming. The luster of this thriving economy seems to have rubbed off on the incumbent president, at least sufficiently for her to win a reelection by a small margin…

For Christmas, Ell and Shan and their two families gathered in Chapel Hill. Ell’s family, Kristen, Duncan and Gram were in theory staying in Ell’s little farmhouse while Shan’s family were staying in the house ‘Raquel’ and Shan had just purchased to the south of Ell’s farmhouse. It really had turned out to be a big house with plenty of rooms for everyone to stay in. They still needed to finish some remodeling, but it was already in good enough condition for visitors.

The igneous bedrock under the new house had turned out to be perfect for tunneling out Ell’s new lab spaces without needing reinforcement. The trip through the tunnel from Ell’s farmhouse to the new house only took a couple of minutes. However, for the most part Kristen, Duncan and Gram actually stayed at the new house too, they just parked their cars at Ell’s farmhouse.

The families so far were working hard to keep Zage from finding out about the connecting tunnels. Though it couldn’t be forever, for now they didn’t want Zage to know about his connection to Ell. She and Shan had agreed that they wanted him to have some version of a normal life. They didn’t want him guarded all the time. They didn’t want him thinking of himself as wealthy or growing up thinking that he was better than his friends because his parents had money. He was already different enough from the other children his age by virtue of the fact that he could read. Not just that he could read, but that he did read, voraciously and with a purpose.

Since the day five months earlier when Shan had proposed the possibility that Zage might be able to “cure” the obesity epidemic himself, the boy had spread his interest from biology into microbiology and virology. For a while he had asked his parents for help understanding the sciences that fascinated him. However, when it became evident that all they could do was help him look things up, something his AI was perfectly capable of, he’d given up on them as useful sources of information.

Like the parents of many prodigies, Ell and Shan were trying to balance ways to have Zage interact with children his own age, who he found boring, and finding someone with the mental capacity to provide him some challenges.

On Christmas Eve the families gathered around the large dining table.

“Lane,” Shan said to his youngest sister, “would you like to sit by your nephew for dinner?”

Lane’s eyes widened and she recoiled a little. “I’ve never even done any babysitting. I wouldn’t know how to help him cut up his food or eat or whatever I’d have to do.”

Before Shan could say anything, Zage said in an aggrieved tone, “You don’t need to feed me, Aunt Lane!”

Startled, Lane stared at him for a moment, then said, “Well, I guess we should sit next to each other then.” She eyed the booster seat in his chair, “Do you need help getting up onto that?” she said, waving uncertainly towards the booster.

“No!” he said emphatically, clambering up onto the booster seat by himself. Once in place he looked up at her with a mildly rueful expression, “You could push my chair in though.”

The group of family members gathered around the table all appeared to be somewhat startled by the little conversation. Because of the past secrecy, the family hadn’t been getting together very often. Ell and Shan were trying not to make a big deal about Zage’s capabilities, so none of the others really realized how fast he was changing.

Lane pushed Zage’s chair in as everyone took a seat.

Fay Kinrais seated herself on the other side of Zage from Lane, thinking that Zage would certainly need some help and that Lane really wouldn’t know how to provide it. She frowned, even though Zage hadn’t used any big words, something about his speech seemed oddly mature to her. The family had been together for most of the afternoon, cooking their Christmas dinner, but she hadn’t spent much time with Zage yet. When she’d gone to check on him, he’d been focused on another one of his videos. Whereas the last time that she’d spent much time with him he’d been watching nature videos, today the videos seem to be about microbes. Looking down at him she thought that might be a place to start a conversation with him. “What kind of videos are you watching nowadays?”

Zage turned to look seriously up at her, “Immunology and microbiology, especially virology.”

Fay’s eyes widened, those words were certainly multisyllabic. She turned to look at Shan, could this be some kind of joke?

Shan looked back at her blandly, though she could swear some kind of a twinkle was present in his eyes.

Fay looked around the table, wondering if anyone else had heard what Zage had just said to her. Evidently so; other people were also looking a little bit startled.

Ell, sitting next to Fay, said, “Potatoes?”

Fay looked down at the bowl of mashed potatoes, then bemusedly took it. She dished some for herself and turned to Zage, “Would you like some potatoes?”

Zage said, “If you can hold the bowl for me, I’ll dish some for myself.”

Fay blinked, but held the bowl down next to his plate so that the serving spoon was near his hand. He picked it up and shook a small dollop of potato off onto his plate.

Lane, who’d been watching this, wondered whether this was normal. She hadn’t thought that most three-year-olds were able to serve themselves. Though it felt rude to be thinking this of her own nephew, she wondered whether his ability to serve himself contributed to the fact that he was so overweight. She took the bowl of potatoes and served some to herself.

As the meal went on, Lane kept half an eye on her nephew. He ate the food he’d served himself, cutting up his slices of turkey with little difficulty. He hadn’t served himself a great deal of food, but Lane had no idea how much a three-year-old should be eating. Finished, he sat and watched the adults, seeming to listen to their conversations. At first she was surprised that he would find the things they were talking about interesting. But then he murmured something and his eyes tipped up to focus on his HUD.

Lane grinned to herself. When she’d been a teenager she’d often tried to watch vids on her HUD instead of listening to the family dinner conversation. It looked like her nephew was going to be zoning the family out at an unusually young age. A moment later, Ell interrupted her conversation with Fay and leaned a little closer to say, “Zage, remember what we said about using your AI when you’re with your family?”

Zage murmured something, presumably to pause whatever he’d been looking at on his HUD, and turned to his mother. “Mom!” he sighed, “Nobody’s talking about anything I care about.”

Ell gave him a reproachful look. “Zage, you need to learn how to make friends, remember? And what should you do when no one is talking about something that you’re interested in?”

Zage rolled his eyes. In a long suffering tone, he said, “Ask them about what they’re interested in.” Ell nodded at him. He turned to look seriously up at Lane, “What interests you Aunt Lane?”

Lane stared at him for a moment, not at all sure that a three-year-old would or maybe should normally ask questions like this. She realized she didn’t even know if a normal three-year-old could ask such a question. But, she decided she should answer. It seemed like the polite thing to do. She kept it simple, “I like fashion,” she said, giving him a smile.

Zage blinked at her several times and his eyes shot up to his HUD once, though he didn’t give his AI a command so he couldn’t have had anything displayed there. He looked a little bit confused, then said, “Fashion?” At her nod, he said, “I don’t know what fashion is. Can you tell me about it?”

“Um, it’s when… you keep up with the latest trends in clothing and shoes and things like that.”

Zage looked down at his T-shirt, pull up pants, and Velcro closing sneakers. He looked back up at his aunt, “Really? Clothing and shoes have trends? Can they be graphed?”

Lane gave a little laugh, “Yeah. More for girls than for boys. For instance, a blouse with a high collar like I’m wearing tonight is the latest style.”

Zage’s eyes focused on her collar for a moment then returned to her face, “That really doesn’t look very comfortable.”

Lane snorted, “No, it really isn’t. What’s in fashion often isn’t very comfortable. What’s important is that it looks good.”

“Really? Do you ever wear stuff that hurts?”

Lane shrugged, “Yeah, these shoes I’ve got on are pretty uncomfortable.”

With an astonished look on his face, Zage leaned back and looked over the side of his chair to be able to see Lane’s feet. “You’re not wearing shoes.”

“No,” she laughed, “I kicked them off because they hurt. You’re going to find women doing that a lot if you look for it.”

Zage lowered his head and leaned back and forth to look under the table at everyone’s feet. Straightening up, he turned back to Lane, “You’re right! Only my mother and great-grandmother still have their shoes on.” He tilted his head, “The men still have their shoes on though. Is ‘fashion’ different for men?”

Lane found herself laughing again at the serious look on his face. “No, men don’t seem to worry about fashion as much as women.” She quirked a smile, “Well, some men do. Just not very many.” She shrugged, “Even the ones who do concern themselves with fashion usually won’t wear things that are painful like women will.”

Zage simply sat and stared wide eyed at her, as if she’d said the most astonishing things. She reviewed in her own mind what she’d just said and decided that it did seem a little bizarre.

Everyone had for the most part finished their dinner. Malcolm Kinrais had put himself in charge of dessert and cooked several different types of pie. He began taking orders and Lane asked for a small slice of French silk pie. To her surprise Zage asked for a very small slice of blueberry pie. She turned to him and said, “Wow, when I was your age I asked for as much desert as they would give me!”

Zage frowned, “I’d like a big piece, but I’m pretty fat.”

Lane stumbled, saying, “Um…” She realized she had no idea how to respond to her nephew’s statement. She herself had been thinking that he was overweight, but somehow it seemed wrong for a child his age to be dieting. She wanted to brush it off and tell him that he shouldn’t worry about it, but she also wanted to suggest that he shouldn’t have any desert all! She bit her lip searching for something to say.

Then Malcolm plopped a pretty big piece of pie down in front of him and Fay, coming along behind her husband put a big scoop of ice cream next to it.

Lane snorted, “Looks like you got a big piece whether you want it or not.”

Staring at his plate Zage said, “Yeah…” He sighed and looked up at Lane, “Maybe you’d be nice enough to take this away from me after I eat about a quarter of it?” Sadly, “Everybody thinks I’m fat, but hardly anyone helps me do anything about it.”

“Okay,” Lane said. When Zage had eaten what she thought was approximately one fourth of his dessert, she said, “Shall I take it away?”

He looked wistfully at what remained on his plate, but nodded.

Lane took both of their dessert plates into the kitchen. As she walked away from the table she heard Zage say, “Mom, can I go play with Tanner?”

When she got back to the table Zage was gone. Lane turned to her mother and said quietly, “Do three-year-olds normally talk like that?”

Wide eyed, Fay shook her head.

***

Allan spoke in Ell’s ear, “You have a call from Dr. John Simon, President Stockton’s new science advisor.”

Ell said, “Really? What happened to Elton Costella?”

“Resigned. News stories about it imply that he was urged to resign because of his close association with Ementhal and the Committee for Extraterrestrial Affairs.”

“I assume he’s a scientist of some kind. Please put some information about him up on my HUD and then connect me to him… Hello Dr. Simon, how may I help you?”

Alan popped a document up on the display in Ell’s left contact. Simon was a biochemist.

“Dr. Donsaii, thank you for taking my call. I have two reasons for calling. First, I spoke with one of my predecessors, Chip Horton, who advised me to check in with you every so often. He said that one of my jobs was to make sure you weren’t about to release some new world changing technology without the president being aware of it.” He chuckled a little, “Is anything like that on the horizon?”

“No sir. Well, nothing major anyway. I assume you’re aware of the contacts D5R is releasing which provide vision correction, enhancement, and heads up display?”

Simon felt a little odd, being called sir by Donsaii, but decided not to make a big deal about it. “I have heard about them. They sound very interesting, but I doubt they’re going to shake up the economy.”

“Well, no. But if you were in the contact lens industry, or the headband display manufacturing sector, you might feel differently.”

“Ah, yes, I can see how that might be the case.”

“We’ll be offering licensing arrangements to contact lens manufacturers which will lessen the blow there. Most of the companies manufacturing head-mounted displays are diversified enough that the loss of their headband business probably won’t ruin them.”

“Thank you for bringing this up, I’ll make sure that the president is aware.”

“There are a few other items affecting medical industries. Port driven cardiac assist pumps have finished a number of trials in animals and in a few humans. They should be entering the market relatively soon. The same is true of a number of artificial kidney type technologies. Essentially, they simply use ports to transport blood to hemodialysis units or fluid for peritoneal dialysis. This isn’t a huge medical advance, but for the patients who don’t have to spend several hours a day, three times a week, hooked up to dialysis machines… for them it represents a huge improvement in their quality of life. The same can be said to be true of insulin ports. The actual function isn’t too much different from currently available devices that sense your blood sugar and deliver insulin in response to it through needles. The fact that you can have a tiny port implanted through a needle once and then pretty much stop worrying about it, not having to reinsert needles frequently, should provide a huge convenience factor.”

There was a pause, evidently while Simon considered her words, then he said, “Those sound… very interesting… and, no doubt, hugely important to people having those diseases. They don’t sound to me like they will shake up the nation’s economy though. Am I missing something?”

“Um, no sir. I’m just wanting to keep you abreast of the situation.”

“I would like to ask, though I hope it doesn’t upset you, whether you might have encountered any new extrasolar civilizations that we haven’t heard about yet?”

“No sir.” Ell said wondering whether he knew about the sigmas. Everyone knew about the teecees and she had told Flood’s administration about the sigmas, but didn’t know whether Flood had told Stockton’s people. Certainly, due to the terrible relationship she’d had with Stockton so far, Ell hadn’t made Stockton’s administration aware of the Sigmas herself. Simon hadn’t asked her, however, what extrasolar civilizations existed, just whether she’d encountered any new ones. She decided to continue without trying to clarify the issue. “The new probes we’ve got out examining other solar systems have so far only found dead worlds. Well, beyond the unicellular life on Alpha Centauri that I assume you are already aware of?” Ell felt a little guilty for not revealing that she had a mission approaching the Beta Canum Venaticorum system which had detected oxygen in the atmosphere of one of its planets. Since oxygen seemed to be extremely unlikely without life, it probably wasn’t a “dead world,” but, after all, she didn’t know that for sure yet.

“Okay,” Simon said cheerfully. “The other thing on my agenda is to invite you to play golf. I like to golf, and as I’m sure you’re aware, President Stockton is a fanatic. She feels badly about getting off on the wrong foot with you. She’d like to try to fix that by inviting you on a golf outing in March. She’ll be back in Pinehurst then, so it’ll be right there in your neighborhood.”

“She’s going back to Pinehurst?!”

“Yes, she doesn’t want the nation to think she’s been intimidated by what happened there. Do you play?”

“Not much.” Not at all, Ell thought to herself.

“Well, as long as you’re not a complete hacker. It is mostly a social outing after all.”

“I’ll have to get in a few rounds before then. Make sure I won’t be an embarrassment.”

Simon laughed, “One of the president’s social secretaries will get back to you with a formal invitation. I look forward to seeing you then.”

Ell stepped into the next room, “Shan? Do you golf?”

Staring at the big screen in front of him, Shan held a hand up for a pause, then shook his head and turned to Ell. “What?”

“Do you play golf?”

“Sure, do you?”

“I never have, but I need to learn how. Can you teach me?”

“Oh no you don’t. I’m not teaching you another sport where you turn out to be better than me an hour later. You hire yourself a professional.” He turned away, then looked back toward her, “Why do you need to learn how anyway?”

“President Stockton’s invited me to play with her in March.”

“Really? Are you gonna wear armor?”

Ell snorted, “To protect me from snipers? Or to protect me from the President?”

Shan grinned at her, “Both…”

Chapter Two

Thinking Shan would be there, Ell walked into the living room. The big screen that Shan liked in there was lit up, but Zage was watching it, not Shan. Ell immediately recognized the view as coming from Tau Ceti 3. She could identify it by the tall spindly shapes of the trees in the picture. As he stared at it, her little boy was marching in place. “Hi Zage,” Ell said, “are you trying to get some exercise while you’re watching this vid?”

“Uh huh,” Zage turned to glance at her, “I just found this! Did you know that there are some cameras on a world around another star? Tau Ceti?”

“Um, yeah,” Ell said, bemused.

“They have huge animals there. Some are even bigger than the dinosaurs!” He spoke to his AI briefly and the video jumped, presumably back to an earlier spot. An enormous animal was on the screen, reaching high into the trees with long spindly dorsal limbs that occupied the place of the teecee’s wings. Whereas the brachiosaurs had had long necks to eat high vegetation, these animals had evolved very long dorsal limbs to reach up and strip leaves from high in the trees and bring the vegetation back down to mouths which were on the ends of their relatively short necks.

“I know,” Ell said. When the exploratory rockets they had on Tau Ceti got down to the low lands nearer to sea level they had found some real behemoths walking around. “They look a lot different than our dinosaurs did though, don’t they?”

“Yeah! Eight limbs, short necks, no feathers.” Zage turned to look at her curiously, “How come Earth doesn’t have any big animals like the dinosaurs anymore?”

“Actually, we do. The blue whale is bigger than any dinosaur ever was.”

“I mean… animals on land. Elephants are the biggest land animals now, and they’re tiny compared to brachiosaurs. Ten times smaller!”

“Yeah, here on earth all the animals are much smaller than they used to be. There are a lot of theories on why, but I don’t think any of the theories are well accepted. Some of the big dinosaurs were so big that it’s actually kind of hard to figure out how they got around at all. By calculation their bones were barely strong enough to hold them up standing still and taking a stumble would’ve broken their legs.” Ell shrugged, “The big pterosaurs couldn’t possibly fly in today’s conditions either. It’s a lot easier for a huge animal on TC3, because the gravity is only about a quarter of earth’s and the atmosphere is much thicker and has more oxygen. In those conditions it’s easier for huge animals to get around and for big animals to fly.” Ell shrugged, “Back in the time of the dinosaurs, earth probably had a thicker atmosphere with more oxygen too, but it’s hard to imagine that the gravity was less.”

Zage frowned at her, “That doesn’t make sense. If they were bigger, their bones would’ve been bigger too. Why would they break?”

“Because of a thing called the square-cube law. Do you understand what it means to square a number or to cube it?”

Zage nodded, “Two squared is four and two cubed is eight.”

A little glow filled her heart as Ell smiled at him, “So what the square-cube law means is that if we took a 5 foot tall person and doubled her height to 10 feet, her surface area would be four times as much or squared, and her volume would be eight times as great or cubed. Since her weight depends on her volume, if she weighed 100 pounds when she was 5 feet tall she’d weigh 800 pounds when she was 10 feet tall.”

Shan had walked into the room behind him while Ell explained that. Zage blinked at Ell for a moment. Then Zage said, “And if she were 15 feet tall, she’d weigh 2,700 pounds?”

Ell glanced at Shan, seeing him staring at his son wide-eyed. She turned back to Zage and said, “Yes, and if she were 20 feet tall, she’d weigh 6,400 pounds. At that point, her bones would have to be much, much thicker to even be able to hold her up.” Ell tilted her head as she studied her son, wondering if he followed this. “If you look at elephants, you’ll notice that their legs are much thicker than a horse’s legs. That’s because of the same thing. Some of the dinosaurs were so huge it’s hard to figure out how they could walk on their legs without breaking them. One theory is that their density was very low because they had a lot of air inside of them. That would make them weigh less. Another theory is that the atmosphere was so tremendously dense that it held them up kind of like the water does when you’re in a swimming pool.”

Zage stared at his mother for a few more seconds, then he nodded sharply and said, “Thanks.” He turned his attention back to his video which jumped ahead to where it had been in response to a command he gave his AI.

Ell felt a little surprised. She had expected that he would want to discuss the theories of low-density dinosaurs or high density atmosphere some more. His stopping the conversation there and going back to watching his video left her feeling… unsatisfied. However, she supposed that expecting him to follow the density theories was asking a little bit much.

Shan had walked over closer to Ell. He leaned close to her and said, “Did our three-year-old son just cube three and multiply it times 100?”

Ell grinned and nodded at him.

Shan smiled beatifically and put a hand on his chest, “A chip off the old block.”

Ell looked at him askance. “Were you really doing math like that when you were three?”

“Well… no. But I’m sure it was only because I lacked proper stimulation.”

Ell snorted and shook her head. “Sure, stimulation, that’s all you needed…”

***

Milo Nesbitt frowned at the next name in his appointment calendar. It was a private lesson and he hardly ever gave those. Almost everyone signed up for one of his small classes because they were cheaper. He liked classes better too, because even though each person paid less, a group of 5 to 10 still paid him quite a bit more than a single private lesson did. The name, “Jin Doh” sounded like it must be Asian. He glanced around the tee box at the driving range, but didn’t see any people that appeared to be of Asian heritage. He didn’t know from the name whether they would be male or female. The people he taught usually met him here on the range tee box, but maybe he should have met this person up at the clubhouse?

Milo’s AI said, “You have a call from Mary.”

Mary worked in the clubhouse and scheduled his lessons. Maybe she knew where this Doh person was? “Put her on. What’s up Mary?”

Mary sounded quite amused, “Your 1 o’clock’s here in the clubhouse and she’d like your help picking out some clubs.”

Mary was probably laughing because she knew how much Milo hated teaching complete beginners. He didn’t like teaching women either. He sighed, “She doesn’t even have clubs?!”

“Nope.”

“Mary! Why’d you even set her up with me? You know how I hate beginners. One of the junior guys would’ve been happy to take her on.”

“Don’t you go getting’ all grumpy on me Milo. She asked who our best teacher was and I told her that was you. Just come on up to the clubhouse, I promise you won’t regret it.”

With a sigh Milo turned and headed up to the clubhouse. He stepped into the Pro Shop and looked around, but didn’t see anyone who looked Asian. Walking towards Mary at the counter he raised his eyebrows. She pointed at a blonde woman who was over holding a club and looking at it curiously. From behind, she was a looker. Milo thought to himself that if she turned out to be as hot as she looked from here it might make up for her being a total beginner. Milo stepped closer to Mary, “Jin Doh? I thought she’d be Asian.”

Mary laughed, “Jane Doe, not ‘Jin Doh!’ She wanted to be listed anonymously in our appointment books. I swear Milo, you need to have your hearing checked!”

Milo rolled his eyes at her and turned to walk over to the young lady in question. “Ms. Doe?”

She turned and smiled, “Hi, are you Milo?”

Ell Donsaii! For a moment Milo couldn’t speak, then, “Um, yes ma’am Ms. Donsaii. You’re wanting golf lessons?”

She shrugged, “Yeah, but first I need clubs. Can you advise me on that?”

Feeling somewhat befuddled, Milo tried to discuss choices with her, but she just took whatever he suggested as if she had no idea. He did try to suggest they order some clubs for her, however she asked him to just pick the best clubs for her that they had in stock.

As they walked down to the driving range, he asked, “Have you ever played?”

She hesitated, then shook her head, “No, but I’m pretty good at sports. I’ll probably pick it up fairly quickly.”

To himself, Milo allowed that she was more than “pretty good” at sports. He’d classify her as excellent at gymnastics and sprinting. However, he’d known a lot of athletes who were very, very good at their own sports, yet found golf to be exceedingly frustrating. “Okay,” he said trying to keep the doubt out of his voice as he got out a five iron and handed it to her. “Have you ever gripped a club?”

“Nope. But I knew that there were some funny ways to grip golf clubs so I had my AI look them up for me on the way here.” She took the club and gripped it with a standard overlap grip. “Is this one okay?”

Milo adjusted her thumb a little bit, then said “Sure.” Taking a grip on one of her other clubs himself, he demonstrated the swing, speaking the whole time to point out strategies for keeping the head still and the swing smooth. “This entire swing evolution is aimed at one goal, to bring the club back to the ball with its face perpendicular to the direction of travel and have it strike the ball with its ‘sweet spot.’” He lifted the clubhead and showed her the markings indicating its sweet spot.

He looked up just as she began a swing of her own. It was smooth, graceful, and elegant. Obviously, she’d been bullshitting him. Certainly she’d played before, but he didn’t call her on it. “That was a very nice swing for a beginner.”

“Thanks, I watched a few vids of professionals swinging on the drive over here.”

Milo made a few suggestions and had her take another swing.

The second swing was gorgeous, though she swung the club whistlingly fast. He chewed his lip a moment, thinking he should tell her to slow down but the swing had looked perfect. Instead, he said, “Let’s try it with a ball.” He pulled out a tee and teed a ball up on it. He thought it was good for beginners to get a few nice shots off of tees before they started trying to hit balls off the turf. “Okay, line your club up behind the ball here. Release your grip and make sure the club face is pointing right at that hundred yard sign down there.”

She let go of the grip and adjusted the club a few degrees, “Like this?”

He stepped behind her aim point and said, “Yeah, looks good. Now, the most important thing you’re trying to do is to bring the club head back to strike the ball right on the sweet spot we talked about.” He pulled out a four iron and used it to show her where the sweet spot was located on the clubface. “Hitting that spot is pretty hard for beginners. A lot of them completely miss the ball, so if it happens to you, don’t let it get you down.” He stood waiting for her to swing.

She glanced up at him, “Do you want me to go ahead and hit it?”

“Oh… sure.”

She glanced down the range one more time and then swung. Her swing was excessively fast again, but her stroke still looked perfect. Unfortunately, the ball broke. He’d seen balls break before in the wintertime, usually into two or three pieces, but this one must have had a manufacturing flaw because it kind of shattered, breaking into five or six fragments.

“Whoops,” she said, “shouldn’t I have hit it so hard?”

“Naw, these range balls are crap. And it being February, even though this is a pretty nice day, the ball was a little cold and brittle. Let me just tee you up another one.”

He put out another ball and stepped back. She lined it up just like he’d showed her and took another swing.

He had the impression that she swung more softly this time, as if she really did worry that she had broken the ball by hitting it too hard. He was about to say something to her—reassure her that it had nothing to do with how hard she’d hit the first one, but his eyes tracked the ball she’d just hit. It was aimed perfectly, exactly over the hundred yard sign he’d told her to aim for.

Way, way over.

About 100 yards over. In fact, it landed about 20 yards past the 200 yard line and rolled on from there. He’d personally never seen anyone hit a five iron that far though he knew some pros and big men could.

Could she have swung too hard?

“So then,” Milo said to his wife Denise, “she hit a few more perfect five iron’s, then asked if she should hit her way through the bag so she would know what distance each club would go!”

Denise usually found Milo’s work stories pretty boring, but found the description of his encounter with Donsaii captivating. “So, shouldn’t she want to know how far each club goes?”

“Well, yeah, but most people have been playing a while before they start working too hard on figuring that out.”

“I thought you said that she must have been lying about being a newcomer?”

Milo shrugged, “She hits the ball too well to be a beginner. But, she really doesn’t seem to know much about golf! I don’t know what to think. Each swing she takes looks just like the one before it, and the ball goes to almost exactly the same spot if she uses the same club. It’s eerie.” He shook his head wonderingly, “Each shot even sounds the same, as if she hits them exactly with the same velocity and right on the sweet spot every time. I had to tell her how to fade or draw, otherwise they go perfectly straight!”

Denise frowned, “How far does she hit a driver?”

“Who knows? We didn’t get around to hitting a driver today. She’s hired me to play an entire round of golf with her next week. When I left her today she was going to the putting green to ‘try putting.’”

***

Milo walked down to the driving range where he was supposed to meet Donsaii. A large crowd had gathered around one end of the driving range and at first he wondered why. Then he saw a familiar strawberry blond head and realized they were star-struck celebrity gawkers.

Then Milo got close enough to see what she was doing. She had a driver in her hands. She teed up a ball and addressed it, aiming right down the center of the range toward the big “300 yards” sign on the fence where the woods started.

A hush fell over the crowd, like they would have quieted for a professional at a tournament.

Her swing was picture perfect, though once again Milo thought she was swinging a little fast. He would have told most of his pupils to slow down.

Instead of a “clink” sound like most amateurs made hitting a big metal wood, her driver sounded like a firecracker had gone off.

The ball took off like a rocket.

Somehow Milo wasn’t surprised to see it shooting right down the range directly at the 300 yard sign. No fade, no draw, just straight as a ruler!

There was a gasp from the crowd, then a sigh of admiration.

Moments later, the ball hit the 300 yard sign—on the fly.

The crowd burst into applause.

“So,” Milo said to Denise over their dinner, “as we’re walking to the first tee box, Donsaii turns to me and says, ‘Why does the driving range end at 300 yards? Is that all the acreage they had?”

Denise grinned at him, “So what did you tell her?”

Milo snorted, “I told her hardly anyone hits it that far!” He rolled his eyes, “And then she clapped her hand to her mouth and tried to look all embarrassed like she didn’t know it.”

“So now you’re thinking she isn’t really a beginner?”

He snorted again, “Of course not! Though I really can’t fathom why she keeps trying to pretend she knows nothing about the game.”

“What did she shoot?”

“Well, she started out like a house afire, but then reality took hold like it does for most of us and she finished up with a seventy-eight.”

Denise looked up at Milo. He was staring distractedly off into the distance. “What are you thinking?”

Milo turned to stare at his wife. “She played off the men’s tees Denise. She just teed off where I teed off, I’m not sure she knew that there were women’s tees. The first hole, Denise? Drive, perfectly down the center. The goddamned ball went 380 yards! Birdie. The second hole? You know, it’s a 370 yard par four? She drove the green and putted in a ten footer for an eagle! She birdied the next hole too!”

Denise laughed, “Well you’re certainly right. She’s not a beginner! But if she can play that well you’d think we would have heard about it by now.” She shrugged, “Well, if she’s really inconsistent maybe not. She fell apart after the first three holes?”

Milo looked a little glazed. “After the third hole, we had to wait a while for the foursome ahead of us and she asked me to ‘explain the scorecard.’”

Exasperatedly Denise said, “Explain the scorecard! She’s four under par after three holes, and she’s asking you to explain the scorecard!”

“Yeah. And I got the impression that she was actually surprised to realize she was under par. From then on, she only got pars or bogeys.” He shook his head, “Her shots still looked perfect, still ruler straight, still exactly the same distance. Except, I’ll swear, it looked like she lined up to miss!” Milo looked up into his wife’s eyes, “I think she wanted to play badly. I swear she intentionally put balls right into sand traps. She got her one double bogey out of her first sand trap where I had the impression she was very surprised by the way the ball played out of it.” He shook his head, “I can’t believe I’m saying this really, but I think…” His voice dropped in timbre, “I think she actually could be the best golfer in the world, just like she’s the best gymnast and the best sprinter.” He paused.

After a moment he said, “And… and she might actually be a beginner…?”

***

Marcus Turner’s AI said, “You have a call from Dr. Shannon Kinrais.”

“Who’s that?”

“Dr. Kinrais is an assistant professor in the Department of Mathematics here at UNC. He joined the faculty six years ago, but took a two-year leave of absence, so only has four years in grade. He is most noted for having published a paper as a grad student with Ell Donsaii on…”

Turner interrupted the AI. Even over in microbiology, he’d heard about the Math grad student who’d published with Donsaii. “Put him on… Hello Dr. Kinrais, how can I help you?”

“Well, I have a precocious son who is very interested in microbiology. He has a lot of questions that I can’t answer, so I’m looking for a real expert like you who might be willing to have a chat with him.”

“And how did you come to the conclusion that I would be the right person to talk to him?”

Kinrais paused, then sounded a little embarrassed when he said, “Actually I didn’t. Zage said he read two of your papers on gut flora. He’s quite excited that you're right here at the same university as I teach at.”

There was a brief pause, then Kinrais said, “Um, how old is your son?” Turner thought to himself that Kinrais must have started his family early if he had a son old enough to be not only interested in microbiology, but even be reading papers. Turner didn’t really like kids though, and the last thing he wanted to do was get involved in something like mentoring a child. He supposed though, that for another faculty member he could at least talk to the kid for ten minutes and then have one of his grad students show him around the lab. He pictured giving the kid a culture plate and letting him culture his finger.

“Three and a half.”

A period of silence ensued while Turner tried to come to grips with the fact that Kinrais had just had the balls to ask him to talk to a three-year-old! He desperately wanted to just say “no,” or “I can’t believe you have the gall!” No matter how rude it seemed to refuse this request, he did not want to waste an hour of his life on a toddler!

Kinrais saved him from having to either be rude or commit himself to babysitting Kinrais’ kid by saying, “Or maybe, one of your grad students would be willing to talk to him for a while? We’d be happy to make it worth a grad student’s time.”

Turner felt like a drowning man who’d been thrown a life preserver. He knew Jenkins actually worked as a babysitter some nights for extra cash. Being a girl, she probably even liked kids. “Sure, Vanessa Jenkins would probably be happy to show your boy around. Can I tell her how much you’d be willing to pay?”

***

John Simon followed his President into the clubhouse. Stockton strode through the building and out onto a little balcony that overlooked the first hole. The big woman stood with a wide stance, hands on her hips surveying the course they were about to play. John looked out over the course a moment himself, then eyed Stockton out of the corner of his eye. Her eyes were narrowed and Simon would have sworn she was trying to stare down an adversary.

An amazing swarm of Secret Service agents cleared the area and a group of the agents started down the first fairway, some of them actually playing golf. Once the Secret Service people were out on the course, Stockton grunted and started down the stairs toward the first tee. Simon followed, turning to look around him as he wondered where Donsaii was. She had said she would meet them at the course. Ah, he thought to himself, seeing her on the putting green.

As Stockton walked toward the tee, Donsaii picked up her ball and walked out to the tee box as well, “Good morning President Stockton.”

Simon stared at her. It was a beautiful but cool April morning and Donsaii wore loose black athletic pants with slender red side stripes and a matching light weight red jacket. There’s nothing special about her clothing, but my goodness she looks good, he thought to himself.

Stockton turned to gaze at Donsaii for a moment, then said, “Good morning to you too. It looks like a great day for golf.” Stockton hesitated, then said in a low voice, “I’d like to get a few things out of the way so they aren’t hanging over us to ruin our game.” She paused, took a breath, and said “I do still believe that you should turn the interstellar technology over to your government, but I’m not going to try to force it anymore. I appreciate the fact that you saved my life and have nothing but admiration for your ethics in not requesting a quid pro quo. Finally,” Stockton grinned at the young woman, “I’m gonna enjoy writing in my memoirs about how I kicked the world’s greatest athlete’s ass at golf.”

Simon’s eyebrows went up at this quiet admission from the President that Donsaii had been involved in her rescue. He’d heard rumors, but thought that was all they were.

For her part, Donsaii simply smiled and said, “Yes ma’am.”

The President turned to Simon and said, “Let’s get this party started.” She indicated the tee box with her eyes.

Simon teed up on the 410 yard, par four first hole. It had a slight dogleg to the left which was a problem for Simon’s chronic fade or slice. He lined up a little bit to the left and was pleased when the slight fade of his shot put it right in the middle of the fairway down near the turn. Elton Brand, a professional golfer who was the fourth member of their foursome teed up next and boomed out a 285 yard drive with a slight draw that gently curved around the dogleg.

