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  “If something, how do I say…bad happened, will the aliens send another ship?” she asks with a French accent, prompting some shushes from the crowd.

  “We have no way of knowing right now if another ship is coming.”

  A member of the crowd jumps in. “Are we in danger of losing more of the protective grid?” Before Carver can answer, there is a sudden barrage of questions.

  “I’ve heard it’s near collapse. Is that true?”

  “Have they abandoned us?”

  “The Protopods aren’t working. Is there another plan for growing food?”

  Carver’s Irish strongman puts his hands up for attention. “One at a time.”

  “No, that’s not true,” Carver answers, falling behind, “I don’t know…”

  The man with a notepad pushes his way into the room and begins putting questions and answers on paper.

  Ailee waves a hand. “Governor? Governor Carver?”

  McKenna, trying to get control, has little success. “Everyone, quiet! There will be order.” A slight hush comes over the group.

  “Governor… is this the end of us?”

  Carver takes a deep breath before answering, “Ailee, I have great faith that your friend Chloe and the rest will return safely with our anti-matter cells and more food.”

  The gathering erupts.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Under stormy electric clouds filled with floating jellyfish creatures, Sephora rests powerless on a bed of downed trees.

  A thin layer of smoke fills the poorly lit flight deck. Jane attends to Tivis, who sits upright with a bandaged forehead. Chloe and Nix huddle near Gordon, who presses button after button, hoping for some sign of life from his ship. “Nix, Tivis, get in back,” he orders. “We’ll re-fire the engines directly.”

  “I’m through taking orders from you.” Tivis stands up, holding his head, unsteady and in obvious pain. Both men stand face-to-face inches apart.

  “For the team, yeah?”

  “You better get us out of this, Gordon, or you’ll be the first to asphyxiate.”

  “Come on, big boy.”

  “No, stop this,” Jane says. Nix and Chloe back up.

  Tivis clenches both fists and then wavers and falls backwards. Gordon attempts to catch him, but he’s not fast enough. The injured black man collapses. Jane springs to his aid.

  “Toffee-nosed git.” Gordon sighs. “Fix him, Jane. Then join us in back.”

  Soon after, Gordon, Nix, Chloe, and Michael, the supply ship’s translator, are in Sephora’s engine room. It’s a snug compartment dominated by the anti-matter engine, which runs lengthwise across its center. Hand-held lights have been strategically placed all around.

  Nix is trying to help, but mostly he’s frustrated. “Hey, I don’t know anything about this. I’m only here to lift the heavy stuff.”

  Gordon grabs the young man by both shoulders. “Then look, Nix, I need you to go outside, see if you can find wherever it is that signal’s comin’ from. We should be right on top of it.”

  Chloe quickly inserts herself between the two men. “What? No, Nix, don’t.”

  “Nix, you with me?” Gordon continues.

  “Yeah,” Nix replies.

  “Take a weapon. But you see slates or Earl’s crew, you leg it back here.”

  “Okay.”

  “Don’t engage ‘em.”

  “Right, okay.”

  “That’s crazy, Gordon,” the young woman protests. “Don’t do it, Nix—it’s crazy.” Nix wraps Chloe up in his arms and kisses her. Gordon, about to say more, decides instead to give the two a moment alone and disappears into Sephora’s midsection.

  “Don’t do it,” she says between long lip-locks. “Don’t go.”

  “I love you. You know that.”

  “Nix, I…”

  “You love him, I know.”

  She sighs. “Nix, it’s just that…”

  “Doubt this atmosphere’s breathable, so don’t try,” Gordon says, having returned quickly with a helmet and a gun.

  “No, I won’t.” Nix nods, clinging to Chloe tightly.

  “Be sure the first hatch is sealed before opening two.”

  “I know. I know that.”

  Nix takes hold of the helmet to put it on, but Chloe stops him. “It’s just a word I don’t throw around, you know. When I say it, I’ll mean it.” She initiates a kiss this time. “Okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  Gordon is somewhat amused as the two enjoy another long, much more passionate smooch.

