Leaving Home

Steven's time had come and Julia needed to be released. They had a wonderful few years together. None of this was in words. Just impressions. Other knowledge came and after another two hours cold seeped into my bones, so I stood up and walked back. The wake had moved inside.

Julia and Mary were there. Mary must have understood parts of my experience and came to some decision. It struck me how similar Julia's face was to the Black Guardian. I left the room as she turned in my direction.

It was about six months later that I ran into Julia in the corridor. Her eyes were black and her hair a mess. She walked with a shuffle, but she only smiled and kept on. I was seeing her now without the makeup that had hidden her condition. This guardian was dying.

That night Mary told me about Julia's illness. How no expert had been able to diagnose it. She looked at me from the couch with the most lost expression.

"You have to go to her. I am releasing you." she said. "I even have a man in my sites." she smiled wanly.

It took me a month to come around. Mary would not let me sleep in the same room with her. Then she had our child, a girl, the next week and I kept her company.

She told me, "I will be alright. Go to her. Move into the new hab, as it has just opened. If you don't, she will die. You and her are magically joined. I don't know how it works, but your powers are the only remedy."

So I went to her the next day. Reached out and held her hands. "Mary sent me. She knows everything." Power was rushing up through my toes. My eyesight was blurred and forces pressed out of my face and through my fingers. She stood up and lead me out. I stumbled along. She borrowed a rover and drove us east where a room was waiting for us in the new hab.

We slept, ate and in time we made love. Not sexual love. I could feel Mary urging me on and I also felt her pain. I held Julia in the bed, in the living room, in the kitchen. We stood for hours looking into each other, before hunger forced us to eat something. Mary was right. There was something powerful here. I fed her power and she was getting stronger. Healthier than I had seen in years.

Mary assured me that only I could do this. Julia has a special purpose that will be revealed to us. Jenna would come in to visit her friend. Julia told her that I was the human form of the Green Man.

"And you are the Black Guardian? Seems a little sketchy to me. And he has something hanging between his legs?"

Julia just smiled. "You are jealous? I would be."

Jenna left scratching her beautiful head. Afterwards I started working again. But the young apprentices were very much in charge of the construction. So I joined in the outdoor garden work. Julia would come to watch me.

She yelled over to me naughty words. "Hey, Tony! Why is it taking so long to knock me up. I would have loved it when I was fourteen. Mom, was encouraging me."

"I figured that. I was young and scared. You know I had reasons to be." I shouted back. "Just love your three children, now that you have recovered. Little Stevens, they are and he was a fine man."

"I got about five more years, dear. Don't ask how I know. And I got things to do. Things to do." she repeated.

She was telling me that her resources were limited and the boys were not going to get much attention. As expected Shaun took over the three boys. Zoraida helped when she wasn't up in the wheelship.

Julia would go walk about. Anyone she met, she would give them a big hug and whisper in their ear. It was years later I got it all sorted out.

The Black Guardian would visit these people in their dreams. Give them a message, then Julia would come to them the next day and whisper the same words. Most of the settlers got this treatment. Few said much about the message. It was not always the same.

We had been on Mars close to a decade. In our ninth year we had a series of terrible storms. The atmospere was blown away and much of the vegetation was destroyed or went dormant. It turned out that anyone up on the wheelship could not come down safely. Nor could anyone go up or anywhere else for that matter. The wheelship had a great stock of food and the fields were full of the most nutritious foods. A good thing because the storm went on for close to two years.

Everyone seemed to have anticipated the weather event. When asked, they had little idea why they had stockpiled so much food. There was even a great stock of dried food, emergency food that I had not seen since the first year at Plato South.

Julia was failing. It was four years into our arrangement and her job was finished.

"Steven is waiting for me and I bet he is really mad. I tried to be well behaved and sometimes it worked."

"Hey! Black Guardian! You finished your job already?" I hadn't completely figured it out yet.

"Were you not watching me. Blind in one eye and cockeyed in the other." I started to cry.

"I love you Julia. I have always loved you. But I will be springing back to Mary the day after you kick it."

We always talked like this. The love was so strong it helped to break the tension. Until the last, I avoided the sex.

* * *

It took me about six months to get over the loss. Mary let me know I was welcome when the time was right.

That next summer was warm and fair. Many of the plants we thought were dead, sprouted from their base. We learned from studying soil cores that the weather cycle was very much like this past nine years and we should plan accordingly. Teams came down from the wheelships and others went up to replace them. During the dark years 1500 new children were born, many twins, a couple of triplet girls.

We studied our situation and we were well ahead of where we had been in the first three years. More oxygen generators, many more trees of the kind that seemed to survive. We completely rebuilt the solar fence. Stronger, tighter and made in a way that sections could fail, not the whole thing, and these parts could be more easily be replaced.

