It was late in the day when Colin came home for dinner. He felt bad about having to leave Genevieve alone all day. He’d planned to come back during lunch, but that had evaporated when an emergency Holo-Connect with the Demarcation Council and Director Banes had been called. Colin and the four heads of his team had gathered in the conference room and sat across the table from the holographic images of their director and the five commodores that made up the council.

The news had been disturbing. The food crisis was becoming increasingly dire. There had been several more instances of food transports being hijacked, and the council was now immersed in the unsavory task of prioritizing where the remainder of the foreseeable food supplies would go. The strain of having to decide who should starve to death first lined everyone’s faces, and Colin couldn’t help feeling profoundly responsible for it. He and his team were humanity’s last hope.

“We’ve spent more than the usual resources on Garrulus Four already. Don’t you think it’s time we deem it a failure and move on?” Commodore Lindin had asked him, pinning Colin with her small round eyes. That combined with her beaked nose had always reminded Colin of birds.

“Commodore, I think that would be a mistake,” Colin said. “Though I don’t have any new data to show you, we have made progress here, and I strongly feel that a breakthrough is imminent. It’s not enough, I know—I know that—but moving to a new planet means starting over completely.”

Colin’s team had shifted uncomfortably in their chairs beside him. All four of them had also voiced their opinions about moving on. But though Colin knew moral was low, foremost in his mind as the number of people who would die while they started from scratch. The current choices of terrestrial planets available to them were far less ideal than this one. Garrulus Four at least had liquid water and some plant life in addition to a breathable atmosphere. At the moment, space teams were desperately exploring the far reaches of the multiverse for other options. But Colin well knew that that was like trying to find a pebble in sack of grain.

Commodore Lindin exchanged looks with the others on the council, and they gave her slight, grudging nods. “Five more days is all we can spare,” she said.

“That’s not enough—”

“Dr. Affeter, that’s all we can give you,” she said firmly. “The decision has been made. Five days and then your team moves on to the next potential planet on the list.”

What the hell do they expect my team to accomplish in five days? Colin had shifted his gaze to Director Banes then, but he’d given Colin an almost imperceptible shake of his head. Banes was not going to step in and back him up on this one. So Colin had settled for clenching his fists in his lap and saying, “Acknowledged.” The sting of defeat had made the word taste bitter on his lips. The transmission had ended then and the holographic images of the council and director blinked out of sight.

As an example to the others, Colin tried to put his pride and emotions aside during the brainstorming session that followed. Logically, he knew the council’s decision was not a reflection of their confidence in him. What their decision really meant was that the food crisis was far more extreme than anyone knew. All the more reason to give us additional time.

But there was nothing he could do, they were employees of the government. And though the council, and Director Banes, usually deferred to Colin’s expertise, they ultimately held the power to nix a project.

As logical and stoic as Colin tried to be, the session with the department heads had not gone much better. After an additional hour of reviewing and scrutinizing the latest research results, no one had any further solutions to volunteer. However, there’d been more than one suggestion that they contact Director Banes and ask for immediate relocation to the next planet. That had made Colin grit his teeth in anger. Rather than give in, he’d closed the meeting with a request that they take the rest of the day to come up with some kind of gambit for the remaining time and discuss it in the morning via comm.

At the end of the day, before leaving his lab, he’d gone into the seedling room to review the progress of the latest crop he’d planted. They hadn’t even broken through the soil yet and he already knew they were worthless. Computer analysis had projected that the genetic mutations would become visible only a few short days after they sprouted.

He sighed out his frustration and stood looking at the expanse of square receptacles of earth, hands on his hips. There wasn’t time to splice and grow a new batch in the next five days. He had no choice but to keep them and try to do something to correct their growth, even if they would be sucking up valuable resources. The disappointment stabbed deep, and the earlier sting of bitterness returned. But this time, he recognized that the uncomfortable sensation of defeat was coming to him not from the council or from his colleagues, but from his frustration with the planet.

This crop had been his latest and most hopeful splice of native plants with the Eardian crops they wished to grow. He had spent over a month working on it before moving forward with developing and planting the actual seeds. Yes, these were going to be yet another failure. That was how it was in research though. But Colin had learned long ago in his career that success lay not in the ability to conduct tedious, time-consuming trials, but in the ruthless optimism that drove him toward a solution. He’d always loved the rush of victory at the end. The feeling of distant hope transforming into concrete reality. That’s what had made him not only love his job, but also become one of the best at it.