  “Be very careful,” Chloe tells him before another kiss.

  “Oh, come on.” Gordon breaks them up.

  “Shouldn’t we just get the ship running and get out of here?”

  “There’s no turning back now, love. Look, Nix, watch every step, yeah?”

  “I will.” Nix makes a few final adjustments to his suit before taking a long last look at Chloe. “I mean it,” he says to her before he fastens his helmet and saunters out.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Several meters from the alien bunker, Lilith rests with her engines off.

  Deep inside the alien-engineered hillside, Earl is alone in a smooth-surfaced, massive room with workstations at its center and a balcony of additional stations one level above. Several flat-screen monitors, suspended from the ceiling, are displaying alien worlds and star fields. One screen cycles through grim images of Earth—emaciated people, familiar cities in ruin, men with guns, and still more men with guns. It has Earl’s full attention. He was wrong about the Greys, so very wrong. They weren’t the enemy, after all. How many hours had he watched of humanity’s inhumanity? He’d lost track, but it was enough.

  “What is all this?” Frey asks, suddenly behind Earl. “Do you have access?”

  Earl turns the monitors off. “No. It was nothing.”

  “It looked like Earth.”

  “Just cycles.”

  “Cycles?”

  Not even Earl is sure what he meant by that. His head is spinning. He decides to go with it anyway. “Life is all about cycles. Winter turns to spring, then it’s summer. But winter always comes back. The darkness always returns.”

  Frey chuckles. “Not on Gaea. Just one long, endless summer. I used to like summer.”

  “Sure,” Earl says, walking away.

  “Was that Earth, though?”

  Earl leaves Frey staring blankly at the empty screens.

  Chapter Twenty

  Sephora’s emergency batteries are almost out of juice. With only the hand-held flashlights, Gordon, Chloe, Jane, and the translator work to get her engines spinning again.

  “Tell me about Amon Earl?” Michael asks from the darkness.

  “Earl of the flies,” Gordon answers from across the room. “Jane?”

  “I’d rather not.”

  “Bloody Back-to-Earthers, yeah?” Gordon says, earning him a snarky look from Jane. “Chloe used to co-pilot his ship.”

  Chloe takes a deep breath, not in the mood to be talkative. She tucks that swoop of hair back. “Yes, I did. So?”

  “So, you do the honors?”

  She sighs. “‘Politics is just war at a snail’s pace,’ he’d always say. So one afternoon he tried to speed things up…”

  ***

  Four months earlier…

  A large, tense crowd has gathered around Center Saucer.

  Inside Carver’s office, McKenna is ready to defend the city’s leader. “They’re coming in. Hold ‘em,” he directs his shabby police force.

  A determined mob of ten, including Earl, Frey, Tivis, and Jane, burst into the room and a hand-to-hand brawl ensues. Several combatants end up on the floor still slugging it out. There's a surge by the invaders just inches from Carver and McKenna who is finally forced into the fight.

  Earl breaks through, wraps an arm around Carver, and holds a hand-made knife to the Governor’s throat. “It’s over.” After a few late punches, he has everyone’s attention. “Clear the room. Except you, M
cKenna. Stay.”

  Frey, Tivis, and other members of Earl’s motley band begin herding Carver’s defenders outside. Small scuffles break out, as they don’t leave easily.

  “Everyone, just do as he asks,” the Governor says, having a difficult time getting words out.

  Earl’s knife draws a little blood. “Your governorship ends today.”

  “That’s not a certainty.”

  “No, certainty would be this blade across your throat.”

  McKenna takes a step toward the men, but Frey, holding his own hand-fashioned weapon, gives the Irish strongman pause.

  “We can work out our differences in a civil way,” Carver chokes out.

  “You mean more talk? More politics? It’s time for action.”

  Out a window, both men hear the struggle for control enveloping Saucer City.

  “We’re taking the next supply ship, and taking it home,” Earl says.

  “This is home.”

  “Earth is home.”

