207 lines
11 KiB
Plaintext
207 lines
11 KiB
Plaintext
From: System Account <tty994@com2.pri.sv14417>
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To: sam <sam@recoveryinstitute.org>
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Delivered-To: sam <sam@l1.luna.recoveryinstitute.org>
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Received: from relay4.qec2.rs001.l4.earthsys.gov
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by mta3.recoveryinstitute.org
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with ESMTPS id x124so177123a067 for <sam@recoveryinstitute.org>
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Received: from relay1.qec7.ganymede.earthsys.gov
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by relay4.qec2.rs001.l4.earthsys.gov
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Received: from qec4.helio.earthsys.gov
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by relay1.qec7.ganymede.earthsys.gov
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Received: from qec.sv14417
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by qec4.helio.earthsys.gov
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Date-Local: 19 Mar 2419 06:54:32 +0000
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Date: 02 Sep 2421 05:30:32 +0000
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Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf8"
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Subject: Made it...
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God, Sam, how I wish you were here. Maybe you could help me. You were
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always the best of company.
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None of us ever really expected to find anything complicated. Proks,
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maybe, if we were very lucky. More likely just smelly slurry that
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might have been something someday if we hadn't showed up first. But
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this? No. Never in a million years. Certainly not in twenty-three.
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Sorry. I know I'm not making sense out of this. I'll try again. They
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probably already have some of it from SCARS, but let me tell it to you
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my own way.
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What I heard, the midcourse corrections had us coming into the system
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weird. Not so weird we couldn't make orbit, but enough that we had to
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correct so the landing boats could reach Site One and back. Partway
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through the correction, we hit something. Or something hit us - I
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talked with one of the pilots before he died, he told me they didn't
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catch it on radar and that shouldn't have been possible, not with the
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damage it did. Had the idea it must've been directed, somehow. I don't
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know if that makes sense, but either way, it holed us.
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Holed us bad, and with the thrusters still firing. If they hadn't
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been, the fuel system would've been evacuated - we might've stayed
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up. But the blast gave us a vector we couldn't overcome on OMS thrust,
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and of course we'd exhausted the primaries. It wasn't a surprise when
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we hit the atmosphere. The surprise was that anyone walked away from
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the impact site. Just under three hundred of us. Doesn't sound like
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much of a miracle, but believe me, we were happy to take it until a
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better one came along. Wasn't even that bad a landing site, for all we
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didn't get to choose much - rolling sandy plains, some large body of
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water within eyeshot, maybe an hour's leisurely walk. We could do
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something with the place, once we got our feet under us.
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We didn't worry about the sickness at first. Barely even noticed it -
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most of us were more or less beat up, and not everyone had made it to
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a crash couch in time. We were all working thirty-hour days between
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broken bones and soft tissue trauma, inventorying what we had left by
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way of supplies, getting the worst toxic leaks from the wreck under
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control, and trying to jury-rig enough of a hab to keep the weather
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off - we hit smack in the northern temperate zone, and the climate
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isn't too bad, but about three hours out of every day we get storms
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you wouldn't believe. Fever, lower back myalgia, mild lower GI
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distress? We had two reactors still up, enough surplus power to run
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the handful of heads left with intact sequestration systems. Plenty of
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paracetamol and neoprox. We had so many problems trying to kill us, we
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were just glad this one wasn't.
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Then, all of a sudden, it was. Day Six, the sepsis syndrome caught us
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completely by surprise. Thirty-four dead in less than half one of
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Ross's long bright days - onset to lethality in minutes, the medics
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had never seen anything like it. The ones who died had been feeling
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worst, but we all had it by then, and still didn't know what it
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was. We found what tools we could for our one surviving biochemist,
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and she set to work trying to isolate the causative agent - with a lot
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of luck, maybe she'd figure out how to treat it before it killed us
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all.
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Probably would've been easier if she hadn't been hurting too badly by
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then to sit up. But she got far enough for us to pick up when she had
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to leave off. Light microscopy doesn't give you much structural
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detail, next to nothing about life processes, but we could see well
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enough what it looked like: something like an amoeba, sort of
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polymorphic that way, but with a trophism like nothing we'd ever seen
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and flagella it used like a mosquito uses its proboscis. We fed it
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whole blood and watched it suck the cytoplasm clean out of two dozen
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erythrocytes at once. Leukocytes it just *absorbed*, we're still not
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sure how - they'd hit the cell membrane and just, I don't know, just
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melt into the thing. And then it'd divide, and both daughters would do
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it all over again. We never saw the whole cycle take more than a
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minute.
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We had plenty of antiparasitics, of course - med bay wasn't what you'd
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call intact, but the starboard-aft hold had most of the backup supply,
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and enough came through the crash to supply we who were left for a
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long time. Nothing we had touched them, though. Not even the really
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exotic stuff that hadn't been approved for human use yet, and we just
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brought because who knew what we'd run into? They didn't even seem to
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notice. We weren't equipped any more for blood filtering or that kind
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of complex intervention, and supportive care was the best we could do
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- try to keep the fever down with ice packs and neoprox, keep the
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kidneys and liver and heart and lungs going, and hope some of us would
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start to pull out of it before the last of us up and about weren't up
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and about any more.
