 
**The Alpha Project**

**Book One – Exodus**

By

Toby Clark

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2010 Toby Clark

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**Smashwords Edition, License Notes**

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Also by the same author:

Alpha Seven

Book One Exodus
Chapter 1

Amelie squealed as arms folded around her. A naked body pressed up against her from behind.

"Guess who?"

"Oh, Desmond, don't be such an idiot. You gave me a fright!"

"Mother sent me here to see how you were getting on. She says there isn't much time."

She untwined his arms and turned around to be greeted by the sight of the young man, dressed only in boxer shorts in the steamy, humid atmosphere of the hydroponicum. He was quite tall, slim, well muscled and fit as were they all. Blue eyes and sandy coloured hair showed off an attractive and animated countenance. The beginnings of hair were visible on his chest, he would soon be coming into his prime. He grinned and let his eyes roam over her. "Amelie..."

"Mother says we mustn't even think about it. This isn't the time."

"Oh, Mother! What does she know about feelings?"

"You mustn't say things like that, Desmond!"

"But I love you Amelie. I think you are the loveliest person in the world! Expedition" he corrected himself. "And for the first time ever, I've got you on your own."

She lowered her eyes demurely. "Desmond! I had to get the sprays ready, this is supposed to be an emergency, after all. I was just making the final connection when you – surprised me."

"Well, turn it on then."

"You know what it will be like when I do." She smiled, looked back into his eyes. "We can leave it for a little while yet, I'm sure. The canopy is immensely strong." They both looked up at the reassuringly bright white dome that rose in a mighty vaulting arch high above them. "I think that Father is overdoing the precautions. If you ask me, that is."

She reached out and took his hand, led him to the grassy bank in front of the pond. He noticed the fat length of pipe which she had fed into it and which disappeared in amongst the undergrowth of the forest back the way they had come. "Won't it empty all the water out?"

"Well, of course it will to start with but it will drain back in again so it should just keep going round and round for as long at it is needed. That's what Father said would happen. It is just like the normal rain making system only directed up on to the canopy and with more force"

"Oh, Amelie! You're so beautiful!" Desmond sat down on the grass and pulled her down beside him. "Will you let me kiss you?"

Amelie lowered her eyes again. She was completely unable to suppress the blush that came to her cheeks. She nodded. Desmond leaned across and brushed his lips to her cheek. She could feel the warmth of his body as his trunk pressed against her and she instinctively leaned forward against him. Her breast was touching him, she hadn't realised how sensitive it was. She was starting to breathe through parted lips and she could feel her heartbeat becoming stronger. He was putting both arms around her and drawing her around face to face, then his lips were against hers. She found herself winding her body around him in response, feeling the back of his neck with her hands and returning his embrace with an increasingly urgent fervour.

They sat embracing and kissing for some minutes, following the demands of nature and the hunger of youth, uncaring for their inexperience. She pulled back apart from him and gazed into his face, drunk with sensation and the heat of physical contact. They were both breathing heavily, she could see that his face was flushed. Their eyes were locked together.

"Mother?" she whispered. "Isn't here" he replied breathily.

She reached behind her and unhooked her regulation bra, let it fall on the grass beside her. His eyes dropped to her breasts. She reached forward and pulled his face down against them, gripped his shoulders, rocking him against her. He kissed her nipples, his lips pulling them up into tight points, then he was above her, she was lying back with the soft, yielding grass against her skin. His eyes looked into hers, enquiringly. She ran her hands down his flanks, hooked her fingers inside the waistband of his boxers and pushed them down over his hips, with boldness that surprised herself, eased them over his big, bulging erection and down his thighs. In an immediate response, he had pulled her knickers down as far as her knees and she wrestled them off altogether while he did the same and then they were naked.

She was drowning in his eyes, her own were liquid pools of desire. Her time had come and she was eagerly ready for him. She held his hot, erect penis in both hands and guided him between her labia, nuzzling the head of him against herself, overwhelmed by the sheer physical sensations coming from inside. "Now!" she commanded hoarsely. He began to thrust with his hips, she could feel him pressing more tightly each time until something gave and he was entering her, going deeper, opening her for the first time until he came all the way down on to her mound. She shuddered, whispered into his ear. "Gently! Don't hurt me. Go slowly."

Desmond tried to hold himself back but it was impossible. She began to writhe and moan beneath him, making him so incredibly excited that his ejaculation came almost at once. She pushed up against him, wanting more but for the moment, he was finished.

"Desmond, that was wonderful" she murmured. "Why did you finish so quickly?"

"Couldn't help it" He was faintly shamefaced, feeling himself slacken inside her. "Next time it will be different, I promise!"

"When will that be?"

He grinned, bent forward over her and kissed her on the mouth. He had already felt renewed stirrings of passion. "Now!" He began to press with his hips, gently at first until he became fully hard again. She gripped him tightly with her hands on his buttocks, pulling him in to herself, gasping and groaning with the unbelievable sensations of joy welling up inside her as he slid strongly over her clitoris and to his full depth inside her. This time she made him work as hard as he could, he was amazed at the force of her response, she was like a wild thing, thrashing and bucking underneath him until she exploded with the violence of her orgasm and took him with her for the second time.

They collapsed together, Desmond still lying on top of her. They were running with sweat in the hot humidity of the hydroponicum, both gasping for breath until at length they began to sink into the delicious peacefulness of relaxation after the fury of their passion. He became aware that she had fallen asleep with him still inside her, his body still covering her. He breathed in the aromatic musky scent of her body, letting himself learn the little sensations and feelings which would cement his love for her in the desperate months and years that he did not yet know were to come.

As he sat beside her sleeping form, his eyes wandered over the lush rainforest that comprised H2. A microcosm of its earthly precursor, flora and fauna designed for maximum biodiversity but subject to the criterion of benign tolerance to humans, it was magnificent in form and delightful in the variety of its species. Small birds flitted about within the canopy, insects droned about over the pond – here a dragonfly, there a butterfly, amphibians and small reptiles could be disturbed in and around it.

Desmond sighed with contentment. They had only been revived from hibernation a few days ago and this had been his first visit to the hydroponica albeit in response to an emergency. It was totally unlike any other part of the ship, contrasting with the metallic orderliness and functionality that defined Alpha Four's status as a spacecraft. The glorious range of greens and browns punctuated with splashes of red, yellow and purple flowers set off the blueish surface of the pond.

Overhead, the canopy presented a pearly daylight glow that set everything off to perfection. He could see exotic looking fruits here and there. He picked a ripe fig from a nearby tree and chewed it appreciatively.

Here in this paradise, he had become a man! Here, he had fallen in love with the beautiful young woman lying at peace beside him while his sperms were making their journey to the centre of her fertility. He sighed again. His life was destined never to be the same again, he reflected as he leaned over to kiss her dear lips.

She stirred and opened her eyes, smiled back into his, then sat up suddenly, hand rising to her mouth. "Desmond, how long have we been lying here? Mother will be furious! The sprays! We haven't started the sprays!" She staggered to her feet and tottered into the forest, following the line of the hose.

"Amelie, wait!" he called, following behind. "You said it wasn't urgent..." His voice was drowned in the sudden clamour of a klaxon sounding over by the control centre and the lighting began to flicker in the firmament above him like the ominous presaging of a tropical storm. He chased after her through a winding path amongst the trees calling out her name until he burst through and out by the control centre to where she was frantically opening a valve.

She was sobbing "the canopy, the canopy!" as the sound of intensely heavy rain began to roar down on to the foliage. "Amelie..."

"It's too late! Desmond, flee. Into the control centre." She ran to him, seized his arm and propelled him towards a vertical ladder that led upwards to a hatch. He could feel the frenzied winds of a great storm beginning to blow around him and down from where they had to go. He vaulted up, two steps at a time and she climbed desperately behind him against the wind roaring loudly out of the hatchway. He reached down a hand to her and dragged her up with him. Now his body was filling the opening and air was shrieking past him, trying to drag him back down with malevolent force, now he was through and dragging her desperately up and through with him. She rolled over on to the floor out of the way, he unlatched the hatch cover and the rising hurricane grabbed it from his hands, slammed it shut with tremendous force and....suddenly all was silent.

He went down on his knees, gasping for breath, seeing again in his mind the last terrifying view through the hatchway as the canopy collapsed on to the trees which were bending and thrashing in the fury of the tornado of escaping air from the doomed forest behind them. He looked up with horror in his face into her equally horrified eyes. "It's gone!" she quavered. "It's all lost. Oh Desmond, Desmond! Why didn't you wake me?"

"I didn't realise...."

"And now the hydroponicum is lost. The other three are still standing, luckily for us all. Why did you fail?" They turned, cringing before the stern figure who had appeared unnoticed and was staring furiously at them.

"Mother, I, we..."

"Thought to find other things to amuse yourselves with while the canopy overheated. Where are your clothes? What did you think you were up to?"

They cringed before her forbidding presence, suddenly and awfully aware and vulnerable in their nakedness." We...."

"You don't need to say anything more. I'm not stupid. I can guess well enough what distracted your attention from your task. You could have killed us all. Now we have lost one quarter of our life support system and it may not be over yet. I need you to assist in doubling up on the sprays in H3. Urgently. Now!" Her command was an enraged shriek. They fled, sobbing before her, paused at the entry into the almost identical hydroponicum in terror, then climbed down into a thunderous deluge rebounding from its canopy far above.
Chapter 2

"I think that we have to abandon ship now, Martha!"

"We lost H2 thanks to that no-good hussy Amelia and that stupid Desmond and I think that the others may go as well, despite the sprays. I told them to double up on the pumps and be sure that the deluge is evenly spread but it was getting dangerously hot, even so."

Matthias shook his head sadly. "I'm going to sound the general alarm and call them all in. There's no more that any of us can achieve now, however hard we try. There is no point in putting lives at risk, any more than they are already." He addressed the computer console: "Com1, sound the general alarm for one standard minute then patch me through to the sound system."

"Confirmed!" The computer was hiding behind his screensaver, which depicted the ship hanging in space against a backdrop of stars with the heart-wrenchingly beautiful images of Earth and Moon in the background, one green, blue and banded with white cloud, the other yellow with the black crater-thrown shadows of a lunar evening; the one teeming with water and life, the other hot, dry and dead. At once, klaxons began to resound through the hub and Matthias's central control room, located behind the massive bulkhead which comprised the floor separating the shuttle bay from the central stores and the fuel and atmosphere tanks. They could also be heard everywhere else throughout the ship, except in the now destroyed H2. Far below him in H3, Amelie and Desmond, along with three of their fellow crewmates, paused from their frantic work of operating the sprays, able barely to hear the alarms above the roaring deluge of hot rain cascading over them and now barely able to see through a thickening pall of mist. They looked from one to another, seeking comfort and confidence in eyes that only gave red-rimmed terror in reply, their faces haggard with heat exhaustion.

"All crewmembers are to go to the shuttles...," this they could barely make out above the thunderous cacophony "...at once. We are abandoning ship, I repeat, abandoning ship. Make haste!"

Amelie and Desmond were the last to go up in the elevator. They had their space suits with them and struggled to put them on before the 500 metre journey up the spoke to the hub and safety of the shuttles was completed. It was always a struggle, much more so than usual because they were in the small space together but worsened by their soaking and overheated bodies. The essential prerequisite of donning their one-piece fleece undergarments was almost impossible and added mightily to their thermal stress but somehow they dragged them on and began on the ungainly business of cladding themselves in the outer. They were still unready as it halted in the hub and they almost fell out into the small elevator lobby with their upper limbs halfway tangled up in the clumsy oversuits. It was each to themself, too busy with the struggle to help each other until finally each fastened their helmet on, the insides instantly fogging to obscurity with the humid dampness of their bodies until the suit air conditioning system had time to get the airflow under control.

There had been no time to speak, other than the cursing which had accompanied their struggles with the suits. Desmond touched his visor against hers, seeing her frightened young face dimly within and nodded through the fog towards the airlock door. On the other side was the vacuum of the shuttle bay. He operated the air pump.

From there, it was only a few minutes in the confusingly low-gravity environment of the hub before they had ascended the scaffolding on to the embarkation landing of S4. They were the last and the shuttle bay doors were opening as they arrived. "Look away!" A voice in their radios. "The sun will burn out your eyes. Hurry! Hurry! Everybody's waiting." It was Mother's voice and its inflexion told them that she was still angry with them. They hastily crammed into the shuttle's airlock and swung the outer door shut, checking the green indicator led that told them it had latched properly. As air rushed from the inner, bringing sound with it, they could hear the shuttle motors starting up and the vibration of movement through their gloved hands as the shuttle began to get away, clearly they were in such haste that they couldn't wait for them to enter and reach the security of their seats. As the inner swung open, the shuttle was already manoeuvering for takeoff, they staggered through the inner hatch and both almost fell as they gave both hands to the task of pulling off their helmets. From there, it was just a matter of taking their seats as the steam drive cut in and S4 pushed forwards.

Desmond could see the dreadful, menacing fireball of the sun, so close to them now. Even though the tinting of the windscreen was dimmed to maximum, it was still ferociously bright and it forced him to look away. It was the same for the cockpit crew and someone operated the shutters, projecting the scene outside on to the ship's viewing screen instead. The other three shuttles had already departed. S4 rotated under steam until it was safely pointing away from the hull of the ship, then cut into fusion drive, pushing him back into his seat with its smooth, powerful acceleration. He exhaled the tensed up breath of tension and relaxed back into the seat, nothing more to be done. He turned his head towards Amelie and smiled. She smiled back but neither of them could find anything to say.

An hour later, the drive was turned off and they drifted into weightlessness, far from the ship and safely clear of the gravity field of the sun. Their sun. Powerhouse to their destination planet. Someone had got the on-board computer to display Alpha Four on the screen at maximum visual magnification – just a small blob moving against that fierce background of fire. As far as they could see she still looked intact and Com1 was emitting a stream of telemetry readings which were coming up on visual on the master vdu screen, basically confirming rising temperature but so far, all her systems were still live. Except for H2.

Martha heaved a sigh of relief. The four shuttles had all evacuated safely with the twenty-two crewmembers distributed between them. They were all arranged with computer-precision line abreast in convoy, five kilometres apart from each other waiting for the moment when the trajectory would be right to take them into orbit around their destination planet. She ordered a cool drink through the shuttle's food service console, pulled the cap off the straw and sucked contemplatively at the contents. 'Banana and mango, suitably tropical in all the circumstances' she mused.

On-screen appeared an update from Com1.

'Hydroponicum H4 – canopy failure.' Now they had lost two.

"Aren't you going to get out of that suit?" Martha looked at Desmond with the air of one accustomed to, but nonetheless intolerant of children. For some reason, Amelie found it amusing and giggled, which was a bit of a mistake. Martha looked her squarely in the eyes and responded frostily "and the same goes for you madam. Or are you afraid you might smell of something that you shouldn't?"

