Charles Ingrid - marked man 02 The Last Recall

Prologue, 2277 A.D.

Commander Sun Dakin pushed away from the observation window, his Asian heritage far outweighing the mix of others in his round face and almond eyes. He frowned as he looked at Commander Willem Marshall, his second officer. "We're closer than either
Magellan
or
Mayflower,"
he said. "We ought to be able to spot it if there's anything out there."

The harsh, chaotic beauty of Jupiter and its moons framed his bowed body. Yet the swirling surface of Jupiter was serene compared to the worry churning inside the man.

Marshall squinted, staring past Dakin at the panorama, his own dark eyes creased in folds of dusky skin. He shook his head. "No platforms, nothing. There ought to be something by now, even if only observation satellites. Sun, what's happened?"

"I don't know." Dakin turned around again to watch as if his shrewd eyes could see what all his sensors failed to pick up. "We're not getting any radio chatter or even television waves. It's as if nothing were being broadcast. . . ."

The Earth they knew would not have been silent. The Earth they were coming home to should be alive with joyous noise, tracking them, beaconing them back. Sun Dakin's shoulders shrugged and he sighed quietly. He pivoted.

"Get the crew together. They should know what to expect. It'll be a long ride in until we're close enough to

have any real idea what's happened, but they should know.''

Marshall nodded. Then, "What about Dusty?"

"It's off her cycle, but go ahead and wake her. She's our senior officer and should be in on this. I'll schedule the meeting to include her."

The second officer nodded in answer and strode from the observation deck. Sun faced Jupiter again, worry etched deeply in his usually impassive face. Where were they? What had happened to NASA and JPL? Why were the skies empty?
Magellan
had first alerted him, and Sun knew that
Mayflower
was anxious as well. He would have to consult with his fellow commanders before talking to the crew.
Magellan
had been suffering with minor equipment breakdown, pesky but consistent. Sifuentes was tense and unhappy enough as it was. Unconsciously, Da-kin rubbed his duty shirt sleeve, where the embossed badge read
Challenger II.
After two hundred and fifty years, the longships were coming home ... to what?

"Gemma. Gemma."

She had known she was waking when she began dreaming, but the dreams were so sweet and welcome after the bitter dark nothingness of hibernation sleep that she was reluctant to awaken further. She clung to her wispy fantasies long after she should have, until the voice in her ear became harshly determined.

"Gemma, wake up."

She blinked, thinking that this was serious stuff because everyone who knew her called her Dusty, for the auburn freckles patterning her face and arms. The thought struck her fleetingly that it might be her sister who had never had a nickname for her unless it be
twin,
and she remembered that she hadn't heard that inner voice of her Earthbound other self in more than two hundred years.
Gemini experiment failed,
Dusty thought poignantly, and yawned. Her eyelids fluttered as she struggled to awaken.

She began to shudder and grasped blindly for the heated blankets they were dropping over her. "It's . . . it's early," she got out through clenched teeth and tried to look up through gummed eyelids.

"We've got a problem, Dusty. Commander Dakin wants to talk to everyone. We'll get you back on cycle when we put you back down." Willem Marshall's rich, calming voice was almost as warming as the blankets he tucked into place. There was a stinging prick as he put the IV in place.

He looked down at the fresh face of a young lady, auburn hair a mass of curls pillowing her head. The expressive gray eyes, when open and clear, would fairly dance with both intelligence and mischief. It was hard to believe Gemma Barlowe was the inly original crew member of the longships still alive. But then, her sole duty on board
Challenger
had been to sleep, waken, attempt to communicate telepathically with her twin Lisa and then return to long-term hibernation again. Dusty, of course, had done more whenever possible. . . . Marshall could not think of a more unlikely candidate to spend decades in slothful sleep. They all took advantage of hibernation to some degree although this was a mission designed to cover several generations, but it had been Gemma's fate via genetic engineering to live and age only one month every two years. He preferred to age slowly and gracefully rather than be faced with the shock of waking to the unknown.

He really did not want to be there, leaning over the coffinlike creche when she awoke, to see the shock in her eyes, however quickly masked, when she realized how he'd aged. She would laugh and make light of his deepening wrinkles and the sprinkling of gray hair, and then she would duck her face away. She'd seen his father age and die away and his father's father before him. To catch Dusty unawares before she could drop that careful masking expression into place was to see his death in her eyes.

Her eyelids fluttered again as her body stopped its shock-induced trembling and began to warm. She reached up. Instinctively he took her hand, pressed it close between his pink palms to warm it.

"It must be important," she finally got out, "if you're waking me up."

"It is."

"How close are we to home?"

"About eight years out. Want to see Jupiter?"

"I've seen it," she said with a low laugh. Her gray eyes fluttered open, stayed open this time, studying him. "What's wrong?"

"We don't know . . . yet."

Her eyes sparked. "You're going gray, Willem."

"Tell me about it." He chafed her hand lightly.

Dusty gave a last little shudder. Her teeth chattered as she said, "You look more like your grandfather every time I wake."

He wondered briefly if she'd ever loved his grandfather. The thought took him aback, rendering him temporarily speechless. He lost his grip on her hand.

