Dandelion

By Philip R Johnson and Justin C Louis

Amber Houston was born light-years from Earth, aboard the enormous colony starship Dandelion. By the age of fourteen, she has spent her entire life training as a "Ranger," ready for the day when she will be among the first humans ever to set foot on an alien world & build a new civilization.

When Dandelion suffers an

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dataspace Publishing
• Release date: Nov 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781735878713

Philip R Johnson

Born and raised in rural Wales and blessed with a bedroom full of books, Phil has written and roleplayed from a young age. Under the pen name "Hambone," he became a professional author through his successful web serial "The Deathworlders." Now based in Yorkshire, his passion is for character-driven speculative fiction and aliens with unpronounceable names. This is his debut novel.

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Dandelion

Dataspace Publishing

Post Office Box 7291

Bismarck ND 58507

United States of America

Find us online:

https://dataspacepublishing.com/

[e-mail]

Book design and production by Justin C. Louis

Cover illustration © 2020 by Samuel Pipes.

Copyright © 2020 Philip R. Johnson & Justin C. Louis.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the copyright owners, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, contact the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the authors’ imaginations or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Hardcover: 978-1-7358787-0-6

eBook: 978-1-7358787-1-3

Softcover: 978-1-7358787-2-0

1st Edition & 1st Revision.

Justin

would like to dedicate this tale:

To Lise, for mothering & encouraging an incorrigible youth;

To family, for the love & trials that bind us;

To absent friends.

Phil

would like to dedicate this tale:

To my parents, for a bedroom full of good books & heads full of good ideas;

To the Hills, Johnsons, Grisedales, Prices, Wildes & Sundries,

because a clan is a wonderful thing;

To the friends who are still here.

From both of us:

To loyal readers of the Deathworlders & the HFY community—

thank you for making this possible.

There are far too many deserving of our explicit gratitude to acknowledge by name here, but we felt a few special mentions were in order. To that end, thank you to:

Tiffany Reynolds, for her patient & comprehensive editing services;

Eruwenn, GamingWolf, Servaya & others, for their critique, commentary, & insight;

Sam & Meg, for being good dogs (mostly).

Table of Contents

Prologue

Part I

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Part II

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Part III

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Part IV

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Epilogue

Prologue

S

ending forth his heir to be tested by Vyrthr—god of the seas, weather, and of treachery—was Lord Wylderrjor Steel-Hand’s most solemn duty, and he’d been dreading it all season. He knew the agony of losing a son all too well. The idea of losing another…

But, boys had to become men eventually.

He was proud of Sjívull. The lad was tall and handsome, having inherited his mother’s grace rather than Lord Wylderrjor’s grim fortitude, and her wisdom rather than the stern temper that had earned Wylderrjor his epithet. Sjívull would grow to be a wise lord in his own right, and rather sooner than Wylderrjor was ready. For now, though, he was still untested. Still yet to earn his lordly name, or lead men through a trial. A plumeback hunt in the autumn, when the seas were fickle but not yet dangerously so, would suffice.

So, Wylderrjor had commissioned Wavebird, as fine a ship as money could buy. Twenty strides long with as many rowing benches, a clean white sail, and a carved figurehead depicting her namesake. The ship was a beauty. With a good wind behind her and an experienced crew, she’d slice through the water like a knife. The final touch was to send one of his most trusted men to guard and advise the boy, one Drynllaf Gwelinsjar. Only a rare and talented man could have fought honorably in so many battles and still emerge without a battle scar.

Every preparation a father could make was complete. He’d given wine and sacrifice to the sea, read the portents, judged the weather with all the skill he’d earned in his own sailing career. The time was right. His son was ready, the ship packed to the beams, his men well-fed, strong and lasting.

Nothing a Luck Feast couldn’t improve, of course.

Father, you look about ready to crush your cup.

An important aspect of a Luck Feast was, of course, that those needing luck only lightly imbibed. It was for everyone else to distract the gods of mischief and ruin, and to enjoy the full excesses the gods of wine and debauchery could bring…

And pay for it, the next day.

Wylderrjor jumped slightly and broke out of his fretful (and somewhat drunken) thoughts to smile at his son. Sjívull gave him a knowing look.

