The storm had passed and the crystal sun was shining brightly once again.

Jeff gave Béla some of Greta’s clothes to wear. Surprisingly, they fit. Béla considered herself extremely petite and was hoping the clothing Jeff offered would be too baggy to wear. Then she could have convinced him to let her run naked; at least between settlements.

They both explored the storage room, separating out what they wanted to take with them. They only needed the basics – a backpack for each of them, a bedroll for each pack, spare clothing and an ice pack for carrying perishables although this early in the spring, there wasn’t likely to be anything available that wasn’t already frozen.

Béla found a standard first aid kit, complete with gauze, white tape, snakebite medicine, hydrogen peroxide and several syringes. There were also bottles marked penicillin, aspirin and Niacin.

“What’s the Niacin for?” Béla asked, curious.

She needed to empty at least one of these vials to store some of her blood in, just in case they got separated somehow. It was her blood, after all, that was the cure for this wasting disease.

“Niacin?” Jeff asked. “Oh, that’s for radiation poisoning. It helps the body to negate its effects, somehow.”

Béla had taken Niacin before. With her, it had created a fierce sunburn effect, convincing her that radiation poisoning was what she had. The effects did wear off after awhile, though. She had wanted to know what a sunburn felt like, so Jake had sadistically fed her a handful of B3 tablets, so she’d know. Then he’d practically rolled around on the floor as she frantically stripped off her clothes and stood – naked, trembling and terrified – in the middle of the room with her arms and legs spread, carefully and painfully not touching any part of herself as she fried. She still flushed (infuriated) when she thought about that!

She didn’t really know if Niacin would cure radiation poisoning like sunburns and such, but back on Earth, there was a philosophy of medicine that believed in using minute doses of natural substances that actually created the symptoms to cure the condition one suffered from. Béla had never been sick, so she never bothered to learn more about it. In the end, it was the aspirin that got tossed. At least, B3 was a vitamin, and Béla hated drugs and the effects they had on her more than just about anything else.

After raiding Jeff’s kitchen and ice cellar for food to pack along, they looked around the horizon, deciding which way to go. Béla knew that cargo was being unloaded at the South Pole, so they decided to head that way. One of the odd things she noticed about navigating around New Eden was that, on a clear day, it was impossible to get lost; your destination was always visible on the horizon, above you. In fact, the only visible horizon occurred where the land curved up behind the clouds. If there were no clouds around, you could see halfway around the planet.

Jeff estimated that it would take four to six weeks to reach Southern, the town nearest the South Pole Depot. Béla had the misfortune of landing nearer Northern than Southern when she’d taken her morning sojourn a little too far from the great ship, and they were going to have to cross the equator to reach their destination.

They had seven weeks until the southern crystal sun began shining, transmitting sunlight into New Eden. If they arrived later than that, Béla would have to wait two more months until the northern crystal sun was in shadow, while traveling halfway around New Eden to Northern in order to get transportation back to the great ship and her sisters.

“I remember, in my studies, there was a rail system here,” Béla was saying as they traveled. “Why haven’t we seen any tracks? They should be all over the place.”

“They are,” Jeff replied. “We just haven’t walked far enough.”

He pointed up to their destination for the day – a small town with a visible rail line running through it. There was smoke coming from what looked like the Town Square. It was blowing away from them.

“We should be there in a couple of hours,” Jeff continued, “It’s only seven or eight kilometers.”
It looked close enough to Béla for her to just hop over into it. She craned her neck to look higher. Further away, the detail of the landscape disappeared into haze. At this time of the year, there was too much moisture in the air to see more than twenty miles or so. There were only two towns she could see. They both seemed to be on fire.

“What are they burning?” she asked, not certain she wanted to know.

Jeff looked up at the town. She could feel in his mind that he was upset about where the smoke was coming from. He knew the layout of New Hope and there was no reason for a fire to be where it was.

Béla withdrew from his mind as the walked on, and kept her thoughts to herself.