Chapter No.13. Encounter.

I was sitting at the food module with Bridget and Natale discussing a discrete subject. Natale had just asked if I was capable of doing my manly duty, to which I replied in the affirmative.

Natale sighed. "Well, I definitely don't want to get pregnant under these conditions. Did they include condoms as part of your supplies?"

"I haven't found any. I doubt that they expected us to do anything intimate."

"What the hell? Are they idiots?" Bridget blurted.

I looked around, hoping that Janet and Sharon didn't hear that. "Listen, let's not get carried away. Just relax and you can discuss this with Janet and Sharon. Okay?"

They both offered me sly grins. Bridget put her hand on my arm. "We were just teasing you."

I nodded and stood up. "Thank you."

They stared at me as if I had gone haywire.

I simply smiled and went back to the command station and sat down next to Janet. "How's it going?"

She turned to give me a smirk. "Were those two hitting on you?"

I chuckled. "I wouldn't necessarily label it that."

She giggled. "They look like they have the hots for you."

I smiled. "They're young and foolish."

"They're about the same age as Sharon and me. Are we foolish?"

"I think you two are mature enough to know better."

She wagged a finger at me. "You are the clever diplomatic one."

Both Sharon and she laughed.

Surprisingly, the women were rather subdued for the next two days. I think that the hibernation blues had caught up with Natale and Bridget, and Janet and Sharon were busy making sure that they had the distance and location more precise for our attempt to travel five million light years in hyperspace.

The time finally came for all of us to get into the G-chairs and have COMA turn the ship around and fire the engines to get us up the proper acceleration before we activated the antimatter production unit.

We were used to strapping in, but the two newbies were obviously afraid, especially when the engines fired, and we experienced excruciating G-forces. However, when the burn ended and we were in hyperspace, they settled down.

I decided to not have COMA turn the ship around, which would make it easier for us to do a slowing burn to come out of hyperspace and then slow into an orbital insertion course.

Once in hyperspace, we were free to move about the ship without concern. Well, except in my case. There wasn't that much to do while we were in hyperspace, which presented opportunities to get in trouble.

I used this time to go down to the engineering deck to do more work in trying to figure out hyperspace. At least I didn't have to be concerned about the robots teasing me.

I was elated that my idea of attaching more antimatter storage bottles to the fusion module actually worked. It meant that there might be a way to coax more acceleration out of the engines before causing the antimatter production unit to put us into hyperspace at a more effective velocity.

Janet and Sharon kept busy coming up with ways to increase our ability to find habitable systems. One way that they explored was to increase the light collection capability of the telescope and the infrared and ultraviolet detectors associated with it.

Unfortunately, that allowed Natale and Bridget time to annoy me.

However, I had an ace up my sleeve. I knew that there had to be a reason that they were not revived from hibernation with the rest of the crew when they arrived at the first supposedly habitable planet. If I could determine the reason, I might have a way to put them in their places, so to speak.

I had the good luck to stumble on it in the crew data that we recovered from the drifting shuttle.

"What are you doing down here in this dungeon?" Natale asked as she and Bridget walked up to me. I was sitting at the command station on the engineering deck.

I symbolically looked around. "It's not that bad in here. The robots are not all that talkative, allowing me to do more work."

I don't think they got my facetious statement.

"What kind of work are you doing here?" Bridget asked, her face exhibiting annoyance.

"I'm trying to determine if there's a way to get more acceleration out of this ship's engines without overworking them." I smiled. "I'm also trying to determine why you two were not revived from hibernation with the rest of the crew."

"We were assigned as backup," Natale replied, her face exhibiting surprise this time.

"That doesn't make sense," I retorted. "They had to know that long-term hibernation is risky."

"I think they recruited us to be the bearers of a new human population on the habitable planet," she said.

"What about the other women in your crew?"

"They were older. I guess they considered us to be more appropriate for childbearing because we were younger."

"Well, you don't have to be concerned about that," I said. "We aren't going to start a new human population anytime soon."

"Why not?" Bridgett asked after propping her fists into her hips.

"Because the idea of living on an alien planet was not thought through properly. In order for humans to populate an alien planet, a method would have to be in place to mitigate possible alien infections, diseases that we have no immunity against. The fact that members of your crew were infected and died is proof of that."

"So, what you're saying is that if we end up stranded out here, we'll age as old maids."

I couldn't suppress a chuckle, but then I hardened my expression. "If I have my way, we won't end up stranded out here."

I could sense that they were not as enamored with my optimism as I thought they would. "Look, maybe we can inhabit a planet out here. But first we have to find one."

That seemed to placate them, at least for the moment.

I spent more time down in engineering. It kept them out of my hair, at least for the time I was down there. I also decided to help Janet and Sharon make the changes to the astronomy array. This required sending work robots outside to make the equipment updates. The work robots were able to stay on the vessel's outer surfaces using magnetic feet when I turned off the magnetic shielding. The only problem with this procedure was that it consumed gobs of time for the robots to walk any distance.

Janet made changes to the programming to utilize the new updates. Unfortunately, we had no way to check it out while in hyperspace.

The day finally came for us to get into our G-chairs and have COMA fire the engines to drop out of hyperspace. This process slapped us hard into the belts, but when we were in normal space, we were able to get out of the G-chairs and gather at the command station.

"We're at eighty percent light speed," Janet said. "It looks like we're close to a billion kilometers away from our target system. Once I get a better trace of our course and the planet's orbit around its star, I'll be able to come up with the correct burn to get us into orbit."

There was nothing else to do until she did it, but what she ultimately determined about the planet was a surprise.