Postponed meeting - 01

POSTPONED MEETING (January 2, 1992)

(English translation via Google Translate ... sorry!)

The shadow was fantastic, wonderful temperatures, the sun shining beautifully. The alpine meadow gave a display of all its softness and its many flavors. Heaven expressed his immense creativity and imagination with soft forms reminiscent of his childhood: Toby the dog, the cows with newborn calves, goats, turtles, even the grandfather's old  maple stick. Suddenly, he heard her mother calling him hitting the spoon on the smoke blackened pot, but this time the sweet call took a heavy, rough, almost annoying tone. A flashing red light finally recalled Lipeio to reality: that night he was on duty at the Nova Athinay Marconi station on Ganesha, the fifth planet of Sirius. 

A sprint to the locker room and then the ritual of dressing, repeated ad nauseam during training; many times, in those brief periods, Lipeio thought about the steps that had brought him in that place so far from home and also from his heart. The childhood in that city, so smoky and selfish, his friends, his studies, graduation and then the work at his uncle's print shop. He liked to work, of course, but behaved more like an automaton than as a man of will and reason. Finally, the letter of his grandfather asking him to spend summer holidays at his house in the Alps. It was the last spring in the city. From then on, his days were no longer the same and boring as before: the nature, the climate, the beauty of these places came into his mind forever. However, Lipeio did not felt this as a goal but as the basis for all his future life and, at the first opportunity, he began again his spiritual ascent. 

At that time, the Army was looking for volunteers who would offer as scouts and guards in the Earth bases that were beginning to be built on new extra-solar habitable worlds. The training was hard but yet crowned by the appointment as Official Explorer on Ganesha. Nova Athinay was now more like a barracks than to a colony, the climate was similar to the sub-polar, intense cold, terrestrial type, with frequent (and cold) rainfalls, but for complicated weather reasons, it rarely snowed. 

He put the helmet in a hurry and went, this time with a quick step, toward the hangar. In that environment, so harsh and varied, the best vehicles for a quick and safe recognition were the ORSA, humanoid looking robotic operators (sort of big forklifts), with all the most sophisticated electronic equipment and poorly armed. As he was entering his vehicle, a droning electronic voice warned him: "G90 operational - reconnaissance mission ...; code 626 in Beowulf Pass area ... immediate departure; instructions transferred to the board computer ...".

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