Donsaii was standing on the tee box with her driver in one hand and a ball and tee in the other. She uncertainly eyed the President, looking, Simon thought, as if she expected the president to tee up. Donsaii actually looked startled when Stockton strode off the front of the tee box and down toward the ladies tee. After a moment, Donsaii started after Stockton, but Simon would have sworn that Donsaii had expected Stockton to play from the men’s tee box.

At the ladies tee, Stockton teed up a ball and boomed it out there. The President was a big woman and Simon thought she hit the ball more like a man than like a lady. She had to have hit it 250 yards, leaving her a relatively easy 100 yard shot to the green.

Donsaii teed up a ball and addressed it.

She didn’t take a practice swing, but her actual swing was beautiful.

The resulting drive was simply astonishing.

It faded around the little dogleg just like Brand’s, landed exactly in the center of the fairway and rolled up to stop about 20 yards in front of the green.

Simon looked down at his scorecard. The yardage from the ladies tee was 350 yards. That had to have been a 330 yard drive!

Stockton gaped after Donsaii’s drive for a moment, then turned to stare at the young woman. After a moment she barked a laugh, “I suppose you’re going to kick my ass, huh?”

“Oh, no ma’am,” Donsaii said, a twinkle in her eye.

Donsaii did not, in fact, beat the President at golf. She birdied that first hole, but from then on missed greens, hit sand traps, missed putts, and otherwise played just badly enough so that Stockton won by a single stroke.

Nonetheless, Simon had the very distinct impression, that, had she wanted to, Donsaii could have played from the championship tees and easily have beaten Brand.

She certainly hit the ball a lot farther than the pro did.

***

While her class busily worked on their drawings, Francine Miller studied that new Kinrais kid. He’d joined their preschool class late in the year. A spot opened when Paul Johnson moved away and he’d filled it. The kid was overweight, well—obese. But that wasn’t all that uncommon nowadays, so being heavy didn’t set him apart all that much. He wasn’t wearing a HUD headband which was a little bit unusual. He had in the new HUD contacts and most parents didn’t want their three-year-old preschoolers wearing them, but really, there weren’t any reports of the contacts causing problems, so there probably wasn’t anything wrong with a child using them.

Unless of course, you were the kind of curmudgeon who didn’t think that children should do anything that you didn’t do when you were young.

Francine didn’t like his contacts because she had several times had the feeling that the kid wasn’t really paying attention to her. This left her wondering if he was watching cartoons on his HUD instead. But, she’d tried asking him some questions about what she’d just said and, without fail, he always knew the answer.

Francine walked around behind him where he sat at the little circular table with four other kids. Like the other kids, he was drawing a stick figure family. His drawing showed a mother, father and child, presumably him. She studied the drawing thinking there was something odd about it. After a moment she realized that… it was simply very well done. It felt odd to say that a stick figure drawing had been done well, but it simply didn’t have the scribbles, overlapped corners, disproportionate bodies and off-center positions that were prevalent in the other kid’s drawings. Somehow, she had the feeling that he could have drawn a much better picture of his family if he wanted, but had instead fulfilled her request for stick figures.

Francine uneasily wondered what it was about the kid that put her on edge. She just couldn’t put her finger on it. After contemplating it a minute longer, she sighed and continued on around the classroom, offering suggestions and compliments to the children about their drawings.

Then it was playtime. The class trooped outside and soon were running, shouting, chasing balls, and otherwise having a grand time. Zage Kinrais, however, stood at one side of the playground, simply watching the other children. Francine went over to him, “Zage, don’t you want to play with the other kids?”

The child gazed up at her with a serious expression, “Not really.”

Francine blinked, “Why not?”

“They aren’t doing anything I think is interesting.”

Something about the way the child said what he’d said seemed much older than his years. “Don’t you want to make friends?”

He turned to look out at the other children, “Um, yes, I’m supposed to. Is kicking the ball or playing tag an important part of making friends?”

I’m supposed to?! After a moment to process that statement, Francine said, “Yes, playing with the others is one of the best ways there is to make friends. Why don’t you go chase the ball with the other boys?”

“Okay,” the boy said, starting out onto the playground in the direction of the boys who were kicking a small soccer ball. They were playing some kind of “keep away” game. Francine couldn’t tell whether they had two teams that were trying to keep the ball away from each other or whether just a few of the boys who were friends were trying to keep the ball away from all the others. Sometimes she wondered whether she should put a stop to those kinds of games, but this one seemed not to be all that different from actual soccer to her.

Next she worried that she shouldn’t have sent the chubby, nonathletic looking, Kinrais kid out there into a game of keep away. His feelings were probably about to get hurt…

Jimmy Simpson kicked the ball to his friend Mark. It hadn’t seemed like the ball was going to be all that close to Zage Kinrais, but Zage took a couple of quick steps and stuck out his foot. The ball shot straight up into the air and came back down right beside Kinrais. He trapped it under his right foot. Mark, Jimmy, and Roger all converged on him, Jimmy yelling like he was angry.

Francine started out onto the field, concerned that there was about to be a fight, but with a flick of his foot, Zage sent the ball to Billy Stevens. Billy was definitely not popular with the other kids, even though he hung around them while they were playing. Francine had the impression that Billy only ever got his foot on the ball by accident, but fortunately there were plenty of stray kicks with these relatively clumsy 3 to 4 year-old boys.

Excitedly, Billy kicked the ball towards Marvin. Marvin also fell low on the pecking order so Francine’s spirits lifted at seeing him get a chance to handle the ball. Unfortunately, Marvin missed his own kick and the ball rolled on past him.

Jimmy had been furiously chasing the ball and now he recaptured it, kicking it to Roger who fed it to Mark. Francine blew the whistle, signaling the end of the play period and the kids were soon trooping back into the classroom. She wondered once again, whether the free play periods were really such a good idea. With organized games she would have better control over the possibility of the popular kids shutting out the unpopular ones. On the other hand, “free play” sounded like such a great idea and the management of the preschool really believed in it.

For a moment before she called the class to order, Francine thought about how coordinated Zage had looked when he stopped the ball. Probably an accidental fluke, she decided.

Weird kid though…

***

Shan watched his wife spooning cereal with sliced bananas and blueberries into her mouth. As he had on many other occasions, he mused over the disconcerting notion that the wealthiest person in the world made her own breakfast out of inexpensive ingredients. Before learning of Ell’s incredible wealth he’d always pictured rich people eating meals prepared by their personal chefs, living in exotic mansions and communicating only through personal secretaries. Well, Amy does kind of serve as a personal assistant and Ell does have people doing most of the grunt work for her out at D5R, but she does so much more for herself than I had ever pictured.

“Hey Ell, I forgot to ask you about your golf game with President Stockton. How did that go?”

She tilted her head, considering, “I think it went pretty well. She started off by telling me that she still believes that I should turn over the ET encounters and one-ended port tech to the government. She said she just wanted to clear the air, but I feared she was actually going to nag me about it for the entire eighteen holes.” Ell shrugged, “She didn’t though. We talked pleasantly about all kinds of topics including what new D5R technology was in the pipeline and what effects it might have. She wasn’t antagonistic at all!”

“That’s amazing… not just that she wasn’t antagonistic, but that you were able to get along with her after she imprisoned you, then chased and persecuted you after you got away.”

“Yeah, we’ve kind of agreed to disagree. I respect her for doing what she thought was right, even though I think it was wrong.”

“How did you like golf? Should we go play some time?”

Ell stared at him for a moment as if considering. “It’s a challenge. Getting the ball to go where you want it can be pretty difficult,” she said, not pointing out that her definition of “where you want it” would be significantly tighter than most other people’s.

“All right! I think I could really get into a sport where being the world’s fastest human being doesn’t provide that much of an advantage.”

Ell eyed him blandly, but said nothing.

“So should I make a reservation?”

She shrugged, “Sure.”

***

Shan found Zage watching video from TC3. “Hey kid, you ready to head over to the University’s microbiology lab?”

Sliding down off the couch, Zage said, “Sure. Have you ever watched the teecees Dad?” He spoke to his AI and the video paused, then shut down.

“I saw one of the edited versions of Goldie and Silver’s trip up the mountain. I really liked that story, have you seen it?”

“Uh-huh,” Zage said, sitting on the floor and pulling on his shoes. “That’s my favorite of their vids. I liked the show someone put together of their kids learning to fly too. I’ve tried just watching real-time video of what they’re doing right now, but that can be pretty boring.”

He got up and they headed out the door to their car.

Vanessa looked up at a knock on the door frame of the lab. A handsome, tousle headed blonde man in his early 30s stood there. She thought he looked pretty hot, then realized that he was holding the hand of a chubby little boy. This guy’s the mathematician with the precocious son who likes microbiology?! “Hello?” she said, bending down and putting her hands on her knees to look little boy in the eyes. “Are you Zage?”

The boy, a serious look on his face, nodded, “You work with Dr. Turner?”

Vanessa smiled, “I sure do.” She looked up at the boy’s father, “What did you have in mind for this visit?”

The man looked down at his son, “It’s pretty much whatever Zage wants to do, as long as it isn’t dangerous.” He tilted his head to indicate a question, “Dr. Turner said it would be okay for us to pay you for your time. Is forty dollars an hour okay? I know that’s more than you get per hour as a TA.”

Vanessa’s eyebrows went up, “Sure! That’s more than I get at my part-time job on weekends too.”

“Do I need to stay with you? Or could I just come back in an hour or so?”

Vanessa thought to herself that it really seemed like he was just looking for an on campus babysitter, but if he could pay that kind of money and Turner gave her permission to babysit the kid in the lab, she certainly wasn’t going to complain. “Sure, no problem. You could just let me know when you want to pick him up… or I could just call you when we’re done?”

Kinrais shrugged, “I’ll plan to come get him in two hours, unless you call me to say you’re done early or to tell me that two hours wasn’t long enough.”

As Kinrais walked away, Vanessa leaned back down to the kid, “Okay,” she said brightly, “what would you like to do now?”

The kid’s eyes narrowed a little as if he were regarding her suspiciously, then he said, “Can you show me around the lab first? I’ve never even seen a culture plate. I’d like to see your incubators, autoclaves, bioreactors, laminar flow cabinets, centrifuges, chromatographs, DNA sequencers, PCR equipment, microarray readers, and anything else you use frequently. Reading about this equipment hasn’t really given me any feel for what it’s actually like.”

Vanessa’s eyes had widened during this recitation. Now her own eyes narrowed as she studied the child. Can he really be three years old? ‘Cause if he is, “precocious” doesn’t even begin to describe how freaky he is! After a second she smiled at him, stood up, and said, “Sure! Let’s start down on this end.”

The kid climbed up on stools to peer into, over, and around each of the pieces of equipment. She offered him a culture plate and had him touch it with his fingers, telling him he could take it home and see the bacterial colonies that formed from his touch by the next day. The questions he asked, though, were almost scary. He knew the names of many of the common species of microorganisms found in the intestine and wanted to know what she thought would happen if the balance of the microbiota shifted one way or another.

He seemed especially interested in Dr. Turner’s research on the effects of gut microflora on mouse obesity. The kid might only be three years old, but he knew what Turner’s papers said better than she did. “So what do you think? Does changing the microflora make people gain or lose weight? Or do you think that eating the kind of food that makes you fat changes the microflora?”

Vanessa studied him while she considered her answer.

Evidently the kid thought that she wasn’t just “thinking,” because he said, “Yeah, I’m fat. And I’m wondering if I’m fat because of the bacteria in my gut, not just because I eat too much. I don’t think that’s a crime.”

Vanessa managed not to wince at how close the kid had come to some of the thoughts that had passed through her consciousness. Instead of admitting her guilt, she lied by saying, “Oh no, I wasn’t thinking about your weight. It’s just that you asked a very difficult question.” She shrugged, “It’s a really hard question to answer in people because they don’t follow diets very well. We know from mice that are raised germ free—so that they don’t have any microflora in their intestines—that if we then populate their gut with bacteria they rapidly gain a lot of weight. The general belief is that the organisms in your intestines help you harvest more energy from your food so that you can gain weight. We also know that if we put bacteria from obese mice into the guts of these germ-free mice that they don’t just gain weight up towards normal, they become obese. This suggests that the bacteria in the intestines do have a significant effect on obesity.”

The kid frowned at her, “So what about in people?”

“When we study people, we find that obese people have different microflora in their intestines than people of normal weight. But if we put obese people on a diet, assuming they follow it, their microflora changes from what it was when they ate whatever they wanted.” She shrugged, “So, it’s really hard to tell which is cause, and which is effect.”

After a moment in which the boy seemed to be thinking, he said, “So if you wanted to find out what kind of bacteria were growing in someone’s intestines, you’d have to do a culture of their stool?”

“Well, we don’t have to do a culture anymore. DNA microarrays will identify most of the microorganisms and give us a good idea of their prevalence. It’s actually much more accurate than a culture. But if we do a microarray on stool, we only find out what organisms are present at the lower end of the large intestine. That can be pretty different from the organisms in the small intestine. It’s much more difficult to get specimens from that part of the bowel.”

“Really? Can’t you just have them swallow a port and suck specimens out every so often as it passes through the bowel?”

Vanessa felt like her eyes wanted to cross. It seemed so obvious now that the kid had said it. She couldn’t believe that she and Dr. Turner hadn’t thought of using ports for that purpose. Probably, somebody, somewhere, was already doing such a study, but if no one was, a paper on it could be quite a coup. She smiled at the kid, figuring it wouldn’t do any harm to give him some praise. A three-year-old wasn’t going to come after them for stealing his idea, after all. “That’s a pretty good idea!” she said.

“How expensive is it?”

“How expensive is what?”

“Doing a microarray.”

“Oh, the microarrays themselves are pretty cheap nowadays. As long as you already have a reader for them, it only costs 1 to 2 dollars to run the test.”

The kid kept peppering her with questions, one after another. Perceptive questions that made her think and made her contemplate things she hadn’t considered until now.

By the time the kid’s dad came to pick him up Vanessa felt mentally exhausted.

Chapter Three

As Shan’s little pickup truck pulled out onto the highway, he looked over and saw that Ell was wiping the bronzers off of her face. Her strawberry blond wig was laying in her lap. Shan frowned, “You’re playing as Ell? I told Ryan that ‘Raquel’ was playing with us.”

Ell shrugged, “So, when we get there tell him that Raquel couldn’t make it. Ell’s the one with the membership at the course. You can complain to Ryan that she invited herself along.”

“But why? Why not just play as Raquel?”

Ell looked at him a moment, then said, “Because I want to play well. It’s okay for Donsaii to play surprisingly well. It wouldn’t be okay for Raquel to do that.”

Shan narrowed his eyes, “Are you going to kick my ass at golf too?”

Ell shrugged, but said nothing.

Musingly he said, “Golf’s really easy for you too?”

Another little tiny shrug.

“But I thought you were just really fast? Golf isn’t a game where quickness should help you!”

She looked off into the distance, “Actually, it is pretty easy. After all, you’re hitting a ball that isn’t even moving.” She shrugged, “I think the reason most people have a hard time with it is that you’re swinging a long club, at a high speed, while trying to hit the ball exactly on a fairly small sweet spot, with the club face pointed exactly at your target. All those items added together make it pretty easy to actually hit the ball a little ways off the sweet spot, with the club face pointed a little bit the wrong direction. When that happens you wind up with a pretty bad shot.” She paused to calculate, “If your club face is off by five degrees at the time it strikes the ball on a 200 yard shot, you’re gonna be off target by nine yards.” She glanced wryly at Shan for a second then said, “But having really fast reaction times make it pretty easy to line the club up precisely and hit the sweet spot… quite well.”

Shan snorted, “Then, I suppose the ball goes pretty much where you want it to go, huh?”

“Yeah. So to keep from freaking people out, I over club, under club, or aim it to one side or another, making bad shots on purpose.”

Shan sighed.

Ryan Keller looked around as he opened the trunk of his car and lifted out his bag. It was nice of Donsaii to let them play on her membership, this club looked really high end.

He checked in at the clubhouse and went out to hit a bucket of balls. Finishing that up, he went over to the putting green. Suddenly he recognized Ell’s strawberry blond head bent over a putt. He hadn’t imagined that she might be there playing the same day that he, Shan and Raquel played. “Ell!” he said, walking up to her, “Are you playing today too?”

She looked up and grinned at him, “Yep. With you. Raquel couldn’t make it so I’m filling in.”

Ryan wasn’t quite sure how he felt about this turn of events. He’d been a little bit pissed that Shan was dragging his wife along on their golf outing in the first place. Of course, Donsaii was a girl too, but Ryan still had an infatuated crush on her. She acted friendly, but a little distant at work—as if she didn’t want him to think of her as possible girlfriend material. Besides, she lived with Bridget and he still dated Bridget occasionally. Oh well, she’ll be nice to look at, even if it’ll be a pain in the ass waiting for her to play off the girls’ tees.

Tommy Wilson hurriedly put on his golf shoes and grabbed his bag. He hadn’t been able to believe it when Ell Donsaii joined the club where he worked as a pro. Tommy had dreamed of meeting her for many years. When she joined the club it began to seem like a possibility. Then this morning Debbie contacted him through his AI to tell them that Donsaii was about to tee off in a threesome! Tommy grabbed his clubs and headed out for the first tee box.

Pete wasn’t surprised to see Tommy Wilson heading down to the tee box at the same time as Ell Donsaii’s threesome approached. When she’d joined, everyone at the club had heard just how much Tommy wanted to meet Donsaii. Sure enough, Pete’s AI spoke in his ear, “Call from Tommy Wilson.”

Chuckling, Pete said, “I’ll take it, Tommy, what’cha need?” As if I don’t know.

“Going out for a round Pete. Can I join that threesome?”

Pete snorted to himself. Trying to keep the laughter out of his voice, he said, “Oh, I don’t know. It’s Ell Donsaii. Don’t you think we should let her have her privacy here on the course?”

Tommy laughed, “Pete, I know you’re just bustin’ my chops! So I’m gonna call on you to enforce the club’s rules.”

Pete snickered, “Okay, even though I think it goes against all that’s right in the world.” He disconnected and turned to the threesome getting ready to tee off, “Ms. Donsaii? We have a single, do you mind if he joins your threesome?”

Tommy stepped up to the little group on the tee box, “Hi, Tommy Wilson, one of the pros here at the club, going out for a round to try to keep my game sharp.” He stuck his hand out shaking hands and carefully noting the names of the two men. He turned to Donsaii last. Wow, just as good-looking in person as she is in pictures! “Hello Ms. Donsaii, welcome to our club.” Hopefully she’ll ask me for a few pointers.

The two guys teed off. Both had decent swings and hit reasonable drives in the 240-250 yard range, though the blonde guy’s shot tailed off into the rough on the right.

Tommy teed up and nervously addressed the ball. He was surprised to feel this way; after all he’d been playing for years and had a scratch handicap. He realized that he was just worried that he might blow his first shot in front of Donsaii. He took a deep breath to calm his nerves and resisted the temptation to hit it really hard. He wanted a decent first shot, because he knew if he blew this first one, he’d play crappy the rest of the day.

With great relief he felt his swing run right in “the groove” and watched the ball shoot out down the middle of the fairway with a slight draw. It wasn’t a great drive, but blew past the other two guys and it was still something he could be proud of. He wasn’t a huge hitter for a pro, but it should be 280-290 yards.

Tommy went back and picked up his clubs to walk down to the ladies tee. When he turned around he saw with some embarrassment that Donsaii was teeing up on the men’s tee as well. From the glances they were giving one another, it appeared that the two other men had also expected her to tee up at the ladies tee. So much for “ladies first.”

Her swing was beautiful.

The “craack” sound her club made hitting the ball sounded like someone fired a pistol!

Her ball sailed over his—still in the air!

Pete walked up to young Tommy Wilson after they’d finished their round. “Holy shit Tommy! I saw Donsaii’s drive on the first hole! How’d she play the rest of the round?”

Tommy looked a little glassy eyed. “She’s the best goddamned golfer I’ve ever seen,” he said in a flat tone, as if watching her play had drained all the amazement out of him. He turned to focus on Pete, “Do you know, she doesn’t even have a handicap?” He shook his head, “I spent the entire back nine trying to talk her into establishing a handicap and trying to qualify for the U.S. Open.”

Pete narrowed his eyes, “What did she shoot?”

“Sixty-four.”

Pete’s eyes widened, “That’s three below the course record!”

“The first goddamned time she’s ever played this course,” Tommy breathed, an expression of awe on his face.

“If she plays like that it shouldn’t be hard to establish a handicap that would get her into the women’s Open.”

“I was talking about the men’s! Women can play in it you know, it’s the ‘Open.’ But, she doesn’t think she ‘wants to play enough to establish a handicap.’”

“What?! Why not?”

“‘Doesn’t have time for it,’” Tommy said disgustedly. “Which is just so much bullshit! She played one hell of a lot to get this good, she could play a little bit more!”

***

Warren Dawson sat nervously, waiting to meet with Drs. Keller and Jenner. To his astonishment, he heard Stell Simsworth’s voice, “Hi Warren, how’re you doing?”

“St-Stell?” he asked. Like many blind people he was very good at recognizing voices, but it just seemed too much to believe that Stell Simsworth would be here at the same time as his doctor’s appointment!

“Yep!” she said. “I was due to have my eyes checked and when Dr. Keller said you had an appointment today, I thought I’d better reschedule mine for the same day. I figured I needed to be here to make sure you weren’t rude to my favorite doctors.”

Warren could tell from her tone that she was just teasing him. He fired back, “Boy, a poor blind man is a little overly sensitive one time and…”

“Oh, you’re a ‘man’ already?”

Warren let out a long suffering sigh, “I’m thinking back on how I used to really like you when I’d only heard you singing…”

Stell snorted, “You’d better be glad I don’t hit blind people!”

Warren cleared his throat, then sang a paraphrase of a couple lines from her most famous song,

But then you’d come to me

Asking for forgiveness

Stell laughed and slapped him lightly on the shoulder. “Oh that was a low blow. But now I have hit you on the shoulder, and I’m not planning to ask for forgiveness anytime soon.” She paused, then said, ponderingly “Besides, you have a really nice voice. I can’t be nice to you, you might go into my business and steal all my fans.”

The nurse called Warren’s name. Suddenly nervous, he said, “Can you go back to see the doctors with me?”

“Sure, I’ll just tell the nurse where I’ll be. You should know though, that Dr. Keller’s been standing here beside you just waiting for you to shut up long enough for him to get a word in edge wise.”

A small hand took his and put it on her arm so she could lead him. As they started off Warren said, “Hello Dr. Keller. I hope you’re not thinking too badly of Stell for the way she’s been treating me?”

Warren heard a man snort. He sounded much younger than Warren had expected. The man said, “I had been thinking you two were here for doctors’ appointments. I hadn’t realized it was actually a date until I heard all the flirting.”

Warren felt mortified. Flirting? He’d thought he was teasing Stell. Are flirting and teasing the same thing? “Um…” Warren said uncertainly.

“Dr. Keller!” Stell’s voice said sounding shocked, “We blind people have a great deal of difficulty with social interactions. I can’t believe you would put us on the spot like this!”

Keller sounded mortified as he said, “Oh, I’m sorry. I, uh…”

Warren heard a smirk in Stell’s voice as she said, “Gotcha!” After a moment she continued, “But really, I was flirting with Warren because he’s such a hunk. He wasn’t flirting back, he’s just naturally rude.”

Warren’s train of thought derailed, I’m a hunk??

***

Pete glanced at his HUD to see who was next on the tee time roster. Donsaii! He glanced back towards the clubhouse and saw her walking towards him with a couple of other men. “Hello Ms. Donsaii. Tommy Wilson told me a little bit about your game the other day.”

She gave him a beatific smile, “Yeah, I played pretty well that day.”

Pete snorted, “I guess you did at that. He said he was trying to talk you into establishing a handicap and trying to qualify for the U.S. Open. Are you considering it?”

She shrugged, “Who knows? Depends on whether I play enough rounds to have a handicap in time I guess. It’s not high on my agenda, but it might be fun.”

Pete walked out to the back of the tee box to watch her drive, holding a speed gun down by his hip. Her swing was beautiful, just like the last time he’d seen it. Smooth, accelerating rapidly and hitting the ball with that same whip cracking, pistol shot sound she’d made the last time she’d teed off in front of him. Even standing right behind the ball, Pete’s older eyes lost track of it, but it had certainly started right down the center of the fairway. The men in her foursome stared wide-eyed after it.

He waited until he got back to the starter’s shack to look at the radar gun.

Holy crap! Her clubhead speed had been 142 mph and she didn’t even look like she was trying. He knew some of the big hitter pros got that kind of speed on their clubhead when they were participating in the long drive competition, but they were giving up on accuracy and throwing everything they could into it!

Later that day, he stopped into the Pro shop to see if she’d turned in a scorecard toward a handicap. Somehow he wasn’t surprised to find a bunch of people gathered around the card she’d turned in, gaping at the numbers written on it.

This time she’d shot a sixty-three!

***

Ell was working in the new underground lab she’d cut into the bedrock beneath and to the side of the house just south of her old Chapel Hill farm. She’d recently become interested in exactly how small the fifth dimension was in comparison to the dimensions we are used to. Unfortunately, measuring something so incredibly small had proven to be extremely difficult.

Allan spoke in her ear. “We are touch down -20 minutes for the rocket descending on to the fourth planet of Beta Canum Venaticorum.”

Glad to give up her frustrating attempts to measure the fifth dimension, Ell stood, stretched and said, “Okay put it up on the big screen in the living room. I’ll be right up.” She powered down the micro port she’d been using and headed for the stairs.

Beta Canum Venaticorum was a Sol analog star about 27 light years away. It was 15% brighter than Sol, so it didn’t seem too surprising that the fourth planet lay in the liquid water zone. The one ended port she’d used to send a rocket there had been pretty far away so it had taken more than a year for the rocket to reach the inner solar system. By spectroscopy she’d known for many months now that there was oxygen in the atmosphere of the fourth planet, so she’d parked the interstellar rocket pretty far away and sent another rocket through its port to do the actual landing.

BC4, as Ell had taken to calling the planet, was about two thirds covered with water and considerably larger than the other worlds where they had found life. Ell was thinking of it as kind of an “Earth analog” and felt pretty excited to find out what it was going to be like down on the surface.

As she reached the living room she saw the green expanse of the landmass she had told Allan to direct the rocket towards. The huge island was north of the equator, but relatively small compared to some of the gigantic continents elsewhere on the planet. Ell had been focused on the biggest section of the screen which showed the view from the downward facing camera. For a moment she glanced at one of the screens showing a side view out of the rocket to look at the atmosphere. It looked very thick compared to Earth’s atmosphere. Really thick!

Ell’s spirits fell. Her hope of an Earth analog looked like it was going to be dashed again. No matter how much like Earth this planet might turn out to be, if it had an extremely dense atmosphere, people wouldn’t be able to breathe there without some special apparatus. People could theoretically live on TC3, but with a density of seven atmospheres, it would require that they breathe a heliox mixture like deepsea divers did to prevent nitrogen narcosis. This atmosphere though, looked much thicker than TC3’s. Even breathing heliox wouldn’t safely get you beyond 10 to 12 atmospheres of pressure.

Because of the thick air, as the rocket descended, it got harder and harder to see very far towards the horizon. Looking straight down, she could still see pretty well. The world she saw looked lush and green like TC3. She had Allan throw up the atmospheric pressure on the screen to see if she was right about it being high.

Even at her present high altitude, the readout said 80 atmospheres and it was still rapidly rolling upwards!

Ell sighed, there would be no way humans could live unencumbered on this planet either.

The rocket continued to descend and Ell had Allan guide it towards what appeared to be an opening in treelike vegetation. When she got down far enough she developed the impression that the surface it was landing on was swampy mud. She lifted back up and flew to a different opening in the tree analogues. This time there was a large boulder in the clearing so she aimed the rocket to land on it.

Right before the rocket touched down, the boulder moved. Rather vigorously in fact! It appeared that her “boulder” in fact was some kind of enormous animal. After it had moved off, Ell dropped the rocket down and landed on the area where the immense creature had been standing, and where it had cropped the vegetation short.

Ell’s eyes went to the corner of the screen where the planet’s vital statistics were displayed. The gravity was 0.78G. Oxygen was 16%, nitrogen 75%, Argon 5% and carbon dioxide 4%.

Atmospheric pressure was 188 times that on earth! A little more than double the air pressure on Venus!

Ell snorted, calculating that the air pressure on BC4 was about the same as if you were 6200 feet underwater here on earth!

She looked at the large herbivore that had moved out from under her rocket. Greenish gray in color with some faint vertical stripes, it looked something like a six legged, headless hippo. Allan put up some dimensions. It appeared that it would be a Triceratops-sized headless hippo!

The trees had tall straight trunks with enormous leaves that appeared to be tilted towards the sun. A riotous tangle of vegetation immediately surrounded the rocket. Ell could see fern analogues, vine analogues, and an abundance of small bushes and grass analogues.

Small flyers flitted through the air though “flitted” wasn’t quite right. Their motions seemed a little bit more like swimming, presumably related to the dense medium they were traversing.

Harald Wheat was going to love this place!

Ell looked at her watch. It was time to go to bed. “Allan, make sure that behemoth doesn’t step on the rocket. If you’re able to recognize that there’s anything especially unusual about any of the animals, save me video clips. Screen off”

As Ell went up the stairs, she wondered how long she should study this new planet before she brought the rest of the TC3 team in on it. Allan hadn’t detected any regular structures from space to suggest an advanced civilization and it was hard for her to imagine a truly advanced civilization without some kind of buildings or roads.

She decided that over the next few days she’d have Allan fly the rocket from place to place in order to get an idea whether there was anything present on BC4 that she didn’t want her own world to know about…

***

Allan said, “It appears that a large comet has just struck TC3.”

Ell dropped her spoon into her breakfast cereal and stood so violently that her chair skittered across the kitchen floor to bang into the cabinets. “How big? Give me a video feed! How far from Goldie’s cave? What time is it there?”

As Ell strode into the living room, Allan projected the view from the rocket they called “Goldy’s meteorite” on her left contact. By the time she’d seated herself on the couch the image was also up on the big screen in the living room. The rocket appeared to be sitting where it frequently did on the ledge out in front of the teecee’s cave. The camera Allan had activated was facing west. It had to be early morning there because the mountain the teecee’s lived on was casting an enormous shadow out in front of her. However, Ell’s attention was riveted by the enormous glowing fireball a few degrees south of directly west.

Allan said, “I can accurately estimate the distance at 307 km from the teecee’s cave. It is early morning there.”

“Have the rocket begin emitting a loud siren alternating with shouted instructions to get outside the cave and up into the air off the ledge. How long ‘til seismic impact?”

“Seismic effects should begin in another twenty-five seconds. The impact should register approximately 8 on the Richter scale. At the cave it should produce effects at about 6 to 7 on the Mercalli scale, which would cause significant damage to housing here on earth. These estimates are necessarily inaccurate as they are based on…”

“Fly the rocket up about five meters into the air and have it shout for the teecees to do the same. Give me your estimates of the size and nature of the object as well as its immediate effects in the region of the cave.”

“I estimate the object was approximately 0.7 to 1.5 kilometers in diameter, most likely composed of cometary ice, but with some denser material intermixed. It appears to have released energy in the range of 150,000 to 250,000 megatons of TNT. The thermal radiation from this blast would give humans first to second-degree burns. Ejecta from the impact will arrive in four minutes and should consist of a rain of sand to pebble-sized particles. Huge volumes of dust will follow, but fall more slowly. An air blast of 100 to 150 miles per hour will arrive in approximately fourteen minutes. On earth it would blow down about 30 percent of trees, however TC3’s air is denser and its trees are more gracile.…”

***

Author’s note, for those of you who have not read Tau Ceti (an Ell Donsaii story #6), hie, hies etc. are not misspellings. The teecees are hermaphrodites and therefore are neither “he” nor “her.” These terms are my attempt to convey that status.

Syrdian was out on the ledge in front of the cave when the sun suddenly rose in the west! It looked like it was below rather than shining through the ever present clouds! To hies astonishment, not only did it rise in the west, but it was many times brighter than the sun normally appeared. Syrdian had to look away and close hies eyes because the light was so bright. Even looking away hie could feel heat on hies fur and skin.

An extremely loud shrieking sound came from Dex’s meteorite, then it began speaking loudly! It spoke much better now than it had when it had originally begun talking to them. Then it sounded like Dex on some words and Syrdian on others. Still, its tone was weird. It didn’t sound excited at all, despite what had just happened. It did however speak at a surprisingly loud volume even though its tone didn’t sound like it was shouting. It said, “Get out of the cave and off the ledge. Rocks may fall.” The shrieking sound resumed, then it repeated its words from before. This kept happening.

Dex came out onto the ledge with all four of their children just as the meteorite shot up into the air with its loud hissing noise and began shouting, “Fly up into the air like this. Leave the cave and fly up into the air like this.”

The meteorite kept repeating itself. Dex grabbed little Galen and Mata, lifting off with a few beats of hies wings. Apparently, hie trusted the meteorite, because hie began shouting to the other dalins to lift off as well. Syrdian flew up with Dex as did the two older children. Many of the other dalins had lifted into the air as well but Syrdian saw hies parents standing just outside the cave mouth. Hie could tell from their expressions that they thought that this was much ado about nothing.

A rumble violently shook the ground.

Rocks broke free from the cliff over the cave and poured down onto the ledge. Syrdian watched in horror as one large rock crushed her parent Ercole and knocked her other parent, Tanif, aside. Syrdian stooped towards Ercole, but banked violently aside when another rock tumbled towards himr.

With a quiver, the ground seemed to stop shaking. A few rocks continued to fall, but no more seemed to come loose. Dex’s meteorite dropped down and landed to one side of the mouth of the cave. It had stopped shouting for people to fly into the air, now it began telling them to go back inside the cave. “In one eighth of a dek dirt and rocks will begin to fall like rain! In three eighths of a dek, a great wind will come and blow down trees. It will not be safe to be outside! In one eighth of a dek dirt will begin…” The meteorite continued on to repeat itself over and over as it had before.

