Chapter 8

Reinforcements

Rima crouched in the shade of a macadamia tree. She combed through the dried leaves looking for fallen nuts while watching the submarine crew work with her Grandfather and Scott. The new pioneer headquarters was rapidly taking shape. Inside was a tightly woven layer of bamboo strips that made an inner wall with the look of wicker furniture. The outside was a grid of arched bamboo poles which were lashed together to shape the sculptured structure. The outer bamboo reinforcing grid would be covered from the outside against the inner woven bamboo mat and become reinforcement within what Scott had named foam-stone. Wall thickness was planned at six to eight centimeters, about 2 1/2 to 3 inches.

Rima stood and stiffly stretched her legs, she then walked into the building, through rooms with already finished interior walls. She busied herself with a hammer and the macadamia nuts while waiting for her grandfather to look up from his work. He, in turn, watched her, and kept working until she had eaten all the nuts.

"The President called and will call back fifteen minutes from now," she said as he set aside the bamboo strips he had been weaving into an intriguingly beautiful wall.

The Admiral paused to admire his handiwork of perfectly woven bamboo. "I don't want to talk with the president," he growled, and then smiled as he looked into Rima's twinkling eyes.

"It's President Daniella Johnson, of Nation Pacifica; the Chief."

"Oh. That's different. Did she say what's on her mind?"

"Nation Pacifica is very grateful for pioneer help with penetrating the Use blockade, it's the first success in over two years. Your order has been loaded on a ship which leaves port tomorrow. President Johnson said they filled up the ship with things you might need, including a new mast for the sailboat. She wonders if there's anything else, something perhaps only you know that you want."

"My order?" the Admiral asked as he turned and started walking from the building, toward the spaceship and its radio.

"Eddy gave the construction supply list to a ship captain in the convoy they rescued. Kevin or Leona must have added the mast."

"Hmm. There's suddenly quite a bit of radio communication going on around here, I've been hoping to keep our location secret for a little longer," he mused barely half out loud as he entered the ship. He spotted Liz, she was the first person he needed to talk with. "Liz," he said, "will you be able to fight to defend our base if we are discovered before Eddy returns?"

Liz sighed, heavily. "I listened to Eddy and Mathew talking with the Use navy commander," she said, nodding agreement while biting her lower lip in conflicted consternation. "Entire families of typhoon survivors will die if we don't stop bullying, price gouging, and piracy by the United States, Use could possibly even start another world-wide war."

Inocente put his hands on both Liz's shoulders and looked her straight in the eyes. "We're caught between a rock and a hard spot. We don't want to hurt young soldiers who have been conned into fighting for corporatists, but if we allow corporations to continue their piracy, many innocent people will suffer endless austerity, wage slavery, or worse.”

"That's why I'll fight if I have to," Liz answered, straightening her back and holding the Admiral's intense and searching gaze with her own.

"Okay," said The Admiral removing the weight of his hands from Liz's shoulders but leaving a weight much heavier. "I'm going to tell Daniella that we will keep the sea lanes open and defend Nation Pacifica with everything we've got."

Liz reached out and shook the Admiral's hand. "Yes Sir," she said with a quietly serious voice. "I do hope Eddy returns quickly. We really should have two spaceships here, somebody has to guard the submarine."

The Admiral and Liz couldn't know that Pioneer Frigate flew away from the cargo ships on an almost direct course to discovery of the HUNTA army. Eddy followed an evasive escape route once the location was recorded to navigation data. He flew fast and low, working seriously, southward, along the bottoms of mountain ranges and into the sparsely populated desert of northern Mexico. There, he turned back north and eventually landed near a rural indigenous american town where Leona had relatives.

The spaceship parked in a box canyon under a very high sandstone cliff. From a distance it was just another little speck dotted across an immense colored wash of reddish and golden brown hues.

"Colorado; multicolored beauty," Leona breathed. "I haven't been here since high school graduation." They were just south of the Colorado border, in northern New Mexico, within walking distance east of the continental divide, where the cliffs are gigantic and silence is part of eye stretching vistas.

The only way to reach the spaceship was to walk up a cool and sandy dry creek bed. The trail was sheltered by desert pines which grew on the sides of the barranca. The spaceship could not be seen until one walked out of the trees and stood under a cliff so high it was difficult to lean back far enough to see the top. The parking spot Leona had chosen for Eddy was a natural wonderland so beautiful it compelled them all to try the impossible and see everything at once. Many native americans quickly arrived to see the pioneer spaceship, more were arriving in a steady stream.

"This is turning into a bigger party than we had at home," Mathew commented to Kevin and Leona.