Dusty sat up, pushing aside the heated blankets. Her crew shirt and trousers were wrinkled and she frowned, looking down at them. Someone had dressed her while she slept this last cycle. She'd have annoying bruises where the cloth had creased into her flesh. She reached up and fluffed her thick auburn hair.

Marshall got hold of himself and passed her a brush. She ran it through quickly, but the thick ringlets her hair grew in naturally did not get much tidier.

"What do I have time for?"

Willem consulted his watch. "Some dinner, a shower, that's about it."

"Okay." She stood up, swayed, caught the metal railing of the creche foot and steadied. "I'll be there in thirty minutes, Commander," she told him as she unhooked her IV expertly.

Marshall bowed his head and left her.

Both simulcast screens were activated when Dusty entered the conference room. Already apprehensive, seeing the images of the crews filling the conference rooms of
Mayflower
and the
Maggie,
as they called her, was not reassuring. She eased herself down next to Peg Davies, the botanist, who, like Dusty, seemed compelled to sit close to the door, as if wanting to flee.

Davies had cruised into comfortable middle age since the last time Dusty had been awake. Her broad plain face had begun to show ample wrinkles and she'd let her skin get weathered looking, a tan achieved only by working long hours in the solars. She made a face as if reading Gemma's thoughts. "Don't say it, girl. I know. These crow's-feet weren't here last time we spoke." She laid a callused hand over Dusty's. "It doesn't look good. Rumor is there's no traffic."

"Traffic?" Dusty blinked. She had not come on board because of doctoral-training or any particular expertise except for the fact that she and her twin sister had proven telepathic abilities, which had led to the genetic work they'd done on her during her childhood. "You mean we're not hearing anything?"

"That's the rumor."

Dusty sat there motionless, stunned. The implication of the botanist's statement iced through her. She looked around the conference table. No one met her eyes. She recognized adults who had been teens the last time she awoke. She looked at her hands, fingers interwoven tightly. She felt alone with her fear. Even if they had been forgotten, there should have been something, some stray signal they could have picked up.

Peg patted her hands again as Commander Sun Dakin moved to the podium and, in eerie imitation, the other two commanders did the same. Commander Heredia of the
Mayflower
stood, a Hispanic beauty who looked, even to Dusty, too young for the job she held. The
Magellan
had gone democratic some hundred years ago, its chief officer elected rather than being born to the post. Commander Reichert was a plain, squat thick man with heavy eyebrows that slanted down as though he carried the weight of a world on them—and it was sliding off.

Dusty felt a moment of disorientation as Sun spoke and she listened for the others, then realized that, although they spoke, the sound was not being transmitted. It didn't matter. From the disbelieving looks on the faces of the other crew members, it was obvious Peg's rumor was being validated from ship to ship.

". . .no conclusions can be reached yet, however human it is to try to do so. We're going to boost our signal and see if the recall beacon responds, but it'll be years before we know the truth. We've an eight-year ride inward until we get close enough for our sensors to be accurate, you all know that. Until then, this is all idle speculation and not worthy of us as mission members." Sun looked relatively serene about the prospect of the end of life as they had been taught to remember it on Earth. Dusty wondered how long he had spent meditating in his cabin to achieve the calmness he exhibited now.

"Bullshit," Warwick said, as he swung his legs over the chair and leaned over the high back, his chin on his forearm. Her attention swung to him and stayed, held by the compulsion to measure the years that had gone by since she'd last seen the handsome officer. "And you know it is."

Sun looked steadily at him also, a gleam in his almond eyes. Then, "You're probably right. But what else can we do? We'll be networking with the
Maggie
and the
Mayflower
in a minute."

Warwick held his peace, hazel eyes narrowed under a brow gone salt-and-pepper. Dusty hardly recognized him. He couldn't be that old—what, thirty-nine or so?—but seemed to have hit that peak just before a quick slide into middle age. She looked away quickly before he caught her watching him.

Dakin reached out, keying the sound open on the simulcast screens. The crews of the other two ships were taking it no better than they, she thought, although everyone on the
Challenger
seemed calmer. Crews mirroring their commanders?

Maggie
was not in sight although
Mayflower
could just be glimpsed on the horizon and there was a little interference in the signal. Heredia tossed her mane of thick, brown hair oif her shoulders. "Well, Commander? Any suggestions?''

"Send a probe out," Warfield bellowed, overriding Dakin's answer. Sun looked dismayed, then contemplative at the interruption. He gazed at Heredia's and Reichert's images.

"That's not a bad idea," he said. "We've no capability here, our probes have all been spent. Reichert, you should have a probe or two left unless I'm mistaken."

Reichert's brows sagged even further. He shook his head. "We're in no condition to be launching."

"This is not a whimsical thing we are asking," He-redia said. Her voice retained the Hispanic accent of her parentage. "It's our best way to know what happened."

"And what would you do then? Turn around and go hack? It doesn't matter what meets us at the end of this run, we've got no other destination."

There were thousands of miles between them, and yet Dusty caught the distinct interplay of emotion between these two. What had gone on while she slept? She knew the M&Ms had docked briefly while effecting repairs on the
Magellan.

Heredia's tongue brushed her lips ever so lightly. She seemed unaware of the camera close-up. "We have options," she said. "Returning is one of them. Without a homing beacon in active recall, I think we should be reviewing our options."