A Miracle Baby For Christmas by Holly Rayner

Author:Holly Rayner [Rayner, Holly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-12-01T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 21

Stella

Stella and Morgan won the foosball tournament, and they decided to celebrate with hot chocolate outside of The Bubble. Everyone suited up in their warmest parkas and prepared to trudge out to the edge of the hill with their mugs of cocoa.

“Hold on,” Jeff said, just as Stella was pulling on her boots. “Let me see if Lucas wants to come.”

Jeff ran down the hallway toward Bubble Two in search of Lucas, who was nearly always in his lab. Of course their workaholic CEO had skipped out on the foosball tournament, insisting that he had important things to get done, but hope seemed to spring eternal when it came to Jeff’s insistence that his old college buddy join for the more fun aspects of life at camp.

He returned alone, though, shaking his head and shrugging. “It’s just us,” he said.

Together, the five team members pushed their way out into the snowy evening, skidding on the ice and laughing at the way they all looked like penguins in their plushly stuffed snow gear.

“The lake looks gorgeous tonight,” Yulia exclaimed, pointing toward the glacial lake at the bottom of the valley.

“Anyone fancy a swim?” Morgan asked.

“Please don’t try and start your own polar bear plunge,” Stella cautioned. “I don’t have enough emergency blankets in the medical bay to attend to your self-inflicted hypothermia.”

“Well, okay,” Jeff said. “Dr. Stella says no. But I want everyone to know that is the only reason I’m not jumping into that glacial lake right now.”

“Of course, dear,” Morgan told him.

They sipped their hot cocoa, chatting and joking, and Stella found herself smiling and relaxing. Lucas had truly put together a great team, and they were wonderful company. Still, she missed him, and felt bad that he was toiling away in his laboratory and missing this nice night.

He pushed himself too hard, Stella thought, but she supposed that wasn’t any of her business.

The next morning, Stella slept in, having stayed up a bit later than she intended, talking to Yulia and Tien over many many mugs of hot cocoa. But she had plenty of work to do, so she got dressed and headed into her lab.

Lucas had asked her—not in person, only via the folder full of research briefs and project directives—to develop a number of experiments that would help Quickgold Industries better understand the needs of humans and animals during space flight. Her lab was equipped with cages of mice, terrariums of small tree frogs, and rows of plastic containers filled with fruit flies, as she had requested. Lucas told her that she had a few cubic feet of space reserved for her on the spacecraft so that she would be able to send a few organisms up into space inside the Project C.L.A.U.S. capsule. Now, she needed to begin establishing her control groups and taking initial measurements.

She booted up her computer and started taking notes on the behaviors of the various mice, then pulled one out of its cage to run on a miniature treadmill.

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