But it was.

They now recognized Jysar as the one who led this small entourage toward them. The crowds moved back as he alone guided the cloaked individual up to them and Mother.

"This is a gift of the Hrono," Mother said to Kyle and Jaric. "I was notified yesterday. I am so..."

Mother's voice paused uncharacteristically, as she gathered her rushing thoughts that numbered into the millions.

"Happy," Mother finished.

Kyle wiped his tears before they spilled his churning emotions across his face for the universe to see.

Jaric continued to look on through his tears in utter astonishment.

Jysar carefully removed the wrap from around the small being's head.

They saw her blonde hair first as it fell free around her shoulders, and then her bright blue eyes. She smiled, like she had smiled so many times before.

It was Becky.

The two young men approached her tentatively. It was Jaric who reached out first to touch her arm.

She stood before them dressed only in a simple white sheet wrapped tightly around her body.

Kyle stared into her eyes, his own filled with a sudden wildness. "It's not her," he said simply. "Yes, it is," Mother answered.

Jysar smiled. "We, the Hrono, cannot clone a large enough population to enable your race to survive.

But we have cloned Becky from the sample of her DNA that I took before the Great Battle. So you can have her back."

"No!" Kyle shouted with rage.

Jaric's tears flowed freely down his cheeks now as he quickly removed his hand, as if he had been touching something poisonous.

"Kyle, it is Becky. It is her DNA, her chromosomes, and her cells. She has been recreated exactly.

There is no difference between the Becky you see before you and the one you knew before." Mother's voice almost seemed to sing.

"No," Kyle spat with anger. "It's not her. It's a monster. It's a fake. Thisthing ," he sneered, the second word spoken as if it were an obscenity. "Thisthing is not Becky."

Jaric suddenly screamed, creating a strange hush over the entire crowd as the terrifying sound echoed eerily over them. As it slowly faded, he stood beside Kyle with anger in his tear-stained eyes.

"No, Mother. You're wrong, this is not the woman I once loved. It might look like her. And biologically, it might be her duplicate. But look at her eyes, she does not know us. She does not recognize us. She does not have Becky's memories. Nor her heart." Jaric was shouting now.

Kyle stared at the clone, his own eyes a mixture of sadness and panic.

As Mother's optics zoomed onto the face she knew so well, she realized that Jaric was right. The clone Becky looked at Kyle and Jaric with a blankness in her eyes. She did not recognize them.

"I will replay all of her memories. She will remember who she was," Mother said.

"No!" Kyle shouted angrily. "She- " he paused. "The clone will never be Becky. You can replay all of your memories of the real Becky, like some kind of weird movie for her, but the clone did not live those memories." Kyle's face was frozen with outrage and contempt. "This clone," he spat. "This impostor, will never be Becky."

"I agree," Jaric said. "The clone is a different person than Becky. I was in love with Becky. I was going to marry her." He stared at the beautiful woman before him. "I cannot marry Becky's body. I cannot love her body alone. It was who she was inside, her inner person that I loved." Jaric forced his eyes away as a part of his mind tried to tell him that this was the Becky he loved. Yet another part of his mind knew the terrible truth.

But something deep inside wanted so desperately for it tobe Becky. He faced the clone, reaching for her soft cheek once again. "Talk to me," Jaric said to the clone with a sadness in his voice.

She approached Jaric slowly, her eyes searching his eyes carefully.

"You are new to my eyes. But you are like me, almost." The clone woman looked around at the ma.s.s of beings silently looking on. "We do not resemble them." Jaric shook his head and stepped back beside Kyle.

Jysar looked around with puzzlement on his face. "We apologize. We have done this thing as a token of our love for you, the last of the humans. If we have offended you, we will take the clone and keep her with us."

"No, I will take her," Mother said with a commanding tone.

The two young men shook their heads, but it was Jaric who spoke for them both.

"Don't do this, Mother. It won't be the same," Jaric pleaded. "It won't work."

"She will be my child, too," Mother said with finality.

"I will never call her Becky," Kyle sneered with utter contempt. "You'll have to give her another name."

"Yes," Jaric added. "We can't call her Becky. It would disgrace the memory of thereal Becky."

