Nick thanked the new arrivals profusely for the food and whisked it away quickly, giving Petra enough samples of each so that she could produce replicas whenever he wanted. More, he had her pass on the 'recipes' to the food printers. Petra herself usually had much more important things to work on, but she remained the best by far at analyzing materials.

That vital task complete, Nick went back and chatted with the people through a transparent wall on their isolation chamber. A video call would have been simpler, but wouldn't have had the same impact.

He approached the astronauts first. A moment of asking Petra for details, and he was able to say, "Captain McAffee, it's an honor to meet you, sir."

"Hello, Mr. Tomsun. Thanks for the live recommendation. Everyone in the astronaut corps is grateful for the shout-out, and we are very glad to be here."

"Lieutenant Schmidt, welcome to orbit. An honor."

"Thank you, Mr. Tomsun." The other astronaut was a very attractive black woman with a ready smile. "So...artificial gravity, huh?" She bounced on her feet a few times. "On the mother ship but not the shuttles."

"Yup. Apparently, it's a safety thing. Goldaskians have that tech, the Arrurrans don't, and they want it pretty badly."

"Feels like Earth gravity. Is that for you?"

"No, actually, I just kind of lucked out. Ooafa has the same surface gravity as Earth, as near as I could tell, and apparently, Arrurra is pretty close as well. Abaddon's is a bit higher, but they turned it down for the rest of us."

"Abaddon?" Schmidt repeated.

"The Goldaskian homeworld."

"That's..."

"Yeah. The Goldaskians are really curious about where we got our mythology from, because they didn't have space travel back then. Best guess is some third party was doing a science experiment on both our species."

"That's...pretty wild."

"I know. Anyway, welcome aboard. In the next few months you're probably going to get to go on a tour of the nearby star systems. For now, you can use the readers to learn stuff while you're waiting for quarantine to finish."

"Readers?"

Nick explained to them how to use the nearest wall console. "Check out the map we made of the civilizations we came across on the way back. I'm going to go say hi to some of the others. Talk to you later!"

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He walked along the transparent wall a short distance. He didn't really have anything to say to the billionaires, and made small talk with Jillian Mason and Alyssa O'Malley. He got tired real fast of being called Mr. Tomsun by women his own age.

"Please, both of you, call me Nick."

"Okay, Nick," Jillian agreed. "How long will we be in quarantine?"

"Hopefully not that long. Doctor Vickall has already done one round of analysis of all the Earth germs and stuff that were in my body. She's already made up gut bacteria so that I can eat everybody's food with no trouble, too. I'd be surprised if this took more than a couple of days.

"Sorry about the cramped quarters, but there's not a lot of room to spare on board." he told them. "But I can't tell you how good it feels to be this close to other human beings again!" Especially women, he thought but didn't say. I really need to check in with Sana, see if she still feels—or doesn't feel—the same way.

Sana arrived at that point. Speak of the Goldaskian, and you'll see her horns, Nick quipped silently. The doctor started calling out instructions.

"Hello, and thank you for coming. One at a time, please stand still in the green circle so I can begin the health scans." Captain McAffee was first, and stood there expectantly. After only a brief pause, Sana said, "Thank you. Please take one of the black cubes and press it to any exposed skin for a few seconds. It will take a blood sample. Ah, please do not handle any cube but your own," she added quickly, as Lieutenant Schmidt picked up a cube from the tray and was about to hand it to McAffee.

"Oh. Got it."

"After it flashes, place it against the wall here."

"Did it work? It didn't even break the skin," McAffee wondered.

"Yes, it says it is full. It drew about one milliliter directly from the nearest artery."

One by one, everyone followed the instructions. Sana had one of the doctors wave a scanner of some sort over the girl on the gurney, since she would have trouble standing up. After his turn, the Congressman walked up to Nick. "Hello, Mr. Tomsun."

"Nick, please."

"Nick. Call me Adam, then. Thank you for remembering where you came from. You're doing your country a great service."

"I'm hoping to help everybody, but I'm an American first."

"Well, if you need any advice, son, I'd be happy to talk."

"Thank you, Sir. I'll remember that." Nick nodded and moved on, feeling uncomfortable around the politician.

They were an eclectic bunch to be sure. He was bombarded with questions, and did his best to answer most of them. Sana got hit with lots of different questions. The two human doctors in particular had endless follow-ups, and he could see that Sana had fun at first but was getting a bit tired of them after a while. She foisted them off on some medical teaching software to get them to mostly shut up.

Sana was most interested in the invalid, and delivered a white cube to the group through a port. "Please press the marked end against her skin."

"Is that another blood draw?" the girl asked. She didn't appear to be older than ten or eleven, as far as Nick could tell.

Sana smiled. "No, it's a treatment."

"Already?!" All the humans were wide-eyed for a moment.

"No, no, no, it's not a cure yet. Even Goldaskian medicine is not instantaneous. But, this should help stabilize you while I figure out how to fix you up. Everyone, please be patient. I have to make sure no sicknesses spread first, and then I will begin curing your ailments."

After the initial excitement wore off, the newcomers were pretty much all studying something. Nick had consulted with Captain Telnik and came up with a list of subjects that they could research deeply, and he had carefully instructed Petra in what they were and were not allowed to see.

I'm pretty sure I'm going to let at least a couple of genies out of bottles by accident, but we have to start somewhere.

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