WHILE THE DOCTOR CHECKED Cherry over at the settlement hospital, Cariad sat in the waiting room with Ethan, her thoughts spinning almost out of control. She could hardly believe what Strongquist had told them. She couldn’t imagine an Earth almost entirely empty of human beings. The previous story the Guardians had told them, that resources were stretched to the limit and humanity was struggling to survive, had been hard to hear, but she’d believed it. In fact, it seemed that the conditions they’d spoken of had existed, but they had occurred much earlier in time, long before the Guardians had left the planet on their rescue mission. The second part of their story about Earth scientists working together to save the Nova Fortuna Project was harder for her to swallow.
Ethan was quiet. His han
