August 6th, MY284

Dandelion master control center

D.A.N.I.

The main engines stopped firing after a precisely timed gentle burn that had lasted most of the afternoon, and DANI relaxed. One thing he hadn’t felt the need to share with the council, though he had divulged it to Captain Torres, was that Course Charlie was also calculated to afford him the most room to maneuver. If Dandelion was endangered a second time, the idea was that hopefully DANI would be able to evade without completely spoiling their approach again.

It wasn’t a sure thing. Indeed, nothing was certain now, other than DANI’s effectively absolute conviction they’d been fired upon. Considering all the data—and some other things, about which most of the crew remained blissfully ignorant—the odds of this being a random incident were infinitesimally small.

He’d swept the projectile with LIDAR at its closest approach and found it all but pristine. The only blemishes he could see were a half-dozen micro-craters and scratches consistent with space dust strikes, just like the countless such impacts that pock-marked Dandelion’s own nose. It had been fired recently. Which meant there was an almost-literal smoking gun somewhere out there, hidden in the Newhome system. And it may or may not be preparing to fire again. The only thing he could do about it, though, was to keep his options open and remain optimistic.

For the great majority of the crew who’d been left behind, optimism was in short supply. Like Mayweather had been, a few were angry at DANI over his decision, but most accepted the rationale…not that it helped them.

In a way, DANI suspected the children would have an easier time adapting. Quite aside from the natural plasticity and adaptability of children, they’d have the business of surviving and building to contend with. They’d be busy, and with something to focus on, no doubt they’d cope quite well.

Their parents, though? The parents aboard Dandelion had to look forward to eight years of what basically amounted to waiting. They could come up with advice and good words for their loved ones, they could transmit messages of encouragement or practical lessons. They would unquestionably throw themselves into whatever research and work came their way.

But ultimately, all of it would be about waiting for a reunion.

Then there were the ruined life plans. The groundfall teams who now had to figure out what to do with their lives all over again, the first-wave colonists who were now going to be second-wave colonists at best, the specialists and highly-trained professionals who suddenly found themselves thrust into the role of remote tutors rather than getting to practice the skills they’d worked so hard to develop.

There had been fights, ship-wide alcohol consumption was up significantly, and but for DANI’s timely intervention, there would have been deaths. Some of the ship’s oldest residents, like Mister Hodder, were lamenting that the thing they’d been looking forward to as a coda to their long voyage—finally setting foot on Newhome—might have been taken from them forever.

All in all, the mood was depressed, traumatized, and sullen, and there wasn’t much DANI could do. Grief marched to its own drum, and he could not change the beat.

The thing to do now was to get the crew invested in the future. Fortunately, today, DANI had something to give them.

The lifeboats were on their re-entry sequence. After spending the entire trip decelerating, they had only a few thousand more kilometers to go. During the approach, they’d vastly increased his understanding of Newhome—they’d mapped its continents and run sophisticated analyses on its atmosphere, oceans, and lands.

There were no nasty surprises waiting down there, or at least none that DANI had been anticipating. Newhome had been scrutinized very carefully indeed from the Sol system, using the very best technology mankind had available…which was far better than most of the crew suspected. But it was good to have those long-range analyses confirmed.

The first of the launches hit the atmosphere fast enough to become fireballs, though of course they were designed for that. Each one described a burning streak across the heavens as it slowed, bleeding off the last of its speed in a spectacular, thunderous fireworks display. He lost contact with them when the re-entry was at its most fierce; the halo of plasma that cocooned them was completely opaque to even the best comms systems. But then they were back, and sending images, and at last, at long last…they arrived.

Hopefully, there would be no further surprises.

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Wavebird, The Southern Seas

Sjívull Wylderrjorssían

Sjívull had seen many falling stars in his short life. Being heir to a lord of the seas, he’d sailed the cool waters of the south since he was a boy at his father’s side. He could read the stars to find his way by eyesight alone and didn’t need the fine copper sextant his mother, Ethjeyni, had gifted to him before the voyage as a good luck charm.

The idea was to prove himself, show that he was no longer a boy, but a grown man. So far it seemed more likely to kill him. Barely three days out of harbor, they had spotted marauders among the morning mist, and the marauders had spotted them in turn. They had turned to pursue, and Sjívull had seen immediately that the other ship was quick and dangerous.