Leona turned her flashing black eyes and happy smile to Mathew, "This is home, too, my friend."

"Let's hope the party doesn't get crashed by TV helicopters again," Kevin said putting his arm around Leona's waist.

"What's Eddy doing?" Leona asked pointing to him sitting on a distant rock, near the shadow line of cliff and sun.

Eddy sat watching the afternoon sun, he was mulling over what a good fleet commander would do next. The HUNTA army was huge. They had seen maybe a hundred thousand troops, and an uncountable number of trucks and war machines of every description. There wasn't enough fuel left on the spaceship to put a dent in such a huge army. They needed fuel. They needed reinforcements.

"I wonder if he's...." Kevin let the question hang, not knowing quite how to describe the moment he'd seen Eddy and Liz appear as if stepping out of thin air, just before the typhoon struck.

Eddy looked at the sun's warm red and orange glow on the inside of his closed eyelids. He watched the colors quiver. Instead of visualizing the beauty of Planet Pacifica dancing with her sun, as he had always done before, he pictured the pioneer settlement and his friend Sequoia. His inner melody reached for the stars.

"He's gone!" Mathew shouted. "Eddy flat out disappeared! Right in front of our eyes!"

And Eddy was flattened, by a solid blow. He felt it throughout his body as it sent him somersaulting backwards. He opened his eyes and looked up from where he lay, gasping for air, vision swirling dizzily. Sequoia was standing above him with both arms raised.

"Are you all right?" Sequoia asked, quickly kneeling beside him. "You appeared out of nowhere right in front me. My body reacted before I knew what was happening," he apologized helping Eddy to his feet.

"I'm still learning about this," Eddy gasped. "You thumped me hard but it didn't actually hurt."

Sequoia helped Eddy to a nearby bench and sat next to him with one arm over his shoulders. "You're sure I didn't hurt you?" He asked again.

"Really. I'm okay," Eddy assured him. "I felt your blow like I was inside a drum. It made my head ring and I saw sparks but I don't hurt anywhere."

Eddy and Sequoia both looked up when they heard footsteps, Walker and Gwen were running toward them.

Glafco arrived in his little car just before the runners. "I saw the whole thing," he exclaimed, jumping from the car seat and slapping Eddy on the shoulder. Glafco was so excited to see Eddy he tilted his body back and let out with a loud surfer's hoot.

“We saw it, too," Gwen said, her breath still timed for running. "Nice to see you, Eddy. We were just coming to meet Sequoia. What brings you here?"

"Wait just a darn minute," said Walker, with full on surprise and exasperation. "I just saw Eddy step out of thin air and collide with Sequoia."

“Wait, Walker! We told you about this … Eddy took Gwen and me to learn about space walking with Star Song," Glafco said. "It was just before the final battle with Doom Cloud."

"I mentioned it, then, several times. Remember?” Gwen reminded Walker.

Walker scratched his head and stared, trying to remember.

"We've been so busy putting things back together we haven't had time to talk much about Star Song's lessons," Glafco told Eddy, somewhat apologetically.

"How does this work?" Walker finally asked. "I seem to be the only one surprised by what you just did."

"Don't feel alone, Walker. I just flattened the poor guy," Sequoia said, with a slow whistle and a wink.

"I can't tell you exactly how it works." Eddy said. "Star song says we may be a new branch on the human evolutionary tree. Melodians are more advanced than we are technologically, but they can't be too far ahead of us or I would be too primitive to do it. On the other hand, I don't know that either. The idea of a singing cosmos is completely mysterious to me."

"So Star Song showed you how to do this?"

"Yep"

"What does the Admiral say about it?"

"He's the one who arranged for me to be trained by Star Song. He's also the one who says I've had advanced flight training."

Sequoia looked at Eddy questioningly, "Gwen and Glafco have told us everything they can remember about their space walks before the battle with Doom Cloud. Without you, though, they haven't been able to do any of what you showed them."

"Are you still able to communicate using melodian speech?" Eddy asked.

"Not really," Gwen answered. "I've tried but it seems to have faded from my head. I'm very disappointed."

"Can you hear my melodian speech?" Eddy asked using only the inner telepathic song of conscious spacetime. They all nodded that they could.

Eddy continued with a long inner song which told all that had happened since Doom Cloud had been defeated and his ship had returned to Earth. Melodian speech is so completely harmonized within the conscious fabric of spacetime it carries details and descriptions with even greater efficiency than Cetacean or Delfinian speech, the complete story didn't take long to tell.

