7

“Roger, Search,” Reilly said, trying not to sound too angry. “Call me when you need me. Shuttle out.”

She slammed the transmitter onto the console before her and spun in her chair, standing and walking away from the pilot’s station in a fury. She wasn’t entirely sure why she was angry—she just knew it had something to do with Mitch.

Actually, to be fair, it had a lot to do with the waiting, too. But it was Mitch’s attitude about her waiting that bugged her most. It was the fact that he was out rescuing the pod while she was stuck here. It was the fact that when she had told him about the sounds and the weird ozone smell, he’d been a little too dismissive. Check the electrical system? What, did he think she was an idiot? The first thing she’d done was run a full diagnostic and check all of the internal breakers and junctions. She’d found nothing.

True, she hadn’t yet gone outside.

And his warning to wear an EVA suit—that really ticked her off. As if she was too incompetent to know how to keep herself safe!

Again, to be fair, he was just looking out for her. He was doing what he would do for any Blue Collar under his command. Maybe that was what really bothered her. Maybe she didn’t want to be just any Blue Collar under his command. Maybe she wanted … something else.

These were half-formed ideas, and she wasn’t exactly comfortable with them.

She had spent the past few hours watching the dots and blips that represented the men as they moved toward the ravine. She had never spent so much time on a planet before. She preferred the comforting curve of the walls of a ship. The womb-like feeling of safety that she only felt when she was on a starship in space.

The shuttle was a close substitute, at least for the time being, but the sight of blue sky, clouds, and trees out of the shuttle windows were incongruous and strange to her. They were constant reminders that just outside of these walls was a world of biology and nature, not the cold expanse of space to which she’d become accustomed. She wasn’t home, just in a place that looked a little like it.

That’s why she was angry, then. Not at Mitch, not really. Not at the suggestions he had made, which seemed to imply she was both incompetent and silly for being frightened. She was angry that she was caught up in a situation that was totally out of her control and out of her realm of experience.

But those sounds … that smell. Those might be real, and they seemed to be coming from outside of the shuttle. Outside … where bugs and animals and maybe even strange, alien people might be.

Reilly reached up and flipped the switch that closed the cargo doors in the back. Anything that might be out there would have a hard time getting through the steel and titanium and re-entry insulation of the hull. There might as well be a mountain between her and the outside world. But still, she felt unsafe. She felt unsafe because there was something unknown happening around her. And after a lifetime of knowing every aspect of her world, of her existence depending on knowing what was happening around her at all times, the unknown was something she simply couldn’t tolerate.

She would have to go outside.

There were no weapons onboard. Mitch had removed all three remaining disc guns and handed them over to Captain Somar before they’d left base. But there were plenty of pipes and other objects. After rifling through one of Mitch’s tool kits, she came away with a large, metal wrench. Its handle was coated in rubber, which gave her a good grip. She hefted it a few times, smacked the palm of her hand with it, and satisfied, deemed it a worthy weapon. Just in case.

She left the cargo door closed and opted instead to go out of one of the emergency exits on the port side of the shuttle. She popped the lock and pushed the door open slowly, checking to make sure no one, or no thing, was waiting out of sight for her. Carefully she climbed down to the surface, holding the wrench at the ready. When she reached the ground, she quickly spun, looking for any sign of trouble.

There was nothing.

Nothing except for the faint smell of ozone in the air. The vaguely metallic smell was setting her on edge, big time. Electrical fires were a real danger in space because they were difficult to put out and they fed on the much-needed oxygen of the enclosed space. Not to mention that whatever system might be burning could potentially mean the difference between life and death. So for her entire life, Reilly and every other space rat she’d known had been keen to the smell of electricity, the smell of ozone and smoke.

The air was thick with it now. Maybe Mitch was right after all. Maybe there was a short somewhere. It was silly of her to start imagining monsters when it was probably just some relay or cable jarred loose on the outside of the shuttle. If a cable was loose, it might be whipping about and causing the noises she’d heard.

It was the simplest explanation, and she was suddenly angry with herself for being so paranoid. What an idiot! What a moron! What a … what a … what a girl! She’d gotten all squeamish about being alone, without the big, strong men here to protect her. When, in her entire life, had she ever needed some guy to be her hero? She was every bit as tough as Mitch or Alan or Thomas. She could probably take them. Well, maybe not Mitch. But she could hold her own.

