One day the radio wasn't working. It happens sometimes, but he could remember the scrambling around the previous week, running diagnostics when there had been a part failure. Everything had turned out fine then. He was annoyed, because he'd planned on hanging out with Myrna after his lessons were over, but now he'd have to spend the afternoon at the comshack with his mother and his Aunt Georgia, troubleshooting.

He didn't really get it, but people seemed to be rather upset with the news from Home. Something was going on, but populations in the billions that he was reading about in his history class just didn't register. There were 621 people on the planet, and that was that. 622 if Susie had her baby; he hadn't heard anything for a couple days. He used to amuse himself after lights-out, reciting all their names. But people had seemed shocked and depressed about something, and found time to commiserate with the Crones, the grandmothers who'd been born back Home.

So, between obligatory grumbles, Stan sat down at the computer screen and began poring through log files. Nothing odd here, except that one morning (well, it would have been morning, topside, but nobody ever went topside, except to fix the transmitter), Europa came out of eclipse, and hey, no signal. Not even a carrier wave. The station had waited 20 minutes for the line of sight to clear the noise that was the massive Jovian magnetosphere a bit further, tried again, and still nothing.

There's the entry from recomputing the position of Home. And the survey to get its bearings. Sun, check. Jupiter's dayside limb, check. Listen for a bit, check. Still nothing. Hm.

Stan thought for a bit, paged through the book, found the address for the Mars colony, and typed that in. He watched while the computation and then the survey executed without a problem. There was a signal coming in from Mars when the antenna locked on. Lots of static, and then the word, unmistakable, "scorch."

He fumbled with the recorder, hit the start button, and ignored the rest of the message while he looked at the little level indicators. He didn't want to screw up this recording. His mom would want to hear it.

"Mom?" he keyed into the microphone.

Almost simultaneously, five female voices came over the speaker. "Yes?" "What is it?" "I'm here, honey." etc.

Stan laughed. "Would Laurel McInerney please contact the comshack?" Seemed everybody was somebody's mom around here. Even most of his lesson mates. But not him. Not yet, at least. He was still a bit hazy on the details.

"Be there in a second," came his mother's voice. "I'm in ponics." Oh, right. They were expanding the hydroponics lab, digging another chamber, so that's where the engineering talent would be if you needed them.

He'd tried explaining to his mother that a second had a rather precise meaning, not just any length of time from a few minutes to a few hours. He'd tried using "in a sec" when asked how long he'd be out in the evening, and brought the ire of his mother and aunts on his head. "I think I have a signal," Stan told the intercom.

There was some clucking in appreciation on the 'com. "But it's from Mars, I think," he said. His voice broke up on the last couple syllables. He hated that, not being sure of his voice or of his facts. Myrna always seemed to know. She did her homework, for one thing, where Stan tended to rely on native intelligence to make something up. And that voice. He walked into doorways sometimes, just listening to the sound of her voice.

Two people walked into the comshack together. His mother, who was now several inches shorter than he. Like most of the colonists, she had been pregnant off and on most of his life, giving him a succession of younger sisters, spaced neatly two years apart. This would be her last, most likely, since he was nearly well over a Jovian cycle old. Populating the place was important. He was reaching that age at which a kid's mother took her aside and explained things, and she'd end up pregnant not long after. His formal lessons were nearly finished; just calculus to test now.

And Myrna. Dear Myrna. She was about about his age, but, he thought, smarter, and certainly prettier. His mom wanted information, but first he had to smile into Myrna's eyes, inhale her scent, relax his knotted muscles, and just be, in her presence.

He lost interest, but could hear muffled voices coming through the static. It didn't sound good, whatever it was.

"Interesting," said Stan's mom. Just the kind of thing an engineer would say.

"C'mon," Stan said to Myrna. He'd had his fill of "interesting".

"Where are we going?" said Myrna.

Stan was about to make something up when Bill rounded the corner, whistling. Stan didn't really like Bill very much, but he had to admit that Bill had attractive notions of what's an acceptable afternoon's amusement.

"What's up?" asked Bill.