Wavebird was swift, agile, and new. She was as slim as a knife, as quick as her namesake on the wing, and built well from seasoned Glimmerwood with good copper nails. She was a princely gift from his father, as befitted a powerful nobleman sending his son to sea alone for the first time. Her crew were wily veterans, her sails were new, clean, and undamaged, and many barrels of good drink had been given to the gods of the sea as an offering on her launch.

But the marauders seemed to have something more on their side. Every time Sjívull felt certain they had lost them in the mists, the wind would shift, or the sun would burn away a little drift of fog, and the foe would catch sight of them again.

And so it had gone for three relentless days. The crew were tiring, morale was low, and they were much further east than Sjívull had wanted to go. Nobody knew how far the ocean went in that direction. Nobody had ever dared to cross it.

But now, sailing at night, the sky had briefly become as bright as daylight, while…something…had thundered down from the heavens with a sound like the world cracking in half. It was more than a falling star; it was a fireball that left purple-green splotches in his eyes after it had plunged over the horizon into the east.

“That has to be an omen,” he decided, once the awed muttering had subsided.

His bjerkar, the old Unscarred warrior named Drynllaf who’d protected and advised Sjívull all his life, pulled a face and spat over the side. “Aye, young lord,” he agreed. “But for ill or for good? That’s the problem with omens; you never know if the gods are telling you to push forward or turn back.”

Unscarred were a special breed. They were veteran warriors who had fought many battles and come away without a single wound or scar to show for it. Small scrapes and cuts, yes, but the enemy had never truly wounded them. Only two classes of men earned such a distinction—the truly exceptional, and the cowardly…and no coward would ever have been named a bjerkar.

Sjívull looked astern. Patches of mist still hung above the waters, but the moon was near full, and he could see the surface glinting darkly under its light. They might as well have been sailing in full day, and even on the darkest moonless night, that falling fire overhead would have lit them up for the enemy to see.

He had been wondering whether to push their luck and head ever eastwards, trusting that their swift ship and their provisions would hold out. Now, he had a literal light pointing the way.

He scratched the back of his neck with the tip of his tail. Could it be an evil omen? They certainly had enough evil heaped on them right now. But would the gods really be so cruel as to mock a young man at a time like this? Or might they show mercy?

He chose to have faith.

“We follow it,” he declared.

Drynllaf grinned, then turned his fearsome glare on the crew. “You heard the young lord!” he roared. “East! Give it your arms!” The crew made a fierce noise and bent to their work. Drynllaf turned back with a pleased expression.

“You approve?” Sjívull asked, quietly enough that only the bjerkar would hear. Father had made it clear that he should always ask Drynllaf what was on his mind. “You think I chose correctly?”

Drynllaf grunted. “We shall see if it was the right choice in time. What matters is you chose, young lord. A good lord chooses and lives with the choice, even when choosing is hard.”

“Thank you, Drynllaf.”

The bjerkar gave him a fond but respectful nod and prowled back down the ship to ensure the men were giving everything to their work. Sjívull mulled his words over for a moment, then nodded and turned his gaze to the light of dawn on the horizon where the falling star had vanished.

He wondered what they would find there.

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Launch 732 landing site, Newhome

Amber Houston

It was over. At long, long last, it was over. Amber’s whole body felt bruised and sore, but they were alive, and still, and…she even felt light.

Right. Newhome had weaker gravity than Earth. Not by much, but it was enough after the endless fierce pressure in the lifeboat to leave her feeling almost buoyant. It was like she’d needed to sneeze for days and had finally managed it.

To her right, Nikki groaned and raised her head. “Are we there yet?”

There was a deep grumble from further up the pod and some heavy sounds as Walker unbuckled his restraints and stood. “We’ve landed,” he declared. “Seatbelts off.”

One by one they unbuckled their harnesses and stood up. Amber rubbed her chest ruefully. The metal buckle over her sternum had become painful on the third day of the trip and had only gotten worse from there. She suspected she’d find a bruise there later when she finally got to change her clothes.

Walker was inspecting a panel on the wall, his brow furrowed in concentration. “Well, the good news is Newhome is just as friendly as the long-range survey said it would be,” he announced. “The air’s good, there’s nothing toxic…it’s warm out there, likely get very hot around midday, but we planned for that.”

“Nothing we haven’t trained for.” It took Amber a second to realize she’d said that herself. It earned her a smile from Walker.