"Now we need help," he concluded. "We need a big fighting ship carrying a full cargo of refined, three dimensional joy to refuel the spaceships already on Planet Earth."

"My spaceship is ready to go," Sequoia responded immediately. "It won't take very long to unload two fighters and fill their bays with extra joy power for the ships on Earth."

Sequoia's posture changed, he seemed to grow slightly taller as he mentally shifted from astrophysicist to space pilot on a mission. Then he turned to his Pioneer Space Fleet Commander, "What do you think, Walker?"

Walker thought about Sequoia's offer and almost immediately agreed it was a good idea. "I'll have your spaceship loaded while you and the copilot pack for the trip," he said with a salute.

"We should hurry, whatever we do," Eddy said trying to express urgency without showing panic. Something he wanted to remember rattled around in the back of Eddy's mind as they walked together toward Glafco's little car. "We should talk to the delfinians and let them know what's going on," he said, realizing he'd been thinking of a somebody rather than a something. "How do we contact Captain Pearl?"

"That's easy enough, his battle platform is soon to be moved to deeper water but it's still docked in the harbor quay. Everybody calls his spaceship, 'The Quay'. Glafco can drive us there as soon as we drop off Sequoia and start a crew readying his cruiser," said Commander Walker as he reached for a radio microphone, to call a loading team for Sequoia's ship.

Glafco and Eddy waited for Sequoia and the copilot to pack, then drove them straight to where the huge delfinian spaceship floated quietly in the water, tied up to the dock. Eddy thought back to the last time Glafco had driven this same route as fast as the little joy powered floating car would go. They had raced to reach the delfinian spaceship before it took off to join the battle with Doom Cloud.

All delfinian ships are huge, more than a kilometer in length. The entire upper deck of Captain Pearl's spaceship had been converted to a battle platform for the pioneer's largest land-based joy beam canons, one of which couldn't be squeezed into even the biggest pioneer spaceship. Sixty canons lined along one side of Captain Pearl's ship. Eddy quickly realized the delfinian battle platform was what they needed back on earth.

Captain Pearl was an experienced man. He had flown the lead ship in a desperate escape of a million Delfinian Pioneers. They had watched Doom Cloud engulf and consume their entire planet, in the rear view sensors. Hundreds of millions were lost, behind them. The Captain had then fought brilliantly in the alliance against Doom Cloud.

Eddy was not surprised by Captain Pearl's well informed understanding of the situation on Earth. He needed very few explanations or details before taking decisive action. Eddy had the distinct impression delfinians already had a plan to assist their first earth pioneers and their President, Sudor. He listened as Captain Pearl activated his communication network.

When a green light blinked, Captain Pearl spoke succinctly, "The first thirty thousand on the Earth Colony Action List, please report to the Quay. Be ready to board ship and take-off. The next five thousand on the list report as reserves. Be prepared to take-off for Planet Earth. All crew members please report for duty. This is not practice. The Quay is departing for Earth. "

Captain Pearl then turned off his communication system and turned to the humans. "What is your plan?" He asked Fleet Commander Walker.

"We plan to send a light battle cruiser. Both fighter bays will be loaded with cargo instead of single seat fighter ships."

"Human spaceships are at least ten times faster than ours," Captain Pearl mused, "How long will it take your ship to reach Earth?"

"The cruiser will reach Earth in about five months," Walker responded, following Captain Pearl's gaze toward Eddy, who looked them all in the eyes, his face showing a touch of worry and shyness which didn't entirely obscure his underlying confident grin.

The delfinian Captain looked Eddy square in the eyes before he said anything. "Fact," said he. "Eddy should still be traveling to Earth. How is it possible that so much has already happened there? Are you able to explain it?"

"Cecric trained me to fly this vessel, Eddy said quietly. "I could probably show you better than I could explain it."

"Are you volunteering for the first shift at the helm of my ship?" Captain Pearl politely asked.

"I'll sit in the copilot's seat," Eddy replied quickly. " We'll carry Sequoia's spaceship on this one," he said turning to Walker.

"I want to go, too! Sean called from the doorway. Sean, Walker's middle brother, had flown companion cruiser with Sequoia in the battle. Their trip into Doom Cloud had turned both their hair as silver white as Eddy's. Everyone who'd been inside Doom Cloud had white hair.

Walker hadn't been able to talk Sean out of the cruiser since the battle; luckily, its assigned pilot had a five month old baby and wasn't yet concerned with the exact whereabouts of her ship.

"Will another cruiser fit on board your ship, Captain Pearl?" Sean added as an afterthought.

"If Fleet Commander Walker requests it," Captain Pearl responded with a respectful bow to Walker.