Worry about the crops plagued Colin as he returned to the housing unit and were joined by new ones as it came into sight. Would Genevieve still be angry? Would she still be there? Would his fantasy of her waiting for him with a hot meal come true? But when he walked in the front door, he was taken aback by the sight of her lying on the couch. Panic stirred uncomfortably in his chest, and old, painful memories flared in bright flashes from the recesses of his mind. He tried to squash them by reminding himself that Genevieve was not Maddy.

“Hello. Genevieve?” he said, setting the portable terminal he carried on the kitchen table. “How did your day go?”

No answer.

Fear began to prickle on the back of his neck. Is she sleeping? He moved forward quietly across the room and looked down at her. Her eyes were closed, thick black lashes fanning out across her smooth golden cheeks. Her dark hair was scattered haphazardly around her. For a moment, what he saw was overlapped by a similar, darker memory. The one where Maddy never woke up. But no, this wasn’t the same. He tried to get a hold of himself and focus on what was really before him. Yes, it was Genevieve, not Maddy, and he now detected a tension around the corners of her eyes and mouth that betrayed the fact that she was indeed alive and awake.

He reached out and touched her shoulder. “Genevieve—”

She was so fast, he didn’t even see her move, just felt the sting of a slap on the back of his hand. “Don’t touch me!”

The shock of the pain made him take two steps back. “Ow! Sorry! I wasn’t sure if you were awake.”

She rose from the couch, uncoiling like some kind of exotic reptile: graceful and lethal at the same time. The unwavering glare she gave him added to the impression, and he found it interesting how her temper had the ability to make her almost vibrate energy. It seemed to sparkle from her eyes like citrine, as if the brown had been taken over by the gold center he’d noticed earlier.

“I’m exactly the way you left me. No, I’m worse. I am now starving and dehydrated because you neglected to provide me with food or drink.” She annunciated the last few words as though he were an idiot.

He frowned. “Why didn’t you make yourself something to eat? There’s plenty of food.” That was likely the last time he’d ever use the word plenty with food, he thought wryly.

“Really? Where? What food? I couldn’t find anything.” She spread her hands out and gestured as though she were in a vast barren desert.

“In the synthesizer,” he said. But her blank look left him stunned. Did she not know what a food synthesizer was? How was that possible?

“What in the Ganges name is a synthesizer?”

He didn’t know what the heck a Ganges was, but he let that go for now. She had to be putting him on. Everyone in the known multiverse knew what they were. But still, she seemed sincere. So, just to humor her, he walked into the kitchen and pointed at the flat black square in the wall. “It’s this unit right here.” He tapped at its surface and the screen lit up, making the food options and heating functions more visible. He turned to look at her and found that, for some reason, his help only seemed to frustrate her more.

She glared at him again as she came closer to inspect the unit. Her cheeks were flushed a light pink and her shapely chest was puffed up. “I’ve never seen one of those stupid things before. I have no idea how to use it!” And suddenly, she was crying. Big glistening tears welled up and began to trickle down the smooth skin of her cheeks.

Anger he was able to handle just fine, but tears? What male knew how to handle those? They transformed him into a bumbling fool, as always, causing painful memories of his last relationship surface again. “Hey. Hey, it’s okay. I’m sure you’re just tired.” He reached out to touch her shoulder in reassurance then thought better of it. “Let me show you how to use it. I’ll get you something to eat right now.” He hoped food would make everything better. That’s what usually worked for him.

He led her through the steps to bring up the meal options, then showed her how to select what she wanted and get it started processing. A few minutes later the unit beeped, and he opened the door and pulled out a steaming plate containing a meat and vegetable pie. Even though he, like everyone else, was running low on meat options—on natural food options all together, actually—he’d selected the dish specifically for her. She needed a good hearty meal after the journey she’d been through. He didn’t like dealing with trader Will all that much, and he couldn’t imagine what it had been like spending months on a ship that looked like it should have been decommissioned a century ago.

He pulled the plate from the synthesizer and held it out to her, but she just stared at it, eyes wide with amazement. He noted with relief that her tears were gone now, vanished as quickly as they’d erupted. She brushed by him, ignoring the food, to examine the synthesizer. “It conjures food out of thin air? What sort of magic is this?” She peered inside then lightly stroked the panel with her fingertips.

