Weffy accessed the ship's intercom. "We need to decide where we're going," she said. None of the ship's physical rooms were big enough to hold everyone, so she accessed a main chatroom. Two or three others were already there, and more windows were constantly opening.
"There are some planets, inhabited by unadvanced species, that could hold us, but PEACE is too full to hold us. None of our other embassies are big enough to hold all of us on this ship, let alone all of us *plus* the Pemalites already there. So where to?" Weffy said, informing everyone of the basic problem.
"Remember those Naedians?" a Pemalite named Jeran asked. "They occupy only a small portion of their planet, and their system is small. The creatures would have a hard time locating us there."
"But their planet is only marginally inhabitable. We would be confined to a narrow band near the equator of the inhabited planet, and we would be destroyed by any shift in temperature. Some of the physically weaker amongst us would not survive one winter," a geologist argued.
"What about the system of Janatha?" someone suggested. "There aren't any sentient species on it, and the temperature is very nice."
"But what about those subsentient birds? We could disrupt their evolution, keeping them from ever becoming sentient."
"Maybe..."
After they'd gone through about twenty planets that all seemed to be not quite right, someone finally suggested a small planet circling around a medium-sized yellow star.
"What about Earth? The primates there are sentient already, creating cities and such. There's a wonderful variety of life, and the temperatures go from very hot to very cold, but with a lot of good weather in between," a Chee said.
"But what about the fact that there's only one sun? One very weak sun."
"We aren't plants; we don't photosynthesize. We don't need a lot of light; only enough to see by, and there's enough for that."
"There's not much gravity, either."
"So we'll bounce if we fall down."
"Well, what about all the asteroids in the system? It's not very stable. Earth has taken major hits several times already, even getting split once. Where do you think that relatively huge satellite came from? And the local flora and fauna aren't very stable, either--you know how many mass extinctions have occurred there!"
"Look, if we get there and we don't like it, we can always relocate," someone pointed out. "Let's just try it out for a few years."
Everyone nodded, satisfied.
"Should we vote?" Weffy asked. "Or are there no objections?"
"Wait. Do we have to go to Earth right away?" someone asked. "Could we stop at some of our embassies? Please? Some of us could get off there, if they have family, or some of our families could come with us," the Pemalite pleaded.
"I don't see anything wrong with that," Weffy decided. She set the course for PEACE first. (It was her ship, so she was allowed to run it--most ships worked best with their owners. A lot of people claimed that the ships' programs were what had been in early Chee, but that was probably just a legend.)
Weffy pulled up a game on the ship's computer. This might be a journey affecting hundreds of Chee and Pemalites, but she could still have fun, couldn't she?
A/N: Well, how was it? Please review--I've got less reviews than chapters, which is pretty bad, considering I only have four chapters up...