CHAPTER 74 – LOST AND FOUND

The couple had thought about having all the doors on the transporter locked so that their son would be confined to either the hallways or a single room but without knowing where he was and with the passengers already losing patience at the lack of gravity, it didn't seem prudent to now put them on lock-down.

Most of the passengers used their four months on the transporter to conduct experiments or do research, while crew-members were expected to keep the transporter flying, the water clean, the air pumped through vents, the food prepared, the laundry cleaned, the navigational system updated based on stars, comets, asteroids, and meteoroids, and messages to Earth, colonies, and other ships, sent and received and processed. Basically, the ship and the people on it needed to do their jobs even if they had to struggle with a lack of gravity. Requiring them to remain behind locked doors because Elizabeth and Jack had misplaced their son wasn't a viable option.

Elizabeth and Jack each took one side of the long corridor lined with doors and proceeded to open each one looking for Aaron Daniel. If the room was occupied, they moved quickly onto the next room. If the room appeared unoccupied, they would do a quick search to make sure the boy wasn't in the bathroom or under a berth, or on the ceiling.

"Nothing," Elizabeth said with a sigh when she met Jack in the hallway. "No one's seen him."

"We'll find him. He can't have left the transporter. I have to admit I didn't think we'd be playing hide-and-seek with him this early in his life," Jack said with a frown.

"Officer Thornton, can we re-initiate gravity?" the first officer's perturbed voice came over Jack's bracelet.

"NO!" Jack and Elizabeth both screamed into the wrist band.

"Where now?" Elizabeth asked when they came to the end of another row of cabins.

Things had now been quiet for more than ten minutes. At least with regard to sightings of Aaron. The only comments were people wondering when they could get back to their schedules. Even Abigail, who loved Aaron, was feeling slightly hassled by the seventy-five Russet potatoes which were floating around her kitchen.

"We can try the lowest level. It's the most empty. Large storage rooms and labs with fewer workers so he might be going unnoticed," Jack responded.

"Except if he's using the stairwell to go between floors, he'd be floating upwards. Meaning we should go to one of the upper levels. The top level."

"Unless he's using the elevators. Then he could go up or down."

"He doesn't know how to use an elevator," Elizabeth said dismissively. She knew that her son was advanced for his age – as confirmed by his recent pediatric doctor's appointment- but "advanced" meant he had started to crawl. It didn't mean that he could operate a mechanized transportation device used to move people between floors.

Jack raised his eyebrows. "I think it's already been determined that our son knows how to do a lot of things we didn't know he could do. Like open a door. Close a door. Lock a door. Move about a transporter evading his parents."

"Good point," she agreed. "But do you really think he could use an elevator?" she said skeptically.

"Who knows? He just babbles and the new voice-activated systems react. They're interpreting his baby sounds as something, and opening doors for him. He could be trying to say DaDa and they think he's saying 'down two'."

"He'd be trying to say MaMa probably, but you're right that he might be using the elevators," Elizabeth knowingly noted. "Let's go downstairs where there are fewer people. It makes sense that he's somewhere fairly empty or we would have had another sighting."

Jack hesitated a moment before following after her.

"Why would he say Mama before Dada?" he called out. "Dada's a good first word! It's a great first word!"

"I agree it's a great first word. It's just not as great as MaMa," she replied with a smirk.

"He might just decide that it is," Jack remarked smugly.

Elizabeth scoffed. "I doubt it."

"Why? Why would a future law enforcement officer with an awesome father say MaMa before DaDa?" Jack asked as he gently pushed against a wall to purposefully overtake Elizabeth.

"Because I'm his mother. Obviously."

"And I'm his father."

"Exactly. You're his father," Elizabeth called up to Jack who was an arm's length in front of her. "I'm the one that gave birth to him and nurses him, so it makes sense that he'd try to say MaMa before he'd try to say Dada."

"I'm the one that sings to him and rocks him to sleep at night so it makes sense that he'd say DaDa first."

"So, one of you is the father and one of you is the mother. Great. Now the only thing you're missing is the kid," a sarcastic male voice came from around the corner.

A man with a crew-cut hair style passed the couple with a look of disgust on his face, reminding Jack and Elizabeth that the passengers were irritated with the lack of gravity.

"Parents! Sheezh," the man muttered as floated down the hallway. "The kids' first words won't be MaMa or DaDa, they'll be 'I'm lost'."

When the elevator door opened to the lowest level of the transporter, Jack almost banged into a small woman. Without gravity, her red hair was beautifully billowing around her face like an aura of flames.