"Rape and pillage," said Stan. He smirked. New words he'd learned from last week's searches of the cultural databases from Home.

"Sounds fun," said Bill.

Myrna was rapidly losing interest. She liked Bill even less than Stan did. Stan wondered why he seemed to be a different person when Bill was watching. So he trotted out his one bit of special knowledge, in hopes of interesting the other two.

"I think the Home folks have finally blown each other up," he said.

"No more Web-search care packages for you," said Bill.

"Oh, my God!" said Myrna. "So that's what they're all glum about." She crossed herself, and then blushed.

"Pretty much, yeah," said Stan, ignoring Myrna's outburst. Tactfully, he hoped. "And, pretty soon, no more nothing."

"Oh, yeah," said Myrna. "There's, what, three more supply ships in transit, and then we're on our own if they don't get things sorted out by then."

"Even if they do, it'll be years before another one."

They pondered mortality, each in her own way.

"Rape and pillage," said Bill. "I'm up for it."

"So what are you gonna do to us?" Stan asked his grandmother. Stan thought the scene was rather like the courtrooms he'd seen in the vids from Home. Bill was a bit banged up, and Myrna seemed, what was the word? Pleased with herself, perhaps.

"What am I going to do?" asked the old crone. "Nothing. But it's become clear we, as a colony, need to do something. Just because you two are bigger than anybody else, doesn't give you the right..."

But Bill cut her off. "What's this Right you're talking about?"

"Don't interrupt," said Susan.

"Well, excuse me, madam archbishop." There was something of a leer on his face. Stan thought that, despite her age and experience, his grandmother was quite worth looking at. So while he could see where the leer was coming from, he wouldn't dare do such a thing. "But it seems like your authority base just vaporized itself," Bill was saying.

"My point, and I do have one," said the crone, straightening to her full height, and looking up at Bill, "is that we'll all die if this goes on. I know you don't care much, but I do. God does."

"And you're his personal representative or something," said Bill. Stan wanted to punch him or something.

"As a matter of fact, that's exactly right." She looked him in the eye.

Bill blinked. "We'll all die anyway," Bill mumbled, in the general direction of his shoes.

"True," said Susan. "But not necessarily today, or next year, or without issue."

Bill laughed at her. "Hardly without issue, O Grandmother of the Multitude," he snorted.

When Stan growled a bit under his breath, Susan stopped him with a look.

"Look, you guys were the leading edge of a grand experiment, turning this society of women back into something more like human society at Home: male and female created He them. In the first stages of the colony, we needed all the wombs we could get, so the founders were all female, and our children were all female. And over 90% of your generation as well. But we had to start sometime. And we knew, the founders, and the brain trust at Home, there'd be trouble when you guys started developing."

"Looks like you got it." This was the first thing Myrna had said since they were caught.

"You crones all signed up for this. We didn't," said Stan. He was still a bit confused by all she'd said.

"It's true. And we were counting on counsel from Rome, when this day came." She sighed. "But that's not going to happen, any time soon. If Rome is even still there, they have their hands full of their own problems now." After staring unfocused at the air between them for a while, she slumped a bit, and continued in a lower voice. "I never should have let them make me a bishop. I'm an engineer. I make engines and power. I'm not so good at the social engineering."

"I think you've done fine," said Myrna. There was a tear in her eye.

"Have I? Then why are you here, waiting for me to punish you? It's my fault, really."

Stan found it was hard to argue with his grandmother when she was being The Bishop.

"Anyway. Life goes on, at least it does here. We'll keep on keeping on, learn to do without what we aren't getting from Home anymore. And come up with some way of dealing with hoodlums, I guess. We may yet all freeze in the dark, sooner rather than later. Meanwhile, there's work to do, and you're going to do it," she said, gathering way. "Supervised, of course," she added after a bit of thought. "Wouldn't do to have you sabotaging something important."

Stan made himself a mental note to ask the Web to define that word, before remembering the Web was no more. He shuddered. The universe suddenly seemed cold, and it wasn't because they were buried in ice in the outer reaches of space.