Sunlight was just beginning to heat up the room when Ellen awoke with a huge stretch and an equally large yawn. A small smile pulled at the corners of her mouth then leveled out. Last day, she thought. The Ark and the Jupiter 2 were scheduled to depart in the late afternoon hours. The Jupiter 2 would, of course, lift off from the space port once the port master gave permission for lift off. As for her considerably sized crew, they would leave in shuttles to return to their bays in the enormous Earth spacecraft. What it all meant was that vacation time was almost over and she planned on making the most of the time left on this paradise world. Once more her mouth hitched into a smile. Of course, Zachary wouldn't agree with that description. Between all the natural 'critters' that had gone after him and their run in with the crooks, he most likely wouldn't have used a word like 'paradise' to describe this place. Yet it was beautiful. And if he'd managed to stay out of trouble, he would have agreed with that general assessment.
It took a few moments to get moving. She lingered in bed a little longer, reminiscing about the night before, and how Zachary insisted he leave discreetly before morning to protect her reputation. Such a gentleman, she laughed to herself. She pulled herself out of bed, showered and looked at her clothes in the nearly-packed carryall case. She wanted to put on something light and filmy. Yet, that didn't really call out to her. What she really wanted was a good old fashioned reminder of Earth so she quickly selected a pair of daisy dukes (with a few discreetly added inches so most of her 'assets' weren't exposed) and a light white cotton crop top bearing the name of a rock band she was fond of. A light application of some makeup and a few seconds of scrutiny in the mirror met with her approval.
Next order of business was a leisurely breakfast with Zachary. Things may have been very tense between them on and off throughout this vacation, but she was genuinely looking forward to this meal. Slowly but surely, she was beginning to trust him again. After one final glance in the mirror, she stepped out into the warm sunlight and gentle ocean breezes, inhaled deeply of the mix of pungent saltwater and fragrant shore blossoms, then closed the door behind her.
Expecting to see a beaming Zachary waiting for her on the boardwalk, she was instead frustrated to find Clifford leaning over the railing. At first, he paid her no mind but she knew better. His cabin wasn't on this section of the boardwalk. Hopeful that he wasn't there for her, she prepared to walk past. After running out on her she was not ready to forgive him, let alone acknowledge him. Just as she was about to breeze on by, he turned to face her. What surprised her was his expression. It was unrepentant, even a bit angry, hard and unyielding. She knew she wasn't getting out of this. Not easily at least.
"What do you want Clifford?" She glanced up at the restaurants in the distance hoping Zachary would be in view to 'rescue' her. "I have nothing to say to you."
He waved a tablet at her. "Then don't. I don't care." He flourished the tablet again, giving it a quick jerking wave. "Just listen."
Clifford's tone brooked no argument. "I dug this information up. I think you'd be very interested in it. It's ready for you to read." He pushed it at her and with great reluctance, and with trembling fingers, she took it. Instinct told her whatever was on there was not going to be happy news, forget playful kitten and puppy videos.
Without waiting for her to look at it, he turned to leave, saying over his shoulder. "Return it to my department when you get back onboard."
Ellen waited until he'd gotten about thirty feet down the boardwalk before slowly following. Still no sign of Zachary. Maybe he had gone to the restaurant and was, even now, waiting on her. The little voice in her head said she should wait to read whatever was on the tablet, but another voice told her not to put this aside for later. That latter voice won. She parked herself on the next wooden bench and after seeing the tablet was already in the on setting, scrolled to the first piece of information. She noted there were a series of files, all apparently articles from her ship's historical records.
"What the heck are you up to, Clifford?" she muttered as she pulled up the first article. Her heart dropped into her feet with a painful thud. She read the next article before getting to her feet again and, still reading, wandered toward shore. She should have headed right toward what humans would have called a food court, but instead she turned in the opposite direction to the sandy beach, where she found a shady spot beneath several trees. Her brain never even registered that she sat down on a partially downed tree, despite its bark scratching her skin.
When Zachary Smith finally found her, she'd been sitting there nearly forty minutes and she was staring blankly out toward the horizon. The tablet lay in her lap.
