The Swarm destroyed any life they contacted. Energy extracted from the consumption allowed them to replicate themselves and continue their deadly purpose, but for only a finite number of generations.

Somehow, this life differed from that anticipated by the programming, less palatable, and it slowed their destructive progress. But even slowed, so great were their numbers that the Swarm cleansed the area. Their task completed, the remaining Swarm perished alongside their hosts, and the Legion returned to sleep.

[Gan]

Mora helped me into the hovercar and graciously offered to retrieve my two bags — one with clothes and personal items, and the other with tools of my trade. I had wanted to make as complete a break from my former home as possible, so I brought little with me. She came back with my worn out bags and five crates of the buzzing menaces stacked on a motorized cart.

Guilt overtook me for not helping her load, but I was in no shape to do that right now. I literally weighed nearly four times more than I did over the last twelve years, and my body felt like stone.

After hefting the items into the back of the hovercar, she jumped in beside me, shook her hair back, and flashed me a smile.

"Hungry?" she asked. "We could go by the dining hall."

I nodded. "I am, and so looking forward to real food rather than that synthetic stuff they have on the ark."

"Well, some would argue whether or not we have real food here, but I will let you be the judge. Food selections are still limited."

Mora engaged the hovercar fans and took off in manual control, kicking up a small cloud of dust behind. Within a few minutes, we arrived at a very impressive dome building, the original habitat, if I was not mistaken. But she parked well away from any other vehicle — a wise precaution, I believed, when hauling thousands of bees.

My strength returned enough that I ventured inside on my own. The dome bristled with human activity, some dashing about and others standing in animated discussions, forcing us to weave through the hordes. While there were only a few hundred humans on the planet surface, it seemed most of them were here. And soon, there would be many more when the new colonists came down from the ark.

I halted as we passed a large window overlooking a vista of grassy hills dotted with flowers and forested valleys beneath puffy clouds — not at all alien, rather as scenic as any on Earth, at least those areas not already spoiled. The pictures of this place had not done it justice. Mora walked a few steps on, but then came back when she realized I had stopped.

"Spectacular, isn't it?" Mora said, stating the obvious.

I could only nod. Paradise indeed.

The food selections were limited, as she implied — a vegetable protein burger, sauteed potatoes with mixed vegetables, and fruit salad. I accepted some of each.

"Well, what do you think?" she asked, amused at my apparent gluttony.

I held up a finger as I finished chewing a bite too big. "This is good. Perhaps my expectations were lowered by what I ate on the ark, but I am enjoying this."

She nodded, grasping a cup of tea. "That may be a good philosophy for some things around here."

With hunger sated, we walked back to the hovercar. As I approached, one of those stinging menaces buzzed my head. On instinct, I recoiled and ducked away, swatting at the insect, and performing an awkward pantomime.

Mora smirked, almost giggling. "Do you have a thing against bees?"

Keeping her gaze on me, Mora raised an eyebrow while I slid into the hovercar. "Let's just say stinging insects and I do not get along very well," I answered. "It comes from an incident in my childhood when I poked around in a hive with a stick. Not to be recommended, by the way."

She nodded. "So noted. It must have been terrifying for you being enclosed in the space elevator with them."

"Well, like I said, they were well bee-haved."

Mora threw back her head and laughed at my pun, lame as it was. "Oh, that was bad."

I took the opportunity to examine Mora as she drove out of the city, piloting the hovercar in manual. With full lips, deep eyes, and a gentle oval face without makeup, she had an authentic kind of beauty. She appeared to be in her late twenties or early thirties — in Earth years, anyway. While relatively short and thin, Mora was physically strong, based on how well she handled the crates earlier. Thick, shoulder-length dark hair mesmerized me as it waved in the breeze from the open window. Even as we first met, I was taken by a crooked smile that inspired her whole face to participate. I looked away before my gaze became something interpreted as creepy.

Within two minutes, we left Central City behind. It was the biggest city on this planet, but by Earth standards, insignificantly small.

"Of all the names they could have come up with, why did they call it Central City?" I asked.

First tilting her head, Mora shrugged. "Because it is on the equator? I don't know. Not very imaginative, is it? And we also have three settlement sites called North Site, South Site, and West Site. But once the settlers get established, one of their tasks is to rename them."

Mora put the hovercar in auto-drive mode and turned toward me. "I programmed in a more scenic route up to the north settlement area. And it will give me some time to tell you more about this place."

"I would like that."