After a few minutes of cursing herself for being foolish, she came to her senses and realized that if there really was a problem with one of the electrical systems, she would have to find it and fix it. It might be something non-critical, but it might be something important. Either way, she’d have to search it out.

The mild paranoia she’d felt before still lingered a bit, but it was fading. The daylight actually helped, despite its strangeness to her. Being able to see all around you, she supposed, had its advantages. Still, she figured she’d keep the wrench handy. It had a comforting heft in her hand, and besides you just never knew.

It was warm out here. The climate control system in the shuttle had been one of the few systems that had remained undamaged, and inside it had remained a cool and comfortable 72 degrees. Out here it felt like it might be in the 90s. And it was humid. Within minutes of being outside, she felt sticky and oily from her own sweat.

She hated that feeling. Humidity was always low on a starship, and if you sweated at all, it would quickly evaporate into the air, leaving you cool and dry. But here the air was saturated with moisture, and the sweat had nowhere to go. It was one more reminder that she was stuck on a planet’s surface instead of floating happily above it.

She followed the smell of ozone, carefully checking before her as she went. If a cable had broken loose, it might snake out unexpectedly from beneath the shuttle. Some of the systems on board had as much as 50,000 volts coursing through them, and the amperage could get unbelievably high. It was the amperage that killed, she knew. Just a slight contact from some wildly whipping cable could be enough to fry her.

She should have worn the EVA suit after all. Damn.

Reilly made a slow circle around the edge of the craft, and came finally to a place near one of the exterior data and power ports. These were non-critical systems, at least from the point of view of shuttle operations. They were one half of the physical connection made between the shuttle and another vessel, such as a starship or even another shuttle. These ports were used to physically link power and computer systems, nothing else.

She sighed in relief. If this was where the smell was coming from, she had no worries. She could leave it be until they returned to Citadel. But she had to be sure, and so she leaned in to get a better look.

The metal around the port was charred and blackened. Some of the interior components looked as if they’d been fused, and some of the contacts were burned beyond recognition.

That was strange.

A few of these components weren’t close enough to make contact with each other accidentally. Two of the power contacts were even insulated, so they couldn’t possibly come in contact with other components. And yet those two were the most charred in the bunch. It was as if someone had shoved something into the port, making contact with both power nodes at once.

She looked around to see if maybe a stray piece of debris was lying nearby. It was possible that during the crash something had gotten wedged in this port. Maybe Mitch had missed it when he did his inspection. Or maybe, since this was a non-critical system, he’d decided to leave it be until they’d returned from the rescue.

But there was nothing on the ground and nothing in the port that could have caused a short like this.

“Reilly,” she heard a voice say from behind her.

She whipped around quickly. Were the guys back? How could they have gotten back so quickly?

But there was no one behind her. In fact, she could see a great distance in almost every direction and there was no one for miles.

Had she imagined it? Was she cracking up? This was, after all, the longest she’d ever been on a planet’s surface. Who knew what kind of psychosis a space rat might go through if they were stuck planet-side for too long?

“Reilly,” she heard the voice again. This time it seemed to come from all around her, or nowhere at all. It was confusing. It was like hearing an echo and not being able to identify the source. She stepped away from the shuttle and looked out over the rocky terrain, toward the distant tree line.

“Hello?” she said aloud.

There was no answer. And she realized that her voice had been a bit soft, a bit quiet. She was scared. And being scared made her mad.

“Hello!” she shouted, forcing strength into her voice.

Still nothing.

Then a thought occurred to her. Maybe she was hearing the radio! Maybe the guys were calling her from their location. They could be ready to be picked up, right?

She started making her way around the shuttle again, back to the emergency exit that would lead her back inside.

“Reilly,” she heard again as she rounded the back of the shuttle.

She was sure now, this was not coming from within the shuttle. It was impossible. The radio wasn’t that loud, and the ship was insulated for sound. Unless the doors were open, no sound could get in or out. She had closed the emergency exit behind her, and so wherever this voice was coming from, it wasn’t coming from inside. It was out here, with her.

She whirled and faced the open expanse of the rocky terrain that stretched out before her. She looked up into the sky, defiantly. She was daring whatever it was to speak to her again. “I’m here!” she shouted. “What do you want?”

“Nothing, nothing,” the voice seemed to say. It was like a whisper, only louder. It was coming from all around her, but from nowhere at the same time. She spun around several times, trying to spot someone or something that might be responsible. She refused to acknowledge the thought that was rising in her mind.

This is all in my head.