“Absolutely,” he agreed. “Let’s get out of this tin can.”

The door on the launch’s end was a big, heavy, complicated thing that took several seconds to release and descend. Warm dry air spilled in the moment its pressure seals disengaged, carrying sweet, spicy, alien scents.

“What time of day is it?” Roy asked.

“Early morning.” Walker staggered down the ramp, stretched, groaned, then turned and hauled himself up a ladder on the lifeboat’s side. His feet clonked heavily above Amber’s head as he stood on the launch’s roof and took a good look around.

Amber was second down the ramp, and her boots crunched into an ankle-deep layer of dry, mossy stuff that must be the local version of grass. It was slightly the wrong shade of green, tinged with the faintest hint of blue, and decorated here and there by bright pink spherical flowers the size of her thumbnail.

For the moment the day was pleasantly warm, but she could feel the promise of future heat in the way the land had a baked quality to it she couldn’t quite put her finger on. The sun was barely peeking above the horizon, but already it felt like a midsummer’s day on Dandelion.

She tried to ignore the sky for now. There was so much of it! So much that she almost felt afraid her feet would leave the ground and she’d fall up and away into the endless blue above. She wanted to gawp at it or hold on to something. But there were more important things to attend to first.

Walker climbed back down from atop the boat. “Okay. We’re not in a bad spot,” he declared. “See those trees over there? We’ll move as much as we can into their shade before it gets too hot and come back for the rest at night when it’s cooler.”

Amber looked at the trees and gasped. They were like no tree she’d ever seen at all! Each one was covered in thousands of little mirrors rather than leaves, with the effect that the woods around them sparkled like a disco ball or the surface of a lake.

That was just the beginning of the weirdness. It wasn’t that everything was alien, it was that the alien things that were there clashed strangely with the familiar things, like the soil. The dirt under Amber’s boots was pretty much the exact same shade of tan brown as the rocks of Mount Messier up on Dandelion, but the plants were totally different. There wasn’t a green leaf in sight, and the plants out in the open were tough, dense, blue little things covered in white fur or peeling red husk.

She stepped aside to make room for Arianna, who was so busy staring at the sky that she stepped on one of the white furry plants. It burst as violently as a popping balloon, and scattered dozens of white seeds onto the morning breeze.

Everybody jumped, including Walker, and what must have been a hundred or more bird-like things erupted from the nearby trees with a loud rasping clamor that sounded more like cicadas than birds. Walker was at Arianna’s side in a flash with his U-Tool in hand to inspect the burst plant and Arianna’s boot. She’d gone rigid out of alarm and fear, but Walker’s usual bedside manner swung into action.

“Well, my tool says there was nothing nasty in that.” He grinned up at her from by her ankle. “Congratulations, you discovered it, so that means you get to name it!”

There were laughs, and Arianna crouched down to inspect what was left. It wasn’t much, just a star-shaped splay of roots. There was another one nearby, a round blue thing the size of a ping-pong ball, and when she experimentally kicked it, she was rewarded with another bang! and more puffy seeds flew skyward.

“Just like a dandelion!” Roy enthused. “That’s a good sign.”

“What are you going to call it, Ari?” Amber asked.

“Umm…it’s…it’s a popperpuff!” Ari declared.

“Good name!” Walker beamed. He played his U-Tool scanner over another. “Log new species, Popperpuff. Discovered by Arianna Mayweather, this date.”

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

The tool beeped, he gave Arianna a smile, then turned to the troop and waved them down the ramp. “Alright, Rangers, time to get serious! Form up and get ready to carry stuff! Amber! Roy! Nikki! Change into your field clothes, grab some pioneer bags, then go find us a water source and a good place to camp. Check in regularly, and don’t stray so far you can’t find your way back.”

It was an honest relief for Amber to change out of her PT gear. After five days, the whole ensemble was just gross, and sure enough she discovered a big triangular bruise in the middle of her chest when she peeled her shirt off.

Just putting on the standard Ranger field clothing—a rip-stop shirt, shorts, high boots, and thick socks—was enough to make her feel a little cleaner all by itself. She had no idea when the chance would present itself to bathe or comb her hair, but still the small improvement lifted her spirits.

