<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #80BFFF"><span style="font-size: 150%; line-height: 116%;">Peter Halvardson</span><br/><span style="font-size: 120%; line-height: 116%;">'The Viking'</span></span></div><br/><br/><div style="text-align: justify;">Peter laughed when she said that avoiding attraction may be his reason for all this. It showed him more than everything else, that not telling her the truth was the right thing for now. She wasn't ready for the truth, not at all.<br/><br/><span style="color: #FF8000">"Alice, I can't tell you the truth, simply because you are not ready for it yet. Your mind is set in black and white. There are the good guys and they are always good and there are the bad guys and they are always bad. Even if some bad guy does something that looks somehow good then of course only because he has some bad intentions. I don't accuse you of it, they brought you up in the military like that. Follow the rules, play it according to the book and damn, if you forget about that, then we can't accuse this bad criminal mind Peter Halvardson of his crimes. But the world is not black and white, Alice. There are a lot of shades of grey between it. And the bad guys may be the good guys and the good guys are the bad guys. I will prove it to you, once this planet has switched your mindset. And then I will color your world. But all at its time...when you are ready for it. I promise you, that you are up for some really big surprises."</span><br/><br/>He finished his lunchpack and put the remains back into his case.<br/><br/><span style="color: #FF8000">"Oh, and you were wrong about the black market dealer wanting to avoid attraction to his business. From your point of view it may sound like a good explanation, but it is as far away from the truth like you are from being a miner. But of course, you need to give the bad guys the benefit of the doubt to see the true reasons."</span><br/><br/>He chuckled, but then he got serious when Alice asked him about the accident. It wasn't his best memory.<br/><br/><span style="color: #FF8000">"Yes, it can happen here and to be honest, we fear it daily. This planet isn't stable, we have earthquakes here. Like we had on Ramala-12. We had warned Universal Exploration, that we had structural collapse by earthquakes, but they had ignored our warnings. It was before the directive to create safe rooms had been issued..."</span><br/><br/>He had laughed sarcastically with those words, before he continued<br/><br/><span style="color: #FF8000">"That day I was on one of the middle soles doing exploration, just like here. Luckily, as I had done all the exploration I knew where the more stable areas were. When the quake started I rushed down the tunnel to a place with very hard rocks. I just managed to take cover there, when the ceiling on both sides collapsed and I was completely trapped. At that time I thought I was lucky, but I had no idea how bad my situation really was. Four soles had completely collapsed, we lost over 3000 miners on that day. You may imagine that the other miners tried to rescue those first, who were large in numbers. Nobody cared about the one exploration engineer but a few other exploration guys. They dug their way to me, but it took four days for them to get there. Four days without anything to eat or drink. I caught my own piss in my helmet and drank it. But after two days, there wasn't a lot of piss left. I had given up all hope, when I heard them coming for me. I can't remember a lot of what happened next, I had been in intensive care for a whole week. But I will never forget it, those grey hairs are always reminding me."</span><br/><br/>He brushed nervously through his dust-streaked hair. This memory was always getting to him.<br/><br/><span style="color: #FF8000">"I had been the only one they managed to rescue alive from those four soles. And the funny thing was, that it had been my big mouth that had saved me. When I had originally worked on that part of the shaft were the hard rocks were, I had bragged that it was the hardest rock I had ever seen and nothing would make it tumble down. And my fellow engineers, although laughing about that at that time, remembered it and told each other that I may have taken cover there. That was the only reason, why they started looking after me."</span><br/><br/>He got up and pulled her on her feet, dragging her with him back towards the lift.<br/><br/><span style="color: #FF8000">"As a result of this accident on Ramala-12 Universum Exploration issued a directive that safe rooms had to be build all 100 yards on a sole. Well, I show you our safe room now. Remember according to your world, Universum Exploration are the good guys. Damn they are..."</span>, they walked nearly half a mile before a hole on the right side appeared. Peter directed his helmet light into it. A small room of concrete, with a handful of bunks in it and a telephone. <span style="color: #FF8000">"100 yards, huh?"</span></div>