Chapter 14

Cara awoke to an empty room.

She got up and checked the back room, but Tom wasn’t in it either. When she realised what the time was, she had an idea where he would be, and after a quick shower, she went to find him. She was still buzzing from the pleasure she had received from him.

Tom had only slept for four hours. Cara hadn’t moved while he showered and dressed, so he left her to sleep. He went and collected several new books from the back room, filled the flask he had acquired from the replicator with coffee and headed up to the dome.

Finding a recliner, he happily settled in under the stars to read. He read for several hours, and it was only when he realised that he was hungry, that he put the book away. All of the new information was buzzing around in his head, and he needed time to assimilate it.

Tom headed down to the crew’s canteen on Level 3, in the hope of avoiding the new arrivals on the ship. He was relieved to only see the crew and happily sat with two couples when invited. One of the men introduced himself as Ivan and his brother as Iran. Their wives were Wendy and Sasha.

They explained to Tom that they were of the Burgis race. This was one of the races that came from Utopia. Utopia was the sister planet of Harmony. Harmony was the planet where most of the passengers on the ship would be going to live. Utopia had restricted access since it was occupied, and Harmony wasn’t when Fortune went to visit the first time.

Tom was fascinated with what he learnt and knew they stayed to answer his questions for longer than they should have. He apologised for keeping them from their duties, but they didn’t seem that concerned.

He was amused that they escorted him back to the sickbay to see the baby. Tom had a feeling that Wendy and Sasha were getting clucky. He suspected the two couples might be planning to switch to planetary life and start their own families after the visit.

Cara found Tom sometime later. He had already fed and cuddled Lorena for a while. Cara took him back to his quarters and had a lot of fun helping Tom with his minor problem. She was finding him a fascinating lover and loathed to leave him even though she had to.

Having to go do her own job, she left Tom with his studies.

A few hours later, and needing a break from his studies, Tom wandered around the ship for about an hour.

He then decided to go check out the Space Station that had been named after Neil Armstrong. He was fascinated by the changes that eighty years of technology and a few years of access to magic had made to the world. He bought a model of the starship he was visiting as a keepsake.

He had lunch in one of the many food outlets on the station and even tried the cuisine from a different planet. He decided that camla burgers would definitely be added to his list of favourite foods. He headed for the dome on the ship to continue his study.

Cara found him again some hours later and took him for dinner. She was finding that Tom was very pleasant company and hoped that he decided to stay with them. Reluctantly, she let him go spent his time with Lorena as she had some duties of her own to do now that passengers were arriving.

Some hours later, Tom let her into his room when she knocked. He took his time making sure that Cara was well satisfied before he let her sleep. She wasn’t Victoria, who he had felt a real connection with, but he wasn’t going to complain.

He did worry that Cara seemed to be becoming attached to him and hoped he didn’t hurt her feelings when he left.

Again, Tom got up much earlier than Cara.

He collected some food from the snack cabinets in the canteen and went to study until it was time to go feed Lorena. He was becoming quite attached to the little girl even though he knew that he couldn’t keep her.

He knew that both Tahoora and Esky had visited with Lorena on several occasions and that they seemed to be happy to add her to their family. Tom was quite sure that Lorena was going to be loved and cared for by the couple.

Merry came in while he was still cuddling Lorena and said it was time to change her derma-patches. Tom now watched over Lorena, as Merry carefully removed the patches, to assess how Lorena was healing.

“Wow, her wounds look like they happened six weeks ago rather than three days,” Merry said in amazement. She grabbed a tube of cream to rub into the scarred and healing skin.

The smaller scratches were now just dark pink strips on Lorena’s skin. Unfortunately, most of the deeper gouges were ugly raised scars that were still red and raw-looking, but there was no infection. They were still healing on the subdermal levels of her skin.

Tom was pleased that Lorena was no longer in a lot of pain, but the extensive scars on her head, neck and arm from the claws and teeth of the dingos, and the skin grafts were not a pretty sight.

He knew they would forever mar her skin and give her grief if he didn’t learn how to fix them. If anything, it only made him more determined to do so. He had surmised that he didn’t have to learn how to do full-body healing, just how to heal her skin to help her.

Unfortunately, he needed to learn more about the human body to become a true healer. He knew that task would take him many years even with magic, rather than a couple of days to do. Even the knowledge for healing her skin seemed beyond him. He told Cara and Merry of his problem and worries.

Merry said, “Tom, Lorena is just a baby. The healing you have done will help her a lot. Realistically if you go study medicine for a few years, she will still be young enough that what people say won’t be a problem for her. She will be stiff in the neck region for a few years, but she should have full mobility otherwise.”