“Reilly,” the voice said again, and this time it was close. She turned and saw him standing there, an impossible vision that she knew … knew could not be real. And yet, here he was.

Her father. Dead for more than a decade. Dead since she was a little girl. And now, here he stood on an alien planet and looking exactly as she remembered him.

“Reilly,” he said, and smiled.

“Daddy?” she whispered. This is impossible. This is impossible.

“Why are you here?” he asked her.

She was having trouble understanding. The words were clear, but with them came … something else. With the words came meaning. He wasn’t asking her why she was at this location, on this rocky terrain. He wasn’t asking why she was here with the shuttle. He was asking her, clearly, why she was on this world. Not as in, “How did you get here?” but as in “What is your purpose here?”

“We crashed,” she said. “We crashed here. We’re … trying to find the others. The colonists.”

“The sleeping ones,” he said.

“Yes.”

“There are many of them here. A lot of dreams. New dreams, new stories.”

“ok,” she said. She wasn’t entirely sure what was happening. She knew this couldn’t be her father. Was it an alien? It had to be. It wasn’t her father. Her father was dead.

“Dead,” her father said. And the word conjured all sorts of images for Reilly. She suddenly remembered her father’s funeral. She then remembered every funeral she’d ever been to. It was like having a conversation with someone you knew, with someone you had a close, personal relationship with. It was like when one conversation led naturally to another, so you begin talking about your favorite food and end up talking about the nature of the universe.

It was like talking with someone who shared all of the same in-jokes with you. Someone who had your complete trust. Only she didn’t trust him. This wasn’t her father. This was some … thing. She fought. She struggled. She stepped away from him.

“Please,” he said. “Please, tell me.”

“What are you?” she asked.

And now she began thinking of other things. She thought of infants. She thought of laughing about stupid jokes. She thought of sex. She thought of the chapel services she had (rarely) attended. One thought after another after another, and each leading into one inevitable string of thoughts, seemingly without end. And it was threatening her. It was overwhelming her. It was flooding her, drowning her.

“No!” she shouted. She suddenly felt the heft of the wrench in her hand, and without thinking, she swung it outward, aiming for her father’s head. As it made contact there was a bright flash, and the smell of ozone amped up. There was the sound of unbearably loud static, of popping and sparking.

She turned away from the vision of her father, stumbled, caught herself, and then made her way slowly to the shuttle’s emergency exit. When she reached it, she looked back, expecting to see her father there. But he was gone. No trace, and nowhere for him to go.

And suddenly Reilly felt a little confused.

Could she have imagined it? Could he have been some delusion, dredged up from her stressed brain as she dealt with these feelings of paranoia and fear about being so … so exposed?

He had seemed so real a moment ago, but now he was fading. Now he was slowly becoming something vague, barely remembered. She did remember, she still held the idea of what had happened in her mind, but the specifics seemed to be draining away. Her father? What had brought him up? Oh yes, I thought I heard his voice. I imagined him being here. Was he here to rescue me? I must really be cracking up.

And by the time she had climbed up into the shuttle, she was laughing at herself. She felt silly. She felt like she had let the stress of the whole situation get to her.

Have to remember to tell Mitch about the data and power ports, she thought. He’ll want to fix those.

She slumped into the pilot’s seat again and settled in to wait for Mitch to call her for the pick-up. It might come any minute now, and it wouldn’t be a minute too soon. She was sick of waiting here. It was boring. She was ready for something, anything, to happen.

She realized she was still holding the wrench in her hand, gripping it so tightly in fact that her hand was starting to hurt. Why was she gripping it so hard? She looked at it and realized it was blackened and scarred and melted in places, as if it had come in contact with an electrical discharge. Had she touched the power conduits with it? Had she shorted them out?

She thought back and realized that she couldn’t remember much after finding the port. There was a vague memory of a spark and a flash, followed by the smell of ozone. Maybe she’d brushed a conduit with the wrench somehow, and the spark zapped her but good. If that was the case, she was lucky to be alive. Lucky that a bit of memory loss was all she’d suffered. It could have been a lot worse.

Damn Mitch for being right, she thought. I should have worn that EVA suit after all.

Thomas couldn’t imagine how this could be any worse.

The girl—Penny—was more than just a pain. She was starting to become an obstacle. Everything had to be a battle with her. And Thomas found himself devolving to the type of guy who resorted to threats just to get things moving. He didn’t like being that guy. He had dealt with too many bullies in the past to enjoy playing the part of one.

