Humankind has found the stars - and forgotten the coordinates of their home planet. Then Hana does the impossible and gets pregnant. Her mother's predictions ringing in her ears, she sets out to find humanity's lost cradle. She only has a myth to gu...
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picture credit - Ron Miller (Stocktrek Images)
Hana and Sanju trudged on leaden feet to the great circular door of the Strawberry Mollusk's transit hatch, separating the ship's habitat ring from the central fusion core. H'ver glided after them at a distance, lights blinking in a frenzy along its equatorial axis, as if the little golden sphere was trapped in a cycle of immense processing of his own making.
She could scarcely believe that Phili had been taken from her so easily. It had all happened so quickly. She should have fought for him, somehow. But, he'd died protecting her, and her little one. Second to Hana herself, he'd been the baby's greatest champion. He'd often look at Hana's belly with such delight, as if he sensed that Earth's mysteries were unfolding in there. But, it was now over. Phili was gone, and without his books and theories and wanderlust, there was no hope of finding their lost cradle.
They'd come so far that the route back to Paghūṛā was just as treacherous as the path ahead to an Earth that perhaps no longer existed. Hana's brain skirted around the terrifying thought before it could take hold of her — the very idea of limping back to Paghūṛā to live a life with no baby was too devastating to contemplate.
She needed to keep herself busy, distracted. She hovered around Sanju's hunched form, arms flapping. "Let me help!"
A limp-crested and yellow-spotted Sanju shook xeir head, Phili's still body hanging in xeir arms. Sanju had insisted on carrying Phili to the stasis pods unaided. "I must do this alone. Besides," a smile lit xeir face briefly, "you have a precious enough weight to bear."
Hana slapped at the gravity buffer switch, the hum of bearings signifying the slowing of the Mollusk's ring rotation. They passed through the transit hatch and into the weightless core, Hana guiding Sanju across a traverse of tethers and rings embedded into the corridor walls towards the stasis chamber. The baby leapt as they went, as if the weightlessness had given him room to toss and turn. Hana clung tight onto a handhold, her other arm sweeping across her belly.
