She was still aboard the Levant.
“Hel—hello?” Her throat ached at the effort, and she tried to swallow.
They stopped talking immediately and turned to her, smiling. “I’ll inform the Commander,” said the man, and disappeared from the room. “Well, good morning, Dr. Montgarde,” said the other, approaching her bedside. “I’m Dr. Velice. How do you feel?”
“Stiff. Sore. Thirsty.” She managed to raise her arm, resting it palm-out against her forehead, and experimentally stretched anything else she could move. She shook her head to clear the mental cobwebs that refused to release their grip. “But not necessarily in that order.”
One of the cabinets concealed a small refrigerator, Adela saw, and the woman was already getting out a container of brightly colored juice. She watched the woman, trying to decide if she knew who she was. No, she decided; but that, in itself, was due more to the fact that the Levant was a big ship, with a large crew, and not to her post-cryosleep grogginess.
“Well, I’d say you’re feeling normal, then. Would you like to sit up?”
Adela nodded.
Dr. Velice touched a control on the headboard and the bed smoothly came to an upright position. Adela took the offered juice in both shaking hands, grateful that it was in a lidded container with a straw instead of a glass, and sipped heavily of the cool, refreshing liquid. Fruit juice. As her taste buds jarred to life, she tried to identify the delicious mix of flavors that had been used to disguise the electrolytes and medications designed to both rehydrate and nourish her. The juice was, after all, her first meal in nearly twenty years. She recognized sweet mandarin orange. And strawberry, apple, pineapple and ginju berry.
“Are we home yet?” she asked, her throat already feeling a good deal better.
Dr. Velice was manually taking her pulse. The warm touch of her fingertips on her wrist made Adela suddenly realize she was chilly. She pulled the sheet up around her. Beneath the sheet she wore only a loose-fitting gown that was little more than a nightshirt, and long stockings.
“Almost.” Velice finished her reading and entered the information into a keyed notepad. “Here, let me take that,” she said, reaching for the empty juice container. “We’re still eight weeks out from Luna, so you’ll have a bit of time to reorient yourself before we arrive.”
And I’ve got a lot to catch up on, she told herself. Feeling wide awake now, she swung her legs over the edge of the bed and was about to begin asking an endless stream of questions when a white-coated figure, the same man who was in the room when she first stirred, leaned through the open doorway. Thinking more clearly now than she had when she first saw him, she recognized him from earlier in the mission.
“You were right, Kinsey,” he said to Dr. Velice when he saw Adela sitting up. “She is ready to hop out and get back to work. Hello, Dr. Montgarde. Good to have you back with us.”
“Dr…” She searched her memory, quickly finding the elusive name. “Dr. Sumatsu, hello.” She smiled and, firmly grasping the edge of the bed with both hands, slid carefully to the cold floor. With no expectation of trusting her legs to hold her up, she was pleasantly surprised to see how steady she was so soon after coming out of the tank. “What was in that juice?”
“It’s an improvement on what we’ve been using for years. We caught up with an outgoing transmission from Luna with the medical specs on the formula when we were still eleven years out. Good stuff, huh?”
Adela had to agree that it was. She tentatively let go of the bed and stretched fully, then bent over and touched her toes. The movement felt good; there was only a little stiffness left in her joints. “Listen, don’t think that I’m not enjoying the plush surroundings,” she said jokingly, indicating the spartan room, “but when can I get out of here?”
The recording she now watched had not been intended for her, but had been forwarded to her at Javas’ request. The report had been sent to him by the science team at the test site many light-years from Earth, using the tachyon burst transmitter. She shook her head in awe at the marvelous efficiency of the device, and realized she would be able to actually be an active part of the current series of experiments from Sol system by using it. Originally she had planned to travel to the test site herself to take part, and she was grateful that many years of travel time could be avoided. More importantly, she could gain valuable lead time for the project. As it was, reports and recordings received instantly on Luna arrived on the starship as fast as conventional communications could relay them, with each batch arriving slightly sooner than the previous one due to their dwindling distance from home. The Levant was still two weeks out, and hence this report was slightly more than two weeks old, but Adela was ecstatic that she was able to get them this “fresh” at all.
She had hoped to get a report intended directly for her, containing specific results of some of the experiments she had designed, and had made the request in one of her first messages sent to the Moon when she awoke, but that request would only now be arriving there. Besides, she came to realize that with Bomeer directly overseeing the work on the Kowloon, and personally reporting all results directly to the Emperor, Dr. Rice and his alien counterpart might not even be aware that she was, even now, preparing to “join” them in a realtime sense from Luna.
“I am afraid there has been a slight setback, Sire,” Bomeer was saying in the recording. The report was one-sided, merely a recitation recorded for the Emperor to review at his leisure instead of a two-way conversation and debriefing. “We’ve found it necessary to temporarily halt the experiment while the alien returns to the Sarpan ship to… spawn, apparently. We don’t expect it back on board for several days.”
The disgust was as plain on the academician’s face as it was in the way he referred to the alien scientist as “it.” Bomeer’s report remained impersonal and professional on the surface, she noted, but something about the way he presented it brought an amused smile to her lips. She had been immediately taken aback by his appearance when she first saw him in the recording. He had allowed his hair to gray, and she saw tiny lines at the corners of his eyes. But even though the years had managed to show in his face, it was somehow reassuring as she listened to him talk—even though much of his biased attitude was personally distressing to her—that he was the same person she remembered.
“While it is not necessary, in my opinion, that the alien even be involved with the modeling at this point,” the recording went on, “Dr. Rice feels that because of the important role the Sarpan will play in the physical test phase coming up after the current series is complete, that it be there for the entire process. He’s really quite adamant about it.” He paused, then added, “In retrospect, I suppose the decision to wait a few days longer is for the best, as it gives me time to review the procedure with Dr. Rice with the open lab set at a temperature not resembling that found in your average oven.”
The recording lasted only a few minutes longer, with the remainder of the report covering areas that, not directly related to the upcoming modeling test, held little interest to her. She paid scant attention to what he was saying as she watched the playback. Why does he look so old? she wondered. Bomeer was old, she knew, but could the time she spent traveling to Pallatin and back really account for the change she saw in his appearance?
She stopped to think of the many messages that had awaited her after coming out of the tank. As she had when arriving at Pallatin, she allowed her personal search software to select and arrange the waiting message strings in order of importance. And, as before, it was the personal message strings that she reviewed first.