As they arrived, the lights came up.
They were standing in a huge, multi-leveled room with a giant fireplace in the center far wall. It did not have furniture, but Maria could imagine this big room with art, furniture, and a crackling fire in the fireplace being amazingly comfortable.
It felt comfortable and like a home even without furniture.
The floor had a soft substance that felt like carpet on it, but she knew from her knowledge of the ship that it wasn’t. It was part of the decking and could be altered to be as thick or as hard or any color that anyone wanted.
She knew exactly where they were. Roscoe had jumped them to the Chairmen’s Suite.
Their suite.
“Wow,” she said, looking around.
Hand-in-hand, they moved to look at the huge master bedroom and bath with a giant shower and a wonderful-looking tub that she knew she could spend hours in soaking and reading.
They both knew that the water systems in the big ship would need some major work to be up to full function after the long voyage. Morning Song had robots working on it, but they were making very little progress. So neither of them suggested using the big shower.
Each of them had their own office in the large suite attached as well, each office with its own bathroom attached.
There was also a huge kitchen and nice sized dining area that could hold a table for ten easily. And there was a larger dining area that could hold thirty people.
Even totally empty, this space felt wonderful and she knew, without a doubt, she could be home and very comfortable living here.
She turned and kissed Roscoe.
As with the kiss in the kitchen, the simple kiss took on entirely new levels of passion and intensity.
It felt like she was making love to him at that moment.
Through the kiss she felt even closer to him and more blended with him and clearly in love with this stunning man.
She pressed herself against him and he pushed back, standing there in the doorway of their future kitchen, kissing.
Kissing and so much more.
More passion than she had ever felt in her life.
Finally, he broke the kiss and stood there breathing hard as if he had run a fast mile.
She felt the same way. She felt like a schoolgirl getting a first kiss, excited and breathless, yet at the same time she felt like she had just made love to Roscoe for thirty minutes.
“Wow,” was all she said.
He smiled and nodded to that, still breathing hard, his dark eyes staring into hers.
Finally, he turned and indicated the big suite with a sweep of his arm. “You like the place?”
“Do you?” she asked, holding his hand and pushing her shoulder into his arm.
“I do if you’ll live here with me,” he said, turning to face her again.
“Are you asking me to move in with you?” she asked, smiling at him. “We’ve only known each other less than a month.”
“I am,” he said, smiling right back.
“Then I love the place if I am living here with you.”
She kissed him again, and once again it felt as if they were making love just standing there, pressed against each other, kissing.
When she broke the kiss that time, she laughed.
He was again breathing hard.
Then for the first time in hours, she let go of his hand and walked down the few steps to the area in front of the big fireplace, slowly taking her clothes off as she went.
Behind her she heard Roscoe say, “Morning Song, please do not allow scans of this suite.”
In her mind she knew that Morning Song had agreed.
“Thank you, Morning Song,” she said as she kicked her pants aside and turned to face the man she planned on spending a long time with.
He had his shirt off and he was staring at her naked body in a way that only a man could stare.
And she loved it.
She lay down on the fairly soft carpet-like flooring and smiled up at him as he struggled to get his pants off.
Then finally, he was on top of her and inside her.
And the passion was so great, she came almost instantly as the two of them melded both minds and bodies.
THIRTY-THREE
FOR THE NEXT ten days, Roscoe and Maria went back to the big education and meeting room. Within minutes each time, Ray and Tacita joined them to prep them for the day’s learning and answer questions and eat dinner with them when it was finished.
Roscoe felt like his mind was going to explode each day when the session was finished. One day was completely on the process of terraforming a planet. Another was on trans-tunnel mechanics, another was about political and governmental systems, the patterns humans took in growing cultures, and how to stop wars.
Ten topics total until the final day.
And every day he and Maria had gone back to Morning Song to check on the status of their ship, to help the tiring crew where they could, to make love, and then sleep.
They had used a few hours each day to explore their ship, including spending one hour just walking between the huge Seeder ships secured to one of the two major flight decks.
Even in an hour, they didn’t get very far. There were so many ships and they were all so large. Even understanding it, the size and scope stunned Roscoe.
Finally they went back for their tenth lesson. Today it was about the coming mission.
This lesson worried Roscoe and Maria more than anything. They knew their mission on Morning Song was to seed new galaxies with human life, but they also knew they had to determine who the other major race was and that race’s intentions.
So before they went under the bubble in the big room, Chairman Ray said, “We’ll stay until you are finished this time.”
And when they were finished, Roscoe finally understood why Chairman Ray had stayed. The aliens were very real and very powerful.
But they weren’t aliens. They were humans.
It seems in the first education day, they had left out a pretty important galaxy-wide war that had happened in the first galaxy.
An off-shoot human culture from this galaxy called Lotus, after their first great, warlike leader, were the threats close to the Milky Way.
