Zarmina

By John Simion

Zarmina ... a tidally-locked world discovered in 2010 and thought to lie within the circumstellar habitability zone of Gliese 581, a red dwarf star in the Libra constellation. A real world. Perhaps man's best hope for a new home. But what might life be like on such a world? Could man even survive there?

For decades no one knew. The discovery of the Branson-Musk star drive in 2068, though, finally gave scientists a chance to find out. As Earth continues to spiral into conflict and bloodshed, one hundred volunteers board the starship Turing, gambling that they can explore Zarmina and colonize it together in peace and freedom. They'll find that Zarmina is a hard place to survive, with a forbidding climate, dangerous flares, sickness, near starvation and dangerous local wildlife. They'll learn the hard way that one mistake could kill them all and that their starship – built on a budget -- doesn't necessarily have what they need. They know that no white knight will come to their rescue, but they're smart. They know they can handle it. As personalities clash, battle lines are drawn and the body count rises, though, the explorers will discover an unexpected and even greater threat to their survival.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Simion
• Release date: Apr 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9781310160233

John Simion

During John's 30 years as a military attorney, he developed a reputation as an accomplished writer of military legal briefs. His career and his own travels have taken him to some of the most exotic places in this world: the pyramids of Egypt, the Parthenon in Greece, the Colosseum of Rome, the Kremlin of Moscow, Machu Picchu in Peru, down the Rhine and even to the depths of the ocean. But John dreamed of traveling to an even more exotic place, a different world, but one he believed could exist. Unable to find science fiction capable of taking him to such a place, he set out to write a thinking man's sci-fi novel – a realistic novel of space colonization that takes place on a real world. "Zarmina" came first, but he followed it up with new stories in the same setting: "Battle for Zarmina" and now "Return to Zarmina." Each is a stand-alone story that deals with different subjects in creative ways you haven't seen a thousand times before. And now there's "Re-Life," the story of a couple in trouble who takes an enticing offer to re-live their lives in the multiverse. But there's a catch ...

Book preview

MAP OF ZARMINA

MAP OF LANDING ZONE

MAJOR CHARACTERS

USFS Turing:

Crew:

Colonel Kevin Johannsen, Commander

Lieutenant Colonel Kathleen Denton, First Officer (wife of Clevon Jackson)

Captain Ellen Zig Zgorowski, Science Officer

Captain Charles Chuck Wright, Engineering Officer

Senior Master Sergeant Gabriel Gabe Bautzen, Supply Officer

Master Sergeant Luke Branton

Master Sergeant Nick Emerson

Staff Sergeant Eric Miller

Colonists:

John B. Travis, colonist, lawyer-historian, soapmaker, and ironworker

Kay Travis, hair stylist, cook, and wife of John B. Travis

Allison Allie Travis, daughter of John & Kay Travis

Steve Gertz, PhD, Director of Science

Christie Johnson, M.D., ship’s doctor

Edward Williams, minister, confidante, and supporter of Colonel Johannsen

Steve Neumann, confidante and supporter of Colonel Johannsen

Janine Strahan, nurse

Augustus Augie Goldberg, biologist

Dr. Joyce Cameron, psychologist

Davide Dave Pitrello, farmer and heavy equipment operator

Jared and Monica Howard, farmers

Ricardo Martinez, farmer, and Rosa, his woman

Kenshen Kawaguchi and Hikaru Kawaguchi, entrepreneurs

Zach Carter, ironworker

Jacob and Emma Turnberry, farmers

USFS Gates

Colonel Annette Castillo, Commander

Major Sanele Barnett, First Officer (later reassigned to the Turing)

Master Sergeant Ernie McGinness, Supply Officer

Staff Sergeant Annette Meltzer (later reassigned to the Turing)

USFS Moehring

Colonel Albert Frazier, Commander

Lieutenant Colonel Julia Spinelli, First Officer

Captain Tricia McDonald

Captain Trevon Thomas

BACKGROUND

As a red dwarf star in the Libra constellation with a mass thought to be one-third that of Earth’s own sun, Gliese 581 was initially thought inconsequential – so much so that astronomers simply gave it a numerical designation instead of something more important and impressive like Polaris or Sirius. Gliese 581 gained prominence in the early 2000s, however, when scientists detected a solar system and theorized that it might have a circumstellar habitability zone, the area surrounding a star within which a planet might support liquid water and therefore life.