"I want to take the new distiller and a portable laboratory in my ship's fighter bays," said Sean.

The distiller was an artificial intelligence project of Sean's. The new version could handle verbal input from millions of people at once. It occasionally missed the point but had an almost super-human ability to distill the verbal input of many people into very few clear and concise sentences, usually stated as decisions.

Distiller often asked the exact question that needed answering before a logical decision could be reached. Many people simply used "Distiller" as a name for the artificial intelligence Sean and his department had created, it made him quite proud that people had become so comfortable with his invention as to give a name to a machine that distilled mass conscious input into logical output.

"We need the distiller as an aid to sustainable development and democratic decision making here," Walker said, with a concerned expression on his face.

"Don't worry about that," Sean replied. "The communications lab was able to fix and update the old distiller after it was sabotaged by Use spies, before Doom Cloud attacked. The old one did a good job and works better than ever now, besides, there are only forty thousand pioneers, and the new one will be needed on Earth."

"Is the lab equipment for Mom and Dad?" Walker asked.

"They'll be able to help the Admiral much better with the lab equipment I'll take," Sean answered. "The new distiller is smaller then a vending machine, it'll fit in one small corner of one fighter bay, that leaves quite a bit of cargo space for lab stuff."

"Now it's my turn," Glafco said stepping into the flight room of the delfinian ship. He and Gwen had been standing in the doorway, he stopped halfway and signaled her to follow him. Then he turned back into the room, "Gwen and I are both planning to go, too."

Glafco, is an easy going and friendly person who had become close to Eddy during battle. He was in charge of sustainable development economics on Planet Pacifica. Though Glafco thought of his work as tedious and dull, Eddy had asked if he could work with him, when and if his life ever returned to normal.

Gwen was a beautiful woman who looked to be forty but was actually over sixty. She had shining silver gray hair and chocolate brown skin. Her teeth flashed brilliant white when she laughed. Gwen had recently been assigned as facilitator to coordinate human interaction with the distiller. She was also responsible for keeping track of decisions as they evolved into action. Gwen was the closest the pioneers had to a chief executive officer.

Eddy was thrilled; all his best friends had volunteered to return to Earth with him. His almost serendipitous wish to talk with Captain Pearl had turned into one of the happiest moments of his life. He was about to return to Planet Earth with a delfinian battle platform more powerful then the entire pioneer fleet of sixty spaceships.

The delfinian spaceship, being a creation of ocean people, was also a perfectly functioning submarine, with a large and strong brigade of armed marine scouts. Captain Pearl's ship had been outfitted with the largest land based joy beam cannons and defensive turrets, plus it still had its original delfinian weapons as well.

"How long until you are ready for take-off?" Walker asked Captain Pearl, who turned to examine some of his instruments.

"Delfinians should be ready in less than three hours," said he, his eyes still focused on the instrument panel while his fingers played over the spaceship controls.

"It'll take us a little longer," Walker said raising a questioning eyebrow to Sean and Sequoia.

"My ship should be almost ready now," Sequoia said.

Sean hesitated a split second, "Five hours is probably closer to how long it will take to load my cruiser and then reach rendezvous in orbit."

That statement started a surge of activity. Eddy stayed with Captain Pearl, who mainly monitored what he called, "the ship's pulse."

Glafco took everyone else back to Pioneer Town, as the settlement had recently become popularly known. He and Gwen returned to the spaceship quay in less than an hour, the little car was packed full of fragile instruments. Everyone agreed to take the car and simply leave it packed.

"These small cars are handy," Glafco had said as he and Eddy stowed the car in a cargo area.

Captain Pearl stayed at the landing for an extra half-hour so that more supplies from the settlement could be brought aboard. He initiated take-off procedures when precisely three and one half hours had elapsed.

The gigantic delfinian spacecraft are gravity powered, ship navigation and power systems behave as if one is always flying in space. The Quay was flying at planetary orbital and rotation speed the instant it was turned on. Up and down became an act of balancing mass and orbital speed as soon as the power was turned on, it was flying though still touching the planet. Captain Pearl handed the controls over to Eddy when the spacecraft was one hundred kilometers away from the planet surface, a distance which seems a lot closer upon leaving the vastness of space than it does when leaving the ground.

Eddy placed his palm on the ball in the arm of his seat and pressed down. He remembered that Cecric had described gravity power as riding on top of a water fountain strong enough to hurtle the ship across space. Rising upward was a matter of staying centered on top of a slippery fountain that shot higher as he pressed down on the ball. Rolling the ball kept the spaceship on center, pushing it down added speed, finger tip controls were for gravity push or pull.