“That is not what I expected,” Roscoe said after the bubble dropped and they could talk.
Maria squeezed his hand. He could tell she was as upset as he was. He would have rather been fighting alien spiders or intelligent raccoons or something.
Chairman Ray and Tacita were sitting across from them, worried looks on both of their faces.
“Now you understand why we could not scout them very well,” Ray said.
“We could not allow them to know we were even close in any fashion,” Tacita said, “you were given all the information we have about them and their culture.”
Roscoe nodded. “Trans-tunnel flight, a desire to expand, they do not do terraforming, but instead leave planets the way they were and just take over and make bases and control the life there in a war-like way.”
“Yes, when this galaxy’s sane cultures finally cornered them and defeated them, we banned the survivors from this part of the universe,” Ray said.
Roscoe nodded, the teaching clear in his head and starting to make sense.
“You built what was effectively the first Seeder Mother Ship called Dark Night,” Roscoe said, “put the remaining four million members all in suspended animation, and sent the ship at full trans-tunnel continuous drive for six hundred thousand years.”
“Yes,” Ray said. “To a galaxy so far away, it never occurred to anyone at the time we would get close to it millions of years later.”
“And you made sure Dark Night would never fly at top speeds again once it reached that galaxy,” Maria said, nodding. “Thus trapping them in the one galaxy unless they made huge scientific jumps.”
“Yes,” Ray said. “And honestly, after so much time, we had basically forgotten about them until scout ships searching for alien life ahead of se
eding realized how close they were to the target galaxy and pulled back.”
Roscoe tried accessing a question he had and couldn’t find it, so he asked. “You have no evidence that they have left their one galaxy?”
“That is correct,” Ray said. “It is a hope we all share that they have not. The scout ships that realized where it was at in relation to the target galaxy came back into known space to report.”
“But two million years ago they still survived in that galaxy,” Ray said. “We will need you and your scouts from Morning Song to determine if they have expanded, very carefully.”
“So we will not get near or seed any of the closest galaxies to theirs,” Maria said.
“Again, a plan we think wise,” Ray said.
Roscoe nodded to Maria. “We can deal with this.”
“Can you see why we wanted new Chairmen with your abilities and youth?” Ray asked.
“We will need to maintain a military posture on Morning Song,” Roscoe said, understanding completely. As Ray had said, advanced human cultures become pacifists and forget how to fight eventually.
“And I am needed to use my skills and talents,” Maria said, “to map this area of the known universe in a way that makes sense and make sure all Seeders close are aware of restricted territories.”
“Yes,” Tacita said.
“But I have a question,” Maria said. “Why do the Seeders have no historical memory past what we have been trained here? Why are entire galaxies of humans just left on their own to let the knowledge of Seeders drop into myth or religion?”
“Human nature,” Tacita said. “When there is no threat to home or life, humans don’t care about the past or what’s even on the other side of their own planet.”
“For a few hundred galaxies,” Rays said, “when we first left this galaxy, we tried to maintain a cultural memory with those we helped start. But it never held and no one seemed to care.”
Roscoe had seen that already at a much smaller scale, more than he wanted to admit. It was already happening in the Milky Way and Seeders were still everywhere in every culture there, helping them along.
“Well,” Maria said firmly, “with the Lotus as neighbors, forgetting is not an option. So for the Local Group of galaxies and the ones we seed, we will change that practice.”
Ray and Tacita both nodded, then smiled.
“They are smiling,” Roscoe said to Maria, “because they are proud they picked us.”
“We are proud,” Ray said, laughing.
At that, the dinner table rose from the ground again and food appeared, steaming and smelling wonderful.
As they turned to dig into the roast beef and steamed vegetables, Roscoe decided he had one more question that he had been wondering about every day since he saw this big place.
“Do all the Chairmen meet at any point?”
“Once a year on the anniversary of the launching of the first Seeder Mother Ship,” Ray said.
“And when is that?” Maria said. “How many standard days away?”
“Two-hundred-and-six days,” Tacita said.
“How long ago did it launch?” Roscoe asked, wondering why all this information wasn’t in the information flow in their minds.
“Just over six million years ago,” Tacita said.
“Whose ship was that?” Maria asked as she dug into a pile of mashed potatoes that looked heavenly.
“Ours,” Ray said, smiling as he took a second slice of roast beef with one hand and reached out and touched Tacita’s shoulder fondly with the other.
Roscoe had a first bite of roast beef almost to his mouth when Ray said that.
Eventually, the bite made it all the way.
Eventually.
THIRTY-FOUR
OVER THE NEXT ten days as they got Morning Song slowed enough to start taking on crew, Maria and Roscoe jumped to many various ships to start the hiring of crew.
Mother Ships worked just as any other Seeder ship. It was basically a corporation that hired crew and paid them. Any crew member could leave at any point and settle on a planet.