Syrdian had landed beside Ercole’s body and now began trying to roll the boulder off of himr. Tanif was also helping and a couple of other dalins grabbed hold as well. Dex sent the children into the cave, the older ones guiding Galen and Mata, then Dex turned and also pushed on the boulder. It finally rolled aside, showing them an Ercole who had been crushed beyond recognition.

Dex said, “We’ve got to get inside!”

Syrdian stared at hies parent, “No, we must take Ercole.”

With a tone of exasperation, Dex said, “I love Ercole too, but hies spirit is gone! We must save ourselves!”

Syrdian now stared at Dex. “You can sew himr up like you do everyone else! We’ve got to take himr into the cave and safety!”

Dex’s head went up and back and hies wings rose involuntarily. Hie turned hies head so that hies good eyes could glance at the baleful hot new sun on the horizon. Suddenly hie turned, bent, and scooped Ercole’s crushed body up in hies arms. At a run hie headed back into the cave.

They were almost the last ones into the cave. With the squealing sound it made while flying, Dex’s meteorite lifted into the air a few inches and scooted along behind them. It kept shouting, “Go deep in the cave. Go deep in the cave.”

The farther back they went into the cave the darker it became. A few dalins had taken burning torches from the fires, but there were too few torches to easily see where they were going. This was causing a problem because a number of stalactites had fallen from the roof of the cavern and littered the floor. Dalins were stubbing their feet and tripping over them in the poor lighting.

Suddenly the watery clear spots on the meteorite began emitting a brilliant white light. The dalins around it involuntarily lifted their wings and moved away, but then realized it was just trying to help. Although in the past the meteorite’s help had seemed to be limited mostly to giving advice, it didn’t seem an impossible leap to its providing light.

Because the top of the meteorite was not very high, the dalins around the meteorite blocked much of its light, but even so the reflections made it easier to see for quite a ways around it. Briefly Syrdian wondered, since it could fly, why it didn’t fly higher in the air to give better light like a torch held up. But then Dex bent over and grabbed it near the bottom, lifting it into the air and holding it up like a torch. The squealing sound that came from the bottom of the meteorite when it was flying immediately stopped, but the lighting was much better with it up high.

“Go deep in the cave…” the meteorite continued to say monotonously. The dalins continued shuffling farther and farther back into the recesses, eventually coming to areas that some had never entered. The ground did not shake hard again, but they could feel many thumps transmitted to their feet—as if heavy things were falling to the ground outside.

Syrdian estimated that it had indeed been about three eighths of a dek when, even deep in the cave, they heard a great roaring noise outside of it. The air in the cave seemed to squeeze hard on them for a centidek, then eased off. Somehow, Syrdian felt like the pressure was still higher than it had been after that first push, but with time the pressure seemed to gradually drop back towards normal.

The meteorite stopped shouting at them to go deeper into the cave. A sudden silence fell, then disappeared as voices began to ask what had happened, what it meant, what they should do, and whether they could go back outside. Some sounded curious, others sounded panicked, a few called out for loved ones. Syrdian hoped no one had flown away from the cave earlier this morning.

Syrdian turned to Dex, “Ask your meteorite if we can go back outside. I don’t like being deep in the cave.”

Dex did not have to ask the meteorite the question, it answered Syrdian directly. “The ground shaking and the big winds should not come back, so it may be safe to go outside. But, I expect that there will be a lot of dirt in the air. This may make it difficult to see and breathe, irritating your eyes and lungs.”

“Dirt in the air?!”

“Like dust, but much worse. More like sand and fine dirt falling out of the air like rain. Occasionally big rocks will be falling also, the thumps you feel are stones striking the ground outside the cave. I think you should stay in the cave as long as you can.”

Dex said, “What happened?!” Hie didn’t sound nearly as panicked as Syrdian was beginning to feel.

The meteorite answered, “A huge meteor came down out of the sky to the west where you saw the very bright light.”

“You mean where the sun rose back up out of the ground to the west?” Syrdian asked.

“Well, the light was so bright that it did look like the sun. Even bigger and brighter than the sun normally looks, but it wasn’t the sun. It was an enormous fire made by the meteorite hitting the ground.”

Little Mata asked, “Like the sparks from a flint?”

Dex looked down at himr, “A little bit like that, yes. But when meteorites land, they are very hot and often start fires.”

In its flat tones, the meteorite said, “Yes, but this meteorite was gigantic. Those dalins who have seen meteorites hit the ground know that they can dig a hole and throw the dirt up out of it when they strike, forming a crater. This one was so large that it has thrown an entire mountain of dirt up into the air.”

A mountain? Syrdian thought, stunned. Can that be?

***

Ell had breathed a sigh of relief when Allan had shut off the rocket as soon as Goldie started to lift it to shine its light around. She had given the command to turn it off as soon as she realized what was happening, but it was already high in the air and she feared that its exhaust might have burned Dex. Ell was quick, but Allan could be nearly instantaneous, as long as he recognized a potential problem, so the engine had snapped off promptly before it did any harm.

Goldie and Silver seemed stunned by the concept of an enormous meteorite doing the kind of damage Ell had tried to describe with the, “mountain of dirt up into the air” portrayal. She took advantage of the pause to say to Allan, “You must have another rocket that can see the impact site, since you were able to give me such a precise estimate of its distance from the cave?”

“Yes. It is located 437 kilometers south by southeast of the impact site.”

“Put a view of the impact site from that second rocket up on the big screen. Then give me the images from all four of the cameras on the one in the dalins cave in smaller sub-windows.”

The big screen went dark, then four small windows popped up on it showing the crowded dalins surrounding Dex’s rocket in the cave.

Ell waited a moment for a picture to come up in the main section of the big screen. When it didn’t happen, she said, “Allan, there’s no picture coming through of the impact site.”

“No. Dust ejected by the impact has blocked almost all sunlight.” Suddenly the screen lit but showed only a swirling gray. “I have turned on the rocket’s lights, but as you can see there is so much dust that vision is limited to no more than a meter or so.”

Ell’s heart sank.

Then she heard Zage thumping rapidly down the stairs.

“Mom?” Zage called, his voice high-pitched and sounding upset.

She had a feeling she knew what was bothering him. “I’m in the living room,” she called out.

His footsteps rapidly approached, “Something bad has happened to the teecees!” He burst into the room, moving much faster than Zage normally did. Seeming very upset, he barreled across the room to leap up on the couch and throw his arms around her. Burying his head into her, he said, “Do you know what happened?”

Putting her arms around her son for a comforting hug, Ell wondered whether telling him what she knew would somehow reveal that she was more than just “Raquel” his mother. Having decided that knowing what was going on revealed nothing more than that she had checked it out through net searches, she began to wonder what she should tell him. “A… very large comet struck their planet. Do you know what comets and planets are?”

Zage drew back and looked at her for a moment. “Well I know that Earth and TC3 are both planets.” He frowned a little, “I’m not so sure about comets.”

Ell briefly explained planets, comets and asteroids to Zage. Remembering his interest in dinosaurs, she said, “The most commonly accepted theory for what killed off the dinosaurs was an asteroid hitting the earth. The ‘dinosaur killer’ asteroid probably massed about 5,000 times more than what just hit TC3.” She tilted her head, “A comet about the same size as the one that just hit TC3 almost hit the earth seven years ago.”

Zage’s eyes widened apprehensively, “How often do these things hit?!”

Allan fed Ell the answer and she passed it on, “The comet that nearly hit earth recently was about 1000 meters in diameter. We think the one that just hit TC3 was in the same size range. Objects that size are thought to hit earth about once every million years. But Tau Ceti has a lot more comets around it. We don’t know how often a big one hits there, but it must be much more often than they hit here. If you watch the night sky of TC3, meteors are coming down all the time there.”

Zage seemed to ponder this for a moment or two, then turned his head to look at the big screen. “Oh, you have the teecees up on the screen there... Why is most of the screen gray?”

“Because… ” Ell felt her voice about to break and had to pause a second. She continued, “The comet there has thrown a lot of dirt up into the air. That gray is just swirling dust in the lights of the camera.”

“Oh… Won’t a lot of dust in the air make it hard to breathe?”

“Yes,” Ell rasped.

“Can’t we help?”

Ell’s mind raced. She glanced down at her son and said, “Well, we can’t, but I know some people who might be able to. I’m going to go talk to them.” She stood, “Tell your dad he has to make you breakfast this morning.”

Ell took the underground tunnel directly to the D5R, entering through the trapdoor in the floor of her office. In transit, she wiped off her skin bronzers and put on her Ell wig while also getting Allan to contact the members of Team Teecee to make sure they knew what had happened. She arrived at D5R in less than ten minutes and started looking for equipment.

Emma and Roger were next to arrive. They set to work helping her sterilize another rocket to send to Tau Ceti. They found one of the models the ET resources folks had which had a manipulator arm sticking out of it. This one also had a big port that could unfurl from its side that they could use to deliver items. They had to drill some holes in it to allow the chlorine dioxide to get into it for sterilization.

Once they had put the rocket through the port to the Tau Ceti system and had it on its way to TC3, they started working on other things to send through to the teecees. Those would need to be sterilized as well.

As they worked, video of the teecees played on nearby screens. For a while, the teecees seemed to be protected from the dust in the atmosphere by their position deep in the cave. But then the cameras began to show some cloudiness in the air. The teecees began spending much more time grooming the air intakes at the bases of their necks. Harold Wheat had arrived and he watched their grooming with fascination. “They’re not only using their tongues to remove the dust trapped in that furry inlet, but they keep the fur moist so that it’s better at trapping the dust.”

Despite the fact that the teecees had their own built-in dust filter and a process for cleaning it, it became obvious that the dust was causing them some respiratory difficulty. More and more frequently they could be heard blowing air violently through their lungs from the intake to the output. Presumably they were trying to clean their air passages similar to the way coughing works for Earth animals.

***

Many deks had passed since the meteorite had blown up the mountain to the west. The dalins did not have a great deal of experience with dust in the atmosphere. Frequent rains kept the ground moist enough so that dust in large quantities was uncommon. They were getting experience now though. They had moved farther and farther back in the cave until they had come to narrow spots they could no longer pass through.

Dex felt like hie was spending most of hies time with hies head down grooming hies intake. The little children were having more trouble with the dust than the adults, but even the adults were having significant difficulty. Syrdian asked Dex a question, but hie couldn’t answer for a few millideks as hie was seized by a spasm of air pouring through himr and out of hies exhaust. Hies exhaust opening was dripping disgusting muddy crud which hie wiped off with a finger. Hie turned to Syrdian, “What?” Hie hoped that Syrdian wasn’t going to resume badgering himr about doing something to bring Ercole back to life. That was obviously impossible, Ercole was cold and stiff.

“Galen’s really sick,” Syrdian said with distress, “what can we do to help himr?”

Dex’s head sagged, “I don’t know,” hie whispered disconsolately. Then hies head lifted and quested towards the entrance.

Syrdian’s head turned the same direction as hie also heard the hissing-squealing sound that Dex’s meteorite normally made when it flew. The sound came from the direction of the entrance. Both of their heads turned briefly to look at Dex’s meteorite where it sat on the top of a broken off stalagmite, still lighting the big cavern where most of the dalins were huddled.

They turned back towards the entrance.

A centidek or so later they saw a light approaching from the entrance. Sure enough it was another meteorite, much like Dex’s. It was bigger around and had a large fin sticking off of it, but seemed to be much the same height. Scooting along just a few fingers off the floor of the cave, it passed among some of the dalins near the entrance and they drew away nervously. It came right up to Dex, then the hissing sighed to a stop and it dropped to the floor of the cave an arm’s length away from him. A circular area on the surface of the big fin changed color and an object fell right out of it!

Dex moved hies head to one side to look at the edge of the fin. That fin is much too thin for something the size of a burrower to fall out of it!

Hie got no time to wonder how something had come out of the fin because then the meteorite spoke to himr with the same flat voice hies own meteorite normally used. “This object should help with the dust,” it said. “Hold it up in the air.”

Dex stared at it. It looked like it was made out of the same kind of metal that hies meteorite was made out of. It looked something like a metal pot with an extremely loosely woven basket on the top and bottom. There seemed to be fins inside of it. Hie bent down and picked it up. The fins started moving around in circles inside of it.

The meteorite said, “Hold it away from yourself and grip it tightly, it’s going to blow air hard enough that it will push hard against you.”

Dex held it out away from himrself at near arm’s-length. The fins started moving faster and faster until they disappeared in a vanishing blur. Hie could feel air being sucked toward it and it pushed back against hies arms.

***

The TC team watched nervously as Goldie held the ducted fan up and they slowly increased its speed. They could see the dust in the cavern began to swirl. Ell said, “Okay Allan, on a low duty cycle, open the port from the lake to the fan.”

The rocket had dropped one end of a port into the depths of a lake on its way to the teecee’s cave. The end of the port on the front of the fan now began spraying water out onto the counter-rotating fine mesh in front of the blades. The high velocity air from the fan atomized the water and blew it out into the cave.

Ell had Allan increase the duty cycle on the water port until the view from the rocket showed a fog blowing out into the big cavern where most of the teecees were. It became evident that Goldie was having a hard time holding the fan as it pumped out the dense TC3 air at a high velocity. They turned down the fan speed.

Ell asked Goldie to sweep the fan back and forth around the cave. It swung to the side and the TC team cheered and began to clap when they saw that the mist of tiny water droplets had swept the dust particles out of the air in the region of the cave where Goldie had been pointing it.

Roger pumped a fist and said, “Okay, it seems to work. We need to make some more of them, but we need to find a way to mount them. Even if they didn’t blow so hard, the teecees can’t spend all their time standing around holding them.”

Ell turned to Kira and said, “While the rest of us are starting to get ready to make more dust suppressors, can you watch them a while longer to be sure the teecees really are breathing easier?”

The linguist nodded. She’d been beside herself when she’d heard about the disaster which had struck the teecees, many of whom she thought of as her friends. After all, she’d spent years communicating with them now.

***

Dex felt hies wings ripple with excitement as the basket hie held in hies hands began to blow a veritable storm of air out away from himr. The howling sound it made reminded himr somewhat of the hissing that came from hies meteorite when it was flying. It pushed very hard against himr, then slowed a little. Hie wondered if this was a bigger version of whatever it was that lifted the meteorite. And why had the new meteorite given this thing to him? It just seemed to be swirling the dust around in the cave, why would the meteorite want to do that?

Then the wind blowing from the basket gradually turned into a fog. At first, because it was blowing away from himr, hie feared that what hie saw was smoke. Shortly however, hie saw the mood of the dalins near the fog lift. One of them shouted, “It’s like flying through a cloud!”

Dex still didn’t really understand until the meteorite told himr to wave the basket back and forth and hie realized that the fog had condensed the dust out of the air where it had been blowing. Hie quickly turned it to blow over hies own family. Once hie had cleared the air there, hie began walking around the cavern trying to clear the dust from the entire space.

It was wonderful seeing the joy come over the other dalins as the air slowly cleared and they were able to breathe more easily.

When hie passed near the meteorite, it suggested to himr that hie carry the fog basket out the cave passage towards the entrance. Hie immediately understood that, if it fogged the air out near the cave entrance, dust wouldn’t get back into the deeper caverns in the first place.

Chapter Four

“Roger, Emma, Wilson” Ell called to her friends. They turned away from where they’d been discussing the project to build more dust suppression units. Everyone from quantum research was here now, working on the teecee disaster. Ell had mercilessly raided people from the ET Resources group and a few of the Portal Tech people also. As Roger and Emma approached, Ell said “I’m hoping we can head to the little conference room and do some planning?”

Emma said, “That’s what we were doing! We’ve still got a lot of other things to work out if we’re going to deliver very many of the foggers.”

Ell blinked at her for a moment, then said, “We’ve got plenty of people that can make foggers Emma. Sheila’s hiring temporary workers too.”

Roger had turned and begun walking towards the conference room, but now he frowned, “How many foggers are you thinking we’re going to make?!”

“Not many more than we’ve already planned for, but dust suppression for the teecees cave only addresses one small part of the catastrophe that’s going to hit them you know?”

They had entered the conference room and Ell asked Allan to put up the view from the rocket down south of the impact site. The screen was dark, so she asked him to switch on the rocket’s lights. The screen turned gray, but the dust was so thick they still weren’t able to see anything.

Ell told Allan to launch the rocket, “Take it up until we’re above the dust clouds and can see what’s going on.” Then she took a few moments to explain to the others why the screen had been gray.

Wilson mused, “I was afraid of that. The dust we saw inside the cave with the teecees was only what drifted in on air currents. It’s much worse outside, right?”

“I assume so,” Ell said, “this rocket’s much farther from the impact site than the teecees cave. If the dust is too thick to see even a meter or so here, it’s probably even worse where the teecees live.”

The rocket had been ascending rapidly as they spoke. Now the screens in the conference room swirled and gradually cleared. The four screens arrayed horizontally mostly showed clouds stretching away toward the horizon beneath the rocket. The one facing north, however, showed a huge, sullen red glow beneath an enormous column of smoke rising high, then spreading out.

“It looks like the mushroom cloud of an atomic bomb!” Emma said.

“Yeah,” Wilson Daster said, “though enormously larger. My AI estimates an energy release equivalent to 200,000 megatons of TNT. Hiroshima was only sixteen kilotons.”

“Holy crap!” Roger breathed.

Wilson said, “The initial explosion is what produced all the dust. It also sent out a lot of ejecta. Fragments big enough to do a great deal of damage have all landed by now, but some were big enough to lift large quantities of dust upon their own impacts. A lot of them were hot enough to start fires. The huge red glow is the heat from the impact and that heat is creating a huge column of rising air. As that air rises, the surrounding air flows in and it’s heated in its turn. When the hot air rises up into the upper reaches of the atmosphere it cools and is blown out to the sides by more rising air coming up from below. That’s going to carry more dust and smoke out and away from the impact site.” He sighed, “It will block sunlight over an enormous area and result in global cooling.”

Emma said, “Off to the right there you can see that huge mountain that Goldie and Silver’s cave is on. It looks like funny clouds are forming over it.”

“They’re probably coming from low altitude air that’s being sucked towards the impact site. When it flows up over the mountain, it cools and condenses to form the clouds. It’s probably raining underneath there too.” Wilson said.

“Oh, that could be good for our teecees, right? The rain will settle a lot of the dust, won’t it?”

“Yeah, but the rain is going to fall as the air rises up on the far side of the mountain. By the time the air gets to the side where their cave is, the water will have condensed out of it already.”

Ell turned to Wilson who they all recognized was much more knowledgeable about astronomical impacts than they were. “Are you saying this is really a global catastrophe then? I’d been thinking that maybe we could help our teecees move to somewhere further away, but if it’s going to cool the entire globe I don’t think we can fix that.”

Wilson frowned, “Well there is no doubt that all that dust and smoke is going to block a lot of sunlight and result in some cooling of the entire planet. Some ecosystems will probably collapse, especially because this will also produce a lot of acid rain. However the effects are going to be much worse close to the impact and our guys are only 300 kilometers away. Where they are, the blast effect is going to knock down a lot of the trees and there will be a lot of sand sized ejecta. The vegetation’s going to get really sick and with the plants sick, the animals these guys hunt are going to die out too. If they were 1000 kilometers away, they would’ve barely felt the seismic effects of the impact, the ejecta would be more dust size and the air blast won’t have blown any trees away.”

“Hey,” Emma said, “these guys migrate close to 2000 kilometers every summer. Maybe they can just head east?”

Wilson’s eyebrows went up, “That’s a good idea.”

Ell frowned, “Flying that far could be pretty tough with all the dust in the air. Besides, what if they get there and some other teecees already live where they go?”

“We could send a rocket over there to check it out and, if it looks good, make them some breathing filters for the flight.”

Roger said, “We should ask Norris and Wheat. Norris has had rockets out exploring the rest of the supercontinent and Wheat has been keeping up with the flora and fauna they find.”

“Good idea. We also better drop some rockets into orbit around TC3 to act as GPS satellites. We’ll need them to fly the rockets accurately in the dust. The rockets aren’t going to be able to see where they’re going for quite a while.”

Emma said, “Their cameras are capable of seeing into the infrared. Infrared gives you a lot better vision in dusty environments so that will help somewhat.” She paused for a second thinking, then said, “Oh yeah, and Rob had me build him one rocket with a small radar unit in it. Radar is lower frequency than infrared so it should be able to see even better…”

***

Los Angeles, California—At 0615 EST a comet estimated at one kilometer in diameter struck TC3. Millions of people who regularly follow Goldie and Silver’s tribe of teecees on video are understandably distressed. The impact site is only about 185 miles west of the tribe’s cave.

Comet Hearth-Daster, which nearly hit the earth seven years ago was approximately the same size as the object which impacted TC3. Before that disaster was averted, it had been anticipated that the ecological calamity resulting from the impact would cause the extinction of many large species of animals, perhaps including human beings.

The extinction of the dinosaurs is widely accepted to have been caused by an asteroid impact. That asteroid is estimated to have been approximately ten kilometers in diameter. It would have had 1000 times greater volume and been approximately five times denser, so 5000 times more massive and destructive. Nonetheless, even the impact of a one kilometer object would melt or vaporize approximately five cubic kilometers of material at the impact site, throwing much of it high into the atmosphere. The attached photos show the enormous mushroom cloud rising from the impact site.

Fiery hot “ejecta” would rain down over the landscape, starting fires and adding to the immense quantity of smoke and dust produced at the impact site. We would show you photographs of the landscape around the teecees cave, however any exterior video shots we have from that area show nothing at all because the enormous dust cloud has blocked all sunlight.

For now the teecees we have been observing appear to be safe in their extensive cave system. However, experts believe that the thick clouds of dust will soon result in severe respiratory problems. In addition, even if the teecees successfully shelter in the cave and survive the dust themselves, the ecosystems on which the teecees depend for food will be destroyed.

Francis Ementhal, erstwhile leader of the now defunct Committee for Extraterrestrial Affairs has released a statement claiming that, “In view of the enormous ‘debris disk’ present in the Tau Ceti system, such a disaster could easily have been predicted by any competent astrophysicist.” He asserts that if his committee had been properly supported by the government and if Ms. Donsaii did not so selfishly restrict the availability of her technology, this calamity could have been prevented. He maintains that the committee would have surveyed the Tau Ceti system for possible impactors, recognized this impending tragedy and averted it.

Others point out that Ementhal’s rhetoric has always focused on the dangers of technologically advanced races and in the past never addressed the possibility of assisting primitive races. In fact, he has been quoted as saying, “We should not intervene with primitive races in any manner. Rather we should allow them to evolve in their own fashion. Assisting them with our advanced technology runs the risk of rendering them dependent upon us…”

After a long day with Team Teecee brainstorming the disaster on TC3, Ell didn’t get home till about 10 o’clock in the evening. She had been planning to go directly up to her room. However, when she walked in she found Shan and Zage sitting in the living room watching the teecees on part of the screen and various forms of news coverage of the disaster on other windows. Zage’s head swiveled around to look at her when she entered. “Hey guys…” she began.

Zage rolled off the couch and ran headlong toward her. He plowed into her, throwing his arms around her legs in the kind of intense hug only a child can give. Without even looking up he asked, “Did you talk to the people who might be able to help the teecees?”

Ell bent to lift her surprisingly heavy child and hugged him back. Over Zage’s shoulder she looked questioningly at her husband. Shan shrugged and said, “He really wanted to stay up to talk to you.”

Ell looked back at Zage, “Did you see vids of the fans that fogged the teecees caves to clear the dust and help them breathe?”

Zage nodded, a serious look on his face. “The news said D5R that did that. Are those the people you know?”

Ell nodded back, “Yes, I work there part-time. Did you know that?”

Zage shook his head. “Have you met Ell Donsaii?”

Ell nodded, wondering how long she’d be able to keep her secret.

Zage said, “Is she as smart as everyone says?”

Ell grinned at him and ruffled his hair, “Not any smarter than you are kiddo.”

He rolled his eyes, “Mom,” he said exasperatedly, “they say she’s the smartest person in the whole world!”

“Well I think she just got lucky a bunch of times.”

Zage stared at her for a moment, as if wondering whether to believe what he’d read or what his mother said, then dismissed that question and went on in different tack entirely. “The teecees can breathe in their cave now, but what are they going to eat?”

“They have some food saved up and stored there at the cave…”

Zage interrupted, “But that will run out pretty soon! What’ll they do then?”

Ell looked at her son, wondering what to tell him. Should she be truthful and tell him that his friends the teecees might die? Should she try to pretend that everything was going to turn out fine when she knew very well that it might not? There wasn’t anything in the child rearing books she’d read that addressed something like this. She supposed some book, somewhere, gave advice on how to help a child through the death of a loved one or a pet, but she hadn’t read it. Even if she had, she didn’t know that she would feel confident that its advice applied to her son. She settled for the truth, “We don’t know. We’re trying to think of ways to help, but we don’t know whether they’ll work yet.”

Zage studied her intently, “Like what?”

“Well, for one, a lot of the large animals they normally hunt have probably been killed. If they preserve the meat from some of those big animals it would help them for quite a while.”

Zage dismissed this immediately, “That wouldn’t last long enough! It might be years before the weather gets back to normal. Besides, they’d probably get sick going out to get that meat because there’s so much dust in the air.”

Realizing that he took this very seriously, Ell resisted the temptation to smile at Zage. “It sounds like you’ve thought a lot about this. Do you have any ideas?”

“Couldn’t they wear moist cloths over their air intakes to keep the dust from getting into their lungs?”

“That’s a good idea. Some people at work talked about that one, but they aren’t sure how to make it fit over the teecee’s air intakes so that dusty air wouldn’t leak in around the filter.” She shrugged, “They’re still planning to make some various kinds of filters and port them to the teecees to try. Hopefully they can find one the teecees will like.”

Zage sighed, “Even if that works, it doesn’t solve the problem of the dust blocking the sunlight.”

Ell was still holding Zage, so she started up the stairs towards his room. “You need to get some sleep my little man. It’s past your bedtime. We can think of solutions again tomorrow, but I think we should wait and see how the teecees do for a while. One thing to remember is that it rains a lot more on TC3 than it does here on earth. Maybe all that rain will bring the dust down out of the atmosphere a lot faster than it would here?”

Zage said, “TC3’s atmosphere is thicker than ours. Maybe it’ll hold the dust up longer than our atmosphere would?”

Ell shrugged, “Could be. We’ll just have to see. We shouldn’t plan too many things we might do until we know more about exactly what the problems are going to be.” She put him down and started pulling off his T-shirt, “But your idea about the filters is a good one. I’ll bet that filters will really help them…”

***

Jenny said, “What are you guys doing about the teecees?”

Carter eyed his daughter, wondering which version of Jenny was sitting at the dinner table with them tonight. Just turned thirteen, sometimes she was sweet and lovable like she used to be, but other times she could be sullen and antagonistic. Like many parents of teenagers, he sometimes forlornly wished he could have the younger Jenny back. “I’m not sure what you’re asking?”

“You do know that a comet hit TC3 don’t you?”

Internally, Carter winced a little. It sounded like she was in one of her teenage “adults are stupid” moods. “Yes I do,” he said, trying to maintain a pleasant tone, “I just wasn’t sure what you thought we might or might not be doing?”

“Well, you guys put farmers on Mars more than a year ago. As far as I know they haven’t done much there that they couldn’t have done here. On the other hand, it seems like a few waldoes on TC3 could really help the teecees.”

“I looked into how difficult it would be to send a waldo to TC3 once. I don’t remember all the details, but I do remember that it takes more than 7 million watts of power to open a half meter port all the way to Tau Ceti. That’s how big the port would have to be to put a standard-size waldo through. I’m pretty sure that so far they haven’t opened a port that big over interstellar distances. Even a twenty centimeter port like you could put a mini waldo through would be over a million watts.”

“I thought you guys had power to burn from solar generated steam?”

“Well, they do, but running that kind of power through a small device might melt it down. I don’t know if they’ve ever done it. What were you thinking the waldoes would be able to do for the teecees?”

“You’re farming in tunnels on Mars. Dig some tunnels on TC3, put some farms where somebody really needs them.”

Carter blinked, “Don’t forget we sent that big tunneler to Mars by rocket. We couldn’t do that to TC3.”

Jenny frowned, “Send the tungsten for the tunneler there in small pieces. Use waldoes to weld them together. The ports that heat the tunneler are pretty small right?”

Carter sat back in his chair and gazed at his daughter. She wasn’t as fun to talk to as she used to be, but if tunnels would really help the teecees? “That’s a pretty good idea. I don’t know whether the teecees do any farming but I’ll mention it to Team Teecee tomorrow.”

Jenny said, “Maybe it’d be easier to just send them food?”

“I don’t know if they can eat our food but I do know that there is a lot of concern about trying to keep any of our germs from getting there. Even if we tried to sterilize the food, there would be some concern that a few of our germs would get through and make the teecees sick.”

Jenny considered that for a moment, then took another tack. “How’s the farming going on Mars?”

“Pretty well, they’re growing a lot more food than they eat themselves. They aren’t growing a lot of variety though, so they ship a lot of their food back here and we send them food so they can have a more interesting diet. Like you predicted, one of the problems we’re having is that they’re kind of bored. They go out on lots of hikes to explore which, as you pointed out, subjects them to a fair amount of radiation. But they haven’t found a whole lot that’s very interesting. A couple of them have taken up prospecting. They hope they’ll find an interesting mineral or a source of something we don’t have much of here on earth and that they’re not getting out of the asteroids that ET Resources is mining.”

***

Dr. Jenner didn’t have a great deal of difficulty finding the stump of the optic nerve in the depths of Warren Dawson’s orbit or eye socket. It had retracted back behind Dawson’s prosthetic eye and had a small bulb of neuroma on the end of it. Thankfully, it didn’t look atrophied. Once he had identified the nerve, it was relatively simple to snip off the neuroma and insert the stump of the nerve into the neurotrode Keller had provided. A quick stitch to hold it in place and another to cover it, then he reinserted Dawson’s prosthesis.

As he finished up the operation, he mused to himself that the procedure seemed incredibly simple, especially considering the possibility that it might perform the miracle of restoring Dawson’s sight. The risks were pretty low too, other than for the possibility of infection around the implanted neurotrode. After all, Dawson was already blind. If the neurotrode didn’t work, he wouldn’t have lost anything.

Jenner did wonder, though, how Dawson was going to react when they first fed signals to his optic nerve. Just because they fed a signal to an axon in the nerve, didn’t mean that Dawson would see something. Presumably the signal would cause a spark of light to be recognized by Dawson’s brain, but would it appear in the correct location? Dawson would have to tell them what color the spark was. Jenner shook his head, it seemed to him that learning to use the incoming information provided by the neurotrode might be far more difficult than anyone expected.

***

Dex found himrself wakening as the lights brightened in the cave. Hie looked around and saw the two meteorites glowing with their white lights again. When they had begun to dim the night before hie had approached the one that hie had had for so long and asked it if the little fires inside of it which made the lights were burning out. The meteorite had replied that the lights were dimming because the sun had gone down and the meteorite thought that it would be better if it became dark in the cave also so that the dalins could sleep on their regular schedule.

At one point the day before Dex had gone out to the entrance of the cave with several other dalins and they had retrieved some food from the storage areas out there.

The closer they had gotten to the entrance of the cave the more dust they had found covering everything, including the supplies and their storage areas. The most disturbing thing was that it had been as dark as midnight despite the fact that they all knew it must still be the middle of the day.

Dex turned to the meteorite, “Is the sun rising outside the cave?”

In its flat voice the meteorite said, “The sun is rising, although if you were outside you wouldn’t be able to see it because there is too much dust in the air.”

“How do you know it is rising then?”

“We have a very accurate time telling device.”

Dex pondered this a moment. The only time telling device hie had ever known was the movement of the sun in the sky. On the uncommon occasions when the sky was not cloudy you could also estimate the passage of time from the movement of the stars at night. “How does your time telling device work?”

“It’s a machine.”

The word the meteorite used, “machine,” was a word the dalins used for a number of devices they considered complex such as harnesses, snares or Dex’s new spears with a sharp head bound to a shaft. Dex pondered a machine, presumably much more complex than any hie had known, which could keep time. Deciding that the meteorites must be some kind of tool-using beings, no matter that they didn’t look alive, hie said, “Is the other meteorite your mate?”

The meteorite made some kind of funny noise Dex didn’t understand, but then said, “No, I and the other meteorite are only very complex machines. These meteorite-machines are being controlled by beings who live very, very far from here. We, the beings controlling the meteorite-machines, consider ourselves to be your friends. We are very sad about what has happened to your world.”

“What has happened to our world?”

“The enormous meteorite crashing into your world. The tremendous damage it has done.”

“But other than for the dust, it hasn’t hurt us here.”

The meteorite didn’t say anything for a long while, then it said, “The dust is blocking the sunshine from reaching the plants. Without sunshine, the plants will become sick and die.”

A cold sensation shot through Dex’s bowels as hie pictured the plants all dead. Of course the dalins didn’t eat many plants directly, but hie knew that many of the animals they hunted did eat plants. Without plants, hie supposed those animals would die and that would leave the dalins hungry. Then hie was relieved by another thought. “But surely, when it rains, the rain will clear the dust from the air.” It rained almost every day; hie wondered to himrself why yesterday’s rain hadn’t already cleared the air.

After a moment, the meteorite said, “We hope so. But so much dust may change the weather. Hopefully it will rain even more, but it may rain less. And, there is so much dust that it may take many, many rains to clear the air.” After a pause the meteorite continued, “Also, some of the dust will be bitter and poisonous so that the rain that falls with that dust in it may kill the plants itself. It might even burn your skin.”

Dex had become used to the meteorite offering solutions when it spoke. This disturbing trend of describing problems the dalins had never encountered before made himr feel uncomfortable. Hie thought to himrself that hie would not have believed such terrible things if the meteorite had not told himr so many helpful and true things in the past. “Can you help us?” Though the meteorite had been speaking very quietly, Dex suddenly noticed Syrdian was awake and staring at himr. Syrdian’s wings were slightly lifted showing hies alarm.