She lowered her eyes before that awful stare and blushed deeply with shame. She had briefly toyed with the idea of making a rude reply but found that she had no words adequate to the occasion and anyway, her voice seemed to have seized up so she simply avoided Mother's glare, unclipped the safety belt and got up out of her chair, proceeded to take off the oversuit. Desmond had shrugged and done the same so that they were soon wearing only their undersuits and had become, hopefully at least, more or less indistinguishable from the other three occupants of the cabin. She rolled up her suit and stowed it beneath her chair. Looking down at herself, she was faintly surprised at how ordinary she looked, how unstained and unsweaty the fleece was. Turquoise in colour, a single zip from neck to crutch and the legend F4 emblazoned over the right breast which, she realised with a flash of pride, jutted out proudly and was, by any standards, shapely. "So up yours, Mother!" The words rose unbidden in her mind. "Because I'm young and beautiful and I've just ceased to be a virgin. And I enjoyed it! Actually it was fantastic!"

She took hold of Desmond's hand, albeit surreptitiously and gave it a squeeze. Electricity flashed between them and with appalling suddenness, she wanted him with an almost frightening urgency. Their eyes met and locked together, there wasn't any need for words. Nonetheless she mouthed the phrase 'I love you' and he replied the same, squeezed back against her fingers and disengaged them moments before Mother turned round to them again. "H3 is holding on, you must have done something good after all!" she said and gave the briefest hint of a smile.

She patched through on their personal radio link. "Matthias?"

"Martha?" His radio voice, clipped at the edges of the speech frequency range but still expressive, and now of anxiety.

"What happens if Alpha Four doesn't survive?"

"We have to simply fly in and get on with what we've got!"

"Oh, Matthias, how can we do that? We just have so little on board the shuttles. Nothing to create an infrastructure with. One or two tents and rations for a month or so. What then?"

"How can we know? We just have to take it as it comes. One thing's for certain, though and that is whatever we face unless we can recover the ship, there's no going back because all the hibernation cubicles are in the accommodation block."

"We should check out the on-board inventory. We'll be short of so many essentials. Like medical kit – what happens if we get major injuries? We are going to be delivering babies within a year. Nine months in Amelie's case, no doubt! Do we have the genetic engineering stuff? We could all be taken out by the local bacteria before we even get a foothold on the place. So many things Matthais. I'm frightened. Very frightened!"

"Try to be calm, they rely on us and so much more now. You have to be strong Martha, and so must I. We have to behave like the leaders we are. Be brave. Don't let it show!"

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They had gathered together. They were the team who put up the sprays in H3, and H3 was now the only one left since Com1 had reported in to tell them that H1 had also gone down. Desmond and Amelie, a strikingly good looking Filipino lad by the name of Manny, a Caucasian girl called Dana and an Indian, Gitangali. Their brief and frantic efforts which had been so-far responsible for saving H3's canopy from collapsing under the intense broad-spectrum radiation from the sun which had long been their destination yet had so quickly become their potential executioner, had given them the semblance of a team. Now they spoke as one and Martha found herself on the receiving end of their combined voice.

"What is going to happen now, Mother? What if the ship is lost?"

"Chances are that it won't happen. With the weight of the shuttles removed, Com1 reports that its orbit is recovering. There is plenty of systems redundancy. Even though we have lost three of the hydroponica and so reduced the range of species, we can do very well with only the one."

"Do we know when we can go back on board?"

"Not yet, certainly. Alpha Four is still at risk. If she overheats too much, the fuel or lox tanks might explode. Also there is the possibility of structural collapse, so close in to the sun's gravity field and with the metals heating up. They were designed against brittle failure in the cold of deep space, not the sort of heating she is getting so close in. It is better for us to assume the worst and that she will yet be lost. I'm sorry, but that's how it is."

"So what happens now?" Manny spoke for them. "Are we going to sit out here and watch? Isn't there anything we can do?"

Martha nodded. "The on-board computer is working up our best orbit to our new home. When we get to the right configuration, we are going to fly there straight away and go into parking orbit until Alpha Four joins us. At least, that's the plan."

She typed in some commands and a long-familiar image appeared on the main viewer. The blue-green beautiful body of their new and as yet un-named home was rotating slowly before them, a reproduction of the original flyby made by one of the Alpha Project's high speed probes, now 125 standard years ago. It served to calm the agitation of the young crewmembers who were pledged to be its initial colonists. It was their home-to-be, virgin, untamed, uncolonised. A new world created by a benevolent god, almost 40 light years from the spent and exhausted planet from which they had set out. Awakened from hibernation after almost ninety-one years in deep space, ten young men and ten young women along with their two leaders were at the threshold of a new life, a new world, the beginnings of a new human colony.

Only the ship had lost an engine and didn't have enough fusion power to pull her out into a safe slingshot orbit around its sun.

The on-board computer announced an alert. 'All crewmembers return to their seats, please. Power-up is in five, repeat five standard minutes, at 1.25g for 25 standard hours and approximately 17 standard minutes to turnround point. It is recommended that you rest as much as you can, mild sedatives are available on request to the food service console, subject to health restrictions.'

******************************************************************

Manny touched her arm, squeezed and looked into her eyes, smilingly. "Mother wants you" he said. "She didn't look very pleased!"

Amelie's young face was pale and anxious, she was almost in tears. "What have I done wrong, now?"

He smiled, suddenly offering the comfort of his open, cheerful countenance. "Don't be afraid, little one. She won't eat you!"

"No Manny, but she can make a damned good try!" So saying, Amelie pulled herself forward, slid back the door into the cockpit and, on a waved invitation from Martha within, pulled herself into the co-pilot's seat. Martha looked her up and down, Amelie suddenly sensed fear and danger and cringed beneath her look.

"What is it, Mother?" she asked tremulously.

"Are you superstitious F4?" She paused for an instant, then added "Amelie."

"Mother?"

Martha's demeanour was not encouraging, her eyes alight with malign rage. Amelie looked down at her clenched hands and winced. "Have I done anything wrong, Mother?" she said, her mind instantly alive with jerky, replayed scenes from the ecstasy of her love-making with Desmond in the now immolated paradise of H2. "Have I – sinned?"

"Look at the screen, Amelie."

Her eyes took in the low-quality images, at first uncomprehendingly, then recognising the interior of a personal cabin, the hibernation unit within and now going to maximum focus on to the detail of the bed from which she had recently, but feeling so long ago now, lain in the long, mindless sleep of hibernation. Teddy was on her pillow. Her eyes filled with tears and suddenly there was a desperate heart-wrenching pain called from somewhere within her rapidly evaporating childhood. She wanted him! She wanted to cuddle his soft, fur-smelling smell and feel his fleecy exterior. Suddenly she ached for his safety and soft, cot-like comfort. Her eyes were drawn instead to the magnetism of Martha's dreadful face, then back to the scene.

Teddy was surrounded with white oozing vapours and then, with a suddenness which made her almost jerk out of her seat, he burst into flames, a bright, smokeless cadence which ranged rapidly out on to the pillow and, seconds later rendered the interior impenetrable with a white fog, turning to blackness, interspersed with yellow flashes until the canopy burst and the cabin interior was engulfed with fire and the camera winked out.

"We lost most of the accommodation block." Martha's voice was flat, cold. "Most of the doors had been left open, including yours. The fire suppression system operated but, as you should recall from your training," Martha stared witheringly into her face, "as we work in low-pressure pure oxygen, it is almost impossible to knock down once it gets away. They learned that on the very first of the space missions in the Mercury capsule, costing the lives of three crewmembers. Far too long ago for your pretty little head even to have been bothered with it as a history lesson, Alpha crewmember or not.

But today it has come back to haunt us. The fire spread into most of the cabins before the intensity of the flames must have burned through the walls of the facility, vented it to space and killed it. We don't know how many of the hibernation cubicles have been damaged or destroyed. Whether any or all of them can be recovered, we do not know." Mother's eyes bored into hers. "But for certain, yours is lost. You at least, and most of the rest of us now have no escape route. F4, there is no going back to earth whatever greets us so we had better pray that the planet we are going to will be habitable!"

Amelie swallowed. Her mind was being burned out by Mother's terrible stare. "How old was your cuddly toy?"

"He was my grandmother's. She gave him to me for good luck. Mother, I'm so sorry!" Amelie collapsed into herself, weeping piteous tears that she could no way find to suppress in the ultimate agony of torment. How could I have known?"

"Because," Martha answered for her "you smuggled it on board, fearing that it would be taken from you. Now you know why it would have been! Go back to your place" she spat angrily, "it may be that we will all die because of it!
Chapter 3

There was something wrong with the planet's albedo. Matthias had the optical telescope up to full magnification so that their destination appeared as a tiny half disk, somewhere in the middle of its phase cycle. Even on visual, he could see that it was too light in colour. He set up the spectroscope and took a digital image which he fed into the on-board computer so that he could establish a link to Com1's vastly greater computing power.

"Com1, can you run me a comparison with the archive data about P2?"

Com1's response appeared only a few seconds later in the form of a graph with the visible spectrum as X axis and two spectral range curves running across the screen. They were completely different. The readings he had just taken showed maybe 30% greater reflectance in the lighter colour bands and correspondingly less in the green-blue range. It looked as though their intended home was covered in clouds.

"Com1, can you run a check against the general planetary archive and give me the closest comparable spectrum?"

This time the response took almost a minute before a picture of a planet appeared. Its coordinates underlined the image along with a list of physical attributes, mostly irrelevant, but Matthias' heart sank as he read off the surface temperature readings. The compared planet had been in an ice age. It was barely above zero at the equator and the polar regions were at a frigid minus 90oC with the temperate zones reading in the minus twenties and thirties.

He reset the telescope, adjusted the spectral range into the infrared, scanned it again and returned the data to Com1. This time, the temperature comparisons displayed on screen. P2 was only slightly warmer than the reference planet. He shook his head, puzzled. What he was seeing was inconceivable.

"Com1, how long ago was the archive scan made?

"115 Standard years, two standard months and 15 standard days."

"How can it be so different in such a small time?"

"Data gained from Earth ice cores and geophysical modelling give a best estimate of around 90 standard years for a flip-flop transition from interglacial to fully established ice-age. As such the P2 data is consistent with that event."

"OK Com1, but why should such an event have occurred now?

"The highest probability is orbital eccentricity. The greater the eccentricity, the less the time interval between flip-flop states."

"Can you determine orbital eccentricity on the basis of the P2 archive data and current readings, then use it to predict periodicity of the glacial cycle?"

"Negative. The observatory telescope is no longer tracking due to thermal expansion and distortion of the azimuthal mountings. Any observations would be too inaccurate to be meaningful."

"Can you not take readings from my telescope here?"

"Affirmative."

"So why didn't you say so?"

"You didn't ask." Matthias shook his head in irritation and went off to the washroom.

Com1 was off screen for several minutes before bringing Matthias's attention back to it with an audio jingle based on Schiller's 'Ode to Joy', singularly inappropriate in the circumstances. He had displayed the estimate as 6455 P2 years (7146 Standard years) +

60.

"Com1, how is it that this was not calculated on the basis of data from the original probe?"

"Insufficient orbital data gathered due to high speed of fly-by. Such readings as were taken did not suggest a high probability of climate change within the operating span of the mission. The risk rating was therefore deemed to be low, i.e. 'acceptable risk.'

Matthias switched Com1 off. 'Acceptable to whom?' he pondered. 'Ordeal by fire and now by ice. Is God putting us to some sort of test, I wonder!'

For the time being he decided to keep it to himself, even from Martha. They would have to know soon enough but for the moment he wanted to ponder their options, such as they were. He ordered a hot drink for himself from the meal service console and sank back into his seat watching the beauty of the starfield ahead of them. P2 was not yet visible to naked sight, or at least, he corrected himself, not yet visible to his unaided sight which was less sharp than it had been so that he now wore spectacles for reading and let his diminishing far point get on with itself, it wasn't yet a significant impairment.

His crew of five were all more or less slumbering after their frenzied spate of activity during the evacuation of the ship, sprawled out over two seats each in a conveniently arranged double row running fore and aft behind him. So just now, for the time being there was quiet, if not peace and he had the pilot's cockpit to himself.

Their fate, he reasoned, would be dependant on a number of unpromising variables. Now that the accommodation block fire had destroyed some of the hibernation modules, the fallback plan of returning home was no longer viable. Certainly not for all of them anyway and he, Matthias shrank from the idea that he might be put into the position of deciding who would sleep and who would grow old in the confines of the creaking wreck of Alpha Four, eking out the diminishing supply of consumables with only Hydroponicum three to succour them. No it was not an option he could accept. They must all be together in facing their desperate future.

Which looked like the icy wastes of P2. They could only really know how possible that was going to be by sending a shuttle down to examine the surface. Maybe it would be possible to grow enough food, they had a pretty good range of species which could be genetically modified to fit the conditions. It looked as though they were going to have to, he decided so the next part of the equation was going to be Alpha Four's status as an orbital base camp.

He called Com1 for a report and the answer came back as a moderate encouragement. She was well on her way clear of the star now and her temperature sensors were all dropping steadily back towards normal. There had been no further damage. Happily, the main storage tanks and the main warehouse were unharmed and, he reflected, everybody had survived uninjured apart from a few minor burns, bumps and scrapes and all four shuttles were intact and fully operational. Things could have been a lot worse.

A lot worse, so maybe God was giving them a test that was well within their capability. He meant them to come through successfully and now it was Matthias' task to lead them in creating a viable and thriving colony. He resolved that, whatever it demanded of any or all of them, he would make it succeed.

With his mind suddenly clear and his resolve set, Matthais drowsed off in the comfort of the pilot's seat. When he awoke, P2 was a visible dot in the sky.

******************************************************

Manny plumped into the copilot's seat beside Martha, waking her from a somewhat uneasy doze.

"I didn't mean to wake you, Mother."

"It was about time I woke up, Manny." She turned bleary eyes to him, from a face that had become haggard with the weight of command. "How are the others?"

"Still sleeping. Is everything alright, Mother?"

"Well, not exactly, Manny, but we did well to fly off all the shuttles and we are well on course to P2. Also it looks like the ship survived and is safely coming after us, which is a great blessing."

"Mother, why was Amelie crying so much after you spoke to her?"

"Didn't she tell you?"

"She wouldn't say. Only she kept crying that she had sinned and we would all suffer because of it."

Martha nodded her head and frowned. "Alas, that is true, but if she shows repentance and learns from it, then maybe some good will have prevailed and that she has learned to grow up a little." She looked at Manny with a darkly meaningful gaze. "You are all going to have to grow up much more quickly than your years deserve!"

"Why do you say that?"

Martha turned on the viewscreen and instructed the computer. "Maximum closeup on P2. Full visible spectrum."

Manny stared uncomprehending at the glistening white vista, banded with layers of clouds and obvious, vast polar caps.

"Our new home has turned into a frozen wasteland. It may be impossible for us to create a viable colony there."

"So what are we going to do?"

"Go into orbit and send down a shuttle to investigate and report. At least it can pick up water for the fusion drives while it's at it."