She grabbed a U-Tool from the rack, finding it fully charged. She loaded a full dust cartridge and accepted the bright orange bag Nikki handed her. It was full of survival essentials like twine, a bivvy bag she could crawl into for warmth in an emergency, fishing hooks, basic first aid supplies, some U-Tool cartridges, and water purification tablets. She strapped it on, cinched it tight to her waist…

…And found herself feeling remarkably ready. Sure, it was a daunting moment—she was about to strike out into the untamed wilderness of a planet never before touched by human life—but on the other hand, she’d been training for this all her life.

Walker handed her something else, a tablet.

“Map,” he explained. “The lifeboat made it as we landed.”

“Thanks.” Amber took it and gave it a once-over. Even at a glance, she spotted a few promising spots to the…she turned and oriented herself by the rising sun.

Walker gave her a warm, confident smile. “Go on. Find us water.”

The McKay twins were waiting for her when she turned around. They had their bags at their feet, their U-Tools ready, their boots laced up, and their game faces on.

“Ready?” she asked.

Roy nodded at the tablet, picked up his pack, and shrugged it on. “Ready.”

“Ready,” Nikki agreed, shouldering her own.

“Right.” Amber checked the map, swiping through various overlays and sensor profiles to see what was around them. The lifeboat had done most of the work for her, in fact. She could survey the surrounding terrain in 3D, with clear color-coding to show fresh water, heat sources that might be large animals, and a temperature map guessing at which spots were likely to be cool and sheltered from the sun.

It would have been nice to hear DANI’s voice to help her analyze it, but really, she didn’t need him. She immediately spotted a likely candidate a couple of klicks from where they’d landed. It was a nice cool blue suggesting it didn’t get too hot, and it showed a strong reading for water.

She turned and pointed. “That way.”

Roy and Nikki followed her without argument.

----------------------------------------

“Uuuurgh…”

“Are you going to keep complaining the whole time?”

“It’s way too hot…”

Amber sighed and tried not to snap at Roy. Truthfully, the heat was getting to her as well. She’d hoped under the trees the worst of it would go away, but rather than being shaded and cool, the woods were close, and the air was still and humid. Her shirt was black from sweat, and she’d had to remind Roy three times already to keep his on.

Funnily enough, in humid situations like this, taking the shirt off might be the better thing to do. Sweat needed to evaporate, after all. But this wasn’t a well-trodden footpath through Susskind Forest up on the ship. This was a real forest, untouched by human habitation. That meant thorns.

“I can deal with some scratches. Hell, I’ve had way worse in wrestling!”

“Not if there’s an allergen or toxin we don’t know about.”

Roy grumbled to himself like an annoyed bear, but nodded and swung his U-tool again. He had it in machete mode, and the shimmering orange blade left a pile of cleanly sliced foliage at his feet, which he kicked aside in a half-hearted, sullen way.

“That water source has gotta be around here somewhere, right?”

“It’s close, I think…” Amber began, calling up the map again, but she was interrupted by a terse sound from Nikki.

“Shh.”

Both Amber and Roy turned to her. Nikki had been silent ever since they’d landed and had been following along in the back. Her U-Tool was in scanner mode, and she’d been taking a survey of everything she could find, but in a listless way that told Amber her mind was firmly elsewhere. Now, though, something had grabbed her attention.

“You okay, Nick?” Roy asked.

Nikki raised a finger to her lips, then cocked her head and cupped her hand to her ear, listening intently with her eyes shut. She turned slightly one way, then the other, then nodded shortly and pointed off to their left. “That way.”

Roy listened for a second, nodded, and set to hacking into the foliage again with renewed vigor. Amber had learned years ago that the twins had astonishingly acute senses, so if they heard something and she didn’t, well…she trusted them.

A minute later they were proven right when the foliage quite abruptly gave way to a creek bed. Rather than fall in, Roy sprang forward, cleared the stream, and landed cat-like on the loose dry stones on the far side.

“Found the water!” he announced needlessly.

“I can see that.”

Roy grinned, looked around, and turned off his U-Tool. The blade dissolved back into the handle, and Amber took his offered hand to steady herself as she jumped over, followed by Nikki, who cleared the stream comfortably with a run-up.

The stream bed was wide and had a well-churned look to it, as though a huge amount of water came thundering through on a regular basis. For the moment, though, the water was little more than an ankle-deep rill cutting through the stones.