The car hovered along the road toward a forest — well, more like a path than a road. A hovercar doesn't need a hard surface, just something even enough for the one-hundred-centimeter levitation. That saved a lot in road building expenses.

We transitioned from the waving grasslands that reminded me of the few remaining tall-grass prairies back on Earth, then into a thickening forest of oak and hickory. Trickling clear streams and flowering bushes appeared in clearings, while a sweet, earthy fragrance teased my nose.

She explained, "The trees are still relatively young, but they will grow bigger over time. We don't have time to go all the way to the down to the coast, but if we did, we would find a temperate rain forest there."

"This is truly amazing," I said with a growing smile.

Mora smiled in return, lifting her chin in approval, apparently taking pride in the ecology.

"What part do you play in this?" I asked.

"I am a botanist and exobiologist. After university, I continued the terraform simulations and helped with the implementation. The initial seeding was all done robotically. But it was frustrating, though, to work from twelve light-years away, but now, here I am."

Shaking my head, I remarked, "I can't imagine how complicated it must be to build an entire ecology on another planet."

"Thank you!" Mora exclaimed, glowing. "You might be surprised how many people think terraforming is just throwing out a few seeds and waiting for something to grow. I jumped at the chance to come here, arriving a little over a year ago in the second wave with the agricultural systems team. Earth was in terrible shape and I had no ties there, anyway. We want the colonists to begin farming immediately, since food production will be critical."

We rode on in silence for several minutes as I took in the scenery. Based on her satisfied smile, Mora enjoyed the tour as much as me.

Eventually, she asked, "What about you? What brings you here?"

I considered my reply for a moment as her gaze lingered. "Like you say, Earth is a mess. I just wanted to get away, and this is as far away as I can get. I heard of a last moment's opportunity to get on the Ark Hope and went for it. They wanted another engineer with my skill set, although I had to agree to wake up for several six-month shifts to monitor the ship systems along the way. Mostly that was pretty boring, though."

Mora raised an eyebrow. "Did you bring a wife or family with you?"

My eyes dropped as a shadow crossed my heart. How do I answer? Best to not pretend. "No. I had a wife, but she died in one of the food riots. That was the main reason I wanted to get away."

Mora's eyes widened and her mouth dropped, but no words came out. After a moment of awkward silence, she said in a weak voice, "I'm sorry. I... I didn't mean to bring that up."

Her lifted eyes offered nothing but gentle compassion. "It's okay," I said. "It happened long ago and far away."

Sometimes it didn't feel that way, though.

"You said food riots?"

"Yeah. These may have started after you left. Big famines broke out across the world. Turns out hunger is not popular." I needed to move this conversation along. "How about you? Do you have a mate or family?"

Mora looked away. "No. Just me. Too busy for that kind of stuff."

Time I shifted topics again. "So, are there any alien jubjub birds, bandersnatches, or jabberwocks around here I should be worried about?"

Laughter rolled from her mouth at the Alice in Wonderland reference. "Oh, nothing like that. It's not the big scary creatures we should worry about, besides other humans that is, but the tiny ones. History has shown us that things like bacteria, virus, and small parasites are the real killers. The deadliest creature in all the human history is a mosquito with a pathogen."

As we rounded a rocky knoll, Mora's gaze shifted outside. "Hold on..."

Stopping the hovercar and letting it settle, Mora stepped outside. I followed. The plants in the area to the right of the car and over a nearby small hill laid wilted, with leaves blackened and stems grotesquely twisted and deformed, in stark contrast to the rich green of nearby untouched areas. It affected all types of plants, whether grassy, woody, or herbaceous. Mora stooped down and examined them, breaking off a few pieces, then pulled an old-style optical magnifier from her pocket and held it to an eye viewing a wilted leaf.

"This is strange," she remarked, shaking her head. "I have seen nothing like this here. Not any kind of pathogen I recognize."

Mora pulled out her com-viewer and took several pictures of the area, then returned to the hovercar and retrieved two small plastic containers. I held them open as she placed samples of the plants and soil in them, then sealed them up with a screwed lid. Next, she pulled out a small black flexible tub from the hovercar tail hatch, adding water, followed by a squirt of a blue chemical.

"We need to wash our hands and then our boots," Mora explained. "Just a precaution in case there is a plant disease that we might spread."

I did so, then asked, "What do you think caused this?"

"It's hard to say. Maybe there is a simple harmless explanation, but I need to check it out."

Mora turned away and rubbed her face. This worried her, and that, in turn, worried me.