Time flew by with surprising slowness, despite the fact that Iida loved to travel and usually enjoyed such intervals of calm between her affairs. Sunrays shimmered beautifully, playing with reflections on the cabin walls, passing through the lowered light filters and creating an atmosphere of warmth and comfort she had already begun to forget.
Finishing her small makeup, which at her young age was more of a professional necessity, she looked attentively through the ship’s portholes at the majestic star of the Solar System, growing larger before her eyes. Undoubtedly, it was one of the most beautiful in this interstellar cloud, and anyone who had seen it even once forever kept that moment in their memory.
Iida took off her soft robe and put on the service uniform of an officer of the Galactic Council’s Internal Space Intelligence, which gracefully fitted her flawless athletic figure, and light boots.
She was one of the brightest representatives of her people: tall, slender, with large eyes shimmering with living gold, a slightly upturned and delicate nose, and black hair drawn tightly into a neat knot. She was modest and entirely devoted to her work. It was hard to imagine that behind that open face and seemingly innocent gaze hid a powerful analytical mind and a readiness to act in unexpected, and sometimes even highly dangerous, situations.
Many years ago, after completing the mandatory training required of long-range space explorers, she, one of the best students, was noticed by Iuma, the head of the Council’s Space Intelligence, who invited her to join their ranks. For proud Iida, who had grown up in an ordinary family without any privileges and who was not inclined to accept the attentions of high-ranking admirers, there could be no greater honor, and she gladly accepted the offer.
Soon she became Iuma’s right hand, and over time, Iuma grew to value more and more the lively mind and sense of responsibility of her young assistant. Iida always managed even the most complex and tangled assignments. And now she had been secretly sent to Fraal, the Blue Planet, to assist Tarion, one of the Council members, in investigating the recent circumstances surrounding the emergence of the Genomode.
Yet what troubled and stirred her thoughts was not the mission itself. She knew that among the group she was to work with was Maarv, her old friend. Once, they had trained together, and though perhaps something deeper than friendship had connected them, they had never spoken of their feelings.
Since their forced separation, they had neither met nor exchanged a single word.
Iida paced thoughtfully back and forth across the cabin, once again imagining how their meeting might unfold – the reaction of Maarv, and of the other members of the team as well, about whom she already knew more than enough from the materials and dossiers meticulously compiled by the Council’s intelligence services.
«Does he even remember me after all these years?» she thought almost aloud, frowning and stamping her foot in irritation. «And why should I suddenly care about it so much?!»
The stray thought, which had unexpectedly offered a simple answer to the question that had lodged in her mind, startled her. She forced it away with an effort of will, trying to focus on something else – it was time to prepare for arrival at the Station.
The enormous unmanned transport ship left by the Lyrians after the deactivation of the Genomode was at first adapted into a space transfer base near the moon of the planet. It was so large that it could easily hold several dozen of the biggest Vriinian cruisers and had its own adjustable gravity.
