Chapter 162 Tales Of Home

• "So, tell me all the details!"
• I tried to remain calm, but hearing that my long-time husband, Ernst, was attacked, set off the worst scenarios I could imagine in my head. I'd been in a holo-meeting with Seven-Diamond and Dr. Lowell, the heads of the Asgard Forestry Project, when I got the alert from the transceiver implant behind my left ear. I interrupted the two scientists' dialogue with a curt `Something's happened to Ernst...' and ended the meeting. I saw the alarm in the `thal's face, and the concern in Persephone's eyes before their images vanished. I was pacing the small room in my apartment, which served as my office while I waited for the time-lag to pass, before I could get a reply from Tycho Deep on the Moon. Six minutes at this time of year...I would have gone crazy if it had been the twenty-one minute delay when Earth and Mars were at their farthest separation.
• It was five years since I'd last seen him; one year to complete sampling had been drawn out to five, thanks to interference from the Genetic Authority—they'd stalled and hindered the work of his Collectors at every turn even though they were doing nothing more than recording the genomes of nearly-extinct species. The only reason his task was now at an end was due to influential family ties in the World Court in The Hague. It didn't help that Ernst had been unable to visit the surface for nearly a century—none of the national blocs were willing to openly defy the GA—though more than a few gave his work clandestine approval.