The meteorite said, “We’re going to try. But even with as much help as we can possibly give, this is going to be very, very difficult for you and your fellow dalins.” After a pause which gave Dex time to consider what the meteorite had said, it continued, “In a few more deks the other meteorite will deliver some devices for you to try putting over your air intakes. We hope the devices will clean much of the dust out of the air you breathe even if you go beyond the fog baskets. We also are making some ‘eye clothing’ which we hope will keep the dust out of your eyes.”

Stunned by the very idea of devices for their air intakes and clothing for their eyes, Dex felt hies own wings rise slightly and hie turned to look at Syrdian…

***

Marvin Castor didn’t like preschool. He’d hated it ever since Jimmy Simpson started picking on him about a month or so after Marvin had gotten into the preschool.

It wasn’t so bad when they were in the classroom. In class Ms. Miller kept everyone organized and Marvin liked a lot of the little projects he and the other kids worked on. But out on the playground, like they were now, there were too many opportunities for Jimmy to be mean to him.

Games of keep away, usually with a ball of some kind. Marvin was usually one of the boys the ball was kept away from. He wasn’t very good with balls, he knew it. It was pretty easy to keep the ball away from him. He thought he shouldn’t care, but it hurt anyway.

Games of tag where Marvin spent much of the game as “it.” If he ever managed to tag someone, they turned and tagged him right back.

Games of dodgeball. The kids weren’t supposed to play dodgeball, and it wasn’t really dodgeball by the rules he supposed. Jimmy would just organize the coordinated kids to kick or throw balls so that they hit Marvin or one of the other unpopular kids.

The game didn’t really seem to matter, whatever it was, Marvin wouldn’t be very good at it. Jimmy would make fun of him and then somehow turn the game into something that attacked Marvin. Being nice to Jimmy hadn’t helped. It seemed to Marvin that Jimmy liked being mean more than he liked the things Marvin had done for him like giving Jimmy his slice of cake.

At present Marvin was sitting at the edge of the playground just hoping that Jimmy would leave him alone today. Perhaps if he sat quietly Jimmy wouldn’t even notice him? It was boring though, so Marvin looked around, watching what the other kids were doing.

Zage, the new kid, stood a few feet away staring into the distance and shifting his weight from one leg to the other. Marvin wondered if he had to go to the bathroom, but that wouldn’t explain why the kid was staring away into the distance. He tried to look the same direction as Zage, thinking that he could see what the kid was looking at. There certainly didn’t seem to be anything interesting where the kid was looking. “What are you looking at?” Marvin bit his lip as he realized he’d just violated his intent to sit quietly and not be noticed.

Zage didn’t give him any trouble though. He said, “I have an HUD in a contact. I’m watching the news about the teecees.”

The news?! Marvin knew of the news as something that adults downloaded off the net. He didn’t know any other kids that watched the news! He stared at Zage for a minute thinking that Zage was a really weird kid. He wondered why Jimmy didn’t pick on him. “What are teecees?”

“They’re aliens. They live on a planet around the star Tau Ceti. You should look them up, they can fly and they live in caves like our ancestors used to!”

“Caves?”

To Marvin’s amazement Zage told him that people had lived in caves long ago. In the middle of Zage’s description of how cavemen lived, Jimmy appeared in the periphery of Marvin’s vision. Jimmy was running full tilt toward them and shepherding the small soccer ball. Then he kicked it as hard as he could. Wincing, Marvin tried to duck when he realized the ball was coming at his head. Even as he turned his head, Marvin knew it was going to hurt.

Though his eyes were on their way closed, Marvin glimpsed Zage’s hand shooting out past his head. The ball didn’t hit him as he had expected and Marvin opened his eyes. To his astonishment Zage had the ball in his hands. Kids their age kicked balls and threw them. They only caught softly thrown balls that came right to them! But Zage had definitely caught that one. He lowered the ball to rest on his right hip where he held it lackadaisically against his side with his forearm. Zage hadn’t even interrupted his ongoing description of cavemen!

Marvin’s eyes turned back in time to see Jimmy’s look of anticipation flash to one of anger. “Hey Fatty, don’t mess with our ball!” he shouted in an ugly tone as he ran up.

Zage turned to look calmly at Jimmy. Marvin would have sworn that Zage was looking at him like Jimmy was something interesting, like a bug or a frog. “You almost hit my friend Marvin in the head with this ball,” he said.

Friend?! Marvin thought, with a small twitch of joy. No one had ever called him a friend before!

Jimmy, in a full fury now, said, “It would’ve served him right!” He lunged out toward Zage’s hip, “Gimme that ball!”

Wide-eyed, Marvin saw Zage somehow pass the ball behind his back so that it appeared on his left hip just as Jimmy’s hand reached his right hip. Zage also stepped slightly to his left so that Jimmy plunged past him on the right. To Marvin it looked somewhat like a video he’d seen of a bullfighter, allowing the bull to slip by as he swept a cape around behind him.

Jimmy stumbled, but didn’t fall. He turned back, diving toward Zage, arms outstretched to tackle him for a full on fight. Somehow, Zage reached out and put his palm on Jimmy’s forehead, stopping his charge and holding him at arm’s length. Sounding curious, Zage said, “Why would it have served Marvin right? Did he do something to you?”

Goggle eyed, Marvin watched Zage restrain Jimmy. It seemed like Zage was reining Jimmy in more readily than most adults managed with kids their age. Jimmy flailed his arms furiously at Zage, slapping at Zage’s upper arms, but not seeming to really hurt him. After a moment he dropped his hands and stood, red-faced and breathing hard. “Give me the ball!”

“What are you supposed to say?” Zage asked calmly.

Marvin stepped back at the livid fury that passed over Jimmy’s face, but after a moment the boy gritted out, “Please!”

He didn’t say it nicely. Marvin knew his mother would have made Marvin say please again until he said it pleasantly, but Zage simply held the ball out to Jimmy.

Jimmy snatched the ball and ran back out on the playground. He kicked it towards Roger.

Zage turned back to Marvin and said, “Can I have my AI feed yours some video of the teecees?”

Marvin found it hard to believe Zage had simply returned to his conversation about the cave dwelling aliens after what had just happened. After a moment he simply nodded. A moment later, he said, “Thanks.”

Zage nodded, “They don’t look much like Earth animals do they? All the TC3 animals have eight limbs. The teecees themselves have four wings, two legs, and two hands…

***

Phil and Carol slowly dropped into the Valles Marineris. Upon their initial arrival on Mars they had been very excited just to be there. Bouncing around in lower gravity gave you kind of a Superman feel and learning their way around the tunnel system was interesting. There were miles and miles of tunnels already, and the melting tunneler was still making more.

Many experiments were being done in order to determine the most efficient way to grow crops, however, the scientists doing the experiments could do most of the work themselves using waldoes and often preferred to do it that way. To be honest, Phil wasn’t terribly interested in farming, so he was just as happy to have them do their work remotely. Carol was pretty interested in the animals so Phil did spend time helping her care for them, but that wore thin fairly quickly as well.

Right now with only eight people on Mars, it could get pretty boring and they all felt somewhat lonely for social interaction. However, the plan was to hold off on sending any more colonists until they were pretty sure that the group who was there wasn’t suffering any unexpected ill effects.

On their days off, most of the “Martians” as they called themselves spent time out exploring, looking for evidence of ancient life, studying the geology, or prospecting for minerals. Phil had gotten over his initial expectation that he would find something exciting at every turn. Realizing that he would have to actively search for something more interesting than brown dirt and rocks, he had begun to study geology. He wanted to actually prospect with a view to finding something interesting .

He had realized that the enormous rift valley that was the Valles Marineris represented an opportunity to study the crust of Mars. If there were interesting minerals or valuable ores to be found on Mars, he should have a great opportunity to find some of them by studying the walls of the tremendous cleft. On his last trip down into the Valles, he had found a substantial area of rock with pale lavender discolorations and some reddish areas that didn’t appear to be typical Mars red. He’d taken some samples and ported them back to earth. His contact there reported that they were cerite, a mineral containing the rare earths cerium and lanthanum.

His mission today was to try to determine how extensive the cerite deposit was and whether other rare earth ores might be in the area as well. Rare earths were moderately valuable, so a large deposit might make it worthwhile to set up a mine staffed with waldoes. Despite the name they were relatively plentiful in earth’s crust but just weren’t found in high concentrations. The best “rare earth ores” on earth didn’t actually have very much of any particular element. Additionally, the different rare earth elements tended to be mixed in an ore and hard to separate.

Phil landed on the ledge where he had initially found the cerite. As he looked at the wall of the canyon Carol came down beside him. She said, “Hey, there’s quite a bit of lavender and red.” She paused, “I suppose a lot of that red could just be typical Martian red though?”

Phil shrugged, “I don’t know, let’s just get samples of a lot of the rock in this region. I’m sure some of the red color is just iron oxide, but maybe some of it represents other ores of interest.” His eye caught on something glittering near the edge of the small shelf of rock they were standing on. “Huh, I wonder what this is.” He walked over and knelt to look at it.

Whatever it was, it sparkled like silver. He knew you shouldn’t find raw silver free in nature though. Perhaps it was mica or something like that? He started to reach for his little prospecting pick and one of his baggies but then the ground under him shifted. At first he thought it must be a Mars quake, though they were pretty rare. Then he realized that a crack had developed in the rock of the ledge where he was kneeling. Phil started to stand up so that the port driven rockets under his upper arms would be properly oriented to lift him off the ledge, but then the rock broke free completely.

In the low Martian gravity it felt like the rock of the ledge was sagging away in slow motion. However, it was falling just as fast as Phil, rendering him weightless. Since he’d been kneeling, his jets were oriented poorly for lifting him back up. At first he thought to himself, I’ve been weightless in space plenty of times, this isn’t any different! He began to windmill his arms in order to rotate his body towards the vertical and spoke to his AI, saying, “Use the jets to turn me right side up!”

The jets on his chest and on the backs of his ankles had just begun to fire to turn him right side up when he hit the next ledge down into the canyon, striking it hard against the side of his hip.

Agony shot through him. He resisted his desire to reach down and grasp his painful hip, instead keeping his arms out to the sides and his body as rigid as he could to allow his AI to reorient him to the vertical. A couple of seconds later he was upright and his AI fired the jets under his arm and began to slow his fall.

In his ear he heard Carol, “Phil, are you okay?”

At first he thought that surely he must be fine. After all, gravity was low here. But he’d fallen a long way before he’d hit that second ledge, and the more time that passed, the worse his hip hurt. Also he could hear a hissing sound, suggesting that the impact had made at least a small tear in a seam of the incredibly tough Mars suit. To Carol he said through gritted teeth, “I think I bruised my hip pretty bad. And it sounds like my suit might be leaking so I’m going to fly right back to the habitat.”

“I’m coming with you,” she said…

Chapter Five

Dex stared at the objects which had just fallen out of the big fin on the new meteorite. Hies eyes were immediately attracted to a necklace of four glossy clear stones. Hie had seen pieces of quartz that were somewhat clear before, but nothing like these! The four pieces of quartz, or whatever they were, were so clear that they were hard to see. Hie reached out gingerly and picked up the necklace, wondering what in the world it could be for. Or maybe it wasn’t intended to be for anything—it was so beautiful that hie knew dalins would trade dearly for even one of those clear stones.

As hie held up the necklace, staring at it. Hie could feel the other dalins in the cave staring at it with himr.

The meteorite behind Dex spoke. “That is our first try at making something to serve as dust protective clothing for your eyes.” After a momentary pause, it continued, “The two big round…” Here it made an odd sound like it often made when it didn’t seem to know the correct word for something. The sound it made seemed like a combination of the words, “see” and “rock”. So what it said was, “The two big round see-rocks are supposed to go over your front eyes, while the smaller see-rocks are supposed to go over your back eyes. We don’t know whether they’ll really fit, or be comfortable, or stay in place like they need to. We’re hoping you will try them on like in this picture so that we can see how they’ll work.”

Suddenly, red lines appeared on the wall of the cave. The dalins around Dex gasped. Like they had in the past, the lines formed a drawing of a dalin. The picture moved closer so that only the head and neck of the dalin was visible. In the blink of an eye, the necklace appeared around the dalins head with the see-rocks faintly visible over each of the dalins eyes. As if that wasn’t clear enough, the dalins head began to rotate around so that they could see it from all sides.

Dex held the necklace up and inspected the see-rocks, touching them gently with a claw. To hies astonishment, hie found that they were shaped like tiny bowls and hie immediately understood how the hollow underside of the bowls could fit over hies eyes. With even greater amazement, hie recognized that although the clicking of hies claws on the surfaces of the see-rocks indicated that they were quite hard, that the under surfaces of the little bowls which would rest against the skin around hies eyes was quite soft. It seemed like there was a different material there, something like a soft leather.

With trepidation Dex lifted the necklace and held it over hies head by the two big see-rocks. Closing hies back eyes, hie lowered the necklace and tugged the two big see-rocks into place over hies front eyes. The straps holding the four see-rocks together were stretchy! Hie reached back and turned over the posterior see-rocks so that they covered hies back eyes. With the see-rocks covering all four of hies eyes, hie could hardly detect their presence. Hie could feel the gentle pressure of the soft under parts of the cups against the skin around hies eyes but hies eyes certainly couldn’t detect any disturbance of hies vision!

Dex turned to look at the other object which had fallen out of the new meteorite. Syrdian had picked it up and was gently inspecting it. White, it looked like some kind of extremely soft leather or fur. When Dex got close to it hie got the impression that it was woven somehow, like a basket, but much finer. As Syrdian plucked at it hie could see that it also was quite stretchy and very fuzzy-furry. Again, red lines appeared on the wall of the cave. The drawing showed the dalin from before, wearing the necklace over its eyes. Something appeared around the base of the dalin’s neck, where a necklace would normally appear. It was wider than a necklace and did not look decorative.

Dex looked at the drawing, then looked at the object in Syrdian’s hands. Syrdian held it out to Dex and hie took it. Extraordinarily soft, hies claws sank into it. As hie turned it over hie realized that it had a tubular structure like a wide belt. Aha, this is what is around the dalin’s neck in the drawing, hie thought, looking back up at the wall of the cave. Hie lifted it up and pulled the furry material over hies head as well. It stretched easily as hie pulled it down toward the base of hies neck.

Hie glanced at the wall again to check the position of it in the drawing. Sure enough, it covered the dalin’s air intake in the drawing. Dex realized it must be the “device” the meteorite had spoken about making them for their air intakes. With some trepidation hie pulled the soft material down over hies air intake, worrying that it would make it hard to breathe. Hie felt relieved when hie realized that although it slowed the air coming into hies intake a little, it wasn’t really very noticeable.

The meteorite spoke in its flat voice. “We are hoping that you will try to go outside, beyond the fog baskets, to see if the air intake device will let you breathe even when there is dust in the air. Also, to find out whether the see-rocks will let you keep your eyes open in the dusty air.

“Okay,” Dex said, turning towards the tunnel that led out of the cave.

Behind himr the meteorite spoke again, “It would be helpful if you could carry your old meteorite with you so that we can see how well the air intake device and eye clothing works. We can tell that it frightens some of your fellow dalins when the meteorites fly on their own.”

Dex turned and picked up hies old friend the meteorite, then resumed hies way out of the cave. Syrdian started to follow himr, but hie said, “I think you should stay with the children so that they aren’t frightened.” Syrdian’s wide eyes told Dex that hie was frightened as well, but Syrdian turned back as requested.

Dex passed one of the fog baskets that had been placed in the tunnel. It seemed to very effectively block the dust from getting back to where the dalins were staying deeper in the cave. Dex felt a little disappointment to find that it was still making fog. Hie had been hoping that rain had already cleared the dust outside and the fog baskets weren’t actually necessary any longer. Then hie realized that the basket might still be making fog even if the dust was gone. The fog from the basket got hies fur a little bit damp as hie passed it. Hie continued on towards the second fog basket which had been placed near the entrance of the cave.

As hie approached the second basket, Dex realized that hie should be seeing some light from outside. “Is it already night time?” hie asked.

“No,” the meteorite replied, “the sun is almost directly overhead.”

Dex’s wings rose involuntarily in dismay, then sighed back down. Hie passed the second basket and its fog moistened hies skin like had happened at the first one. The area right in front of the basket was clear but the wind blowing from it swirled what looked like a great cloud of dust further out.

Walking farther out of the entrance, Dex passed the swirling dust and entered the huge cloud of it. To hies surprise, hie was able to breathe fairly well. Hie felt a slight tickling as if some of the dust had entered hies intake, but it was much better than it had been the night before. Hie wasn’t blinking hies eyes like hie had the night before either, however hie quickly got the impression that hies see-rocks were not as clear as they had been earlier. Hie put a hand up right in front of hies eyes wondering whether it was just the dust. Hie felt pretty sure that hies vision was worse than it would have been from just the dust.

The meteorite spoke. “Dex, has it become harder to see through your see-rocks?”

“Yes,” hie replied.

“Unfortunately, when you walked through the fog, the see-rocks got wet. Now the dust is sticking to them. It is also sticking to the see rocks on the sides of your meteorite which is making it difficult for us to see as well. Can you try rubbing your see-rocks with the back of your hand? We are thinking that your fur might clean them off.”

Dex reached up and wiped at the see rocks with the back of hies hand as hie’d been instructed. Sure enough, although a little of the dust smeared into a kind of mud, hies hand cleared much of it away. “That helped quite a bit,” hie said.

“Would you mind wiping the see-rocks on the meteorite as well? It would be very helpful if we could see better.”

Somewhat bemused to find himrself helping the meteorite rather than vice versa, Dex bent to the task. A moment later the meteorite thanked himr. Hie went back to rubbing at hies own see-rocks with other parts of hies arm, trying to get them cleaner. Hie had some success though hies vision remained slightly smeary.

Dex realized that hie must be standing on the big ledge in front of the cave. Instead of the bare rock of the ledge, hie felt dirt and sand beneath hies feet. The dirt and dust on top of the ledge was so thick that hies toes were submerged in it. Beneath that, however, hie thought hie could feel the rock of the ledge. Without the lights from the meteorite hie didn’t think hie would be able to see much. Nonetheless hie said, “Can you turn off your lights so I can see what it is like out here without them?”

The light from the meteorite blinked off and Dex was plunged into darkness. Hie stood still, hoping that hies vision would improve like it normally did after hie stepped away from a fire in the night time.

After a few moments hie was able to see a generalized glow in the dust. The luminance seemed to be filtering down from above, fitting with the meteorite’s claim that the sun was directly overhead. However, the light was no greater than the dimmest twilight just before the night became completely dark. In fact it seemed a little worse because in deep twilight hie would’ve been able to see outlines of things which were far away. In this light hie could only see things that were nearby like hies feet and hands. It reminded Dex of the times hie’d flown in fog, or up into the clouds.

Despair filled Dex. Yes, the plants would die in the dark, and the plant eaters would die for lack of plants. But, blind, Dex wouldn’t have been able to hunt for the plant eaters even if they had been healthy. Hie turned to the meteorite, “If this dust doesn’t go away, we’ll all die. I appreciate the eye clothing and the device for my air intake, but it won’t be enough to keep us alive if we can’t find food. Can you help us with that?”

“We don’t know,” the meteorite responded. “We have other meteorites flying around trying to find out what your world is like in places far from here. Perhaps you can fly to a location where there isn’t so much dust.”

Despairingly, Dex turned back towards the cave. Hie said, “How can we fly anywhere? We can’t even see…” Hie tripped over a rock lying on the ledge. It must have been one of the ones that fell.

***

Ell stared at the dark screens showing the view from Goldie’s rocket. They provided virtually no useful information. When the lights were on they showed nothing but dust. Remembering Emma’s comment, she said to Allan, “Let’s see what we can see with infrared.”

The screens blinked and then came back with a picture in the deep reddish color that Allan used to display infrared information. Ell could see more than she could with visible light, but it still wasn’t great. The most obvious thing was Goldie slowly moving away from the rocket, evidently having forgotten that he’d set it down. “Allan,” Ell said. “Turn the rocket’s lights back on.” Then, she said “Goldie,” trusting Allan to translate it for her. “It looks like you’re going back to the cave, but you’re not going the right direction. If you’ll pick up the rocket and take it with you, we’ll be able to give you directions.”

Without saying anything, Goldie turned and shambled back to pick up the rocket. When Goldie started back towards the cave, Ell said, “The entrance is a little more to your right.”

Once she had guided Goldie safely back into the cave, Ell said, “Allan, has the rocket with the radar on it arrived at the cave area yet?”

“Yes, it’s at the north end of the ledge in front of the cave. I have some imagery obtained with its radar during its flight to the cave. Would you like to look at it?”

Allan had translated the radar imagery into false profile 3-D imagery that was fairly easy to understand. It was stunning, showing trees flattened in enormous swathes. It looked to Ell like 50-70% of the trees were down rather than the 30% that had been estimated for this kind of an impact on earth. Presumably the denser atmosphere transmitted the blast wave better, or the more slender tree trunks were less resistant to being blown over. As the rocket swept in over the meadow that lay just north and slightly higher up the mountain, the imagery showed a number of lumps in the meadow. “What are those bumps?” Ell asked. She’d seen the meadow a number of times and felt sure there weren’t any rocks in that region.

“I don’t know,” Allan responded. “Would you like me to send the rocket back out to look at them more closely?”

“Yes, fly up there and get close enough that we can confirm their shapes. Maybe they’re some of the large herbivores the teecees hunt sometimes?”

“Lifting off,” Allan said. “You should be aware that Phil Zabrisk has fallen in the Valles Marineris on Mars. Although his life is not in danger, an x-ray obtained by the colonists’ doctor shows that he has broken his hip socket.”

Ell frowned, “Will they be able to put him in a cast or whatever needs to be done?”

“Apparently, fractures of the hip socket are complex injuries normally treated with surgery. It is far beyond the capability of the colony’s doctor to repair.”

“Oh my God! Are they shipping him back to Earth then?”

“That is currently the plan. However, the surgeon they have consulted with back on earth has advised that, by the time he arrives back on earth, the fracture will have healed in a bad position making the surgery extremely difficult or impossible. Apparently the results of such delayed surgery are typically poor.”

“Nooooo,” Ell moaned, thinking that the timing was terrible, having this happen at the same time the teecees were in real trouble. “Connect me to him.”

“Elllll,” Phil said drunkenly a moment later when they were connected. “Did you hear I fell in the Valles?”

“Yes, sounds like they’ve got you on some pain medicine?”

“Oh yeah. I’m hurtin’ almost as bad as I did when a certain someone kicked me in the nuts and hit me with her purse!”

Despite feeling choked up over Phil’s injury, Ell found herself snorting at his attitude. “Well, hopefully this time you didn’t deserve it.”

“Naw!” he scoffed. “I’ve been being such a good boy it’s disgusting! Hey, they tell me by the time I get back to Earth for my surgery my hip will be all screwed up. Can’t you just send me one of your big ports and shoot me back to earth right away?”

Ell felt an icy hand grasp her heart. “We… could, but when we put animals through ports they have seizures.”

“So give me some anti-seizure pills!”

“The animals still seem to have seizures, even if we make them completely unconscious. When they wake up afterwards, they act just like animals do who’ve had a seizure.”

“Well, tha’s okay,” he slurred, “I don’t mind having a seizure to save my hip!”

“Um, the animals don’t do as well on mazes afterwards either.”

“I don’t need to do any mazes.”

“Um, mazes are kind of like IQ tests for the animals. Not doing well on the mazes suggests that it does something to their intelligence.”

“Sheeit! I got smarts to spare! Losin’ a few IQ points ain’t gonna be a problem!”

Ell snorted again, “I was thinking more along the lines that you needed every last bit of intellect you have!” She had a thought, “Why don’t you just let it heal on the way back to earth and then have them replace it with an artificial hip when you get home?”

“I already asked that one. Artificial hips are light-duty only. If you try to play sports or do astronaut stuff they crap out. They won’t want to put one in a young guy like me, ‘cause hip replacements are more for old duffers who only play golf.” There was a pause during which neither of them said anything, then Phil said, “Send me that big port. I’ll take the chance. It’ll be my claim to fame, first astronaut to travel by port!”

Ell sighed and closed her eyes in distress. This would be a terrible decision even if it was someone she didn’t know. For a moment, she wondered why the question hadn’t come up before. But then she realized the situations where a port transfer of a human being might save a life probably came and went before anyone thought of the possibility or could set it up. They had put ports on a few submarines with the thought that in a crisis the men might rather jump through a port than die a certain death undersea, but such an emergency had not come to pass as yet.

Before Ell could think of anything to say to Phil, he said, “Ell,” he sounded choked up, “would you talk to Carol? She’ll tell you I don’t wanna live my life with a bum hip.”

“Okay,” Ell said, her voice breaking.

“Hey Ell,” a woman’s voice said, “this is Carol.” She sounded pretty choked up herself. “I know…” her voice broke, “I know that Phil loved you…” She trailed off and Ell heard a sniffle, then Carol continued, “and I know you got us on this Mars mission, so you must still care something about him… Can you make this happen for him? It’ll destroy him if his hip’s no good.”

“I can make it happen,” Ell whispered, too distraught to speak out loud, “but, did you hear the part about it reducing animals’ IQs?”

“Yeah, is it a lot?”

“Um, maybe not. It’s hard to tell because they seem to recover from it after a little while.”

“Let’s do it then. I can take the big lunk acting stupid for a while, Lord knows it’s happened before!”

“What if it’s permanent?” Ell rasped.

“We’d rather take that chance, than the… certainty of his hip turning out bad.”

“Okay, I’ll work on it. I assume we’ve got a few days?”

“Yeah. They’d like to do the surgery within two weeks…”

“Okay, Ell said. Then, “Allan, connect me to Roger.” She needed to find out everything Roger and Dr. Bynewicz had learned about putting animals through ports. While she waited she started to wonder about whether they could hold a port big enough for Phil open long enough for him to go through. They’d been opening ports that big for some time now. They used big ports like that to chop up ore in their asteroid mining operations. But those ports were only opened for a fraction of a second. They’d have to be sure they could hold a port open long enough for Phil to go through without the power melting the electronics! For a moment her mind produced a horrific picture of the port, failed with half of Phil on Earth but the other half still on Mars…

Alan spoke, “The mounds in the meadow do appear to be large herbivores who have suffocated there.”

“Okay. I need to talk to a bunch of people about Phil, but remind me in a little while to talk to Goldie about them.”

***

At the end of the morning, Ms. Miller led the kids outside. Marvin looked around for his friend Zage and worked his way through the other kids until he reached Zage’s side. Since a couple of days before when Zage had kept Jimmy from hitting Marvin with a ball, Marvin’s life had gotten a lot better. He had gone from feeling friendless and lonely and hating preschool to being a happy kid who looked forward to his mornings with Ms. Miller and the other kids.

Sometimes it seemed to Marvin that Zage acted more like a grown-up than like another kid. He usually didn’t play games like the other kids, but when he did he seemed to “share” better than the rest of the children. When other kids acted mean, Zage often managed to stop it. Most of the bullies had stopped picking on the other kids when Zage was nearby.

Even though Zage wasn’t interested in the same things most of the kids liked to do, he could explain the things that he found interesting so that Marvin understood and liked them as well. Not just Marvin, but Nancy, a chubby girl with wispy hair and funny clothes. Two days ago, the three of them spent quite a bit of time together, watching videos of the teecees. When Ms. Miller decided that they needed to do something more physical than watch videos during their play periods, Zage got them a ball to kick and throw back and forth amongst the three of them.

At first, Marvin had thought that this would be a terrible idea. He expected Jimmy to immediately take the ball away from them, or if not Jimmy, one of the other bullies. However, Jimmy had seemed reluctant to come all that close to Zage since the day Zage had made him say “please” to get his own ball back. Roger came over and tried to take Marvin, Nancy and Zage’s ball once, but somehow while Roger was taking their ball, Zage had wound up with Roger and Jimmy’s ball…

Marvin hadn’t quite followed how that had happened.

When Marvin caught up to Zage just outside the school, he noticed that Zage looked worried. Normally Zage seemed very placid except when he talked about the teecees and what had happened to their planet, so Marvin suspected that whatever was worrying Zage had something to do with the teecees again. “What’s the matter Zage?” he asked.

“They released images of the area around the teecees cave. A lot of the trees have been blown down and dust is covering everything. There’s so much dust in the air the teecees can hardly see.”

“I thought the teecees were okay inside the cave with their fog machine?”

“Well, they are, but they’ll run out of food pretty soon. The plants and animals they normally eat are all dying outside the cave from dust and a lack of sunshine.”

Marvin frowned. He’d never really given any thought to where food came from. He just ate what his mother served him. Well except for vegetables. “Can’t we send them some food?”

“We don’t know if they can eat our food. Besides, it’s possible that some of our germs might go there in any food we sent them and make them sick.”

“Oh,” Marvin said as he thought on this disturbing problem. Then he saw his mother’s car pulling up, “See you tomorrow,” he said as he turned to run out to her car.

***

Dex watched and worried as the crew of dalins hie had organized worked. Realizing that hies tribe might soon run out of food, Dex had decided that they should inventory the food they had in storage and bring it back into the depths of the cave away from the dust outside. They had moved one of the fog baskets in front of the side cave where they kept some of their supplies and most of their stored food. They hadn’t actually put the fog basket into the side cave because Dex was worried that the fog would get the dried food wet and it would spoil. However, hie had hoped that if they could keep any new dust from getting in there, the dust already in there would settle with time.

Now that the dust in the side cave had mostly settled, they were in there shaking the dust off of the dried meat and carefully removing dust that had filtered into baskets full of grain. The dalins were frequently having to blow spasmodically to clear their lungs of the dust they raised as they worked. It made Dex worry that hie should have brought the fog basket into the little cave even though it might moisten the dried food, but so far the blowing wasn’t too bad.

Once the food items had been cleaned as much as possible, Dex had a couple of young dalins carrying them back into the deep caves where the tribe was living at present. The food wasn’t really clean, and hie knew they were all going to come to hate the taste of dusty stored food in the near future. Better by far, however, to eat dusty stored food than nothing at all.

The new meteorite with the big fin had been lighting the storage cave. Suddenly it spoke, “Dex, the dust has killed some zornits in the meadow just north and up the mountain from your cave. If you organized the tribe to butcher and preserve their meat, they could feed your tribe for a long time.”

Dex’s wings rippled involuntarily with excitement, then drooped. “It would take many of us to bring zornits back here, I can’t do it by myself and they can’t go out into the dusty air.”

The big circular area on the fin of the meteorite turned fuzzy and things poured out of it. Dex recognized excitedly that it had delivered a pile of the see-rocks as well as more of the fuzzy tubes to cover dalins’ air intakes. How rich must the meteorites’ tribe be, that they can afford to give away such wonderful things?

The other dalins were standing there, staring at the bounty which had just poured out of the meteorite. Dex said, “The meteorite has given us eye clothing and devices for our air intakes so that we can go outside.” Hie reached into hies harness to get out hies own and began to put them on. “They fit on your head and at the base of the neck like these that I am putting on.”

The other dalins gathered around the pile and began to share them out. Dex was glad to see that none of them appeared to be fighting over who got which set, although the fact that each set of see-rocks looked exactly like all the others probably had a lot to do with it. Hie blinked, realizing that if only they’d had the devices a little earlier, they would have been a great help while the dalins were sorting through their dusty stored food.

Soon every one of the dalins in the food storage cave had put on a set of the see-rocks and had covered hies air intake. Dex was astonished to see that a substantial pile of the devices remained on the floor. “Okay,” hie turned to one of the young dalins, “Zelan, take the rest of these see-rocks and air intake covers back to the dalins in our new living cave.” Hies eyes swept over the others, “the meteorite says that there are some zornits that have died in the meadow up the hill. Let’s take as many travois as we can find and go get them. We’re going to need the food.”

“That’s stupid!” Qes said. “I’m not going to eat carrion like a dlak! In a few days, the dust will settle and I’ll hunt for my family like I always have.”

Dex turned and stared at hies old nemesis. Although Qes had lost a great deal of status when hie had deserted Syrdian seasons ago, now hie did everything hie could possibly do to undermine Dex’s leadership. The handsome dalin constantly carped at directions and belittled Dex’s ideas. “You haven’t been outside yet have you Qes?” Dex said.

“Nobody’s been outside except you! I’m sure it’s dusty; there’s dust here in the cave after all. But a little dust never hurt anyone and as soon as it rains it will be gone.”

Dex tried to control the rage pumping through hies hearts. Speaking as calmly as hie could, hie said, “Well Qes, while the rest of us are getting ready to go get some zornit meat for the tribe, why don’t you head out for a quick hunt. Check your snares, maybe there’s something in them?” Dex turned back to the others, “I hope we can find one travois for every two of us. Be sure you’ve got your biggest butchering knife with you too. Some of the zornits may be too big to put on a single travois.” When hie turned around again, hie was glad to see that Qes was gone. Hie wondered whether Qes had indeed gone outside to try to hunt, or had just gone back into the depths of the cave where the dalins were living.

When the group seemed ready, Dex led them out of the storage cave and turned towards the outside. Hie spoke quietly to the meteorite hie was carrying, “Should we take one of the fog baskets with us?”

“Maybe? It won’t help much if there is any wind.”

By that time they were exiting the cave proper and Dex remembered that they could hardly see for all the dust. “How are we going to find the meadow when we’re practically blind?!”

“I can tell you which way to go,” the meteorite said, “but everyone will have to stay very close to me so that my lights will let them see well enough not to trip over things.” There was a pause, then the meteorite spoke again, “I think it would be very helpful if your dalins use the buddy system.”

Dex listened in fascination as the meteorite explained how each of the dalins should have a partner so that if someone went missing, the partner could immediately tell the group about it.

The meteorite said, “If someone does go missing, I can make a very loud sound. Anyone lost in the dust can head towards the sound to find the rest of us.”