  “Earth is a cinder.” Carver wrestles free just as his supporters storm back into the office. Punches are thrown, and soon it’s total mayhem. A rock strikes Earl above his right eye, and he wavers, but Tivis and Jane grasp the bloodied man. Together they claw their way out.

  ***

  Lilith and Sephora are parked on a small hill overlooking the city. Gordon, who is rarely out of his space suit, is wearing jeans and a T-shirt and tinkering with some components on the ship’s hull. He’s interrupted by the commotion below as Chloe exits Lilith.

  “What’s going on?” the young woman asks.

  “Dunno, love. Politics. Never gets any less ghastly. Carver and Earl must be at each other again.”

  “Maybe that’s why he told me to stay here,” she says, and puts a hand up to block the sun's glare. “I think they’re coming this way.”

  Gordon stops fussing with Sephora. Soon, Earl, Frey, Tivis, Marshall, Wray, and Naledri scurry up the hill. Chloe steps back as a bloodied Earl nears.

  “The ship ready, Chloe?” he yells.

  “Yes. What’s happening? You’re hurt. Let me help you.”

  “No, we’re going. We’re leaving now.”

  “What the hell?” Gordon says just as all but Earl, Tivis, and Frey stagger into Lilith.

  “Come on. Get in, Chloe,” Earl demands.

  “No, wait. What are you doing? You can’t leave—these people need you.”

  Gordon jumps in, “You can’t take that ship. Our continued survival depends on it.”

  “We’re going home,” Earl continues. “Chloe, come on.”

  “You’ll never make it in that.”

  “I’ll find a bigger ship. Chloe, get in.” He grabs her, but she pulls away.

  “No, wait,” Chloe pleads.

  A mob is approaching from the city.

  Gordon punches Earl in the mouth, and Chloe screams. Earl falls, and Tivis steps forward to defend him. With a return blow to the face, he knocks Gordon off balance, but the tough Brit comes back swinging. Tivis goes down, clutching his ribcage and gasping for air.

  During the commotion, Frey helps an injured Earl into Lilith. The ship’s main hatch closes, and her engines ignite with a pulsing, low roar. Tivis and Gordon, covered in Gaea’s rusty sand, stop struggling as the sleek alien ship lifts off and rockets skyward. Seconds later, a swarm of people descend on the site. Some shout, “Take us with you.”

  ***

  Back to the present…

  Chloe finishes her story with, “Hate him or love him, he gave us all hope. Hope of going home. Even though most of us agree it isn’t there.”

  ***

  From Sephora’s flight deck, Tivis listens to their conversation through the ship’s internal communication system. The sound of it reminds him of an old hand-held transistor radio he had as a child.

  “That he didn’t come back,” Chloe goes on, “guess I wanted to believe he’d found his way there.”

  “I assumed the bloody nutters were dead,” Gordon adds.

  Tivis perks up when his girlfriend joins in, “And the rest of us ‘bloody Back-to-Earthers’ were forced out of Saucer City—living in the dead trees, living off your leftovers.”

  “We all want you to come back, Jane,” Chloe tells her.

  “Sure,” Jane and Tivis say at the same time. He mutes the conversation and sits back in the pilot’s chair. “Just keep working.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Nix sprints through surreal-looking vegetation on his way back to Sephora and trips, hitting the ground hard.

  “Man, come on. Calm down,” he tells himself, getting up and brushing dirt away. Something spooked him, but what it was exactly, he didn’t know—just this situation, this planet maybe, alien and yet strangely familiar at the same time.

  It’s hard to see what’s underfoot through a thick mist, and that is unnerving as well. After a deep breath, Nix continues more cautiously.

  In her engine room, Sephora’s drive system is spinning, whirling, and whining, though not to Gordon’s satisfaction. “I’m at a loss,” the captain tells his ship.

  The engine room hatch opens, and Nix rushes in. The young man has his helmet off and is trying to catch a breath.

  “What’d you find?” Gordon asks.

  “Lilith and a—a door, I guess—into the hillside,” Nix reports, “and they’re not far.”

  “Really?” Chloe asks, surprised.