“Not exactly out of thin air. It’s just science, not magic.” He walked over to set her plate on the table, then pulled utensils out of a drawer. “Here, have a seat,” he motioned with his head and moved to set the items down on the table.

Genevieve went and sat at the table. “But where does the food come from?”

She gazed at him like a student eager to learn how he’d unlocked the mysteries of the multiverse, and he couldn’t help chuckling. “How is it there are no food synthesizers where you come from? I can’t believe you’ve never seen one before.”

No answer. She’d picked up the fork and was poking carefully at the meat pie. Either she was ignoring him, or she was truly engrossed in her first careful sampling of the food. She wrinkled her slim nose as she lifted a tiny bite to her lips and tasted it. But she swallowed and dug for another bite, which was a good sign.

His lips curved in a small smile, and he went back to the wall unit to call up his own meal. “A fourth of the ingredients to make food come from naturally grown or raised sources,” he explained. “From there, the organic materials can be magnified to a certain point with synthesizer technology. It’s like stretching food,” he explained. “All the ingredients are stored in tanks behind that panel there.” He pointed, and she gazed in that direction with interest. “I’m not entirely sure how they work, but the basic principle behind them is that the organic materials sort of flesh out the non-natural scaffolding to create a finished food product. They’re good for missions like this, and are helping to solve some of the food crisis. But synthesizing food in this way is expensive and carries only a fraction of the nutritional content of real food.”

A long-term diet consisting primarily of synthetic food let to malnutrition and some very complicated side effects. But at the moment, full bellies were keeping the peace. Without synthesizers there would be chaos and a large chunk of the existing civilizations would have starved by now.

For some reason, no one had been able, as of yet, to simply mimic the components of living materials and recreate them. The government had been funding research for years to solve that mystery. On Eardia, there was a huge research facility with an army of scientists dedicated to solving that one single task. But no matter how many resources were thrown at it, they hadn’t yet been able to compose natural ingredients from scratch elements in the lab. Once they did succeed, it meant Colin and the rest of his team would be out of a job. Who would need to grow plants or raise animals once they were able to create food whenever they wanted from basic elements?

When his meal was ready, he pulled it from the unit and went to sit with Genevieve at the table. It had been a long time since he’d had company while he ate, especially female company. Normally, he worked on the portable terminal during meals, hating to lose a single second of progress. And now he found himself in the rusty position of having to make conversation. He glanced at her and smiled at the way she shoveled large bites of food through her berry-pink lips. Her long, dark hair was unkempt from lying on the couch, and she now had crumbs at the corners of her mouth. But despite that, she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. A strange, fuzzy warmth filled his chest, and he had the sensation of ... coming home.

“So, I’m really interested in hearing about the planet you come from,” he said.

He waited while she chewed and then swallowed the large mouthful. She flicked her brown gaze up at him then back down at her plate. “An island. It’s really remote. I’m sure you’ve never heard of it,” she said dismissively then stuffed another large forkful of food into her mouth.

“Ah, then you’re not from Eardia.” There were no islands on his home planet. That would require oceans, which they didn’t have.

“No,” she said around the food in her mouth, looking down at the dish.

He mentally flipped through his knowledge of planets, and frowned. There were a few with oceans, but none of them were inhabited because of the dangers they held. Or were they? He’d heard rumors of rogue colonies who somehow survived in rough conditions. Squatters who wanted to live outside of the network. Had she come from one of those?

He waited for her to say more, but she just continued with her meal. He wasn’t dumb, he could tell when someone didn’t want to talk about something. She was probably hesitant to tell him because it might get her or someone she cared about in trouble. He tried a different question. “What made you get on the trader’s ship?”

She shrugged a petite shoulder. “I needed a change.”

He waited for more information, but it looked like that was all he was going to get. Okay. Clearly she wanted to start with a blank slate. She wouldn’t be the first woman to have that goal.

“All right. Well, why don’t you tell me what kind of daily tasks you normally did back home. Even if it isn’t anything that would technically fall under skills, I’m sure there’s some kind of work you could do. I’ll need to know so that we can put together the proper schedule for you.”

She frowned at him. “I don’t work.” The last word was said with as much disdain as could be packed into one syllable.

Not this again. “You do now.”

She shook her head. “No. I don’t.”

Their eyes locked in a silent battle. “This planet is like any other planet,” he explained in a firm tone, “including wherever it is you come from. If you don’t work then you don’t earn any of society’s benefits. That includes food.”

