Pete clung to the crawl handles on the skin of his spaceship and hoped he’d catch a breath before reaching the upper atmosphere. He’d looped his pilot’s harness straps hastily through a handle and clipped them together, taking most of the strain during acceleration, but he was already regretting his recklessness.
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Next up was the Aleuthian. It stood at the front, fidgeting with its hair and clothes with three of its rubbery appendages.
From the seat next to mine, Nimthron yelled, “Hurry it up already. Some of us don’t have three hundred years.”
Nimthron turned to me. “That’s only if it’s female, of course. Males have significantly shorter lives. But it’s nearly impossible to tell.”
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CAL! Get me out of here!” Walden screamed into his comlink.
The whine of blasters sent him scurrying around trees and jumping branches as he bounded through the woods where he’d landed that morning. At least CAL had the foresight to scan the local channels and had seen the proclamation. How the Lothean government knew he was here remained a mystery, unless his contact had snitched on him. After all, the bounty on Terrans was enough to make any poor sod give up his own grandmother.
“The citizens of New Earth must be expecting someone to appear from the ancient depths of space.” I didn’t know if I was trying to reassure myself or my assistant. “After all, the cradle of life is littered with functioning spaceships.”
The tractor beam continued to draw us in.
“They’ll welcome us, surely.”
I stared at the looming sphere of Earl Grey dominating The Seeker’s viewport. Not Earl Grey as in the tea—Earl Grey the planet. Some doofus had the nerve to name the planetary collection “The Tea System.” Of course when you hear the name, it sounds like “The T System,” which is way more categorical.
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Jacob nudged the Joint Venture’s harvesting controls, unable to hide his grin of triumph. “Fifteen. I win!”
“Cheater. Four of those were clustered together.” Seelia’s scowl didn’t hold, and her matching grin prompted a warm glow somewhere between his clavicle and navel. She sprang up from her control chair
2491.5.31
Ship status: green
Biodome status: green
Pods status: green
Current database scan: Botany and biochemistry
Estimated remaining time: 27,392,520 days to planetfall.
Kavis watched the volcanic moon move from the shadow of its parent planet—both unnamed. Not that it mattered. He cared only for the voice that emanated from the moon. A woman’s voice. Ghostly. He could hear it when the moon hid from the sun. Somehow the sun interfered with the signal.
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“For cryin’ out loud, Arnie! Will you quit snapping selfies?” Liz rolled her eyes. “We’ve been sent to explore and catalog planet 4X9, not pad our personal photo albums!”
“We’re the first humans to set foot here. I’m capturing an historic event. Oh look—ancient ruins!” Arnie struck a pose. “The first anthropologist to find ruins on an alien planet.”
My watch vibrated, the sudden brightness casting shadows across the bedroom ceiling. I sat up, blinking back sleep, forcing my eyes to focus on the tiny script flashing on the screen.
Evacuation assist on Telmar.
The coordinates faded into a jumble of letters and numbers, and I slapped the watch on my wrist with a grumble. Two hours of sleep. Two measly hours.
Not again. Gerald could not do this one more time.
He rubbed his eyes. Michael’s words glowed at him in angry orange from the vidscreen:
REPORT INADEQUATE. RANKS MUST NOT BE ABBREVIATED. REFERENCE TIMECORPS REG. 927.3. RESUBMIT.
Gerald pushed back from the console and floated across the capsule until he bounced lightly against the opposite wall.
I died three hundred and ninety-nine days ago.
The doctors told me that I didn’t really die. I just lost 46.6 percent of my human body. It felt like dying when they dragged my broken frame out of the rubble and inferno of the explosion and filled the empty spaces with wires and metal.
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