Dex stopped and talked to the group, most of whom were already horribly shocked by the thickness of the dust and how hard it was to see. It wasn’t hard to convince them they would be at risk for getting lost. At hies request the meteorite set off its siren. “So if you hear that, everyone should move toward it. That way we can all find each other if someone gets lost. If we’re just missing one dalin, the meteorite will call that person’s name before setting off the siren. Then just that one person can follow the sound so that we can find them.”

Before the group set off toward the meadow, the light coming from the meteorite suddenly changed. Before it had been ordinary light much the same as the light that came from the sun. Now it was mostly infrared and Dex realized that hie could see a bit further through the dust in those colors than hie had been able to in the white light before. Nonetheless, hie felt astonished at how many times hie stumbled. Even though hie could see better in infrared and despite hies feeling that hie knew the way very well from the many times hie’d been to the meadow, it seemed like hie was catching a foot on something every few steps. If it hadn’t been for the meteorite giving himr directions hie would have wandered blindly off the path several times. The other dalins crowded nearby so that they could see somewhat in the glowing foggy light from the meteorite. Dex stopped at several narrow or rough spots in the path, standing and holding the meteorite so that the other dalins could work their way through the difficult area. They counted off their buddies at each of those locations to be sure no one had gotten lost.

After much more time than it would normally have taken, they arrived in the meadow where the meteorite led them unerringly to the zornits. In a fearsome portent, it seemed that an entire herd of zornits had choked to death on the dust right out there in the middle of the meadow. Of course the meadow, as well as the zornits, were completely covered with dust. Ominously, none of the carrion eaters, large or small, had gathered round the feast before them. Is everything dead? Dex wondered.

Dex and hies group set about loading each of the smaller zornits onto a travois. The fog basket proved to be of little help because a steady wind kept new dust constantly blowing into the area. Fortunately, there were enough small zornits to fill all their travois. Thus, they didn’t have to try to break up one of the larger zornits into two pieces. The trip back to the cave was even more difficult than the trip out because they had to follow each other single file and were more spaced out away from the lights of the meteorite. Eventually, Dex had the meteorite sound its siren just loud enough so that the dalins at the back of the line could hear it and know approximately which direction they were going. They stopped frequently so that Dex could go back up the line and count the group to be sure everyone was there.

As they neared the cave, Dex, at the front of the line, began to hear someone shouting in the distance. At first hie worried that something horrible had happened back at the cave and that those who had stayed behind were trying to call out to himr. Hie resisted the impulse to rush ahead, fearing what might happen if hie lost the group hie’d taken out with himr.

As hie got closer, hie was able to tell that only one voice was shouting which reassured himr that something bad hadn’t happened to the entire tribe. The dalin sounded panicked. Moments later, Dex recognized Qes’ voice. Hie led the front of hies group to the entrance to the cave and counted them off as they headed inside. Malnot asked, “What’s wrong with Qes?”

“I’m not sure,” Dex sighed. “Once I’m sure all of you are safely inside, I’ll go out and try to find himr.”

The group stopped and beat most of the dust off of the zornits in front of the fog basket before dragging them back into the little side cave where they planned to butcher them. As soon as the butchering was underway, Dex turned to Malnot who hie thought was friendlier to Qes than most. “Will you go with me to try to find Qes?”

Malnot turned toward the entrance of the cave, Dex thought a little apprehensively. After a moment, hie gave hies wings a brief shake and said, “Okay… I thought maybe you were going to leave Qes out there after the way he’s acted towards you.”

Dex picked up the meteorite and turned toward the entrance of the cave. “Well, I’d be lying if I said I liked Qes. But even hie doesn’t deserve to die choking on dust like the zornits did.”

Malnot squeaked a blip of air out hies exhaust in amusement, “Maybe not? But I think Bultaken would have left himr out there.”

Out on the ledge in front of the cave Dex turned hies head this way and that, unable to hear Qes anymore. Did hie find hies way back in while I wasn’t looking? Or has hie gotten well and truly lost? A ripple of apprehension shot through Dex at the thought something bad might have come to Qes. Everyone in their little group would have heard Qes calling out, some of them might have thought Dex should look for Qes right away rather than waiting until hie got the group inside. “Qes,” hie shouted.

Hie and Malnot stood listening for a few moments, but heard nothing. Dex called Qes’ name several more times as did Malnot, but there was no response. Dex looked up at hies meteorite where hie held it to light the dust around himr, “Can you make your siren sound again?”

“You’re trying to find Qes?” The meteorite asked.

Dex dipped hies head “yes,” then, unsure of whether the meteorite could have seen it or understood the gesture, hie verbally said, “Yes.”

The meteorite made its screeching sound, very loudly. After a centidek it stopped, then called Qes’ name several times, much louder than Dex could have shouted it himrself. It paused. They all listened, but heard nothing.

Dex had a sinking feeling as the meteorite made its siren sound again and called for Qes several more times. Eventually the meteorite said, “Would you like me to look for himr?”

“Yes!”

“You should set this meteorite down and step back so that the fire coming out of its back end doesn’t burn you.”

Dex did so, and with a screeching sound the meteorite shot back up into the air and moved away in the direction Dex thought led off the front of the ledge.

At first Dex was astonished that the meteorite would fly off into the murky air. Dalins found it very frightening to fly when they couldn’t see, although they would occasionally do it for fun in clouds high up in the air. Flying down near the ground when you couldn’t see however—that could lead to terrible injuries if you hit something hidden in fog or darkness. All dalins had an inborn reluctance to fly when they couldn’t see.

After hie gave it a little thought though, Dex realized that if the meteorite could tell himr where to go to find the zornits, it must be able to see despite the dust. After all, it had offered to try to find Qes, how could it possibly do that unless it could see? While hie pondered this, Dex reached up and rotated hies neck-cloth, as hie’d come to think of the air intake device the meteorite had given himr. It had been getting somewhat hard to pull air through it, but hie had found earlier that if hie rotated it to a fresh part of the cloth it made it easier to breathe again. Back in the cave hie’d taken it off and looked at it, finding a great deal of dust in the portion of the neck-cloth that had been right over hies air intake. Hie wondered what was going to happen when the entire neck-cloth was choked with dust.

The meteorite shrieked back down and landed beside Dex. Speaking in its monotone it said, “I found Qes. It looks like hie fell over the lip of the ledge and was injured. Hie is still breathing so I don’t think the fall killed himr, but hie appears to be unconscious. If you’ll pick me up I can lead you to himr.”

Once Dex picked up the meteorite, it had himr turn right instead of going in the direction from which it had come. At first hie was confused, then hie realized that the meteorite understood hie could only walk, not fly. It was taking himr to the end of the ledge and around and down. Since there wasn’t a good path that way Dex found himrself tripping quite a bit more than hie had on the trip up to the meadow. “How do you see in this dust?” hie asked the meteorite.

“I can see with… with special eyes that see even more infrared than you do… Like you can see somewhat better with infrared light, I can see even better yet using… light that is even more infrared.”

Dex thought, more infrared? To himr, infrared was just one of the colors hie saw and hie couldn’t understand this “more infrared” term. Hie wanted to ask more questions but thought that the answers probably wouldn’t be any easier to understand than the one hie’d just gotten.

Eventually Dex and Malnot found themselves down on the ground beneath the ledge. Qes lay crumpled there. Hies breath still pumped through himr so hie must still be alive. Dex leaned down close and could see that Qes’ neck-cloth was quite dirty over hies air intake. Dex twisted it around to a cleaner portion, then looked Qes over as well as hie could in the dirty air. Hies eyes caught on a funny angle.

Qes’ arm was broken!

Malnot had been leaning in as well. Hie gasped and exclaimed, “Dyatso!”

In its flat voice, the meteorite said, “Dyatso?”

Dex said, “It means ‘walking dead.’ Someone who has injuries so severe that they can’t care for themselves or fly south for the winter. Someone who is alive for now, but will soon be dead. Dyatso is what Qes called Syrdian when Syrdian’s wings were ripped by the talor.”

Malnot, sounding abashed, said, “I forgot that you healed Syrdian’s wings! I suppose you can do the same thing for Qes’ arm?”

“No…! No, I repaired Syrdian’s wings like I do leather work. I have no idea how to fix a broken arm!”

“Oh…” Malnot said in a disappointed tone.

After a brief silence, the meteorite said, “We may be able to offer some suggestions for the care of hies broken arm. We don’t know if they will work in a dalin, but you could try them.”

Dex’s hearts rose as Malnot exclaimed, “We should try it! It can’t make himr worse than dyatso!”

Dex and Malnot picked Qes up, partly by hies wings and partly by hies harness and they shuffled slowly back up to the ledge with hies broken arm dangling in front of himr. They had to stop several times to rest as walking with a heavy burden while barely able to see proved surprisingly difficult. So that Dex wouldn’t have to carry it, the meteorite moved itself, flying a short distance ahead each time they caught up to it.

When they reached the living area of the cave, carrying Qes whose head dangled limply in front of himr, it generated a good deal of consternation. Most of the questions were about what had happened to Qes, but as Dex had feared, a few implied that hie should’ve gone for Qes more quickly.

Qes’ mate Fantais approached angrily, barking accusations. As Dex and Malnot set Qes down, Dex wearily considered pointing out that Fantais had not gone after Qes either. Instead, hie said calmly as hie could, “It looks like Qes fell off the ledge. He’s broken hies arm.”

“Fell!” Fantais said, disbelievingly, “How could hie fall?! There’s nothing wrong with hies wings!”

“I don’t think you’ve been outside yet, have you Fantais?” Dex asked, knowing that Fantais was quite timid for a relatively highly-ranked dalin. Dex said, “The dust is so thick that you cannot see your own feet. If you don’t know where you are walking it would be easy to accidentally step off the rim of the ledge and fall. I am sure that Qes’ got hies wings out in time to slow hies fall, but hie would’ve been reluctant to actually fly when hie couldn’t see. If hie was merely using hies wings to slow hies fall hie may still have landed hard enough to break hies arm. If hie did try to fly, hie might have flown into the cliff face and broken hies arm. We will probably never know because shock has rendered himr unconscious and hie probably won’t remember what happened right before hies injury.”

“Or,” Fantais said with loathing, “perhaps someone just pushed himr off the ledge.”

Dex stared at Fantais, trying to keep hies wings from lifting, but antipathy radiated from himr nonetheless. “Since everyone else was in the cave here, I assume you think that I pushed himr off? Malnot will tell you I didn’t, but then you will probably accuse Malnot and I of conspiring to push Qes off of the ledge together.” Hie stepped back away from Qes. “I expect that if that is the case, you don’t want me to try to help care for Qes so, instead, I will go and help with the butchering of the zornits.” Dex walked a few steps back out toward the side cave where the butchering was being done, but then stopped, turned, and said, “You might ask the meteorite for help in caring for Qes. It said it could make some suggestions for the treatment of hies broken arm.”

Dex turned and continued toward the butchering room. Most of the adult and young adult dalins of the tribe were already there, but Dex had not been surprised to find that Fantais hadn’t been participating. Fantais had been born into a high status and seemed to believe that hie was above such things despite the fact that hies status in the tribe had dropped substantially.

The butchering had turned into an assembly line process. Even though the tribe had never had this much meat at one time before, they all understood just how desperately they needed it all to be preserved. Some dalins were cutting the meat out, others were slicing it thinly and salting it. Another group were taking the meat into the smoking grotto or tending the fire in there. There was a cluster who were making sausage. Some of the sausage would become incredibly important if they couldn’t find plants to eat. Sausage made from some of the internal organs could keep you from getting sick from a lack of vegetables.

Dex wondered whether the meteorite could help them find some of the important plants in the world of dust and destruction outside. Hie had never been an expert at gathering plants and worried that perhaps those who were plant experts might not be able to make drawings that the meteorite could understand. Maybe the meteorite could teach some of those dalins to see light that was “more infrared than infrared?”

After a while Dex took a torch and went back and down in the cave system to where the deep river ran. Hie was musing about what a good thing it was that a river actually ran through the cave so that they had access to water without going outside. Then for the first time in hies life, hie wondered where the water came from that made up that river. What if that water became choked with dust as well?!

When hie got to the river, hie found with great relief that the water was still clear, cold and pure. Hie drank and washed blood off of himrself. Hie had old Bultaken’s zornit stomach with himr and hie took the time to fill it with water to take back to the other dalins.

As Dex climbed back up to the main caves where everyone was living hie heard Fantais’ voice saying, “Where is Dex?! Has hie deserted us?”

“I’m right here Fantais,” Dex said tiredly, “I went for water.”

Fantais’ wings rose in hostility. With what appeared to be a conscious effort hie brought them back down, but then said, “You’ve got to help us with Qes! Your stupid meteorite is making red lines on the wall, but no one understands them!”

Dex blinked a few times, astonishment rising in himr. After a moment, hie quietly said, “You’re wrong. I don’t have to help you. I don’t like you and I have never liked Qes. You are constantly rude to me and I often hear about ugly things you say behind my back. Just a little while ago you implied that I was the one who hurt Qes. If you truly believe that, then you definitely should not want me to be taking care of himr. If you don’t believe it’s true, you should apologize.” Dex turned and started towards the butchering room, but turned to say back over hies shoulder, “And, if you want my help, you should ask for it—not demand it!” Even with hies back-eyes Dex could recognize Fantais’ astonished expression.

Dex was again covered with blood from cutting the meat out of zornits by the time hie heard Fantais tentatively say behind himr, “Dex, I’m sorry. I… I know you had nothing to do with what happened to Qes. You’re… you are also the only one who might be able to heal hies arm. Otherwise hie will be dyatso. I couldn’t take care of himr and no one else will. Would you… would you please help us?”

Dex stood from the zornit. Hie thought for a moment of all the other things hie needed to do to help the entire tribe survive. Could hie rightfully refuse to help hies old enemy on the grounds that it might bring harm to all the others? Then hie realized that that was exactly what old Bultaken would have done when hie had been leader of the Yetany tribe.

And that had been one of the things Dex hated about Bultaken.

“Okay,” Dex said after a minute, “let’s go see what the meteorite’s red lines are saying.”

When they arrived at Qes’ side, Qes still lay unconscious. “Has hie been out like this the whole time?” Dex asked in astonishment.

“Hie woke up once, but as soon as hie saw hies deformed arm, hie passed out again.”

Dex knelt and studied Qes arm for a moment without touching it. Hie looked up at the meteorite, then over to where the meteorite had been displaying its drawings on the wall. Currently, the drawing showed a dalin whose arm looked odd. The portion of the arm near the hand, the same portion which was broken in Qes was enlarged so that it looked more like a bundle of sticks. “Meteorite,” Dex said, “I don’t understand the drawing. Usually you show one drawing after another so that we can see something happening. Can you do that here?”

“Sorry,” the meteorite responded, “we didn’t realize the drawings had stopped cycling through.” Immediately, the drawing which had been on the wall disappeared and was replaced by one showing a dalin whose arm appeared to be broken. Or at least it was deformed like Qes. Another dalin appeared in the next three drawings and pushed the arm back into a straight position. The meteorite spoke, “We have one of our experts at caring for broken bones here with us. Hie says that, at least in us, it is most important that the arm be straightened and then held that way.”

Subsequent drawings showed a dalin using a hand axe on a piece of wood, or at least Dex assumed it was a piece of wood. After a moment the meteorite confirmed this, saying, “We hope that one of your tribe members who works wood can shape pieces of wood to fit Qes arm. We call them ‘splints.’” The words the meteorite had uttered, “splints” was very bizarre, leaving Dex to wonder if this was what the meteorite’s home language sounded like. Dex had met a dalin from far away once. That dalin used some words that were very different from the words the Yetanys used, but the foreigner’s words weren’t nearly as different as this word “splint.”

The meteorite continued, “This might be more easily done by shaping a splint to fit the arm of someone who is similar in size to Qes.” The next drawing showed Qes arm tied to the piece of wood with several pieces of small rope. Then the drawings showed another piece of wood being shaped similarly to fit on the other side of the arm. Finally, the first splint was untied, then both splints were tied into place, one on each side of the arm. “The idea is that the two pieces of wood would hold the arm straight until it heals. In beings like us this might take 40 to 80 days, but we do not know how long it would take in a dalin.”

Dex studied the drawings as they cycled through the series of images again. It seemed an obvious enough way to treat a broken arm, though hie’d never heard of anyone doing such a thing. Hie glanced at Fantais, thinking to ask why hie hadn’t straightened Qes’ arm out himrself. Hie found Fantais’ eyes staring at himr. “Did you understand that?”

“No!” was all that Fantais said.

Dex turned back to Qes’ arm, grasped the two segments and bent them back straight in a single quick motion. Qes made a moaning sound and hies head rose. Hies eyes flashed open to stare at hies arm in Dex’s hands. Then hies head fell limply unconscious once more. Dex turned to Fantais and said, “Sit down here and hold Qes arm straight.”

“I can’t!”

“You can, and you will if you want hies arm to heal correctly. I can’t sit here and hold it, I’ve got to try to find someone to shape the splints to hold it.”

“Can’t you get someone else to do it? I don’t know how!”

“No one knows how!” Dex said exasperatedly. “We actually need everyone in the tribe to be working on preserving the meat from the zornits. Since you haven’t been helping with the meat, at the very least you could be useful by helping with Qes. I’m not going to ask someone who is working on the meat to stop preserving meat for the entire tribe and have them hold Qes arm straight instead, just because you don’t want to do it!”

Wide-eyed, Fantais squatted down beside Qes and gently took hold of hies arm. “What do I do if it starts getting crooked again?”

“Straighten it back out!” Dex said with evident frustration, letting go of Qes arm and standing up. “I’ll go see if anyone is willing to shape the splints.”

Somewhat to Dex’s surprise, Malnot volunteered to shape the sticks for Qes’ splints. Dex had been expecting one of the dalins who shaped wood for spears and other tools to do it because they had more experience with woodworking, however, they all seemed to be quite uncertain about the prospect of shaping wood to fit an arm.

Malnot had not volunteered immediately, apparently also expecting someone else to be better at it. Thinking about it as Dex went back to butchering zornits, hie realized that the spear shapers and other toolmakers tended to be dalins who had learned to do a particular task from someone else and then practiced until they became experts at it. Malnot, on the other hand, made many different things. Hie didn’t seem to be the best at making anything, but wasn’t at all afraid to try something new. In retrospect it seemed obvious that hie would be the best candidate for making something new like splints.

Chapter Six

Phil had demanded that they move his bed into the big room where the other colonists were trying to set things up for Phil to be ported back to earth. With a great deal of coaching from a surgeon back on earth, Mark Wilson, the doctor on their team, had put a pin through the end of Phil’s thigh bone. Despite Mark injecting a bunch of local anesthetic and giving him some meds IV before putting the pin in, it had been a thoroughly unpleasant experience.

Next, an arrangement of pulleys and weights had been ported out from Earth and set up at the foot of Phil’s bed so that they could use the pin to apply traction to his leg. According to the x-rays Mark had shot, the “traction” was holding his broken hip in a much better position. The surgeon back on earth, however, had said that the position was not good enough to prevent arthritis so he still needed surgery. Apparently, the surgery would be even more difficult if the traction didn’t hold the bones in approximately the right place until he could get ported back home, so Phil would be in the traction until he got there.

After a while, Phil noticed that his hip didn’t hurt as badly in the traction as it had before the traction had been applied.

Phil had pictured the actual porting procedure as being fairly simple, but this proved not to be the case. First, a rolled up port had been sent out through the biggest port they had. This new port was oblong, and an even bigger oblong port was sent through the first one. Each port was bigger and sturdier and generated more heat when it was activated. The bigger ones had radiator fins that had to be attached to them before they could be used. Finally a very large, nearly round port came through the last oblong port. Even it wasn’t really big enough for his shoulders when his arms were down at his side but Phil’s body would be able to slide through if he kept his arms up over his head as if he were diving.

The machinists back at D5R stayed busy making more and more equipment that they sent through to Mars. This included brackets and frames that had to be assembled to hold the colonists’ dining tables tilted up at a steep angle. Then the port was placed down at the bottom end of the dining table so that Phil could slide down off the table and through the port in a very brief period of time. Phil hadn’t considered this, but apparently there was significant concern about keeping the port open long enough for him to go through. The power draw required to open a port this big to Mars was enormous, about two megawatts or enough to power a small town. When it opened, the waste heat warmed the room quickly and left the port itself almost glowing after it had been open a few minutes.

Fred Epstein and Carol unbolted and moved the port up to the top end of the table while Lindy Thompson brought in some pillows to catch the titanium “transfer jacket” that Phil was supposed to be put in before he was sent through the port.

All five of his fellow colonists stood by to catch the transfer jacket when it came through because, to test the port, they sent the jacket through with several big balloons full of water to simulate Phil’s mass. The transfer jacket looked pretty much like a Phil sized oval titanium pipe. It came shooting through with a crash and Phil’s fellow colonists had a bit of a struggle keeping it from falling off the table.

Diane ran tests on the port to make sure it had tolerated the transfer and showed no evidence that it would fail soon. Fred and Carol then unbolted and moved the port to the bottom of the table again, where they reattached it. The colonists tilted the table back flat for Phil to be transferred onto it.

Putting him into the transfer jacket, or “spam can” as Phil had begun thinking of it, turned into quite an ordeal. First they took the front half off the can, removed the bags of water and put the back half of the can on the ground off the end of his bed. Mark dosed Phil up with quite a bit of morphine and disconnected his traction. Then the other colonists picked Phil up by grabbing his sheet, two on each side. They shuffled forward, carrying him on the sheet from his bed to the spam can, trying to lower him into it gently. However, just the fact they had taken off his traction made him hurt. Carol tried to keep a constant pull on his Phil’s leg while he was being moved, but it was almost impossible to keep an even, steady traction while the others were shuffling him from one location to the other.

Every jerk caused quite a bit of pain.

They closed the lid on his can while they lifted it onto the table and positioned it for the actual transfer. Once he was in place, they opened the can back up and hung the traction weights off the end of the table in an effort to keep Phil comfortable while Mark got him ready.

Getting him ready essentially meant drugging him out of his mind. Phil was loaded up with anticonvulsants and given several tranquilizers. Right before they sent him, Mark was going to put him all the way under general anesthesia and put a tube in his throat to breathe for him. His muscles would be paralyzed, then the table would be tilted, the port opened and Phil would slide through the big port to arrive at the University Hospital in Chapel Hill. They had anesthesiologists and neurologists standing by there to try to do their best for him, even though no one was sure exactly what that would be.

Mark put a mask over his face, saying, “This is just oxygen for now.”

A few minutes later Phil groggily heard Mark say, “Hang that IV a little bit higher. Diane, are you ready to push the medications in those syringes?” Then he said, “Well, here we go.” Phil’s arm started to burn where the IV entered it.

The world floated away.

Phil had no awareness as the endotracheal tube went into his throat and was hooked up. The spam can was closed, the table tilted up, the port opened, and Phil shot through to earth, spam can and all.

***

A couple of techs wheeled the anesthesia machine into the recovery room and hooked it up. Clint started checking it over, what he thought of as a “preflight” of the machine. He’d been asked by his attending anesthesiologist, Dr. Norwood, to help with this and felt pretty excited about it. Someday, he might be able to tell people that he’d been present the first time a human being was ported. Even if he was just an anesthesia resident helping out, it was a momentous occasion. Of course, if it all went south and the poor bastard arrived here in pieces or completely out of his mind, it probably wouldn’t be something he’d want to brag about.

The guy was supposed to arrive with an endotracheal tube in place, but to have only been given a short-acting paralytic and propofol as anesthetics. Norwood had said that going through a port caused seizures in animals, so apparently this Martian astronaut was going to be loaded up with anti-seizure meds as well. Clint would need to hook his endotracheal tube up to the anesthesia machine and start giving him some inhalational anesthetic because the plan was to keep him under for a day or so before letting him wake up.

Norwood arrived and looked over the selection of the emergency drugs that Clint had checked out of the pharmacy. “Looks like you’ve got everything I’d thought of. Sure as hell, that means we’ll need some drug neither one of us considered.”

Clint asked, “Isn’t this guy supposed to need some kind of surgery on his hip?”

Norwood nodded, while still frowning at the selection of emergency drugs, apparently still trying to think of anything else they might need.

“As long as we’re keeping him asleep, why don’t they just take him on back to the operating room and fix his hip while he’s under?”

Norwood looked back up at him and shrugged. “I think they feel like being ported is traumatic enough. They’d like not to do both things at once. Besides, they want to be sure his brain’s okay before they start operating on him”

“But if he’s got to have both things done…”

“He’s also going to be the first human to go through a port. Probably the second human being through a port is going to want to know for sure whether any bad effects came from the port… or from the surgery.”

“So he’s just a guinea pig then?”

Norwood gave Clint an irritated look. “No, Dr. McVeigh, he’s a human being who’s decided to take the risk of being sent through a port in order to save his hip. As long as he’s taking that risk anyway, it seems only rational that we should try to gain as much information from this event as we can—to the benefit of the rest of mankind.”

“Yes sir.”

Norwood rolled his eyes at Clint. He seemed about to say something further, but then a group came in pushing a large device on wheels. The two men turned to watch.

One of the people with the device stopped to ask one of the nurses something. She pointed at Clint and Norwood. The men resumed rolling the big device in their direction. One of them evidently recognized Norwood, stepping ahead. He said, “Dr. Norwood, where should we set up?”

Norwood frowned at the device, “Which end of this thing will Mr. Zabrisk come out of?”

After a short discussion, they wheeled it around so that the large thing with all the radiator fins on it was up against the wall. It had a set of curved rails in front of it. Apparently, the astronaut would be in some kind of metal canister that would slide out of the port and onto the rails. Then they would be able to open the canister and get to the man inside. Once they were sure he was stable, they would be able to remove him from the canister and put him on a regular gurney, but for now they needed the anesthesia machine to be near where his head would be located after he’d come out.

After some further discussion they finally had positioned everything to their satisfaction. Quite a few people had gathered around and they had moved some equipment out of their way. With some surprise, Clint realized that one of the people gathered there was the Dean of the medical school. He turned to Norwood and quietly asked, “What’s the Dean doing here?”

“D5R donates huge quantities of money to the University. Besides, the University’s reputation will be affected by the outcome of this. The Dean’s probably sweating this even more than we are.”

Clint stepped closer to the big port the astronaut was supposed to come out of and was startled to realize that it was very cold. In fact when he looked at it he realized that  the surface of its radiator fins were frosting. “Why’s it so cold?” he asked of no one in particular.

A woman’s voice spoke over his shoulder, “Opening a port this big is going to generate a lot of heat. They’re porting liquid nitrogen through it to try to keep it cool.”

Clint started to look around to see who had spoken, but, just then the man who seemed to be in charge of the big port said, “Okay, the people on Mars say they’re all ready. Is everyone ready here?”

Several affirmative responses came. Norwood looked at the machine one more time, took a deep breath and said, “As ready as we can be.”

To Clint, it felt like everyone held their breath for a moment. Several loud clicks came from the port and then a substantial hum emanated from it. A few seconds later a bright flash of light signaled the opening of the port and a large gray metal tube shot out of it and onto the rails. The cold Clint had been feeling from the radiating fins immediately became heat. Hot! Hot enough that he shuffled a little further away, even though his eyes were fixed on the metal tube containing their patient.

Several of the people from D5R stepped up, flipped latches, and lifted the top half off of the tube exposing a man laying inside. He had his hands up over his head like a diver which surprised Clint. His eyes were taped shut and an endotracheal tube was taped in place where it came out of his mouth. There was an IV bag lying on his chest. Clint picked it up and hung it from an IV pole, eying it to be sure that the IV was still running.

Norwood disconnected the man’s endotracheal tube from the tubing it had been attached to. Clint distantly noted that the tubing had been cut off when the port closed. Norwood hooked the man’s tube up to the circuit on the anesthesia machine and turned on some isoflurane. Apparently, some neurologist who’d been studying porting of living beings thought that animals who went through ports did better if they were kept on isoflurane for a while afterwards. Clint hooked up a set of EKG leads, an oxygen saturation monitor, a temperature thermocouple and a BIS monitor to follow the astronaut’s brain waves.

The woman behind him, the one who’d explained the liquid nitrogen in the port, said, “What’s all that stuff you just hooked him up to?”

“Standard anesthesia monitors,” he responded, and listed them off. “We don’t always use a BIS monitor, but since porting is supposed to induce seizures, it seemed like a good idea to follow his brain wave activity.”

“Oh,” she said, sounding ineffably sad.

The way she’d said it made Clint’s hair stand on end. He suddenly worried that somehow one of the patient’s relatives had been allowed into the room. Having someone with an emotional attachment present in a life-threatening situation could be problematic. He glanced quickly over his shoulder to see who he’d been speaking to.

The woman was about his own age and very, very pretty. Suddenly, even more goosebumps shot down his spine.

Ell Donsaii!

***

Los Angeles, California—The news from TC3 has not been good. Video released by Team Teecee shows that dust continues to fill the atmosphere in the vicinity of the cave of the teecees that so many of us have become attached to. The dust is so thick that visibility is limited to no more than a few feet. The teecees seem to be safe for now, living in the depths of the cave system in which they have made their homes in the past. D5R has provided them with “misters” which clear the dust out of the air inside their caves. They have also provided them with goggles and breathing filters which allow them to go outside, however the world outside their cave has been devastated. As you can see in these radar images provided by the research team, enormous tracts of the vegetation have been blown down. No animal life is moving around. The teecees have been butchering a herd of grazing animals that died nearby. They’re preserving the grazers’ meat, but it is unclear how our friends will continue to survive when that runs out.

On another front, D5R has used a large port to retrieve astronaut Phil Zabrisk from Mars after he fell in the Valles Marineris, injuring his hip. Work with animals has shown that being “ported” may cause significant neurologic issues. It is unclear what exactly is going to happen to Mr. Zabrisk because he is the first human being to actually go through a port.

Francis Ementhal, the disgraced leader of the defunct Committee for Extraterrestrial Affairs has publicly accused D5R and Ell Donsaii of overextending themselves. “They find themselves unable to cope with these disasters. If only they had been properly managed, these situations could have been prevented…”

When President Stockton was asked about Ementhal’s comments, she said, “The events of which he speaks were a natural disaster and an accident. It is not clear to me how ‘proper management’ can prevent such incidents…”

As Warren’s mother led him into the facility at D5R his stomach was practically cramping. He kept wondering, what if this doesn’t work?

A few minutes later, a pleasant sounding young woman named Bridget led them into a large room where Warren was quite distracted by the sounds of many conversations, various tools and other noises and vibrations he didn’t recognize.

Then he heard Dr. Keller’s voice, “Warren, there you are! Are you ready to try out your neurotrode?”

The familiar voice settled Warren’s nerves quite a bit. “As ready as I’ll ever be I guess. I’m not sure what I’m gonna do though if it doesn’t work. I think my head might explode.”

“Mine too, mine too,” Keller chuckled. “Actually I’m pretty sure it’s gonna work. Sending impulses to nerves is something we’ve been doing for a long time after all. What I’m really worried about is whether you’re going to be able to interpret the impulses we send you. I really doubt that we’ll be able to do anything that immediately gives you a ‘picture’ to look at.”

Warren’s mother helped him get seated at a table.

Keller said, “Okay, tell me what you see when I do this.”

Warren involuntarily jerked his head back as a series of colored sparks flew across his field of vision, generally traveling from left to right. “I saw sparks!” he said holding his hand up and moving it through the air in front of him from left to right. He wiggled his fingers in an attempt to somehow show the scattered location of the sparks.”

Keller sighed, sounding disappointed.

“What’s wrong?! I saw something, isn’t that good?”

“Yeah, yeah, it’s good,” Keller said. Warren could tell he was trying to sound upbeat. “You saw something and that’s great. We’ve done a lot of work in animals to determine the kind of signals the cells in the retina send out through their neuron’s axons in response to light striking them. We’ve been worried that the signals we generate in your optic nerve axons might not be perceived as light at all. Actually, scattered sparks were what I expected you to see. Well… I’m assuming from the way you wiggled your fingers around that you saw a bunch of scattered sparks?”

Warren nodded.

“It’s okay, it really is. I was just hoping that it might just possibly have been a single line like I drew on the screen. It just means you’re going to have to spend some time teaching the AI where each of your axons is located in your visual field. Then the AI will be able to convert images from the camera into something that will look like a picture to you.”

“Teaching the AI?”

“Yeah, for instance where do you see this spark?”

A spark of light appeared just to the left of center in Warren’s field of view, or what he vaguely remembered as a field of view from back when he could see as a little kid. He said, “It’s pretty much in the center, just a little bit to the left actually.”

“That’s okay,” Dr. Keller said. “I’m putting a trackball in front of your hand to help you communicate with the computer. If you’d roll the ball it will stimulate different axons. To you it should seem to move the spark. Tell me when you’ve got it lighting up an axon that seems to be exactly in the center.”

Warren moved it and the spark jumped around but generally moved in the direction he moved the ball. He kept moving it until he felt like the spark it generated was in the center and said so. Another spark flashed up into Warren’s field of view. Keller said, “Where’s that new spark in relation to the first spark?”

“Up high and just a little and to the right,” Warren said.

“Okay,” Keller said. “Leave it up high but move it until you feel like it’s centered right over the one in the middle.” Next Keller had him center one at the left edge of his field of view, the right edge, and then the bottom center. “You’re going to be doing this until you’re absolutely sick of it. The issue is, that the axons in your optic nerve are only approximately arranged in the same way the neurons are organized behind your retina. That means that if we just send impulses to axons that are in the same relative location as the pixels in the video image from the camera, the spots of light you see will all be a little bit out of place. In theory you’ve got to tell us where each axon is located in your visual field. Now that we’ve got an approximate grid of your retina from the center, left, right, top, and bottom neurons you’ve picked out, you can just tell us which axon lights up a spot in relation to those that we’ve already located.” He sighed, “There are over a million neurons though, so once you’ve got your image to be pretty good I’m worried you’ll be sick of it and probably quit doing it. Your brain may adjust to them being a little bit out of place too. We’ll give you a trackball to take home with you, but I’d like you to work with the AI here until we’re sure everything’s going okay. We’ll also need you to tell the AI what color you see.”

