Free Foundation by Marco Guarda Page A

lovers engrossed in lovemaking. The groans, which seemed to originate from behind the couch, went on for a long while, until they suddenly climaxed and then there were none.
    A flushed Starshanna rolled away from a sweaty Trumaine, lying alongside him on the olive floor. They looked at some point in the ceiling, getting their breath back, without saying anything.
    At last, Starshanna spoke.
    “They offered me the job,” she said.
    “That’s great. You don’t get that kind of offer every day. Did you accept?”
    “I don’t know, Aquaria isn’t exactly around the corner ...”
    “But you’re dying to go.”
    “It will be the chance of a lifetime ...”
    “Then what are you waiting for? Go grab it, before they think again and give the job to someone who doesn’t give a damn about what he’s doing.”
    “Are you okay with that, Tru? I’ll be away most of the time. We’ll be seeing each other far, far less—we’ll be together only on the holidays ...”
    “I’ll get a first-class Aquarian citizenship,” promised Trumaine. “And then I’ll be with you all the time.”
    He smiled. He was happy because he had the world in his hands. The thought that someone or something could take it away from him was the farthest thing from his mind.
    “Come here, you,” said Starshanna. She straddled him again, kissing him repeatedly. Then she stopped at once and looked straight in Trumaine’s eyes.
    “ Life’s a beautiful dream ... ” she said.
    Suddenly, like in an overexposed picture, everything went white.

    The glare dissolved to reveal a vast hall.
    The floor was aquamarine marble streaked with sapphire veins and looked like an endless stretch of blue ice. The walls were tall and thick, lined with slabs of bluish alabaster aglow with the light trapped within the translucent surface.
    The ceiling was a tilted video wall which kept playing images of the amazingly thriving plants and creatures of an ocean planet.
    At the center of the hall, a holographic reproduction of a big blue planet rotated slowly: Aquaria.

    Aquaria was the common name of Aquaria XVII , which was found in the nameless spiral galaxy that went by the code name of NGC-4414 . Three degrees north of the γ star in the Coma Berenices constellation and sixty-two million years from Earth, it was the seventeenth planet suitable for human life that had been discovered after the large-scale colonization of the universe had begun.
    Even though it was considered an ocean planet, it included a thin, oblong rock ridge that had risen from the depths of the ocean floor. Meridian Island developed in the general north-south direction for more than ten thousand miles. About two hundred miles at its largest, it was crested by a chain of jagged mountains that hardly soared above two miles’ height.
    While armies of biologists had been sent since its discovery to study the local fauna, it was soon clear the fine-sand beaches, the warm climate with a constant temperature of about seventy-five degrees, the absence of pollution and the limited strength of the rare storms that hit the inland, made Meridian Island a great place to live.
    Little by little, along with the scientists, had come the well-to-do people who had decided that Earth was so old an article it had gone out of fashion. Aquaria was the new trend to follow. Aquaria was the new El Dorado.
    Beside the three founding cities of Aquariana, Thalassos and New Greenwich, more cities had risen, more often than not illegally, built without a rational plan, in total disregard of waste control policies. Big mining companies had followed and started drilling everywhere, looking for the renowned “Aquarian White,” a diamond so pure and perfect it could be sold everywhere for huge loads of money.
    In a couple of years, the first baby was born on Aquaria. Twenty years later, natural Aquarians had grown to the considerable number of ten thousand. It was they—who considered themselves the true guardians of the