Proving exactly what was out there and what it all meant was difficult. Three planets were detected in orbit around Gliese 581 in 2005, followed by a fourth planet in 2009, using the radial velocity method – tiny Doppler shifts in the starlight as a planet’s gravity tugs on a star. Their existence was confirmed by study of planetary transits, which occur when the orbiting planet passes in front of the star and blocks a tiny fraction of its light. In 2010, a team led by Steve Vogt announced the existence of fifth and sixth planets based on analysis of gravitational data. It was impossible to confirm their existence by planetary transits, however, for the simple reason that they did not transit Gliese 581. Another team, using a different radial velocity spectrograph, claimed there were no such planets, arguing that the Vogt team had erroneously assumed the planets had circular orbits and that the results would be completely different if the planets had elliptical orbits – and of course, nobody knew what kind of orbits any of the planets had. The Vogt team tested and retested their data, however, and held firm to its conclusion.

The giant Webb space telescope in 2019 and its successor, the even larger Braun telescope launched in 2031, failed to resolve the dispute. Gliese 581 was simply too far away and the planets too small to draw definitive conclusions. The one thing all scientists agreed on, however, was that any confirmed planets in the Gliese 581 system might be within the star’s habitability zone. Which planets those might be remained mere academic speculation until Vogt unofficially named one of the disputed planets, Gliese 581 g, after his wife, whose name was Zarmina. Vogt and was quoted by the Mercury News as saying that the planet Zarmina may well be like Earth, where you could walk around comfortably and look out at the stars. Vogt pointed out, however, that Zarmina was tidally locked, saying, Fixated on its star, one side is always torrid and the other is frigid.

A frenzy of media attention followed Vogt’s announcement, speculating on what explorers might actually find on Zarmina, but the speculation faded as time passed. Gliese 581 was too far away and too weak to give solid data, and astronomy budgets fell in succeeding years as sea levels and warfare increased. By the late 2060s, however, the world had calmed down a bit and development of the Branson-Musk star drive finally offered the possibility of resolving the issue.

REPORT FROM ZARMINA

I’m transmitting this report from the bridge of the USFS Turing, the first manned ship to leave Earth’s solar system. My name is John Travis and before I left Earth, I was assigned to report on our mission. I’ll start by confirming that Zarmina does exist and it’s habitable. We quickly discovered, however, that habitable didn’t mean that life on Zarmina would be comfortable or easy. Just about everything that could go wrong did go wrong. The biggest threat to our survival, though, didn’t come from Zarmina. It was a threat no one saw coming.

I’m sending my report with a quantum entanglement device that they say can transmit this message faster than light, but how long will it take to cross the 20 light-years from Zarmina back to Earth? We’ve been here 2143 cycles of Zarmina time, which is about two years in Earth time, but given that our ship’s star drive got us here by folding space-time, I have no idea what year it is on Earth.

ESCAPE FROM GUIANA

I’d always dreamed of going to space, and my dreams finally came true, although not exactly the way I planned. When I was younger, I memorized every episode of The Galaxions and even watched all those old episodes of Star Wars and Star Trek. They took me to distant worlds I could only dream of, but traveling through interstellar space and coming to live on Zarmina really brought home to me how ridiculous sci-fi can be. People don’t walk around in a starship like they have Earth gravity. They don’t lie down in gleaming white and chrome containers and then wake up a minute later at the end of their voyage, all fresh and clean. Phasers don’t exist. And we have yet to encounter any giant ants or sexy green alien women in miniskirts.

