“I don’t want that either, baby, but we have to go,” Bravik said gently. “Look, every minute we’re here on Soluu Four, we get younger and we lose more of our past. Even now, I’m struggling to remember how all of this works…” He gestured to the bewildering array of equipment in front of him. “And if we stay so long that I completely forget how to pilot, well then—we’re gonna be screwed, all right?”
“I…I guess so.” Danni tried again to suppress a sob. “I guess we have no choice, do we?”
“I’m afraid not,” Bravik said gently. “The only thing we can do is try our best to hold on to the memories we made here. But for now, we have to go.”
And turning back to the instruments, he began the preflight sequence that started the engines. Smoothly, the shuttle lifted up and up into the dark sky of Soluu Four as they headed for a home that Danni barely remembered.
Forty-Four
Brav tried several times to contact the Mother Ship—Soluu Four was pretty far away, which meant some communications delay. Finally, on his fourth try, he raised them and asked for Commander Sylvan. But when the other male appeared on the viewscreen, he only looked at Brav blankly.
“I’m sorry—do I know you?” he asked politely. “I was told it was Commander Bravik calling, but you don’t look like him at all. Or at least, you look like you might be related to him. Are you a younger relative of his?”
“No, Commander—it’s me, Bravik,” Brav said. Now that they were out of Soluu Four’s atmosphere and past its magnetic field, he was beginning to feel a bit more like his old self.
“And it’s me—Danielle Adams,” Danielle put in, leaning over to be part of the conversation.
Sylvan stared at both of them.
“But…what has happened to the two of you? You both look like you took a drink from the fountain of youth! Bravik, my old friend, you look like you could be your own son!”
“It’s a long story,” Bravik told him. One that he hoped he would be able to remember. “Can the Mother Ship fold space for us so that we can get back?” he asked Sylvan.
Sylvan frowned.
“Unfortunately, we’re having a bit of difficulty right now—a routine maintenance check turned up some irregularities that need to be fixed before we can fold space again. However, if my star charts are right, there should be a stable wormhole not far from you that will bring you out just on the edge of Earth’s solar system. And from there it’s just a ‘hop, skip and a jump’ as the humans say, back to the Mother Ship.”
“That will be fine—we’ll take the wormhole,” Brav said, nodding. “We need to get out of the vicinity of Soluu Four as soon as possible.”
“Well, I’ll be interested to hear why when you get back to the Mother Ship,” Sylvan said, looking intensely curious. “I’ll transmit those star charts to you right now. Just stand by for a moment—you know how these long distances affect communication.”
“Standing by,” Brav told him. “And we’ll be home in time for Last Meal.”
“Looking forward to hearing about your mission,” Sylvan said. “Stand by for transmission.”
The viewscreen went blank and a moment later, the star charts started downloading. It took Brav a moment, but piloting was coming back to him quickly, now that they were completely clear of the Mother Stone’s influence. As soon as he saw the wormhole that was their destination, he turned the ship and headed in that direction.
“Here we go, little girl,” he said, casting a sideways glance at Danielle. “Home in time for Last Meal.”
“I hope so,” she murmured but there was a troubled look on her lovely face that worried Bravik—worried him a hell of a lot.
Forty-Five
Just being away from Soluu Four seemed to be having an effect on Danni. And the farther they got away, the more the effect intensified.
The past two weeks began to seem more and more like a dream and her life aboard the Mother Ship began to seem realer. It was like a camera switching from a spot in the background to a spot in the foreground, she thought, as they flew out the other end of the wormhole and entered her home solar system. The camera couldn’t keep both spots in focus at once—it had to concentrate on one or the other and right now the camera of her mind’s eye—and her memory—was concentrating on bringing her former life into focus.
“Wait—I’m a doctor!” she exclaimed, as the familiar curve of the Earth came into view. “I went to medical school and after that, I decided to go back to school for a PhD in Medical Anthropology!”
She had completely forgotten that fact in the past several hours they spent near the Mother Stone. In fact, she had forgotten a lot of things about her life aboard the Mother Ship, she realized. Such as that she and Liv were good friends and how much she enjoyed working in the Med Center with the other woman.