“Wait, can’t you just feed me a picture, even if it's bad?”

“Well, we can, but it’ll be really messed up because we’ll be activating axons that aren’t quite in the right place. The image will be incredibly blurry.”

“Believe me, ‘blurry’ will be an enormous improvement over my current situation!”

“Ah… well yes, you’re probably right. Here goes.”

Suddenly Warren’s field of view was awash in light and color. It looked nothing like his vague memories from childhood. However, there was a large dark area off to his right surrounded by blurry light. He turned his head and a dark area moved into his field of view from the left. Could that be Mom? Goosebumps tingled on his scalp as he reached out with his left hand and a smudge appeared in front of the blurry object he thought might be his mother. “Mom?”

“Warren?” she said, her voice sounding choked.

“I can see!” he paused, tilted his head, then said, “Well, kinda…”

***

Vanessa’s AI reminded her that Zage Kinrais was due in the lab in just a few minutes. She’d been viewing his pending arrival with a mixture of anticipation and dread ever since his dad had called to make another appointment. Talking to the kid had been… arduous at his last visit. She wasn’t sure exactly why, but after some thought she’d decided that it had to do with the great jumps her brain had to make to keep up with the little brainiac’s thought processes. Alternating brilliant intuitive leaps with stupid questions that demonstrated a lack of basic understanding of some of the microbiological processes involved made the runt’s conversations difficult to follow. Not that his questions were really “stupid.” She actually wouldn’t think they were stupid if one of her undergraduate students asked them. However, having those kinds of questions asked in the middle of a conversation where he had demonstrated graduate-level comprehension of other parts of the subject resulted in something of a rollercoaster ride for her brain.

During the kid’s first visit he had suggested having people swallow ports so that they could get samples of the microbiological flora at different locations in their gut. She had mentioned this idea to Dr. Turner, her professor, and he had been just as stunned as she had been by the concept. They had immediately done a careful search of the literature, finding to their astonishment that no one had yet published on the use of ports to evaluate the gut flora. They had ordered some small ports. As they feared, the standard ports did not survive passing through the acids of the stomach so they had had to apply an enteric coating to protect them until they reached the intestines. However, from the upper intestine on, they had been able to obtain frequent samples of the gut microflora in the different areas. They would be submitting a paper on those results as soon as they could get it written up.

Ports swallowed before, then another port shortly after various meals were starting to give them data on the effects of certain foods on the intestinal microbiome. Vanessa’s own idea had been to evaluate the effect of pumping oxygen through a swallowed port. The lower parts of the intestine were anaerobic and the oxygen quickly wiped out the obligate anaerobes living there. She expected to learn more interesting things by putting other materials through ports into different portions of the intestine.

The most astonishing thing to Vanessa was that ordinary people had been able to buy ports for about 3 to 5 years now and she hadn’t yet heard of anyone swallowing ports as a form of intestinal bypass to control their weight. Admittedly, buying ports for that purpose would be pretty expensive unless you recycled them by sifting them out of your stools, washing them off and swallowing them again, but Vanessa was pretty sure someone, somewhere, must have thought of it, and if they’d thought of it, surely someone had tried it. They’d have to build some kind of pumping system to pull stuff out of their intestines and working with the stuff that came out would be pretty disgusting, but surely someone would do it.

People were going to make themselves sick doing it. It probably wouldn’t be as bad as bulimia, which damaged your teeth and imbalanced your chemistry by throwing up stomach acid that your body had invested in making, but even taking stuff out of the intestines was going to cause some problems. At the very least some people would overuse it and become malnourished. On the other hand, she supposed that, if it was done right, it could be safer and healthier than a surgical bypass.

Vanessa was once again considering whether there was any way she could get involved in commercializing a product for port-based intestinal bypass when the kid showed up. “Hey Zage, how are you doing today?”

“I’m fine, have you guys tried using ports to evaluate the microflora in different parts of the intestine yet?

Vanessa felt her own smile tighten. She’d hoped the kid would have forgotten his suggestion by now; after all, he wasn’t even four yet. She regretted not telling Dr. Turner that the port sampling idea had come from the kid in the first place. Though putting a three-year-old on an academic paper seemed ridiculous on the face of it, it had been the kid’s idea. Trying not to grit her teeth, she said, “We’ve been doing that all right. We’re learning a lot about how the bacterial population of the intestines change in the different regions.”

“Can we run a set of samples from my intestinal tract? I’d really like to know whether there are any big differences between my microflora and what you found in people who aren’t fat like me.”

Taken aback again by the kid calling himself “fat,” Vanessa smiled and said, “Oh, come on you’re not that heavy!”

Zage stared at her with a frown for a moment, “I assume you’re only trying to be ‘polite.’ My weight’s at the 98th percentile for kids my age and I certainly qualify as ‘obese.’ In any case, whether you think I’m fat or not, I think I’m fat and I’d like to do something about it. Could you run some samples on me?”

Now it was Vanessa’s turn to frown. Tilting her head she said, “That would pose a lot of problems. Our research protocol only covers people over the age of 18. You’ve got to be able to sign consent, and you’re too young to do that. In addition, even if we did have specimens from you we wouldn’t know how they compared to other kids your age. Kids are often a lot different than adults.”

Zage rolled his eyes expressively to show what he thought of these problems. “What if I got my parents to sign consent?”

“Sorry, our protocol still only covers people over the age of 18.”

“So, don’t consider me to be a research subject. We’ll just do it ‘because I’m interested’ not because you’re trying to do an experiment on me.”

Vanessa shrugged but shook her head, “That’s a slippery slope we don’t want to get onto. Someone might accuse us of trying to go around the research protocols.”

The kid actually sighed at her. “Okay, let me buy some micro arrays from you guys and I’ll bring them back in a while and pay to have them run.”

Her eyebrows rose, “You have your own money?”

He nodded, “But you can talk to my mom and dad to make sure you have their approval.”

She shook her head again, “Ports don’t do so well passing through the stomach’s acid environment. We have to enteric coat them to protect them until they get to the intestines. If we did that for you it would be pretty obvious that we had supported what you were doing and we could really get in trouble.”

“My mom works out at D5R. I’ll bet she can find me some ports that are resistant to stomach acid. All I need are some micro arrays, and for you to run them for me when they’re done.”

“I’ll ask Dr. Turner,” Vanessa said resignedly, already feeling worn out from talking to this kid.

“Thanks!” He said brightly, “Now let me ask you about a few other things…”

***

Dex was with several of the dalins who normally prepared and preserved meat in the smoking cave . There was far more meat in the cave than there had ever been in anyone’s recollection. Nonetheless, another group had been led out to the meadow by the meteorite to break up and bring back some of the bigger zornits they had left behind on their first trip.

Before they got a lot more meat from the big zornits however, they would need to clear the smoking cave of all the meat that was already in it. The smoking cave was a particularly good branch of the cave system for smoking because near the top of it, it had a small narrow vent to the outside that acted as a chimney. Not a good enough chimney to keep the room from being smoky, but good enough to keep smoke from billowing out of it into the rest of the cave.

To try to finish the meat quickly they had to come in and turn the meat over frequently, moving it to different places in the cave and trying to balance out how much smoke got to each strip. The meteorite had led them outside on several trips to cut small sticks so they could build frames to suspend the meat over. Nonetheless, it was almost impossible to expose the meat evenly. Some meat was closer to the fire, some closer to the damp walls of the cave, some higher in the smoke, some too close to the floor. The meat needed to be rotated around to different locations and taken out before it became so dry or smoky that it was unpleasant to eat.

Working in the smoky cave was normally an extremely undesirable task. Your eyes watered and your lungs choked in the smoke. It had been delightful to realize that the see-rocks not only kept dust from getting into your eyes but also prevented smoke from irritating them. The dalins were still having spasms of blowing to clear their lungs, but at least their eyes weren’t watery and itchy.

Then something else wonderful happened. Four more meteorites had arrived the day before and they had had one of them with them in the smoking cave to provide light while they were rotating the meat. The light from the low smoky fires was quite poor. The meteorite had only been in the room with them a short period of time before it said, “The smoke seems to be making you blow air through your lungs, I assume to try to clear the smoke out of them?”

Dex dipped hies head for a yes, thinking that it was obvious, but perhaps not to a meteorite.

The air intake cloths don’t work for the smoke like they do for the dust?”

Dex waved hies head in negation.

“You could put one of the ‘fog baskets’ in the opening of the smoking cave while you are working in here. It would blow air through the cave and clear away much of the smoke.”

“But the fog baskets would get the meat wet. The meat must not only be exposed to the smoke but must be dry or it will spoil.”

“Oh, we can turn off the water so that the fog basket will only blow air, not make fog.”

Startled by the idea, Dex sent one of the young dalins to get one of the fog baskets they weren’t currently using. Sure enough, once they set it up in the doorway, it began to blow air without any mist in it. It didn’t completely clear the smoke out of the cave, but it made it enough better that working in there wasn’t difficult.

Dex heard some shouting and moved the fog basket so hie could step past it into the main cave system. “What’s happening?” the meteorite asked.

“It’s raining!” Dex shouted back over hies shoulder as hie began to run towards the entrance.

It soon seemed like everyone in the Yetany tribe was out on the ledge, staring ecstatically up at the falling water. Because it rained almost every day in normal times, rain had never seemed like a miracle before. Now dalins were hooting in delight and leaping up and down.

Many of them beat their way into the air a little ways, though none went very far. Even though the rain seemed to be clearing the air, you couldn’t really see very far yet. No one wanted to be hurt like Qes.

Dex heard Syrdian’s voice behind himr. “Is it going to clear the air? Will the plants get their sunshine and live after all?”

His voice juddery with emotion, Dex said, “I don’t know. I hope so.” Hie paused and looked around, “If it doesn’t, I don’t know if we’ll survive.”

As if Dex had spoken some kind of curse, the rain stopped falling…

***

Ed Zabrisk stared at his feet, pondering the vicissitudes of life. Just a few days ago, life had been about as good as it could get. He was up for promotion to general, his daughter, in addition to holding down a great job, was pregnant with his first grandchild, and his son was one of the first six astronauts on Mars.

Now, he was sitting in an ICU waiting room, waiting for his son to be brought out of a coma. Ed’s brother and Phil’s sister were still on their way to North Carolina. If Phil woke from this coma with some kind of mental impairment, as it seemed had happened to the animals sent through ports, then in a single stroke, all the good things in his life would be as ash.

Distantly, he recognized that a pair of women’s shoes had stopped right in front of him. Whoever it was appeared to be waiting for him to look up, probably to ask some inane question. Ed didn’t want to be disturbed, so he kept looking at his shoes.

His wife’s hand stole over to grab his as the woman spoke, “Colonel and Mrs. Zabrisk, I wonder if I might sit with you while we’re waiting?”

Ed’s temperature started to boil. The gall of these people. Just because Phil was a well-known astronaut, it seemed like they all felt like they had the right to push their way into his family’s life. He took a breath to say, “Go away!” but then Brenda jerked at his hand to get his attention. “Ed! It’s Ell Donsaii! You remember, she and Phil used to be friends at the Academy.”

Ed’s eyes snapped up. It was indeed Ell Donsaii, and she looked just as haggard as Ed felt. Brenda said, “Yes Dr. Donsaii, we’d be delighted if you sat with us. Do you have a relative in the hospital here as well?”

“No ma’am,” the young woman tilted her head a moment as if considering. “Just Phil, but then, he and I have been through so much together it’s kind of like he’s the big brother I never had. So I guess I do feel like I have a relative here.”

Ed had risen to his feet. He found himself somewhat choked up. He remembered the young woman from when she had come to Phil’s graduation at the Air Force Academy. He’d been proud enough to meet her then, simply because of her medal of honor and the fact that she’d saved his son’s life. Her Olympic gold medals were icing on the cake. But at that time, he’d had no idea of the role she had played in stopping the Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Shortly thereafter though, he had developed the “need to know” when he had taken a role in determining how to use her PGR chips in linking the Air Force together. Then she’d taken Phil on his first flight into space, saved the planet from a comet and turned everyone’s lives upside down with her port technology. To say that he respected her above all others would be the understatement of the century. Eyes welling, he made a slight bow and said, “We would be honored to have you sit with us Dr. Donsaii.”

Before they could sit back down though, a nurse stepped up beside them and said brightly, “Okay, Phil’s awake, I can take you in to see him two at a time. Who’d like to go first?”

Ed assumed that he and Brenda would go in first, but Brenda got a stricken look on her face, clasped a hand to her chest, and said, “You two go ahead. I’ve got to steel my nerves for a minute or two. I’ll be able to take it better Ed, if you’ll tell me how it turned out before I have to face him.”

Thus Ed found himself walking into the ICU with the nurse and Ell Donsaii. He felt his heart thumping harder than it had when he’d been in combat as a young man. Why didn’t I ask this nurse how he was doing? Then I wouldn’t have to go into this completely unprepared!

The nurse stepped over to the bed first and said, “Phil, your father and Ms. Donsaii are here to see you.”

Ed stepped up to the bed next to the nurse as Dr. Donsaii stepped around to the other side. He looked down at his son and saw Phil, a vacuous expression on his face, unsteady gaze wavering about the room, mouth open with drool dribbling out of the corner of it, apparently unable to recognize his own father.

Ed’s heart plummeted.

The nurse said uncertainly, “Phil?”

Phil’s hand lifted off the bed covers and quested unsteadily towards his father. “Daddy?” he slurred.

The nurse said, “Phil!”

Phil slurped the drool back up out of the corner of his mouth, and, suddenly alert, looked back and forth from Ed to Donsaii. He grinned, “Sheeit! You should’ve seen the expressions on you guys’ faces!”

Ell snorted, “Once again I find myself wondering just why I think of you as a friend?!”

Knees suddenly weak, Ed reached out and grabbed onto Phil’s bed rail. After a moment his strength recovered and he glared at his son. “Only the fact that it might injure your broken hip is keeping me from shaking you!” he growled.

Phil put his hands up in mock surrender, “Let me have my surgery, and give me a few weeks to recover. Then you can shake me as much as you want. I could go for a gentle hug right now though?”

Ed glowered a moment longer, then leaned down and gave his son a little hug. He stood and wiped at an eye, “When are they planning your surgery? Do you know yet?”

Phil looked up at the nurse. She responded, “What I heard was that they have you on the schedule for tomorrow, as long as everything checks out now that you’re out of anesthesia.”

Phil reached his hands up towards Ell, “Do I get a hug from my old ‘almost’ girlfriend?”

Ell wiped at an eye, “You shouldn’t, in view of the crap you just tried to pull!” She paused a moment to glare at him herself, then relented “But in view of our old friendship…” She leaned down and gave him a fierce hug, trying not to shake his body enough to wiggle his hip. She stood back up and stared at him pensively for a moment, “So, I’ve been worrying about your brain ever since we agreed to do this. How do you feel mentally? Any stupider than you were before?”

Phil grinned at her, “Well, when you’re dumb as a post to begin with, it’s kinda hard to tell if you’re now dumber than a post.” He shrugged, “I hear they’re going to come by and do a battery of tests on me this afternoon. Maybe they’ll be able to tell?”

Joining the banter, Ed turned to the nurse and said, “Do you think their IQ tests go down low enough?”

She grinned, “I don’t know, I’ve heard they think they might have to have him run some mazes like they do rats.”

***

Dex looked around the large room of the cave where most of the dalins were living. It had been days now since that brief rain, with no further rain. Normally, if the weather had been abnormally dry, the dalins would have been outside on the ledge speculating to one another about the appearance of the clouds and their portents. However, there was still so much dust in the air that they couldn’t even see a body length, much less up to the clouds.

Even when Dex’s meteorite said it was high noon, the dalins could only see a faint glow in the dust above their heads. The dust remained so thick that even in the meteorites’ bright lights they could see no more than about two body lengths. When the meteorites used only infrared light they could see a little bit farther, but not far enough to fly safely. Not far enough to hunt, even if any animals were out there. A few parties had gone out and set snares, but they remained empty. Groups which had gone looking for tubers had found a few, but stumbling around in the dust trying to recognize the plants that grew tubers when you could barely see their dust covered leaves proved to be terribly difficult.

There had been a few areas where many tubers grew, but they were far enough away that walking to them in this desolate landscape was nearly impossible. In the first place, dalins seldom hiked anywhere, so even if they could see and the world had remained green, it would have been difficult for them to find their accustomed tuber digging grounds on foot. In addition, no matter which direction a group set out, they soon encountered a swath of downed trees. If they did try to climb through the devastated forest, by the time they exited the other side, any sense they might have had of where they were going had usually been completely lost.

More and more, the dalins of the Yetany tribe stayed in the caves, necks drooping, attitudes flat, despair in their eyes. Syrdian’s parent Tanif led a small group out every day to search for vegetables, but hie was one of the few actively working on survival. Most of the Yetany simply lived, complaining about eating smoked zornit for every meal and waiting for the world outside the cave to repair itself.

Or for someone else to come up with something better to do.

Or to die.

Chapter Seven

Ell felt a little bit guilty that she hadn’t reviewed any of the data from BC4. She’d stolen a couple of moments once to have Allan show her some of the animals he’d captured on video. They all seemed to have six limbs, but in every specimen she’d seen, one pair had nothing to do with ambulation. The middle pair appeared to have transformed into wings in the few flyers where Allan had been able to get good pictures. Initially she’d thought that the first hippo/triceratops-like animal she’d seen had six legs. It turned out that it, as well as the other BC4 herbivores, used its front pair of limbs to bring vegetation to its mouth. In all the animals she’d seen, the mouth was directly attached to the body rather than residing on a neck. The arrangement reminded her a little bit of a crab, including the fact that the front limbs placed food into the mouthparts, instead of the head and neck carrying the mouth to the food. The mouth opened sideways which Ell found a little disquieting. In carnivores, the front limbs trapped or attacked prey, and then the limbs ripped flesh from the vanquished kill. In herbivores the front limbs generally stripped leaves from plants and brought them to the mouth. Eyes were mounted independently on another pair of small limbs which originated just above the mouth. So far, none of the animal life had looked intelligent and she kept thinking that she should let the teecee team know about the new planet so that they could begin studying it.

However, she really didn’t feel like she’d investigated BC4 as much as she wanted. She was spending too much time worrying about Phil and the teecees. Just now she’d been looking at video and maps Harald Wheat had sent her of an area 1,800 kilometers east of the teecees cave that appeared to be uninhabited. Tribes of teecees lived in a lot of places, but the population wasn’t dense enough to cover every location by any means. Ell worried that there was something wrong with the area Harald had picked out. Some reason, not obvious to them, why no teecees were living there already. But, the temperature was similar and the vegetation looked to be much the same. A stream had swimmers like Syrdian fished for. Ell had even seen a small herd of zornits.

Even there, 2,100 kilometers from where the comet had struck, the sky and clouds were a dusty brown. The light seemed dim and in fact, Allan’s best assessment of the number of photons striking the cameras was that there had been a significant reduction in the amount of sunlight. Though the temperature was similar right now, the altitude was lower than where Goldie and Silver’s tribe lived on the mountain.

Maybe none of the teecees lived here because normally it was too warm? If so it could still be a great place for the tribe to live until things got back to normal at their home location.

Ell chewed her lip. Some of the vegetation had turned brown. Could that be a lack of sunlight?

Zage came running down the stairs. “Mom!” he said, running over to jump up on the couch next to her. “What’s for breakfast?” His head swiveled to look up at the big-screen. Suddenly distracted, he asked, “Is that TC3 before the comet hit?”

Ell thought that she should be surprised that Zage had immediately recognized the video as coming from TC3 rather than Earth. But, she wasn’t anymore. The kid frequently knew things about TC3 that she didn’t. “No that’s imagery from yesterday, so it’s pretty current. This is just from a spot about 2,100 kilometers east of the impact so there isn’t as much damage.”

Zage frowned, “It looks like there’s still quite a bit of dust in the air though, huh?” He shrugged, “But it’s still a lot better than where they live now. Why don’t they move to this spot?”

“Well, I’m thinking we should suggest it to them. It will be hard for them though. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but they never fly when they can’t see. Probably have a fear of it from running into things in the dark or in fog. We don’t even like to walk fast in the dark for fear of hitting something.”

“Couldn’t they walk?”

“Walking is also really hard for them in the dust. They trip over things and move pretty slowly. Going 1,800 kilometers to this new spot would take them an extremely long time because they average less than 10 kilometers a day. At least that’s how fast Allan tracks them when he leads them places near the cave right now. And, as opposed to when Goldie and Silver climbed the mountain, they wouldn’t be able to hunt for food most of the way. They’d have to carry most of their food with them. They might not have enough even after they butchered all those dead zornits.” Ell shrugged, “I think the only way they can do it is to fly. Maybe we can suggest to them that they could fly behind a rocket. They’ve come to trust the rockets pretty well and the rockets can use radar to make sure they’re not about to run into something.”

“Good idea,” Zage said, dismissing that part of the conversation and focusing back on the screen. “Aren’t a lot of the leaves brown?”

“Yeah,” Ell sighed, “I’m afraid they’re not getting enough light. Even this far away from the comet’s impact there’s a lot of dust in the atmosphere.”

“Oh,” Zage said, an intense look on his face as he pondered the problem. Then he turned his face up towards his mother and said, “Couldn’t you ask D5R to hang some ports from balloons to send in extra light from solar parabolic mirrors?”

Wide eyed, Ell stared at her son.

***

Staring sightlessly out over the dispirited Yetany in the big room of the cave, Dex felt an overwhelming guilt that hie had not been able to work out a solution to this problem. Hie had come to think of himrself as someone who could solve problems, sometimes with the help of the meteorites. But this… mountain sized meteorite… that had crashed into the world, the endless dust, the constant darkness, the depressing sameness of dried zornit at every meal, and the horrible knowledge that someday it would run out…

His mind had been going in circles for deks now and hie was no closer to a solution. Hie thought fondly back on the trek hie and Syrdian had made up the mountain. At the time their problems had seemed horrific, an insurmountable set of difficulties with no reasonable end in sight—now hie thought of it as hies greatest triumph—yet the challenge had been relatively simple.

Suddenly hie wondered, could the Yetany climb the mountain like hie and Syrdian had? Maybe there would be clear air up high? Hie got up and walked to the nearest meteorite. As hie walked there, hie wondered how hie could feel so tired when hie had done so little that day. “Meteorite,” hie asked, “what if we climbed the mountain? Is the air clear up there? Perhaps we could live up there like Syrdian and I did back when you were first with us?”

For a moment the meteorite said nothing and Dex had time to ponder with some horror the possibility that the meteorite might never speak again. Perhaps it had died? Then it said, “No, the air is very dusty up higher on the mountain also. It is perhaps a bit better than it is down here, but it’s cold and the plants and animals you normally eat are dead or dying. Your entire world has enough dust in the air that the plants everywhere are at least a little bit sick, but it is much better a long way from here.”

“How far? We’ll start walking tomorrow.” Dex’s hearts had lifted, as much at the prospect of something they could do to better their life, as at the possibility of arriving somewhere better. As hie looked around hie saw that several other dalins had heard what the meteorite said. Their eyes were brighter as well.

The meteorite said, “It’s nearly as far as you migrate to your summer living place, but to the east rather than to the south. You could not walk there, you would have to fly.”

“But…” Dex said looking around at the nearby dalins. Hie saw the shock and dismay in their eyes. Hie lowered hies voice and spoke more quietly, “But we can’t fly!” hie said, trying not to sound despondent. “The dust… We can’t see, and when we can’t see we can’t fly. If we can’t see, we crash into things and die.” As hie said it, Dex thought back to a time when as a young dalin hie and several others had flown into a cloud on a dare. Hie had felt certain that hie could fly in one side of the cloud and straight out the other. Instead, to hies great astonishment, hie came out, having obviously turned down-right-low, even though hie had thought hie was flying straight ahead.

In its toneless voice, the meteorite asked, “Do you think you could follow one of the meteorites? You’d be able to hear the sound it makes when it’s flying, but it could also make its loud shrieking sound for you to follow.”

Dex’s head drew up and back in startlement. Flying without seeing? By following a sound? The entire idea was so bizarre hie had a difficult time even imagining it. Visualizing how it might actually work—at first it felt impossible. Hie pictured himrself flying, unable to see anything but darkness with a faint brown hue above. Following a sound! Trusting that sound not to guide himr into a tree, mountain, or even the ground! After hies mind had circled through the concept several times hie began to think of it as, not impossible, merely frightening.

Exceptionally frightening.

The meteorite said, “I wouldn’t suggest it except I can’t think of any other way for the dalins to get there.”

Dex realized that hie had never responded to the meteorite’s earlier question, thus leading it to this new statement. “It would be… terrifying.” After a pause, hie said, “I can’t think of a way to travel that far without flying either. But,” hie felt hies own wings lift and ripple slightly with the terror of what hie was about to volunteer for, “I think I should try flying behind you by myself first. We don’t want to lose the entire tribe if this is impossible.”

“Okay,” the meteorite said, “will you carry me out to the ledge so I don’t have to make my flying noise in here?”

Dex’s child Fagan said, “I’ll fly behind the meteorite. I think it would be fun! Besides, we can’t afford to lose you, father, if it goes badly.”

Dex’s wings lifted in dismay at the mere thought. “No! Absolutely not. You are too young! We don’t put children at risk.”

The cave was silent for a moment, dalins looking back and forth at one another in dismay. Then Malnot said, “He’s right Dex, we can’t risk you! If you die we all die. Far better that one of the other members of the tribe die if this doesn’t work.”

“The rest of you won’t die just because I die!” Dex exploded, “That’s ridiculous!”

Malnot stared at Dex as if hie had just said something particularly inane. “No one can do what you do. You… think of answers that no one else has even considered! And the meteorites talk to you! Yes, we could all die because you died. The tribe can’t risk you.”

Dex glowered at Malnot, “Will you do it then?”

Malnot shrank down as if cowering away from something particularly fearsome. “No,” hie whispered, “I can’t do something like that. I’m too…” Malnot trailed off, apparently unable to put words to exactly what it was that kept himr from being able to do it.

Dex said, “Well then, lacking another volunteer, it looks like it’s up to me.”

Syrdian stood, “I’ll do it,” hie said resignedly

Despite a great deal of arguing on hies part, Dex found himrself carrying the meteorite out to the ledge with Syrdian, Malnot, Fagan, Rossa and several other tribe members. On the grounds that it put everyone’s life in jeopardy, hie had been stridently shouted down on any proposal that put hies own life at risk.

Hie had barely set the meteorite down when its squealing sound began and it lifted into the air. Speaking loudly, yet still in its monotonic voice, it said, “I will fly out and up a ways.” It receded away, but Dex could tell that it was lifting somewhat higher in the air as well. Then it said, “Syrdian can you still hear me easily?”

Syrdian said, “Yes.” They could all hear it without difficulty.

“If the rest of you will back up to the wall of the ledge, then Syrdian can fly towards me and I will lead himr around in a circle to land back on the ledge. With many of you out on the ledge, I’m worried hie will run into one of you when hie lands.”

Dex shuffled backwards until hie bumped into the back wall of the ledge. Hie wondered how the meteorite would be able to tell if they all backed up or not. Presumably with the same kind of vision that it was using to lead Syrdian around? Extra infrared vision that could see through the dust?

In any case, at about the same time that Dex bumped into the wall behind himr. Hie heard the meteorite say, “Okay, fly out towards me. As you come towards me I will back away and lead you in a large circle. I will warn you when it is nearly time to land.”

Dex presumed that Syrdian must have taken off, because shortly after the meteorite spoke, the sound of it receded even farther and a little bit higher into the muddy sky. Dex’s hearts throbbed with anxiety. Then the sound of the meteorite seemed to move towards the left and eventually to be approaching again.

In a few centideks the sound of the meteorite flying approached again and Dex thought it might be almost over the ledge. Its voice said, “Okay, I am about to land on the ledge. You are up about three body-lengths… now two… now one and a half… now one… you’re almost down. That looked like a good landing! Are you okay?”

Assuming that Syrdian would be near the meteorite, Dex rushed towards its voice. As hie approached, hie heard Syrdian say, “I’m okay, but flying like that is terrifying!”

Hearing that, Dex turned towards Syrdian’s voice and moments later almost collided with himr in the murky air. Throwing hies arms around Syrdian, Dex whispered, “I was terrified for you too.” After a few moments tightly holding hies mate, hie considered what had just happened. “Speaking to the meteorite and anyone else who might be able to hear, Dex said, “Just walking, I almost ran into Syrdian! If more than one of us is flying out here behind the meteorite, we could run into each other even if following the meteorite keeps us from running into a tree!”

The meteorite said, “Oh. Yeah, that could be a bad problem.”

Dex felt shocked. Hie had been angry that the meteorite hadn’t told them how they would keep from running into one another, but had not considered the possibility that the meteorite might not know how to keep it from happening! “What… what will we do?” hie said uncertainly.

Dex heard the squeal that meant the meteorite was lifting up into the air. Its sound receded a little. Then its voice said, “I’ve just turned on one of my lights. Can you see the glow?”

Dex could indeed see the dust glowing in the direction the voice had come from. “Yes, how far away are you?”

“Three body lengths. I’m moving farther away. Can you see the glow still? I’m five body lengths away now.”

“I can still faintly see you, but it’s difficult.”

“When you are migrating,” the rocket said, “you usually maintain a distance of one to one and a half body lengths from one another in your formations. I’m now one and a half body lengths away. Do you think you could keep formation on another dalin if it was carrying a light like this one?”

The glow of the rocket’s light had brightened quite a bit and was relatively easy to see, even though details were lacking. It was more like the sun behind the clouds. Dex could easily imagine keeping formation on it though. When they flew in formation, they had a leader with others trailing out to the sides. The trailing dalins could “feel” when they were in the right position because it was easier to fly in that spot just a little behind and to the side. Dex thought that with the light, and the “feel” of the position they should be able to fly in formation. “I think we could, but we should try it with just three dalins before we risk a big group.”

“Can you carry a meteorite, like you did climbing the mountain when we first met? Then that meteorite could turn on a light and two other dalins can try to fly in formation on you.”

Dex went back in to get a different harness that had straps with which hie could carry a meteorite on hies back. Shortly, hie had hies old meteorite strapped to himr. Hie knew it wasn’t one of the new meteorites because it didn’t have a large fin sticking off of it. Hie strapped it on upside down so that the end of it which had lights would be nearer to hies trailing formation flyers. Syrdian and Fagan volunteered to fly in formation with himr. For a moment hie considered protesting having so many members of hies own family at risk, but hie didn’t want to get back into another argument like they had before. Dex told the meteorite that they were ready.

The meteorite Syrdian had followed earlier spoke, “I’m lifting off now.” Dex heard the squeal it made when it flew and could tell it was moving up and away. The meteorite on hies back lit its lights. “Okay,” the flying meteorite said, “you can take off now and fly towards me. I’ll move away as you approach. We’ll make a circle and land like I did with Syrdian.”

Dex felt nervous because hie couldn’t tell where Syrdian and Fagan were. Quietly to them hie said, “Can you see my light okay?”

They answered affirmatively.

“You’re in a formation position and ready to take off?”

Hearing them both say yes, hie took a couple of steps forward and stroked into the air after the meteorite. As Syrdian had said, it was terrifying flying off into the dust when hie couldn’t see. Hie flew towards the sound and faint glow of the meteorite. A moment later hie could better see its glow in the murky dust. Hie could tell it was moving away, because if it hadn’t been hie would have run into it already. It seemed to veer slowly around to the left, although, remembering hies flight through a cloud in the past, hie worried that hie was merely disoriented. After a bit the meteorite spoke to them, “We are approaching the ledge. I am slowing down. We are three body lengths above the ground, two, one. No! Dex, you’re going up. Time to land!”

Dex had stretched out hies feet and begun beating to a hover. Hie’d thought hie was descending, but evidently hie wasn’t, hies feet weren’t touching anything. Hie forced himrself to beat more softly in order to ease himrself down gently, still stretching toes as far as possible. Hie heard the meteorite say, “One and a half, one, a half, you’re down!”

With great relief, Dex felt rock under hies talons and settled to the ground. “Syrdian, Fagan, are you okay?”

Soon Dex, hies spouse, and hies child were embracing one another in great relief. Malnot joined them a few moments later.

***

Ell found herself a little bit at loose ends. Her team was getting ready to send more air filters to the teecees as well as lights to put on their ankles so they could fly formations in the dust. She had commandeered some of the people over at ET resources that worked with parabolics. They were putting up a bunch more solar parabolics for Zage’s idea to light TC3. For that to work, she’d contacted Allosci. Viveka was making some graphene balloons and tether lines they could use to hold the parabolic powered lights up over the TC3 landscape.

They couldn’t start the teecees eastward migration until they had the ankle lights and filters. She felt a little itch to get back to trying to measure the fifth dimension, but had a meeting with her team again in a little while and didn’t feel like she had enough time to go home and start measuring dimensions either.

She headed back to her office, “Allan, bring me up whatever interesting video you’ve set aside from Beta Canum Venaticorum.”

Allan said, “I thought you would be interested in these images of very large herbivores. The specimen here seems to fall into the same category as the sauropods of Earth’s dinosaur age. It even has a very long tail. Like on TC3, rather than an extremely long neck like the brachiosaurs, these animals use extremely long front limbs to harvest vegetation from high in the trees and bring it down to their mouths. You will recall Harald Wheat’s observation that this arrangement obviates the problem of pumping blood at a high enough pressure to reach up to the brain in the head of brachiosaurs.”

Ell blinked, “I’ve forgotten. Why isn’t it just as much of a problem to pump blood up to the ends of those long limbs?”

“Because the tissues of the brain must have blood at all times, whereas the tissues in an extremity can go without blood flow for short periods. You’ll notice that this particular animal reaches up first with one arm, then with the other. Neither one is high and without good blood perfusion for very long at a time.”

“How big is it compared to Brachiosaurus?”

“Well, if you include those long front arms as part of its length instead of the long neck in Brachiosaurus, it’s about the same. The one you’re looking at in this video would be twenty-eight meters or about ninety-two feet. It’s pulling down vegetation from a height of about ten meters.”

