“And now we’re in that dimension between man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge,” G.R. offered.
Bach sighed. “It’s not the Twilight Zone, G.R.”
Lynch narrowed his beady blue eyes. “No. It’s more like biblical history.”
Kaz stared at him. “What do you know about the Bible?”
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me, kid. And I bet you didn’t know that Balal, the name of the galaxy where we were, is an early form of the word, Babylon, and in scripture, Dura was a province of Babylon. Then we’ve all heard of Jenesis, only spelled differently. The other ten planets had names of ancient cities in scripture, too. But it seems to me that this was another case of Babylon’s falling to ruin.”
“So would the Specter be dead? And his army gone?” Kaz asked.
“Guess we’ll find out sooner or later,” Lynch replied.
“Just remember,” Bach said, “we conquered the foe using the ultimate weapon, the mind, and we can do it again. But now, we need to come up with options for all the lives entrusted to us on this ship.”
Star jumped up. “Oh, gosh, Deni’s still in the E-module. I’ll go check on all of them.”
Bach handed her the a to z roster. “I’m still wondering about this puzzle. Maybe you can figure it out while you’re back there.”
*****
When Star and Deni returned from the E-module, the crewmates gathered around two fold-down tables for a conference. “Let’s have good news first,” Bach said.
“Okay,” Deni replied. “No injured passengers or animals.”
“And no serious damage inside the ship,” Star added.
After an oddly quiet time when no one offered more good news, Bach cleared his throat and said, “Okay. Here’s the bad news. The speck of fuel we have left isn’t even enough to start the engines, but with stored power and our food sources we can remain operational in a space-station mode for a while.”
“How long?” Kaz asked.
“I don’t know. Our hydroponic gardens are producing well, but the bottom line is we didn’t build the ship to sustain life indefinitely. The environmental module is built to fly independently; it runs on either electronic or collected heat. But we don’t have a sun to power it.”
Allowing the others time to worry seemed a bad idea, so Star placed the roster in the middle of the group and changed the subject. “Look. We had a few names wrong.”
“What names were wrong?” asked Bach.
“We assumed Ptero and Xian were spelled phonetically, but it’s p-t-e-r-o. And Xian is spelled x-i-a-n. Even the little fuzzy phroo animal—it’s a phroo, with the ph sounding like an f.”
Deni added, “And Yang goes by his middle name. His real name is Quan—with a q. But there’s a Rook named Kwan, with a k, so Yang uses his middle name.”
“Yes, it was Kwan who took our fuel on Ashkelon,” said Star. “I’m glad to forget him. But the problem is, we still have two letters unaccounted for.”
“Which are?” Bach asked.
“A and e.”
“So we’re missing two people?” Kaz asked.
G.R. said, “Yep! Eleven planets … picked up two each from ten planets, and four of us from Ashkelon. Twenty-six letters in the alphabet—two missing.”
“Why bother with the roster anyway?” Lynch asked in his lazy drawl. “We can’t go get anyone else. It’s a done deal.”
Bach said, “Altemus had something in mind when he put that checklist aboard. Why are there two letters open when we have all the inhabitants?”
Kaz jumped from her seat so fast she knocked over a water bottle in her haste. “I know, I know, I’ve figured it out!” She quickly wiped up the spill.
“This should be good,” G.R. deadpanned with a snort.
“You’re just jealous because you don’t have an ‘opinion,’ nor a clue,” she teasingly countered.
“Do tell, Oh Great One.”
With a satisfied smile stuck to her face, Kaz offered, “When Bach said ‘inhabitants’ instead of ‘people,’ didn’t that ring a bell?”
No one responded.
She waved a hand at Bach, “You did that on purpose didn’t you, Bach? You’re so smart. I bet you did that on purpose. You already know what I’m going to say.”
Not wanting to admit he didn’t know, he shook his head slightly.
Kaz wore a cunning look and replied as if answering a Jeopardy question, “Who are the apes?”