“I can’t go up any further,” Penny was panting after making it only a few feet since the last time she had claimed she couldn’t go up any further. She was more than halfway to the ridgeline now, and Mitch stood on the ridge high above her, holding the rope they had tied around her waist. She couldn’t fall, at least not to the ground, but that seemed to be of little comfort to her.

Alan was directly below her, and Thomas was below him. The climb, so far, had been laborious. Getting her into the tree in the first place had taken an effort of sheer will. Now it seemed every branch was a battle.

Alan climbed up next to her, sitting in the crook of one of the branches as she clung tightly to the trunk, eyes squeezed shut.

“You can make this climb,” Alan said plainly. It wasn’t in that nurturing, encouraging way you’d expect to hear in a situation like this, and it wasn’t harsh. It was matter-of-fact. He wasn’t encouraging Penny, he was reminding her.

It seemed strange to Thomas that Alan was so taken with this girl. He was a pretty levelheaded guy, by all accounts. Now, though, if Thomas didn’t know any better he’d swear that Alan’s hormones were getting the better of him.

Penny was very attractive, Thomas had to admit. Lean and shapely, blond hair, tanned—she was everything one would expect from the daughter of a very rich man. Including spoiled and obnoxious. Alan, who didn’t seem to be the kind of person to be taken with something so shallow as sex appeal, nevertheless seemed to be going out of his way to take care of the girl, to encourage her and protect her.

It occurred to Thomas that he might be this way with any “civilian” they encountered. Or maybe he really was letting his hormones guide him. Only time would tell.

“I can’t!” Penny was saying now, in a pout. Her eyes were welded shut, and she had a death grip on the tree’s trunk. She was digging in, prepared to stay in that spot until the tree itself fell down from old age.

Thomas, feeling the pressure of some unknown deadline pressing against them, was starting to become annoyed. But for the life of him, he couldn’t think of what to say to this girl to get her to finish the climb.

“You’ve made plenty of climbs that were much tougher than this,” Alan said.

Silence.

To Thomas, it seemed as if the air around them was now crisp and still, even the sound of the local birds seemed to have dimmed. From above them, Mitch called down, “What does that mean?”

“She’s a climber,” Alan said, without taking his eyes off of her.

Penny, who until now was hugging the tree for dear life, now hung back casually and looked at Alan with a strange, slightly annoyed expression. “You knew?” she asked.

He shrugged, “I’ve read articles about you. I recognized you when we opened the pod.”

Thomas, jaw dropping was furious, though he wasn’t sure what, exactly he should be most angry about. “You … you mean you’ve been faking this whole fear of climbing thing? Why the hell would you do that?”

Penny looked at Alan, then down to Thomas. Her expression was smug, and it made Thomas want to shimmy up the tree and smack her. To his credit, he stayed where he was, waiting. “A girl has to have her secrets,” she said.

Thomas was infuriated. And apparently so was Mitch, who made a noise of pure disgust before stepping away from the edge of the ridge. Alan, however, clung passively to the branches closest to Penny. He seemed to be unaffected by the girl’s deception, possibly because he’d known about it all along.

“Why didn’t you say something?” Thomas said to him.

He shrugged. “She was keeping it to herself. I thought she might be trying to protect herself.”

“Protect herself?” Mitch called from above.

Alan looked up. “It was her advantage. She still wasn’t sure about us, but if she could make us think she was helpless when she really wasn’t … ” he let the rest trail off, unsaid.

Thomas understood at once, and more than simply what Alan was saying. He understood that Alan had allowed Penny to keep her deception intact so she could feel safe, but was now telling her that he wasn’t fooled, to assure her that it was alright to trust them. It was an expert move, Thomas thought, and it showed that Alan had a much deeper understanding of people than anyone might have supposed.

It also showed that Alan would willingly allow those around him to be deceived, while he knew exactly what was going on. Thomas wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, or how he felt about it.

“So why did you tell on me?” Penny said, affecting a sort of childish pout that told Thomas she was still practicing deception, still trying to fool them into thinking she was helpless.

“You’re slowing us down,” Alan said. “And there are a lot of people who still need to be rescued. Including your parents.”

Penny stared at the young man for a long moment. She’s realizing, Thomas thought, that she’s met her match. Heck, I’m realizing it, too. No one had guessed that Alan was such a keen observer of humanity, and no one had known he was capable of letting a deception go on, just so the deceiver could feel at ease. It was kind of sneaky actually, and it had the effect of disarming Penny so that now she would have to suck it up and trust them.

