Chapter 10

2077 a.d.

Plans for the Summer

It was two weeks later. The ground was just now thawing enough for spring planting. The Great Bard had convinced the farmers who had worked on the university foundation last summer to start on the brick walls, but now they were gone, attending to their own plowing and planting.

Béla had just found out that the university's Praetor wouldn't be shipped until the first section was complete. She had planned to use the Praetor to study the history of New Eden and the series of events that led to its creation. There were things she was convinced she needed to know. She had also intended to get Jeff trained in using the Praetor in his role as head schoolmaster.

There had been another question but, like a dream, it eluded her. She wasn't worried, however; the Praetor would know. She would just ask it about Elaine. She lay back, trying to relax in the warm sunlight. The ground was still almost too cool to lie on comfortably.

'What about Elaine?' Elaine asked, dropping down beside her a few minutes later.

Elaine had been flying, seeing how high she could go before the winds got too rough for her to handle, and now she was curious, having picked up Béla's thought. Béla sent her an image of the confusion regarding her almost forgotten dream.

'I can help, ' Elaine told her, excited to try out her ability of 'right-finding' that she had been practicing as a junior justice.

Béla felt her sister's sudden presence as she dream-walked into the image Béla had created. Béla lay back in the grass again and closed her eyes to aid her concentration. Her sister lay down next to her and stretched out. Béla felt the grass caressing her sister's body in her mind. Other images, more erotic, began to overflow into the image Elaine was trying to concentrate on.

'Hey! You! The horny one!' Elaine shouted into Béla's mind. 'Later, I promise. Okay?'

Béla chuckled and concentrated harder on the task at hand.

'You were commanded not to wonder about that. It's time for you to leave. You will remember when you are ready, ' a new voice, that of the Praetor, commanded them.

The two sisters slept on the cool spring grass, warmed by the northern sun. Hundreds of miles above them, the Praetor returned to its duties, having gently mind-wiped the memory of Béla's dream from its precious charges and put them both to sleep.

It noted that the Seeker was predicting the future destruction of the ship. It stored that data in the central core of its memory. This Seeker was never wrong, even in her new body and with her earlier identity forgotten. Passing through the asteroid belt, she had proved her value at the laser cannons, always knowing where a random rock that could threaten the ship would appear.

During the one time the ship would have been damaged when another of her sisters was manning the guns, the seeker had managed to place herself on the bridge and in the gunner's seat idly chatting with the gunner on duty. As the asteroid appeared on the scanner, traveling at a much higher velocity than would have been expected by the new gunner, she almost casually carved it into harmless little pieces with the laser cannon. She even apologized to the Bridge Officer for 'playing with the guns while she was off-duty' afterward. Only she, and the Praetor unknowingly mind-linked to her, was aware of the disaster that had been averted.

The Praetor began to search the mind of this Seeker to determine the circumstances of the coming disaster as she slept on the ground far below.

The great ship is approaching the Deimos entry point. A force of undetermined origin pushes the ship off course and into the surface of the artificial moon, collapsing a section of the hollow shell, causing the atmosphere to escape, which blows the ship back out and away, toward the red planet below. The remaining Deimosians suffocate as Deimos' inner atmosphere vents into the vacuum of space and the great ship, out of control and spinning rapidly, is trapped in Mars' gravity well and plummets down to the surface as a great fireball. The resulting crater is twenty miles across and two miles deep.

After several attempts to clarify the Seekers' vision, the Praetor was still unable to determine what will cause the accident. The loss of the Deimos station could not be averted. The loss of the ship could be prevented by blowing the atmosphere of Deimos' interior before the ship arrived, or by not arriving there at all. Something was going to destroy the ship, no matter how the Praetor changed the sequence of actions. Only one more voyage to Deimos and Earth would occur. If a second voyage to the inner planets was attempted, it would meet with disaster.

The Praetor filed the data collected from its mental exercise in its central core to be acted on when the time was appropriate. Now that it was likely that the decision to abandon Deimos would occur, the Praetor determined to check with the Seeker later in the year to see if her prediction had changed.

Béla stretched. The warm sun felt wonderful with the dark cold of winter still fresh in her memory. She felt Elaine's mind as she awoke. They were lying together in the grass that would become the front lawn of the university.

"Hi. What're you doing here?" Béla asked, somewhat confused, but not unhappy to see her sister lying beside her.

"I would ask you the same," Elaine said, feeling the same confusion.

A moment ago, she had been hundreds of feet high and several miles away. She broadcast her confusion to her older sister. Béla entered her mind, looking for a solution. The two ran into a blank wall. Béla pressed against it.