Julia sighed as she pulled off the dia-glove from her hand. Heller had had to sedate Morgan into sleep after he had instantly panicked at Alonzo's forced dream caused by G889's Mother. It had been hard enough the firs time in keeping the business man calm and collected after the Balancer had abandoned them out of fear at John Danziger's confession of cannibalism. She covered Martin up with a silver mylar sheet to keep him cool under the shade of a canopy they had made of their night jackets. His vital signs quickly faded back to normal from their blind panicking levels. Julia looked up at Morgan's wife. "He'll be fine, after a few hour's nap. I've given him enough of a water bolus so he won't become dehydrated in this heat."

Bess Martin exhaled deeply and leaned in close and kissed Martin's lax cheek. "My silly, super sensitive whacky husband. Whatever am I going to do with you?" she smiled sadly. "You're not cut out for either a rural or a pioneer life."

Martin's forehead creased in worry briefly before the medication began working to make him relax. He didn't open his eyes, escaping instantly into the dreamless world the doctor's hypo offered. He sighed. "Go follow Alonzo then. I don't care any more..." he mumbled, falling into a snore.

"Men." Bess smirked at Julia, once he was napping. "I had to marry one of the too sensitives."

"He's a good egg. Somewhere down deep. Your intuition didn't steer you wrong. I have a feeling he'll settle down eventually, once he finally accepts the planet's ultimate authority." Julia smiled as she packed up her kit. "He's just a slower learner than the rest of us. He's got you, Bess, to lead him the way there."

Devon Adair and John Danziger had chosen a cool spot on a beach alongside a river of known safe water type, that Cameron had scouted out earlier. The lurid, cold humidity wrapped all of them up in a blanket that belied the post-eclipse swollen sun of G889.

Devon eyed up John seriously as they collectively packed up a small picnic that everyone had enjoyed. "What are we going to do now? Alonzo can't find the cave location he was given by the Mother." she asked.

"We can keep looking. Our knowledge of geology on this planet's growing by the day. We're getting better at finding transit caves." He shared.

"Uly's been trying to reach the Balancer on the dream plain, but he and the Terrians can't find Her near here anywhere. And quite frankly, I don't understand why she reached Alonzo with that information instead of my son." Adair frowned.

"It's because Balancer is obsessed with Uly. You've seen her. She might be linked to him even while she hides from us. So how do you find a demi-god who doesn't want to be found?" John sighed. " Devon, I'm sorry for earlier. I guess I'm still a little traumatized by what I had to do in the snow biome. I had no idea Balancer would abandon us when she found out about me.."

"Shhh.." Devon said, rubbing John's arm soothingly. "Yale always says confession is good for the soul. But I suppose, to the Terrians, even our thoughts are extremely predatory and very alien. Do they even had food chains here? No wonder the Balancer fled from us."

"Fear is always present in a very large measure in anyone who's good." pronounced Yale as he joined them on the pink beach to offer them a mylar sheet from his pocket that they could use for shade over their heads. They immediately took him up on the offer. "But it is we who still might be too evil for this planet, despite our remorse."

Devon studied the tutor's tired face. "I don't think that. Perhaps, at one time, the penal colonists who were abandoned here by the Council were. And perhaps the Eden Scientist who launched the Phage on the surface. But not us."

"But what about our part of the dark past against the Grendlers, through Gaal." John nodded. "Commander O'Neill probably made a few mistakes during his first contact solo missions."

"Yes." Yale nodded. "Most likely so. But no more. And no longer for any of Seth's people. Remember what Balancer sent us about the other humans here before She disappeared?"

"We're alone." Uly murmured from nearby, his free hand not on his Terrian staff making idle piles of sand in a row on the beach. "On a continent full of death. You all saw the mind picture She sent as She ran away from us."

"Don't remind me." said Bess. "That was... just unbearable. All of the penal colonists. Everywhere. Nothing but skeletons left."

Danziger's tiny first born was trite. "So the Earth criminals just fell to zero. Big stinking deal. After what Gaal tried to do to me, they didn't deserve to live!" True snarled at her.

"Easy, half me." John said, inviting his frightened daughter onto his lap with a wave for a hug. True leaped into his arms and buried herself out of sight under the mylar sheet.

"Hmm. We're at a disservice now as current circumstances stand, yes... But the ZEDs were terminated by Balancer. She did us a huge favor by doing that." Yale said thoughtfully.

Julia snorted. " Yeah. She did. Their evil was too evil for Her as a subset if that holds any bearing on judging us, as a benchmark. I was getting really sick of conducting worm bullet surgery. So, yey,.." She clapped her hands sarcastically. "..cheering on the destruction of war machines. Even if we don't know who ultimately made them from G889's own bipeds."

"E.V.E. might have an answer to that." replied Yale. "Will you permit me to try and contact the satellite? We'll have to reach out to it anyway when it comes down to starting up the geolocks."