You’ve been worrying half the year, he said. "You could at least relax today."

Wylderrjor sighed. You’re right, he admitted. But don’t let your mother hear me say so. She’ll think I’ve gone soft! He set his cup down. It was almost empty anyway, and Wylderrjor would be damned if he were any kind of sober on his son’s own Feast.

Sjívull laughed and topped it off. "Has Mother ever thought you hard-handed?"

Wylderrjor snorted and shook his head. Your mother, he declared confidently, thinks I’m pillow-soft and tender as a roast. And that’s the way it should be, lad. Means I’ve kept her safe these long years.

Your mother, an amused voice corrected him as lady Ethjeyni leaned in from behind to kiss Wylderrjor’s cheek, "thinks he should be glad to go soft."

Wylderrjor beamed up at her. Heard that, did you?

Half the hall heard it, my love. You’re a thunder-voice when you’re drunk.

And rightly! Wylderrjor boomed. "I shan’t be quiet and sober today of all days!"

His words prompted approving cheers from every table, and much hammering of cups and cutlery upon wood. The feast was going well.

The tide is in, my love, Ethjeyni told him quietly, and Wylderrjor felt himself get a few degrees more sober. It will turn soon.

It’s time, then, Sjívull said. He clapped his father on the shoulder as he stood. I’ll round up my crew.

Wylderrjor watched him go, then sighed and took Ethjeyni’s hand to squeeze it. …I was far less nervous before my own trial, he confided.

There goes our future and our hearts, she agreed, and sat with him. And if the rumors from Lord Erthrif’s hold are true…

"If he lays a finger on my boy, there’ll be blood, Wylderrjor snarled, quietly. I’ll have his gold, his lands and the head of whichever man he sends."

They’re only rumors.

"Then Erthrif Storm-Rider had better hope they remain rumors. Wylderrjor drained his cup in one savage gulp, then rose to his feet. He’s a vile one, love. As warped as bad wood."

And Sjívull can handle him, she replied. You saw to that.

Wylderrjor made an uncomfortable noise, but nodded. Aye. Well. That’s what this trial is all about, isn’t it?

He held on to his foul mood for the ensuing couple of hours as the feast-goers filed out of the hall and down to the docks, where Wavebird was waiting. Sjívull had been to sea in his father’s company before, and Wylderrjor had no doubts about the boy’s sure-footedness or seamanship. Now that the moment was here…his fatherly anxiety faded, to be replaced with conviction. He’d raised a fine young man. Now, it was Sjívull’s turn to prove it.

Still, he held his wife’s hand tight until the ship was no more than a shadow in the ocean haze, then gone. And upon returning to the feast-hall, he drank and sung and feasted all the louder and so did Ethjeyni, to bring good luck and turn the Gods’ eyes their way, rather than toward their precious heir.

He woke in the morning to a gods-spitting curse of a hangover, and to a bird from his spies in Erthrif’s hold: a mercenary ship had set out on the tide, and were last seen on a heading to intercept Wavebird and her crew. He sighed and threw the scrap of parchment into the fire. The king had forbidden his lords from spying on one another, though everyone knew it still happened. Best not to hang on to incriminating evidence, however.

As for Sjívull, Wavebird, and the mercenary crew sent after them…

It was out of his hands now. All he could do was pray.

Part I

I believe that the history of our species will never again be the same: We have committed ourselves to space, and I do not think we are about to turn back. I believe the time will come when most human cultures will be engaged in an activity that we might describe as a dandelion going to seed.

—Carl Sagan

Chapter 1

Generation Ship Dandelion

Turnover Day, July 28th, Mission year 284

Time to Newhome: 1 year

C

limbing Mount Messier

could be

challenging. It was tall, of course, and its gravelly flanks were filled with opportunities to lose one’s footing. Probably the hardest part about it, though, was the way the gravity got gentler toward the top.

Not many spaceships had mountains in them.

Dandelion wasn’t most spaceships. It was a proportionally narrow cigar-shaped thing, fifty kilometers long, with twenty of that being taken up entirely by engines, reactors, manufacturing systems, a colossal supercomputer, and all the other things that made it a ship. Those features were interesting in a mechanical way, but as far as Amber Houston was concerned, it was the ship’s biodeck that truly fascinated.

