Waypoint Magellan Read online

North nodded. Apart from the Tube, people who lived on Magellan almost never enjoyed any kind of mechanized travel. The float out into space was more than a joyride to Amberly, however.

  Amberly took in the view of the American Spirit, as they skirted the gangway. She looked at the American flag painted on the Sprit’s hull. Technically, having been born on an American waypoint, she was an American citizen, though one’s Earth nationality did not have much relevance on a waypoint as it did planet side. Earth’s nationalistic governments persevered, though on Arara there was one planetary government, divided into federal districts.

  “You, know, the ship I was born on was about the same size as that one,” North said, nodding to the American Spirit.

  “Which ship was that?”

  “Il Lungo Viaggio. That’s old Italian for ‘the long voyage’,” North explained. “We landed on Arara when I was six.”

  “How could you ever come back into space after living on a planet?”

  “I dunno,” North said. “Duty called. Someone must be ever vigilant to defend the waypoints from foes external and internal. Someone must be always ready. Heaven forbid something happen to one of the waypoints, and we lose our connection with Earth.”

  “Except we don’t have any foes,” Amberly said.

  “Hopefully the Marines will never be needed for any real battle,” North agreed. “But you must admit, you feel a little bit safer knowing we are around just in case.”

  “Well, maybe safer knowing you are around,” Amberly said, and she patted her hand on North’s.

  The Claire De Lune cleared several kilometers of distance from Magellan and the docked American Spirit. “I’m bringing the engines to full power,” North announced by habit.

  North and Amberly talked continuously about nothing important for the next few hours as they sped along at thousands of kilometers per hour toward the Spencer Belt. It wasn’t an awkward nothing – it was a familiar nothing: details about the minutia of daily life on a waypoint, the sort of banal information discussed by close siblings, old friends or lovers. Amberly was comfortable alone with North; she didn’t know what they were romantically, but she knew they were friends. Somehow, she knew they would always be friends. Why wouldn’t they be? They had been friends for eight years, nearly half of Amberly’s life and a third of North’s.

  “And then Skip says, what did you mean, ‘wider than a tubecar’?” North said.

  “You’re making that up,” Amberly responded.

  The pair of joyriders giggled through sandwiches North had packed when they made visual contact with the Spencer Belt. Sonnet stood out because it was significantly larger than its sibling asteroids. Amberly pressed a hand to the viewport.

  “The Shard Caves are on the far side,” North announced, quickly slipping into his military pilot training. “I am going to bring us down to a few hundred meters, and then we’ll circle relative north to the caves.”

  “That is a big rock,” Amberly smiled. She spotted an artificial structure on the horizon. “Is that the abandoned settlement over there?”

  “Yeah, that’s the Fuentes Memorial,” North said. “I thought we’d do a fly-by since we were out here.”

  “I remember reading about that in middle school history,” Amberly said. “Everyone died. I am surprised we’ve never tried again.”

  The chrome and white shell of the old colony building was coming clearly into view.

  “Hey, is that a light? I thought the thing was abandoned?” Amberly said.

  “Where?”

  “There.”

  “Where?”

  “Oh, it’s gone now. Maybe I was just seeing things.”

  “Well, I thought it was abandoned. Mining runs aren’t expected to start for another three weeks. Maybe we should radio, just in case, North said, as he activated the radio that was standard for all spacefaring craft – a universal local communication system. “This is the M.S.S. Claire De Lune, broadcasting a general hello to anyone in earshot.”

  The pair listened for a response. There was a long period of silence followed by a quick series of clicks. Then more silence.

  “Was that something? Sounded like someone opening and closing a comm channel?”

  “Probably just some magnetic radiation interfering with the radio,” North shrugged.

  Amberly reached over and activated the radio. “Hello? Hello?” she said. “Anyone out there?”

  The response was more silence.

  “On to the main event,” North said.