“The apes!” Bach shouted.
“You said they weren’t among the animals of their planet, that they showed up from out of nowhere. They must have names, but they can’t tell us,” she said.
Deni digested the comment, then said, “Maybe this is a case of all that pollution causing a higher form to evolve into a different species.”
G.R. said, “Maybe they’re humans who were taken there by the Specter after an experiment gone wrong.”
Kaz said, “That’s scary.”
“Well, hold those thoughts,” Bach said. “We’ll research and document the possibilities later. They’ll make thought-provoking journal entries.”
“Ape women,” G.R. said, trying to stifle his laugh-snort.
Kaz giggled. “Do you have inside info, G.R.?”
Deni sounded like a mother. “Will you two stop it? Now get serious. We need to figure out their names. Obviously they should start with an A and an E.”
“I do like thinking of them as more human,” Star said.
“Yeah, we should name them,” Lynch said. “And that would mean that picking up four of us on Ashkelon was the right thing to do. The roster’s complete with our names included.”
“I’ll check the old co-op crews’ travel journals to see if they mentioned apes or names,” Deni said.
G.R. reared back on his stool, “Okay, a and e, how about Evolution and Atom, a-t-o-m.”
“Dumb,” said Kaz with thumbs down.
“Not dumb. A logical offering—opposite interpretations of mankind’s beginnings.”
“Amour and Eros?” Lynch said with a grin.
G.R. screwed up his face. “Eros?”
“Erotic love … maybe it’s time you learned.” Kaz hooted.
Deni closed the book. “No mention of apes on Zarephath.”
Star shrugged. “We can list them simply as A and E.”
Chuckling, G.R. said, “I’d prefer real names. Maybe Darwin, or how about Hairy, h-a-i-r-y.” His braying laughter ignored by the crew, he tried again. “Hairy,” he said, snorting.
“Darwin? Hairy? What kind of cornball offerings are those?” Kaz yelped. “They don’t start with a or e.”
G.R. sank back on the stool and folded his arms across his burly chest while the others tried to come up with meaningful names.
All of a sudden, Bach stood and flashed his megawatt smile. “Well, the word atom gave me an idea.” He polished his fingernails against his chest. “And, I like it better every minute.”
“What?” Star asked.
“Let’s call them Adam and Eve. Not a-t-o-m, atom, but a-d-a-m, like the real Adam and Eve.”
“Oh, I like that,” Kaz said.
“Love it!” Deni said.
Lynch shrugged. “Why not?”
G.R. fiddled with his symbol necklace. “Works for me.”
Star said, “Adam and Eve?”
The others tried to answer, but Bach dominated. “The first man and woman placed on Earth by God, the Creator, in the beginning of time.”
“Is this another story from your Bible?”
“Yes.”
“I’m glad we have it aboard. I want to read it.”
For a moment, Bach seemed to enter another place in time. When he snapped back, he said, “Gosh, mention of the Bible just brought a powerful memory of our crewmate Faith.” He shivered without meaning to. “She loved anything to do with Noah’s ark—collected all kinds of Noah stuff. Now it almost seems we’re living that Bible story right now. Look around. Kaz joked abo
ut Noah’s ark back on Ashkelon, but here we are on Bach’s Ark, civilization has ended, and something outside is coming down like rain.”
Lynch broke the silence that followed Bach’s comments. “Actually, this is like a fast-forward scriptural montage where Noah’s ark meets the opening of the sixth and seventh seals in the book of Revelation.”
*****
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Adrift in the rafters of space, with visibility at zero from the downpour of silvery dust, Bach and crew stopped keeping track of time somewhere after the fifth week.
The E-module Arkriders now mingled freely with those from the other planets, and often spent their time sharing personal stories with the crew in the main cabin. Some tended to the hydroponic gardens, while others cared for the animals.
Bach had tried numerous times to instill hope with enthusiastic talks of survival, but hope had long faded and all were weak from lack of exercise and mental stimulation. Most simply went through the motions necessary to maintain status quo and nothing more.