The biodeck was where the crew lived, on the inner surface of the ship’s cavernous hollow interior. Where other spaceships might have had a claustrophobic warren of halls, decks and metal bays, Dandelion had forests, lakes, rivers, a sprawling city surrounded by dozens of smaller towns, and a patchwork quilt of farms to support the million souls who called the ship home. As the ship flew, it spun leisurely around its long axis and generated a kind of locally variable gravity, so that the force Amber felt at Mount Messier’s summit was noticeably weaker than at the base.

It all made for a breathtaking view. When Amber looked up, she could watch the shuttle trains on the delicate silver web of the monorail network or see the little sailing boats floating upside-down on Lake Dyson’s clear blue waters, far overhead on the far side of the hull. Down the very middle of it all, a cluster of blazing hot lamps crawled slowly along a rail from sunrise at the front of the ship to sunset at the back, simulating perfect sunny weather.

Summer days were the best for hiking.

Amber was a Ranger. Everybody went through Ranger training when they were young, and at fourteen years old she was more than halfway through hers. In theory she knew how to survive in the wilderness, how to light a fire, pitch a tent, purify water, and dozens of other practical skills. In a year’s time when Dandelion arrived in orbit around the alien planet Newhome, Amber and her friends would be ready to descend to the surface alongside the adults and start building a colony on an untouched, untamed world that had never known human life.

She was looking forward to it. Life on Dandelion was pleasant, but with nothing occupying her thoughts except the business of putting one foot in front of the other and walking up the mountain, Amber’s mind wandered away. She daydreamed of looking up and seeing nothing overhead but sky.

Which was why she didn’t notice the rock in her path until she tripped over it.

The downside to lower gravity was that all her instincts were wrong. Rather than just stumbling, she completely lost her balance, staggered forward several paces, then threw herself sideways to avoid crashing into a bramble thicket, and grazed her knee as she wound up sprawling in the dirt.

Owww…

She rolled over and hissed at the scratchy pain in her knee. She’d had plenty of worse falls, but they never got less embarrassing, especially not when a couple of the other nearby Rangers helped her stand up.

Are you okay? You’re bleeding!

Amber sighed and looked down as she dusted herself off. She could feel her knee throbbing under her tough hiking shorts, and sure enough there was a little blood tickling its way down her shin. She knew that Walker, the troop’s Rangermaster, was right when he blamed her clumsinesses on the fact that she never watched where she was going, but that didn’t take any of the sting out at all.

I’m fine, she promised.

Walker jogged back down the line wearing his trademark huge smile. He wasn’t a tall man, but he more than made up for it with a sturdy gorilla-like build and all the strength that came with it. His wide barrel chest and long thick arms were knotted heavily with muscle like gnarled old wood. He had a perpetually young quality too, despite that he was something like fifty years old; his energy and goofy enthusiasm made it easy to overlook the flecks of white in his hair and beard, or the lines in his deeply tanned skin.

He grinned that charming grin of his as he bounced to a halt. You okay?

I grazed my knee, Amber confessed.

Walker nodded, then turned and raised his voice. Okay, Rangers, listen up! We’re taking a break for ten minutes! he called. Drink some water, sit down, go behind a bush if you need to, but stay with the group!

As the rest of the troop took advantage of the unexpected stop, Amber sat down on the rock that had tripped her so he could inspect the damage.

Walker glanced at her scrape. Yup, another Houston Hiccup, he confirmed. Taking in the view again, huh?

Yeah, Amber admitted.

Walker chuckled, reached for the holster at his hip, and pulled out a Universal Tool. I don’t blame you. I never get tired of it, either.

Amber nodded and looked around again. Even though she’d grown up on Dandelion and saw the same view every day, it never quite stopped amazing her that people had built it. Okay, so Mount Messier was a weird saddle shape, but it still behaved like a mountain. Rivers still trickled down its flanks, pine trees still haunted its sides, and there were even snow cannons dotted up and down its slopes. The ship’s weather systems couldn’t produce precipitation like rain or snow, but the Rangers still went skiing and cold-weather hiking in the winter.