Manny continued to stare at the bleak whiteness on the screen. It was impossible to distinguish cloud from ice and land from frozen sea. There didn't seem to be any green areas or anything else that might give hope of life below. It was indeed a frozen wasteland. "We came all this way, just for this! Mother, how did it go so wrong?"

"Com1 has calculated that the orbit is very eccentric and P2 is swinging out away from the sun, which has triggered it off into an ice age."

"Doesn't that mean that it can get even colder than it is now? Even if we could make a life there, it would gradually become worse as time goes on. It's hopeless, isn't it!"

Martha nodded sadly. "Yes, Manny. Basically it is hopeless. We have no home to go to. All that P2 can offer us is an abundance of water to refuel the ship and the shuttles, recharge the lox and liquid hydrogen tanks and so on."

His countenance suddenly brightened. "Maybe we can live underground and be protected from the cold. We could make tunnels and create an underground lake. We could use a fusion drive to act like a small sun and then grow things. Don't be downhearted, Mother. We have all the energy we can possibly want, the rest would only take time."

"Oh Manny! How happy I am for your good spirits. With your youth and optimism, with God's help we might just succeed. We'll have to see what it's like down there. Maybe we can do what you say, it sounds like a wonderful idea."

She opened channel to Matthias. "I've just been talking with Manny and he has had an inspiration. He says we should carve out a home under the ice and use a fusion drive like a small sun to heat us and give light for plants to grow and for us to live under. Matthias, I believe that he is speaking with the word of God. I believe that He is speaking to us through him. Matthias, it could work, couldn't it?"

"Martha, contain yourself!" Matthias' voice over the radio sounded deflatingly weary. "I guess you are right and there is wisdom in the concept, but I wonder how much better off we would be than on the ship, with H3 to provide our ecosystem and a more congenial temperature regime."

"Well maybe that's it, Matthias. We go back to the ship as our orbiting base as we were always intended to and then try to put a foothold on the planet, set up the colony but have the option to come back up to Alpha Four."

"OK Martha, we can certainly think about it, ask Com1 to do some feasibility studies and some research, in case anything like that has been done elsewhere. It will keep us occupied, at least. Meanwhile, we have only a standard day to go before we go into orbit, and the ship will only be a day or so after that. I for one will be glad to have more spacious quarters than in here."

"The others will be waking up soon, I guess. I think that we should give them a briefing. Better they know what the future has in store for them and we will be in direct visual sight of P2 soon enough. What do you say
Chapter 4

They were all crowded into the cockpit, gazing in a mixture of awe and apprehension at the planet rotating slowly beneath them. The surface of P2 was largely swathed in great swirling masses of cloud, even here at the equator where there might have been some chance that the surface was clear, but alas it wasn't. They stared and stared as their destiny rolled by far below, revealing almost nothing of itself. On screen, however, Martha had set up a radar image to show the terrain below and this alone was revealing the relief of the hidden landscape – evidently there were high mountains and deep valleys, making it a dangerous place to fly down a shuttle and attempt a landing. As they pondered this, Matthias came in over the radio. He had taken up a more polar orbit and was now over what should have been a temperate zone, mixed landmasses and oceans but which now presented as a monotonous plain in which free water did not seem to exist.

"Pretty flat around here, Martha. If we want to fly in, I suggest that it's here. Question is who goes? Should be one of us, I'm not willing to let a crew of youngsters do this on their own and anyway, Alpha Four's catching up fast so I want some of us back on board again so that we can do what we can to set her up as base station."

"Whatever you think, Matthias, though I must say that Manny here is jumping up and down in his seat with wanting to go."

"So maybe you should then. Let him see how practical his vision is going to turn out to be."

"OK then, Matthias. I'll get the coordinates punched in and we might as well get on with it."

"Agreed, then Martha. Now you take care and keep me online the whole time. You know what to take care about. God speed Martha, and you all!"

"Godspeed!" she responded, surprised to hear the others joining in the word with her. She looked around them. Manny, all eagerness and absolutely unfazed by their disturbing circumstances. Amelie, still a bit puffy around the eyes, pale and not saying anything, assiduously averting her sight from Martha's firm stare. Desmond, anxious for his sad little paramour, Dana, not giving anything away behind impassive, curiously flattened, pale features and slanted eyes in marked contrast to Gitangali, tall and beautiful with long, curling black hair giving a tentative smile to reveal even and gleamingly white teeth. Suddenly, they had become her crew!

She sent them back into the cabin to don their spacesuits so that they would best be prepared for an emergency. She then had them deploy, calibrate and initialise all the monitoring equipment that the shuttle boasted; external sensors for pressure, temperature, humidity and so on; air samplers to determine atmosphere composition, hepa filters to capture dust and microorganisms; gravimeters to detect subsurface anomalies, spectrometers covering the infrared and ultraviolet spectral ranges. Visible imaging from the forward and underside cameras were displayed in four windows on the main cockpit screen with a repeater set up on the cabin wall to the rear. There were even speakers to pick up anything audible.

The shuttle's engine retrofired for some minutes, the crew feeling themselves thrusting back into their seats. Instruments steadily changed readings, dials winding around their clocks and digital displays tumbling steadily over their logic counters. The fuselage gave a distinct sense of falling down backwards, the external microphones began to pick up a noticeable whine as atmospheric drag began to bite, temperature and pressure readings began steadily to increase and a maze of other parameters began to display on various screens.

"The air looks to be good." Dana's voice. "Oxygen about 20%, CO2 just over 30 000ppm, water vapour almost nothing, temperature minus 85C. Not picking up any significant particulates yet."

"Hull temperature's coming up rapidly, though. Atmosphere's pretty thick, I think. If we go on rising at this rate, we're going to have to change the rate of descent in about three minutes or so. I'll tell you when, Mother." Manny sounded excited but unafraid.

Martha initiated the rollover programme and the shuttle flipped sickeningly from backward facing rocket retarder to aircraft configuration, then began to ride on her wings. As soon as the vertigo subsided, she took over on manual and suddenly found herself enjoying the long-forgotten experience of flying a live vehicle. "Manny, get over here, I need a copilot" she sang out with a sudden exuberant cheerfulness, love of adventure overriding the hollow ache of anxiety which gnawed at her leader status.

Manny fell into the seat beside her. "Don't let her bite in too quick" he panted. "The hull's beginning to roast." He gripped the duplicate column and pulled back, Martha let him have control and the shuttle pushed her nose up higher, surfing across the atmosphere, now starting to slalom as a crosswind jet stream hit them, tipping a wing down so that he had the instantaneous choice of following the roll or fighting it. He opted to go with it and they went full-circle barrel roll, coming up nose into wind and heading back the way they had come, several thousand metres lower down and with the forward velocity down to 600kph.

There was nothing visible ahead, just a thick opaqueness of cloud. Instruments gave their attitude as horizontal, descending on a slow glide path across an open plane with no hills, mountains or any other irregularities, now picking up a firm altitude of just under 1000m.

"It's going to be an instrument landing Manny. I was never any good at this sort of thing and I'm getting a bit old now!"

"God help us, Mother!, he turned to her with a dazzling grin, "I never had time to finish my shuttle course, not even the simulator stage!"

Whatever she might have said, or screamed back at him was lost in surprise. The screen had suddenly and instantly cleared. They were flying almost straight and level over a flat plane, interspersed here and there with random blocks of what was likely to be pack ice. It was a most unpromising landscape and not the easiest to put down on, assuming it to be solid enough to take the shuttle's weight. Gitangali appeared between their seatbacks, stared out for a short while and then said "it's only a few metres thick. There's water beneath, we shouldn't try to land".

"Well, I'm glad you said so!"

Martha had used the main screen to display an archive photograph of the planet in all its former blue-green glory. "Looks as though we're over this ocean" she touched a finger to the image, "and if that is so, there's land mass on the equatorial side so I would change course about 30 degrees to port. God willing we might be able to get down there. Manny nodded, changed course and put the shuttle over to autopilot, allowing her to drop to 500 metres at the same time so that they could have a closer view of the surface and try to keep under the cloud layer which was gradually lowering ahead of them. Even so, they were flying through banks of white which occasionally roiled down almost to sea level, giving them only an intermittent view ahead. "All that flying's made me thirsty!" He laughed and punched a peach and mango flavoured isotonic drink out of the meal service console, bit off the cap and sucked down the contents in one flamboyant go. "Sorry about the aerobatics!" He winked hugely at Gitangali who smiled and fluttered her eyelids in return. "Shuttle flies like a brick, I almost lost her in the crosswind up there."

"Manny, there isn't any need to exaggerate just to impress everybody. You've got enough power to play with that you could have sent her straight back into orbit. You would have had to be a complete dunce to let her crash." Martha tried to look stern but it didn't really work.

He had turned back to Gitangali to say something else when Martha grabbed and wrenched the controls over in a sharp turn, forcing the shuttle into a steep bank at the same instant that a proximity alarm wailed urgently through the cockpit. They had come upon a sheer, kilometre high wall of ice-covered rock with appalling suddenness, largely because they had failed to change the screen from archive image back to radar map. Amelie and Dana gripped each other as they were thrown off balance down at the other end of the cabin and fell together against the engine room hatch cover which somehow flexed and sprung open. Dana lost grip on the remote sampling kit she had just removed from its stowage and it flew inside, smashed violently against something within and, an instant later, the hatch snapped back and latched. They were still rolling about in a tangle of arms and legs when the engine room alarms shrieked and the fire suppression system operated, seconds later the fusion drive gave a series of jerks and abruptly cut out.

"Let me have her!" screamed Manny. Martha threw her hands up in horror. "Please God, be merciful!" she wailed as Manny brought the shuttle back into level flight. Through a gap in the clouds rolling off the edge of the huge cliff he saw the surface of a glacier between towering walls of icy rock, it was deliverance of a sort, their only chance of survival in this dreadful wilderness and he took it. He banked cautiously left, perilously short of sideslipping into a fatal stall that would have plunged them nose first into the pack ice, mentally wrestling with the impossible conflicting demands of keeping both altitude and flying speed. The long, sloping and horribly crevassed surface rose towards them with terrifying speed. "Hold on!" he shouted. Dana and Amelie had no time to get into their places for landing, rolled against the back of the last pair of seats and held on to the struts. Gitangali threw herself down behind the pilots' seats and did likewise. Only Desmond was still in his seat and able to fasten his seatbelt.

Now it was all in Manny's hands. 'Now it's all in your hands, God!' he whispered to himself, otherwise pushing overwhelming terror to the back of his mind. He held the angle of descent to a whimper below stalling, no time to check their forward velocity, nothing to be done if he could, they were rushing towards their fate parallel to the long surface ridges of the glacier. It was only metres below them now, blurring by underneath. He gradually lifted the nose, flying exactly parallel, bleeding off speed until she stalled and he pancaked her down on to the ice. The shuttle landed foursquare and slalomed along on the surface with a terrible screeching and banging from below, holding direction for what seemed an eternity, doing her own thing now, the crew just passengers inside her as she slid along until her wing caught against a knob of rock and she slewed round in a semicircle, canted up on to one side and stopped.

Manny met Martha's eyes. He grinned with more than a hint of hysteria. "I told you she flies like a brick, didn't I!"

That they had survived was a miracle. That they had survived substantially intact and with no more casualties than a few bruises was proof enough of the existence of God, in case anybody had doubted it and Martha was quick to make the point to which they all uttered a grateful 'amen!'

The cabin temperature and air con. system were functioning with comforting normality. Apart from the 30degree angle of the floor and the incredible scenery outside, they could have been back in the safety and predictable void of space. While Martha tried unsuccessfully to make contact with Matthais, Dana and Gitangali opened up the engine compartment to inspect the damage. The remote sampling kit had smashed the main fuel cell which regulated the fuel supply, shorted out the electrics and caused the automatic extinguisher to fire. There seemed to be almost no other damage and it looked possible to replace the unit with a spare one from the comprehensive parts kit which the shuttle carried. But they wouldn't be able to do any remote sensing which created a potential problem because they really needed to do a pathogens evaluation before setting foot outside.

While Manny helped Dana and Gitangali with the complicated business of the repairs to the fuel cell, Amelie set to and tidied up the cabin, more to busy herself than anything else leaving Martha in the pilot's seat to switch on and verify the emergency distress beacon, then continue to try to make radio contact, with Desmond joining her to monitor the various external sensors. They were not in a good place, shielded by the rocky walls either side, the direct line-of-sight they needed gave only a very narrow width envelope. Their best hope was that an orbiting ship would pick them up as they rotated below.

"We've done what we can in here, Mother." Manny spoke for them. "I'm pretty happy that the drive will fire up. If the shuttle is still flyable, there's a chance we might be able to get ourselves out under our own power. But we have to go outside to see how she looks."

"And that we will have to do without a pathogens assessment" added Dana emphatically. "Which is against standard procedures and dangerous. We are tempting God's anger if we do."

"So what's the alternative, then?"

"Why don't we have the patience to await rescue? We are safe enough in here and they will find us before long, I expect."

"You are our Leader, Mother, what do you say?"

Martha looked around at her little crew and felt a silent surge of anxiety. She didn't know what was best and it was true that they could simply sit the situation out for however long it took. They didn't know if the shuttle was even flyable, they were sturdily built and specified to make a glider landing if they had to, but the problem was likely to be the wing. She nodded towards Dana. "I think we should wait."

Within a few minutes she was forced to change her mind. The shuttle had begun to move. Inside the cabin it had been quiet, apart from a faint wind-buffeting from a downdraught over the glacier but now there were irregular creaking and cracking sounds and they could feel small but jerky movements through the hull. The shuttle was slowly turning in line with the direction of the ice. As they listened uneasily, there was a more powerful lurch as the wing came clear and should have straightened them up, but instead tilted them over further, the lower wing seeming to start burying itself in the glacier.

"I'm going outside" said Manny. "I reckon it's so cold that it's pretty sterile anyway and at the temperature out there, I'm going to need my full suit, helmet and all. Desmond, will you come with me?"

Despite Dana's protestations and Martha's equivocation, they entered the downsloping airlock and prepared to brave the external 30 degrees below zero along with a 25 knot wind that the telemetry promised them. As he prepared to don his helmet and Martha's 'God be with you' still in his ears, Manny leaned towards Desmond and grinned lopsidedly. "The mumbo jumbo's beginning to get a bit on the heavy side, don't you think Dez?" He didn't seem to need a reply, clamped down his visor and operated the air exhaust, forcing Desmond hastily to do the same.

In no time, the pressures equalised with outside, the door swung back and Manny leaned forward, about to step out, even rehearsing the astronaut's most famous line of all time, for Martha's benefit. He gripped the sides of the hatchway, for an instant almost overcome with vertigo to find himself staring straight down into a blue-sided bottomless void. "Oh my God!" he croaked.

She was straight there. "Manny, please don't blaspheme!"

"Mother, just believe me, this is no blasphemy! We are lying straight across a crevasse. There's no way out of the airlock except down into the depths. All the way down to Hell!" he added needlessly.