For our 20-lightyear journey, the scientists came up with extended sleep for us. The idea was that we would slowly drift asleep, our heartbeat slowed to the point of just barely keeping us alive, our nutrition and hydration taken care of by tubes and wonder drugs to slow the aging process. Sounds like suspended animation, right? It’s not. The big difference is that we’d still age. Thanks to the Branson-Musk star drive, we’d travel from Earth to the Gliese 581 system in an instant, but it might still take several years to navigate from the edge of the system to one of the habitable planets. By the time they told us about aging from extended sleep, I was already in the program and it was too late to do anything about it. I figured aging a few years wasn’t too much of a price to pay for an adventure anyway.

Getting selected to fly on the Turing was the most exciting day of my life. The United Space Force (USF) was running the mission and had asked for volunteers for a deep-space mission. My wife, Kay, and I had applied as volunteers. We heard nothing for months, but when we got the call that we were selected, we immediately said yes. They didn’t give us time to change our minds. Within a day we were picked up and whisked away by gyrocopter to the USF’s launch site in Guiana. I’m not sure what I expected, but there was no departure speech, no ticker tape parade, no photos for the news media and not even enough time for a hold mail notice to the Post Office – not that it would have done much good anyway.

Guiana was incredibly remote, hot and humid – good training for Zarmina as it turned out. It rained every day; your clothes would be soaked with sweat in just a few minutes outside and everything was covered with mold. The launch site wasn’t much, just our dorms, some giant metal warehouse buildings and a very long runway. There were four USF shuttles next to the runway, each with the usual staircase, an elevator for loading cargo, generators like you see at airports and of course refueling equipment for the shuttles. Each of the birds was the latest design, dazzlingly silver in the bright Guiana light, crouched and ready to move to the runway. A few USF security policemen and a handful of private security troops lazed around the corners of the building, seeking shade and generally looking bored. Who could blame them? After years of fighting, the world was finally at peace.

We were quickly moved into one of the warehouses for training. They issued us three white jumpsuits and some underwear, toiletries and a bag to hold a few personal items. They said the USF would issue anything else significant that we’d need. We slept on cots in one of the dorms with our fellow colonists. Nobody knew anything and the few USF troops that guarded the compound either knew nothing themselves or were told not to talk to us.

Training began the next day. There was little introduction, we knew what we’d signed up for. About the only thing they told us was that there were four identical ships waiting for us in space: the Turing, the Gates, the Jobs, and the Moehring. Since we weren’t crew members, training was minimal. They had a mockup of a shuttle and the centrifugal ring on whichever ship we ended up on. Training consisted of boarding and escape procedures for the shuttle, transfers from the main body of the ship to the centrifugal ring, briefings on the USF crew, its ranks and procedures, and instruction on hygiene in space. They gave us every kind of medical test and vaccination known to mankind. Test and inject. Over and over. We knew we were about ready to leave when they gave us an entire day of laxatives to completely empty our bowels. We made so many trips to the bathroom – I mean latrine — that we nearly wore a hole in the floor.

We were only in training for three days. Whether training was finished or not, on the fourth day we were awakened before dawn by the sound of explosions and gunfire nearby. I was instantly awake but must have been in shock. I got out of bed but simply stood there for a minute, stunned. I could hear people screaming and yelling outside but at first it didn’t register on me. There was more gunfire and loud PINGS! on the metal walls of the dorm that must have been bullets. Seconds later, USF troops ran through the sleeping area, telling everyone to get dressed and meet at the east entrance. There was a loud explosion nearby and suddenly a huge hole appeared in the other side of the dorm. My ears were ringing and several of our colleagues nearest the hole were bloodied and on the ground. Seeing their motionless bodies must have brought me back to reality, because instinct took over from shock and I started to move. I wasn’t going to stand there and watch while we got shot or blown up. I took Kay’s arm and we ran for the opposite door, following the crowd.

