Unwelcome Stranger:

With the news of the sobering discovery at the new crash site, dinner had turned into a somber affair. John and Maureen had contemplated not telling Penny and Will, but in the end, they decided that their two younger children needed to know that sometime in the future, Don and Judy would return to Earth.

"John," began Jarrock. "Tomorrow, Teral and I will return to assist you with the removal and burial of your loved ones. All of you are in mourning, and you should not have to face this alone."

"I appreciate this, Jarrock," said Robinson. He would have to instruct them both in the use of a decontamination suit, as he didn't know the cause, or, what will be the cause of their death.

Don and Judy hadn't said a word as they both seemed to still be in shock although Maureen had noticed that they were sitting much closer together than they usually did.

"I don't understand," said Penny. "How could that be Don and Judy in the ship? Wouldn't their coming back in time create a paradox?"

"There is so much about time travel that we don't know, Penny," answered her father. "Is the landing we made in Manitou Junction now in our history books? Or did we cross into a parallel dimension were the Jupiter 2 was supposed to be there."

"Or maybe there is only one outcome and our fates are already sealed," Judy added quietly, leaning into her fiancé for support.

"Now, Judy, please don't talk like that…" Maureen began to say, but Judy cut her off in anger.

"That's easy for you to say, Mother. It wasn't you and Dad in those tubes."

She stood from the table and rushed behind the ship, trying in vain to hold back the tears.

"Judy…" Maureen went to go after her but John stopped her.

"Let her go, darling," he said. "She needed to work through this herself."

Don stood from the table, "If you will excuse me."

"Certainly," said the Professor. He knew that Don was going after Judy and at this moment he was the only one who could help her.

"Oh, John, I didn't mean to upset her."

"Of course you didn't, darling," John said to his wife. "I was surprised that they held things together while we were at the ship. It was bound to take its toll."

"How did they get back to Earth, John?" asked his wife. "Even if the Jupiter could lift-off, we have no idea where we are."

"Mom, Dad," said Will, who had been following the conversation. "I think I might know how we find Earth."

"How's that, Will?" asked his father.

"Last night, at the party, Brina showed me the telescope they use in the village for star mapping. In fact, she brought the charts that her people have drawn."

"Go on," said the professor, his interest piqued.

"One of the stars she showed me is called Aurora, but, through the telescope, it looks a lot like Betelgeuse. If I'm right, and I can identify two more stars, I should be able to find our position in relation to Earth."

The procedure that his son was describing was an exercise in three dimensional trigonometry, difficult, but not impossible. The trick was correctly identifying the three stars.

"How do you intend on verifying the stellar identity?" asked John.

"Tonight, I was going to run a spectrograph of the star and have the Robot compare it to the ones we have on record."

"It's a good idea, Will," the professor said admirably, once again surprised by his son's ingenuity.

"Dad, if it's okay with Jarrock, I'd like to ask Brina to stay over tonight. I could really use her help to decipher the village charts. She can have my room and I'll roll out my sleeping bag near the viewport."

"Maureen?" John asked, looking to his wife.

"As long as it is all right with Jarrock," she said, as she turned to their guest.

"I have no objections, John." He looked over to his daughter, "Brina, you will be a guest of the Robinsons this night. You will show the Professor and his wife the same respect that you show you mother and I."

"I understand, Father."

Jarrock looked to the west and stood from the table.

"The sun hangs low in the sky, my friends. We must return to our village. I offer my gratitude for the food you have provided. Please give my farewells to Judy and Don."

"I will, and it has been our pleasure."

As the clan rode away, John stood and watched with his arm around his wife. They both noticed the sun start to touch the tree line and in another forty minutes it would be below and the Macktu would be prowling the forests.

...

As Don rounded the ship, he saw Judy sitting on one of the rocks, still crying uncontrollably.

"Judy?"

She glanced up and jumped to her feet. She was in his arms in less than a second, clinging to him for dear life. Don gently stroked her hair and let her cry for as long as she needed.

"I guess I made a real fool of myself," she said, pulling herself together. "I shouldn't have snapped at Mom like that."

"I'm sure she understands," he said.

Judy pulled away just enough to look at him, "Don, I want to stay here, on this planet, build a life with you and raise a family together. Why would we throw that away to go back to Earth, only to get back on another ship and go into space again? It doesn't make any sense."

"I know, Judy. I want the same thing. If we did, in fact, go back to Earth, there has to be a very good reason for it, although I can't think of a good one right now."

"Don, I have to know, why were we there, and are those our children. Would you help me sort through the memory core we pulled from the ship?"

"Tonight?" he asked.

"Please, Don," she pleaded with him.

"All right, I was going to set up the interface tonight anyway. Will was going to download the information into our mainframe while we are at the crash site tomorrow."

She pulled him back into her embrace, and clung tightly to him. "I don't want to be alone tonight," she said. "Do you mind if I stay with you till morning?"

"I don't mind, Judy, but your parents may not like the idea…"

"Mom already knows that we've cuddled together. I promised her that we would keep it from going any further than that."

"No wonder she gave me a wry grin the other morning," said Don, as he turned bright red.

Judy laughed for the first time since they found the other ship, "Come on. Let's go find Mother so I can apologize to her."

...

The landing was not something that his instructors in Houston would have been proud of, but he had managed to get the tiny craft down in one piece. Which is more than I can say for the Jupiter 6, he thought.

The middle aged Lieutenant Colonel collected his belongings from the tiny space pod and opened the hatch. As he set foot on the surface of this alien world he thought of the words uttered by the first man to set foot on the moon. One giant leap, backward, for mankind, would be more appropriate.

He glanced back at the space pod noting the damage to the landing pads. It was wedged in a rocky outcropping with the canyon wall keeping it from tipping onto its nose. The ship would not be visible unless someone was directly overhead.

Checking his compass and map, he set out over the small rise that led to a small field where the Jupiter 6 should have crashed. Sure enough, the silhouette of the saucer shaped spacecraft could be seen in the moonlight. By the scorched appearance of the hull, he was sure that the first part of his mission had gone according to plan.

According to the records, he would find his quarry in a shallow valley south of the ridge which he was approaching. In his pack, were the instruments needed to carry out the second part of his mission. He found it ironic that the weapons were so small that one needed an electron microscope to see them, yet they held the destructive power of a thousand H-bombs.

The Robinson Family is going to wish they had stayed, Lost in Space.