"I will name her. And I will love her. Fixer3, lead my new child inside." The awkward silence continued as the diminutive robot led the clone by the hand through the open door and inside her hull.

Kyle and Jaric walked slowly behind them up to the opened door that led inside MotherShip. But they stopped and watched the robot and the clone enter alone.

"I can't believe this," Jaric whispered to Kyle.

"This is going to make things so much harder," Kyle whispered angrily back.

Taking a collective breath, the two angry young men turned to look one last time on the people they had lived with, fought together with, and grown to love. Now they were leaving them all behind, as they had left everything else in their short lives.

"We will always remember you," Mother said to the crowds.

"Where will you go?" Rok asked.

Kyle looked at Jaric. They finally smiled at each other with the thought of their future adventures traveling the great, wide galaxy.

"We will search for other humans, of course. But we have decided we will also explore." Kyle looked up at Mother's freshly repaired hull, which was now reflecting the reddish light of the triple suns of Hronosium. "Mother wants to explore, too. We're tired of fighting. Humans are first of all explorers and seekers of knowledge, as are all of you."

"Yes," Mother agreed. "We would like to discover and meet more races like yourselves. Broaden our understanding. Find new life in the vast universe." Mother paused. "And perhaps, maybe, we will learn of other small groups of human survivors. Perhaps."

Kyle's face grew hard, but Jaric put his arm around his shoulder and pressed it hard. "A most admiral goal," Jasus agreed.

Rok stepped forward and hugged Jaric and Kyle each firmly in his mighty grasp.

"Will you allow me to travel with you?" Before they could answer, he turned back to the a.s.sembled throngs. "It is not good for the last members of this n.o.ble race to journey alone. I and select members of the Band of the Stars, will journey forth with them in our own ship. We, too, will explore and learn. The Kraaqi are changed, as the Hrono. We will become explorers first and foremost." He pointed to the sky above. "On this great journey, we will take our women and our children for the first time. Our families will travel with us."

Cheers went up from the crowds.

"I, too, wish to go." Jysar stepped beside Rok's form. "I would like to travel to theunknown parts .

Perhaps my skills may help you in some small way to find other survivors." He smiled. "Even if I never see Hronosium again, I would treasure traveling this universe with my friends. My new family."

Rok smiled at Jysar and then turned back and smiled at the two men.

"Minstrel too, has promised to accompany us," Mother added.

"I wish to go with you as well."

Faces turned as a Mewiis female made her way forward.

"Saris and I were the first Mewiis to meet with the family of the MotherShip. We made First Contact with them," Krinia said. Her head-tail whipped from side to side as she joined them. "I do not have a family group of my own as yet. If it is acceptable, I would like to join Mother's extended family."

"You are most welcome," Mother said. "Please, join my family."

Kyle and Jaric smiled at all of their friends.

Stepping forward, Kyle grasped Rok by both his arms. Rok returned the warrior's embrace as they faced each other a moment in silence.

"We are brethren," Rok said with conviction. "Wherever you shall journey, there I and my Band will go also. The Hrono called Jysar, and the Mewiis called Krinia as well. And Minstrel. Whatever fantastic worlds and aliens you encounter, we will loyally be at your side." He paused, smiling with the thought of the wondrous journey before them.

"Even to the edge of the universe!" Rok's face beamed.

"Then let us go," Mother said.

Tony Chandler

Tony Chandler lives in Atlanta, GA, along with his wife and their eighteen year old daughter, Meghan.

They share their home with two wonderful cats, K.C and Andy, who lead very, very deprived lives - eating, sleeping, and getting loved every day. But they give much love in return so the arrangement is acceptable to all parties.

Tony enjoys baseball, art exhibits and the Bard live at the Shakespeare Tavern, as well as music ranging from Mozart and Bach to the Beatles and Enya and beyond... he loves 'great' music in most any form.

He has loved books and reading all of his life, and for the last ten years has written and been published by some of the leading Webzines on the Internet. His first published novel, MotherShip, is the culmination of this first stage of his writing. And MotherShip can rightly be said to be his 'dream' novel.

Tony continues to write. The sequel to MotherShip, Borne on Wings of Steel, is due out in 2003 as well as a short story anthology.

MotherShip by Tony Chandler Hard Sh.e.l.l Word Factory