Ahead were a line of shuttle buses. Clickety-snap, clickety-snap. I recognized the sound of railgun fire — I’d heard that sound too many times on the news. More gunfire. Closer. More loud PINGS! as bullet holes appeared on the side of the nearest shuttle bus. A USF security cop and three private security guys ran past us to the east. I wondered why they were running the same direction as us, then one of them went down, blood streaming from a jagged hole in his back. There was no time to stop and help him, even if he could have been helped. Kay and I kept running with the crowd, heading for the bus marked Turing 2. We stumbled inside the bus and almost immediately fell to the floor, because the driver panicked and hit the accelerator before we were seated. The bus swerved wildly as it started moving toward the runway. We could hear more gunfire and PING! PING! PING! as bullets hit the bus somewhere. People were screaming on the bus; I don’t know if they were shot or just scared. Two more USF troops in flight gear waited at the shuttle. Close gunfire again. One soldier waved us up the staircase while the other kneeled and fired his weapon. As we ran up the stairs and into the shuttle, I heard more clickety-snap, clickety-snap from the guards, then we were inside, frantically attaching all kinds of belts to hold us steady under massive acceleration. The sound of gunfire outside was quickly drowned out by the roar of the shuttle’s engines starting up. I had only a tiny window but I could see a line of advancing troops on the runway as the shuttle took off.

As the shuttle turned, I got a glimpse of the other three shuttles taking off behind us. Then I was blinded by a gigantic explosion and by the time my eyesight returned, I only saw two shuttles behind us, and they quickly disappeared as we climbed toward space. It seemed like the battle was behind us now and that our rendezvous with the Turing was going to be uneventful. Indeed, we could see the curvature of the Earth, one last look at the beauty of blue skies and white fluffy clouds. That was when the shuttle suddenly jerked left. The movement just about wrenched my neck, but I had just enough time to see a silver bloom and then an orange explosion off to my right. Chaff and a missile strike? An instant later a hypercraft passed right under us. It was traveling at incredible speed on a different vector, though, and disappeared so fast that I couldn’t even tell who it belonged to. Our shuttle kept climbing and a couple of minutes later the tug of gravity disappeared.

WAKING UP

After we reached space, the rest of the shuttle ride was uneventful. It took a few more minutes to reach the Turing but there was a babble of voices aboard. Everyone offered their opinion about what had happened and what was lost in the attack. Who were the attackers? Why would they attack us? Were they just terrorists or some other group out to capture the Branson-Musk star drive for themselves? Whoever they were, how could USF security have allowed them to attack a high security installation in the middle of the jungle? One thing was for sure – whoever they were, we were leaving them far, far behind us.

With all the talk, we were so busy we didn’t even notice the docking procedure. We were already docked when the crew told us to line up to enter the Turing. They said nothing about the attack; they simply directed us toward the hatchway to enter the ship. A crewman directed me to take the first corridor on the left and to move by hanging onto railings and pulling ourselves along. As I floated through the hatch and into the Turing itself, I saw a large plaque that read Qui audet adipiscitur. I asked the crewman what that meant, and he said, It means hurry your ass up and get moving. I knew he was lying – later on I found out that it means, he who dares wins. Pretty accurate for an adventure like this.

Everything aboard the Turing was zero-g. No matter what you’ve seen in sci-fi, there’s no artificial gravity in space except what can be manufactured through centrifugal force or acceleration — neither of which were available while we were simply orbiting Earth. It was my first experience in zero-g and without gravity, I floated along while my stomach remained about ten meters behind me. Everyone’s movements were exaggerated because nothing slowed us down. Our group was a chorus of ouch and sorry as everyone banged into the walls and kicked each other.

A nurse led us to a long, narrow passageway with stacks and stacks of drawers on both sides. We were supposed to sleep in these things? The drawers rolled out from the wall and then sealed up when they went back in, reminding me too much of a morgue. And these things just looked cheap – it was my first reminder that our ship was built by the low bidder. Where were the shiny chrome and glass chambers I’d dreamed about? Anyway, I was hanging there in the narrow hallway in my stylish white jumpsuit, waiting my turn to get in one of these things, when something dawned on me.

