The two identical Spirit starships hung in space above the deadly grey and blue world of Haven.
Approaching both was Anna-two’s Rimor which had safely climbed out of Haven’s gravity-well towards rendezvous.
‘Do we need to leave Anna’s Rimor as a warning too?’ asked Mary.
‘Why didn’t you encounter ours before going to the surface when you arrived in orbit?’ I asked. ‘It rather failed to serve its purpose.’
‘Tosh did a scan, but it must have been the other side of the planet, so he didn’t pick its signals up,’ said Anna-two.
‘Perhaps we should put a warning on this one and put it in a diametrically opposed orbit to the original Rimor,’ said Bill.
‘Sounds like a plan,’ I said.
‘Sorry, Anna, we need to take you through decontamination procedures which we used after our visit to Haven,’ said Tosh.
‘Ha,’ said Anna-one, ‘you promised you’d get your revenge one day.’
The decontamination required Anna-two to abandon her Rimor in a full EVA suit and transfer to her Spirit’s airlock, where she was to strip, spray herself thoroughly with disinfectant, and abandon all of her clothes. Mary could then let her into Spirit, disinfect her thoroughly again, and blow the suit and clothes out of the airlock. Sadly, for Tosh, Bill and me, only Mary got to see Anna’s nakedness emerging, like a futuristic Venus, from the sea of space.
In reality, the thought of the vision passed me by. I was still in shock over seeing myself lying dead on that beach. How could someone be both alive and dead? I knew it was possible because of our discovery of Chi alive on our first return to Earth, but this wasn’t someone else, it was me! I tried to imagine those torturous few minutes as my lungs and digestive system was invaded by the pollen. What would it have felt like to drown in my own blood? Death would probably have been a welcome relief. These parallel world paradoxes would long remain with me. In addition, we had another conundrum. We were communicating with a different Heradian colony. That meant the first colony we’d contacted was probably still waiting for our return, and why were both Spirits in orbit around the same version on Haven? We needed answers.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
Anna-two’s Rimor was equipped with the same warnings as ours and Chi remotely guided it to an orbit diametrically opposed to that of ours.
The two Spirits carried out a cool waltz in orbit. One of our new Rimors, with tank, was detached and docked with Mary’s Spirit. We were then able to link the remaining vacant docking ports directly to give us access to both Spirits. I opened the hatch and floated through towards Mary who immediately hugged me and burst into tears. An unexpected reaction from the usually oh-so-cool astrophysicist.
‘Thought you’d died, Mark,’ she said tearfully, ‘and when I found your Rimor with its warnings, I was too late to stop Anna descending to the surface. I had visions of being left alone in Spirit with all the crew dead on Haven.’
By the time she’d said this, I turned and witnessed the two doppelgänger Annas in a tearful embrace, with Chi, Bill, Tosh and Terry queuing to take my and Anna-one’s places. The reunion was extremely tearful, memorable and I’m sure we were all considering our own mortality, with copies of me, Bill, Chi, and Tosh decomposing on Haven and, as far as we were aware, the only version of Penny also dead. Life and death would never be the same again and I wondered what the remnants of religions back home would make of it all once we returned.
We helped ourselves to coffee and snacks, then floated in the main space to listen to Terry explaining to Mary and Anna-two what we knew of the entiroverse.
‘What’s still odd,’ I said, ‘is why you are here, Mary. Why aren’t you at some other version of Haven?’
‘What you were saying about turning in and out of the dark universe, Terry,’ said Mary. ‘I’m not sure why, but I reversed the turn on our journey, so we stayed in the current parallel universe. Pure fluke.’
‘Right,’ said Tosh, ‘that would do it, but why is our first Rimor and landing site here? Why isn’t it somewhere else?’
‘Now, that’s a question we don’t yet have the answer to,’ said Terry, ‘and why had the population of Arctur lost their contact with this crew?’
‘I had to start their education from scratch,’ said Tosh, ‘and, frankly, I’m seriously worried about the colony we were in touch with. Have we left them to die? Shouldn’t we return to Earth and come back with one incorrect turn and see if we can find them?’
‘What? If we save them in this universe, they could continue to be slowly dying elsewhere in the entiroverse?’ said Bill.
‘That’s what’s frightening me,’ said Tosh.
‘Me too,’ said Anna-one.
We all lapsed into a puzzled silence which lasted several minutes.
‘Okay,’ Mary said. ‘What do we do now? Our mission has changed somewhat.’
‘We need to set some priorities,’ I said. ‘I’d like to get back to Arctur and work out a way of descending and learning more about their culture and way of life. Then we want to bring a couple of them back to Spirit when we lift off.’
‘We’ll need to consider contamination,’ said Tosh. ‘Not the weed, but any other bugs which might have a field day moving from us to them or vice versa.’
‘We’ll want them to bring samples of their anti-weed chemical for our guys to analyse back on Earth,’ said Anna-one.
‘And we still need to consider how many other versions of Arctur there might be in the entiroverse and do something about saving them too,’ said Tosh. ‘It’s really bothering me that the other Stroya is looking out for our return and we might never come back. Just imagine dying, knowing the people of planet Earth promised to return and never did. Even worse, some of her people had already voiced concerns that we’d never be heard from again.’
‘Yes,’ I agreed, ‘we must deal with that too. However, for all we know, there could be thousands of Arcturs which were never visited by us in the entiroverse. We could spend multiple lifetimes trying to visit them. Wouldn’t that be a hopeless venture?’
‘Maybe, but the one we were in communication with is different, Mark. We must try to return to them. We promised them,’ said Tosh.
‘Yes, you’re right, I’m with you on that. I also want to make a stop at Herade to check that it really has been taken over by the weed. It could be different in this universe.’
‘Hadn’t thought of that,’ said Bill. ‘Come to think of it, where is that command module of theirs which we left in orbit last time we were here?’
‘It’s still there,’ said Anna-one. ‘I checked when we arrived in orbit.’
‘Well done,’ I said. ‘I’d forgotten about it.’
‘What are you talking about?’ asked Anna-two.
‘There is a Heradian command module, or similar, in orbit here,’ said Bill. ‘We examined it and then put it into a stable orbit. We think it was part of a mission to Haven and that the crew, when they returned to Herade, took the weed with them wiping out all land life on their home planet.’
‘Why would they leave it in orbit?’ asked Mary.
‘How do you mean?’ I asked.
‘Well, it is likely that this was not the expedition which took the weed back, but a second or earlier mission which got to the surface and may have died there,’ said Mary.
‘Oh, yes,’ I said. ‘We must ask the Arctur colony if they have any historical records.’
‘Whichever it is, the wiping out of all the people on an entire world is simply dreadful,’ said Tosh.
‘Indeed,’ said both Anna-two and Mary.
‘First things first,’ I said. ‘Our Anna, set a course to Herade and let’s go and check that it is in the same state as the planet we saw on our last expedition. Mary, you and your Anna follow us.’