Living Under Ice

Living Under Ice 14

The next day, the group got together again that evening. They told everyone that they wanted to work on a new play together, which was true. In order to work on it late, they got permission for both Tablitha and Talon to spend the night. They decided that they would write another comedy. The last one was so much fun that they felt they needed to do another. This time they decided that they would include the other teenagers in the play even though they wouldn't get their help in writing it out. It would be an exclusively teen-aged play.

Working on the play together made the evening go by faster. It was a lot of work, but promised to be a lot of fun. They decided that they would definitely have to ask Cook if he would prepare another feast afterwards. If anyone could make the horrible rations they had taste half-way decent, it was him. Besides, there were more fresh vegetables now to help disguise it with as well. Eliza wanted to make the dress code to the play formal. They would ask everyone to wear black formal wear.

Supper time rolled around, but it was nothing to brag about. The protein portion of the meal was horrible. It was supposed to be butterscotch pudding, but it definitely had a horrible bitter taste to it. Talon stuck with the fried zucchini coated in nutritional yeast and had a salad also covered in the yeast flakes. He would get his protein that way. The butterscotch was just too horrible to finish.

"Did you hear the news today?" Kyle asked everyone.

The four teens couldn't help sounding a bit guilty when they asked him what it was. They were sure that somehow their plans had been discovered.

"We are almost through going through the mail now. There are only a few packages left. Most of it is just stuff for the museum, but today we found more embryos in stasis. This was for an exotic animal farm. There are small Asian deer which the data banks say will taste a lot like beef. Along with them, there were English Hares. I hear they taste good as well. They also found food grade crickets in stasis.

Sharah groaned. "I hate eating bugs," she said. "Well, maybe not as much as I hate eating this butterscotch."

"How soon will they be ready?" Johan asked. He didn't mind eating cricket power bars at all. All the star athletes back on the home planet advertised them.

"It won't take long," his father assured him. This package had the adults in stasis and a lot of them. It is designed to be ready in only two weeks to harvest the first generation after they have produced the second generation. Let's just hope they never get out of their cages. That would be almost as bad as losing control of the hares."

After supper, the boys went to Johan's room and the girls went into Eliza's room without even looking at each other. As far as things looked, they wanted everyone to think that the group of four was done for the night. They had planned it that way. No one paid attention to Tablitha's giggle as the girls went into the room. Everyone was used to that.

They all laid down like they were really going to bed, but not too early in case anyone checked in on them. Deedri did check on the girls with a smile, but no one bothered the boys. They waited a full hour and a half before they all got up as scheduled. It didn't take them long to sneak down the hall into the medical center. It was easier, because all of them could see better in the dim, red light than they could in the past.

This time they charged the artifact for a full thirty minutes before anyone touched it. Johan had upped the power on his power emitting device by getting rid of the battery and installing a plug for an electric outlet in the clinic. In all, they calculated that they were increasing the power input four fold. Eliza thought they were pushing it too fast, but no one listened to her. Tablitha was the worst of all at encouraging Johan to push the boundaries. Talon was slightly more cautious than she was, but never liked to admit it.