#
After awakening from a catnap in a wall hammock, Bach yawned and stretched as he moved to the middle of the cabin and did a dozen jumping jacks, then dropped to the floor and cranked off a round of pushups before heading to the cockpit to look once more at the instrumentation. He yawned again, almost mesmerized by the silvery dust sliding down the windows.
Star plopped beside him, arms hanging lifelessly at her sides. “I wish there were enough stored power to run computer games. I’d gladly design a few for mental stimulation.”
Bach shifted his eyes sideways, flexed an arm muscle, and said in a robotic, computer-like voice, “I’d beat you every game.”
She leaned back, smiling in amusement. “I’d build ’em with ciphers you’d never figure out.”
He nodded and sighed. “Yeah, and I wouldn’t have the energy to defend my honor.”
“Your honor?”
He patted his shoulders and chest and stuck his hands in his pockets as if searching for something. “I think I still have it,” he said, dead serious. Then he snapped his fingers in a jazzy rhythm and sang in a lounge-singer voice, “I just want to testify, your honor, that I’ve lost my honor.”
The exhausted two giggled like children and Bach soon lost it with a laughing jag he couldn’t stop.
Star snuffed through her nose and breathlessly said, “You’re too silly.”
He wiped tears from his eyes and groaned, “Ohhh, I needed a good laugh.”
She grabbed him by the arm. “Bach!”
“Yeesss, Star?” he teased.
“Look at the windows!” The energy in her voice got his attention.
He looked at the windows and sat bolt upright. The silver rain had ended, and as the windows cleared the once dark and hopeless view became one of blue, almost heavenly, airspace.
“Oh, God, thank you,” he stammered, turning dials to boot up the view panel.
Star checked a printout with incoming data of an exterior scan. “I can’t believe it. The ship’s sparkling clean, as if polished by a cleanser.” She collected more data.
“Hey!” Bach yelled through the cabin to Deni and G.R. who were snoozing in the alcove hammocks. “Wake up. Come here.” He used the intercom to call Kaz and Lynch back from a visit to the E-module.
With the crewmates gathered around, Star used a hand-held device. “Look at this. I don’t understand it, but there’s an anomaly in this realm of space. It affects our fuel’s density. Energy sensors are showing our fuel’s power output at a hundred times greater than normal. It doesn’t seem possible, unless it’s somehow related to the liquid absorption.”
“Some things can’t be scientifically explained,” Bach said with a burst of energy. “I’ll run a couple of sims.”
“Even if we can use the fuel, where will we go?” Kaz asked, peering out a porthole. “Nothing but blue space.”
“It’s blue because something’s creating a source of energy and light,” Bach replied. “If it’s a sun, we can harness the energy with our solar collectors.”
“It could be something like a daystar that’ll disappear and reappear on schedule,” Star offered.
Star and Bach moved to mid ship to work at the control center. “If we collect enough energy to get the main generators up and instrumentation working, we should be able to burn that fuel and take a tour of space.”
Kaz scurried to aft cabin and rummaged through drawers and cabinets. “Where’s that Bible? I want to find out what happened to Noah’s ark after the rain stopped.”
“They wound up on a mountain,” Lynch said. “Some believe it’s on the lost continent of Atlantis, now under water.”
She thumbed through the Bible’s gilt-edged pages. “Lost in space with no mountains—now what?” She stared at Lynch. “How do you know so much about the Bible?”
“I studied for the ministry in my younger days. Then the heavens called in a different way.”
Her voice squeaked. “You, are half-minister? Holy cow! There really is a lot I don’t know about you.”
He cleared his throat. “Well, I have lived a few years longer than you.”
Bach shook his head without looking up.
Kaz changed the subject. “I’ve heard the word, ‘Atlantis’ but never knew the legend behind it.”
Lynch continued. “The philosopher Plato described Atlantis as an island empire on the other side of the center of the world. An Eden on Earth from which sprang all the other cultures—the root of all civilizations.”