She pouted. But before she dropped her eyes from his, he detected worry in them, so he knew he’d made his point. Obviously, the memory of her earlier empty stomach was helping to reduce her stubbornness. The thought helped to reduce his guilt. Sometimes, stubborn people had to learn the hard way.

“You could try to find something in town. With the recent added headcount, the change in the community will create new job opportunities.” He took a bite of food. “I’m sure there will be something.”

She remained silent. And, having finished her food, she was still.

He knew better than to push things. It would be wiser to give her time to just absorb what he’d said. As he ate, he glanced at her, noticing the flush blooming around her collar bone and at the base of her neck. It was almost as if he could see her temper simmering beneath the surface like lava, and he had no wish to make it explode into a rage. He’d been there himself on more than one occasion.

Why couldn’t she see sense? How had she earned her way in life prior to now? Did she expect to receive everything for free? He hated the distasteful thoughts that crossed his mind. There were women who used their looks as a bargaining chip, and men who were willing to provide for them. Was that what she’d been doing all this time? And how she’d come by the insane notion that she’d never have to work? So far, that theory didn’t fit, however. She’d yet to smile at him, much less flirt. And she’d refused to share the bed with him last night, which was crazy because the couch was hard as a rock.

She was being insanely obtuse so far. The annoying thing was that, though her stubbornness was irritating, he could admire the strength of will that lay beneath it. He hoped badly that her attitude was just an instinctive reaction borne from fear.

Regardless, she didn’t know who she was dealing with if she thought that would work on him. He had an iron will himself. It was what had driven him to be one of the leading scientists in his field. Where others quit, he refused to give up. Though it was a quality that also had a downside, it had served him well. And it was one of the reasons the government had entrusted him with this key project now.

Colin rose, dropped his dish on the growing pile next to the sink, then walked over to the food synthesizer where he typed in the lock code. “Okay. Well, I need to go back to work for a while.”

“Again?” Her fine brows scrunched together and made a fine vertical line between them.

“Yes. We’re under a tight deadline and I need to spend as much time as I can trying to make some progress.” All his worries returned as he said it, along with some new ones. What was he going to do with Genevieve after the five days were up? Would she put up a fight at having to move to another planet along with him? Should he just tell her and get it over with? She’d just gotten here. He wasn’t one to be bothered by anger. That’s not what worried him. As the team leader, emotions were something he was often in the position of handling. But he just didn’t need anything more to deal with right now. He had to focus. And it was probably better not to worry her about another impending change just yet.

He sighed heavily and ran a hand through his hair, feeling suddenly weary. “Look, I have sympathy for what you’re going through. But I’m serious about how things work on this planet. I already gave you dinner. But if you want to earn breakfast, I’m going to need to see some evidence of you having done something around here by the time I get back.”

She sniffed at him, and folded her arms across her chest.

“I’m sorry, but I just locked the food synthesizer. Take the evening to think over how you’re going to contribute. I’m happy to return you to the trader if that’s what you want. But in the meantime, if you want to earn food for the morning, I suggest you think about what you’ll commit to doing.”

Unfortunately, his words catalyzed her temper instead of soothing it. She sprang up from her chair and stalked closer to yell directly in his face. “But I don’t know how to do any of the things you want me to do! And now you’re just going to go off again and leave me here trapped in this tiny box! You want me to do something? Fine! I’ll work on being bored to death. Oh wait, I already did that all day today!”

For a moment, Colin’s heart stopped. Not because of the force of her anger, but because of how it supercharged her beauty. It raged over him with the power of a supernova, the passion beneath it holding him pinned in fascination. All at once, he could envision her beneath him moaning his name. He had the mad urge to kiss her, to plant his lips on hers and work her mouth with his tongue until he diverted the radiant energy of her words into lust.

But he held himself in check and walked stiffly to the door. It whooshed open, and the bright sunlight of the double suns hit Genevieve’s face, making her squint. “There’s no need to be bored. There’s more than plenty to be done around here. I just gave you a choice, so it’s up to you. Working is part of the contract you signed with the trader, I have a copy of it.”

He started to leave. But then, as inspiration struck him, he called back over his shoulder. “In case you change your mind, someone really needs to pick this place up. It’s a mess. Even where you come from, I’m sure you know how to clean. Why don’t you start there?”

After the door slid shut behind him, he wasn’t surprised to hear her shriek of outrage and the sound of something heavy thumping against it. But instead of annoyance, amusement made him curve his lips and chuckle softly.