“He’s right,” Mitch said from above. “We’ve wasted too much time already. You’ve slowed us down. Now get your ass in gear and get up here so we can go save someone else.”

Penny bristled but climbed faster. She paused long enough to untie the rope from her waist, letting it dangle until Mitch quickly wound it to the top. In a short time, they’d all made it safely to the top of the ridge, and the three men pulled up the heavy stasis pod from the bottom of the ravine, while Penny brooded by herself at the edge.

When the pod was safe, all three men took a handle, not even bothering to ask Penny for help, and began the trek to the landing zone. Mitch keyed the comm on his shoulder, “Shuttle, this is Search, we have the first pod and a … guest. Rendezvous at LZ in twenty minutes.”

“Roger that,” Reilly replied.

They made their way to the landing zone in silence.

The shuttle didn’t land, but it came as close to it as possible. As the cargo door lowered to the ground, the three men charged upward with the pod between them. A bit like a funeral in reverse, Mitch thought, with the pallbearers carrying the casket back into the chapel after retrieving it from the ground. They’d even gone to the extra trouble of raising the dead, and there she was walking among them as if nothing had ever happened. The rich girl. The princess. The liar.

Mitch didn’t care for liars. No matter what their motivation might be, he was pretty sure it all came down to the same thing—self-preservation. And it was one thing to do whatever it took to stay alive and safe, it was another to put others in jeopardy to do it. By slowing them down with her little act, this girl may have killed other colonists. There’d be no way to know for sure, of course, but that didn’t make her actions any less reckless.

To be fair, he wasn’t angry at her alone. He was also angry with Alan.

He’d known Alan for a few years now, since he’d come onto Alonzo’s crew as a young man. He had told them his parents had died in a colony ship explosion, and that had gained him a great deal of sympathy. Such things weren’t common, but they happened often enough that nearly every Blue Collar had been affected by such a loss.

Mitch, like everyone else in the Blue Collar crew, had taken Alan in as his own kin, looking out for him and protecting him as he grew and learned and became useful. He had potential, Mitch felt. He had a shot at becoming a White Collar engineer if he wanted. He could make the transition in status that half the Blue Collars yearned for and envied and the other half resented and scorned.

But why had he let Penny’s lies go on for so long?

So he was angry with Alan, angry at Penny, and even a little angry at himself for being fooled. He was so angry that once they were on board he started looking for something—anything—that he could do to keep his hands busy. He would hide his anger in work, just like he always had, and so by pissing him off, this girl, Penny, would have only accomplished something good in the end. By being such a liar and a moron, she would get the environmental systems functioning again. And Alan, by letting liars delay them and possibly cause the deaths of some of the colonists, would help them all by causing the shuttle’s stabilizers to be repaired.

They were in the air now, setting course for the hop to the colony module’s wreckage some miles away. Mitch had picked up a wrench that was out of place, and somewhat worse for wear, burned and scarred and melted in places. What the heck had happened to this thing? Did someone shove it into a power cell?

“Mitch,” Thomas said from behind him.

Mitch didn’t turn around. “Yeah,” he said.

“You seem … well, you seem pissed off. Want to talk about it?”

Mitch whirled on him. Thomas had also been fooled by the girl, and had been caught up in the elaborate game she’d been playing. But for some reason, Thomas didn’t seem angry about it. He seemed to have dealt with it somehow. “Yeah, I’m pissed,” Mitch said, but his voice stayed low and calm so that only the two them were part of the conversation. Everyone else was busy, except for the lying little snob who had strapped herself into one of the charred seats while wearing an expression of disgust. She might have said something, but if she did, Alan was the only one who would hear.

“It’s the girl, right?”

“Yes,” Mitch said.

“And Alan?”

Mitch paused, then suddenly, strangely, felt the anger unknot itself. It didn’t fade away, it just became lighter. Less pressing. For the first time, Mitch started to wonder if it was these two kids he was really mad at, or if it was something else entirely.

“Yeah,” he said, “I was pretty angry about the climbing thing. But I think I’m getting over it.”

“It didn’t exactly thrill me, either,” Thomas said, with a tight sile. “But I think Alan handled it pretty well.”

“You do?” Mitch was confused and a little annoyed. “He practically helped her lie to us.”

“But that’s not what he was doing. That may be how it felt to us, but I think he was doing what he had to do, to make her stop lying and start taking this seriously.”