  Even at reduced speeds, the corvette zoomed quickly around the asteroid, and within a few minutes, the Claire De Lune was at the opening of the Shard Caves. Amberly couldn’t see directly into the cave mouth from her angle, but could see a soft glow emanating from inside.

  “I didn’t think we should put down and hike in,” North said. “Too dangerous unless you are experienced in space suit walking.”

  “I hate the things. You feel claustrophobic and vertigo at the same time,” Amberly said. “But how are we going to see the shards?”

  “We’re floating in.”

  “Whoa. Are you sure about that? It’s a pretty tight squeeze,” Amberly said, trying to hide the sudden nervousness in her voice.

  “Absolutely. Hold on.”

  North accelerated the Claire De Lune and pitched the craft skyward for a few hundred meters. A bright field of stars filled the viewport, raining beams of light on the couple. Then he slowly rounded the vertical ascent back into a descent – a controlled nose-dive, and the rocky Sonnet filled the viewport again. North was threading a needle, heading straight towards the cave mouth.

  That mouth is twice as wide as the ship, thought Amberly, as she tried to reassure herself. Any good pilot could manage that. I think. She glanced over at North who was looking over at her, clearly amused at her anxiety.

  “Pay attention to the rock in front of us!” Amberly shouted. North chuckled, smiled and looked forward again, guiding the corvette expertly into the crevasse. The ship glided in as if it were made to fit, like a well-engineered cog or a finely tailored glove.

  And then they were inside the cave. Amberly audibly gasped as her anxiety was replaced by breathtaking awe.

  The intensity of the glow emanating from the crystalline structures that seemed to grow on all sides of the cave was brighter than Amberly expected – not daylight bright, but surprisingly bright for a naturally occurring phosphorescence phenomenon. Each crystal had a unique glowing color: turquoise, amber, violet, rose and a spectrum of others. The largest crystals growing out of the rocks were several meters tall and had smaller crystals of varying colors growing out of them. Most of the shards were semi-translucent, and colors from the other shards could be seen though them.

  The scientist in Amberly was trying to figure out how enough outside light could even penetrate the cave to create this much afterglow. The smaller, poetic voice in her whispered to her heart, just enjoy the show.

  So she did.

  The caves went on for several kilometers, and the deeper Claire De Lune made its way into the caves and away from the mouth, the dimmer the shards were. About two kilometers in, the corvette floated into a large cavern, about half the size of the Magellan’s hangar bay. North brought the ship to a full stop, and powered the main engines down. The glowing rocks were dim here, and seemed to flicker, almost like candles, although Amberly did not connect the flickering to candles, as open flames were uncommon on Magellan. Scientifically, she couldn’t figure out what was causing the flickering, and it bothered her a little bit. Then she looked over at North, and she thought he was looking at her funny.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?

  “I’m not looking at you in any way.”

  “Yes, you look a little goofy.”

  “I guess it’s you.”

  “Me?”

  “You’re amazing. Look at you, Amberly. You have it all: the most beautiful girl on Magellan, and you’re probably more intelligent than any man o
r woman on the station. You’re only 19 and people respect you like you’re 40. Your friends adore you. You’re considerate, kind to everyone you meet. You are practically perfect.”

  “You said it,” Amberly said, putting her hands up palms forward.

  “Amberly, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately, about the people God puts in our lives. I’ve been thinking about where we are heading and –”

  “What we? We ‘humanity’? We Magellan? We us?”

  “All of the above, I suppose, but mostly ‘us’,” he smiled his winning smile. “What if we were to become more than friends?”

  “You mean, like dating?” Amberly said, with an almost sarcastic tone and a look in her eyes like North had just asked her to airlock herself.

  “Sure dating, courtship, you know, boyfriend, girlfriend,” North said.

  “Leading to what?” Amberly said, getting testy.

  “I am not trying to get ahead of anything here,” North said, confused by Amberly’s tone. “You’re pretty good. And, well, I’m not so bad. What if together, we can be great?”

