The Last Days of Krypton - Kevin J. Anderson [131]
“We’d better decide soon.” Lara put a hand on her rounded belly. “Not only do we have the future of Krypton to worry about, but we’re about to have a baby.”
Jor-El stroked her stomach, and she placed her hand over his. He felt something move beneath his fingers. Lara pressed his hand down. “Did you feel that? It was the baby. It kicked.” She winced. “Another one!”
“Our child is a strong one already.” Jor-El felt such a sense of wonder that he promptly set aside all his other concerns, his political worries, and his suspicions. For the moment, that love was stronger than his doubts about Zod. He and Lara were going to be parents!
Keeping the baby’s health paramount, Lara had been eating well and taking care of herself. Not content just to accept the advice of doctors, she kept herself well informed about the progression of her pregnancy. She wanted nothing to go wrong.
Jor-El had doted on her and pampered her. Every day he did his best to prepare the foods she craved, though he couldn’t remember the last time he had done any cooking before her pregnancy. He allowed himself to enjoy these times with her and realized that he was happier now than he could ever remember being before.
In his younger years, Jor-El had thought that only scientific pursuits could give his life true satisfaction—the thrill of discovering new things, developing new ideas. But his feelings toward Lara, and his paternal instinct to love, protect, and teach this baby surprised him with their intensity. He promised himself that he would create the brightest possible future for his child. On Lara’s beautiful face he saw an expression of complete fulfillment. Her smile seemed almost too big for her face, and he realized that his own smile was just as broad.
As Lara relaxed in her chair next to him, humming an old folk song, his attention wandered back to the pale smear of the comet’s tail. Jor-El had never been able to switch off his analytical mind, his ever-curious observations. He had been so preoccupied with emergencies that he had never gotten around to studying this astronomical marvel in detail. Even so, evening after evening in Kryptonopolis he had taken a few moments to look at the majestic comet on its ancient path.
Tonight, though, he realized that what had been the smooth and graceful arc of a wispy tail now had strange knots and kinks. Even with his naked eyes, he could see that some areas in the head of the comet appeared brighter, as if jets had exploded from its frozen surface.
“Jor-El, I know that look on your face, so don’t even try to keep secrets from me.”
“I need to contact the telescope listening post before Loth-Ur’s Hammer drops below the horizon. There’s something I’d like to check.” He and Lara left the open rooftop, climbed down the stairs, and went out into the brightly lit streets. She matched his brisk pace, wanting to find out what had piqued his interest so.
Though he would rather have been at the telescope array himself, or at least at the observatory monitoring center on his estate, he could get the information he needed from a substation building here. Using his codes to control the receivers remotely, he could realign the twenty-three receiver dishes in Zod’s distant early-warning system in order to get the best images possible.
With Lara looking over his shoulder, Jor-El worked swiftly, entirely focused on the combined images from the telescopes. “I’m not an expert on cometary behavior, but this seems most unusual.” He back-calculated the comet’s path from the archive of images over the past several weeks, and then he plotted variances in its expected orbit.
From the largest optical magnifiers, he found a high-resolution image of Loth-Ur’s Hammer. The silently tumbling comet was made of black ice laced with rocky inclusions and pockets of gas. White plumes volatilized out, erupting