What goes round...

Mr Brown was old fashioned. Broad, well-built, middle-aged and wearing old fashioned clothes. He smiled a lot, with an out-of-doors kind of weather-beaten face, big whiskers and a flat cap.

Walking along the corridor that leads to the first main hydro-garden, where the broadleaved trees and shrubs help to maintain the Beagle’s oxygen, I could hear him telling them how nearly everyone had a garden when he was a boy.

The ship was stopping briefly, to deliver some supplies to Landfall, one of Earth’s colony planets, and to collect some of the AG crystals that had been recently discovered there. None of the colonists were revived from Deep Sleep, only the essential crew, and their families.

I was a little surprised and pleased to find all the children here, the twins sitting in front of Mr Brown and the other two, the twin’s elder brother Kris, and Robanne, the daughter of the ship’s engineer, racing round the pathways.

‘Hello, Miss Octavia, how are you today?’ he greeted me, without seeming to interrupt his tales. ‘Is it time for the young masters to start their lessons?’

‘Yes, I’ve just……’

‘Emergency, Emergency,’ the alarm sounded, drowning out my reply with its ghastly, stomach churning wail.

‘This is to let those of you still awake, know what is happening,’ said the unmistakable, city accent of the Shuttle pilot, Lieutenant Aiesha Henderson. ‘That’s only you’n the Captain’s brats, Miz Carolann’, she half laughed, half snorted, ‘I’m stayin’ here on Landfall. That was always my plan. There’ll be rich pickin’s for any one with a bit of enterprise on this new world. All the crew’re now in Deep Sleep, an’ I’ve set y’on a new course.’ She paused, and then continued in a dead-pan voice: ‘You won’t be able to wake ‘em up, as y’ don’t know how; a’n even if you did, I’ve got all the antidote’. She started to chuckle: ‘Dear-oh-dear, it’s goin’ to be a long, lonely voyage for y’all but you’ll have a lovely, warm time when y’ get there. When you fly into Mizar in about a year or so.’ And her chuckle broke into laugh. Trying hard to continue through her laughter, she continued: ‘You’re now headin’ straight for the star. An’ there’s nothin’ you can do to change it. Have a good trip.’ and she gave a roar of laughter.