Hey, I said to the nurse. You’re putting us down to sleep, but who’s going to wake us up?

The nurse was all business and not in the mood. The shipboard computer controls all the drugs, nutrition and hydration. The computer will wake me first, then I’ll monitor the rest of the wakeup process.

Whoa, wait a minute! What if the computer fails? I asked.

Computers don’t fail, she snapped. Now take off your jumpsuit and get in your sleep chamber.

Seeing that we were entering a morgue already scared the hell out of me, but hearing we were entirely relying on a computer to wake us up when we arrived didn’t help. My brain kept echoing, Computers don’t fail. My home computer failed all the time and we were going to leap across 20 light-years and expect the ship’s computer to work perfectly? What could possibly go wrong there? I’d always been up for an adventure, but just about then I changed my mind. Too late; there was no time for contemplation. The nurse made me take off my jumpsuit right in front of everybody and get in the sleep chamber. It wasn’t easy maneuvering naked into the tiny sleep chamber in zero-g, either. I banged my head a couple of times and the nurse permitted herself a tiny chuckle until I finally managed to get into the coff — I mean, sleep chamber. The damned bed was cold and I had a feeling that the in-flight service was going to be lacking, too. The nurse first hooked me up to the tubes to supply food, vitamins, hydration and waste removal, then to drug that would slow down my metabolism and make me sleep. I wish she’d connected me to that one first — connecting the waste removal lines wasn’t fun.

My wife, Kay, was right behind me in line. Now that I was fully connected, the nurse let her give me a quick kiss before sliding my bed back into the sleep chamber and turning out the internal light. The last I remember of my interstellar journey was that last sliver of light as the chamber went shut. The year was only 2068 but now it seems like about a million years ago.

All I know about the journey is that it ended when the computer or somebody cut off the sleep drug. I heard an artificial voice somewhere in the distance telling me to wake up. At first the AI voice was so beautiful and pleasant that I ignored it. After hearing that voice repeat the same thing so many times, though, it wasn’t beautiful and pleasant anymore. Eventually I got pissed off, opened my eyes and realized that the lights in my chamber were on. I also found that the chamber itself had cracked open a couple of centimeters. I tried to turn away because the light from the hallway was blinding, but I was still strapped down and couldn’t move. Eventually somebody slid the chamber the rest of the way open, undid the straps, unhooked my tubes and pulled me out.

I ended up in another room, sort of a recovery room. There were about 20 of us in there, men and women, all buck naked and strapped to couches that were as upright as you can be in zero-g. I gagged on my own smell and told the nurse I was seasick, but she just laughed and said it was normal — but then I noticed that she was wearing a mask. It wasn’t a pretty sight in that room. Everyone had long hair, the men had mountain-man beards, and everybody looked old and wrinkly. The nurse said we’d all feel better after drinking and eating and getting cleaned up. She gave each of us a drinking bulb and a tube of food while she and a couple of assistants cleaned everyone up. They could spray soap and water, rinse, and vacuum it all up almost simultaneously, right in place. It felt like a car wash and the water was cold, but it was good to feel alive again. By the time everyone was cleaned up, my cobwebs were starting to clear. The crew helped us into fresh jumpsuits and announced that they were moving us to the centrifugal ring to continue the resuscitation process. Entering the spinning ring from the body of the ship gave me some quick dry heaves, but once I was through, the artificial gravity from centrifugal force in the ring itself seemed almost normal and a welcome relief from zero-g. The ring was divided into sleeping and active areas, with a small corner set aside to get prepackaged food and drink. Each of us got a bunk that we’d have to share by shifts. We were expected to spend the rest of our time working out and walking to restore our strength.