Captain Pearl ran some computer calculations and then projected a green line on a navigation screen for Eddy to follow. The orbital rendezvous point was marked as a circle. Their actual path was a curved yellow line. Eddy's job was to make the curved yellow line meet the straight navigator's line, at the end circle. He was thoroughly enjoying himself and wished his time at the controls was longer than the ten short minutes it took to reach the orbit position.

Sequoia's ship arrived only minutes behind them. Captain Pearl clicked on an intercom and requested a landing bay door be opened for the cruiser to enter, starboard side.

"Fly your ship in when the light over the landing bay door turns from yellow to green," Captain Pearl told Sequoia, who then eased the cruiser inside the delfinian ship, with room to spare.

Diana, the cruiser copilot, stayed to secure the ship while Sequoia climbed a ladder four levels upward, through a vertical tunnel, to the topmost air deck, above the water filled decks. The bottom two decks contained row upon row of closely spaced bunks. Forty to fifty thousand Delfinans had slept on those decks in semi-hibernation as they traveled from Delfinia to Planet Pacifica, pursued as they slept by Doom Cloud. Sequoia remembered that the delfinian voyage across space had taken one hundred and eighteen years. His reverie stopped when he reached the top of the ladder and entered a gymnasium sized room, a big gymnasium. He knew the top air level had ten sections equal to the one he had entered.

Six very large joy beam canons, two joy generators, and a computer center were mounted in each vast section. Each cannon was on a large three way swivel mount, ridden by a canon operator. The joy beam cannons looked like observatory telescopes, with the star end mounted in a ball swivel attached to the outer spaceship hull.

"I'm guessing there are almost one hundred humans on this ship," Sequoia said upon entering the flight control room, after passing through three cannon sections.

"There are eighty-six," said Captain Pearl turning to greet Sequoia. He then indicated with one hand, "Please, take the navigator's seat."

"Thanks," Sequoia said placing his small satchel on the seat.

"You are an astrophysicist," Captain Pearl said. "I'm sure you will want to observe Eddy's space flight technology."

Conversation briefly paused at the soft whine of machinery. A delfinian had entered the flight deck from a lower water level through a revolving door, it turned under water in the floor, inside the portable delfinian water barrier. One arm rolled the tubular glass door open, a quick flick of the tail hand brought the delfinian from flat on the floor to standing upright, next to Captain Pearl, looking over the water partition, toward the humans.

"Allow me to introduce Esther, our top astrophysicist. Oh. Pardon me, the second pioneer cruiser is arriving now. Please introduce yourselves to Esther while I briefly attend to the new arrival."

Glafco, Gwen, Sequoia, and Eddy quickly introduced themselves to Esther. "I am also an astrophysicist," Sequoia said. "It was a huge intellectual jump for our science to learn that you come to us from an entirely different big bang."

Esther smiled. "It has been one hundred and forty years since our first pioneers returned with confirmation of multiple creations that appear infinite from within," she said waving her arm toward the front window. "We still understand only with the poetic sense that each big bang is but one small bubble in the foam of a storm tossed sea."

Then, with a questioning expression, she turned to Eddy, "Am I correct that Star Song has tutored you in melodian science? Are they really thousands of years ahead of us?"

"I don't know," Eddy readily admitted. "I probably wouldn't understand any better if melodians were only two or three hundred years ahead of us. They used the tide to lift their floating city, that was easy enough to understand, the rise and fall of tides generated their electricity. Melodians seem to have discovered that, er, spacetime has a conscious dimension." He shrugged, "I really don't know much about it."

"What do you do which you cannot fully understand?" Esther pushed the thought onward.

"Melodians know how to create harmony with the stars and the planets. The conscious fabric of spacetime becomes connected when their melody joins with the harmony of the singing spheres. One simply steps through the desired connection, led by the song of creation, it seems happy when it happens." Eddy shrugged his shoulders again. He glanced at the floor, and shuffled one foot.

Everyone on the flight deck savored each and every one of Eddy's words. They waited for him to continue.

"I've practiced a few short flights on Earth, but I've never flown the melodian way with so many lives on the line," said Eddy, feeling a little drained by trying to tell very smart people about something he himself didn't fully understand, almost wishing the subject would change while knowing it wouldn't, and couldn't.

Gwen was watching Eddy’s strained expression, she knew him well enough to guess what he might be thiking and worrying about. "Star Song taught you something in the middle of a battle for survival," Gwen said to him, gently. "No one here expects you to completely understand all the science behind your hasty training."

