Odyssey.
"Doctor Russell?"
Helena looked up from her work and smiled at Emma. "Hi, Emma, what can I do for you?" She asked as she stood up, but the moment she saw the young woman's face, she was instantly concerned. Emma looked unwell.
Emma Collins smiled. She was a member of Professor Bergman's scientific team, specialising in astronomy. "I've been feeling a bit nauseous for some time now, and I was wondering if you could confirm my theory."
"Theory?" Okay, now Helena was confused. Not many of her patients came to her with a theory of what was wrong. "What theory?"
Emma sighed. "I think I might be pregnant. I just need to be sure."
Helena nodded and sighed. Ever since the Odyssey opened its first hyperspace conduit away from whatever galaxy the moon had taken them to, and the promise of returning home, many had obeyed their old clocks. Already she had met several women among the Alphan personnel who were pregnant themselves, so Emma's case was far from unique.
"Okay, let's take a look."
Xxx
"Several of the Oort Cloud asteroids have definite colonies on them; some of them were once old mines, converted into living spaces," Dashka was saying at the Command Council meeting. The Council Meeting was currently occupied by Commander Koenig, Professor Bergman, Doctor Russell, Sandra Benes, Paul Morrow, and Dashka Kano. David was on the bridge. Alan was currently in an Eagle exploring a new city they'd found. "All of them have been cleared out."
Nobody was surprised. They'd had reports like this so many times before, it was becoming boring.
"This is getting ridiculous," Paul said, "we've been searching the Sol system for the last month. We have found nothing except old cities that have been abandoned for decades."
Koenig nodded. He hadn't given much credence to the idea some humans might have remained, but since they were here, he didn't want to discover they'd missed someone. But at the same time, he was tired of the endless search. As Paul had said they'd looked for signs of other humans, living colonies, but they'd found nothing.
And the Odyssey's Asgard technology had picked up on nothing.
They'd found no artificial energy sources, no signs of any kind of life that was from Earth.
They had transmitted all kinds of signals, beaming them from Odyssey and the Eagles conducting the searches and they had exchanged Eagle crews and supplies so many times now.
And for what?
To keep hope going when there might not be any. "We'll keep looking for a few more days, and then we'll leave," he said decisively. "At the same time, we need to think about our future. There's nothing here for us in our old Star system. The colonies can be reactivated, yes, but I want us to breathe unfiltered, unrecycled air. I want our children's children to be able to see the sunlight, not be enclosed in some dome like a load of damned goldfishes."
Nobody was bothered about the orders. Nor did anyone bother protesting about abandoning ready-made colonies, since they were tired of life support technologies in general.
"Speaking of children," Helena began, remembering an important point, "we've got about nine women, all pregnant."
Koenig and the others were grim but unsurprised. They were grim because while a child was a blessing and ensured their long-term survival, they also consumed resources. But in this case, their need to find a colony had just become more urgent. They were unsurprised because things had become loose after they'd used Odyssey to flee the moon.
"Okay, with that in mind, where does that leave our search for other signs of human civilisation?" Koenig asked.
"We can't give up on it, Commander," Paul said.
"Nobody said we would, Paul," Sandra pointed out. "But how much time has passed since they left and since we got here? It could be a century or even a million years."
"There might be a colony just next door," Helena added.
"We'll search the nearby star systems," Koenig decided, already making up his mind to have a quick sweep done. "
"They might be as empty as this one, sir," Paul pointed out.
"Yeah, but we'll still take a look," Koenig said.
"John, we might have to accept the inevitable possibility we might not find any other humans," Victor advised gently.
Koenig looked away, remembering the state of the Earth city he had seen, the Martian domes, and the few times he had seen the cloud cities of Venus. And he recalled what he had said shortly after Breakaway, that the Alphans might be the last survivors of the human race.
"Wait a second, I've just thought of something," Dashka suddenly announced. "Why are we rushing looking for anyone? Why don't we take our time, build up the colony and experiment with the databases we've got and then work on building ships while we send probes out to make our search easier?"
"That sounds like it could take a long time," Helena commented slowly.
"But it works," Sandra pointed out. "We've currently got one ship, two if you count the UFO. But we're still not sure about that one. On top of that, we've got nearly a dozen women who're pregnant. Why rush things?"
Koenig had been silent for a moment, processing Dashka's suggestion and coming up with plans and counter-plans. He could understand the attraction behind the ideas she had and truthfully he saw it as well. It would take a long time to find out if there were any humans and truthfully he had too many concerns about how long the Odyssey, considering its age and how long it had been buried on the moon after it fell into their reality, could hold out.
On top of that, he didn't want to spend the rest of his life in space looking for something that might not even be there.
"It's a good idea. Victor? Paul? Your thoughts, please."
Paul blew out a breath. "To be honest, Commander, many of the crew are complaining we haven't found anything, some are even wondering if we're the last humans in the universe. I can understand their views. I've told them that until you say otherwise, we're looking. But for this plan…I think it's a good one since we've got other things to deal with right now."
"John, travelling the galaxies in a single ship to return to a single planet is one thing, using it to cross lightyears on the off chance we can find bands of people is quite another," Victor put his thoughts on the table. "It's impractical. It puts us at risk, and there are now pregnant women at stake; even if we didn't have that factor, I'd strongly disagree with looking for any other people in the Odyssey. This ship's good but we can only cover so much ground, and we don't know if humanity somehow learnt how to create traversable wormholes; if they had, then they could be anywhere in the universe. No, if we colonise a planet, we'd at least be in a far better position to explore and search."
