Some of the Travels of Sophie

First Trip

In the courtyard of the Science Institution, Aldred and Sophie stood, while Louise and some of the other scientists looked on. Aldred had the silver-coloured teleport watch strapped to his wrist, and he and Sophie were carrying a small backpack each.

"I still don't think it's a good idea to let the girl go." A man in the crowd mumbled.

Louise, who was sitting a metre in front of him, turned to look at him. "Would you rather leave your family behind and go in her place?" she asked sweetly.

The man shook his head hurriedly.

Although not everyone seemed okay with it, after several hours of debate it had been decided that Aldred and Sophie would use the teleport watch to search for the expedition. Aldred because he'd done most of the work on the teleport watch and so was entitled to it, and Sophie because she had volunteered long before anyone else and was determined to go. Of course, everything would be monitored closely, and all precautions would be taken to ensure that both of them, and especially the very young teenager that Sophie was, would be safe.

Today was the day they were leaving.

To aid them in finding the spaceship, apart from the teleport watch, Sophie and Aldred had a virtual star map of all the planets that the expedition visited before it went missing, and the records of all the trips. The plan was that they would visit each planet on the records, starting at the beginning but then proceeding in a more direct order, ask around for any information on the ship (and collect scientific information on the planet along the way), and then move on, following any leads on the spaceships whereabouts.

Sophie was nervous as she stood there. Of course she was nervous, she was about to embark on a journey to the stars, something completely different to anything she'd done before. But at the same time she felt really hopeful. The chance that she would find her dad, coupled with the prospect of travelling around the universe with Aldred, who was a good friend of hers now, made Sophie feel just great.

She knew Louise was worried about her, but Sophie didn't want her to worry. Louise had become like a surrogate mother to her and she knew Louise saw her as a daughter. She had expressed her doubts about the trip to Sophie the night before.

"Sophie..." she had begun. "Are you really sure it's the right path for you to go on this trip? I mean, it will be very dangerous and I.... I don't want anything to happen to you."

"It'll be okay Louise." Sophie had tried to reassure her. "I'll have Aldred there to look after me. Plus I know how to handle myself, I'm not clueless."

"I know, Sophie." Louise replied. "And I know Aldred won't let you get hurt, but, well, I'm worried about the teleport watch. I mean no one has journeyed with a non-fixed teleport before in recorded history, apart from tests of course. Anything could happen during the teleportation, any kind of fault could turn up. We don't even know if there's any room for fault, since no one has done it before. Anything could happen to you."

"That's the exciting thing though Louise." Sophie had leaned forward and placed her hand on Louise's shoulder. "We get to do what nobody on Earth has done. It's going to be different, and unpredictable, but that's what makes it the ideal way to find the expedition. And that's why I have to go." She finished with a sad smile on her face.

Louise was still worried of course, but the two had embraced, and then Louise wished the young girl good luck, and Sophie knew that she meant it.

Sophie recalled this conversation with Louise as she and Aldred prepared to go, and looked for her in the crowd. Her eyes quickly found Louise, sitting in her wheelchair near the front, and gave her a small smile. Louise smiled back encouragingly and gave her a thumbs-up. Sophie grinned at this. For someone who wasn't young, Louise sure acted like it sometimes. Sophie felt really sorry that Louise was confined to that wheelchair for all her days, because she knew that it pained her to not be able to do everything she could with functioning legs. Louise had told Sophie that her legs had been injured during a fieldwork experiment almost ten years previously, and she'd been in the wheelchair ever since. Although her legs weren't entirely paralysed, Louise couldn't walk properly, and no surgery or medicine had been able to fix her.