John Danziger nodded. "The Balancer may no longer be willing to go there. And you are our second option, Yale. Okay. Let me know when you're ready with an open channel on our universal head sets."

"All right." said the tutor, shifting in place on his beach chair, in order to better focus on his cyber communications internally.

Alonzo Solace eyed Seth, who was tossing stones into the maroon shaded river current that was lazily drifting by their peach shore. Occasionally, dust from Phage crumbling vegetation cascaded down into the water, creating swirling clouds of gray dust in the air. The sour spiciness of decay was thickest where the teenager sat. They were the only two people sitting on the sand bar in mid river.

"Lovely spot." Alonzo said, sitting down on a towel Seth had spread as a peace offering to anybody who wanted to join him. "At least the water sounds are soothing even if the visible signs of environmental caving is not."

Seth eyed up the Eden Project pilot and chuckled weakly. Then his face deadpanned and his thoughts came back to haunt him. He finally spoke aloud to Solace. "Why am I not sad for all of my clan at home? They were all I ever knew."

Solace was frank. "Generational gap differences in extreme survival mode conditions?" he replied. "There can't have been too many children born after you, in the penal colonies. "

The red haired youthful slender man sighed carefully, and looked up at Alonzo.
"As far as I know, I was the only child. My father's power was absolute. He used the diaglove's fix first. And even if there were any other pregnancies and births after I ran away, they're all gone now. The Balancer's image was quite thorough." and his face wrinkled up suddenly in silent grief, and his mouth gaped open in the deepest pain.

"I'm sorry, Seth. I wish the Phage had never happened. But it has. And it's ruling our lives now. If it matters, come live with us. Mary chose not to, but she is still bonded with the Terrians while you are not. And she has lived most of her life alone, and so she's well equipped to being independent for the rest of it." Alonzo shared. "Will you at least consider staying? Gaal's sins are not yours. You are his son, but you were never his in thoughts or actions as far as I can tell."

Seth finally reached out without looking away from the twisting wine colored river, and he blindly took Solace's gently offered hand. "I will, sir. Thank you. I've nowhere else to go." he sobbed. "Can you stay with me? I'm feeling very odd."

Alonzo smiled softly, and nodded once. "I won't tell anyone you're hurting like this. It's none of their d*med business, but ours. Welcome to your new family, Seth. We're not perfect, but I promise we'll be far more open and respectful than your father was."

John flipped down his head gear's viewing lens. "Zero." He prompted to their mechanoid sentry over their channel.

##Sir?##

"Return to base. Your find supplies mission is cancelled. Alonzo has some ideas on the whereabouts of Balancer. We need your coordinate calculator."

##Right away. My E.T.A. is seven clicks. ##

"We can use Zero's energy packs for a power source, too, if we need it." he decided, sharing with the group, resting by the water.

"Zero as a battery and a night light source. Smart thinking." Devon smirked.

"Hmm." John grunted, waving her off with a shrug. "I'm a mechanic."

Devon glanced up at the biggest moon, no longer eclipse red with shadowing. "The third eclipse is over. Does that mean the Balancer can't take us to a nearby moon while the geolocks do their work?"

"I don't have that answer." John replied. "Only She does."

Uly trilled, "Moon Cross..s...ss. Again..n...?"

Devon kissed her son's head. "No, Uly. Not any more. But keep asking for your friends . At the very least, maybe they'll help Alonzo relocate the Balancer for us." she said.

"I'm ready." said Yale to John Danziger. The entire Eden Project group and Seth sat around the sunset camp and fire on the sun warmed rocks above their sheltering river. They all flipped down their head sets over their eyes.

Alonzo showed Seth what to do. "Don't be frightened. This is a holographic signal and not a real brain tap. Just relax. If it becomes too much, just pull the gear off your head, okay?"

"What are you going to do?" the nervous teenager asked.

"We're going to reconnect with a computer that once tried to kill us. But E.V.E. got better fast after some facts were shared, and then it quickly saved us from a shutdown of bio implants that the Stations had installed in all of our brains, when we were kids." Solace explained.

"A machine? Where is it?"

"On the planet, it's dead. Burned up by the Terrians using sunstones. But part of it is in orbit, on a satellite.
That's a machine that hangs above the air we all breathe. It now monitors and studies the planet."

"Does it have any weapons?"

"That is the question now, isn't it?" Yale said. "It's why we haven't reconnected with E.V.E. until today, Seth.
There might be some danger of unwelcome information exchange or a probe launch from space, but things can't get any worse than the Phage already running rampant." the tutor told him truthfully.
"Do you consent to join in?"

"Huh?"

"We never take any action that might be dangerous without agreeing to it as a whole and as a group, Seth."
said Adair. "It's called taking a vote on the decision. We need your input. Yes or no."

"Uh, yes? The Phage is killing everything and Yale has told me it's something that humans started. It's up to us to stop it. The planet's our only home." Seth replied.

"Good man." John grinned. "Then it's unanimous. Yale, let's get started. On your mark."