"Excuse me, have you seen our son? Six months old. Soft brown hair. Barefoot. Wearing a giraffe onesie." Elizabeth asked hurriedly.

"Nope. Sorry." The woman moved past the couple through the small doorway.

"If you see him, please let us know!" Elizabeth called out as the door slid closed ending their conversation.

"Why is no one worried?!" she demanded in exasperation. "He's a lost baby! Back on Earth, we would have called 911, and started a search team with dogs to help find him! Father would have already announced a reward and mother would have organized hot coffee and donuts for the volunteers"

"This wouldn't have happened back on Earth," Jack reminded her. "He wouldn't have flown out of the house. Unless, there's something you're not telling me about him? Like he actually has some odd trait due to being conceived in space that you've been hiding from me. You haven't, have you? Been hiding the fact that our son can fly?"

Elizabeth stifled a laugh and for a moment forgot how worried she had been since artificial gravity had been turned off.

"Excuse me, have you seen our son?" she called out when she suddenly saw two women floating down a cross hallway. "He's six months old. Soft brown hair. Barefoot. Wearing a giraffe onesie. The only baby on the transporter. His name's Aaron."

"Sorry. We heard the announcements but we've been at our duty stations. Didn't see him," one of the women answered before they floated out of view.

"Jack, I'm worried. He's got to be somewhere. What if he's scared?"

"He's not scared," Jack assured Elizabeth. "If he was scared, he'd be crying and someone would have heard him."

"What if he's not crying because he's hurt and can't cry," her voice choked off at the thought.

"He's not hurt. He's floating. He can't fall. Nothing can fall on him. There are no wild animals to attack him and drag him off into the wilderness. No neighborhood dogs to bite him. No swimming pools to fall into – the one in the gym is covered – he can't have gotten in – I had Marisol lock it and she's in the fitness center looking out for him. No busy streets to crawl into. No horses to stomp on him. He's safe," Jack assured her. "He's just on an adventure."

"Where is he?!" Elizabeth practically wailed despite Jack's attempt at confidence that their son was safe.

Before Jack could answer, the intercom buzzed with the sound of an upcoming announcement.

"ATTENTION. ALL PASSENGERS, PREPARE FOR RE-INITIATION IN TEN SECONDS. OFFICER THORNTON PROCEED TO WATER PURIFICATON TO COLLECT YOUR SON. ALL PASSENGERS BRACE FOR RE-INITIATION. IN NINE. EIGHT. SEVEN. SIX. FIVE.

A startled Jack and Elizabeth both grabbed hold of the metal rail which ran along the wall.

FOUR SECONDS. THREE. TWO. ONE.

Their feet fell to the floor and for a moment Elizabeth was too disoriented to move. It reminded her of years ago after she would spend hours on snow-covered mountain slopes wearing heavy ski boots, her feet would feel awkward and light when she would finally take off the equipment. Only now it was the opposite. It was like putting on loads of equipment which weighed her down.

"I need to go on a diet," she muttered before she and Jack hurried down the corridor towards the stairwell.

When Elizabeth and Jack entered the water purification room with its large machinery, Candy, their roommate from their last flight, was holding Aaron in her arms and laughing as the boy tried to pull her hair out of its ponytail holder.

"Thank goodness," Elizabeth exclaimed as she hurried forward and reached out her arms to Aaron, who instantaneously changed his focus from Candy to his relieved mother.

"Thanks, Candy. We so appreciate this," Jack said as he reached his arms around the woman who had captured their son and gave her a quick hug.

"What this?" Elizabeth ran a finger along her son's forehead and then looked at the dark streaks of grey on his onesie. A giraffe's face was completely obliterated by a huge smudge. "Grease all over him?"

"Yeah, sorry. I was working on the machines when we lost gravity and some lubricant floated off the pipes. I had to go to Level 1 to handle something and when I got back here, your little one was floating around and gathering the drops, and smooshing them on himself. I kept him from eating them."

"Poor little thing," Elizabeth said with in a sing song voice as she spit on Aarons face and then wiped it clean with her sleeve.

"He's a cutie," the water-purifier announced with a smile. "Even if he did try to eat grease and my hair. Which reminds me, he was chewing on this when he floated in here." She gingerly picked up a hair comb which was wet with slobber off of her desk and handed to Jack. "And he was carrying this." She handed Jack a piece of metal covered almost entirely in red silicone. The number 'two' was emblazed in black in the center of one end of the four-inch long object.

Jack set the comb back on the desk and felt the weight of the other object in his palm. "It's heavy. "And he was carrying this?"