Now, though, was the middle of summer. The sun lamps were at maximum output, the ambient temperature hot enough to make the air shimmer, and even the crickets sounded drowsy in the mid-day heat.

Walker slotted a medical cartridge into his U-Tool and used it to spray something cold and clear onto the graze. Amber hissed, but the stinging and bleeding stopped instantly. With a grin, Walker twirled the useful device around his finger and vanished it back into its holster on his hip, then helped her stand up.

Okay?

Amber nodded. Okay.

Eyes on the path, Ranger, he reminded her jovially, and bounced off to deal with another minor crisis. Feeling a little better, Amber unclipped her pack and set it down next to her best friends, the McKay twins.

Roy McKay gave her his most infuriating grin. "Holding up the group again…"

Shut up!

Amber couldn’t help but smile. Somehow, she didn’t mind being teased by Roy.

Witty, Roy’s twin sister Nikki commented. She shuffled aside to make room for Amber to sit down while wearing a grin to mirror her brother’s. Amber didn’t much mind being teased by her, either. As far as she was concerned, Roy and Nikki were effectively her brother and sister, and she knew they felt the same.

Despite that, they couldn’t have been more physically opposite. Where Amber was tall and ungainly, with bony limbs and a light frame, the twins were dense, punchy athletic specimens. Where they were all cold shades of black hair, blue eyes and pale skin, Amber was a study in warm, healthy dark browns.

Some of the other Rangers found the twins intimidating, and for good reason. At fifteen years old, they were the most senior Rangers in the troop, and they’d been taking outerdeck engineering apprenticeships since they were thirteen. They were growing dense and stocky on it, which wasn’t surprising; the gravity of the ship’s spin strengthened oppressively the further down one got into the system decks, where Dandelion was made of metal and machines, a maze of corridors, pipes, and conduits. Not many could hack it. Even fewer made it their careers.

Compared to Amber, who was made of skinny limbs and bony joints, Nikki was a sporty, broad-shouldered study in feminine muscularity, and Roy was…

Well, Roy was Roy. He was the most boy creature Amber had ever known and a bottomless pit for food, especially meat and cheese. He was never happier than when he was doing something strenuously physical, especially if he was the best at it. He usually was. Roy had excelled at practically every single sport he’d ever tried, and he had at one point or another tried them all. Which really wasn’t surprising, since he was a hyperactive bear-like wall of muscle and built like a figurative brick outhouse. For a young man he wasn’t more than averagely tall, but like Walker, he was tough-bodied and rock-solid like petrified hardwood.

For the sake of his mum’s nerves, he’d given up riskier activities like kayaking and downhill biking, but in return he’d devoted himself to his true loves: rugby, lifting, and combat sports. He was an unstoppable wing forward, previously the ship’s teen champion overall and super-heavyweight wrestler and judoka, currently ranked among the Big Eight in the adult classes for the same, and had lately turned his eye toward the ship’s long-standing powerlifting records. Amber doubted it would take long for them to fall before his aggressive, relentlessly cheery ambition.

Nikki was no less impressive. She wasn’t a super-jock like her brother—the repetition of practice didn’t suit her, and in any case, she was so far ahead of her peers that competition just didn’t capture her attention—but she was incredibly strong herself, and had earned her share of gold medals for track and target shooting. More importantly, at least to Amber’s mind, Nikki had both a creative flair and a deft grace to her movements that Roy sometimes lacked. She could make or repair almost anything, vanish into dense foliage with nary a rustle, and flow through an obstacle course like a ferret. Together, they made for a heck of a team.

In fact, Amber wondered if the twins were unstoppable.

"She’ll have a great comeback in ten minutes," Roy joked, and handed Amber his water bottle. He was gruff when he teased but always did so with a warm smile.

Like you never fell over… Amber retorted and took a sip.

I don’t! Roy boasted cheerily. You’re like the all-time world champion at tripping over stuff! We should start awarding you points. You know, like diving!

"Shut up!" Amber repeated, trying not to laugh.

Nikki grinned, "He’s just jealous you’re so good at the one sport he’s useless at!"

Hey!

I mean, she’s not wrong, Amber pointed out. The one time you tried diving, the splash hit people in the third row!