Upon entering the ring, my first thought was to find my wife, Kay. Instead, they made me sit down and eat a packet of food, take some vitamins and drink another bulb of water. After I finished, I felt better and finally was able to look for Kay. After stumbling around for a while, I found her talking with some others. When I saw her, I just stopped. The sight of her still made me crazy. The way she smiled when she talked, that accent, the shiny black hair and smoldering brown eyes. She gave me a big hug and for a brief second, I thought of something else, but the tight quarters didn’t present a lot of opportunity for romance. For the time being, all we could do was speculate about what was going to happen and try to regain our strength.

PRELUDE TO FLIGHT

Given the near-secrecy regarding its departure and how much time has passed since we left, you’re forgiven if you don’t remember the Turing. To make sense of it all, you need to know the background.

I can’t remember who said it, but I can’t forget an old quote I’d heard about how the future ain’t what it used to be. That was true. We always thought we’d be in flying cars and having robots do all the work, but it wasn’t to be. Instead, the situation on Earth had deteriorated and things were a mess. It started with dumbing down the masses, making everything political and turning friends into enemies, while the rich and powerful manipulated everything on both sides. Then the ice shelf broke off in Antarctica in 2055. Water levels instantly rose a full meter all around the globe. Together with the tsunamis that were unleashed, millions of lives were lost and billions more were left homeless; countries like the Maldives and Bangladesh essentially ceased to exist. In the North American Federation, coastal California and most of Florida were already underwater by the time the tsunamis arrived and flattened everything else.

Destruction of most of the world’s ports led to an oil crisis. The ports could be rebuilt, and the people who’d built the artificial oil-producing islands in Southeast Asia had anticipated these disasters, building floating platforms designed to go with the flow. Most remained above sea level and survived the tsunamis; these were quickly restored to full functionality. It seemed like recovery was on the way, but then competition started for the remaining resources. When the Chinese tried to capture the oil-producing islands they hadn’t already captured in the first South China Sea war, the North American Federation (NAF) retaliated and the situation turned into a major war, creating another oil crisis and destroying a good part of the remaining civilized world. A few years later, cooler heads finally prevailed as the world finally stopped fighting and tried to fix the mess.

Ignoring all this were Nicholas Branson and Saxon Musk, heirs to billionaires themselves, who’d become even richer in the various crises. The two found common interest in space. Branson looked to expand his grandfather’s Virgin Galactic beyond the Moon, and Musk wished to take his father’s SpaceX company to the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Conventional rockets were too slow and dangerous to make a profit much beyond the Moon, so the two secretly hired the world’s top scientists to develop a new, faster drive for space travel.

The new drive went far beyond the dreams of Branson and Musk, promising not merely faster travel, but instant travel to almost anywhere — by folding space and time. It held the promise of taking spacecraft far beyond our solar system, even to other stars, but it was untested. Unwilling to risk their own assets and pay the entire cost of a mission merely to test the drive, Branson and Musk began looking for a partner. The United Space Force (USF), an alliance between the North American Federation (NAF) and the European Union (EU), had recently been formed to counteract China’s increasing threat in space and saw a potential military use for the drive. The USF agreed to fund the test project, subject to strict cost limitations on the project and under USF control.

The only way to test the interstellar drive was to go interstellar, and while you’re going interstellar, you might as well do something useful. The Gliese 581 system had long been the subject of scientific debate, and with potentially habitable planets, it was a natural pick to test the new interstellar drive. But what would the mission be? Nobody knew exactly how far or fast the drive could send a ship – or even if it would work at all. An unmanned probe would be safe, but nobody would ever know what happened if it malfunctioned. A manned ship on simple reconnaissance could bring back answers to the right questions, but due to time dilation, the crew would return – if at all — to an Earth completely different than the one they left.

Colonization was selected because past experience had shown that volunteers could be found for any space mission, no matter how risky. Volunteers would be expendable; all Earth needed back from them was a simple message to verify the viability of the drive, and that could be provided instantly using another new device based on quantum entanglement. Even if the colonization mission failed, the volunteers’ initial message could provide information about conditions in the Libra constellation and Gliese 581 system that could be used to prepare for the next mission. Even failure to send any message conveyed useful information; namely, that the star drive didn’t work.