"What do we do now?" Desmond, just behind him was rubbing frost off the outside of his visor.

"No point trying the other side, it won't be a lot different. Listen, we need to rig a traverse line. There's all the kit in the EVA suit locker. Gitangali, go get the permanent magnets and the personal lines, kit up and be ready to join us. Dez, help her in and belay me as I go out." He rubbed the blinding layer of ice off the outside of his own helmet and looked more carefully around. "Mother, the ship's lying right across the granddaddy of all crevasses. The rock we hit with the wing is actually in the wall of it. We have canted over and the wing is dropping into the crevasse itself. Seems to me that soon it's going to dip in deeper and we will roll over completely on to the side, then fall in after it. And that's the end."

"What can we do, Manny?"

"You could try praying!"

She missed the inflexion. "With all my spirit, oh Lord!"

Manny continued to take stock. "As far as I can tell by looking, I think the wing is only a bit dented. As long as there's nothing internal strained, I reckon she can be made to fly again, if we can ever get her out of this, that is!" His mind was working overtime, spurred by the almost continuous series of small tremors vibrating through the superstructure as the shuttle continued to settle into the jaws of her doom. "We have to haul her round so she's facing back down the glacier if we are to have a chance. That means running a cable through the nearside front and offside rear anchorage points then finding somewhere to pull from. Gitangali, bring the longest lines you can find as well."

But it was Amelie who joined them in the airlock. Desmond touched visors with her just as they fogged once more into blind opacity and they had to scrape themselves some vision. Manny clapped a permanent magnet on to the hull as far across as he could safely reach and deployed a line through it which he passed back to Desmond for belaying, waited until he had it taught and swung himself out over the chasm, gripped the short line hanging off the belay point and clipped the snaphook from it's end as an additional safety. He was then able to reach forward and fasten a second magnet, from which he could reclip the safety line and then was able to step down on to the surface of the glacier, just at the edge of the crevasse. Thereafter it was simply a matter of Desmond doing the same and they were both free of the ship and out into the path of the wind. Unaffected by its extreme wind-chill due to the protection of the suits, they were nonetheless immediately powdered with spindrift which already had coated the upwind side of the shuttle with a thick coating of rime.

"We have to find an anchorage for the lines."

"Over there!" Desmond pointed to a vague blackness through the swirling misty drift and they made their way to a protruding boulder. "It will do!" averred Manny. Desmond unslung the line from his shoulder and they wrestled together to run two turns of it around the rock, used a snaphook in lieu of a slipknot and ran the free end back to Amelie who was down on the glacier with them. She had opened the offside rear anchorage point and run out several metres of cable against the ratchet mechanism. She took the line from them to feed it through the cable end, doubled and tied it off with remarkable competence. "I was in the guides when I was just a little girl" she offered in response to the unspoken question in Manny's visor-hooded eyes.

Desmond returned to the hatch and came back with a second line, passing the free end to Manny to pay out and secure to the rock in the same way, then going back to the hatch and leaping forward to the far side to the nearside forward anchorage point to do the same. While he was there he noticed that the down thrust nozzle, albeit fully retracted into its nacelle, had been irrevocably damaged by impact against something during the landing which meant that vertical takeoff was not going to be possible even if the other three were still functional. It would have to be back the way they had come, using the glacier as a slipway. 'At least we know it can be done' he pondered sombrely.

"OK, Mother, start retracting the offside rear cable" ordered Manny. They stood well clear and watched as the slack took up and the line sprang up off the ice, singing audibly with the tension and the wind sawing through it. "Hold that, now the nearside front." The second cable pulled taught and their reward came as the wing began to rotate back until it was almost horizontal, the shuttle began to slide rearwards and start to turn in line with the glacier. "OK, Amelie, Dez. Get back in the airlock. I'll see her in from here then untie and join you." Desmond was already on his way back, standing on the taught line, balanced by his hands against the hull. Amelie made a clumsy leap up to the second belay point, swung quickly past to the first and the sanctuary of the airlock door, gripped and reached a hand to him, giving him enough support that he could push off against the line, claw his other hand inside the airlock doorframe and he was in too."

"Go inside, leave me space" ordered Manny. "Mother, tighten both slowly together." The cables pulled once more and the shuttle continued to rotate, she was now almost in line, almost there.

The crack opened directly between his legs. He felt, rather than heard the fracture. The complete section on which the shuttle now lay was about to drop into nothingness. He went for the lines to cut them through, realised that he had nothing to do it with and screamed at Martha to unclip them from the cable ends so that seconds later both of them whiplashed, catching him in their frenzied swirling and throwing him backwards over the protruding rock. Something in his neck snapped with the brutal force of the impact, his visor starred all over and his stunned body fell on to the ice. Miraculously, he was still conscious but completely unable to move, only his voice seemed to be left. "Martha, you've got to go now. Now! Or you will all die."

"Manny!" she screamed, "we're coming for you."

"No! Martha, listen. My neck's broken. I don't want to live crippled. Go!"

"Manny, no!"

He heard the ice 'boom' below him, felt the shockwave as the whole crevasse began to collapse into itself. "For the love of God, Martha. The whole thing's going. Go! Now!"

He felt the ground moving below him, tilting over, taking his helpless body down into itself, then a great sudden blast of bright yellow light and searing heat, even through his suit as the fusion drive ignited, then snuffed out in the last instant of his young life as thousands of tons of rock and ice crushed him down with it into oblivion.

The shuttle careened down the glacier, Martha, eyes blurred with tears, pulled back to full throttle and the shuttle roared up, out and to safety, Amelie and Desmond still inside the unclosed airlock, clinging to each other and to the frame of the hatchway. She levelled it off at 5000m and switched over to autopilot before collapsing over the controls, prostrate with grief.

Dimly she could hear Matthias' voice calling her over the radio, beside himself with dread, repeating her name over and over. She sat up, drew herself together, threw the switch to transmit. "Oh Matthias. Matthias! Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends! Manny! Plain Manny no more, you are henceforth Saint Manny and your memory will live forever. Praise be to God!"
Chapter 5

Com1 had linked with the onboard computer and guided the battered shuttle into its dock on board Alpha Four, itself seared by it's recent passage of fire. As the shuttle bay doors fully closed, the airlock opened and the traumatised crew, led by Martha, floated out weightless along the walkway and to the elevator landing which took them down to the observatory. Martha and Gitangali went first, and Matthias was waiting for them at the bottom. He took their hands in his and led them to the cloakroom where they removed their oversuits. He sent Gitangali off to the shower room and took Martha into the nearest of the two sleeping quarters, closed the door behind them.

"I have decided that we should have this room to live in."

"Oh Matthias!" she leaned against him for comfort. "Whatever are we going to do? Everything is so hopeless and now Manny is dead!"

He held her against himself, as if to protect her against the forces of evil, led her to the big double bed and sat her down on it, took her hands and held her at arm's length. "We have to be strong, Martha. We are the leaders, it is for us to find a way."

"But what can we do? There is nothing for us down there, it is just a frozen waste. It will not support us, we cannot live there."

"Was it not Manny who suggested making caves in the ice?"

"He said we could use a fusion drive to carve ourselves living quarters. I don't think he was very serious about it."

"He is a saint, now Martha. We should be guided by his wisdom. I am minded to fly a shuttle down and at least try it out."

"Oh, Matthias! Please don't do that. We all rely on you as father of the expedition. If anything happened to you we are all lost."

He smiled wanly. "I wasn't thinking of straight away, Martha. We have many other things to sort out here before we do anything else."

She snuffled into a tissue, wiped her eyes and looked into his face. "Of course!" She nodded. "We have to see what needs to be done to the ship."

"I have sent a crew down to the accommodation block to set about repairs and make it airtight, then make a damage assessment. Some of the cubicles may still be useable and we may have to use them."

"But we can't all be hibernated."

"It would be a way to conserve what food we have if we took turns to sleep."

"Can't we grow enough in the hydroponicum?"

"I don't know. I am going to set up some scenarios with Com1 to find out just what is possible, or not when I have all the information. I sent the other shuttle crew off to H3 to make an assessment and examine whether anything can be done for the collapsed canopies of the others. The rest have gone to the medical block to carry out an inventory and set up sleeping quarters, part of finding us all living room, we are going to need everything we can muster in the way of facilities."

The damage to the accommodation block had turned out to be worse than they had expected. The searing heat of the pure-oxygen fires had caused the cabin partitions to burn through even where the doors had been closed. Only F9 and F10 cabins were intact and the hibernation units functioning on that side of the corridor and three opposite them on the 'M' side along with L1 and L2, Martha and Matthias' cabins, making a total of seven in all. The others were all so badly burnt that repair was out of the question. Usefully, the conference room and library had both survived and the five crewmembers had opted to make the accommodation block their base for the time being. They had sleeping quarters and a place to gather in with communal facilities and a meal service console. The library, a small room with a disk-based storage unit and DVD projector could provide enough entertainment and research media to occupy many hours with creative and recreational activity. There was even a link to remote screens in the individual cabins and the conference room.

H3 was its warm humid self and the canopy was fine as far as they could tell by looking at it but the other three hydroponica had been completely destroyed, their canopies shrivelled into nothingness, their environments scorched and desiccated, all water evaporated away, the stores did not carry canopy fabric other than a small roll of it for repairs. The five crew members opted to stay there for the time being. It was pleasant, comfortable, warm and the only living, green ecosystem for many light years away.

The crew of Alpha Four settled down to rest and contemplate after the trauma of their so-recent awakening into imminent peril. Matthias spent his time with Com1, trying out every scenario variation that occurred to him, sitting at his terminal while Martha slept, mentally exhausted. When she awoke, they sat together and had a light meal from the service console. When they had finished, he put the remains into the waste chute.

"Martha, I've gone through just about everything with Com1. We don't have all that many options and none of them are exactly attractive. What they amount to is this:

firstly, we can just stay out here indefinitely and maybe experiment with ideas about P2. If we do that, we have resources for about half a local year, including everything we can grow in H3. That's not hibernating anybody. Beyond that, we run out of food although atmosphere is infinitely sustainable as long as we bring up water from the planet from time to time;

secondly, we can fly on to our secondary objective. We can make another planetary landfall in just over twelve standard years from now, assuming that we have taken on enough water from P2. To do that, we will need to hibernate crew members on a rotating basis. Even so, we will be about 15 to 20% short on essential proteins and vitamins. We will be half-starved for virtually the whole time we are travelling and beyond that, if the secondary objective is non-viable, there is nothing. We will all perish."

It took her a while to come to terms with what he was saying. "Isn't is best if we hibernate seven crew and try to set up Manny's caves? That way we must be able to get along for the best part of a standard year. Isn't that the way to go?"

"If Manny is right, it gives us the best chance to survive. But it offers us a bleak long-term future, hiding underground, forever entombed beneath the ice, waiting for over six thousand years before the planet becomes properly able to be colonised. It isn't what we set out for, is it, Martha?"

She nodded her head. "Well then, Matthias. We do not actually have any choice. For the sake of our young crew, we have to go on to the next destination. And if then we die – well, it was the Will of God!"

"Amen to that, Martha!"

"Amen, then Matthias! So be it!"
Chapter 6

Desmond, Dana and Amelie squeezed into the elevator together, ignored the complaints of the overload alarm and went down to the observatory. On emerging through the airlock, they were spellbound by the beautifully clear astrodome above them, displaying the constellations which they knew so well, both from their lives before hibernation and in numerous training sessions once they had embarked as crew members on the project. The staggeringly lovely, vaulting veil of the Milky Way swept over in the centre of their field of view. None of them had seen this view before from this particular perspective and they were duly rendered speechless.

It was Gitangali who called over to them to join her in the almost wanton luxury of a hot shower. All four of them stood naked under the one shower head and soaped each other liberally, four young persons, one male, enjoying an experience almost unique in many light years of isolation in space and time. The nearest equivalent was the H3 team, splashing and cavorting about in the central pond, laughing and enjoying the sheer pleasure of just being alive, unfettered, wet, warm and happy. The team in the medical centre had likewise discovered the one installed shower but it was too small to take more than one at a time and so they were, at the same time, queuing up naked in a short, animated queue, relaxed and laughing. For a brief moment in time, Alpha Four was a happy ship.

Desmond led Amelie by the hand back into the astrodome and they sat naked together on one of the couches there, just gazing up at the heavens above them.

"Des, it's just so beautiful!" She snuggled up against him, at peace with herself now, her guilt pushed aside for the time being, for the first time since they had been awakened, at peace. Deeply and warmly aware of her young womanhood, no longer a virgin, yet not ready to rejoin him in the consummation of their relationship. Just happy, just contented.

The observatory, hydroponicum, accommodation and medical centre rotated silently at the ends of their spokes, providing the artificial gravity needed to keep their bodies healthy and the ship rotated in turn about the swirling, cloud-covered planet that should have been their home. They were innocent and ignorant of the future that lay before them. For just one standard day, the young would-be colonists enjoyed simply being alive.

Matthias and Martha called a conference in the observatory.

With all twenty-one of them, it was almost crowded to capacity. Martha had insisted that they all wear their standard-issue fleeces so that each was now uniquely identifiable by the individual tag embroidered over their left breast pocket. Matthias, with the L1 tag and the blue, not green fleece, stood up and raised his hands. They all fell silent, watching him with a certain respectful anxiety. Martha went to stand beside him so that they overlooked their little flock together.

They had fallen silent, waiting. He cast his gaze over his young crew, wondering at their innocence

"Before we begin" he said "I want us all to remember that one of us is no longer here. I want to remind you that Manny sacrificed his life so that Martha, Gitangali, Dana, Amelie and Desmond might live. It was the act of a true saint – Manny was a true saint in every sense of the meaning. His inspiration will live with us forever and his example will inspire us through the suffering and toils that inevitably will be our lot in the months and years to come.

They had fallen into apprehensive silence. Only Desmond recalled Manny's last words to him in the airlock before climbing out on to the glacier and he kept his own council.

"I want to call you my children" said Matthias, spreading out his hands to embrace them with a gesture, "as you call me 'Father' and Martha, 'Mother.' My children, the life ahead of us will not be easy. The path we must travel together will require much self-discipline and we will all have to suffer if we are to survive. Mother and I have prayed together and sought God's wisdom to overcome the trials which He has put before us. It amounts to this. We have no choice but to take the ship on to the next destination and seek our home there. The planet P2 is uninhabitable. Even if we could gain a foothold on it, the future for us and our descendants would be one of endurance in the face of bleakly hostile elements. We owe it to ourselves, to God and to our children and their children for generations to come to make the right decisions and to set out on the right path. It will be a difficult and onerous path and it will require all our strength of spirit to keep to it but we must not fail. It is the only way forward for us. We will experience want and deprivation. The days and nights will be long. There will be times when our spirits will be put to the severest of tests and we will weaken. We have only the example of Saint Manny to guide us and the history which we can take from our ancestors, their struggles recorded in our archives, to inform us.