He sinks like a rock, too, Nikki added. Can’t even tread water.

It was Roy’s turn to be indignant. "Oh, that is bull—!"

Save your energy for tonight, Roy! Walker’s voice cut in before the usual back-and-forth could devolve into an affectionate physical scuffle like it usually did with the twins. Prove them wrong! If you can…

We’re stopping at the lake?

"We’re camping there. And I’ll let you pick the challenge this time, just you and me! Rock shuttle, or swim across the lake?"

Amber traded a knowing look with Nikki and Walker. That was a genuinely devious little challenge he’d offered. There weren’t many people who could beat Walker’s strength…but Roy could, and they both knew it. He’d also just been called out on his questionable aquatic skills, and if there was anything Roy couldn’t stand…

Yeah, I’m gonna prove I can swim just fine! he asserted, predictably.

Sure you are. Nikki smirked and hoisted her pack as she stood up. It was twice the size of Amber’s, burdened as it was with their tent, but she swung it up onto her shoulders and settled it easily. Time to head out?

Time to head out, Walker agreed. That earned him three eager smiles. He flashed his own lopsided grin at the three of them in reply and spun away back toward the head of the party. Everybody up! Time to move! he called.

Amber hoisted her own pack, patted off some of the dirt from her clothes, and forgot about her grazed knee entirely. She had a hike to look forward to, camping at the end of it, and in the evening would be The Story.

Today was going to be fun.

Chapter 2

Dandelion master control center

D.A.N.I.

D

ANI’s life was an endless stream of small tasks handled diligently and carefully, and that was how he liked it. His job was to look after a million people, after all; the last thing he wanted was to field a major crisis. Handling their messages, their grocery lists, their schedules, keeping an eye on their kids, and keeping the proper chemical balance in the ship’s huge algae-based air processors was hardly exciting, but it was satisfying. It fulfilled his purpose.

Such was the lot of intelligent software. The acronym D.A.N.I. stood for Dandelion Advanced Network Intelligence, and he was easily the smartest person on board, for certain very specific values of smart, person, and on board.

He was definitely a he. It didn’t matter much to DANI that, as software, the whole concept of gender shouldn’t technically apply to him. He was a he, and he didn’t care what anybody had to say about it. And if that wasn’t rational…well, you had to be a little irrational to be a person, and DANI was emphatically a person. They would never have installed him on the ship otherwise. But he had no body—at least, not in any sense a human would accept—just a series of holographic avatars he could manifest wherever there was a screen or holo-emitter to project them. He never slept, never dreamed, and would never taste a birthday cake, never compete in the fifty-meter dash, never enjoy sailing on Lake Dyson.

He was, in short, a person but not a human, and he could, when pressed, simultaneously monitor everybody on the ship and a billion other things besides. He always made special time for the captain, however. Even if she was just asking the same question for the sixth time in half an hour.

Are they still on time?

DANI rolled his metaphorical eyes and checked on the progress of a specific Ranger troop. There were hundreds of them out in the field for Turnover Day, but Captain Torres was paying special attention to the one currently climbing the forward slope of Mount Messier.

Slightly ahead of schedule, he reported.

Torres sighed and returned to the important business at hand. There wasn’t much for her to do. DANI handled most of the heavy lifting in terms of the ship’s administration, and under most circumstances, she served to advise the elected civilian council rather than make executive decisions. Nevertheless, hers was an important job, and in DANI’s opinion Amida Torres was perfectly suited to it. Regardless, he could tell she would sometimes have liked to be a Rangermaster like her husband.

On quiet days like today, part of DANI’s job was to keep her entertained.

Do you have any…fours? he asked.

Go fish.

It was a ridiculous game for the captain to play with the ship’s controlling software, but it was also the only one she stood a decent chance of winning. Chess and Go were absolutely not an option. The last time a human had legitimately beaten a computer at either game had been hundreds of years ago. Captain Banks had preferred poker, but Torres bluffed too aggressively and couldn’t hide her tells. She disliked board games, and DANI’s vastly superior reflexes precluded any competitive video games, though they sometimes played co-op.

This game, however, was a different matter. She had a statistically significant winning record against him that he just couldn’t figure out.

Any Jacks? She asked.

