In the meantime, they had a roof over their heads and protection from the wild.
They stepped off the steel entry portico of the hospital and out from under the steel roof. It was dusk, and it would be dark soon. There was a bit of a crowd around the portico, all taking the evening air of their new planet.
Off to the west, the other direction from the ocean, the sky was a blaze of red and orange, with bars of purple cloud.
“Oh, how pretty,” Peggy said.
“Just another day in Paradise,” Matt said.
“Oh, you,” Peggy said, punching him in the arm.
“It’s true, though. With no seasons, this is pretty much how it’s going to be all year ‘round.”
“Well, that’s fine by me. It’s beautiful.”
Between the emergency lights in the rooms and under the portico, it was light near the hospital, but it got dark quickly as one moved farther away. Peggy was in the light, but moving out toward the darker area.
“Don’t stray out of the light, Peg.”
“Oh, we’re fine, Matt.”
“Oh, yeah. Look again.”
Peggy looked out across the dark grassland, and about a hundred yards distant a pair of large green eyes glowed as they caught the lights behind her.
“Oh, shit.”
Peggy scampered back toward the portico.
“Actually, staying here is a real good idea, I think.”
“Yeah,” Matt said. “We’re going to have to let them know this isn’t where they want to be. Once the town builds out, it will be OK, I think. They’re not going to want to mess with a large population of people. For now, though, you don’t want to be a single target.”
“What about all these other people?”
“I think I can fix that.”
Matt cupped his hands around his mouth.
“TIGER! IN THE GRASS.”
Some people looked out over the grassland, saw those eyes, then sprinted for the building. Others headed back without looking. But everybody pulled back much closer to the hospital, and Matt saw the eyes disappear as the big cat turned and wandered off.
“There he goes,” Matt said. “He doesn’t want to tangle with all of us, or to come out into the light. He was just looking for easy pickings.”
He turned and looked up at the top of the building. There was a rifleman up there, silhouetted against the darkening sky, wearing IR goggles.
“One of the building lookouts would probably have gotten him anyway, before he actually took anybody. But let that be a lesson to be careful after dark.”
“Geez. Just from the eyes, that thing looked like it was the size of a pony,” Amy Jasic said.
“For a tiger?” Matt asked. “That’s not far off, actually.”
“Why would Colony Headquarters bring something like that here anyway?” Peggy asked.
“Because without any predators, the deer population will overrun the place,” James Thompson said.
“Yup,” Matt said. “They tried to balance the ecology. We’ll have to see how well they did over time.”
“Well, I think it was exciting to see,” Dwayne Hennessey said.
“You would,” Gary Rockham said.
“Well, to see it from over here, anyway. Why not?”
“Fair enough. It is a good reminder, though. It’s a wild planet, not suburban Raleigh-Durham.”
They went back upstairs and, with it dark now and the emergency lights on low, they simply went to bed. They had been up a couple hours longer than local time since they had woken up before dawn on the prairie in Texas that morning. That plus the longer day on Arcadia – about twenty-five hours – meant they had been up for almost seventeen hours.
With all the emotion and excitement of the day, they were all pretty beat.
“Well, we’re back in a bed,” Matt said. “That’s some progress.”
“Yeah,” Peggy agreed. “Maybe tomorrow we’ll get sheets for it.”
“No telling.”
Setting Up Camp
The emergency lights kicked up to a higher level about an hour before dawn. Matt Jasic was already awake, staring up at the bottom of the bunk above them, listening to Peggy snore softly in his arms.
She mewed in protest and looked across to the windows.
“So early? It’s still dark.”
“All of the light is for working. With no axial tilt, it’s only light half the day all year long.”
At that point, the display projector came on, lighting the room further. The legend ‘Work Assignments’ was on the screen.
Matt disentangled himself from Peggy and swung over the edge of the second-level bunk, then lowered himself to the floor. With no sheets or blankets yet issued, he was still in the onesie coverall he had put on that last night in Texas. He slipped on his booties, then padded over to the display.
Others in the room were getting up now. Some were opening their supply boxes and getting breakfast. A couple had slipped down the hall to the portable toilets by the elevators.
Matt entered his name for his assignment and checked out his work crew. James came up alongside.
“What have we got?”
“Building houses. Like we figured.”
MingWei was on Matt’s other side.
“And for us?” he asked.
“The barns. Getting the animals out of harnesses and refreshing their food supply.”
MingWei nodded.
“What all else is going on today?” James asked.
Matt was scrolling down the screen, scanning work assignments.
“There’s a whole bunch of guys assigned to the powerplant. I guess the transporter placed the inbound and outbound water pipes from the ocean right up to the plant. They need to get those hooked up before they can dial up the power. And they’re going to be running temporary power, water, and sewer lines to the permanent buildings to get them up and running.”
He scrolled further down.
“Bunch of guys here stringing wire on the fences, so we can let the