"Gwen's right," Sequoia said excitedly. "Let's quit talking and do some doing. I'll plot a course to orbit thirty-five thousand kilometers above the United States capitol."

"You're joking!" Eddy laughed out loud.

"Why not?" Sequoia asked, his voice turning serious. "This ship has its own delfinian weapons plus our biggest long range joy beam cannons."

Captain Pearl chuckled and everyone turned his way.

"I've studied Use military technology very thoroughly. Use cannot threaten us. Furthermore, we can stop them from hurting anyone else." He clapped his hands gleefully as he spoke, "I agree with Sequoia's basic idea. My only addition is that we deploy the cruisers as soon as we arrive at Planet Earth."

Sequoia had walked to the portable water barrier while the Captain was speaking, he leaned over the barrier and worked with Esther on her navigation computer terminal. Delfinian sensors projected a real time stellar view background while the computer calculated a course into the sensor data. A course they agreed to set for a position which straddled a mid-point view of the Use capitol and Earth Base One.

Eddy had seen the extraordinary magnification power of the delfinian sensors when he last rode with Captain Pearl. "How close can you see to Earth?" He asked.

Esther moved a slider bar on the control panel in front of her. The screen visually zoomed past several galaxies to a closer view of the Milky Way, Earth's home galaxy.

"Now, as I zoom in even closer," said Esther, "you should understand that our sensors have been gathering light on this course for several months. The computer has enhanced dim objects, and filtered out glowing dust, which obscures the view."

She turned on a second computer and the navigation screen zoomed past an uncountable number of stars. It stopped at a point where a bright green dot marked Sol.

"Earth's star is too small to see among all the others in this region. The green dot centers on a computed location, which is based on incomplete sensor data."

"We might as well start on the proper course," Captain Pearl said motioning for Eddy to fly the ship on the course, toward open space.

Eddy pushed down with his hand and rolled the ball until the huge spaceship was in line with the navigation screen course toward Earth. Captain Pearl pointed downward and winked. Eddy pushed the ball down and the ship accelerated into deep space drive.

"You've flown this ship in orbit and underwater, but never in deep space," said Captain Pearl. "Turn the switch near your finger controls."

Eddy turned the switch. "What does it do?" He asked.

"We're in for the long haul," said the smiling Captain. "The ship will stay on course while gradually accelerating to full speed. Minor course corrections are made as we draw closer to our destination and obtain better sensor data. Welcome aboard my friend."

"Delfinian ships are totally cool," Eddy said admiringly. "How many people do we have on board?" He asked glancing at the Captain nervously.

There are thirty-four thousand four hundred and eight delfinians plus ninety-two humans, counting the cruiser copilots and all you here."

Eddy slumped in his seat. He then slid out of it and started walking slowly around the room.

"What are we going to do when we get there?" Sean asked, fully aware that Eddy was worried about practicing his advanced flight training when so many people's lives were at risk, it suddenly dawned on him that poor Eddy would probably be practicing like this for the rest of his life. "You can do it," he added, encouragingly.

"Oh! I almost forgot!" Eddy exclaimed, stopping in the middle of a step. "I've been promoted to Earth Fleet Commander."

Eddy grinned sheepishly, also, battle hardened proud. Still, the thought of telling his friends what to do intimidated him, briefly.

"So what's the plan? Man," drawled Glafco, obviously trying to put a touch of fun in the air.

"My original idea was to request a cruiser bring fuel for Pioneer Frigate. Now that we have two cruisers, Sean should dive for the South Pole and then fly low and fast to Earth Base One. Sequoia and I dive for the Pacific, west of Costa Rica, then we fly up the Gulf of California and across the desert to my ship."

"What would you have me do, Commander?" Captain Pearl asked Eddy. He and Esther both smiled and then bowed, seriously.

Eddy answered even though he remained slightly overwhelmed at telling older and far more experienced people what to do. "You contact Admiral Castro and the Use President as soon as we arrive."

"We have a brilliant plan," Said Glafco to his friend, Eddy. Glafco's voice then took on a mixture of feigned innocence and serious challenge. "Will it take long to reach Earth?"

Eddy once again found himself flatfooted and tongue-tied by a direct question about his advanced flight training. Though this time he felt a bit more prepared to answer. His good friends had deftly maneuvered him into conversation mode, he was about to answer when Glafco stepped forward with an offer.

"May we help?" Said Glafco.

"Oh, yes! Please! Thank you!" Eddy almost shouted, then he lowered his voice. "Glafco and Gwen have actually traveled using melodian technology. Sequoia felt, heard, and saw it during the battle with Doom Cloud. Captain Pearl heard the grief song of Planet Pacifica, he rescued us and then directed capture of the Use spies using melodian song, er... technology."

