“It’s just like Earth!” Kate exclaimed, looking around in wide eyed wonderment.
Kate, Pete, Tremaine, and Mason had just come through the BSP. It was Kate’s first time.
Pete Reynolds thought back over the past couple of months and admitted to himself it was the most exciting and busiest period since he discovered the BSP.
He remembered the full thirty plus minutes arguing with Pilcher over the pros and cons of allowing Kate to go.
“She is not a risk to our security. There have been more tests on her than the whole team collectively. I think she desperately needs to find some answers to her visions, and the stones are part of the equation.”
“I agree, however, Dr. Kramer and I are not happy with that extraordinary brain activity when she is in contact with those bloodstones, and she does get tired after contact.”
“Well, she can leave them here. Geez, she’s as human as you and me except for a few little talents.”
“Yeah, do I hold you responsible if she starts spinning my men around like tops or blowing up the computers?”
Back and forward it went. In the end, Pilcher sighed and held his hands up to stop the arguing. He still saw Kate as an anomaly and therefore, out of his full control.
Pilcher received orders from his superiors to keep a close eye on her and use her. Make her a team member as soon as possible but only when he judged her to be ready. He knew why they said that. If anything went wrong, he would be the patsy. God, he hated unnecessary pressure. He needed a holiday!
“Alright, Dr. Reynolds, if she passes the standard physical and gives me her stone, she can go to the next scheduled meeting to Ahmadeus.”
“Great, thanks sir.”
When Pete had said to Kate, “It’s time for a little off world visit,” the day before his confrontation with Pilcher, he enjoyed the inevitable reaction—a did I hear you right expression, then amazement, followed by downright excitement, a second of skepticism, wiped out by a very loud exclamation of YIPPEE!
It made him smile; he had not smiled so much in his whole damn life. He saw a childlike quality in her. He knew she was hungry to go; hell, would not anyone!
It was one month, from that day, that Kate walked through the BSP.