To ensure success, four ships were constructed in space with little to no publicity. Each ship would be staffed by a commander and a crew of eight from the USF and carry payload of 100 volunteer colonists, deemed to be the bare minimum to be sufficiently diverse in skills and in genetics to start a successful colony. Operating on a tight budget, the ships’ designs would have to walk a tightrope between the power and fuel demands of the interstellar drive and the mass of the spacecraft itself, the colonists, and their supplies. Supplies had to be carefully considered, because each ship’s capacity was limited and there’d be no Oops, we forgot the toilet paper on this mission. More importantly, the ships and their supplies were on a tight budget and, as I already mentioned, everything was provided by the low bidders – unsurprisingly, Virgin Galactic and SpaceX.

Almost half a million volunteers submitted applications and of course were never told that they were viewed as expendable. For the selection process, the mission planners used a computer program to weed out the serious applications from the rest. At first, I wondered what kind of program would have selected me. I’m a lawyer. Nobody likes lawyers, and why would they want one? I finally concluded that I was selected because they wanted my wife, Kay, who’s a trained hair stylist and pretty good cook. The reason was simple: They had a commander and 108 crewmen and colonists. Somebody was going to have to cut their hair and cook their food. PhDs and geniuses were probably a dime a dozen among that half million volunteers, but hair stylists and cooks? Probably not many — maybe none. Taking me was the price they paid to get Kay.

Kay and I were the odd couple, but we always just clicked with each other. When I met her, I was still in law school. I came from a family of lawyers, and it was expected that I’d be a lawyer, too. I was in my last year of law school when a couple of buds and I took a quick trip to California for spring break. While there, I decided I needed a haircut and somehow wandered into Kay’s shop. I was thunderstruck and I just couldn’t stop looking at her. She was exotic and beautiful and my voice almost cracked when I tried to talk to her. She just laughed and tossed her hair and it was all over for me. As she trimmed my hair, she flirted with me and I thought I’d slide right out of the chair. I eventually got my voice back and we were out on a date. Kay was one of those people that makes everyone around them happy with her beautiful smile. I was so taken that I almost forgot to return to school! I did, of course, but we stayed in touch. After graduation, I passed the Bar, moved to California and worked insurance defense just to be close to her. Before long, we were married.

Kay had come from an Asian family on the west coast that had lived in the United States for decades. When the disasters struck California, the results were tragic for all, but particularly for Kay. Most of her family was killed and some of the bodies weren’t even found. Kay and I might have died as well if we hadn’t been hiking in the mountains the day the tsunamis struck. There was nothing left for us in California, so we decided to relocate to the Midwest. A decade later, I had my own private law practice in a small town. We were doing well financially but all those wills, deeds and claims settlements had begun to run together. By then my parents had passed on and neither of us was close to any other relatives. We didn’t have any children, either — not because we didn’t want them but because our bodies never seemed to cooperate. Life had settled into a routine.

When the call went out for volunteers for an interstellar space flight, after all those years I finally saw my chance to boldly go where no man had gone before. And after all those wills, deeds, and bad check cases, I also saw a chance to do something that would really be important. I imagined myself as another Thomas Jefferson, setting up a government from scratch that could right centuries of wrongs on Earth. Kay wanted me to be happy and humored me by applying for the mission along with me, probably never expecting that we’d be selected, but we were. We must have done well on the psychological testing, or maybe the USF just had a sense of humor, taking a hairstylist and a lawyer to outer space.

When we were notified of our selection, Kay and I had a very serious talk, but we concluded that there was nothing holding us on Earth and that we ought to see if the mission was for real. The people on the interview panel had made everything sound so well planned that when the approval came through, we couldn’t say no. We didn’t know then that we were really just guinea pigs in their experiment to see if the Branson-Musk star drive actually worked. In 20-20 hindsight, it should have been obvious: The press didn’t interview us, there were no pictures of the