We will need all God's help". His eyes swept over them and all who met his gaze looked down. Desmond came the nearest to staring him out. "Let us Pray!" he intoned. "Let us pray for the endurance and the strength to endure. Let us pray that the example of Saint Manny will give us that endurance. Let us Pray!"

When they had finished praying, which Martha had led in a version of the Lord's Prayer, Matthias took up a piece of paper and addressed them. "Children, there are just 19 of you, 21 including Mother and me. I have had to organise us so please pay careful attention to what I am saying. Seven of us have to hibernate at any one time because we do not have enough cubicles for all due to the fire." He looked around and over them but he couldn't immediately pick out Amelie in the anonymity of their fleeces, perhaps just as well, he mused. "Each of us will be able to sleep for one third of the journey, which is a little more than twelve years. M1, M2, M3, F1, F2, F3 and F4 will take the first turn. You will need to tidy up your things and prepare to hibernate at 12.00 hours tomorrow."

He paused as they started a buzz of muted conversation but then raised his hands to quieten them down. "There's plenty of time for discussion later. When the time comes, I will hibernate with the second group, M5, M6, M7, M8, M9, and M10 and on the last stage of the journey, Mother will hibernate with F5, F6, F7, F8, F9 and F10.

Those of us who are not hibernating will form up into two teams and we will rotate our activity base around the ship so that we all get as much variation as we can. I will lead Team One which will comprise my hibernation group and Mother will lead Team Two which is her hibernation group. Team one will stay here for the first standard month and team two will occupy the hydroponicum. We will go there as soon as we have dispersed from this congregation.

But we won't be able to start on the journey until we have made enough sorties down to the planet to take on water for the fusion drives. I will be organising that straight away."

As soon as he had finished speaking, the 'children' erupted into a babble of conversation. He looked around for a minute or two to see how they were taking it, then took Martha by the arm and led her back to their room.

"I hope we can enforce it!"

"They seemed to accept it, Matthias. Nobody argued with you."

"Not yet, but I have no doubt that they will, soon enough."

"It cannot have been lost on them that we are segregating the sexes."

"They will have to accept it. They must conform. It is the only way we can enforce God's Will."

"Amen to that, Matthias!"

There was a knock on the door. It had come sooner than he had expected. "Father, will you come and speak with us again. We have something to ask?"

"Who is we?"

"All of us, Father. Will you come?"

Matthias returned to his flock and bade them sit down so that he was able to overlook them. A young man called Dane acted as spokesman. "Father, what it is..." he hesitated, looking around at the others, some of whom were giving encouraging nods and smiles "...we wonder why you have segregated us as males from females."

"That should be obvious" he said with as stern a countenance as he could muster. "On this journey we will be short of food and long on spare time. There will be nothing to spare and this could be a time of great temptation. Mother and I well know the temptations of the flesh, believe me. We want to spare you the stress of that and segregating you seems to be the kindest way of achieving it. God is giving us a great test. We must not fail him, that would be a sin and the punishment for failure inevitably would lead to death. Death by starvation. God knows that you have fertile bodies and you are physically ready for marriage but we cannot allow that, we cannot support the extra demands of children. When we reach our destination then He will give you His blessing and you shall go forth to create a new colony and you shall enjoy the fruits of His bounty and His generosity, you shall be fruitful and multiply according to His law."

Matthias paused, allowing his words to sink in before adding. "But until then..." he stared balefully over them, slowly looking to see if any would make eye contact with him – none dared, he noted with relief and a certain inner satisfaction. "Until then, the lusts of the flesh are forbidden. Fornication is a sin. On His behalf it will fall to me to punish any of you who fail, and I will not flinch from my duty should that become necessary. But come, now" he lifted his voice into a lilt, "God will be your guide and your spirit. We must pray for the strength that only He can bring you! Let us pray!"

He looked sternly over them until all heads were bowed in supplication. "Oh Lord our God" he brayed, "hear the supplications of these, Your servants. Grant them the strength and moral fibre to keep their hearts and their bodies clean and pure, grant them the purity of spirit and the strength to endure the trials and tribulations that you may ask them to bear. Give them that strength and purpose. Let Your Will be their staff and their power! Amen!"

He allowed a meaningful silence to draw out for long seconds then repeated quietly "Amen!" and this time they murmured "Amen" in response.

Matthias returned to his room and dropped the latch on the door. Martha had undressed and gone to lie down in the bed with the duvet pulled over her. Suddenly he was tired, the stress of giving them such powerful leadership had exhausted him. He pulled off his fleece and lay down beside her, their naked bodies touched and he felt a familiar warm surge begin to flow in his body, in spite of his fatigue. He rolled over to face her, let her arms go around him, in turn put his around her body, still vibrant even though they were older now. They kissed, gently and lovingly. He felt her hand on his penis which had, of its own volition come up erect. He sighed, for an instant saw in his mind their fleece-covered flock and then gave himself up to lovemaking.
Chapter 7

Matthias travelled up in the elevator with Moses. Moses was obviously Afro-Caribbean in origin, only eighteen years old and yet built with the physique that is symbolic of his race.

"I'm glad to be with you again, Father!" He smiled with dazzling white teeth in the shining blackness of his countenance. In every way, he was physically and (given selection to the project) genetically perfect. Moses had been his pilot on his previous excursion to P2 and aboard the shuttle already was Renate, the Brazilian technogeek who was the expedition's computer engineer. Furious with his name, which he regarded as effeminate and therefore personally offensive given his (very) straight sexual orientation (another, if 'hidden' selection criterion of the expedition) so that he asked everybody to call him 'Hack' in recognition that he had been chosen on the basis of phenomenal and socially destructive capabilities with the internet. It was rumoured that Alpha Four was seen as a way simply to get him off the planet and as far away from terrestrial computer networks as it was possible to go.

They helmeted up and made their way into the shuttle bay, went in through the airlock and joined Hack in readiness for departure. The vehicle was already humming with activated systems and Mozart's Requiem as it floated from out of the cockpit to greet them.

"Ho there Hack!" Moses slapped him on the shoulder and the slightly built Brazilian clapped his friend across his ample shoulders in returned greeting. But he spoke to Matthias. "Father, the vehicle is at your command. Just give me a course!"

He climbed into the copilot's seat and Moses leaned in between them, over the back of the seats.

"Can you put her down somewhere where water might actually be present as a liquid?"

"Anticipating your orders, Father, I can put her down just by an active caldera that seems to be melting stuff so much that there are live surface streams to be tapped into."

Matthias was faintly astonished. He looked approvingly at his crew. "Take me there!"

The shuttle bay doors were already open. Hack took her out with his usual cautious touch on the controls and S1 manoeuvered delicately clear of Alpha Four on steam drive. As soon as he was clear, he took off his headphones and mike, handed them to Moses. "Yo, man! Inspire me!"

Moses vaulted over the seat back into place, leaned towards Matthias and said "Better strap in tight Father. One thing I know about Manny, 'cos we were at training school together," he looked Matthias squarely in the face and chuckled. "That boy was no saint, that I can promise you!"

He flew the shuttle as though it was a stunt plane. As soon as they broke atmosphere enough to get bite on the flying surfaces, he did everything except stand her on her nose (which technically would have been irrecoverable, even with the enormous power available in the fusion drive). Matthias fought the rising urge to vomit in much the same way as Hack fought to stop himself being thrown about the cabin and rendered a bloody pulp, regretting the bravado that had prevented him strapping in to a spare seat back in the cabin. Eventually, a chuckling Moses levelled off and set her on to autopilot. "Landfall in a few minutes now Father. We should be able to pump tanks full in no time at all. Might even have time for a hot thermal bath if you want!"

"Moses, if the Good Lord thought I needed a bath, there's a perfectly good one back on the ship!" Matthias retorted, thinking to himself that that was a pretty good comeback in the circumstances. "Just make sure we get the water!"

S1 landed on it's downthrusters with its feet in half a metre of hot water. They didn't even have to get out of their seats. The umbilical dropped into the shallow pool and all the tanks were filled in a matter of minutes. Moses took off even before everything was fully retracted and almost before he knew it, they were back home and pumping the precious liquid into Alpha Four's storage tanks. Matthias decided to sit out the remaining four trips by going into S2 on the pretence of using the on-board computer to run some preplanning scenarios via Com1 which had a direct interface with the shuttles.

Thus it was that three hours later they found him fast asleep in the pilot's seat with the computer on-screen waiting for an input from him. Moses reached across and cancelled the command, dropping into the copilot's place. Hack, leaned over from behind and prodded him in the neck with a long and very bony finger. Matthias jerked awake, the dream which had involved ranks of green-clad and exceptionally nubile young women evaporating into a sudden, uncomfortable awareness of his surroundings and his companions.

Moses giggled. "Happy landings, Father!"

Matthias shook his head, awakening with a sudden ominous apprehension somewhere surfacing in his mind. "Hi, boys. What's happening?"

"Tanks are all full to the brim. Shuttle's squared away and everything's absolutely hunky-dory. All objectives achieved, hey, Hack?"

"Sure thing Captain! Anything I can get you onscreen?" he offered. Matthias said nothing, then blushed with profound embarrassment as the screen came live to reveal four naked young women giggling together as a shower cascaded over their heads. His startled, bolting eyes took in jutting breasts, proud nipples with water streaming from their tips, glistening and incredibly beautiful torsos, wet hair cascading over smooth shoulders, parted lips alive with atavistic and barely-suppressed yearning for everything that he knew they would yearn for and need. He closed his eyes, blinked and opened them again.

"Turn it off!" he commanded. Hack grinned and dropped the image to a small window in the corner of the screen, leaving the sound of breathing, running water and barely suppressed giggling to emerge from the sound system. Matthias angrily hit the 'off' button and came eye to eye with both of them.

"You are insulting the Lord. You are insulting the memory of Saint Manny. How dare you!"

Moses and Hack were completely unabashed. "Oh, come on Dad!" Hack grinned lopsidedly. "We're all men in here, aren't we. I think we've got a lot to discuss, don't you Moses?"

Moses giggled as the screen reactivated and three more windows popped up on screen to join the first. Each was of Matthias and Martha in their room, taken from different perspectives. He could hear his own laboured breathing and Martha's gasps of delight as they humped and heaved under the covers. Hack giggled. "All men of the world, hey! Only question is, which world?"

Matthias slumped back into the seat. "Please, turn it off!"

Hack giggled and reached across, switched off the screen but left the sound running. Moses took up the lead. "It's like this Dad. Father! You're the leader. You and Mother. Only she'll do anything you say, so basically, it's you we want to deal with."

"What do you want of me?"

"Well, certainly not what you two had planned for us all. Life's too short. You must feel that even more than we do?"

"Father, we aren't stupid. We can follow your logic clearly enough. In fact I did most of the analysis long before you even got around to asking Com1. He gave you my figures, which are spot on accurate, by the way. So we broadly agree with your conclusions. It's the detail that we need to discuss."

"Detail?"

"How you think you can contain a shipload of hot eighteen year olds with absolutely nothing sensible to do except wait for the ship to go to another planet."

Matthias responded with returning defiance and not a little anger. "If you think you can come up with anything better, I'd like to hear it. I'm your leader and I'm the interpreter of God's Will on this expedition, lest you had forgotten it. He will not be mocked, whatever human frailties He has to contend with! Mine included." he ended lamely.

"Father, you might think you can lead from your pulpit but what are you going to do when somebody says 'no' or you start to get a riot on your hands?"

"There will be no riots and God will guide me when it comes to disobedience."

Hack punched some commands on to the keyboard, bringing a video clip up full screen. It was four of the males engaged in plotting just such a riot. He overheard their voices complaining about the regime which had been imposed on them. "If he thinks I'm going to spend the next twelve years tossing myself off just so I can get to sleep, he can think again."

"I say we go up to the hydroponicum right now and see what the girls have got to say about it all."

"Yeah, I'm on for that!"

"So how are you goin' to deal with Martha then?"

The young man sniggered. "Hell, if she wants me as well, then I guess I'll just have to oblige her, a little!"

The others giggled, Matthias squirmed with rage in his seat. "Those hotbots are on their way up to H3 right now, Dad. So what are you going do about it?"

"Let me talk to Mother" he fumed.

"Sure thing, Daddyo!" Hack changed the view to the interior of H3, by the entrance airlock. The girls had opted to go naked in the warm lushness of the rainforest and they were standing in an animated, giggly group in the middle distance. Martha was so close to the camera that he felt like reaching out to touch her shoulder. "Martha!" he called out. She turned to face him, looking slightly off camera. The viewer kept her back a little to include her breasts on screen. Hack was doing it deliberately.

"Matthias?"

"I'm talking to you from the shuttle bay. I'm on board a shuttle. Listen Martha, there's four of the males heading down there with the idea of breaking in and fraternising with the girls. You've got to lock the hatch from the inside. Go at once before they get there!"

Martha disappeared off screen and the camera zoomed on to the shimmering vista of the six females, bringing them right up close, panning lasciviously over their innocent, unsuspecting bodies. "Wow!" enthused Moses. "Now that's quite something to behold. I think I'm going to have to get me over there pretty soon before I have an accident!"

Matthias angrily switched off the screen. He looked from one to the other with thunder in his face. "What in the name of God do you think you're doing?"

"Hey, Dad! Don't get so mad. Aren't we helping you out already? Mother will have managed to stop them and they'll have to go back up again." Moses looked very directly into his eyes. "You can't run this ship on your own. You need us. Hack to keep things under surveillance and me – he flexed his ample pecs. – me, to keep discipline in the ranks. Discipline for the disciples, see what I mean?" The camera replayed the plotters and Moses bade Hack to freeze frame it on the face of the lead plotter, Dane. "Do you want me to put him in his place, Father?"

Matthias looked from one to the other. He felt a sudden numb helplessness and he knew that he had no option but to go along with them. It was a Faustian plot. He nodded. "Tell me this then Moses. What's in it for you?"

Moses grinned and operated the camera himself this time, zoomed it on to the group of young women, brought it up to take in a full-frontal view of one of them and froze the picture. "I want her!" he said.

Matthias recognised her face. It was Amelie.

"Me too" whispered a voice behind him but he thought that Moses had not heard it.
Chapter 8

There was no further reason to delay the departure. Com1 fired up the three functioning fusion drives to full power and P2 rapidly faded into the background of the starfilled sky as Alpha Four accelerated away to its new destination, years ahead in space and time. With some minor trimming adjustments to the speed of rotation, a fairly exact 1.0g resultant was achieved in the various crew's quarters and the ship was set on course. Matthias dispatched three of the four potential rioters to the engine bay to make an initial assessment as to whether the fourth drive could be restarted.

Which left Dane, their ringleader, Moses and Hack in the observatory. Matthias called him over to his room, closed the door and bade him sit down. He wasted no time on preliminaries, simply turned on his computer screen and let the damning short video clip run through it. Dane watched in alarm, then defiance. When it had finished, he said simply and with a degree of dignity, "I meant every word of it. The way you've got this planned is fine for you and just about terrible for everybody else."

