The four-year wait for the colony ship seemed very long. Simone was not by any means without occupation; there would have been plenty to do even for the full team of scientists sent with the Curie. Working alone, Simone could only hope to accomplish the highest priority tasks, the most critical of the critical. It was fortunate that she needed neither food nor sleep.
Yet she found herself checking her internal chronometer against the ship’s computer, and ship’s computer against the planet’s rotation, over and over again. Time, she told herself, was passing just as it always had since it began; this was the only logical conclusion.
As she had promised Lucy, she was not alone; and if the recorded memories became cold and predictable company in time, she still had the hope, the determined b