"There you are!" he exclaimed, sounding a bit breathless. "I have traipsed all over this place looking for you. I thought we were supposed to have breakfast together and assumed you'd find me when you were ready. I didn't have the heart to ruin your beauty sleep."
When she finally looked at him, it was with an odd mixture of pain and intense disappointment. As Clifford had with her, she handed him the tablet.
Reluctantly, he took it and quickly scanned the first five or six articles.
"Who gave these to you?" he inquired in a dry voice.
There was a moment of silence before she answered, "Does it matter?" Before he could reply, she added, "Are these true?"
"Mere supposition, all of it." He growled, not because he believed it, but because he was angry that someone had uncovered it, no doubt to hurt him…and Ellen. It came to him in an instant. Had to be Clifford, but in the long run, that fact didn't have any weight with what was going on at that moment.
"So, you are denying it?"
Smith had vowed never to lie to her, but this was a very different set of circumstances.
"What does this tell you? Theories and rumors. You know full well how the press can be when they try to sink their sizable canines into something. All these articles say is that I was either running around Earth, incognito and hiding from authorities or trapped on board the Jupiter 2. You know which one is true. Some reporters suggest I was a saboteur for some foreign government." They have no idea how foreign, he thought. "But do you really think I wanted to put my life at risk attempting such a thing?" he waved the thought away with a dismissive hand. "I'm not that brave and well you know it. Nor do I have a death wish. I was trapped onboard doing some final checks when the doors sealed, pure and simple."
"But the guard-"
He sighed for effect "-somehow plummeted down a chute and had amnesia from the resultant head injury. Frankly, he was lucky he wasn't killed by the engines during liftoff itself." Good one, Zachary, that was certainly the truth.
"So, you are telling me, you aren't responsible for the ship going off course?"
"Of course not, although my added weight possibly effected the course somewhat." Again, the truth. "And the meteor shower certainly didn't help the situation."
"Come on Zachary. The reports said you should never have hit those meteors at all, and your weight wouldn't have thrown you off course that much."
No mention of the Robot run bringing that up. Well, maybe there was no harm in it. The Robinsons were all aware of that in any case, so it was no secret. "Programming malfunction of the B9 unit caused it to run amok and crash into the astrogator." He sat down by straddling the downed tree and because it would let him face her at her eye level. Just like adults who got down to a kid's level to make them feel like equals. "It turned out to be a good thing I was there. I opened the Major's freezing tube so he could take over piloting the ship…after I removed the Robot's power pack so it could do no further harm."
Would she ask how the Robot malfunctioned? He hoped to God not. Confusion was flitting across her features and her mouth puckered in a substantial moue. The thought was there, he could tell, but it hadn't quite reached the forefront of her mind. He had to diffuse this and quickly, but she wasn't letting it go. "But—"
"Listen, if you have questions, ask the Robinsons. They'll tell you what happened."
Truth was he knew they 'suspected' he was a saboteur as well, but for whatever reason they had chosen to ignore it, particularly after his calculated and rapid change of personality into someone less dangerous. They would tell her what he just had because in reality they didn't have the actual facts, facts too enormously profound to be summarized by the one event of a sabotaged spaceship.
Looking into her hands, she murmured in a voice almost too soft to hear. "I'm sorry, Zachary. Really, but this information is out there." She fluttered the tablet she'd retrieved from his hands. "And if it got out, others would turn whatever suspicions they had about you onto me and I just…just can't handle that kind of problem. If it got out, they'd ostracize you, truth or not, and do the same to me. I don't want to live my life under a cloud of suspicion simply because I'm associated with you. I risk getting shunned by my own crew and this is a one-way trip with a limited number of people. I—I couldn't handle that." She got up. "I'm sorry but your truth, whatever that is, can't become tied to me." She forced out a breath. "My affection for you just isn't strong enough to take such risks."
A few stray tears flowed down her cheeks. "So, let's be honest. This, whatever this is, is over. For good." With that said, she walked away without looking back.