“My God! How heavy is it?”

“We don’t have a way to estimate its density,” Allan said. “Somewhere between thirty-five and forty-five metric tons depending on whether it has a lot of air sacs in it like the big dinosaurs have been proposed to have had.”

“Have you run the numbers on the atmospheric density? Is it dense enough to provide support to an animal this large even though the gravity is almost eight tenths of Earth normal?”

“At 188 atmosphere’s pressure, the density of the air is 222 kilograms per cubic meter, or a little less than one quarter of the density of water. It’s not the same as swimming, but it does support a lot of weight. That plus a slightly lower gravity makes these immense animals physically possible. In this next video clip, you’ll see an enormous flying animal, also made possible by the very dense atmosphere.”

Ell’s eyes widened as she saw what appeared to be a huge flyer soar overhead. Without perspective she couldn’t be sure just how big it was, but then Allan dropped a scale marker on it showing that it was nine meters, or thirty feet from wing tip to wing tip.

Allan said, “Emma is asking for you out in the big room. Do you want me to connect you?”

“No, I’ll just go out there. Go ahead and move the rocket to another continent. Keep an eye out for anything regular that might have been built by an intelligent species.”

***

Phil felt like he was starving. His surgery on his hip was scheduled around noon and of course, they hadn’t given him anything to eat or drink after midnight. A knock came on his door and he and his parents looked up. Maybe they’re coming for me early?

A strawberry blond head poked its way around the door. “Hey, I thought I’d come by and see you off to have your surgery?”

A warm feeling came over Phil as Ell stepped into the room. My God she looks good. “You’re welcome, if you brought me a beer and a couple slices of pizza.”

Ell tilted her head and looked at him quizzically. “That’s about as dumb as the stuff you used to say. Do you think Dr. Bynewicz’s titanium shell and general anesthesia and other meds kept the porting from affecting your intelligence? Or do you think you’re even denser than you used to be?”

Phil grinned at her, “I have noticed that light seems to be bending around me…”

Ell laughed and turned to Phil’s parents, “That last answer alone is enough to convince me that going through the port didn’t really do his brain much harm. What do you guys think?”

Phil’s mother had initially been appalled at the way Donsaii spoke to her son. She’d been around men enough to know how they “trash talked” one another, but she was surprised to hear a young woman dishing it out. I suppose, if she went through a military Academy, Donsaii probably had to learn to talk back to these bozos? Brenda smiled, and said, “They said that the testing they did on Phil showed normal neurologic function.”

Phil’s dad snorted, “If it showed normal neurologic function in this lunkhead, that’s certainly a big change from before. Though it’s hard to imagine it fixing all the things that were wrong with his brain.”

Ell turned to Phil again and said, “Seriously though, do you feel it’s caused a problem for you? This will be hugely important to know in the future if someone else needs to be ported.”

Phil shrugged, “Yeah, as near as I can tell I feel fine. I guess if it affected my intelligence I might not notice it myself, but if someone’s smart enough to see how they cross correlate I’d be happy to take some IQ tests to be compared somehow to test results from the Academy. I’ve even been thinking that once I’m back on my feet, maybe you could drug me up again and shoot me back to Mars?”

Ell stared at him for a moment. “Wow. I’ve been thinking that I might not feel too bad about sending someone through a port again in an emergency. I have not been thinking of it as a general means of transportation!”

“Oh, come on!” Phil grinned at her. “Riding in a spaceship to Mars is dangerous!”

There was another knock on the door and a young man leaned in and focused on Phil, “Hello, I’m here to pick you up and take you down to the operating room?”

Ell breathed a sigh of relief, “Saved by the bell!”

Phil’s nurse came in as well and she and the young man bustled around disconnecting Phil’s bed so he could be wheeled down to the operating room. Once they had him ready and were starting out into the hall, the young man glanced around and said, “If you family members want to tag along I can show you where the waiting room is.”

Ell said, “I’m just a friend. Can I wait with his parents?”

The young man looked at her fully for the first time and stopped cold in his tracks. “D-Dr. Donsaii! I-I’m sorry I didn’t, didn’t look at you before. I didn’t… recognize you.”

“That’s okay,” Ell said, “I like being incognito.”

“B-but, you’ve always been my hero,” he looked a little cross eyed, “heroine? I’ve always, always wanted to meet you!”

“Okay,” Ell winked at him, “I’ll tell you what. After we get Phil safely delivered to the operating room, I’ll sign you an autograph. How’s that sound?”

“Oh!” The young man looked at the bed he was supposed to be moving as if surprised to find it there. He started towing it out of the room again, “Oh! Yes ma’am.” He gave an abashed smile, “I’ll get my work done first. Yes ma’am. Then, I would absolutely love it if you would give me an autograph. Maybe I can get someone to take a vid clip of us together and send it to me.”

As she watched all of this, Phil’s mother had gone from being amazed that Ell Donsaii was going to sit with them during their son’s surgery, to being pleasantly surprised at how kind she was to the star struck young man.

Later, as they sat quietly in the waiting room, the young woman obviously got a lot of work done. She murmured almost constantly to her AI as she stared off into a space only she could see in her contacts. Nonetheless, when several young people in the waiting room recognized her and came over to pay their respects, Donsaii was unfailingly polite and gracious, despite the fact that it obviously interrupted the work she’d been doing.

When the surgeon came out to talk to them after Phil’s operation, he also appeared to be quite startled to recognize Donsaii. “Um, hello Ms., excuse me, Dr. Donsaii.” He said a little wide-eyed, “are you here for Mr. Zabrisk also?”

Donsaii nodded, “I’m just here to provide a little moral support.”

The surgeon told them that Phil’s surgery had gone well, but that he would be on crutches for 2 to 3 months and that it would be 6 to 12 months before he recovered as much as he was going to.

Ed asked, “Will he get back to normal?”

The surgeon shook his head slightly, “After a severe injury to a joint like this, it’s never completely back to normal, but we hope it’ll be back to pretty good. He’ll probably have at least some mild arthritic symptoms. Sometimes for reasons that aren’t completely clear, the hip rapidly goes on to severe arthritis and requires a joint replacement. As you know we don’t like to replace hips in young people. Hopefully that won’t be the case. Some patients do exceptionally well, playing sports and essentially doing everything they did before. Cross your fingers, say your prayers and we’ll all hope your son will be in that group.”

***

Dex looked curiously down at hies feet. The meteorite’s new bracelet sat around hies ankle with four watery clear spots on it, similar to the ones on the meteorites. Hie checked hies harness again. Hies most important tools and hies allotment of the smoked zornit as well as a few of the sausages were all securely fastened. Little Mata seemed to be solidly attached to Dex’s harness as well.

“Is everybody ready?” Dex asked the group behind himr on the ledge. Hie heard an affirmative chorus but wasn’t sure that everyone had answered. “Sound off,” hie said, another thing hie had learned from the meteorites. “One.”

“Two, three, four, five, six,” hie heard trailing off into the wings of the V on each side behind himr. Moments later the count came back to himr, “… four, three, two…”

“One,” hie said. “Okay,” hie bellowed, “your lights are gonna come on now.” As hie spoke, the lights on hies own ankle bloomed, creating a large glow down around hies feet. As hie looked back to the sides hie could see the glow about the ankles of several of the dalins just behind himr on either limb of the V. “Okay, we’re taking off unless someone shouts out that you’re not ready?”

Hearing nothing, Dex spoke quietly to the meteorite standing in front of himr. With its typical squealing sound, it lifted into the air. Its lights came on and it drifted out and up away from himr. They had all practiced this a few times now and when it got to be a reasonable distance up and away from himr, Dex beat into the air behind it. Behind himr hie could hear the other dalins of this flight lifting into the air as well. “Sound off. One,” hie shouted. Hie felt like the rocket was drifting to hies left and hie slowly followed it in a big turn that hie knew would lead himr around to the south of the mountain and then off to the east.

Moments later the count came back to himr, reassuring himr that everything was okay with this particular flight. Hie was more worried about the flights that would be taking off behind them. Each of the six rockets were supposed to lead a flight of dalins with Syrdian at the point of the last flight. The fourth flight worried himr most. Malnot was leading it, and although Dex had come to like Malnot quite a bit, Malnot was not very assertive. In addition, Qes and Fantais had asked Malnot if they could be in hies group and hie had agreed. Although Qes and Fantais had not caused a great deal of trouble since Qes had broken hies arm and Dex had straightened it back out, hie worried that they would cause problems. Worse, if Malnot couldn’t handle it, Syrdian would come up on them and have to deal with the issue.

Since hie despised Qes, dealing with Qes’ petty problems was particularly difficult for Syrdian. Maybe I should have been in the last flight instead of the first?

Nothing for it now. Hie could only keep stroking steadily onward in this long, extra migration. Dex hoped the meteorites would be able to bring them in for a landing on reasonable ground before they were all too exhausted. None of them had been flying much recently and hie worried that many of the dalins might not be in good enough condition for migration length flights. The fact that hie was carrying Mata made it unlikely that Dex would fly off and leave weaker members behind. Hie just hoped not to be embarrassed by hies own lack of endurance.

After they had been flying for a dek or two, Dex was beginning to feel a little bit strained. Although hie was sure hie could push on until noon, hie called out to the rocket hie could hear squealing along in the gloomy murk up ahead of himrself. Just the noise the rockets made to fly had turned out to be easy enough to follow through the dust. Though they had offered to make a louder noise, it turned out to be unnecessary.

The meteorite responded, “Yes Dex?”

“If you can find a place to land sometime soon, I would like to check on everyone to be sure they’re okay.”

“Okay, we’ll start to descend in approximately twelve centideks,” the meteorite said. “We should be on the ground in about twenty-five. Will that be okay?”

“Yes,” he said but he wondered, how can the meteorite possibly know that there will be a clearing to land in twenty-five centideks from now? It’s a marvel that it can see at all. Even more amazing that it can see the ground below us to keep us from crashing into it! But it stretches all sense of the incredible to think that it can see a clearing that we will reach in another twenty-five centideks! I couldn’t see a clearing that far ahead, even if there wasn’t dust in the air!

Nonetheless, in what Dex estimated to be about 10 to 15 centideks, the meteorite said it was descending. Dex was able to begin just gliding behind it as the whistling sound from it diminished slightly and the meteorite dropped slowly downward in front of himr.

Hie passed the word back to the dalins behind himr that they were landing, “… in a meadow,” the meteorite had said.

In another10 to 15 centideks the rocket said, “You are about to land… You’re up three body lengths, two body lengths, one body length, time to land!” There was a pause, then the meteorite shouted, “Rossa, you’re going back up! Descend, descend, you’re at one body length, now land!”

Rossa was the sixth flyer at the right end of the V. If the meteorite hadn’t just proved that it could see a meadow twenty-five centideks of flight time away, Dex would have been astonished that it could tell what Rossa was doing back at the end of the V in this thick dust.

Dex walked from one end of the formation to the other checking on each of the dalins. Even though they had landed spread out like they flew, finding them in the murk wasn’t difficult because of the glowing lights on their ankles. They all drank some water from the bladders they carried and proclaimed themselves ready to fly onward.

Dex went to check in with the meteorite. As hie approached, it asked, “Do you think it would be good for each of the other groups to stop here as well? The next group will need to start descending pretty soon if they’re going to land in this same meadow.”

At first, Dex felt startled once again by the fact that one meteorite seemed to know what another one was doing, no matter how far away it was. But hie had seen this before and they were always correct about what another meteorite was doing. “Yes, I do think that would be a good idea if each of the groups landed here to make sure no one has gotten too tired or is having a problem with their harness. Also, as we fly, if you could keep an eye out for a lake or stream where we could fill our water bladders, that would be very helpful.”

The meteorite said, “We will come to a meadow with a large stream going through it in a little more than two deks. Will that be soon enough?”

“That will be fine,” Dex said, wondering once again how it could know such a thing. “We’re ready to take off if you are.”

As they counted off in preparation for lifting off again, Dex thought about how hie himrself knew approximately where streams were on the Yetany’s usual migration route south. But the meteorite that they were following had never left the cave area. It couldn’t have flown this eastward migration itself. Not that hie doubted the meteorites strange abilities any longer.

Instead hie wondered whether the Yetanys would have had any chance of surviving this disaster without the meteorites and their strange knowledge of things which Dex wouldn’t have thought they could possibly know…

Sure enough, after flying for what Dex would’ve estimated to be about two deks, the meteorite said they were about to descend to the stream. Because flying the point of the V where you weren’t riding in anyone else’s wing tip vortex was harder than the other positions, one of the other dalins had taken over the point from Dex for a while. However, the meteorite had spoken loudly enough that Dex could still hear it from the number two position. A few centideks later, Dex heard the slight decrease in pitch the meteorite made when it was descending. Moments later hie could tell that the meteorite was lower, then the glow from the ankle bracelet of the current leader began to descend. Dex began gliding down, minutely adjusting hies position to stay in the leader’s wingtip vortex.

They came in for another successful landing in a meadow. This time Dex landed a little too hard and nearly fell. When hie checked on hies flight, everyone in it said they were okay. Hie wondered whether anyone had been injured in the following flights. Approaching the meteorite, hie asked, “Where is the stream?”

“Up ahead about ten body lengths,” the meteorite replied. “We are worried that the water might have a lot of dust in it. This device,” Dex was close enough to see the big fin on the side of the meteorite turn fuzzy. Something fell out of it and Dex picked it up to study it. “That device,” the meteorite resumed, “is like your air intake device, but designed to clean water instead of air. If you pull it open, you can scoop dusty water up into it and clean water should come out the bottom.”

Dex led the other dalins up to the stream. Apparently Fagan immediately tried to drink, because Dex heard himr complaining, “This water’s muddy!”

“Don’t drink yet! Or, drink from your water bladders if you have some left. The meteorite has given me a device to clean the water with. Let me try it and see how well it works.” Dex looked at the new device the meteorite had given himr, puzzling about the instructions to “pull it open.”

The meteorite had moved itself up beside himr. Now it said, “It’s curled up like a leaf. Unroll it and you’ll see that at the big end it has two layers. Pull them apart.”

Dex did so and saw that it now formed a large bowl with a knob at the bottom.

The meteorite said, “Dip it in the stream so that the bowl fills with water. Clean water will come out the bottom.”

Dex dipped it and held it up. Sure enough, water began pouring out the bottom of it. However, in the dusty air, hie couldn’t tell whether it was actually clean. Tentatively, hie directed the stream into hies mouth. It tasted a little bitter but not dusty. Hie wondered whether hie was as sensitive to the taste of the dust as some of the others. “Fagan, come taste this water. Tell me what you think.”

The other dalins had crowded around Dex, waiting for clean water. Dex had to keep calling hies name so Fagan would know which direction to go as hie shuffled hies way through them. Dex re-dipped the water cleaner and held it up for Fagan to sample the stream coming out of the bottom of it. “It’s good!” hie said, sounding somewhat surprised. “Just a little bit bitter.”

Dex said, “Okay, let’s take turns filling our water bladders. Those of us who aren’t filling our bladders can eat and relax. After we’ve rested, we’ll try to fly farther yet today.”

Fagan quietly said, “I wish Syrdian was here. Maybe hie could catch us some fish in this stream.”

Just as quietly, Dex replied, “I’m afraid the muddy water has probably killed the fish.” Wistfully, hie said, “I hope the fish are healthy where we’re going…”

***

Warren lay in bed working on the mind-numbingly boring job of selecting the location of his axons in his visual field. They had started by building a vertical line up from the axon he had chosen as the center of his field of view. He would use the trackball to search for the axon that gave him a spark of light exactly on top of the line the computer could generate for him based on the axons he had already identified.

Once he had developed a good central vertical line, he had started just to the right of center and built another vertical line right next to that one. Eventually they had established a small area in the center of his visual field where the axons were clearly and correctly located.

That done, he became able to see things quite well as long as he looked directly at them. Now he was simply pushing the area of his good vision outward. A line would appear in the established part of his visual field and he would roll a trackball until he lit an axon right at the tip of it. They took about five seconds each on average to identify.

He’d had his AI run the numbers. At that rate it would take nearly 1400 hours to locate a million axons. It would take him thirty-five weeks if he put in forty hours a week! Warren had bitched about this to Dr. Keller. Two days later, Keller had sent Warren’s AI an algorithm worked up by some programming genius named Kinrais. Apparently this guy had recognized some kind of pattern in the way the axons were arranged. Now, when a spark appeared it frequently was already in the right place! If it wasn’t, it was close and it didn’t take Warren nearly as long to light up the correct one.

At the rate he was working now, it would only take about twelve weeks which was still horribly long. However, Keller had called yesterday to say that this Kinrais guy had noticed that as time went along Warren’s brain might be rearranging the pattern it “saw” the axons in. In other words, his brain might be learning where the axons were currently arranged in his visual field. Kinrais had suggested that Warren might want to stop after a while and just see how well his brain did rearranging the rest of his vision on its own.

Warren had decided to finish out the current circle of axons he’d been working on recently. His central vision was already excellent. He wouldn’t mind waiting to see if his peripheral vision improved on its own given time, but the little triangle of blurred vision in his current circle of good vision bugged him. He wanted to get rid of it before he quit.

It would be good to get back to living life again instead of track-balling axons. Actually, living a lot better life than he had in the past now that he could see!

He wondered if he would ever meet Stell again. She was one thing he would really like to see—now that he could.

Chapter Eight

Nancy sat at the corner of the little playground there at the preschool. It was as far as she could get from the other kids. Her stomach hurt and she held onto it with both hands. Two mornings ago, when she’d sat down at her usual table in the classroom, Mark had scooted his chair away from hers. She and Mark had been assigned to sit next to one another since the summer session preschool started. While they hadn’t exactly been friends, they had gotten along okay. They had shared markers and paint and had helped one another like they were supposed to.

But Jimmy and Roger had been whispering terrible things about Nancy, saying that she was unclean and had cooties. Nancy had asked Mark why he had scooted his chair so far from her and he had shrugged and said, “Jimmy says you’ve got cooties. If I touch you, the other boys won’t play with me.”

Mark seemed to think that was a perfectly reasonable thing to say. He apparently thought that Nancy should sympathize with him for his plight in having to sit at her table. When her face had crumpled and she had begun to cry, he had said, “What’s your problem?”

The rumor of Nancy’s cooties had quickly spread and the other kids started avoiding her and trying not to touch her. At first it had only been the boys, but now even the girls were avoiding her.

She felt so lonely. But, she was putting on a brave face and trying to smile like her mother had advised her.

Ms. Miller had seemed to recognize what was going on. This morning she had had a talk with the class in general about how cruel it was to avoid another kid or imply they were unclean. She told them that such unkind behavior had been going on amongst children since the beginning of time. She hadn’t used Nancy’s name, but Nancy suspected that everyone knew who she was talking about.

It hadn’t affected the way the other children treated Nancy. At first, she had hoped that Ms. Miller’s little speech would turn things around for her. The kids all seemed to like Ms. Miller, however, their love for their teacher didn’t seem to extend to Nancy.

Nancy scuffed her shoe in the dirt, alternating between wondering what she had done to make everyone hate her and whether she could do anything to make them like her. Her mother’s advice to smile and be friendly hadn’t been getting her very far.

Two pairs of shoes appeared in her field of view. She looked up and saw Zage and Marvin. At first she recoiled away, expecting them to say something as cruel as the other kids had been saying. Then hope blossomed, maybe they didn’t know that she was to be shunned?

Zage said, “Have you heard that the teecees are migrating to a new place?”

Zage sat down next to her. Not just next to her, but close enough that he was touching her. He must not know about her cooties. Marvin sat next to him. Looking over at Zage, Nancy said, “They are?”

“Yeah, my AI’s sending yours a link so that you can watch the video. It’s kind of boring right now, they’re just flying along and the air is so full of dust that you can hardly see anything. But if you look at this next link, you can see where they landed next to a stream for a rest. The people at D5R sent them a filter that they used to clean the water in the stream so that they would be able to drink it.”

Nancy looked up at her HUD. “Wow! That’s awful, they can hardly see anything, huh?” Distantly she thought that being shunned wasn’t quite as bad as life could get.

“Yeah, but D5R found them a place pretty far to the east where the air’s much clearer. No other teecees live there, so hopefully they’ll be able to move into that area without too much trouble.”

Nancy thought about this for a moment. “What about other teecees that live near where the comet hit? Is D5R helping them move to the east also?

Zage sighed, “That’s a sad problem. D5R’s rockets have tried to visit a few of the tribes that they knew lived near the impact area. They didn’t have enough rockets on TC3 at first so they had to send more rockets out there through ports. By the time new rockets got there, the teecees in those other nearby locations were already dead, choked on the dust. They tried to visit some groups that were further away too. Those groups were still alive, but pretty sick. The rockets tried to give them air filters and goggles, but the teecees were frightened and mostly ran away. Even the ones who listened either couldn’t see or couldn’t understand the projected pictures of how to use the goggles in the dusty air.”

“So they’re only really helping one tribe?”

Zage nodded sadly.

They kept talking about the teecees until Ms. Miller called them in to class from their free play time.

Francine Miller eyed the little group of three children as they walked back into the classroom. The kids shunning Nancy was breaking Francine’s heart. She’d not only spoken to the entire class, but she’d had a special little sit-down with Jimmy and Roger who she thought were leading the hateful practice. She liked teaching preschool because kids usually weren’t this mean. This particular class was not only cruel, but surprisingly resistant to her attempts to change them. It reminded her of the ugly behavior she’d encountered in the much older children she had taught during her student teaching days.

Nancy proved to be a typical target for bullying by the other kids. Obese, with thin, poorly cut hair, her parents dressed her in odd clothing. Standing out amongst one’s peers at this age was always a bad idea unless you had a lot of charisma, something Nancy was lacking. Francine had considered talking to the child’s parents about a haircut and different clothing, but she suspected that just sending her to preschool was a financial stretch for them.

However, this Zage Kinrais kid, odd as he was himself, seemed particularly impervious to peer pressure. Regarding Nancy, or anything else for that matter. She’d seen him sitting with Nancy on the playground, close enough to touch, as if completely oblivious to the other kids shunning her.

For a moment she considered speaking to Zage and telling him how much she appreciated his befriending Nancy. And Marvin too for that matter, though she thought Marvin was just tagging along.

But it might backfire. Zage was the kind of kid who might be completely oblivious to Nancy’s low social status until Francine pointed it out to him.

She decided against saying anything.

***

Dex chewed on yet another piece of dried, smoked zornit as hie walked around talking to members of the tribe where they had camped in a large meadow for the night. Some were upbeat, finding the migration so far to be easier than they had expected. Some expressed their dismay at finding that they would have to wear their air filters and see-rocks all night long. They had not thought about the fact that the fog baskets wouldn’t clear the air in an open meadow like this.

Dex tried to bring their attention to the fact that the air already seemed to be a little clearer than it had been back at the mountain. “And the meteorites promise us that it will be much better at the place we’re going to,” hie reminded them.

As Dex made hies way through the murk towards the area where hies own family had camped, hie heard Qes voice. “This ‘migration’ is ridiculous. Going east! Who’s ever heard of something like that? I don’t know why we couldn’t just wait till the rain cleared the dust out of the air. Sometimes I think he’s only doing this because hie knows how much it makes my arm hurt to fly!”

Dex thought of ignoring it, but then turned and took a few steps towards Qes voice. When hie could faintly see Qes, hie said, “If you want to go back, Qes, I’m sure I could arrange for one of the meteorites to escort you back to the cave.”

Qes jerked around, as did Fantais and the two dalins sitting with them. “No, no,” Qes said in a conciliatory tone. “We’ll continue. We don’t want to live alone. We just don’t agree that this migration is needed.”

Dex looked at the other two young dalins. They both had embarrassed postures, though it was hard to see their expressions in the thick air. They had turned their faces away. Dex thought they’d turned so that it would make them hard to recognize. “OK,” hie said, “it’s your right to disagree. Or to leave…” Dex turned to go, then had a thought. Hie turned back, “Sorry to hear that your arm is hurting you Qes. Isn’t it getting any better?”

Qes looked back over hies shoulder again at Dex. “Yes, yes, it’s getting better. Slowly.”

“I’m glad…” Dex continued on hies way, hopefully leaving them to ponder the fact that hie was the one who had straightened Qes arm.

***

Phil moved his crutches ahead, gently set the foot of his injured leg down between them, then brought his good leg up through and past them. He felt astonished at how difficult this was. They told him it was because he had lost blood, and become deconditioned during his period on Mars compounded by the time in bed waiting to come back to earth and have his surgery. Still, for someone who had always found physical things incredibly easy, this seemed surprisingly difficult.

His therapist, a small slender woman named Terese had hold of a belt around his waist. He often wondered if she actually thought she’d be able to hold him up if he started to fall. Maybe she could slow his descent a little, but she would act more like an emergency chute than a real parachute.

Terese kept telling him that he was doing well. Phil didn’t know whether she was blowing smoke up his skirt, or she really thought his feeble progress was good.

A voice said, “Hey Zabrisk, you’re looking pretty puny. I thought you were supposed to be invincible, but here you are, sweat on your brow, pale in the face, weak in the knees…”

Phil looked up. Terese was always telling him that he should be looking up rather than down at his feet anyway. Ell stood there, languidly leaning against the wall, looking astonishingly good as always. She had on black jeans and a little T-shirt, looking casual, but as usual carrying it off better than anyone else ever even hoped to. “Hah, Ms. Endurance, come around to verbally abuse the halt, the lame and the sorely injured?”

Ell grinned at him, “You bet.” She winked, “I’ll bet I could take you in a mile run today.”

Terese spoke up, “Dr. Donsaii! Should I take Mister Zabrisk back to his room so you can talk to him?”

“Oh no! You just keep right on torturing him! I’m having more fun than you’d ever believe watching you do it.”

Phil sighed, “Every good man’s nightmare. Having two evil women ganging up on him, each bent on doing him sore harm.”

The two women laughed merrily.

Phil said, “I’ve been thinking that my rehab would be a lot easier on Mars?”

“Phil!” Ell said, sounding horrified, “I can’t believe you’re looking for an easy way out!”

“She’s right,” Teresa agreed, winking at Ell, “the best way to get your strength back is right here in full gravity.”

Phil shook his head morosely, “I would never have dreamed that sadists could be so pretty and innocent lookin’!”

***

Dex looked around. The air had cleared a great deal just during this day’s flight. Hie wondered whether it was only the distance they were putting between themselves and where the meteorite had struck, or if perhaps the air was clearing everywhere as time passed. Certainly the air was far from clean. The sky overhead, when they could see it through the clouds, had a bluish brown color. The clouds themselves seemed darker and thicker—kind of brown. The haze that obscured things in the distance had a brownish cast and hie certainly couldn’t see nearly as far as they usually could when cruising at migration altitude.

His back-eyes showed himr a world that was much browner yet, but of course the sharpness of hies back-vision was poor. Back-eyes were best at noticing things that were moving so they could warn of danger approaching. Dex turned to look back over hies shoulder with hies front-eyes, then quickly turned back to the front because the flow of air over hies body and wings was seriously disturbed by turning hies head back.

His front-eyes, however, had confirmed the impression hie had from hies back-eyes that an enormous cliff of dust clouds billowed up to the very top of the sky behind himr. Hie wondered if there really was a wall of clouds there. If so, it had just formed, because they had not exited such an abrupt wall while flying this way on the migration. On the other hand, perhaps it didn’t have such a sharp edge that hie would’ve noticed it while coming out of it, yet it might still look quite solid while looking back at it. Hie’d experienced this coming out of clouds which appeared to have a sharp edge from a distance, but didn’t seem to have a sharp edge when hie went in or out of them.

Well, hie didn’t understand it, but it seemed to have little bearing on hies current problems. Hie settled down to continue flying onward, wondering how much longer it would be until the meteorite would bring them down for another rest. Normally during migration, dalins flew for a half a day at a stretch which was more efficient than landing frequently because of the extra energy spent getting back up to cruising altitude. Usually the older members of the tribe knew where good stopping places with water and sometimes food were located along the migration route. Of course this time, they were flying a route no one had ever been on before. However, the meteorite seemed to be able to fulfill the role of an experienced adult, at least as far as knowing where water would be located. So far on this trip they had not found any food.

The pitch of the meteorites squealing sound dropped a little bit, and as Dex had learned to expect the meteorite began to lower itself out of the sky a little bit at a time. Once again, hie idly wondered how the meteorite stayed up in the air without flapping its wings. But then hie began to look ahead to see where they might be landing. This was the first time hie was able to see possible landing sites from the air and hie looked forward to setting down without the meteorite having to tell himr how much further it was until hie struck the ground.

In the distance ahead along hies glide path Dex could see several meadows. One was bordered by a stream and seemed to be directly in their path so hie suspected they were going to come down there. Normally, hie would be wondering if they might catch any burrowers or hoppers as they landed for tasty treats. In the past hie would not be wondering whether there might be any tubers or other edible plants, but this time hie felt so sick of the zornit meat that hie found himrself eagerly hoping that they might encounter some tasty vegetables, or maybe even some kind of sweet fruit.

Obviously, hie had not been the only one with such thoughts. As they glided in their V formation broke up. This time they didn’t have to land in the formation they flew in because they didn’t depend on the meteorite to tell them where the ground was. Excitedly the dalins of their formation swirled around as they got close to the meadow. Dalins began skimming over the meadow with a couple of them diving after small animals. Dex saw a moderately large patch of rinich, a leafy plant famous for having edible leaves, stems, and even a small edible root. They weren’t very tasty and Dex would normally have ignored them, but not today. Hie landed amongst them and commenced pulling up big handfuls of the plants. Hie had to make a brief flight to the stream to wash them. Not only to wash the soil out of the edible roots, but to wash the dust off the leaves and stems.

The stream wasn’t completely clear, but wasn’t muddy like the last stream they had stayed at either. Hie washed the rinich satisfactorily without having to filter water to do so. With more joy than hie had ever experienced while eating rinich, hie commenced crunching into it. Fagan and Rossa approached. Dex handed each of them an entire plant of hies own, delighted to see the smiles come over their faces as well.

Soon they were filtering water to fill their bladders, splashing around in the stream a little and getting ready to take off again. Two more flights had landed, also exploding outwards to search the meadow for something besides zornit meat to eat. Dex could see expressions of joy and hope on the faces of hies fellow tribesmen. This caused hies hearts to pump with such delight that hie wanted to stay and wait for the rest of the flights to land as well. Especially to see Syrdian would be a delight. Hie so wanted to see a smile on hies mate’s face once again!

“Okay, first flight, time to get on our way again.” Dex ignored the groans coming from the other twelve members of hies flight.

Rossa came up to himr, “Parent, why don’t we stay here? We can see again, and there is food. I’m tired of flying!”

Dex looked fondly at Rossa, then around the meadow and up into the sky. “It’s still dusty here,” hie said. “It’s much better than it is back home, I’ll admit, but back before the big meteorite hit we wouldn’t have been happy here at all. Try taking off your see-rocks, and lifting your intake device. You’ll see it isn’t good yet, just much better than it has been. Even that amazing rinich wouldn’t have been so great if we hadn’t done without for so long!”

Rossa frowned then reached up and lifted hies see-rocks off hies eyes. A moment later, hie blinked a few times rather vigorously and then dropped the see-rocks back into place. Hie grinned at Dex, “I see what you mean!” Hies eyes blinked involuntarily a few more times under the see-rocks.

Dex turned to the meteorite, “We don’t all have to lift off at exactly the same time now that we can see.” Hie looked around, then spoke loudly, “First flight, let’s take off.” hie suited words to actions by beating into the air himrself. With the squeal, the meteorite lifted off and shot out in front of himr, moving much faster than hie had ever seen it go before. Hie looked around and saw the other twelve members of the first flight lifting into the air and shaking themselves out into a V formation as they ascended.

Soon they were up to cruising altitude and continuing to make their way to the east. As Dex looked down hie realized that before the disaster, hie would’ve been quite worried about the appearance of the world beneath himr. The greens weren’t as green as they should be, hie suspected because dust was coating the leaves. There were patches of brown here and there, where some plants had died, sometimes in big swathes. And, most disturbing of all, everything just looked a little bit dim. Could the dust in the air above, even though not thick enough to be terribly noticeable, be blocking enough sunshine to make the plants sick?

Rinich, hie suddenly thought, it grows down lower on the mountain where it’s usually pretty hot. But that meadow with the rinich we just ate, it was cool! Could that also be because the dust is blocking the sunshine?

They flew on while Dex pondered the changes, visible and perhaps invisible, which were occurring in hies world.

That evening, as the tribe set up camp in yet another meadow, it rained! Although it was unpleasant to be caught out in the rain, the dalins were delighted as they saw the dust washing off the leaves. Like a delighted child, Dex turned hies mouth up towards the sky to catch raindrops. Then hie dropped it back down, a frown on hies face. The rain had a bitter taste to it. Worse than the faintly bitter taste of the filtered water from the streams. Never having heard of acid rain Dex had no idea what the bitter flavor meant, but like so many things recently, it worried himr…

***

Vanessa and Zage looked up at a knock on the door frame of the lab. Vanessa saw Zage’s handsome father standing there and for a moment her mind jumped to the disappointment she had felt when she found out that he was happily married. She looked down at Zage, “Well, any more questions? It looks like your dad’s ready to take you home.”

Zage frowned in concentration for a moment, then shook his head. Then he paused, held up a finger, and said “Do you guys have any experience making vaccines here?”

Vanessa shook her head, “That’s a pretty specialized field. Not one we have done anything with here in this lab.”

“Okay, thank you for all your help. Maybe I’ll see you again sometime.”

Vanessa felt some surprise. Of course dealing with this kid had just been one surprise after another, but she had expected that he would want to keep coming back and learning more. Now it sounded like he was saying goodbye. “Oh, okay. I’ll miss you and your precocious, confounding, disconcerting questions.”

As the kid got up and walked away with his dad she reflected that she would certainly miss the money his dad had been paying her for these little sessions.

In the car, as they headed for home, Shan asked, “So, it sounded like you were saying goodbye when we left there. Did you learn all you wanted to learn from Vanessa?”