"Yeah," Candy nodded.

"He's stronger than I thought." Jack's voice showed his obvious pride.

Candy snorted. "Duh, there was no gravity. Remember Jack, we were all floating. No gravity. No weight."

"Yeah, right," he admitted with an embarrassed smile, and then curiously examined the object. "What is it?"

"Not sure exactly. It's a lever of some kind. I'm just not sure what it's from."

"Great," Jack said sarcastically. "So far our little explorer has pilfered a shoe, a hair comb, and probably some vital piece of equipment required for the ship to keep a straight course and get us too Coal Valley."

"It's not exactly like he's left a path of destruction in his wake," Elizabeth remarked nonchalantly. She smoothed the baby's hair back and gave him another kiss – the fifth in the past minute. "It's probably "nothing important."

"Yeah, your right. That's why its covered in bright red, and on the bottom edge is says 'for emergency use only." Jack sighed, put the item in his pocket, and nodded to Candy. "Thanks again. We'll get this little one back to our cabin."

Hours later, after lunch and dinner meals, and so many apologies to other passenger that Jack felt like he should wear a shirt printed with the words "I'm sorry we inconvenienced everyone", he dimmed the lights in the Thornton cabin and lowered himself to the mattress on the floor.

The couple hadn't even debated their sleeping arrangements. After the worry of temporarily losing track of their son earlier in the day, they had instantaneously agreed that the family would sleep together. Their reasoning was simple – they didn't want Aaron left alone for even a second. And since the floor was the only place big enough for the three of them, they had pulled mattresses from their berths and made a bed on the floor.

Elizabeth sleepily looked at the numbers illuminated on her watch.

Just past midnight. She couldn't go back to sleep.

A few hours earlier, as they had changed into sleeping clothes, she had automatically wanted Aaron in bed with her, but now . . well. . . now, she had calmed down and was feeling something other than maternal protectiveness.

She was feeling squished. And hot.

Aaron had fallen asleep after his middle-of-the-night nursing and his warm body was still pressed up against Elizabeth like a heating blanket. The more she thought about it, the more she couldn't stop thinking about it. His adorably pudgy and warm body was causing her to start to perspire on her chest.

Gingerly, and while still cradling him with one arm, she put her other hand on the rail of a lower berth and slowly pulled herself to an upright position.

"What are you doing?" Jack mumbled when he sensed movement in the room.

"Shh, just putting him a berth."

Jack lazily turned over onto his side but kept his eyes closed. "Is he okay?"

"He's fine. Just tired after his long day," she whispered.

Still hot from her son's body, Elizabeth pulled off the tee-shirt she used to sleep in and which was now spotted with dribbled breastmilk. She tossed it across the room and onto one of the berths.

Laying down next to Jack, she stared up at the ceiling. A small night-light glowed in the corner but the room was otherwise dark.

"Jack?"

"Hmmm."

"Are you asleep?" she whispered.

"Yes," he murmured.

"I love you." Elizabeth's voice was soft but totally honest.

There was a sleepy pause before Jack responded. "I love you too."

"I really really love you. Today was stressful but you didn't once get mad at me for leaving him."

"It wasn't your fault."

"I shouldn't have left him," she acknowledged without even trying to shirk the blame.

"You couldn't have anticipated that we'd lose gravity and he'd be able to activate the doors," a now more awake Jack responded. "You deal with children all the time. I trust you. This is just one of those crazy things that no one can anticipate. I have a feeling we're going to have more crazy unanticipated things over the next eighteen years with little Hubris."

Elizabeth smiled and gave Jack a shove. "Stop calling him Hubris."

"Huebie?"

"Stop it!" she put her over her mouth to stifle a giggle. "Shhh. We'll wake him," she whispered.

The room was quiet again, except for the faint hum of the air recycling unit.

"Jack?"

"Yeah?"

"I wouldn't want to have a misplaced child with anyone but you," she said earnestly.

Jack chuckled. "Odd statement to make but I get the sentiment. I wouldn't want to have a misplaced child with anyone but you either."

"We really are perfect together, aren't we?" Elizabeth turned on her side, resting on an elbow as she looked at Jack in the dim light.

"We really are." He closed the few inches between them and touched his lips to hers.

In the dark quiet night and so used to the normalcy of being together, they forgot something. They forgot to remember what Elizabeth had earlier remembered that she had forgotten.

And because they were so in love, the couple did what they had done on so many occasions.

Up Next: Chapter 75

Dear Readers: What is with this couple?! 😊 They just get in one predicament after another.