“By playing along?” Mitch asked.

“By letting her get to a point where she couldn’t keep up the lie. I think that when he recognized her he also saw that she was scared. People do desperate things when they’re scared,” Thomas said. Mitch thought there was more feeling behind it than there should have been. Something Thomas wasn’t saying. “I think Alan knew she was feeling powerless, and so he let her do something that gave her power.”

“By lying?”

“By keeping a secret. Secrets give people power, believe me. When you know something and your enemy doesn’t, they can never be sure where your weak points are.”

Mitch thought about this and thought about how he felt about it. He had never been one to stay angry for no good reason. He was rational, logical. He wasn’t like most of the Blue Collar crew he knew—quick to anger and slow to forgive. He might still hold something of a grudge against this girl, but he knew Alan too well to let some passing offense color his judgment.

Slowly but steadily he calmed himself, and in moments the anger was gone. Now he was looking at Thomas, who was looking back at him, and he realized for the first time that this man was not who he said he was.

It occurred to him like an inspiration. There were hints, constant little things he did and said. Questions he asked. Concepts he should have been familiar with but of which he seemed to have only a cursory knowledge. Like Penny, Thomas was holding something back, pretending. He was deceiving them all somehow. But since the crash, Mitch had spent a lot of time with this man, had had many conversations with him, had laughed with him, and had struggled with him. Was it possible that he could have deceived them all so thoroughly? Was he evil in a decent-looking package?

Mitch wasn’t sure. Thomas seemed genuine in most things. He seemed to genuinely care about rescuing the colonists, for example. He seemed concerned with his team, too. Hadn’t he come to check on Mitch, to soothe his anger? Could an enemy do that? Mitch didn’t know. But he was starting to get a deeper picture of this White Collar engineer. He liked him, that much he couldn’t deny. But he wasn’t sure how much he trusted him. This man has secrets, Mitch thought. And I don’t think he was placating me when he said secrets give you power. I think he was confessing.

Mitch shook his head, smiled, let the humor return to him. Whatever Thomas was hiding, so far it hadn’t brought them harm. Or it seemed so at any rate. Time might say something different, but for now he’d proven himself a friend and a colleague, and a decent leader too. “ok,” Mitch said. “ok, I can let it go. I’ve let it go. Let’s see if we can get this bird to fly like an eagle instead of like a turkey.”

The shuttle settled down close to the wreckage. The first chunk of wreckage, anyway. This was the section of the module that was festooned with atmospheric propulsion systems. Each thruster was controlled by its very own independent system, a redundancy that was meant to compensate for damage or failure of any one unit. The sudden entry into the atmosphere coupled with the collision with the Citadel module had rendered these redundancies useless, however, and the whole thing had spun out of control until it had plowed up miles of topsoil and foliage and rocks on the surface of an alien planet.

Thomas felt uneasy about the scene. He had never before seen a vessel of this size splayed open and spread out in a wake of destruction, but that didn’t seem to stop him from associating it with another starship from a distant past—one that had not crashed to a planet’s surface but had instead exploded with the force of a star, with enough power and energy to vaporize everyone and everything close by. The vision of peeled metal and fire damage that Thomas looked at now could not have existed in the explosion that had changed his life all those years ago, but that couldn’t keep his mind from connecting the two.

“Thomas,” Mitch said from beside him. “You ok?”

Thomas finally broke out of his reverie. Mitch, Alan, Reilly, and the girl, Penny, were all standing beside the shuttle, and all eyes were on him. He realized that he’d been standing with his back to them for some time, staring intently at the wreckage, and he must have missed something someone had asked him. “I’m sorry,” Thomas said, trying to force a smile. “I guess … well, it’s just that this is a lot of destruction.”

Mitch nodded, but still stared at him for a moment.

Mitch and Alan got to work on salvaging what systems they needed to bring the shuttle back to 100 percent. Or at least 90 percent, Thomas thought. Mitch had explained that they would be able to get full flight capability back, which would mean no more short hops with long cool-down periods. Getting the atmospheric controls back in shape would take longer, and it wasn’t a priority right now. They’d deal with getting back into space once they’d reclaimed as many of the colonists as possible.

While the two Blue Collar engineers did their thing, though, Thomas found that he was suddenly useless. As were Reilly and Penny. After giving it a great deal of thought, he made his decision. “We’re going on a little hike,” he told the two ladies.

