Colonization Read Free Page B

taut. “Get my hoverchair. I’ve got a lot of work left to do.”
    The nurses flooded around him and pushed me back. As always, my time with him was short. He was too important to bother with minor things. I slouched down. My arms were weights, pulling me to the floor. The song had drained all my energy.
    Sirius took my hand in his. His skin warmed my cold fingertips as he wrapped his strong fingers around my small, pale hand.
    “That was amazing, Annie.”
    I shrugged, embarrassed he had heard me sing. “I didn’t know what else to do.”
    “What you did was perfect.”
    A woman cleared her throat and I whipped around. Some of the nurses stared at us, and I felt naked standing there holding Sirius’s hand. I dropped it faster than a hot-energy capacitor. “Come on, we don’t want to be in the way.”
    “Of course.”
    Even though we left my granddad alive and well, the truth burdened my heart. He wouldn’t live forever, and soon enough we’d have to leave him on the New Dawn .
    As we approached the elevator, Sirius whispered under his breath, “Why doesn’t he appoint someone else to take his place? It seems dangerous to have an old man in charge of the entire ship.”
    “He doesn’t want another person to be connected to the New Dawn .” I pressed the panel and the elevator portal dematerialized, allowing us to step in. Chaos had cluttered the deck moments before, but now people walked about, doing their daily business, the red glow of the emergency lights just a memory. How easily they forget.
    “Why not?” Sirius jammed his hands inside the pockets in his uniform. I thought of how he’d held my hand only moments ago, and the feeling of his fingers wrapping around mine. I wanted to grab one of his hands and see if the same rush of emotion came back again, but I turned and entered the elevator instead.
    “Because whoever is connected can’t join us on Paradise 21. He’d be stuck to the mainframe for the rest of his life. My grandpapa doesn’t want anyone to have to share his fate, especially when we’re this close. It would be a waste of a life. We’ll need all of the young colonists to explore and build up the outpost.”
    “Why doesn’t he at least train someone, in case he doesn’t make it?”
    “It’s useless.” I shook my head. “If you connect to the mainframe too quickly, it can drive you crazy. It almost did to my grandpapa. He never wanted another man to go through what he did. He lost himself completely to the machine and came back forever altered. For that reason, the training procedures are time-consuming. By the time we reach Paradise 21, anyone he chooses would still be in the beginning of the transformation.”
    “Oh, I see.” Sirius moved his shoulders as if a chill blew by his neck. “Let’s hope we get there in time.”
     

 
    Chapter Three
    Tests
     
    Ms. Hoodcroft pressed a button and the main screen flashed with a picture of an impossibly large and radiant violet flower, taller than a man and bursting with white tentacles shooting outside its bell-shaped petals. It dwarfed one of the satellite probes taking pictures beside it. “Can anyone tell me what this is?”
    We’d been fed information about plant species for months now, and every flower blended together in a vast bouquet. I scanned the classroom. Only one girl held up her hand.
    “That’s Trillium Bisonate.” She ran a hand through her unbelievably perfect, long auburn locks. “Very poisonous, very deadly.”
    “Excellent, Nova.”
    I sighed, shifting my shoulders against my uncomfortable plastic seat. You’d think with a genetic matching program everyone would have an equal amount of brains and beauty, but Nova had them both in superfluous quantities. Her hair always flowed down her back in luscious waves and her uniform fit snugly in all the right places, bringing out her supple curves. I looked down at my own baggy pants and smoothed my stray wispy-blond ends, rolling my eyes.
    Mrs. Hoodcraft