Chapter One

Every day was a struggle for Noelle.

Truthfully, it had been a struggle to keep fear and hysteria at bay since she’d boarded the ship bound for the newly discovered worlds of the H32 system in the Clarion Galaxy.

Sometimes she thought she must have been insane when she’d agreed to go, signed up, fought for a place on the colony ship!

Her motives had seemed perfectly logical when she’d been working on her decision. The list of reasons to go had far outweighed reasons to stay where she was. And yet ….

Day by day—almost minute by minute—she was torn between terror and delirious excitement—and for the same reason—the alien world they’d landed on, the world that was destined to be her home world forever more. Officially, it had been named Gemini for the fact that the planet had a twin, Sparta, but most people referred to it as New Earth.

She thought it would’ve been easier if the other colonists weren’t determined to call it New Earth. That made it impossible for her to put ‘home’ from her mind, particularly since ‘new’ Earth looked nothing at all like old Earth. And every time she heard the word ‘Earth’ her mind instantly produced images for a comparison that only brought home how out of her element she was.

To each his own, she supposed. She could only think this must be their way of coping with being torn from everyone and everything they’d known and thrust into a terror filled situation of new everything.

It didn’t work for her, however. She could repeat the mantra all day long and it wasn’t going to change the view. The new world looked like Earth only in the sense that some of the terrain was vaguely familiar to places on earth. None of the flora or fauna was. Even the colors of the dirt and rocks weren’t entirely the same. The sky was blue, but not Earth blue, and they could see the world’s twin, Sparta in the sky for hours each day and a trio of moons at night.

The smells weren’t the same! Nor the sounds. She couldn’t even have the comfort of closing her eyes and pretending she was home.

The indigenous people called it K’naiper—she’d yet to discover what that meant in their language. For even though they’d managed (or their computers had) to crack the ‘code’ of the alien language en route, naturally enough there were some words that simply defied translation because there was no word to associate them with in the English language—any Earth language.

It was a word that was nearly impossible to wrap her tongue around—because it included sounds beyond the limits of human vocal chords—but she still rather thought they should call the world what the natives did. Or as close to it as they could manage.

If the natives were anything like human beings beneath the skin, it seemed to her that they might resent the arrogance of humans taking over the place and renaming it.

Physically, they were certainly very much like human beings. Naturally, there were notable differences, too. They weren’t likely to ‘mistake’ one another when the stature and pigmentations alone differed drastically from humans. Their pigmentation ranged from blue to yellow. Like humans, the skin tones varied from light to medium to dark, but the blues were definitely blue. The yellows ranged from pure yellow to a very definite orange, but they hadn’t observed one that was actually close enough to the yellow skin toned races of Earth to confuse them.

And then there was the stature.

On average they were around a foot taller than a typical human male—the females were. They hadn’t seen a male and they’d begun to believe these people only had one gender.

Which was another factor that made mistaking them for human unlikely!

Beyond the color and height, though, they seemed to be proportioned much like humans and shaped much the same. Their features, not surprisingly, were definitely exotic next to humans, but they looked more like a different human race than a different species.

And that was the only point about the entire situation that made Noelle’s decision palatable. She’d trained as a xeno-biologist specifically to make herself eligible for inclusion in the colony project—but also because she was extremely drawn to the field.

If she’d stayed on Earth it was doubtful she would ever have had alien biology to study!

And yet it was beginning to look like she might be old and gray before she was allowed any contact at all with the natives!

Any indigenous life!

She didn’t know what the damned holdup was!

Unconsciously, she began to drum her fingers on the desk in front of her, staring at the window, although she didn’t see any of the view beyond it. She was too focused inwardly to register the bustling little colony she had as a view.

It was a slice of Earth, their little colony. Naturally enough it was made from indigenous materials, but the design ….

Then again it had been pretty unanimously decided to program the builder droids to focus on functionality. They could give their new home ‘character’ when they got there. It would be therapeutic.

She didn’t think anyone had considered how damned depressing it was going to be to live in a … void until they had the time to ‘make their space reflect their personality’! As utilitarian as the ship had been, it wasn’t as bad! At least it hadn’t looked so … antiseptic!

But everything was so uniform in color—so generic—and so flawlessly, perfectly constructed that it made her think of a cardboard cutout of her home city—on Earth.

It was sterile!

Very deliberately so.

The warm, dark-skinned hand that settled over her fingers and squeezed them almost painfully jerked Noelle out of her abstraction. She blinked at the person standing beside her, slowly bringing the dark face into focus. Monica’s full lips were pulled back in a strained smile, displaying her bright white teeth, but there was a spark of irritation in her dark eyes. “Let’s take a walk.”

Noelle glanced around, but she didn’t see anyone else in the cubicle ‘lab/office’ she shared with her best friend, Monica.

It wasn’t exactly private, though. The walls surrounding their area did cut off a good bit of the noise of the lab, but privacy was mostly an illusion.

Deciding Monica must want to talk about something she didn’t want everyone to hear, Noelle shrugged and got up. “Is it break time?”

“Lunch,” Monica responded with determined cheer.

Surprise flickered through Noelle and then her spirits lifted a little. Lunch time meant they were over half way through their shift! Only a few more hours of deadly boredom and she could go to her apartment and stare at the f’ing walls! “Hot damn! We get off in a couple of hours! You want to do something tonight?”

“First lunch,” Monica responded succinctly.

Noelle stopped in her tracks, dismay replacing her mood of moments before. “We do last lunch,” she said irritably.

“Not today.”

Surprise flickered through Noelle and then a touch of hopefulness. “Why not today?”

“Because you’re driving me out of my fucking mind!” Monica snarled under her breath. “I figured it would be better to take a break than choke you to death. I don’t want to end up being the first colonist executed for a major crime.”

“Me?” Noelle demanded indignantly. Fortunately they were outside the lab by that time and in the corridor leading to the cafeteria. A man and woman coming from the opposite direction cast a glance at them when Noelle raised her voice and then quickly looked away when they saw the frown of indignation she was wearing. “What did I do?”

Monica rolled her eyes and shook her head. “I think it’s the breathing … in and out ….”

Noelle gaped at her. “You aren’t serious,” she said a little doubtfully.