"They won't need traversable wormholes," Sandra pointed out. "They've got the UFOs and they don't use traversable wormholes."
"Ah, I forgot, thanks Sandra," Victor was nonplussed.
"That means they can be anywhere, so that means any hopes of finding them might be pointless," Paul said.
"Yes, we need to be aware of that," John turned to Helena, "Helena?"
Helena felt put on the spot. She was a doctor first and foremost, and she had to think of the mental well-being of the entire ship. "John, when we got here, morale has been dropping like a stone. And with each report, more and more people are questioning if we should stay or if we should go. Everyone's divided; some say we should stay and colonise some of the infrastructure already here, but others just want to leave."
"We're going to leave no matter what anyone says, so they had better accept the fact we're leaving," John's tone made it clear he wasn't going to take an argument on this matter, "there's nothing here for us, and we need a fresh start. But where should we go?"
"The Odyssey database contains information on hundreds of planets, some of them explored by the humans of its home reality, and we have visited several planets in the Pegasus and Andromeda galaxies; some of the planets matched the records," Sandra said.
"Why can't we colonise a planet in the Milky Way?" Paul asked.
"Why can't we make a fresh start, one which we have no ties to?" Dashka countered. "From what I've gathered, we have several women onboard the Odyssey who are pregnant. They need to be taken to a planet we can colonise quickly."
"I agree with that point," Victor said, "I also agree with the point we have all the time in the world to find out if anybody is out there, and we have all the supplies on the ship needed to build a fully functional colony."
"So, where do we build this new colony? In the Andromeda or Pegasus galaxies?" John gazed at the faces around the table in the conference room.
"Andromeda is closer, but we had the impression while we were travelling through the Pegasus galaxy that it was sparsely populated; perhaps that's what we need, a sparsely populated new home," Paul suggested.
"You mean to build a new home in peace and quiet?" Helena asked.
"Why not, after what we've been through?" Sandra challenged, showing she was in total agreement with Paul. "In a sparsely populated galaxy, we could colonise dozens of worlds and build a true interstellar civilisation, at the same time we could find out if anyone got out."
"So the Pegasus galaxy, then?" John looked around the table once more as he made up his mind. "We'll continue with the search for another few days to make it more thorough; in the meantime, we'll go through the survey reports of the planets we visited in Pegasus, and we will find the best one for us."
"When are we going to tell the others?" Victor asked.
Koenig thought about the question; the last time they'd been in this kind of situation, Simmonds had rammed a coup down their throats, and to make things worse, he had forced everyone to vote for the chance to return home to Earth, but now they were here, too many people were disappointed.
"I'm going to do it now," he said at last, "it's better if we were honest with everyone; the last thing we need is another mess like Earthbound."
"Yeah, many people who got involved with that wish they'd never listened to Simmonds," Helena shrugged.
"Where is Simmonds anyway?" Dashka asked, realising for the first time the Commissioner wasn't there.
"Oh, he's been sulking because his gambled didn't pay off," Sandra snorted. "He was acting so smug and righteous when he made Project Earthbound and raised everyone's hopes, and he spent most of his time telling everyone on our final leg of the journey we'd soon be reunited with family…only for it to blow up in his face. He's been sulking in his quarters since. The holographic message from Earth was the final straw."
Koenig rubbed his chin. "It doesn't matter. The sooner I find something to say to everyone, god knows what, the better."
"Why not just leave now, John?" Helena asked.
"It will take time to alert the teams to return to the rendezvous points, and we also have a few other places to search through, and we also need to find a planet to set a course for," Koenig replied.
Xxxx
The Alphans' reactions to the command decision were mixed. Only a small number of the crew raised a stink about leaving, but Koenig was brutal when he made it clear there was nothing in the solar system for them; it would likely take millions of years before Earth even returned to its once rich diversity of life, and there was no chance of them spending all that time in a domed city.
Koenig was also brutal in making sure the Alphans realised there were other worlds for them. For the next four days, the Odyssey continued with the search while they sent messages to the Eagles exploring and surveying the Oort Cloud, advising them to return to rendezvous locations.
In the meantime, Koenig and the other members of the Command Council poured over the various survey reports from worlds they'd visited in the Pegasus Galaxy. They had found several worlds, ones that matched the files in the Odyssey's database.
They had a lot of choices. They had worlds filed under the Odyssey's names for them; Lantea, New Athos, and New Lantea. New Lantea was a possibility since the planet had a single landmass and would be easy in colonising, but there were other worlds.
"Aside from the snake creatures, this world is perfect," Victor was saying as the monitor showed the picture of the planet.
"It's a pity that there aren't more continents on it, though," Sandra commented.
"It doesn't matter, as long as we breathe in fresh, real air," Helena pointed out.
"That's it then," Koenig made his decision. They'd been wrangling for days and days now. "Make preparations for the journey back to the Pegasus galaxy."
Everyone else was tired of pouring over the reports and they saw nothing wrong with the decision.
Xxxx
"That's the last Eagle, Commander," Winters reported.
"All preparations have been finished. We're ready, sir," David said.
"Make sure to do a headcount, I don't want anything to go wrong at this stage," Koenig ordered.
Once it was proven everyone was onboard, Koenig turned to the officer at the helm and navigational station. "Set in the course for the Pegasus galaxy, for New Lantea."
"Course laid in."
"Engage," Koenig sat back in his command chair as the Odyssey turned around and the hyperspace window opened up in front of them before the ship's subspace bubble formed the tunnel that would take them to the Pegasus galaxy.