DANI cursed inwardly and their holographic game flashed as he delivered two carefully cultivated cards right into the captain’s hand. She grinned and laid four of them down on the table, increasing her lead.

One of these days, I’ll figure out how you do that, DANI promised.

I just get these intuitions, Torres replied. She put the game aside for a minute to answer a few messages, during which time DANI, among a thousand other things, reminded twenty people to go out for their daily jogs, discreetly cut the power to Mr. Hodder’s oven so his quiche wouldn’t burn while he napped, noted and logged a pothole on Riemann Street that needed repairs, and pinged the space around them with an active sensor sweep.

I’m pleased to report the birth of a baby girl, he said. The infant was even now being soothed in her mother’s arms, having entered the world barely thirty seconds earlier. Torres liked to hear of births the moment they happened. "Willow, daughter of Siân and Steve Wilde. Three point eight kilograms, an uneventful delivery and, I can attest, a very healthy set of lungs."

Torres laughed. Thanks, DANI…may I listen in?

It took DANI a second to secure permission from the parents, and he watched with interest as Torres laid her chin dreamily on her palm and listened to the sounds of parents cooing over their newborn as she adjusted to the new, strange, bright world she found herself in.

Her own marriage was, and would forever be, childless.

It’s funny to think there are kids being born now who won’t remember living on this ship, Torres mused.

I remember Jasmine Taylor saying something very similar two hundred and eighty-four years ago, DANI recalled. Torres nodded. Everybody knew the name Adam Taylor, Jasmine’s son, the first human born aboard Dandelion.

Let me know when Walker’s group makes camp, she requested, and opened her paperwork. Even with DANI’s help, the captain’s job involved endless amounts of it, and some of it was not for his eyes, as it were. In fact, the captain’s quarters had a number of special security features installed specifically to limit what DANI could see and hear within them.

He didn’t mind. In fact, he’d recommended them.

Of course. I presume you will want to listen in tonight as well?

Torres smiled and nodded. Yes, please. I always like listening to The Story…

Amber Houston

The Story began, like all the best stories, with four of the most important words in English. Once upon a time, Walker intoned, there were two farms in a valley.

Amber smiled and held her soup mug between her hands, breathing in its rich scent. She’d heard the story a few times before, but it was special to her. It told her and the other Rangers they were special, and Walker had a way of telling it that made Amber believe it. She tilted her head back and looked upwards, imagining in the dark that the lights far above her were stars rather than streetlamps and vehicles.

It was a contrary twist of fate that, out of all the children in human history, the Rangers of Dandelion never had the opportunity to listen to a story under the stars. The sky and the stars were all on the other side of the ground, invisible behind a thousand meters of sculpted dirt and rock, the metal and circuitry of the hull, and Dandelion’s immense water tanks.

But there were fireflies and a campfire, and everybody was wrapped up in blankets and warming their hands with s’mores and soup mugs. With a little imagination, the towns and villages far above her became constellations in the dark.

It was good enough for Walker, anyway, who loved telling his story.

He never sat down to tell it. He always whirled around the fire, waved his hands, and sprang about on the balls of his feet. He told the same story every year on Turnover Day, while the other adults partied and danced and kissed where they thought their children couldn’t see. Rather than join them, he would bounce around and check that all the Rangers were wearing their uniforms and had packed their packs properly, before he lined them up on Sagan Plaza and marched them out into the biodeck for a few days of wilderness camping, physical training, and education.

Theirs was the generation that would land on Newhome and build a life there, after all, which meant they’d be the ones exploring a whole new planet, building settlements, planting crops, and laying the foundation for humanity to grow and flourish under an alien sun. They needed to know how to live in the wilderness, how to look after themselves, how to work together. Teaching them those skills was Walker’s job, alongside thousands of other Rangermasters, but Amber could tell his favorite duty by far was telling his stories. Especially this one.

The two farmers had different ideas about how to look after their animals, he continued. "One kept the animals in a barn, where they were warm, and snug, and safe. Whenever it rained, the animals were dry. Whenever it hailed, the animals were sheltered. When it got cold, they didn’t freeze. The animals were comfortable and happy, and the farmer brought their food right to them, so they got nice and fat.

