Approaching Omega Read Online Free Page B

imagine that?" He looked around at his team. "Let's assume, for the sake or argument, that Earth's survived. We won't be going back to the place we knew. Society, human beings, will have changed out of all recognition. So much will have happened in the time we've been away — we'll have no hope of understanding or fitting in. We'll be freaks."
    He stopped, aware of the eyes on him.
    "And remember, we'd be consigning not only the four of us to a world we no longer recognised or belonged to—" he indicated the viewscreen, the hangars containing the three thousand sleepers, "we'd be playing with the destiny of everyone else, too. Think about that."
    In the long, silent seconds that ensued, they thought about it.
    We can't vote to go back, he thought. It would be more than just defeat, it would be the end of a dream.
    "So... what do you think? Who's for pressing on?"
    Help came from an unexpected source. Emecheta raised a big hand. "I'm with the boss. I say we keep on. We can't turn back now. We signed up to do a job, and like Ted says, even if Earth survived, what kind of Earth would be returning to? We'd be like Neanderthals among Homo sapiens."
    Latimer looked across at Emecheta and nodded his thanks. He turned to Renfrew. "You?"
    He could see the uncertainty in her eyes. Finally she gave in and nodded. "As I see it, we're caught between two evils," Renfrew said. "I don't like the picture Jenny paints — I don't like the idea of just gong on and on and on without hope, but what would we be going back to, if anything? So, yes, let's keep on."
    "I think you know how I feel on the issue," Latimer said. "So we press on. Okay, Jenny?"
    She gave her head a minimal nod. "It was only a suggestion, Ted. I... I'd like to go back. I'm sure Earth has pulled through. But I guess I'm out-voted on this one."
    She turned her seat and regarded the screen.
    Renfrew said: "Hey... Did you check for incoming, Jenny? What about that message from Earth?"
    Even before Jenny Li replied, Latimer knew the answer.
    The Korean shook her head. "If Earth did broadcast, and we did pick it up, it was lost with the damage to Central."
    The news was yet another disappointment. How wonderful it would have been to have heard from the Omega Corporation, told that all was bright and rosy on a rejuvenated planet Earth. But, thinking about it, perhaps it was just as well the message had been lost, if the news from Earth had been unremittingly bleak...
    For the next hour they prepared themselves for another stretch of cold sleep. Emecheta set the program to wake them after a thousand years, and they returned to their pods. Li and Renfrew lay down and pulled the covers shut over themselves, and in seconds the alpha-numerics were sequencing along the flank of their pods, denoting successful immersion.
    Latimer was about to settle into his own pod when he looked across the unit at Emecheta. "Hey, I appreciate your help back there. We're doing the right thing."
    "Sure, boss," Emecheta said. And with that he lay down and drew the cover over him.
    Latimer smiled to himself and stretched out in his pod. He felt the tickle of a dozen hypodermic capillaries worming under his skin, and seconds later he was sinking as if under the most sublime anaesthetic.
    His last waking thought was that Carrie was alive and well, and he entered cold sleep with a vision of her beauty playing in his mind's eye.

Two
    It seemed to Latimer that he came awake almost immediately and rose slowly through a sea of dreams. He saw a twisted, phantasmagoric image of the starship, wrecked beyond salvation, and a thousand floating bodies.
    The cover above him lifted suddenly. It was Renfrew, staring down at him.
    "We got a problem, Ted."
    "No suitable colony planets?" he said, half awake.
    "No — but that's not the problem."
    He sat up and swung himself from the pod, but too fast. His vision swam as he stood. He felt dizzy, nauseous. Renfrew passed him a beaker of high-energy concentrate. He gagged half