“My last batteries went dead a week ago, Sal,” Bridget chattered and shivered. “But I know where we are without the satellite data. The glow on the clouds ahead is Perlagio.” She had navigated the group back to the starting point for three weeks. It had been raining and snowing for a full day. The snow was ankle deep.
“I hope you are right. If we don’t get there tonight, Su will be dead,” Salish chattered back.
“We won’t get there tonight,” she replied. “It is too far, and we need to rest. Pulling Su is slowing us too much.”
“Leave me here.” Su coughed as he rasped, face beneath a wool blanket. No one could hear him. He had been too ill to walk for four days and slow for a week before that. The truck had no fuel and was abandoned sixty kilometers from the Bunker.
“Why don’t I go ahead for help?” Salish proposed.
“Why don’t you?” was the reply from Brandt, head down, leaning forward, breathing heavily as he dragged a stretcher made of limbs that supported a hacking, mummified package the size of a man. “Dude, you don’t spend much time dragging the stretcher.”
“My palms are blistered.”
“Funny those blisters, like, don’t show,” huffed Brandt.
“Let’s keep going for two more hours,” Bridget said.
“I can go for three or four,” said Brandt. “The snow makes dragging this thing easier. We have no groceries, and there is no Yanni’s so we could grab eggs, bacon, and toast and get back on the highway. Dudes, it’s not like stopping will give us energy.”
About two hours after midnight, they reached a point where they could see a house with steam rising from the chimney. The shocked owners let them in and fed three of the four that could eat. Su was semiconscious. Soon, Su was in the hospital. In the evening, the news broadcasts covered the story of the team of four who returned from an expedition close to starvation with evidence that a spaceship from thousands of years earlier had found a planet capable of supporting human life. Salish Moor, a Reaper deacon, was the leader.
The following day, a platoon of state police arrived in search of Salish, Brandt, and Bridget. Salish was taken into custody. Brandt and Bridget were not. They had gained passage the night before on a boat crossing the Mediterranean to Saharia. The captain was sympathetic with their plight and kept no record of them—just their money. Bridget had assumed that the authorities would arrest them. Saharia immediately granted the two asylum and promised not to extradite if Atlantica requested such. Salish was charged with several crimes including violating an archeological site, a felony.
Brandt stayed in the Moroccan region, while Bridget went to Alexandria. She met with scientists from the university as well as from industry. Her story was compelling, and over the winter, leaders from many regions combined their efforts and requested permission to inspect the site along with experts from Atlanticus, all under the control of state guards or military police as necessary. The central government was resistant. In the early spring, they relented as they worked out a fee arrangement with parties who would participate in the expedition. In midsummer, 2053, the site was a hub of activity. The generator that powered the plant had negligible output. The signals from all of the REAP consoles appeared to be lost. Other than this disappointment, the area was of enormous interest to the scientific community as it was a wealth of historical science.
Salish was convicted and sentenced to prison for twenty-one years. Brandt entered the Moroccan Institute of Science and Technology, MIST, at the invitation of the dean and president of the institute. As Salish was freezing in the coastal fog of northern Atlanticus, Brandt earned a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from MIST, a paradox that humored him until his death many decades later.
Bridget coaxed, cajoled, and caressed the scientific community in efforts to convince them of the claims of her mission. The photographs were compelling but, arguably, could have been altered. In view of the signal data being lost and irreproducible and considering the potential evangelical motives of the religious zealots who reported the finding, all serious academics declined to trust her. Her petitions were ignored. She and Brandt made trips to Ceylon, Australia, and South America in failed attempts to gain credence. She ran out of money and hope.
Brandt found a post at the University of Pantegune located on an island off the north coast of South America. He married, had a family, and worked in obscurity until he died a very old man. While the faith of many Reapers was enhanced and the membership of the sect increased, no one in a position of influence made or could make a serious effort to reproduce or confirm the findings after the initial confirmatory expedition. Once again, politics got in the way of world-changing discovery.