  “North, you know me … better than this,” Amberly said, starting to feel confusing emotions erupt inside.

  This is wrong, this is all wrong, Amberly’s brain flashed. Not the location. The view of the soft glowing cavern of the shard caves was romantic as any place within light years of Magellan to be sure. And North was good looking. And just plain good. But she was not going to be defined by an outdated institution born of ancient religion. If her mother taught her anything, instilled any value in her core, it was how the deceptive comforts of tradition would hold her back. North knew she felt this way. He knew her mother felt this way. If he cared for her, wouldn’t he know better?

  Perhaps, after all these years, North still didn’t understand her, Amberly wondered. He was too simplistic, too naïve. He was 10 years her senior, and in many ways, a man of the worlds. But Amberly also thought of North as being a bit backwards, a smidgen old-fashioned, and perhaps on the macro-level, dully unimaginative. He was always playing checkers, and she was playing chess.

  “Amberly, I’ve known you for a long time,” North said. “If you give us a chance, you would see how much we could do together.”

  “You sound like my dad, North.”

  “Is that a bad thing? Alroy Macready was a good man.”

  “Yes. Because I am like mom – I choose to be like her. I want to be like her, more than anything. And she regretted her relationship with my dad. Even if she never said it, and she did say it. I could see it, even when I was a girl. She was never happy. It was unfair to dad, because he could never make her happy. I saw him suffer, too.”

  North looked at the young woman, not sure how to respond to her. After a few moments, she filled the silence. “You are gentle and kind. But we would just end up like mom and dad: I would be disenchanted and disappointed and you would be eternally frustrated that you couldn’t make me happy.”

  “You don’t know that Amberly.”

  North’s wrong, Amberly thought. I will not disrespect my mother’s memory by not learning from the mistakes she made. That’s what she’d want.

  “North, don’t be an idiot. I would never be with you,” Amberly said, and immediately regretted using such an ugly tone with her friend. Her cheeks burned crimson with embarrassment and she quickly covered her mouth with a hand and looked away.

  “Oh, I'm sorry,” Amberly stammered, “I didn't mean —”

  “You must be right,” North flatly said, looking out the window and away from Amberly.

  North was not a spoiled man, or someone who felt entitled to the best life had to offer. But for 29 years, life had seemed to always go his way. Amberly meant so much to him, and he was sure that she had the same feelings. But to be so wrong, and to be denied something he thought was right and good broke something in North. How naïve am I? thought North. He wasn’t sure what had changed inside him, and North wasn’t prone to excessive focus on his own feelings, but this would be something he’d need to process, to pray about.

  Amberly reached across her seat and took North’s sizable hand in hers. Her cold fingers felt tingly holding his strong, warm hand.

  “I’m sorry, North,” Amberly said. “It’s not you. I’m never going to be any man’s anything. I’ve got too much of my mother in me.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Amberly was wearing a spacesuit. How did I get this on? she thought. Where am I?

  She looked down, and saw her feet planted on a dusty, rocky ground. She looked up and saw hundreds of asteroid rocks floating in the heavens around her. A quick look a few dozen meters behind her, the white-silver gleam of the Fuentes Memorial glowed. Something suddenly blocked the light from HD 238921. Standing in shadow, she looked up, and saw it was the Claire De Lune, floating viewport down, just a few meters above her. She could see North in the pilot’s seat. His eyes were red, as if he had been crying.

  Oh no, what have I done? Wait, why am I out here? Amberly thought.

  The Claire De Lune rotated slowly and now she could see the co-pilot’s seat – her seat. But … someone else was sitting in her seat! Flora Dillington! How? Flora was laughing, though Amberly was not sure how she could hear Flora through the vacuum of space.

  North waved at Amberly — not a hello wave, but a goodbye one, and she started to panic. Wait, don’t leave me here! The Claire De Lune’s engines fired up and the ship started to pull away, out into open space away from Sonnet.

  No! Don’t leave me, North! North!