About an hour later, Smith trudged heavily after her, knowing there was no way in heaven that he could salvage this. A small part of him, the less cowardly part, wanted to beat Clifford to within an inch of his life, but Smith just wasn't that kind of person. Few people knew he could and would defend himself, if necessary, but pummeling Clifford wouldn't make the articles go away. Best to leave it alone and hope they both kept their mouths shut and didn't spread the word. She wouldn't discuss it, he knew, but Clifford was an unknown factor. However, the troublemaker hadn't done more than speak to her, so there was hope he'd leave it well enough alone once he knew Ellen was through with a certain Doctor Zachary Smith.
Appetite blasted to smithereens, he returned to his cabin to finish packing.
"Well that went far smoother than some of your previous lift-offs and landings," Smith said with a smirk to Don who sat in the command chair next to his. That garnered an evil glare from the Major, but he didn't respond with something equally biting. The pilot was too preoccupied working his way around some of the larger space faring vessels that couldn't possibly land on the planet. Once free of them, he looked in the general direction of where he expected the Ark to be. He found it eventually, near black against the background of blackness, only the portholes and windows glittering in the light.
Maureen, who was sitting behind them with John, padded up to the Major and leaned forward. "Did I ever ask you why they painted their ship such a color? You can barely make it out."
Shaking his head, Don answered, "Don't think so. But someone in their infinite wisdom felt that it would make the ship easier to hide. Shut down engines and all lights and it would be nearly invisible from any potential enemies, particularly from a distance."
"Think it would really work that way?" she inquired.
John answered her. "Hard to say. So many species we've encountered had sensing equipment so much more advanced than anything we have."
"Sure is pretty, though, just like a glittering jewel" Will added leaning next to Smith's shoulder. He was patiently waiting for the Doctor to get up so he could claim the seat but apparently Smith wasn't budging. He thought about it a minute and thought he'd figured it out. He grabbed the mic and made some adjustments to the radio then handed the mic to Smith. "Here ya go, Doctor Smith. You can easily contact her if you want. The radio is upgraded to reach much longer distances now."
No one asked who 'her' was but all of them had sensed something had happened, something not pleasant. Smith gently pushed the mic away. "I think not, dear boy."
"Did you two break up again?" he asked in typical childlike innocence. "If you try talking to her, maybe you can—"
Smith's chin dropped to his chest. "It's beyond repair, I'm afraid. There will be no talking to Ellen, not now, not ever."
"But why?" Will pressed, not quite understanding. He was still too young to understand romantic relationships beyond comparisons to his father and mother's unwavering affection and the very brief spats Don and Judy had.
His father spoke up. He hadn't known about the breakup until that very moment, but this was not a topic for young impressionable minds. "Let it go, son," he said, gently.
"But can't you just speak to her," the boy pressed, burgeoning puberty pushing him to understand how things could go so wrong so fast. He'd met a young but definitely female passenger on the Ark. They'd had a few disagreements, but had still parted friends and he'd hoped to see her again once they found a suitable planet.
Smith could have deflected the inquiry instead chose to make a statement he knew he'd probably regret later. "William, listen well, some people are just not meant to be together. One moment, I could say the right thing and the next say something equally innocent and have her become furious. I can't handle relationships with people like that. It was like walking on the proverbial eggshells all the time." He didn't know if the boy understood the reference, but his parents certainly did. "The stress and strain wore me out. That type of behavior can ruin a relationship quickly and permanently."
Apparently, Will did understand enough of it to get the gist. "Well, that sucks!" he stated, ignoring the glances his parents gave each other over how he acquired that phrase.
Gazing dejectedly at the jewel in the screen before them, he muttered, "I wholeheartedly agree with you, my boy. It sucks…indeed."
Authors' note: Please don't hate us! 😊 We know this probably wasn't the ending you were looking for, but there's a method to our madness. We have…. A SEQUEL! You see, there was a story one of us wrote over a decade ago for a friend and it inspired this story. The more we wrote, the more we realized how many elements this shared with the original and how it could work as a prequel. We will be posting "Redemption" in its entirety soon.