"You mindless idiot" snarled Matthias. "What do you think is going to happen if I let you run amok amongst those young girls down in H3? If you don't end up having jealous quarrels with each other, leading to heaven knows what fighting and feuding while you sort out your pecking order, you are certain to impregnate them all and we shall be turning this ship into a crèche within the year. We cannot feed extra mouths. We will all starve."

"There isn't any reason why they should become pregnant if we are careful."

"And just how do you propose to exercise that care? How are you going to prevent six young women at the peak of their fertility from responding to nature. No contraceptives of any kind were included with the ship's inventory. When the time comes, it is important that they do become pregnant because then the expedition needs families, needs children and as many as is humanly possible as quickly as possible. But not now." he snapped.

"Dane, I need you to be sensible. Clearly you are the ringleader of your little group. I need your cooperation. I need you to recant your evil intentions...."

"I'm not evil, you..... Father"

"Of course, you don't see them as evil and you didn't mean them as such, just a little spirited rebellion, but Dane, leading to death by starvation for many of us, perhaps all of us!"

"Will you recant? Help me to lead this expedition along the hard and stony path in the face of all the temptations to take the easy way that leads us to ruin?"

"Oh, Matthias, I don't believe in all that stuff. My parents weren't religious and neither am I."

Matthias stood up stiffly. "Very well, then. Perhaps there are other ways to make you see the light." He opened the door and Moses stepped in, closely followed by Hack.

Moses smiled broadly. "Isn't brother Dane willing to follow the true path of righteousness, Father?" He was taken by surprise. It was the sheer speed of it. Before he could properly rise to his feet, Moses had him in an armlock, pressed forward with his face pushed into the duvet on Matthias's bed. Hack stood by and giggled. Dane could just twist his face up enough to see the scalpel in his hand.

Matthias nodded to Moses. "Let him look up at me." Moses eased his grip sufficiently for Dane to be able to meet his eyes. "What are you doing with that?" he quavered.

"Dane, I want you to understand the gravity of your situation. I want you to understand that you can be brought to your knees as you are now at any time that it is felt to be necessary." He nodded to Moses who flipped him over on to his back in one swift, and overwhelmingly strong movement. His arm was forced painfully up behind him, Moses put his other arm around his throat, starting to squeeze off air from reaching his lungs. He started gasping frantically then to his absolute horror, Hack pulled down the zipper on his fleece, all the way to the crutch, reached inside the fly of his boxer shorts and lifted out his penis.

"No!" he screamed. He flailed and writhed but was hardly able to move at all in Moses' terrible grip. "No, Please! Not that! Father, help me!"

Matthias nodded to Hack. "Perhaps not this time? Perhaps not this time if he freely and truthfully recants and repents of his sinfulness. You do recant, don't you Dane?"

His eyes were bolting. He was still hardly able to breathe and the hand still gripped his manhood. "Yes!" he gasped.

Say it properly, Dane. Just as you are going to say it to your little group of friends when they come back. Say it Dane!"

"I recant!" he spluttered.

"Do you truly recant?"

He hesitated. Hack's fingers tightened around his penis and began to pull. "Yes!" he squawked. "Please, let go. I recant."

Matthias nodded to them and they let him go, let him slump over the bed, gasping like a landed fish. "Make sure he learns his lines properly. Now take him away from my room. It doesn't feel very clean here any more.

*********************************************************

Amelie waited until Martha was busy somewhere before going into the control centre and then letting herself through the airlock to the elevator. It was then only the ride up to the hub, transfer across and down to the medical block. She pulled on her fleece as she went, it felt cooler in the dry air outside the hydroponicum. She tingled with anticipation.

It had just been a scrap of paper.

"Meet me in the medical block 1500 hours. I love you. D."

She hadn't been able to speak to him since the partition. She hadn't been able to think about anything else since. She was lonely for him. Her heart yearned for him, her body was beginning to ache for him. They had only made love that one time but now she was ready for him again, she wanted to be his partner, she wanted to love him with her entire body and soul. And she was anxious about all the religious stuff. She felt that somehow she was being made to feel guilty simply for having a body that had been sexually awakened, that wanting Desmond was somehow wrong. She wanted to talk to him about it, to find some way through this for themselves. Her emotions were in a tangle.

The elevator came to rest and she let herself out eagerly into the lobby to the medical centre. She opened the inner door, suddenly dying with want to see him, to throw herself into his arms, to feel his hands in her hair, his lips on hers, his hands slipping down on to her breasts....

"Hello Amelie," he said. Only it was Moses. He had stepped out of one of the side rooms and now he was between her and the way back to the elevator. He was naked. Her eyes swept over his big, sturdy frame, then down to his equally big, erect manhood, looked back up to his smiling face, full of lust for her. She suddenly felt faint with shock and no little sense of fear.

"Where's Desmond?" Her voice sounded, even to herself like the pathetic cry for help of a lost child.

"We swapped places. He hibernated." Moses smiled hugely. "He said to be sure to come here in his place so that you wouldn't be disappointed."

Amelie tried to say something but there were bright lights whirling before her eyes and a roaring in her ears. Everything was becoming very faint, distant and unreal, then beginning to swirl around. He caught her as she fell but she didn't know that because she had passed into a dead faint.

She came to to find herself lying in a bed. It was not a big bed, barely more than a single size, it was in a cubicle, a surgical recovery room. She opened her eyes to Moses' face looking anxiously down on her. He was standing beside her, holding a glass of water. "Here, drink this" he said, there was concern in his voice. You'll have to sit up. He had an arm around her shoulders and lifted her gently into a sitting position, let her rest back against the pillow. She shuddered with the awareness of his great physical strength, she was like a child in his arms but she took the glass in both hands and drank it down, then sat holding it, hands folded on the top edge of the duvet which didn't quite reach as far as her navel. She realised that she was naked, her breasts open to his hungry eyes. He must have undressed her while she was unconscious. He had even taken off her knickers. She wondered what else he might have done.

But he cared! She could see that in his face. "How do you feel?" he asked.

She was rapidly recovering from the initial shock. "I want Desmond" she said firmly.

Moses grinned. "You're going to have to wait a long time, Amelie. About four years, actually."

"He never said anything to me. That he wanted to hibernate. He sent me a note. He loves me, I know he does."

Moses shook his head. "He asked me if I would change places with him because he wanted out for a while. He asked me to take care of you and that's why I'm here."

She could feel the tears running silently down her cheeks, her heart was clenched with pain. 'How could he?' she thought, suddenly angry. 'How could he do such a thing to me and without so much as a hint of his intentions. If I had known, I could have swapped too. As it is now, when he awakes, I will be four years older than him. For me four years will have gone by and by then I won't feel the same about him. I will have had four years in which to get used to the idea of being betrayed.'

"Don't cry, little one!" His voice was surprisingly soft and gentle. "I will look after you, I promised him that I would."

She looked up into his face again. He was good looking as well as strongly built. If she had to be looked after by somebody else, she thought, then Moses would do very well. Disconcertingly, she could feel her body beginning to respond to him, knowing instinctively that he knew even as she did. When he lifted back the duvet and got in beside her, she put her arms around him and let him roll over on top of her. Big as he was, their lovemaking was surprisingly gentle but even so he took her to orgasm very quickly, then emptied his seed deep within her. For a while they just lay together, half asleep, arms entwined in the small bed.

Drowsy as she was, she savoured the intimate contact with his body. Her sensitive breasts were pressed against his muscular chest, her thighs against his. She kissed him gently on the mouth, then buried her face in his armpit, learning his smell. She could feel his fingers pressing deliciously into her from behind, gently massaging the entrance to her vagina just below her anus. Amelie sighed and savoured her gradually reawakening sexual response, the transfer of her affections was complete. She kissed him again and whispered into his ear, "I want you, Moses."
Chapter 9

Once more they had gathered in the observatory. Martha had led them in prayers and then Matthias took over.

"I hope you are all satisfied with the arrangements we have made to keep you comfortable and happy. Our journey to our next destination has begun, P2 is already far behind us. The hibernating team have been hibernated and we, the rest of us are left awake to ride out the rigours of the journey - with God's Will to guide and strengthen us. Already, I have a crew working on the non-functioning fusion drive so that if we can repair it, the journey will take maybe two years less time. But God has not yet given a sign that this may happen so we must be prepared to have the spirit to endure for the full twelve years. I am also working with Com1 to see if we can use other areas of the ship, such as space in the shuttle bay, to set up another hydroponicum to give us extra food and ease our sufferings. But in the meanwhile, the rations that have been set for each of us must suffice. We will be hungry, but we must be spiritually well nourished by His Word. You must read the bible every day and Com1 will give you an on-screen test to confirm your diligence. He will report your scores to Mother and myself so that we can monitor your spirituality and give you guidance where you need it."

Matthias looked sternly over the fleece-clothed flock. "Unhappily" he said sternly, his face furrowed with paternalistic anger and concern, "one of your number has grievously sinned. He had set his countenance against the face of God and he had sought to prostitute himself and others who would have followed him, by indulging himself in the lusts of the flesh and, worse still, incited other weaker brethren to follow his iniquitous example. He comes now to recant his evil mis-intentions and so seek our forgiveness. You must be his judge!"

Matthias beckoned Dane from the throng, calling him to stand up on the podium beside him (which they had constructed from materials brought up from the stores). Dane stood in front of them, his eyes lowered.

"Brothers and sisters" he mumbled in a low voice. "I did not believe the Word which is brought to us by Mother and Father. I wanted to go my own way and I had evil and lewd thoughts, I wanted to indulge the lusts of the flesh. I wanted to go to the women's quarters and disport myself there." Dane could not look up, his eyes were cast down to the floor at his feet, just beyond where Moses and Hack were standing watchfully. Hack had a hand in the pocket of his fleece and was holding something there.

Dane mumbled as if to himself, eyes half closed. "I now realise that my thoughts were impure and that I encouraged others to sin, also. I beg God's forgiveness."

Matthias stepped forwards. "Praise Be! Dane has admitted his sin. God will forgive him because He is all loving and all forgiving! But you, his brothers and sisters must decide upon his atonement so that you can be sure his recantation is honest and true."

He looked over them, his eyes flintily stern. "What atonement do you require of him?"

In the uncomfortable silence that followed, a voice spoke up quietly from somewhere near the front. "Let him fast for one week."

Matthias lifted his eyes and overlooked them. "Is that the wish of you all? So be it then. Dane will be confined to his room to drink only God's pure water for one standard week! God be with you. Amen!"

After three days Dane went to Matthias to beg for mercy and allow him some food. He had to point out that it was not for him, Matthias, to interfere with an atonement required by his fellow colonists and that the matter was really in their hands, not his. But he understood how Dane must feel and he wondered how truly contrite he was. Maybe if Dane took today's bible class and gained full marks from Com1's onscreen test, then he would have a case to take to the flock and intercede on his behalf.

It was a difficult test and Dane had to have several goes at it before he fully succeeded after which Matthias assembled the males, had Com1 rig a conference link via Martha to the females in H3 and then called Dane to the podium.

"My children," he began. "I have brought Dane before you at his own request to beg you to release him from his fast. I have suggested to him that if he studies his bible class diligently and satisfies Com1 then you might be willing to grant his wish. Did you want to say anything in support of your supplication, Dane?"

Dane couldn't look up but he mumbled that he was sorry he had done wrong and promised to be good in future. After hearing his rather pathetic recantation, Matthias led them in deciding that he could have his ration as long as he gained full marks in his bible study test each day and that otherwise, that would be the end of the matter.

**********************************************************

Amelie was besotted with Moses and he, in turn was besotted with her. They turned the medical centre into a honeymoon suite as best they could. They reorganised the sleeping arrangements from the abandoned endeavours of the earlier female shuttle crew, creating a very satisfactory double bed out of them in what presumably was intended to be the medical staffroom.

The others were told that Amelie was being kept in indefinite isolation because she was suspected of having caught an extraterrestrial infection from when she had gone out on to the glacier on P2. Other than herself, only Manny and Desmond had been exposed and now, with Manny gone, the hibernated Desmond was the only other crewmember who might have been at risk.

The sexual attraction between them was fantastic. Their bodies had only to touch to light the fire that would then consume them until they exhausted each other. It was the same for both, they simply didn't seem able to get enough of each other, the passion never seemed to dim down, however often they made love.

Amelie snuggled up against his muscular body, her breasts, tender from his stroking hands and the suction of his lips on her nipples, nuzzling against his torso, her swollen pudenda gently throbbing from his most recent and very protracted penetration, her hand gently stroking his relaxed but still more than generous penis. "Moses" she murmured sleepily, "if you ever tired of me, I would die."

He slipped his arm around her shoulders and hugged her protectively. "Amelie, I will never tire of you. My body is yours as much as your body is mine. We are one."

She kissed him and drifted to sleep, warm and happy within his encircling embrace. He lay there with her for a long time, drowsy and contented, knowing that she would be his forever and that he would always want her, that he had been right to overpower Desmond and force him into the hibernation cubicle.

His lips twitched faintly in amusement at the memory and then he began the slow drift into sated sleep. The last dreamy image to float through his consciousness was a tall, willowy body and animated face, sensuous mouth and almost liquid brown eyes, framed in shoulder length black hair. Gitangali.

Hack had made himself a computer room in the instruments laboratory in the observatory and spent his waking hours keeping tabs on what everybody was doing. He spent an inordinate amount of time organising the surveillance equipment in H3 so that he could watch the females in their naked glory. He especially liked it when they swam in the pond or lay about on the grassy banks surrounding it. His camera kit was so good that he could focus down to bring a single breast up to full screen size and once he had caught one of them masturbating herself - he had kept the video clip and played it over sometimes when there was nothing else much happening.

He had also watched Amelie and Moses in their abandoned lovemaking but found himself becoming jealous and frustrated and unable to enjoy it. There was no doubt in his mind that she was the prettiest and most attractive of the females on the ship and he harboured a secret, and increasingly powerful desire to possess her. So much so that he was beginning to find himself unable to sleep because of it. If Moses ever realised how he felt, he realised grimly, he would probably try to kill him.
Chapter 10

Moses had completed his discussion with Matthias. The animosity between them had been barely disguised, Matthias was not happy that he had gone to live in the medical centre with Amelie. So Moses had found it necessary to remind him that the price of his policing action with the males of the expedition was that he should have her and, that being so, just where was the 'having' supposed to take place? Her quarantine status had been a stroke of genius, actually dreamed up by Hack, and Matthias should be glad that there was such an honest and convincing reason for her removal from the women's quarters in H3.

No, he hadn't actually made himself available in the observatory for several days in order to take part in and supervise the daily prayers because he was very occupied on other aspects of surveillance. Was Matthias aware that the females were every bit as liable to the fomentation of lewd and lustful thoughts about their counterparts in the observatory as the males had been towards them? Actually, Matthias had not, preferring to leave management of them to Martha in her role of Mother Superior and he had seen evidence enough of her competent performance as such in terms of their bible study scores and lack of any other rumblings of discontent from that direction.