“What do you have in mind?” Reilly asked.

“What do you mean, a hike?” Penny snapped.

“There may be other pods in the wreckage. We’re going to see if we can find them. If any are in trouble, like you were Penny,” he said pointedly, “then we’ll get them out. Timing could be crucial.”

Reilly nodded, as expected. She would do her duty.

But to his surprised Penny was also nodding. “Do you think we might find my mother and father?”

Thomas had expected her to snap again, to demand that he and Reilly do it on their own while she rested in the shuttle or something. At once, he felt a little ashamed at his harsh judgment of her. At the same time, though, he couldn’t help but note that her interest in finding the pods was strictly personal. “There’s a chance,” he said quietly. It seemed to be enough.

And so, once again, Thomas found himself donning a backpack and canteen and trudging out on foot. This wasn’t exactly how he and his fellows had always envisioned the colonization of alien worlds. In his dreams, there had been sophisticated computer systems handling all of the colony’s needs, and there had been dozens of vehicles for transport. One hobbled shuttle wasn’t really cutting it. Then again, the point of the current system was to arrive on a world, break down the colony module for parts and materials, and build everything else they would need, vehicles included. It was, on the whole, a much more efficient means of colonization than he had ever really envisioned. Nothing was wasted.

Still, even though he’d kept in decent enough shape in his previous life, over the past couple of days he’d done an awful lot of hiking, climbing, and carrying of heavy objects. His muscles were starting to rebel even as he forced himself to press on.

Reilly seemed a little beaten by the experience as well. She had grown up entirely in an environment where gravity had little to no hold on her most of the time. Artificial gravity was still relatively new throughout the human colony fleet—a gift from the Esool—and part of her lifetime had been spent floating among bulkheads and through corridors. Now that she was confronted with the real thing on a grand, planetary scale, it was kicking her butt. Or so he imagined. She seemed winded after a very short period and lagged a bit as they walked. Thomas slowed the pace enough for her to more easily keep up.

It was Penny that was the biggest surprise, though. She seemed to have no limitations. She was in good shape, despite the obviously pampered lifestyle she’d had. The designer clothes, the manicured nails, the perfect hair and skin—these things gave her away as one who had money and could afford to spend it on frivolous and luxurious things. But she had the movement and strength of someone who was used to being physical. She must have loved being outdoors, Thomas figured. And since she had no other responsibilities to distract her, she was outdoors a lot. Rock climbing, hiking, maybe some sports, and all in real gravity. Penny might be spoiled, but she hadn’t sat idle.

Thomas found that his opinion of the girl was shifting slightly. He still wasn’t thrilled at her frequent displays of childishness and selfishness. But he had to admire her grace, her strength. No wonder Alan seemed to be infatuated with her.

Penny kept moving ahead of them and then pausing to let them catch up. She was obviously annoyed. “I thought we were in a hurry here,” she said.

Reilly, huffing and obviously tired, said, “I’m sorry. I’m not used to real G.”

“Real G?” Thomas said. He, too, was huffing a little, though it was probably due more to the fact that he’d already had a lengthy hike recently and his physical limits were closing in.

“Real Gravity,” Penny sneered. “What else would she mean? Are you seriously an engineer? Because you don’t seem to know anything.”

“I know nothing at all,” Thomas said, forcing a smile. “That’s why they put me in charge.”

Penny huffed her annoyance and stormed off in the direction they’d been moving.

“She’s a snot, but she’s right about one thing, you do seem to be a little out of the loop at times. No offense,” Reilly said.

“I’ve been … away. For a long time,” Thomas replied.

“Away? Like on another colony? Or … wait, are you a sleeper?”

When Thomas only blinked in reply she went on. “A sleeper is someone who goes into cryo and only comes out at certain times. I’ve met a few here and there, mostly they’re specialists who are taking long voyages.”

Thomas nodded, “That’s as good a name as any. I was in cryo freeze for a very long time. I woke up about a month before the Citadel mission was launched.”

Reilly regarded him for a moment, weighed what he was saying, apparently did some sort of side-by-side comparison in her head, sizing him up based on other people she had known. “That explains it,” she said finally. “You tend to get most of everything right and then miss out on some saying or expression or something. So, what are you specialized in?”

“Computers,” he said. “I used to design and build computer systems for spacecraft and for the colonies.”

“For the colonies? But, those systems haven’t changed much in about a hundred years. I thought they had all been designed long ago. You couldn’t have been asleep that long.”

