Judgment Day by James F. David

Author:James F. David
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: McMillian Publishing
Published: 2007-04-01T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTERS 64 JOURNEY'S END

Because the goal I sought lay far In cloud-hid heights, today my soul Goes unaccompanied of its own; Yet this shall comfort me alone, I did not seek a nearer goal.

—THEODOSIA GARRISON

NEW HOPE STATION, EARTH'S ORBIT

Six months after the departure of the Genesis, the tabloid press pronounced the ship destroyed. Reasoning that the family men on board could not go six months without communicating with their wives and children, the media concluded the ship would never return. Over the next few months the tabloids ran stories about aliens capturing the Genesis, a collision with an asteroid, and that they were secretly building a base on Mars. When Mark Shepherd signed the U.N. Mars treaty in New York, he was peppered with questions about the location of Genesis. He answered none. The story in the weeks following was speculation about when the Fellowship would honor the Mars treaty and announce the existence of their colony. Instead, the Fellowship signed a contract to provide transportation for a joint Europe-U.S. project to build the first permanent base on Mars.

Judith took her first steps at eleven months, and said "mama" by her first birthday. Shelly encouraged "daddy" as her second word, but it was "cookie." Each month John Jr. talked less and less of Micah, although they prayed for his safe return every night.

On the anniversary of the Genesis's departure they held a worship service in Christ's Home. The media photographed them filing into the church and ran footage of the Genesis departing on news broadcasts as Wyatt Powder intoned about "loved ones lost in the void."

Genesis was gone eighteen months when its twin, Exodus, delivered the Euro-American colony to Mars. With a dozen huge supply modules stacked on its nose, the fully loaded Exodus had transported enough equipment and materials to build a self-contained station that could run for a year. The media gave the fledgling colony big play, running live broadcasts from the Martian surface—a red desert—showing what the inhabitants would be up against as they tried to tame the hostile planet.

Six months later the Exodus returned with more cargo, doubling the number of residents and extending the reserve supplies by another year. By now the colonists had bored under the surface of Mars, burying their homes to protect them from the ultraviolet radiation passing nearly unimpeded through Mars's wispy atmosphere.

As the luster of settling a new world wore off, concerns about the cost of the project began to be heard. The billion being spent on maintaining a handful of people on Mars could be better spent on the poor at home, the argument went. Chief defender of the Mars colony was Senator Crow, who staunchly reproved those whom he called "shortsighted." The future was in space, he argued forcefully, successfully blocking efforts to end the project. Only if you listened carefully, did you also hear his concerns about the monopoly the Fellowship maintained on the space technology. "After all," he said one Sunday morning on Meet the Press,

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