  Then suddenly, the Claire De Lune exploded in a ball of fire, and smoking fragments of metal and flesh streaked along the disintegrated corvette’s trajectory.

  North! Amberly reached to her mouth and could feel a trickle of drool out of the side of her mouth. How could she feel her mouth with her space suit on, she wondered?

  Dreaming. Amberly had leaned her head against a portside bulkhead juxtaposed to her chair and had fallen asleep. Well, the drool was real. Amberly was relieved, and went back into a soft sleep, albeit a more peaceful one.

  North didn’t process emotions quickly. He was patient, letting his feelings simmer before internalizing them. He looked over at Amberly, who was breathing heavily as she slept. The Claire De Lune was en route to Magellan. Watching the authentically beautiful Amberly sleep unexpectedly made him feel raw and exposed.

  When Amberly woke an hour later, the mood was awkward. North broke the silence.

  “Of course, I’m not for you Amberly,” North said, matter-of-factly. “Totally unfair to you. I don’t know what I was thinking. We live on the same waypoint, but really we’ve always been on two separate worlds. You are a brilliant researcher with a future brighter than any of the dim stars out here. I’m just a guy who can point a gun.”

  “It’s not like that, North, not really.”

  “Isn’t it, though?” North insisted with calmness. “In your world of stellar anomalies and quantum whatevers, I really have nothing to offer. Why would you desire someone who brings nothing to the table? The best I can do is be cannon fodder for an enemy that doesn’t exist. We don’t match. The waypoint needs you. It doesn’t need me.”

  Amberly wanted to say, “I still need your friendship,” but she remained silent.

  A question struck North. “Why did Kimberly marry your dad?”

  “I don’t know North; if she were alive today, I’d ask her,” Amberly said, a little annoyed at where this was going. “Why are you so hung up on getting married anyway? It’s a meaningless tradition.”

  “Meaningless? Can’t you see how relationships affect society, and even human history? I’m not the greatest thinker, but it’s sort of obvious that strong families build strong societies, and strong societies are what enable us to do great things, like build the waypoints. Some people — maybe even you — think this is silly, but a man and woman committed to each other forever is an awfully powerful thing for good.”

  “Please, North,” Amberly rolled he
r eyes. “Applied science allowed us to create Project Waypoint.”

  “No, you don’t understand what I mean,” North said, trying hard not to be condescending or disagreeable. “Strong societies need order to function. Marriage and the traditional family are the building blocks of social order. Patterns of relationships that create a foundation for everything else we do. We would not have the space to pursue science and art in a world of chaos. Chaos destroys societies.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard this before. What you call chaos, I call freedom and self-determination. What, are you running for office now or something?”

  “What? … No,” North sighed. “You know I don’t give a whit’s bit about politics. I just respect our forebears from Earth and the traditions they gave us, like marriage.”

  “But what is Earth keeping from us?”

  “Keeping from us? Now you sound like that progressive crazy at Rick’s … Dek. What nonsense did he put into your head?”

  Now Amberly was offended. Her cheeks burned and almost matched the color of her hair. “How dare you? I am not a puppet of whatever idea I heard most recently from the last man I spoke with – you or Dek. I’m done talking to you.”

  “What? I didn’t say that. Have I ever —”

  Then Amberly did something North thought childish: She got up from her chair, took two steps into the small galley, and pulled the sliding door closed, ending the conversation. Maybe he gave her too much credit; she was, after all, only 19.

  There was standing room only in the galley, though Amberly was able to sit cross-legged on the floor, where she floated slightly. She stubbornly waited in the galley for the next three hours until they arrived safely in the Magellan docks.

  Amberly was never happier to see her apartment door. She burst through the door and straight toward the bathroom. All Amberly wanted was a shower and her bed. But Kora lay in ambush in the common area.

  “Will there be a second date?” Kora asked, barely able to contain her excitement.

  “No!”

  “What? Are you crazy? You turned North down.”