Moses' innuendo had disturbed his mental tranquility and he had been forced to accept that he needed to consider infiltrating them in order to get the full picture of what evil might be being concocted from that direction. He had to agree to allow Moses to find a way of ascertaining what, if anything was going on. He had no idea of the extent to which Hack had been snooping on them since he had set up his own centre and he would have been horrified if he had. So he gave Moses his qualified blessing.

Hack had kept his door locked so Moses had to knock and wait. "Why so secretive, Hack?" he said, pushing open the door.

"Close it behind you and come and look at this, brother!"

Projected onscreen was the clip of the girl masturbating. Moses watched in amazement.

"Hey, I didn't know they did that!"

"They aren't any different to us then, are they. Just that they haven't got what we've got to play with!" He sniggered.

Which one do you want to see most?"

Moses' answer was without hesitation. She had been on his mind ever since that dream. "Gitangali"

Hack smiled lopsidedly. "I knew you'd say that!" Gitangali had appeared onscreen. She was walking naked towards him, the wiggle of her hips speaking directly to his manhood. She had stopped a few steps away and was looking down at herself, absently stroking the inside of her thigh with her hand. Then she walked off to one side and sat down under a tree on a little patch of lushly green grass. She wrapped her arms around her knees and sat gazing into the middle distance as if thinking about something serious.

"She often goes there. She seems to have a need to get away from the others from time to time. She'll sit there for hours sometimes. The others seem to know that she doesn't want them to disturb her, so they don't."

Moses sat down in a spare chair and watched her thoughtfully. "She sure is a beauty, Hack!"

"You fancy her, then? What about Amelie?"

Moses met his slightly mocking eyes. "Leave Amelie out of this."

"Sure thing, boss!" The picture faded and then he found himself looking at his own naked body straddled across Amelie's, her legs wrapped around the back of his thighs, his bottom rising and falling in time to her cries and gasps as he serviced her. He turned on Hack, instantly seething with fury. "You dirty little swine" he snarled. "Does this mean that you've been spying on us? Watching what we do? I swear I'll kill you!"

"Uh, huh! Take it easy brother of mine." Hack lifted his hand, he was holding the scalpel.

Moses paused and the moment was lost. "Put that away! Don't be stupid, Hack. Put it down."

"How do I know you won't attack me?"

"I won't attack you. If that's how you get your kicks, I pity you. Funny enough" the words came out almost of their own volition, "I need a bit of a break from her actually. It's a relief to come down here for a while. She's like a bitch on heat, wants it all the time."

Hack had switched back to Gitangali "Well you won't have any to spare for her, then!"

Moses stared at the screen. "Is that in real time. Is she sitting there right now?"

"Right now, brother. Maybe she's even thinking about you. Right now, Moses!"

"Then maybe I just ought to do something about it!"

Hack grinned his lopsided grin again. "I can open up the airlock door for you, if you want!"

Moses stared at him thoughtfully. "Then maybe you should do just that, little brother. Give me ten minutes to get over there, open it up, wait ten minutes and then lock it again."

Moses stood up. "Do me a favour, Hack. Don't spy on me again because if I ever find out, that blade you've got won't save you!"

*********************************************************

Gitangali looked up, startled, then shocked, then incredulous. All these emotions passed over her face in quick succession. She had been lost in her own thoughts when Moses had found her and now he was standing only two metres away, as naked as she was and every bit a man.

"How did you get here?" She managed to project calmness into her voice despite the flux of inner turmoil inside her.

"All doors on this ship are open to me, Gitangali." Moses smiled disarmingly. "What were you thinking about? You looked so serious for one so beautiful."

"Oh, Moses!" she sighed. "I was thinking about Manny. I think about him a lot. He would have been my partner one day when it was right."

"And now he's....gone!"

"And I am still alive because of it, along with Mother and the others who were on the shuttle."

"How can you say he would have been for you?"

Gitangali looked up at him sadly, her eyes growing liquid with tears. "I just knew. I think that he knew, too. Only there was no time and now there never will be!"

"So you come and sit here and brood away your days. Gitangali, you're turning him into a saint!"

"Well, that's exactly what he is, isn't it. That's what Mother said at the time. Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." Moses was right, she was intoning the words, they had already become ritual.

He sank down on to his haunches, just in front of her, so that their eyes were on a level. He put out a hand and rested it on her arm, she didn't seem to notice it. 'If this was Amelie', he thought 'she'd be all over me by now! This one's surely different.'

"Gitangali! Such a lovely name for such a lovely girl. Woman" he corrected himself. "Manny wouldn't have wanted you to be so sad about him. He would have wanted you to cry and then get up and move on. You have the rest of your life in front of you."

"Moses. I think you mean well. Perhaps you haven't suffered grief in your life so you don't know how it is. I am still grieving for him, there is an ache inside me. Maybe one day it will go away, I don't know. But that's how I feel now."

He had become uncomfortable squatting down, so he rolled over into a sitting position just beside her so that he shared the tree trunk as a backrest with her. "Gitangali, I'm going to sit here and talk to you. I'm going to share the pain with you and when we have finished, maybe you will be happier again. So tell me how it was with Manny and you."

And so Gitangali did. The story of her love for Manny, almost all of it fabricated in the sadness of her mind, going over and over it as she sat there alone underneath the tree. She talked and talked until after a while, he realised that she had been saying the same things over and over, like an incantation.

"Gitangali, you've got to pull yourself out of this" he said eventually, interrupting her. "You've got to move forward. Manny wouldn't have wanted to see you like this."

She was wringing her hands as she sat beside him. Suddenly she sat up straight. "I have to go now. We all eat together. Then we sing hymns, after which I do my bible study. They pray for me specially, you know. Because they know that I'm not well."

"Gitangali, you are sad for him. But you will get well. Your grief will pass. I promise you!"

She looked at him quizzically, then stood up. "Will you come again?"

It became a routine. Each afternoon he made his way to the tree and found her there. Each day he let her talk and talk, gradually trying to steer her away from the central theme of her lost love for Manny. In the hours that they conversed, she began to relax in his company and then began to listen to him as he told her about other things until he was rewarded by a smile in response to a joke. He could see that she was changing gradually, her face becoming more animated, her eyes engaging his. She was relaxing from the trauma that had engulfed her. When she said "Will you come again tomorrow?" that his answer mattered to her.

He touched her arm and felt a physical response in turn. It was time for her to go. He put an arm around her shoulders, fought off the craving to touch her breasts and kissed her gently on the lips.

"I will come again, tomorrow, Gitangali. And I will not leave. When you have eaten with your sisters and when you have completed your bible study, will you come back to me, here?"

She stood up and looked down at him. There was a smile on her face. She simply nodded and then was gone.
Chapter 11

Moses told Amelie that he was needed by Matthias. It was God's will, apparently. He would not be back for the night so she was to relax and catch up on her sleep.

He went down for his daily conference with Hack who was, as usual, tuned in to the females in H3. For some reason, he had Martha in view. Moses had to admit that her body, whilst no longer young, was still shapely and she had 'interesting' breasts.

"Ho, Brother! What do you think of Mother Superior, then?" He had changed to a general view of Martha leading the group of young women in singing a hymn. Moses watched, entranced at their proud young bosoms rising and falling as they invoked the Word of the Lord. "Wow!" was all he could find by way of response.

"Hack. You're going to have to see a bit of action, brother! You can't just go on like this, ogling them onscreen. You're going to lose your mind. Listen, when I've sorted out Gitangali, I'll get her to help me sort out one of her friends for you. That's a promise! I'm staying in H3 tonight. The time has come!"

"What about Amelie, then, oh my stud brother?"

"Amelie knows that I'm otherwise occupied with God's good work. She gave me her blessing. It's a chance for her to catch up on her bible study and keep Matthias quiet, if nothing else. So do the honours in ten minutes from now, it's time I went!"

*********************************************************

He was there first, sitting under the tree. Her face lit up at finding him there. She came at once to sit beside him, her hand reaching out to him. "I'm so glad you came, Moses!"

He turned to her and kissed her gently on the mouth. "I'm so glad that you want me to be here."

He put his arm around her shoulders and let her snuggle up against him. "Are you OK today, Gitangali?"

She nodded, looked into his eyes and there was happiness there. "No pain, today Gitangali?"

"No pain, Moses. I prayed to Manny last night and he answered me. He said that I should find another to love. I love you, Moses!"

He pulled her into close contact with him. She had a faint, yet heady body perfume. He didn't have to look to confirm the surging erection swelling between his legs, only that she hadn't yet realised how far along the sexual road they had already travelled until she looked down. She looked up again into his eyes. "When we go to bed tonight, will you come to my tent?"

He kissed her again, this time with the full power of his sexuality. His hands moved by themselves to touch and caress her beautiful, brown breasts, a desire that he had fought against with increasing difficulty ever since the first time he had shared with her the bower beneath their tree. She pressed against him, a moan coming from her lips as he stroked her, touched her nipples with his fingertips, then bent forward to take one in his mouth and suckle her up to a hard, taught point of desire. Her back arched, thrusting herself forward to him, he held her there with a powerful arm supporting her, just below her shoulder blades, let his mouth rove over her shining, swelling bosom, first one, then the other breast until she was drooling with want for him.

He gazed into her eyes, those wonderful brown liquid pools of want for him and she gazed meltingly back until he thought he would drown in her. They were both panting with want for each other, the thought beginning to overwhelm him that this was the time, this was the moment, only that she pushed him back, still gasping. "Please, Moses! Will you wait just a little longer? Soon I will have to go to supper and to sing the evening hymns with Mother and the other girls. Then I will go into my tent and we can have the whole long night together. Please, my darling. Please!"

************************************************************

"Darling, I wasn't expecting you!" Amelie was lying drowsily in bed in the warm mindless moments before sleep overcame her. She had turned the light off so that it was very dark in the room. She felt the duvet lift up and his body roll in beside her and she reached out dreamily to him, too sleepy to feel any arousal yet. So sleepy was she that it was some time before she realised that it wasn't Moses who was in bed with her.

She tried to sit up but a strong arm held her pinned down. She came awake, suddenly crying "No!" until a mouth smothered hers with an inexperienced yet greedy kiss. A hand was pressing into her groin, trying to tease her clitoris into response. She wriggled and squirmed, wide awake but helpless as his body rolled over on top of her. She tried to fight him but he had forced her legs apart before she was really awake enough to be able to defend herself. She felt the sharp penetration into her unlubricated vagina and then it was too late to stop him. Hack raped her without saying a word, just grunting out his release as he ejaculated inside her. Afterwards he just held her there, she could hear his harsh breath in her ear. She wept piteously for her violated body and her abused heart but that seemed only to accelerate his response and he became rigid again inside her and raped her again, harder than before, hurting her with each thrust, seeming to take forever until his second orgasm ended it.

He had gone as suddenly as he came and she was left lying in bed in agony. She turned on the light to see blood on the sheet where he had hurt her and that night, unknowingly, she lost Desmond's baby that had begun incubating inside her.

"Moses" she cried. "Moses, please help me? Where are you Moses? Where are you?"
Chapter 12

The inside of the tent began imperceptibly to lighten. Moses had been lying there awake for some time, Gitangali's warm, soft, sleeping body snuggled up close against him. It was time for him to go but he lingered for a moment, savouring the delicious memory of their night together. He had aroused a sleeping tigress, after an initially virginal hesitancy, she had become almost insatiable, even more perhaps than Amelie, on this the night of her initiation into womanhood. Only now she slept, so deeply that he was able to creep away without waking her. He was away and into the concealment of the rainforest before any of the others were stirring, found his way to the airlock and the elevator. His fleece was still where he had hidden it and he donned it as he ascended back to the hub.

His mind was full of her, he could recall the feel, touch and taste of her, sense her smell still lingering on his skin. He crossed over and went on down to the observatory, thinking that he should have a shower before returning to Amelie who might sense that he had been with another if he didn't wash away her scent. As he lingered under the water he continued to wonder at her wantonness, she had been almost as physically responsive as he could contain, he could feel tenderness on his arms where she had dug in her fingers, gripping him so fiercely during her many moments of ecstasy. He had been surprised at how unabashed she was at the cries and moans she uttered as he forced her through a long series of orgasms, it was as if she wanted the others to know that she was being initiated into sex. He doubted if the other girls actually got much sleep. They must have wondered who Gitangali had with her in the tent and he suspected that they might guess it was him. It was just as well that Martha had gone to the observatory to sleep with Matthias last night.

Hack wasn't around and the others were still in their sleeping quarters, including Martha and Matthias and he felt vaguely alone suddenly. "Father, I have sinned. I have committed the sin of fornication." He smiled to himself, then, for no reason he could put a voice to, shivered with an ominous premonition of trouble. He shook his head to clear away the thought and took the elevator down to the medical centre.

The airlock door was closed and latched. He tried it again, to be certain. He spoke into the voice call system. "Amelie? I can't get in. You must have locked the door by mistake." There was no reply. He tried again and again but still there was no answer. 'I wonder what the devil she's up to?' The thought came to him uncomfortably. Had she guessed what he had been doing? That he was two-timing her with Gitangali? How could she have known. Unless that devious little geek had given the game away. What if he had put up a video clip on Amelie's screen of him chatting her up under the tree. Those last moments when she told him to come to her tent. Their hugging and kissing. His hands massaging her breasts, his lips kissing her nipples. He could feel his face flushing with a warring spate of emotions. 'Was this what it was like to be caught sinning? The wages of sin are death!' He shuddered with a deep involuntary superstition as the ancient words echoed in his mind. He headed back to the observatory.

Hack was still not around. 'Maybe he's hiding from me,' he thought with a surge of fury, as if Hack's mere absence signalled his guilt. 'I will winkle the little animal out, wherever he has gone into hiding.' Moses went to Com1's terminal in the common area.

"Where is Hack?"

"I presume you to mean M5. He has put a restriction on his personal file which is password protected."

"The devil he has! Is he with Amelie?" The idea suddenly surfaced in his mind. "Is that little bitch two-timing me with Hack?"

"Amelie, F7 is in the Medical Centre. My sensors detect that she is suffering an emotional disturbance."

"Is she alone?"

"Affirmative"

"Can you open the airlock to the medical centre?"

"Only 'L' designated crewmembers may override locks and latches."

"So I have to get Matthias's authorisation?"

"'L1' or 'L2' will suffice"

"They're still in bed. Send Amelie a message from me to open up."

"Affirmative." Com1 sent an audible signal to Amelie's terminal and displayed a flashing message onscreen. Moses waited.

"F7 is not responding."

"Where is she, for God's sake?"

"My sensors indicate that she is sitting on her bed. She appears to be traumatised."

"Traumatised? Why the hell should she be traumatised?"

"A proper psycho-medical examination is required for me to be able to give you an answer."

Moses couldn't contain himself, couldn't wait any longer, he was becoming extremely agitated. He knocked on Matthias and Martha's door, waited a few seconds, knocked again, more loudly and opened the door. They had been asleep. Matthias sat up blearily. "In the name of the Lord, what is this, Moses that is so important that you burst in on us? Are your sins catching up with you?" he added tartly, unable to know just how close to home his barb had gone.

