|
When supper was called, the dining room on the next level below us was set up as for a festive occasion, with white table cloths and a genuine red rose on every table.
"Gosh! Where did the captain get those from?" marveled Jill, then turned and looked at Olaf, who began to smile again. "From your planet?"
Olaf, as we now called him, shook his head. "From the planet 'O'," he corrected her in a soft whisper.
"I'd love to gather bundles of flowers again," said Jill.
"Oh you will," Olaf replied, "but not on Gamma planet. You won't be able to pick flowers until you pick them on planet 'O'."
Olaf, Martin, and 'O' disappeared that night. They vanished as they usually did. They exited near the end of another dance session that went on for many hours past midnight. I wondered if they were aware of the immense amount of work that needed to be done.
Every room aboard ship had to be rebuilt. What used to be the floor, now became a wall. The ceiling, too, had to be moved. Elevator shafts had to be converted to hallways, and hallways to elevator shafts. Even the Atrium was constructed in a modular fashion. Stairs, walkways, the dome, everything could be taken apart and re-assembled as the new gravity orientation required. There were plug-ins for everything, everywhere. Everything was color-coded. The light pipe connectors for the ceiling panels, for instance, were blue. There were connectors for computer access, air conditioning, power, intercom, alarm systems, light switches.
The doors throughout the ship were as wide as they were high for that purpose, with panels closing from all four corners. The doors looked the same no matter how the rooms were arranged around them according to the three different directions in which the ship's artificial gravity would act upon us. Most of the rebuilding was done at three tenth of normal gravity.
The physical rebuilding of the ship, and the even larger task of a language training effort that would enable us to speak the Gamma language well enough to partake in parliamentary discussions, left us nearly breathless for exhaustion until one day, orbit insertion had been achieved. So, once more the engines were stopped, the ship began to roll on its axis, and every room had to be rebuilt again.
This time, Olaf didn't show up for the gathering in the great auditorium during gravity change. The huge movie screen was filled with close ups of Gamma .8 with views of its three moons and two sister suns that were brighter than its own red sun. This show was equally as exiting, if not more so than the first one.
Later on, selected TV broadcasts were relayed to the screen, to monitor if the ship had been sighted. Which it hadn't.
Eventually, the captain announced the names of the first landing team. He himself would be the leader of it. My name, and that of Jill, Natalia, and Mark, was among twenty-five other names. Mark was a friend of Jill.
It struck me as odd that our entire group was called out. I didn't expect the honor to be chosen for the first mission. It quickly dawned on me that this wasn't an honor. Every military company needs some elements that are expendable when a situation gets hot, someone to hold the line so that the rest might escape. This, evidently, was to be us!
According to measurements it was summer on the planet. We were provided with the appropriate clothing, a bicycle for transportation, but no weapons, except for a knife. We were also supplied with a communicator each which could reach the ship, and four video cameras for the company as a whole. Each person was provisioned with enough food for five days. Everyone carried his own. Camping equipment was distributed to groups of four persons according to our own choosing. Naturally, our group stayed together, especially after we had realized what our selection to this company might signify.
Next Page
|| - page index -
|| - chapter index -
|| - Exit -
||
 |
Stories about
Love
from novels by Rolf A. F. Witzsche
|
|
|