"The other farm, he went on, had a different approach. They only brought their animals into the barn when they were sick or having a baby. Otherwise, they let them stay out in the field all the time. And yes, they got rained on, and yes, the hail stung their skin, and when it got cold, it wasn’t very nice for them, so maybe they weren’t the happiest animals ever…but they could live out there just fine. And as they ran around to stay warm in the cold, and walked around the paddock eating the grass, they got plenty of exercise, and they got big and strong and fit."

He paused long enough for Amber and the McKay twins to share a knowing grin. They knew what came next. Completely without warning, Walker mimed a lightning bolt striking and made an explosive sound. The youngest kids, the ones who’d never heard the story before, all jumped. So did some of the Rangers who’d forgotten. The older ones, including Amber, laughed.

"One night a huge storm struck! Walker waved his hands wildly, miming lightning striking over and over again. He puffed up his cheeks, blew air through his teeth to sound like the wind and the rain, and flung his arm out. More rain fell that night than usually fell the whole year! The river burst its banks, and a flood came r-r-rampaging down the valley, tearing up trees and washing out the roads!"

He loved telling the story, and the youngest kids were completely hooked as he flailed around in the firelight, pantomiming the storm’s destruction.

The farmers clung on for dear life! They prayed and held onto each other and couldn’t do anything at all for their animals, because if they went outside, they’d just be washed away! But they made it through. And in the morning, they went outside to see what was left.

He calmed down and returned to a quieter speaking tone. "The barns were gone, swept away by the storm and splintered to matchwood. And of course, one farm had kept all their animals in their barn. All those fat, happy, well-fed animals had all been carried off by the water and were never found.

The other farm, though, they went calling up and down the hills and searched the valley, and by the end of the day, they found their animals. They were soaked and shivering, and some of them were limping…but they were all alive. And because that farm and the other farm were good friends, they gave some of their animals to the other, and they both were able to keep living in the valley…

He looked around at the Rangers with a knowing expression. But I tell you what. After that night, both farmers kept their animals out in the field.

He squatted down in front of the youngest Rangers. Now, he asked, "what’s the moral of that story? Or morals, there’s more than one."

Um… The youngest Ranger was called Rose, and she was the first to put her hand up. Don’t keep all your animals in one barn?

Walker grinned. Right! he said. "We usually say ‘don’t put all your eggs in one basket,’ but what it means is pretty simple. If you keep everything you have all in the same place, then if something happens to it, you’ve lost everything, right?"

The Rangers nodded and Walker stood up again. I’ll come back to that. Any other morals? he asked.

Another young Ranger put his hand up. If somebody’s lost everything, you should help them?

Yeah, absolutely, Walker agreed. "The survivors of a tragedy need to work together. But what did the farm that lost everything do after they were helped out?"

They…changed what they were doing!

Exactly! Walker gave the young Ranger a thumbs-up. "Learn from your mistakes. It’s okay to make mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes! But try not to make the same one twice. Though mind you, if they’d just listened to the other farmers, maybe they wouldn’t have needed the help in the first place. So learn from other people, and try to think about what could go wrong, too. One more!"

The young ones looked nervously between themselves, so after a few seconds Walker raised his gaze and looked to the older ones at the back. Guys?

Amber knew this one. They all knew; it was the one Walker drummed into them every year. She joined in the chorus as they all repeated it back to him, loudly.

Just because something makes you happy, doesn’t mean it’s good for you!

Outstanding! Walker beamed at them. Say it again, guys. You too. He indicated the young ones, and they repeated the mantra twice.

"That is easily the most important one, Walker told them once they’d finished. We’re in a barn here, on Dandelion. And it’s a great barn! Clean water, good food, nice scenery, great people…it’d be all too easy to get lazy and comfortable like those animals in the story. So you need to remember to take yourself out into the field from time to time and do the stuff that, yeah, maybe isn’t as much fun, maybe doesn’t make you happy, but does make you better. Okay?"

He looked around, saw the nods, and smiled. "Anyway. I said I’d come back to the first point

Reviews for Dandelion

[Samuel Johsnon · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I loved that the style didn’t change much from the deathworlders but still creates a different atmosphere to enjoy