Nikki knelt and scooped up some water in her palm. “Smells clean. Upstream?”

“Sounds good, but I don’t wanna get caught in like a flash-flood or whatever,” Roy said. “It looks like this runs a lot higher sometimes.” He eyed the foliage on the bank wearily; the thought of hacking through more foliage clearly didn’t appeal to him.

“We’ll never get anywhere if we keep chopping through the brush,” Amber pointed out. “And the banks are dry. I think it only gets full in the rainy season.”

“Sure, but when’s that?”

Amber checked what little weather and climate data the launches had gathered and communicated to each other as they approached. It wasn’t perfect, but it was at least good enough to tell her the hot, dry weather covered most of the continent.

“Not right now…”

“Let’s go,” Nikki urged. She marked the spot where they’d come out of the bush by carving a trail-mark in a tree trunk with her U-Tool and gestured upstream.

In fact, they didn’t have far to go upstream before they found a point where two smaller streams merged to become the larger one they’d followed so far. While the branch to their right was almost empty, the branch to their left looked much fuller, as though the water level that way never got much higher than it already was.

What sold Amber, however, was the clear sound of what could only be a waterfall drifting down from up that way.

In fact, the stream had cut a narrow, steep-walled kind of valley in the rock, and for whatever reason the air was noticeably cooler by a few degrees.

“What would you call this, anyway?” Roy asked, after a minute or so of hiking.

“Sorry?”

“Well is this, like…a valley? A gorge? A ravine? A crevasse?”

“Um…a ravine, I think,” Amber guessed. “I’m not sure.”

“Split the difference,” Nikki suggested. “Call it a crevine.”

“Or a ravasse!” Roy grinned. “I like the sound of that! Roy’s Ravasse!”

“No, Roy,” Amber vetoed him and managed to avoid rolling her eyes.

“Come on! We discovered it, that means we get to name it!”

“We get to name it, not you get to name it. And we’re not naming it ‘Roy’s Ravasse.’”

“Aww—!”

“Mind on the job, please.”

Their waterfall turned out to be little more than a watery cascade down a cliff face, rather than an actual fall. Still, it fed into a cool, chest-deep pool at the bottom, and when Amber plunged her U-tool into it, the device reported the water was clean of pollutants, parasites, or indeed many organisms at all. It was in fact as clean and safe as a natural water source was likely to get.

“Well,” she said, shaking the U-Tool off and hooking it back onto her belt, “that takes care of our drinking water.”

“This spot’s great!” Nikki declared. She was sweeping her own U-Tool around it to take an accurate survey. “It’s cool, it’s sheltered—”

“It’s defensible,” Roy interjected.

“I mean, yeah, it is, but what exactly are we gonna need to defend it from? We’re the only people on this planet!”

He shrugged. “Space bears? Alien dinosaurs? Ditzy sisters?” He dodged with a grin as she scooped up a pebble and threw it half-heartedly at him. “I’unno, I just figure defensibleness is a good thing no matter what.”

“He’s not wrong,” Amber agreed.

“Ssh, he’ll hear!”

Roy grinned, then looked around. “But…yeah. This looks good. An’ it’s way less hot down here. Whaddya think, Nick? Reckon we can put those falls to good use?”

Nikki nodded. “Instant water pressure, no problem. We can have showers and faucets in…a day or two when we start building them?”

“Well, we’re not stocked with faucets or fittings. It’s just a coil of copper piping.”

“Baths, then.”

“Yeah! And a sink probably, and—”

“And a still!” Amber suggested.

The twins gave her identical surprised looks. “A still? Wow, Amber. Priorities?”

“Purely as a survival tool!” Amber hastened to explain. “Alcohol is useful! It’s a solvent, a disinfectant…”

“A morale booster…” Roy grinned.

“…I guess. Once everything else is taken care of.”

Rather than dignify the twins’ grinning with a response, she keyed her communicator. “Walker, it’s Amber. We’ve found a nice cool sheltered spot with clean drinking water, a swimming hole, and plenty of building supplies. Some concern about water levels in the wet season, but we’re marking it as Site A.”

Walker’s voice was a little distorted in her ear. “Good job! Have you three decided on a name?”

“We’ve…ruled out one suggestion.”

Roy blurted out, “Amber has no sense of style!”