  “Well, I didn’t get too close.”

  Gordon steps to a nearby communication panel. “T? Feeling better, yeah?”

  “No,” is the transistor radio-sounding response.

  “Get back here anyway. Nix and I’ll go after Earl.”

  “Our heroes.”

  “Jane, you okay?” Gordon asks.

  She hesitates. “I suppose.”

  “Chloe’s right, you know. Everyone’s eager to put all that behind us.”

  Jane concentrates on a component of the anti-matter drive. Chloe’s ship manual is open next to her. Like Earl and all of the Back-to-Earthers, she’s homesick. Childhood was tough for Feng, her real name. Having scraped together all they had, her mom and dad shipped her to distant relatives in Seattle, Washington, with hopes that she and her brother would escape the abject poverty of their small village in southern China. The move was traumatic at first, but she grew to love it and wanted nothing more than to go back—to see her brother and her friends again, to make one of her daily walks along Elliot Bay and through Myrtle Edwards Park where, if she were lucky, a big ship would be unloading its cargo of grain. There wasn’t anything quite like that sweet smell.

  “Let’s go,” Gordon tells Nix.

  “I want to come with you,” Chloe says, blocking their way out.

  “No, stay and help piece this boat back together.”

  “It’s not safe,” Nix adds.

  “How is it any safer here?” she asks. While neither man could bear to put her in danger, she was right. It probably wasn’t any safer to stay on the ship, especially in its present condition.

  On Sephora’s flight deck, Tivis eavesdrops again and remarks to himself, “Fools.” He could fly the ship alone.

  Minutes later, Gordon, Chloe, and Nix, in full suits, venture into the alien forest with only the sky’s electricity to light their way. The dense mist curls and swirls around their feet.

  Gordon and Nix carry weapons.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Earl sits alone on a narrow suspension bridge in the center of a cavern several kilometers below the planet’s surface. If the man didn’t already know what lined the walls on either side, it would be impossible for him to see in such dim light. He runs his fingers through his hair like a comb and gingerly knocks the back of his head against a railing. A mug that had been full of his last ration of cider, the powerful concoction made from fermented alien fruit, is tipped over beside him.

  He sings to himself, “Trees swaying in the summer breeze, showin’ off their silver leaves, as we walked by.” Ev
en if he were not inebriated, the lyrics would be hard for him to recall. It’d been too long. Music is one of Earl’s great joys, and now it is all gone. Sure, there are musicians on New Earth, and they had managed to handcraft various instruments, but it just isn’t the same. “Soft kisses on a summer day,” he’s remembering more of the classic Chad and Jeremy tune, “laughin’ all our cares away, just you and I.” Then it escapes him. “Damn it.”

  He begins again, “Laughin’ all our cares away, just you and I…”

  After an angry sigh, he hits the railing hard with a clenched fist. “Just you and I. Anyone, anyone remember how it goes?”

  Earl punches the railing again, injuring a hand. Suddenly he’s sobbing and then yelling into the darkness, “You’re all useless, you know that! Useless!”

  Catching his breath, the man is in an instant calm again. “Except to make war on each other.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Gordon, Chloe, and Nix trudge along through thick, overgrown vegetation. As far as any of them can tell, they might actually be walking atop plants and tree roots, not ground. The sky is a raging mix of electricity and glowing jellyfish creatures.

  Gordon’s headset clicks on, “You’re sure we’re going the right direction?”

  “I’m sure,” Nix begins to comfort the others. “Although…” He pauses before they enter a clearing one hundred meters in diameter. “I don’t remember this.”

  “Great,” Chloe blurts out, attempting to free her left foot from two slippery vines. Not far into this clearing, there’s a change in the ground’s consistency. It’s squishy like waterlogged carpet. “Eww,” Chloe grimaces.

  Nix stops short. “Whoa, is the ground moving?”

  A small tremble turns violent in a hurry. All three lose their balance and tumble. Then the ground, to their surprise, begins to rise and float, glowing a familiar orange and pink. They’re on top of a jelly creature.