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I don't really know what happened after I went down. I think it was
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Day Ten? Eleven? There weren't many of us still up by that point. Just
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over a hundred had died, I think. One thing, we'd just gotten Eve
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shifted to a new pallet and I was trying to clean up the mess of the
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old one and keep her from getting too hot, both at the same time, and
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next thing, I was here, flat on my back in what's left of Main
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Control. Nine days gone, just like that. I didn't even know we'd
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gotten any power back on in here - I don't think we had, when I went
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down. Don't know why I'm here, either. We saw enough delirium before I
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went down, there may not even be a 'why'.
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I don't feel bad at all. I can see I've changed; whoever put me here
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put me in a gown first, and there's not as much of me under it as
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there would've been a couple weeks ago. It fell right off my neck when
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I tried to stand up. That didn't go well. I think I should be hungry,
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but I feel full, like I just ate. I wish I knew if anyone else was
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still here. I've been awake a few hours, I think, but I haven't heard
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anyone. I don't hurt, though, and I'm not burning up. Right now I'm
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still mostly okay with that.
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I really hope someone else is still here. I don't want to be alone
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like this.
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Getting up in the chair at the sender console was hard, but I did it,
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and I can still use a keyboard well enough. I thought it was important
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to try to let someone back home know what happened. I don't know if
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the followup expeditions launched on schedule, I don't remember
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hearing before and not much of the mission log made it through the
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crash. If they did -
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I was going to say, tell them to make turnover early and go anywhere
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else. Even back home would be better than this place, with its barren
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vistas empty of vegetation, its anonymous sea we never even found the
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time to try to name or go and see up close. Smeared along half a mile
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an arrowhead stain of ship debris, at its apex a shallow crater
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centered on the shattered remains of all our hopes and dreams, and in
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a nearby shanty village, rows of corpses - decaying? mummified? Who
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knows if anything else can eat us here? - whom no one had time or
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strength to bury. Go anywhere else but this ball of death and deceit
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whirling around its lonely star. There is nothing for you here.
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...is what I was *going* to say. But - really, I don't know. As I sit
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here I can feel my strength returning to me, and with it grows the
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conviction that it really isn't bad here. Look at what this planet's
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done to me already! - and yet I survive. I still remember myself. And
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soon I'll be up and about again, able to see what may be seen and do
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what need be done. Yes: many of us died. People I knew. Friends I
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remember and mean never to forget. No few closer than friends - spend
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so many years closed up with only a thousand or so people, sooner or
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later those with whom you were recede in memory, making room for those
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with whom you *are*.
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Not you, Sam. I've never felt that way about you. How I wish you were
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here! But maybe you will be. If the third expedition hasn't launched
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yet. I know we talked about it. Well - fought about it. I've never
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stopped regretting that, and I hope while I've been gone you might
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have come to understand why I had to go. Maybe we could see one
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another again. I would like that very much. I think you could help
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me. And you were always the best of company.
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But what worse can this planet do to me than it has already done? What
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worse can it do to any of us who still survive? We came here not
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knowing what we faced - only that it could hardly be worse than what
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we left behind. And even still I feel that very strongly to be
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true. We could never be together there, Sam. Here, who'd be to stop
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us?
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I know it sounds frightening, what has happened to me. It *was*
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frightening. It was scary and painful and frequently disgusting, and
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that's just what I remember! But I don't hurt any more. I'm not sick
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any more. And I'm not afraid any more. You don't have to be,
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either. It's really not that bad - the body never remembers pain, you
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know. I remember that I hurt, but I don't remember *hurting*. Does
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that make sense?
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You can come here. Join the third expedition and come find me
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here. Come sooner, if you can. There might be a research ship. I miss
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you, and I hope you miss me. We can be together here, and though I'm
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feeling much stronger now, I still wish you were here to help me. I
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still can't hear anyone, and I don't want to think I'm alone here. Not
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forever, anyway. Besides - once I get more of my strength back, make
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up for what I've lost in the last little while, I think you might like
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seeing me. I think I do. And I'm sure I want to be close to you again.
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Well. That's enough for now, I think. I'm sure I'll have more to say
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later, but once you get this you'll know I'm still alive, and even
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though we couldn't send our landing report, there's really no reason
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not to send the followup expeditions. Not really. Some won't make it,
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but enough will. And if we weren't going to take that kind of chance,
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why come out here at all?
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I'm going to send this, with all the power the transmitter will
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take. It'll get to you eventually. Then I'm going to try to stand up
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again. I think I can manage it, now. It'd be easier if I still had
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legs, I suppose. But four limbs shouldn't be *that* much harder to
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manage than two, and I'm still enough of a biologist to remember how
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muscular hydrostats work. I think it's just a matter of figuring out
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which impulses go where...oh well. By the time you're here, I should
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be all finished embarrassing myself with them, I hope.
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I never stopped loving you, Sam. Please don't have stayed angry with
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me. I hope we'll see each other again. In the meantime, I'll see if
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anyone else is still alive. And with whoever's left, I'll start
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preparing for those who may come after us. By the time they get here,
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if they do, we'll be ready to make our new settlers a home.
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