Back to Mary : Flying Solo

When you have nothing inside to give, to return to a woman that has loved you deeply is hard to imagine. She saw that and gave me time. I knew that it was my faith in love and God's grace that was under fire. I had experienced more love and adventure in the act of unity than any man should expect.

Why did I feel like a flat tire? A plane no longer able to rise, a pool of dirty oil laying in a dark alley waiting for the street cleaner.

I had three children. They need a fresh happy father and a secure warm mother. Mary was suffering as much as I. She had put off the younger men begging for her attention. She told me, that I was the man and she was waiting for my rising from the ashes.

It is what I have done in the past. It was time for a tidal change.

* * *

It took me six months to complete the written exams. In the Glider Survey Corp. (GSC) one had to be able to memorize thousands of details of the Martian terrain and know the location of the closest landing site, emergency huts and charge centres, known as safety spots. I practised on the simulators and crashed a hundred times.

I was determined. Just the effort had cleared many of my dark corners. Mary was not happy, that I could be away for a week at a time, but we were always emotionally and mentally connected. That mattered a lot. Mary was going to share my aerial experience of Mars, listen to its stories and see its bright and dark sides. It was seven to nine days out on patrol then two weeks back, where I would help interpreting the data collected.

There are computer controlled gliders (each with an electric assist prop). Then there was the piloted kind. The pilotless gliders were used on the most distant flights. With the piloted gliders, speed was a factor. Top speed was slow at 120km an hour. Cruising was more 100km an hour. This gave a daily range of 1100km average, depending on prevailing winds. If a storm comes up we could be stuck in a safe spot for days. In a pinch, a passenger could be carried and this was done, when rescues were made.

I loved working with these young women and men. They were all less than half my age and they treated me well. The average age was 18. Weight was a factor and lighter pilots got better treatment. It was a challenge at first, but I soon trimmed down.

The glider base was up on the ridge above the habs. An elevator served both passenger and commercial use down to the floor. Tow planes moved the gliders to a comfortable height. Eight gliders were in constant rotation. A large slow prop kept the gliders hanging at the right altitude. Long slim wings caught the thin air and camera equipment recorded every detail of the topography. Tight solar-panels on the upper surfaces collected what sunlight there was and hightech batteries stored the electrical trickles.

Up there is not a time for day-dreaming. What I see is what the equipment detects. This is a bit overwhelming, but I got used to it and soon I was learning to concentrated on certain aspects of that info. What were we looking for? We were not a commercial, industrial enterprise. So it had more to do with the interests of each pilot. We were scientists, biologists and geologists. Because we had to detect important spots among the noise, personal hunches were important.

I was right near the west end of the valley. Three days out and nearing the turn-around safe spot for this journey. I noticed the wall as a faint straight line. Nothing much was straight on this planet. I flew lower into the rill valley. Not a lot of room to turn. My wings hovered close to the cliff walls. There was no possibility of landing so I started the motor and made a straight line to my resting spot for the night.

It was a week later. I was home with Mary and the children. Happy that my find had stirred people up. News came back that the scientific parties had found an ancient habitat, two old landing craft and some charred remains that were probably human like but present evidence was not enough to be sure. Any electronics from the ships were gone. Materials were being analysed. That was given to the Russians because of their co-operation. No sign that a tragedy had happened there and it seemed they must have got off the planet, but maybe a 50 years stay.

* * *

News got back to Earth. We always kept the Americans informed because their own press did not. There was an awakening among rich entrepreneurs. They were now pooling their resources. 'Copy the Plato Crater People'.

There was no other choice. For the next ten years they built up a base at the Moon's South Pole. The Schomberger crater was their home base. They saved a lot of time because Candle Lake made strong monetary deals to share data. They had the south, we had the north. We based their operations in the Labrador City area because the American military could not be trusted, if they operated out of Colorado or Nevada as they wanted to. They would not succeed.

Everything cost them three to nine times more than work done at the Plato South site. It was a professional bunch, well educated and paid. Might I guess that they did not have the fun we had. Playing catch up. Always thinking of return on their investment.

Candle Lake was now able to buy new tug planes and shuttles. People were crowding the small base and the only way to relieve this was to get them off the planet. Eventually populations reached 80,000 in the northern crater. Wheelships were routinely being built and sent off to Mars. They were required always to detour to Venus and maintain and expand the Parasol. A shield cutting off 15% of the Venus sunshine. Patches needed to be made and ion motors replaced, as they gasped into a long needed retirement. Nine years for the best of the motors holding up the reflective materials.

We got the message that Ali had died. A group of us are headed to Luna to honour her memory.

The End of Lunar Radiance