Eddy realized that the almost thirty five thousand people on board were anxious to assist perhaps millions of typhoon victims who needed immediate help. He had been worrying that Use could become desperate and start militarily pirating whatever it needed, atomic bombs would then blast all over Mother Earth, this was a rush job whether he liked it or not. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the earth orbit they had discussed.

"Think of something beautiful," Eddy's voice said from every speakerphone on the ship. "Think of something beautiful about Earth and sing it. If you hear the music of the spheres, sing praise for the goodness of Planet Pacifica. Think of something good - anything - make it your melody."

Eddy heard the song of creation swelling around him as he spoke. He thought of Earth's beauty and then the poisonous pollution clouds and the pains of endless war which pioneers and delfinians would help sweep away with the reinforcements he was bringing. His inner voice grew confident and played a soft and unimposing melody that stretched across the vast well of spacetime. The songs of planets and suns rose to a crescendo of encouragement which seemed timeless yet quickly cascaded into a brief solo welcome from Sol, which was followed by a sudden silence that couldn't be silent because so many humans and delfinians were still loudly singing joyous melody.

"We're here," Eddy said as soon as the vocal melodies quieted enough for him to speak.

Everyone on the flight deck looked a tad self-conscious and shy. It was very much as if everyone aboard had caught each other singing in the shower at the top of their lungs.

Eddy glanced at the instruments, the spaceship was in geosynchronous orbit at thirty-six thousand five hundred kilometers. He then turned to his friends with a wide smile, "It isn't necessary to use your voice when you sing melody with the song of conscious creation. The simple fact is that our life is already the melody, whether we know and sing it or not."

The extra singing hadn't interfered with the work of Sequoia and Esther, who were examining all the sensors they had rigged to measure and otherwise detect melodian technology at work. They both wore interestedly perplexed expressions.

"I didn't learn anything from the sensors," Sequoia said with a surprised chuckle and a wink to mystery somewhere beyond his experience, so far.

"There was an instantaneous change in location, direction, and velocity," added Esther. She rubbed her hand across the top of her head, like a human, but with no hair to pass her fingers through.

Every human saw her and simultaneously wondered if they had just seen a primordial gesture from the time before delfinians returned to the sea, when delfinians were humanlike land mammals, before they had self-destructed in a nuclear war fought over diminishing natural resources and the chaos of their own self-induced global climate collapse. A repeat of delfinian history was about to happen on Planet Earth, unless they could scrape together a miracle and stop it.

"Talk later!" Captain Pearl fairly shouted. "Deploy the cruisers now. Bring all spaceships on earth to orbit. Sean's cruiser stays in orbit until we contact the Admiral, who I'm calling right now." He reached for the radio and waved everyone on their way. "Hurry," he called after them.

Five at first hurrying and then running humans split into two groups. Gwen went with Sean, figuring his would be the quickest route for her to go help out at Earth Base One. Glafco and Eddy dashed aboard Sequoia's ship, right behind Sequoia, who promptly slid into the pilot's seat and started the joy generators. The soft whine of the generators reached full power as the huge doors slowly opened to reveal Earth floating in her own timespace; a serenely beautiful swirling white and blue solar powered oasis of life.

Sequoia edged the heavily armed cruiser out into space, backwards. He then quickly separated fifty kilometers from the mother ship. Sean moved fifty kilometers in the other direction. The cruisers looked tense, like crouching lions ready to spring.

They all listened with bated breath as Captain Pearl's voice returned to the radio. "I wish to speak to the government of Use. My name is Captain Pearl. Do not attack this spaceship. I now request to speak with Admiral Inocente Castro."

"Greetings Captain Pearl," the Admiral's voice came over the radio; loud, clear, and relaxed. "I'm very happy that you brought your battle platform. Do you request admission to Pioneer Earth Fleet?"

"Yes Admiral," Captain Pearl quickly responded, and then saluted.

"I'm speaking from a fighter at Earth Base One," said the Admiral. "This spacecraft will soon move to low earth orbit and take a defensive position. Work with Mathew if you can, he's become our negotiating ambassador to President Bushleeg."

Sequoia didn't say anything to anybody. He rolled the cruiser out of formation with the other cruiser and the delfinian ship, then deftly flew out of a cork screw twist and into a direct dive for the Pacific, aiming two hundred kilometers west of Costa Rica, he hoped to pass over the new United Nations Building that had been built there when New York was submerged by rising seal level from the rising temperature of climate change.