G.R. spoke up. “In my opinion, it seems we’re the beginning of a new civilization right here on the Ark—a space-platform world of the future.”
Kaz glared at G.R. like an angry drill-sergeant. “I refuse to live out my life confined on this ship, space platform or not. If there’s a speck of land out there big enough to hold Lynch and me, we’re outta here.”
Lynch smiled. “Sounds romantic. Adam and Eve revisited.”
G.R. tauntingly laughed with his tongue hanging over his bottom lip. “Scary thought. Kaz—the mother of a new civilization.”
“I wish you two would coexist peacefully,” Deni said.
“Just tryin’ to keep it interesting.” G.R. chuckled. “Actually, we love each other like brother and sister.”
“In a very unusual family,” Kaz whispered to herself as she turned more pages in the Bible. A few minutes later she asked Bach, “How many days have we been adrift?”
“This is day forty,” he replied.
Lynch shook his head and said, “Well, you’re talkin’ Earth days. Maybe out here there’s a space/time warp. Maybe it’s been a thousand years.”
*****
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Bach bolted from mid ship to the cockpit, leapt over the bench seat, and booted up a computer. “Hallelujah!” he yelled at the top of his lungs.
Following on his heels, Star didn’t take time to sit down. “Generators and instrumentation’s working,” she announced. “Life support systems updating.”
“Amen!” Lynch muttered, rushing to the cockpit. “Is everything back up?”
“Yep—and it looks normal,” Bach replied. “Go ahead and restart the subsystems back there.”
Lynch, Kaz, and G.R. swung into action. Deni rushed to the cockpit and sat next to Bach. “I can’t believe it! How did you know we were operational?”
He pointed to the overhead panel and tapped on a keyboard at the same time. “The digital pressurization readout lit up.”
“Anything I can help with up here?” she asked.
“Sit with Star for a minute while I monitor the rollover from emergency power.”
Deni adjusted the bench back higher to fit her tall frame, then settled in as if preparing for a feast. She ran her hand across the controls, spoke into the electronic voice interpreter, wrote on the air panel with the laser pen, and measured light intensity displayed as colors and symbols on a monitor. “Star, what’s the purpose of this one?” Sh
e pointed to a small instrument with a touchpad, dials and push buttons.
“It shows when radar detects an object, then calculates distance, and—”
Deni cut her off. “It’s detecting something now.”
Star slid across the bench. “Quick, set that scope sixty degrees from center and get a size measurement. Put the cursor on the laser’s blip to check the range indicator.”
“Too much at once,” Deni grumbled. “Help me.”
Bach stepped back to the cockpit, leaned over Deni’s shoulder, and eyed the data panel. “You can do this. Use the touchpad and enter ‘DP’ for the dimensional picture, then follow the onscreen prompts to find out if it’s coming this way.”
“An asteroid?” Star asked.
“Not enough heat,” Deni stated.
“Any movement?” asked Bach.
“Not toward us. More a rotation.”
“Enlarge it,” Star said.
Deni manipulated two dials and the image filled the screen.
“A rogue planet?” Star wondered aloud. “It can’t be.”
Deni gulped. “Urusa!”
“What?” Bach shoved in next to her. “Move over.”
The downloaded image showed a planet encircled by two crisscrossing bands of water and orbiting its own small sun.
“It’s Urusa,” Deni stated. “Look at it. It looks just like the pictures we had when we were headed there from Earth.”
“Urusa?” Bach stared. The hand of God has touched us again.
Deni shouted to the others, “Hey, guys, come here. Something out there looks like Urusa.”
Lynch was first to the cockpit. He leaned in for a look, then stepped back. “I ain’t gettin’ all excited yet.”
Kaz hesitated then said, “Bach, we’re still on the earthship. Did you keep those observatory pictures and logbooks when you rebuilt this thing?”
“Yes, they’re in a lower port side storage bin. We kept everything.”
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