Chapter Seven

Outside the windows, the moon was receding in the distance. Mila watched it go, squinting to find out if she could see even a trace of LuCA. But she had left the Moon around 12 hours ago, and now the Moon had rotated so that she could not see her home anymore. Mila sighed. She had heard stories and reports about Earth, had watched it's blue, green, and white swirled globe rise over the horizon every 24 hours, but she had never gone.

She was wearing the standard-issue Luna-Terra (travelers whose home was on LuCA) travel clothes: a silver jumpsuit, with the crest of LuCA embroidered on the breast. Terra-Luna (people whose home was on Earth) voyagers wore a silvery-blue jumpsuit with the crest of Earth on it, sometimes along with their country's flag underneath the emblem. Mila was also wearing LT (Lunar-Terra) shoes: silver boots with black soles and a zipper up the side.

She carried a backpack that had her essentials in it: for her, a tablet on which she had downloaded the location of the Nyklos burial site in Egypt, along with as much information as she could find on Thellas, the Llachar, Cori Ashrak, ancient forms of Latin, and the Nyklae mummies. She had stuffed a few Powerbars in the backpack as well, along with two hologram photos: one of her and Jakk as children, the other of her mother and father. The latter she pulled from her backpack.

She pressed her thumb to the printlock on the back, and the hologram sprang into life. Her mother's smiling blue eyes looked out at her. Her father's arms were around her mother, and he was smiling as well, his chin on her shoulder. Mila suppressed tears as she looked at her parents. When Mila was barely a year old, both of her parents had died in a rover malfunction, along with the two others that made up the rest of their team. Mila had been brought up by the community of LuCA since then.

"If you don't mind me asking, are those your parents?" Mila jumped, and turned around to see a man wearing the TL (Terra-Luna) uniform behind her. His gray hair was combed neatly and pushed behind his ears. He was leaning forward on his hands, and Mila could see that he wore a gold ring set with a black stone on the middle finger of his right hand. She vaguely recognized the flag on his uniform as the UK one.

"Um, yes." Mila said, clicking the hologram shut.

"Ah," The man said, and this time Mila picked up on the accent in his voice. On LuCA, the colonies' inhabitants spoke a variety of languages, but the main one was English. The accents definitely differed, as many families came from different parts of Terra. The younger LuCA generations had developed a dialect that was a bit of everything. Mila had only heard a few people, mostly Elite, speak with accents.

After a short, semi-awkward pause, the man spoke again. "Where are my manners?" he asked, throwing his hands in the air. "Aster Hawking, History Head of the LuCA improvement company." He offered a firm hand for Mila to shake. She took it, saying, "Mila Arwyr, LuCA resident. Labor class. Engineer." He smiled deeply. "Ah, Mila Arwyr."

Oh no, don't let him say anything about the lab incident, Mila prayed silently. Please.

"You're the one that trashed a few labs a couple of months ago."

And, here we go. Mila forced a smile. "Yes sir, that's me." He waved his hand. "No need to call me sir. Hawking will do fine."

"Yes, Hawking, the lab incident was my fault."

"Oh, I'm not here to punish you, Mila," he laughed, and she couldn't resist smiling as well. "I recognized you because I knew your parents, the ones in that hologram." He nodded to the small cube in Mila's hand. "You did?"

"Well, I only knew them for a couple months, but we grew close. I was on LuCA when the...uh, accident happened. It was horrible."

"I know."

"You look like them." Mila had never been told that she looked like anyone. "Thank you, sir--er, Hawking."

Hawking smiled. "So, what brings you to Earth?"

"Research," Mila said, not technically lying. "I started to take an interest in Egyptian burial sites." She decided to take a risk. "Especially the Nyklos case." Hawking nodded his head. "Yes. I heard about it on the news when I was just a kid. Even though it happened almost 50 years ago, it's amazing that no one understands what happened there."

"Yeah. You'd think with all our technology, someone would know about it."

Hawking laughed softly. "What?" asked Mila, suspicious. "Nothing," he responded. "It's just that one of the last memories I have of your mother is talking about this very thing, and she said exactly what you did."

The two of them sat in silence for a while, thinking their own thoughts, each not wanting to disturb the other for fear of bringing tears to their companion's eyes.