Earth soon filled the forward windows. Central America rushed toward them as they plummeted downward and across the western Gulf of México. Sequoia gave a little tap to the joy generators when they crossed into the Pacific. He turned into a tight cork screw turn and dove rapidly to one hundred meters above the water.

Eddy hadn't been aware he was holding his breath until he heard his own involuntary sigh when they leveled off, blasting due south at ten thousand kilometers per hour. "You're going the wrong way," he said pointing at the compass.

Sequoia nodded and grinned. "That'll confuse anybody tracking us with radar. He then turned a giant U turn, northward, directly toward the Gulf of California, descending to fifty meters above the wave tops.

May I take over flying for a moment? Eddy asked as soon as the course change was complete.

Sequoia agreed and Eddy again turned his mind toward the dimensions of conscious timespace. The view out the windows flashed a swirling mother of pearl white with his song. Eddy visualized the box canyon where his ship was parked. He sang melody for Earth, Moon, and Sun.

Their passage through spacetime was brief, Eddy kicked the cruiser power sideways the instant the windows flashed back to sky blue and turned the controls back to Sequoia. The cruiser slid towards its parking spot like a fast boat pulling up to anchor.

Hundreds had gathered at the box canyon, they became aware of the cruiser's arrival when a boom louder than thunder rolled from it to the ground, and then rumbled on across the desert, far into the distance. Most of the people on the ground involuntarily flinched when the boom rolled by. Some jumped to hide. All eyes then turned skyward and watched the cruiser gracefully approach and then touch down next to the fighting frigate.

Pioneer Frigate had seemed big and powerful until the nearly half again larger cruiser parked next to it. The crowd of people cheered and approached slowly, with Kevin, Leona, and Mathew in the lead. Eddy burst out of the cruiser door as soon as the copilot opened it. He stopped briefly and turned back to the cruiser. "Sequoia, Glafco, Diana!" He yelled. "Introduce yourselves. I'm going to set up my ship for refueling." Then he said a quick, "Hi," to those nearest him, and ran to his spaceship.

"Glafco," Kevin called out. "It's me, Kevin. Meet my wife, Leona, and our ambassador, Mathew." Glafco had been a graduate student teacher's helper when Kevin was a first year college student. Kevin had attended some of Glafco's classes, they had become fast friends and surfing buddies.

"Howdy, Kevin. Fancy meet'n you here," said Glafco rushing to embrace them all in a hug of greeting.

Everyone in the parking area introduced themselves, which took quit awhile, considering how many people were there.

Native americans knew the story behind Sequoia's name. They knew about the trail of tears, when the Cherokee of the Carolinas, Northern Georgia, and Tennessee were marched like cattle to Oklahoma. They knew that his great ancestor, also named Sequoia, remains the one and only person in all Human History to invent a written language, and that he mysteriously disappeared soon after the Cherokee literacy rate surpassed euro-americans. The trail of tears took a long time to happen and actually began when gold was discovered in the Cherokee Nation. "There's gold in them thar hills!" Came the call. The gold rush was on. Impoverished refugees from Europe were given a gun and a bottle of whisky and told; "There's gold in them thar hills!" Though there wasn't really very much gold, Cherokee tears flowed like rain. Imagine living civilized with whisky crazed gold fever sneaking around your neighborhood.

Many Cherokees died on the trail of tears, or became deseparecidos. Disappeared ones are something quite different than the purposefully obscurantist Hollywood term, desperado, implying a desperate bandit. Though the old United States never learned to clean up its pollution, it was always quite good at making people disappear, especially people who worked for the common good. Those who noticed little details like switching desparado for deseparecido were simply isolated with the label, conspiracy theorist.

Sequoia eventually broke away from what later became a new legend known as; "the grand introduction." He went to help Eddy refuel. "You're almost finished," he said walking up to where Eddy was working.

"Not much to it," Eddy commented as he put away some of the tools he'd been using. "We should hurry these ships into orbit where they can intercept nuclear missile launches if war starts."

Sequoia waved the others to board ship, then turned back to Eddy. "The story going around here is that there is a small army of Native American Braves closing in on HUNTA. Their going to attack with the exploding cable sling gizmo."

"How many?" Eddy asked in surprise.

"Nobody seems to know the exact number, somewhere near seventy-five to one hundred men and thirty to forty of the more athletic women. They're probably in the thick of a battle right now."

"So we go help the native americans escape HUNTA, and then go into orbit," Eddy mused.

"That's the way I see it," said Sequoia. "We're all here. Let's board our ships and go."

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