Walker’s chuckle crackled slightly over the radio frequencies. “I don’t think I want to know. Investigate that water level concern, and then if you’re happy, mark and prepare a trail back to the launch for us.”

“Will do!”

“So, where next?” Nikki asked. “We should probably check out downstream.”

Amber checked their map. Incomplete as it was, the launch had identified a lazy, looping, slow river not far to the north that the stream presumably fed into, running westward out of the woods and down to the sea.

But there was a cool pool right there.

“We should probably…” she agreed, reluctantly. “We’d better find where it joins up with the main river at least.”

“But…?” Nikki prompted.

“We won’t be, uh, skipping out on our responsibilities if we take a few minutes to get clean, right?” Amber ventured, unwilling to tear herself away the fresh, clear water. “I mean…Hygiene is important!”

The twins emitted almost identical snort-laughs and glanced at each other. Then with a shrug, Nikki stooped to unlace her boots.

“Now you’re talking!” Roy agreed. With an almost disconcertingly well-practiced flourish, he left his shirt draped over a nearby rock and thudded down on top of it to unlace his boots.

Amber dropped her pack and scrambled to catch up.

A minute later, the feeling of cool, refreshing, crystal water was heavenly. Maybe a hot bath would have been better for her aches and bruises from the long trip in the launch, but she’d never felt relief quite like it. A week’s worth of accumulated grossness, plus the trail sweat and dirt, washed right off. It was simply perfect.

Nikki submerged herself completely, came up scrubbing her hair, then flopped over backwards, and floated with a happy sigh. “Good call,” she sighed. “This might even be better than Lake Messier…”

As for Roy…well, he wasn’t particularly buoyant. Normally, he had to furiously struggle to keep his head above water, or else he’d sink like a rock. Swimming was his arch-nemesis, but in this case, he was only really interested in cooling down. He spent most of the time submerged up to his nose like a particularly un-stealthy submarine.

Amber just smiled at them and scrubbed herself all over with a thin slice of soap from her pioneer pack. It really wasn’t the right stuff for her hair, but there and then she didn’t care. The simple joy of being clean was all that mattered.

In fact, by the time she ran out of soap and the last of the suds swirled away downstream, she felt cleaner than she’d ever felt before. She found a shallow and comfortable spot on some smooth rock near the pool’s edge and lay back to relax.

For a little peaceful while, the only sounds were the steady susurrus of the waterfall, the splashing sounds the twins made as they washed, the brush and rush of the breeze in the canopy, and the trilling sounds of some kind of small native animal high in the branches. She could almost forget she was on an unexplored alien planet.

It couldn’t last forever, but it lasted long enough. Eventually, spurred by her sense of responsibility, she reluctantly spoke the words she didn’t want to.

“We should probably get back to work, I guess.”

“Yeah…” Nikki sounded just as reluctant.

“Five more minutes?” Roy asked.

Tempting as that was, Amber shook her head and stood up. “No.”

Roy groaned, but waded ashore without further complaint. Nikki sighed, stretched her arms above her head as she floated lazily for just a few seconds longer, then sat up and gestured downstream as she returned to her clothes. “So. Any more thoughts of what we’re gonna call this place?” she asked.

“I know!” Roy began.

“Roy, I swear if you’re gonna suggest anything with -asse or…I dunno, crack in it…”

“Hey.” Roy shook his head as he wriggled into his shorts and buckled his belt. “I was gonna suggest something like…like here-we-are falls.”

The girls blinked at him. After a while, Nikki sighed and tied her shirt on rather than buttoning it up. “Roy? I love you? But that’s awful,” she said, smiling.

“Well whaddya want from me? I’m just a ship engineer and a jock! The most creative I get is cheating on my macros!”

“The Falls part is good,” Amber conceded, buttoning her own shirt up more methodically. “I like that. Something Falls.”

“Groundfall Falls?” Roy suggested. Nikki snorted.

“Wet waterfall falls,” she mocked him.

“Shut up! Pedant Falls? Loopy Sister Grove?”

“Jock Bottom!”

“And Roy’s Ravasse at that part over there!”

Amber, deeply amused and determined not to show it, rolled her eyes and waved downstream again. “Let’s just get moving,” she suggested before they really got started.

“Don’t we need to name this, though? I mean, we can’t call it Site A forever!” Roy protested. Amber shoved him in the right direction, and he lumbered into movement.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “I’m sure something good will come to us…”