Camibra

CHAPTER SEVEN:


The journey home aboard Moya was a welcome respite after the emotional rollercoaster of Rygel's services and the whirlwind reunion with kids and grandkids. When the last farewell was said, the last hug given, Crichton rode the Transport Pod back into his valley.

It would take Aeryn no more than a few solar days to return the children to their respective lives. Then she would be back here - back home - as well.

In the kitchen, Crichton reached into the preservation chamber and pulled himself out a cold bottle of fellip nectar. He took it out onto the porch where two chairs rested side by side. Crichton eased into the chair that was his, cracked open the fellip, and took a sip. Across the valley, the two suns were setting, three-quarters of the larger sun already diped behind the horizon, the smaller sun not far behind. In a very short while, the day would be over.

Crichton looked out across the valley. he thought about Rygel. Then other faces drifted across his subconciousness. Dear departed Zhaan...Crais...and Stark...his own father and mother, his grandparents, and everyone he'd known on Earth who were surely long since departed from this existance.

He knew only the barest tip of what was to come - he had been there, after all - but of one thing he was certain - he would be seeing them all again, and there were countless adventures still to come.

The larger sun was completely gone now, its smaller brother just brushing the horizon. The valley before him was taking on a unearthly crimson hue. Unearthly. There was a word he hadn't thought of in a very, very long time. Before long, the smaller sun had disappeared, too. As its light faded, the moons of this planet became visible, three of them, standing out in m,ilky relief against the rich black canopy of space and the splash of millions of stars.

As he stared out at the vista, something his father had told him long ago came to mind. "Be your own kind of hero, John..." Hero? Crichton would always be uneasy applying that term to himself. But he had helped a lot of beings in his long life out here. In a way, large or small, he'd made a difference. He hoped it was a life that made his father proud.

Crichton took another sip of the fellip. His mind, at last, wandered back to those early times aboard Moya, when all he wanted with the greatest desperation was to get back to Earth. to get home.

Sitting here tonight, on this porch, looking out at the stars, waiting for Aeryn to return - he knew the he had accomplished that very thing. John Crichton was home.

Rocknie S. O'Bannon, who just celebrated his own 311th birthday, stands very proud of his seminal work back in the late 20th and early 21st centuries in something called 'television'. Among the series he created for this 'television' were Alien Nation, seaQuest DSV and FarScape.