Living on the ship was cheap, far less than any salary working on a Seeder ship, so all crew members saved most of their income and often retired to a favorite planet after only a decade or so. Some were lifers, not caring much about the money, using it to help others where they could.
Maria had talked with Roscoe at different times about how he felt about spending such a long time with her, especially after they learned how really old Ray and Tacita were. The answer that Roscoe gave that finally satisfied her was “I’ll tell you in a few thousand years.”
She had really liked the sound of that and had kissed him and they almost hadn’t gotten back to work.
But they had because of the amount of work they had to do.
They were faced with what seemed like an impossible task. They had an empty ship that was in need of some pretty extensive repairs after its million-plus years in space.
The warehouses were stocked with furniture, parts, and just about anything else needed on board the ship except for food. So bringing in food and getting the kitchens up and running would be fairly high on the list.
And the water system was a mess and had to be upgraded completely after so many years of lack of use. In fact, the ship had never been used, so many of the problems were new-built problems, even though the ship was so old.
Repairing water systems and major support systems was top on the list and could be done as the ship continued to slow, as soon as they got help on board.
Maria had come to love the ship, though, over the twenty days. She could feel Morning Song with her at every moment and loved that. She talked to Morning Song a lot and where possible, Morning Song would answer on a nearby screen.
But as the twenty days went on, she had also just fallen more and more in love with Roscoe. She felt she was blended with him, yet they were both very distinct people.
They often finished each other’s sentences and they laughed a lot.
And they made love every day. With each lovemaking session, she felt even closer to him.
Making love, they became one person.
And one of them was always touching the other it seemed. They gained energy from contact.
On the day they decided to let the first ship try to dock with the Morning Song, she and Roscoe were in their command chairs. They had decided that Roscoe’s former ship, The Huntington, should try first. It was the fastest of all the Seeder ships at sub-light speeds.
On the bridge beside them at one station was Fisher on Roscoe’s right and on the other side Callie on Maria’s left. The two of them just felt comfortable now in those third and fourth command positions. Maria liked them there.
All fifteen on board Morning Song were in the Command Center, leaving Fisher and Callie’s ship, The Lady, empty.
“First, Morning Song,” Maria said, studying her heads-up display, “we need to move The Lady to one side of the big landing bay.”
On the big screen in front of them was the image of The Lady sitting in the middle of the huge landing bay.
“A position close to Entrance 63,” Roscoe said.
Maria knew that was the entrance they had used on their jumps to the Command Center the first time.
“Can we do that?”
The word “Yes” appeared in the middle of the big screen.
“Everyone, monitor your stations,” Roscoe said.
“Go ahead, Morning Song,” Maria said.
The Lady vanished from its position on the big dock and appeared near one wall, still looking very small.
Maria could tell that all systems were stable.
“Very good, Morning Song,” Maria said.
The words Thank you appeared on the big screen over the image of the mostly empty landing dock.
“Power down engines to full shut-down,” Roscoe said.
Maria watched the systems closely as the engines slowly powered down. They had decided it would be eas
ier for a ship to match a constant speed than one that was changing every second.
“Engines powering down,” Fisher reported, more for the rest of the crew, since she and Roscoe got the information slightly ahead of everyone through their big chairs.
“Atmosphere shield on the docking bay door seems to be functioning,” Hudson said from a station behind her.
“Engines shut down,” Fisher reported. “Everything stable.”
Maria shifted the image on the big screen to show The Huntington matching speeds with them just outside the big bay door.
Red, who was now Chairman of The Huntington, came over the link. “Speeds matched. Engines off.”
“Open the bay doors,” Maria said.
The bay doors seemed to hesitate for a moment, then slid back in four directions.
Maria knew they would need to be serviced as well, but for the moment they were working.
“Atmosphere shield holding,” Hudson said.
“Morning Song,” Maria said. “Please bring The Huntington on board.”
Maria knew a tractor beam had taken a firm grip around The Huntington and was pulling it in through the doors.
“Wow, some perspective,” Roscoe said.
Maria was stunned as well. “The Huntington was the biggest warship the Seeders had built in Andromeda, and yet coming in through the big bay doors, it looked almost like a toy hanging there.
“Middle of the deck is fine, Morning Song,” Roscoe said. “They won’t be staying that long.”
The Huntington drifted over the massive deck and eased to the surface.
“Closing bay doors,” Maria said.
“Tractor beam released,” Roscoe said.
A moment later Red and Mattie’s faces came across clear on the big screen. “Welcome to the Morning Song,” Roscoe said, smiling at his old friends from Sector Justice.
“Wow,” was all Red could say.
“Bring engines back to full. Let’s keep slowing down,” Roscoe said.
“Engines coming back up slowly,” Fisher said.
Maria and Roscoe both stayed in the big chair until the engines were up and running smoothly and the ship was stable.
“Thank you, Morning Song,” Maria said, standing and pulling Roscoe up as well.
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