Zage was staring off into the distance with a thoughtful expression on his face. He said, “Yeah, thanks for paying for all those micro arrays she ran for me. They were really helpful.”

“What did you learn?”

“Well, we assayed the bacteria in my gut, and it’s not very remarkable.” He turned to look at his dad, “Obese people like me often have very different bacteria in our intestines than non-obese people.”

A little irritated, Shan asked, “Who said you’re obese?”

“The numbers. I ran them on my weight, height, age etc. By most definitions I’m in the obese category.” He frowned, “In any case I do have more Firmicutes and fewer Bacteroides bacterial species growing in me which is pretty common in obese people. It might contribute to causation, but it’s a little difficult to be sure it’s not a result of me being fat. I’m also positive for a Bacteroides bacteriophage.” he glanced at his father, evidently assessing whether Shan would know what that meant, then continued, “A phage is a virus that kills bacteria, so it might be this phage that’s throwing off my Firmicutes-Bacteroides balance.” He sighed, “It’s all a lot more complex than I thought it was going to be when I started on this.”

“Um,” Shan said, feeling completely out of his depth, “are there any phages that kill the Firmi…?”

“Yeah, the subfamily of Spounavirinae phages all kill Firmicutes species. The problem is, there are a lot of different Firmicutes species. I might wipe out the wrong ones if I tried to use phages to balance myself back out. Besides, I also managed to slip in a micro assay for AD-36 and I’m positive for that as well. It seems to me like that’s my best target.”

“AD-36?” Shan said, a little nonplussed.

“Yeah Human Adenovirus 36. Remember? It’s quite prevalent in obese people, especially kids.” Zage sounded like he was talking to a not very bright kid when he continued, “I told you? It makes lab animals like mice, rats, chickens and monkeys obese. Kids with it average 30 to 50 pounds heavier than kids who don’t have it.”

Shan vaguely remembered this from a conversation a long time ago. “Is there, I don’t know, a treatment for it?”

“No!” Zage sounded a little disgusted by the fact. “I’m thinking that’s what I should work on next.”

As they got out of the car to go into the house, Shan wondered whether he’d be able to explain all of this to Ell’s satisfaction.

That evening, when he came down from putting Zage to bed Shan sat next to Ell and said, “You know, when I put the kid to bed, I get the feeling he’s only pretending to go to sleep. I’ll bet if we went up and checked on him we’d find him on his HUD.”

“No doubt about it,” Ell said without looking away from whatever she had up on her HUD. “I’ve had Allan check it and the kid stays on his HUD for a couple hours after we put him to bed.” She shrugged, “I was that way when I was a kid except I had to climb out of bed and go get my AI rather than just having it right there on my contact at all times.”

Shan chuckled, “Well, I’m not sure whether you’ll find this hard to believe or not but…” Shan went on to relate the conversation he’d had with Zage on their way back from the microbiology lab. “I’m not sure I got all of that right,” he said to Ell. “I don’t really understand all those microbiology terms he was throwing at me, but he sure seems to.” Shan snorted, “Lots of times I feel kind of dumb when the kid’s talking, but today he started talking to me like I was retarded or something when I didn’t remember some stuff he told me a year ago or so about the adenovirus.” He smirked at Ell, “It’s hell raising a genius!”

Ell had turned to look at Shan and by now she had a broad grin. “Is Daddy feeling a little overwhelmed by his gifted son?”

Shan grinned but nodded. “I need a little sympathy!”

“You do not! He’s good at biology, you’re good at math. Ryan told me today about your programming that set up the blind kid to identify the location of his axons. That was an amazing piece of work!”

Shan waved it away, “Just programming. Ryan could’ve done it himself if he’d just taken the time.”

“He could not! What you think of as ‘just programming’ is really hard for most people. You really have a genius for that stuff!”

“If I was a genius, I’d be having more luck with the gravitational theory I’ve been working on!”

“That’s what you’ve been working on?! When are you going to let me look at it?”

“I’m not! I want to be able to say I figured this one out by myself!”

Ell pushed Shan over on the couch and leapt on top of him. “Who would’ve thought that I’d marry a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal? Homo sapiens, you know, they work together. They don’t crawl off into corners and try to figure things out all by themselves!”

She was vigorously digging at his ribs with fingers and Shan had begun laughing uncontrollably. Between snorts of laughter, he choked out, “You know, you keep that up, you’re gonna, get tired. And, when you’re tired, I’m gonna, have my way, with you!”

***

Dex looked ahead as the flight began to coast into the long glide down to their final landing. Well, final landing if they agreed with the meteorite that this was a good place to live. The meteorite had told himr that the location was a little bit lower than where they lived at the cave, but at present, rather than being warmer, it was cooler because of the diminished sunlight.

The meteorite apparently had some kind of plan for bringing in more sunlight though Dex couldn’t imagine how that could be done. The meteorite was more worried that once it brought in more sunlight the area might be too warm but also it was worried about it currently being too cool. It said that there was a good-sized river for them to get water from and perhaps fish. It told Dex that another meteorite had explored the area and had seen zornits, hoppers, flyers and other common game in the area. The meteorite didn’t seem to be too sure about tubers and other vegetables.

Of course, there wasn’t a cave here like there was back home. The Yetany would have to build shelters like they did when they migrated south for the summer. At the location where they summered, they had some homes partially built out of rocks and each fall before they went north, they stored many supplies that they could use for building their homes the next spring. Here, they would be starting fresh on almost everything, but of course it would be far better than living under the enormous cloud of dust they could still see to the west. Even if the dust went away, all the plants and the game animals were dead back home. Dex knew it would be many years before they lived at their cave again.

Ahead, hie saw a huge meadow with a river along one side and forest on the other. The river ran along the side of a cliff for a while and hie could see where it had undercut the cliff somewhat. Hie swung out of formation and sailed along the undercut but quickly saw that the overhang wasn’t big enough to live under. Hie beat up into the air a little and sailed back along the cliff.

There was a large flat area there against the cliff! Hie turned and glided toward it, beating to a halt and landing. Hie looked around speculatively. It had the cliff on one side and the river on the other to protect them from land-based predators. A number of boulders that had fallen from the cliff were strewn across the flat. Many of them were big enough to build a shelter against.

A shadow slid across himr and Dex looked up to see hies child. “Fagan, call the others! This looks like a great place to build homes. Especially get Syrdian when hies flight comes in.” Fagan turned and winged away. Dex beat into the air and swung back around, determined to survey the flat and find the best location for hies and Syrdian’s home.

Chapter Nine

Phil checked the time, then spoke to his AI. “Connect me to Carol.”

In a moment, Carol’s voice came in his ear, “Hey Phil, how’s the invalid?”

“Doing better, wife o’ mine. They’re letting me out of the hospital!”

“Really?” Carol sounded concerned. “Who’s going to take care of you?”

“Hey, I’m a big boy you know! I can take care of myself.”

“You couldn’t cook for yourself even before you broke your leg! And even if you could cook, you wouldn’t be able to do it on crutches. You don’t have a hand free to carry stuff from one place to another around the kitchen.”

“I can order in, or for that matter, go out to dinner.”

“Laundry! You can’t do laundry on crutches either!”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got the same song and dance from my mother. She’s planning to stay with me for the first week, but I swear I don’t need her.”

“I’ll bet you do Bucko. And you’d better say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ too.”

“Women! You’re always ganging up on me…” He thought about telling her that Ell had been picking on him too but decided that telling Carol that Ell had been by to visit might not be the best idea he’d had.

“Well,” Carol said, “I’ve got some good news for you too.”

“You found a Martian!”

“Nope.”

“You’re pregnant and we’re having the first Martian!” Phil said, even though they were on a strict birth-control regimen to make sure they didn’t bring a baby into the universe in a high radiation environment like Mars.

“Nope, no such luck. This has to do with certain rocks someone found in the Valles Marineris.”

“The assays came back?!”

“Yep. You are now officially the discoverer of the ‘mother-lode’ of rare earth ore. Not only are we finding rare earths in higher concentrations than anywhere on earth, I still haven’t been able to find the ends of the deposit. It’s freaking enormous! Lots of neodymium!”

***

Francine Miller watched as the Kinrais kid stumped his way up to the front of the class for his little speech. She’d asked each of the children to tell about someone they admired and why. Many of the kids had spoken about their mothers, some about their fathers, a few about generic firemen or police officers. Several of the boys had admired sports stars and one of the girls picked Ell Donsaii.

Kinrais would be the last kid to present and Francine thought to herself that she was likely to be surprised by his choice. He usually did whatever the class called for, but a little bit better than any of the other kids. Sometimes he would startle her with a multisyllabic word that made her think he might be a lot smarter than he let on. For a while, she’d thought that his chubby physique and his bookish knowledge might lead the other kids, especially Jimmy Wright, to pick on him. But it hadn’t happened. Jimmy seemed to avoid him, but certainly didn’t harass him.

Little Zage turned to face the class, “I admire a girl… Not a grown-up woman, but a girl my age. A girl who is nice to everyone around her even though they are cruel to her.”

Francine swallowed. She immediately thought she knew where this was going and feared it could go somewhere terrible. She wondered if she should try to stop Zage. With a sense of awe, she realized he was looking each of the other children in the eye as he spoke.

He continued, “This girl smiles at each person, even while they’re saying mean things to her or about her. If they play keep away, she simply goes and does something else. When they tried to avoid touching her for fear of ‘cooties,’ she shrugs and lets them avoid her… without saying bad things about them or telling her teacher. She doesn’t even point out that there isn’t any such thing as cooties.”

Kinrais stopped to look around the room at the other kids again, then finished by saying simply, “I admire Nancy Jensen.”

Francine’s eyes welled with tears as Zage walked over to Nancy, pulled her up out of her chair, and gave her the kind of clumsy hug that little boys dispense.

A moment later little Marvin got up and gave Nancy a hug also. Then Mary and Diane got up out of their chairs! They approached Nancy, each gave her a hug and turned to look out at the rest of the classroom with the fierce eyes that socially dominant little girls can muster.

In a few more minutes almost everyone in the class had given Nancy a hug.

Francine had never seen anything quite like it. She had more expected Nancy’s low social standing to wear off on Zage than vice versa. Francine wondered what kind of force of personality Zage had that would let him do such a thing and be successful at it.

Why hadn’t she recognized whatever charisma he had at work here?

***

Dex coasted in to land at the shelter hie, Syrdian, and the children had been building. One of the meteorites stood there unmoving, a little ways in front of the doorway. Hie wondered if it had put itself there, or if one of the dalins had put it there? As hie stood in front of it pondering this question, it spoke to himr, “We need your help, or the help of another dalin.”

“Okay,” hie said, thinking that in general the meteorites helped the dalins rather than vice versa. “What do you need?”

“We would like to put up a device that will replace some of the missing sunlight. However, it needs to be anchored to the ground which is something that a meteorite cannot do.”

“How would I attach it to the ground?”

“Oh, you could attach it to a tree or a boulder. It doesn’t have to actually be attached to the ground itself. Just something that will keep it from flying away.” Suddenly the big fin on the meteorite turned translucent and an object fell out of it. “This is the device.”

Dex studied it. It had a coiled rope at one end. At the end of the rope was a large thick disc made of meteorite material, then another, much smaller disc that was made out of the clear watery substance that the meteorites emitted light through. Finally came a piece of floppy material. Dex picked up the rope.

The meteorite said, “We need you to tie that rope around a tree or boulder.”

Dex cocked hies head, “Can I tie it to this boulder that my house is built against?

“Yes, that would be fine.”

Dex picked up the rope with its attached devices and turned to look at the boulder. Several other homes had been built against this particular boulder, but theirs was built against a craggy area that had an overhang. Hie found a big snag on the rock face that hie could tie the rope around. Once done hie gave it a couple of hard tugs to make sure it was secure, then turned to the meteorite, “Does that look good to you?”

“Yes, it appears to be quite secure. The other end of it is about to get larger, please don’t let that worry you.”

Dex turned to look at the floppy gray material at the far end just as, with a hissing sound, it started to expand and enlarge. It reminded himr of a water bladder filling with water. However this kept getting bigger and bigger, becoming significantly larger than a water bladder. Astonishingly, even before it got very large it began lifting up into the air. Once it became fairly full, it was tugging itself vigorously towards the sky and had pulled the rope to point straight upward.

Dex stared at it. Another device that flew without flapping any wings! Suddenly the big bladder started to rise up into the sky! A fine shiny rope was coming out of the big disk.

The meteorite said, “Can you see the small rope that is coming out of the device at the end of the big rope?”

“Yes. It is very shiny. It’s beautiful!”

“We’ve been worried. Do you think there’s any danger a dalin might fly into it by accident and be injured?”

“I think it will be easy enough to see, but let me look at it from the air.” Dex beat into the air, circling around the shiny little rope. It truly was a thing of beauty the likes of which Dex had never seen before. Even when hie was fairly far away hie could still see it easily because of its sparkly surface. Hie circled back down to land by the meteorite. “No. It’s easy to see. No one will run into it by accident, but it’s so beautiful some may try to take it!”

“Oh… That’s a problem we hadn’t considered. Can you talk to the tribe about it? It would be very difficult to cut that little rope because it has a much smaller rope inside of it that is extremely strong. But a dalin might injure himrself trying to cut it.”

“Sure, I can talk to them. Dalin’s can be surprisingly foolish about pretty things though.” Hie tipped hies head up to look up towards the floating bladder at the end of the fine rope. To hies amazement, it had ascended so high into the sky that hie could barely see it. It looked like it was just below the clouds and hie thought that some days when the clouds were lower it might actually be inside of them. How could so much rope be inside of that big disk hie wondered?

As hie stared upwards hie noticed a glow appear at the bottom of the floating bladder. It gradually became brighter and brighter until it looked like a small sun up there in the sky.

Dex blinked away from it and looked out around the surrounding area. It looked like the ground was brightly lit starting a little ways away from himr, but not right where hie was standing. In fact as hie looked around, hie realized there was a little area that was dimmer all the way around where the rope was coming down from the sky. It was as if the little sun was shining down all around himr, but not right on himr. With a squeal, the meteorite lifted up and flew out into the brighter area. After a moment, Dex walked out away from the rope and into the bright area himrself.

Dex realized with amazement that the sunshine was quite a bit brighter out away from the rope. Hie could actually feel increased warmth coming from the new little sun. The real sun was shining down through the clouds and hie thought was actually providing more warmth than the little one, but because it wasn’t direct like the little sun below the clouds it didn’t seem to be as noticeable.

The little sun dimmed slightly. Dex had been feeling a little bit too warm, but the dimming made it feel just about right. Hie’d been worried because it seemed too cold in this area before. Maybe it would be about right now?

At D5R, Ell turned to Emma, “Using the video cameras as photoreceptors, Allan estimates that with the port at this duty cycle, the total incident light at the teecee’s new site has been boosted up to the same level as the light back at Goldie and Silver’s cave before the comet struck.”

Emma was studying her screen. “It’s a good thing graphene is resistant to heat. Even with your little trick, building a doughnut port around the tension cable so that the port isn’t shining high intensity sunlight right on the cable, all that sunlight is heating the air around the cable enough to make the cable pretty hot. Hot enough that I’m still worried about some young fool of a dalin flying into the beam up high and getting fried.”

“Yeah, I’m a little worried too. The AI we’ve got monitoring the beam should be pretty foolproof at turning it off if a dalin tries to fly into it at altitude.” Ell chewed her lip, “But I think I’ll ask Goldie to warn them to stay out of the beam up high though. That way, if one of them does manage to beat the AI and gets burned they’ll know he’s partly to blame. Do you think we ought to put up the rest of the lights now?”

Emma grinned at her, “Let’s wait till tomorrow. This is going well and Murphy hasn’t had time to put her hand in yet. If nothing terrible has happened by tomorrow that’ll be soon enough to start putting out some more of the skylights.”

Ell said musingly, “Do you think the tribe’s going to make it?”

Emma leaned back in her chair, put her hands behind her head and said, “Yeah. They are.”

Dex beat up into the air. Catching an updraft off the cliff to help gain even more altitude, hie looked out over the Yetany tribe’s new homeland.

The new little sun the meteorite had given them lit a surprisingly vast area around the houses the Yetany were building. Far off in the distance, hie could see that the world remained dim from the dust in the sky, but here, where the little sun’s light fell, the world looked bright. Hie would swear it even looked a little greener than it had, though hie couldn’t imagine that a few deks of sunlight would already be enough to improve the health of the plants.

Hie wondered whether the meteorites would give them more of the little suns so that they could improve the health of the plants even further away. As hie soared along hie saw the distinctive silvery wings of Syrdian sailing back towards their home camp. Hie suspected that the smaller wings accompanying himr were probably some of their children.

A feeling of bliss came over Dex. The kind of bliss you have when you’re in love, or have just survived an attack by a talor.

The kind of bliss that comes when dark despair has been lifted by a ray of hope.

***

Warren shuffled in to the concert hall with the rest of the crowd. His mother had bought him a ticket to this concert as soon as she had heard that Stell was playing in Asheville.

Warren hadn’t encountered Stell since that time when she had met him at the doctor’s office. Every time he went back to the doctor, he hoped that she might be there again, but she never had been. He wanted to tell her how happy he was to be able to see. And to thank her for putting him on the list to be the first patient treated.

He’d even avoided looking at any pictures of her, wanting to tell her, when he first saw her, that it was the first time he’d seen her.

However, as time had passed, Warren had begun to despair. Stell was busy, and famous, and probably had a boyfriend. He hoped that she might remember him if they did ever encounter one another, but he no longer felt sure that she would.

At first, when his mother had given him the concert ticket, Warren had told her that he didn’t want to go. He told her he didn’t want to see Stell until it could be special.

This was even though in his own mind he had already despaired of ever seeing her one-on-one again.

Even though he’d decided that she had already moved on.

His mother said in a choked voice, "Maybe… maybe you should think that it’s something special to see her at this concert. Don’t break your heart over her. She did something wonderful for you and she’s a really special person. You probably care a lot more about her than she does about you and you should accept that.”

Warren had been staring down at the table, stricken with his own disappointment. Hearing his mother’s voice breaking up as she spoke, he looked up at her. His always cheerful mother, the one who’d gotten him through the depths of his despair back when he was blind, had tears pouring down her cheeks. Warren found himself wondering how many times she’d been crying in the past and he hadn’t even known it because of his blindness.

“You should go,” she said. “Live your life. Stell might come back into it, but don’t let your life slide into tragedy just because she hasn’t.

As Warren continued on into the concert hall he was surprised to realize that his seat was down on the main floor. His mother didn’t have a lot of money, and he had expected to be sitting up in the back of the balcony on one side. In fact as he followed the seat numbers he realized that he would be sitting in the middle of the main floor. It certainly wasn’t right down front, but it was a great seat! He was just one seat over from the main aisle.

Warren settled in to his seat finding it strange to be at a concert without his mother. In the past, he’d always had to have someone lead him in and that had almost always been his mother who would then sit next to him through the concert. He knew people usually went to concerts with someone else and as he sat there by himself he could understand why. Despite being in the midst of a huge crowd he felt lonely.

He wondered about the empty seat between his and the aisle. At first he had assumed that it had been sold to another person that wanted a single ticket, but as it remained open closer and closer to the start of the concert he wondered if they had been unable to sell it.

The lights dimmed in the hall and Warren considered moving into the empty seat on the aisle where he’d be able to see just a little bit better. He decided to wait until the concert had started. This was a fortunate decision because at the last moment a girl strode up, sat down in the seat and tossed back the hood of her little sweatshirt. Up on the dark stage, a guitar started to pluck out the opening line of Forgiveness.

The girl was a pretty blonde. Warren wondered whether he’d have the courage to try to talk to her, but then she turned to him, grinned, and said, “I’ll bet you were about to steal my seat weren’t you?”

Stell?! The voice was right, but it couldn’t be Stell, she’d be up behind the stage getting ready to sing! A spotlight came up on the stage, but no one was there. The spotlight slid slowly down the main aisle to stop right beside Warren’s row. Then it slid over to light the girl sitting next to him!

She stood up pulled out a microphone and started to sing.

Stell!!

As she continued the first verse, Stell reached a hand out to Warren. He didn’t know what to do, but then she made a little wave evidencing her desire to have him stand up. Warren slowly stood, his heart pounding as he wondered what was going on. Stell reached out and took his hand pulling him out into the aisle with her.

She finished the first verse, but then began speaking as the guitar continued gently progressing through the chords. “I’d like to introduce y’all to my friend Warren Dawson.” She chuckled, “I’m sure most of you will remember that when I started singing I was blind. D5R gave me my sight back and it was during that effort that they invented the contacts with HUDs in them that many of you are wearing.” She started walking down the aisle towards the stage towing Warren along by his hand. “My handsome friend Warren here was blind too. But his blindness wasn’t a simple problem with the cornea and lens like mine was. He’d had his eyes removed for cancer! Now he’s D5R’s first patient who’s had his optic nerve hooked up to cameras to let him see again!”

Warren’s head whirled as she led him around to the stairs at the edge of the stage and then up onto it. They walked to the center of the stage and faced the audience. Stell continued, “But, I’ll tell you what. The most amazing thing isn’t that Warren is so handsome, and it isn’t that he’s a blind man who’s been given the power of sight. No, the most amazing thing… is that he can sing!”

Stell looked up at Warren and smiled. “Now Warren had no idea I was going to embarrass him in front of y’all. He didn’t know that I sent his mother a ticket so he could come to this concert. He didn’t know that she told me that he’d never even looked at a picture of me because he wanted the first time he saw my face to be in person.” Warren saw Stell’s eyes well with tears. Her voice broke, but she swallowed and then continued, “And he most certainly didn’t know I was going to drag him up onto the stage and ask him to sing. But I’ve heard him sing and he’s good, so I’m hoping you’ll give him a little welcome round of applause to encourage him to sing the choruses with me.”

Applause broke out and a man tapped Warren’s hand with a microphone. He took it, noticing that the guitarist had just about cycled the chord progression back to the beginning of the chorus.

Stell started to sing.

Warren cleared his throat, lifted the microphone and harmonized his rich baritone—like he had so many times before while listening to her sing that song.

There was a moment of stunned silence, then applause thundered over them…

***

Shan walked into the kitchen and found Ell eating her cereal. “Morning.”

Ell mumbled something in response, but Shan didn’t really understand it. He looked at her more closely. “Why the big frown?”

She looked up at him, “I think I told you that I was trying to measure distances in the fifth dimension and see how they correlated to the world we live in?”

“Uh huh,” Shan said reaching into the refrigerator for the milk.

Ell snorted, “Well it’s been incredibly frustrating. The distance ratio is either infinite, which I can’t believe, or it’s so big that millimeters there equate to hundreds of thousands of light-years here… Well, ‘there’ and ‘here’ aren’t accurate terms, but you know what I mean.”

Behind her, Shan dropped his bowl. It hit the floor, shattering into small pieces.

Ell snorted, “Ha, and I used to think you were well coordinated!” Shan thumped down into the chair next to hers. “Hey,” she asked, “you going to clean up that mess ‘fore somebody cuts their feet?

Shan held out a hand palm outward, “Wait…”

Ell looked at him. Though his eyes were pointed at the top of one of the cabinets, she could tell they were focused on infinity. She desperately wanted to give him some grief about his clumsiness, but forbore. After a minute he got up and, still staring off into space, made his way out of the kitchen and into the living room. More accurately, he staggered in there.

A bemused expression on her face, Ell got up and followed him. The big screen in the living room was lit up with some of his graphic mathematical displays. She remembered seeing the one in the upper left corner several times in the past and wondering what it represented “Shan?”

He put up a halting hand again, “Please… wait…”

Ell watched him. He spoke to his AI once, twice… a third time…” He sagged back on the couch like someone had suddenly deflated him. After a minute he roused like someone coming up from a deep sleep, looked around as if dazed, then focused his eyes on Ell.

A smile blossomed on his face.

“What?” Ell asked.

“What you just said! Millimeters, to a 100,000 light-years…”

“That’s not exactly what I said.”

“No,” Shan grinned, “but it’s close enough. What objects are in the range of 100,000 light-years across?”

“Galaxies.”

“Exactly. And it’s at galactic dimensions that gravity fades out a little faster than it should, leading to the galactic rotation paradox that had everyone postulating dark matter.” He grinned at her a moment, then stood up and threw his arms around her. “I’ve been trying to figure out why gravity fades for months… well, years now.” Shan pushed her back out to arm’s length and looked her in the eyes. “What if… what if gravity works through the fifth dimension? Could that be why it works over such enormous distances compared to the other forces? Is that why nothing can interfere with it? Is that why it only fades when you get up to galactic distances? His eyes turned to his screens, “tossing some rough fudge factors up there, so far it works!”

Ell turned to his screens and her eyes went glassy. A moment later she fell into the chair beside him like someone had cut her strings. Shan watched her anxiously.

After a minute she roused and turned her eyes to look at him. A smile broke out over her face, “I think that’s going to turn out to be a pretty big stroke of genius!”

Then she frowned, “You’ve still got to clean up that mess you made in the kitchen though…”

Epilogue

Pinehurst, North Carolina—the golf world is atwitter over the fact that Ell Donsaii has qualified to play at the U.S. Open.

Reactions are mixed, with some excited about the attention her celebrity is bringing the sport. Others are offended that a spot in the tournament has been offered to a woman when, as they point out, only a few women have ever played in it and none have done well. It should be recognized however, that while many call it the “Men’s” U.S. Open, it is actually titled the “U.S. Open” essentially a tournament to determine the best golfer, no matter their sex.

Dr. Donsaii has only recently established a handicap, however that handicap is a plus four and certainly made her a legitimate entry into the qualifying rounds. She shot a sixty-seven in her local qualifying round and a pair of sixty-sixes in the sectional qualifying stage.

Some expect her admittedly good game to collapse under the pressure of the actual tournament. They acknowledge that she has done well so far, but point out that many other golfers have had brief “in the zone” spurts where they played extremely well, however those spurts were unsustained.

The other camp points out that she has already beaten men in the Olympic sprints. Over the next few days, we’ll find out which group is correct.

“Okay Dale, here we are on Pinehurst #2, beginning our coverage of the U.S. Open. As everyone knows, the big story is the fact that Ell Donsaii, a well-known celebrity who is totally unknown in the world of golf has entered, qualified, and appeared here to play. The pundits are mixed, with some calling her qualification a ridiculous travesty and others waiting anxiously to see what the ‘world’s greatest athlete’ can do in our sport. Where do you fall on the spectrum?”

“Well, Nigel, I’m afraid I’m a bit of a doubter. Like other skeptics, I admit that she played surprisingly well in the qualification rounds and that she is certainly a good player. But many’s the amateur who’s strung together a few good rounds to qualify, but couldn’t sustain it when the pressure mounted.”

“But Dale, she built herself a +4 handicap! Surely that tells you that she’s not just a good player. She’s an excellent golfer! I’m not saying I think she’ll dominate this tournament, but one would certainly expect her to compete at a high level!”

“Yeah, yeah. We’ll see, won’t we? Personally, I doubt that the Donsaii aficionados are going to be cheering at the end of the day, much less at the end of the entire tournament.”

“Well we won’t have long to wait. As someone who went through local qualifying etcetera, she’s going to be teeing off in this second foursome that’s approaching the tee box now. Do you want to tell us about this first hole?”

“Sure. At 402 yards it’s a healthy par four. It’s defended by a couple of traps just short of the green and another one lies along the green’s left border. It isn’t considered to be a terribly difficult hole and we can expect quite a few birdies today by these tournament-quality players.”

“Well, what do you think? Is Ell Donsaii going to be one of those people who gets a birdie here today?”

“If she’s going to get a birdie, this would be the hole to do it. I’m more concerned that it will be her first bogey when reality comes home to roost.”

“Well, reality has certainly come home to roost for Jamie Hixson, the first player in that foursome, his drive tailed off to the left and wound up in that fairway bunker. It looks like Donsaii is next. She’s teeing up. Does she look nervous to you Dale?”

“Well I can’t tell if she’s nervous, but I’ll bet her heart’s going pitter patter Nigel. Look at this! She’s addressing the ball without even taking a practice swing! I heard she didn’t hit any balls on the range this morning either. That’s a pretty cavalier attitude. Here she goes…”

“Oh my God! Dale, she absolutely crushed that ball. It sounded like she fired a shotgun when she hit it! I wonder if she’s got some kind of strange club that to make that sound.”

Dale quietly said, “Our cameramen have lost the ball, but it appeared to have started down the center of the fairway.”

The producer had cut the video feed to show the two sports announcers while he waited for one of the cameramen to pick up the ball. Dale said, “Ho, apparently some joker in the gallery has thrown a ball out onto the…” Dale put a finger up to his ear and tilted his head as if listening, “No! Really?” He looked back and spoke solemnly to the camera. “Ladies and gentlemen, it appears that Ell Donsaii has just driven the green on this 402 yard par four.” The video feed cut to a camera focused on the green which showed a ball rolling to a halt approximately eight feet from the pin. “Some of the big hitting tour pros are well known to be able to hit it this far, but they don’t because they know accuracy is more important. I’ll admit, I never dreamed a woman could hit it this far, but, given that she did it, she had to have hit it with everything she has. Hitting it that hard was foolish and actually getting it on the green was very, very lucky.”

Nigel cleared his throat, “I don’t know Dale. What if she can do it routinely? That’s a pretty easy putt for an eagle!”

The End

Hope you liked the book!

If so, please give it a positive review on Amazon.

Try the next in the series, to be published someday.

Author’s Afterword

This is a comment on the “science” in this science fiction novel. I have always been partial to science fiction that posed a “what if” question. Not everything in the story has to be scientifically plausible, but you suspend your disbelief regarding one or two things that aren’t thought to be possible. Essentially you ask, “what if” something (such as faster than light travel) were possible, how might that change our world? Each of the Ell Donsaii stories asks at least one such question.

“Impact” asks what value besides exploration might come from an expedition to Mars?

It asks, “What might it actually be like if a one kilometer diameter comet or asteroid hit fairly close to you?” If you would like to explore this further you might look at the “Impact:earth!” website (http://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/) which has a calculator that will let you choose the size, speed and distance of your asteroid or comet impact. Then it will output a surprisingly large amount of information regarding the local effects such an impact will have.

It asks, “What if obesity really is a communicable disease ‘epidemic’?” If you google “obesity maps” of the world it looks like this epidemic started in North America. It isn’t necessarily a disease of the affluent, Mexico has recently taken the title for “number one” in obesity from the United States (though strangely some pacific islands are over 40% obese!). If you look at this “by county” map of the U.S. (http://www.maxmasnick.com/2011/11/15/obesity_by_county/) it looks like the epidemic started on the Mississippi-Alabama border. Certainly there is some significant evidence for the role of microorganisms in obesity. Check the Wikipedia entry for Human adenovirus-36 to learn about possible viral causes. You can read about Firmicutes/Bacterioides imbalance in the intestines of the obese at http://www.nature.com/ajgsup/journal/v1/n1/full/ajgsup20125a.html. Firmicutes species have enzymes that break down indigestible polysaccharides (fiber) in your gut, providing you with more calories from whatever food you do eat.

This story continues to explore the (to me) fascinating possibility that other life bearing worlds may have enormously different atmospheric pressures than Earth. In most science fiction, other living worlds are colder, or hotter, or heavier, or lighter, or have a (to us) unbreathable atmosphere due to a lack of oxygen or the presence of toxic gases. But, even if we had a breathable mix and a reasonable temperature, the pressure might be markedly different and make it impossible for us to live on those worlds. If we just look at the range of atmospheric pressures in the second, third and fourth planets of our own solar system we can see a huge range of variability (Mars = 0.6% of earth’s pressure; Venus = 90X earth’s pressure – neither pressure even close to livable for humans or other earth animals even if they had the right gas mix). But animals can live at high pressures, witness the depths of our oceans, so aliens might evolve to thrive at high pressures at least. Also consider the “dinosaur paradox” which is the fact that the dinosaurs were so massive (square-cube law) that walking would have been very difficult (Brachiosaurus), their heads were too high for them to be able to plump blood to their brains (Brachiosaurus), or that they were too massive to fly (Quetzalcoatlus, a pterodactyloid). One of my favorite SF authors Robert J. Sawyer addressed this paradox in a book (“End of an Era”) in which he imagined that aliens used gravity control to allow earth’s animals to evolve to such enormous sizes and still function. Without assuming alien intervention, there are a number of people who believe that they can explain the obvious fact that Brachiosaurus did walk and Quetzalcoatlus did fly, by positing that the atmosphere was much denser and/or had more oxygen in it during the Cretaceous. If you google “dinosaur paradox” you can find extensive arguments on this subject, but personally I think it highly likely that the atmosphere was indeed much denser back then.

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the editing and advice of Gail Gilman, Nora Dahners, Elene Trull, Allen Dietz, Hamilton Elliot, Kat Lind, and Abiola Streete each of whom significantly improved this story.

If you’d like another story while you’re waiting for the next Ell Donsaii story, you might try…

Telekinetic (a Hyllis family story #1)

“Telekinetic” is the first of a series of stories featuring the Hyllis family who tend to inherit telekinetic “talents.” The story is set after a plague induced apocalypse. The resulting collapse of civilization has reduced mankind back to iron and horsepower.

Tarc Hyllis’ mother (and his grandfather before her) could “feel” things with their talent. They became healers because they can feel inside their patients, which frequently lets them diagnose the underlying causes of an illness. Having made a diagnosis, unfortunately, there is often little they can do to treat the problem.

Tarc’s father can “push” objects with his mind, but because he can’t feel inside of anything, he doesn’t know where to exert force in order to help to treat his wife’s patients.

Tarc is just gaining the ability to do both of these things. The combination of these two powers will let him both diagnose a physical problem such as bleeding and then stop that bleeding by applying pressure inside the patient. This is a very exciting development for his mother, who too often has had to watch her patients die for lack of an effective treatment.

Then some strangers show up to scout the town where the Hyllises live. They plan and initiate a violent takeover. Could Tarc’s powers, weak as they are, play a role in resisting this invasion?