Rheindic Co was vastly different from cloudy, damp Dremen, but this was only a stopping place, a waypoint where eager colonists waited to go through the transportal to their new homes.
Orli was used to gray gloom and cold drizzle; she couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt warm sunlight on her bare arms and face. To her dismay she got ferociously sunburned for the first time in her life. On Dremen, she’d never had to worry about it, but now a tingling redness covered every square centimeter of her arms and cheeks and neck.
Her father went among the other colonists, asking if anyone had brought lotions or sun creams. Only a few had, and he couldn’t afford the price they were asking. Fortunately, his persistence paid off, and he found supplies in the Hansa base camp. He returned slathered with ointment, which he promptly applied to his daughter as well.
She kept blinking her eyes against the dazzle of sunlight reflecting off the rocky canyons and mountains. Everything looked so different. When Jan saw how his daughter stared at the alien landscape, he tousled her short hair. “Don’t worry, girl. Our new colony home will be more attractive than this, warm and green, a place to settle down and take it easy for a change.”
Orli brightened, though she didn’t mind the desert scenery at all. “Have they told you where we’re going? Do you know the name of our planet?”
“It’s just the luck of the draw, I think. We’ll find out when they call our number. They’re afraid people would start arguing over planets, trading assignments and messing up the Hansa’s record-keeping.”
Orli sat down in the dirt outside their tent. “You’d think they’d at least give us a bit of background, so we could plan.”
“Don’t worry. They’ve scouted these worlds, and they wouldn’t send us to a place unless we could survive just fine there.”
The colorful tents looked like jewel-toned mushrooms that had sprung up on the canyon floor. To prepare for the influx of new personnel, EDF engineering squads had cleared an expanse of the desert, using high-energy beams to melt the sand and dirt into a level glassy plain where shuttles could easily land and take off. Every day, new ships full of supplies or eager colonists dropped down into the bright sunlight. Rheindic Co had been an abandoned place not long before; now it was a boomtown.
Her father opened two packages of rations he’d retrieved from the distribution point. They ate a chalky fruit-flavored pudding that was supposedly full of protein and vitamins. Orli saw him frown at the taste, but she elbowed him in the ribs. “Anything’s better than mushroom stew, isn’t it, Dad?”
“That’s looking on the bright side.” Jan extended the awning from their tent, propping it up with the poles so they could sit in the shade. As the dusk painted the sky with colors and the temperature dropped, Orli went into the tent and rummaged through their possessions to retrieve her synthesizer strips. She played music quietly, tunes of her own devising. It soothed her, and her father tried to hum along, though he’d never heard these particular melodies before.
Jan sat looking bored but smiling. “Oh, I hate this waiting. Maybe tomorrow they’ll let me help out somewhere in the main complex.” He glanced over at her, musing. “Say, why don’t you go make friends with some of the other children? I’ve already seen a dozen or so your age.”
She had thought about it herself, but decided against the pointless exercise. “I’ll wait till we get to our colony, Dad. Then I can establish a long-term friendship.”
“Friends are friends, girl. One for a day is better than no friend at all.”
Orli had never had many playmates, since she needed to spend so much time just keeping her father from doing too many ill-advised things. She liked telling stories and imagining games, but work in the mushroom fields had taken up her time on Dremen. Maybe on the new colony she would find someone who shared her interest in music. “I’ll try when we get where we’re going, Dad. I promise.”
For the next few days Jan volunteered his services at the supply-distribution center. Most evenings he wandered among the tents and struck up conversations, describing Dremen and asking other people about the planets they were leaving, while Orli practiced on her synthesizer strips.
On the fifth evening, another loud Attention tone rang through the camp, as it did several times a day. Hopeful and eager people popped their heads out of tents and stopped cooking and conversations to listen. “This one’ll be us, Orli,” Jan said. “I’m sure of it.” He’d said the same thing at every announcement for the past three days.
“Colonists from Group B, please report to the gathering ramp. Prepare for disembarkation through the transportal within two hours.”
The announcement repeated several times, though the colonists had hung on every word the first time. Her father slapped Orli playfully on the shoulder. “See, I told you, girl. If you guess enough times, you’re sure to be right eventually.”
The nearby colonists began moving about frantically, as if they’d been called to an emergency evacuation. Two hours was plenty of time to gather the few belongings she and Jan had carried from Dremen. Orli wrapped her synthesizer strips carefully in her clothes and put them in her pack, and her father scrounged together his clothes, files, sketchpads with ideas for fruitless inventions, and a few tools he’d brought.
They would all leave the temporary tents behind for the next wave of travelers. After their group departed, compies would clean and refurbish the standard living quarters; within a day, more people would arrive to fill them. Prefab buildings had already been shipped to each destination point.
Orli and her father hurried with the moving current of people toward the ramps up into the cliff city. There was no particular reason to hurry. They still had an hour and a half, but her father wanted to be among the first to go through the transportal, as if a few minutes would make a difference in staking the best claim for a homestead. Maybe he was right.
A few other pale-skinned hopefuls from Dremen joined those from various struggling Hansa colonies. They all stood around talking until finally the settlers were allowed forward into the labyrinth of Klikiss structures. The stone halls were worn and scuffed. Many of the alien hieroglyphics and artifacts had been damaged or rubbed away by the sheer volume of people passing through.
Orli paused to look at the letters written by a clawed Klikiss hand in an incomprehensible language, but her father nudged her forward. “We’ll have plenty of time to study old ruins when we get to our new colony, girl. Every place has them, otherwise we wouldn’t have a transportal on the other end.”
A grizzled man with shaggy hair and several days’ stubble turned to them. “Oh, the place we’re going has ruins, all right. And a big valley, tall granite walls, running water. We’ll be able to settle there nicely.”
“How do you know?” Orli asked.
“Because I’ve been there.” The old man stuck out his hand to the girl first, then to her father. “I’m Hud Steinman, one of the transportal explorers. I found Corribus only a month or so ago, and right away I decided I wanted to retire there. It’s perfect, the best of all the worlds I’ve been to.”
Her father beamed. “See, Orli, I told you so.”
Orli wrinkled her nose as the shaggy explorer stepped closer. He smelled sour and dusty, but he seemed friendly enough. Ahead she could see the colonists shuffling forward group by group toward a shimmering image displayed on what had been a flat stone wall. Loud voices echoed in the rock-walled chamber. Hansa managers told people to keep moving as each group marched forward through the instantaneous transportation system.
Orli recalled a day once, when she’d been a little girl, when her father had taken her to a crowded amusement park full of rides, holographic simulations, and old-fashioned roller-coasters. The wait had seemed interminable as they inched forward. It had felt as if they’d had to stand forever just to get to the roller-coaster . . . and the ride had been over in only a few minutes. But the thrill had made every moment of anticipation worthwhile.
Orli hoped the payoff on this distant Klikiss world—Corribus?—would be just as gratifying.
As they came closer, listening to the hum of alien machinery, the quick discussions of technicians, and the nervous excitement of the colonists, Orli could see the wall up ahead. People marched forward and then vanished, as if they had stepped off the edge of a cliff. Finally, the crackling stone trapezoid loomed in front of her, ringed by well over a hundred tiles, each one containing a strange symbol.
Hud Steinman turned to them with a grin, showing off bad teeth. “Here we go. You’ll see what I mean.”
“Next!” the technician called. “Step up. Don’t delay the rest of the line. We have a lot of people to get through on this transmission.”
Orli clasped her father’s hand. He squeezed hers for reassurance, and they looked at each other, eyes bright. Then together they stepped through the transportal—and emerged under the sunny skies of Corribus and into a whole new landscape.