To Thomas’s relief, she laughed at the very idea, and he smiled and said, “No, I guess I couldn’t. But I was under for a long time. When I went into suspension, they were still designing and refining some of the systems that you use now. They may not have changed much to the naked eye, but there’s always some adjustment or something that you have to make. I’m not quite extinct yet.”

She smiled and as they started hiking again, trying to catch up to Penny, she said, “I’ve never done anything other than fly ships. My whole life I’ve been part of a crew.”

“That’s what I hear. Did you ever think about doing something else? Did you always want to be a pilot?”

She smiled, “Well, no. I used to want to be an engineer. A White Collar, actually. Living in a house on some planet. Working in a building that’s rooted to the ground. Clean. Well,” she said, slightly embarrassed, “you know. You’re a White Collar. You have money.”

He laughed out loud, and when he saw her face, he immediately felt bad. “Sorry,” he said. “But I’m not exactly Rockefeller.”

“Who?”

He sighed. “It means I’m not rich. There was a family on Earth named Rockefeller, a long time ago, that was very rich at one time. They might still be, I’m not sure. But way back in the stone age when I was working on computers, we had that saying.”

“Ah,” she said. “Still, you were free to travel if you wanted, right? And you were free to settle somewhere. White Collars can choose a colony and stay there. Blues just have to keep flying.”

“So why’d you give up your dream? Or have you? Do you still want to be a White Collar engineer?”

She was quiet for a moment, and Thomas wondered if he had somehow offended her. He waited until she finally answered. “I passed a bunch of tests. Did really well, in fact. But a few of my friends, Blue Collars, people I had grown up with and pretty much thought of as family, they made it clear that they wouldn’t have anything to do with me anymore. If I left, I’d have to start all over. I don’t have any other family, so, you know.”

“That’s terrible,” Thomas said. “They’d cut you off because you’re trying to better yourself?”

“Hey, I wouldn’t be better than them, ok?” she said, sounding a little angry. “Just … never mind. It kind of freaks me out to be planet-side anyway. It’s not a big deal.”

“I didn’t mean to offend you, Reilly. I’m sorry. You’re right, you wouldn’t be better than them. You’d just be improving yourself. You’d be doing something for you. I think it’s selfish of them to shun you for it.”

She shrugged. “That’s the way it is,” she said.

Thomas could see that it was. Before they’d left Citadel, things seemed to be getting tense between the Blue Collars and the White Collars. It was almost like some sort of caste distinction. The White Collars were seen as a kind of elite class. Not as rich and powerful as the wealthy colonists, but close. Close enough, in fact, to be considered “other,” to be considered the outsider. The Blue Collars seemed to play the social role of serfs, or the working class. They were the grease in the wheels of society, and they knew it. Apparently, they resented it, but they had developed a sense of pride and elitism themselves about the fact of their social status. They saw themselves as better than the White Collars because they, at least, weren’t afraid to get their hands dirty, to work hard and risk their lives in the service of others.

This sense of identity, Thomas knew, was important. It allowed them to make sense of their lives, thousands of days spent in the cold and dark of space with little more than each other to depend on. They became family, and just like any family, they held to their members fiercely. So when someone left, as Reilly had dreamt of doing, they were shunned. They were cast out and set loose.

Thomas had seen this kind of thing in his day, too. Weren’t the Amish like this? The unbelievers, the ones who refused to join the church, weren’t they shunned and cast out, never allowed to return? Before he’d gone to sleep, putting himself voluntarily in cryo suspension, there had been plenty of street gangs around, and hadn’t they had similar rules? When you joined a gang, you became part of a family, and if you tried to “better” yourself, you were showing disrespect to that family. You were cast out, sometimes violently, and never allowed to return.

It happened with poverty groups, too. There was this culture of poverty in which families and friends clung to their lifestyle and situation and saw anyone who tried to get out as turning their backs on their roots. It was a concept that Thomas had always found strange, this idea that the pursuit of an education could be seen as a statement that you are ashamed of where you came from. Nevertheless, he knew that it happened, and it had obviously played a part in shaping this girl’s life.

“Are you two going to camp here or something? Come on!” Penny shouted.

They had been walking at a somewhat leisurely pace. “I hate to say it, but she’s right,” Reilly said. “If we’re doing this, we need to get a leg up.”

“Agreed,” Thomas said, and the two of them practically ran to catch up to Penny as she trudged on to the next chunk of wreckage.