Page 14 of Atlas: Colony: Nyx #5(Intergalactic Dating Agency)
FOURTEEN
The computer chimed, waking Peri from her doze. She'd set the volume to its highest level, so she'd hear if anything went wrong. This chime sounded particularly smug, or maybe she was imagining it. Not even the NASA computers at home had ever sounded quite that satisfied.
This computer had reason to be, though. While she'd slept, it had mapped out the comet's course through the Altan System, zipping between the planets until it skimmed the system's star, before heading back out into the darkest, furthest reaches of the system from where it had come, vanishing from the sensors until it deigned to return, which might be millennia or more.
She should probably tell Atlas about this. Well, after she took a screenshot, as she was pretty sure this counted as something important.
Back home, she would have taken things a step further, instructing the computer to update the orbital map as new data came in, every twelve hours or so, and to make sure all the instruments continued to track its course, whether it changed or not. Atlas hadn't asked her to do that, but...oh, screw it. She'd done this so many times back home, she didn't even need to consult the manual. A matter of moments, and it was done. Now the observatory could record everything the comet did in maximum detail, even when she was asleep. The whole place could be run by a drunk or hungover intern. Or a weird giant in a space suit.
And she could go back to Star Farm for fresh underwear.
After she told Atlas.
Who was either in the orchard or his quarters, he'd said. Places he'd vaguely pointed to, but hadn't actually shown her. Time to explore the place, then.
The first mystery door was already open, with trees visible through it. The orchard, Peri presumed, as she headed inside.
"Good girl. Can you catch this one, too?" Atlas crooned from somewhere through the trees.
Trees that looked far too big for a Colony that had only existed for a year. These were mature apple trees, with actual golden fruit hanging from the boughs. Peri reached out to touch one, to check if it was real. The solid weight of the apple in her hand, the roughness of the bark, even the soft down on the underside of the cool leaves felt unmistakably real. She hadn't tasted an apple since she left Earth, and these appeared absolutely perfect. All she had to do was twist and she'd have one in her hand. Just one bite...
She'd never understood the bible stories about Eve before, but then Peri had never known the temptation a single apple could hold. A single alien apple, as this apple and the tree it was attached to hadn't been part of the cargo manifest for the Genesis , so it must have come on the Titan colony ship. An alien apple that could be poisonous, for all she knew, though it looked like a normal, golden apple. It did seem to glitter in the artificial lighting, which could just be a trick of the light, or it could signify that the apple was nothing like its Earth cousins.
Besides, she wasn't here to steal apples. She was here to tell Atlas about the comet's orbit, before heading down to Star Farm.
Peri reluctantly released the apple and clasped her hands behind her back, the better to resist temptation. A moment later, she folded her arms across her chest instead, wishing she'd thought to bring her borrowed coat, instead of leaving it draped over the desk chair.
She shouldn't need it, she scolded herself. If she could just find Atlas...
"Oh, that was a brilliant catch!"
Something fast arrowed overhead, blazing white in the overhead lights, so she had to squint to make it out. Some sort of large bird? No, it couldn't be. If there were birds in here, they would definitely have gotten to the apples. Unless they really were the poison kind...
"You're such a good girl. Want another one?"
She could see something white between the trees now. White, or sort of silvery, catching the light, all right, but definitely bigger than whatever she thought she'd glimpsed overhead. In fact, it looked like...
OH.
It looked like a marble statue of one of the Greco-Roman gods, with muscles all the way down, wearing nothing but a scrap of shiny black fabric like some sort of loincloth, which barely covered an absolute peach of a butt and definitely didn't conceal the sizeable bulge in front.
"Can you catch two?" Atlas the statue rumbled.
Peri froze. This was what he'd been hiding under that space suit? Why? Because one look at him made women's underwear evaporate? If she'd been wearing any in the first place...as it was, she definitely felt decidedly damp down there. Good thing she hadn't abandoned her dress for one of the uniform coveralls in the cupboard. Instead, she pressed her aching thighs together and wished...
Sharp claws dug into her shoulder, and she heard a ripping sound. Her eyes shot open, but she was already too late to catch the orange and white flying creature now hovering above her head, with the faux fur collar of her dress clutched in its talons. The creature chirped cheerfully and flew back to Atlas.
Who was now looking right at her.
Busted.
"Shouldn't you be at the computer?" he asked.
"I was, but I was following the instructions in the manual to map out the comet's course, and I thought you might want to see the orbit it calculated," Peri said.
But Atlas's gaze had drifted away from her face and down to the ground.
The orange and white creature lay on its back, legs in the air, tangling its claws in the fluffy collar that looked more like a dead ferret than the pretty embellishment it had once been. The creature ripped out a tuft of fake fur with its beak, then spat it out and chirped.
"What is it?" she asked. Better than asking what he was, though she wanted to do that, too.
"She is a meowl, and her name is Miranda. She's a genetically engineered cross between an owl and a cat, bred for hunting vermin aboard space stations and the like. She's supposed to be hunting rats, but we don't have any here in the orchard, so I have to keep up her training with pieces of chicken and fish." He selected a morsel from the bowl in his hand, and held it up in the air.
In a flurry of limbs and claws, the creature flung the collar's corpse away, and leaped into the air, wings flapping, without a sound. She shot up, collecting the piece of chicken from Atlas's fingers, before retreating to a nearby tree to devour her prize. A stealthy hunter, indeed.
"She's beautiful," Peri admitted, staring at the meowl.
Miranda chirped smugly. Of course she agreed.
Atlas set the almost empty bowl on the ground. "Here. You can finish the rest on your own. There'll be more for dinner. I suppose I should see what you have for me." He marched out to the observatory, and Peri had to run to catch up. But now he was out of the space suit, she had to admit she was a little slower in her step now, the better to admire the view.