The girl shook her head thoughtfully.
“What if it was an attempt to ask for our help? What if an unknown epidemic struck the people, threatening them with total extinction, and those two were the only survivors?”
Jean raised his eyebrows in surprise.
“Your assumptions are impressively fatalistic.”
“You’re so right. I don’t understand what’s been happening to me…”
“You just attach great importance to what’s gone on…”
Lora looked at Jean, puzzled.
“How can I not?”
“What do you mean? How can anyone not think so much and not assume the worst?” the councillor asked her calmly.
“It’s not about my assumptions, though the finding has been really haunting me. It’s just that we are talking about Earth! Our home!” the girl realized that she almost shouted the last words.
“Calm down, please,” Jean put a fatherly hand on her shoulder. “We’ll sort it out. In the end, the man who needed our help is safe now. He has you to thank for that. It was you who urged Doctor Blake to rescue him.” He paused and Lora nodded in agreement. “Please, be a little patient. Although, patience is a virtue you’ve never really possessed,” he smiled.
In the ‘Unity’ building, Lora sat at the desk in her small office and dropped her head on her hands, feeling tired. She had just returned from Misgran after three weeks of constant negotiations, and immediately started preparing to leave again. Titanium and ‘Solar Flotilla’ were getting ready for launch from the Taria’s orbit. The unrest on the planet was constantly growing. The new leader’s aggression left no chance for reconciliation with space travellers. Despite the fact that they had spent more than one Tarian year on the planet’s orbit working closely with the previous government, the new authority wished no further contact with aliens. Lora sighed sadly – it was the first time in her life that they’d had to leave a populated planet so urgently. Before this moment, their ships left other races’ territories of their own free will after their cooperation, technology and resources exchange had exhausted itself. Besides, the citizens of ‘Solar Flotilla’ never forgot that they were only visitors. In search of a new home, they had been examining one planetary system after another. But every time they were ready to settle on a planet, they encountered intelligent life there.