"Amelie has locked herself into the medical centre and Com1 says she is traumatised. Only you can authorise him to open it."

"What in the name of God is going on. Martha, we must go at once and see what is the matter with Mistress Amelie whom" he glared at Moses with barely suppressed fury "you said you had to have in exchange for your cooperation."

Moses was too distressed to reply, went to the elevator to be joined seconds later by the pair of them and they returned to the airlock which Matthias had ordered to be opened, burst into the centre and Moses threw open the door to their room, their so-recently commissioned honeymoon suite. Amelie was sitting naked on the bed, her back propped against the wall. She was a truly dreadful sight, causing all three of them to stop in shocked silence. Her eyes were glazed over, she was hugging her arms around herself and rocking backwards and forwards making mewing little cries in her throat. There was blood on the duvet underneath her.

"Holy Mother of God" breathed Matthias. "What has happened to her?"

Martha went to her, went on her knees beside her, put her arms around her and drew her against herself. "There, there! Amelie, it's alright now. You're safe now. We will take care of you, keep you safe."

"Ask her what happened" whispered Matthias. Martha stroked her hair, rocked her to herself like she was a small child, crooned words of comfort over her. She looked up at Matthias and shook her head. "She is in some kind of catatonic shock. She isn't really conscious."

"The blood?" Moses voice was quaking with horror. "I think she's been raped" said Martha.

"Raped?" He echoed the word without really comprehending it. His Amelie who was so eager for sex. How could she have been raped? Who could have raped her. He leaned forward, touched her face. "Amelie, it's me, Moses. Can you hear me, Amelie?" He thought that she nodded. "Who did it, Amelie? Who did this to you?"

They all three heard her reply. Just one word. "Hack!"

"Moses, come back!" Matthias' words followed him unheeded. Moses' heart was black with anger. He went up in the elevator, reached Hack's door and smashed it open with a fire axe. It was empty and there were no clues as to his whereabouts.

"Com1, where is he?"

"Please be more specific, Moses."

"Where is Hack?"

"I am only authorised to give that information to a password holder. Please enter the password now."

"Com1, Hack is a criminal. A rapist. He has no rights. I command you to tell me where he is!"

"Command denied. Please enter the password now."

Moses snapped off the terminal. There were few places in the ship in which Hack could hide. He guessed the shuttles. If anywhere, Hack would be in one of the shuttles. He reactivated Com1. "Please request Matthias to lock shut the shuttle bay doors. Tell him I think that Hack is in one of the shuttles and I'm going to get him."

He was too late. As he opened the outer airlock door into the vacuum of the shuttle bay he could see that the doors were open. Before he could even make up his mind what to do next, S2 emitted a pulse of steam and drifted up and clear of the ship. He went for S1, entered through the airlock and had his helmet off as soon as the pressures equalised. He jumped into the pilot's seat, still in his space suit and switched on the master control panel. He ignored the customary elaborate prestart checklist and flicked on the steam drive, activated the decoupling mechanism and fired the shuttle clear of the shuttle bay. He activated the on-board computer and commanded it to link to Com1.

"This is S1, lock to S2 flight coordinates and keep formation."

"Affirmative."

The shuttle fired up on full fusion drive, leaving Alpha Four to disappear into the background of stars visible through the rear screen. Ahead, the radar screen connected to the already distant forward blip of S2 and he ordered emergency power. He was holding formation but only just, sitting about 100km behind and gradually drifting further apart.

"Com1, patch me through to S2."

"S2 link, confirmed, you have live teleconference mode." The cabin of S2 abruptly appeared onscreen. Hack was at the controls. He was wearing a baseball cap back to front, staring straight ahead at the azimuth and artificial horizon, hands on the control column like he was flying a spitfire.

"Hack! Why? Why did you do it?"

"Don't bug me Moses, just get off my tail!"

"You little bastard! You could have had any of them. Any one you wanted."

"Except Amelie. And now Gitangali."

"Shit, Hack. You raped her. You destroyed her. She can't even speak! There was blood everywhere. You tore her apart."

"I only did what you did. And you're bigger than I am. So what's the big deal. Between friends."

Moses felt terrible rage rise over him like a black cloud that enveloped and engulfed him, then just dissolved into his psyche. He was very calm and quiet when he spoke. "I'm going to kill you Hack. You are no longer fit to be a member of the human race."

"Try me brother. Just try me!" Teleconference mode dissolved, replaced by the radar image of S2. It was coming straight at him at a closing speed of almost 2 kilometres a second. Terror flooded through him, freezing his hands on the controls for long seconds as the image enlarged with horrifying rapidity, bearing down on a direct collision course. Hack appeared on voice only.

"Bye bye Big Boy! Pity you never learnt how to fly one of these properly." Various alarms began to sound through the cabin. Moses held the controls, switched from autopilot to manual, waited with sweat breaking out on his forehead until the last moment, then twitched S1 sharply into a steep bank. The searing flame of the fusion drive raked briefly over S2's hull and then it was past, turning almost on its axis and heading once more towards him. Moses counterattacked, driving a direct collision course back until it was S2's turn to break away in a tight turn and then was immediately rounding on him, forcing him to evade with a steep turn of his own. The violent manoeuvres had disoriented him for a few seconds, sending his head dizzy with the violent 'g' forces and threatening him with nausea, losing the critical initiative so that he was faced with S2 filling the screen as it approached him head on at incredible speed and it was too late to react. They flew past each other, so close that it seemed they must collide, then the fire of Hack's fusion drive caught S1 and his systems tripped out.

She had become an instant hulk, tumbling uncontrollably and sickeningly about her axis, engine stalled, radar and most onboard systems plunged into blankness, a sitting duck. Hack lined her up carefully, then closed in for the kill. "If you can hear me brother Moses, it's time to offer up one of those prayers that old Matthias seems so hooked into, 'cos I'm goin' to show you what hellfire really is. Then I'm going back home to see what I can find to do to entertain the lovely Gitangali"

S2 was drifting slowly past him. Moses fumbled in the darkness, found the emergency power switch and turned it on. S1 hesitated then found her systems. He hit the main power drive just as Hack turned on S2's drive for the final immolation. S1 stabilised as the computer compensated, he pulled the control column over, S1 turned away, catching his sister ship square on in the immolating flame of the fusion drive. S2 glowed red, then white hot and exploded silently into a spreading ball of blindingly white fire.
Chapter 13

The shuttle came back on autopilot. So did Moses. He came straight back to the medical centre where Matthias and Martha were still attending the traumatised Amelie. They had changed the bed and persuaded her to lie down, though she was still functioning as an automaton. He went directly to her, leaned over and placed his hands on her shoulders, looked into her eyes, though they didn't seem to see him in return. "Amelie" he said gently "Hack is dead. I killed him. You need never fear anything ever again. This I promise you, in the name of God. I will look after you, I will protect you and keep you safe. I will nurse you back to health. So help me God!"

Somewhere in the background he heard somebody whisper "Amen!"

He stood upright, looked to Matthias. "Forgive me Father. I have committed a mortal sin. I have killed a man. I submit myself to your judgement."

Matthias went to him, put his arms around him and held him to himself. "Moses you have nothing to be forgiven. The Lord said 'I am a vengeful God!'" He held Moses at arm's length, looked into his eyes. "You acted in the name of the Lord, you carried out His Will. You committed no sin."

"Oh, Father. I have committed many sins. I will dedicate myself from henceforth to atonement for the wrongs I have done. I will devote my life and my soul to bringing Amelie back to health and strength, forsaking all other, henceforth and forever."

Matthias hugged him as a son. His eyes were blinded with tears. "God be with you, my son" he said and Martha, still with her arm around Amelie added the single word of blessing "Amen!"

***********************************************************

She did not get better. Moses sat with her and talked to her for hours at a time. He fed her, washed her, helped her to the toilet and wept over her when she slept. He made her get up and walk around so that she would have some exercise. He held her in his arms when she started to rock back and forth. He dried her eyes when they were wet with tears. He prayed with and for her.

One day he stroked her breast and she screamed and screamed and bit her lip until it bled and he was forced to give her a sedative. The next day, her eyes were even more glazed over than usual and she felt stiff to his touch.

He didn't leave the medical centre for a month. Martha came every day and helped him with feeding, showering her and tidying up their living quarters. She led them in prayer that Amelie might get better and one day was rewarded when she murmured "Amen" along with Moses and herself.

One day Matthias asked for him to come down to the observatory, leaving Martha to care for Amelie. He had gathered everybody together, it was the first time that he had seen them since it happened. Matthias took him by the arm to where they were grouped around the platform and took Moses up to stand beside him.

"Brothers and sisters, my children" he swept his gaze over them and they lowered their eyes in supplication. "I have brought Moses here today to join in with us in our daily act of worship. We have prayed each day that he might be given strength and solace in the ordeal he now faces. We have prayed that Amelie might be restored to health and that her heart and mind may be healed in His name. We have prayed for the lost soul of Hack that His boundless love may bring forgiveness for even the heinous crime that he committed and that he may, in God's good time be spared the perpetual fires of Hell in which he surely now dwells. Let us pray!"

After the meeting, they spread out through the observatory, some to watch a film, others to access the library, some to look through the telescope and some simply to use the shower room. Moses just stood around watching and Matthias left him to himself so that inevitably he came face to face with Gitangali, wearing her fleece with F7 embroidered over her left breast.

Their eyes met and he trembled. Her huge, liquid brown eyes engulfed him, now unfathomable, her emotions unreadable. She came to him, stood face to face with him. He could hear her breathing, see her breasts heaving under the anonymous garment. He swallowed but could not speak. She reached out a hand and touched his arm. "Hello Moses" she said softly. "I am pregnant, I am going to have your child."

**********************************************************

Amelie, thankfully, was asleep. He sat beside her, Gitangali's words echoing through his mind. 'Pregnant. Your child.' Her enormous brown eyes, looking for his love.

"How can you be sure?"

"I was sick this morning. I have missed my period."

"It is a punishment!"

"Punishment? I don't understand you. What do you mean?"

"I have grievously sinned. Whilst I lay with you, Amelie was being raped by Hack. Now her mind is deranged and I killed him, the shuttle was destroyed. You were the temptress. If you had not ensnared me and taken me to your tent, none of this would have happened. Beautiful as you are, it must be Satan who gave you the beauty to seduce me from the path of righteousness, to ensnare me. Now you seek to ensnare me further. You are the embodiment of evil, Gitangali. I renounce you!"

And she had fled from him weeping, as well she might. He would pray for her wicked soul but first he would need to seek the wise council of Matthias. Was it not Father who explained to them that they must practice the strictest abstinence because they could not afford to feed extra mouths. Having a child would be grossly sinful. It would take the inadequate reserves of food from their own mouths and they would all be hungrier as a result.

Gitangali would have to be punished for the sin of fornication. The question was, what should the punishment be?
Chapter 14

"Father, do you remember that next week is Saint Manny's Day?"

"Moses, dear Moses. Yes, I had remembered. How can it be four years ago that it all happened? Four years! We must plan so that it coincides with the hibernation changeover. If I am truthful, Moses, I am not looking forward to it. With Martha asleep, I will miss her terribly and I worry about how she will manage over the next four years after that when she has been awakened and I am asleep.

"I had thought about that too, Father. I have prayed for His guidance and last night, He spoke to me in my dreams. He told me that what I must do is simple. I must take your place Father. I will not sleep at all so that you and Mother can lie side by side and then both awake together when we reach our new destination. You have given more of your lifespans to this expedition than anyone else. We will continue to need your wisdom in the later years when we colonise our new home."

"Oh, Moses! I cannot think that this is fair and right for you. It would be a dreadful sacrifice. I do not think that I can agree to it."

"Father, there is more to consider. I have thought long and hard about things in these last few weeks. When you and Mother become tired from your burdens, the Lord will need to call another to grow in your places. It is ordained that I shall be the one. It will be for me to take up His Ministry in your stead, only I am young and do not yet have the maturity or the strength from suffering that will be needed. When we reach our new home, I will be four years older than any of the others and they will be able to look up to me and respect my experience. Then I will be ready to take up His Holy Ordinance as the first priest in the new settlement."

Matthias gazed at him and there were tears in his eyes. How Moses had grown during this time of travail. What suffering he had already endured, and with never one word of regret or one of complaint. It was as if by killing Hack he had purged his soul. How faithful he had been to poor, sad Amelie. How patient with her poor deranged spirit. For all those years he had devoted himself to her. No man could have been kinder or more forbearing, no man could have truly given more love and kindness to his partner, but sadly with so little reward for his efforts. It seemed that Hack had stolen her personality in that terrible violation of her. Com1 had been instructed to give all his endeavours to diagnosing and healing her mind but his programs were limited and lacked the sophistication to achieve anything much. After four years she could walk, talk, wash and dress herself. She ate with the others and joined in with their hymns and prayers but her mind was still lost in some kind of catatonic state and she could not be engaged in meaningful conversation.

But she was increasingly good at her bible study and now regularly achieved an acceptable success rate in the quizzes so that maybe in the fullness of time she could become an incumbent in the first convent when they set up their first colony. Already,

Gitangali had decided to devote herself entirely to the service of God. Matthias's tears welled anew from his eyes as he recalled those first terrible days when she had announced her dreadful sin of fornication and that she was with child. She had never confessed the name of the father, even when Moses had demanded that she be publicly named and shamed. How sad that they had made her wear sackcloth and ashes in penance and reduced her rations to half until she should speak the name of the father, only she never did until, one day, she collapsed with weakness and lost the baby by spontaneous abortion (or so he supposed it to be).

It would be a release to everybody when both she and Amelie were hibernated and the changeover crew could be revived. Matthias worried about how well they would be. Hibernation weakened the constitution of the slumberer and repeated hibernation might have cumulative effects. When they awoke they would need supportive therapy for some weeks with an enhanced diet and a regime of exercise, sunbed and massage which Com1 planned out for them on an individual treatment timetable. Fortunately, they would not have a great deal of work to do, they would just have to manage the on-board systems, see to the maintenance of H3 and now the extra hydroponic garden in the shuttle bay – which latter had enabled them to have an adequate, if not over-generous diet.

Before he hibernated, he intended to plan a programme of bible study for them. For the first year or so, they would need to be prepared by regular lessons until they could each begin to meditate upon the Word of God and ultimately achieve such spirituality that when the first colony was established and they multiplied and were fruitful, the men would be ready for their roles as the first disciples. The Eight, led by Moses and supported by their eight wives, assuming that Amelie and Gitangali were given to God. Moses had already made his vow of celibacy and thus would live alone. It was an orderly arrangement, thought Matthias, it would please Him and, he felt certain, He would smile favourably upon them because of it.

When the time came, Matthias pondered, he intended to baptise Moses in the waters of the new planet and give him a new name. No longer Moses, but one greater even than he. He would rename him 'Peter' because he would be the rock upon which the first Ministry in the new world would be founded.

