Bright light and a full-body stinging dragged Nathan out of the darkness. He was disoriented. How long had he floated in the dark? Seconds? Hours? He had no way of knowing.

He felt sunburned from head to toe. Though the light was painfully bright, he raised a hand to look at it. His hand and arm were a greyish-white.

"This one's awake," someone shouted.

"Good. Put him to work," came a reply.

Two pairs of hands picked him up and plopped him on the sand.

"Ow!" he said.

"Go wash off in the surf, kid. Then get back up here and help us with these others."

Nathan sat up. He was surprised at how light he felt. He looked around.

He was on a beach. Lying all around on the ground and apparently unconscious, were hundreds of naked, grey-skinned people. Only a half dozen were awake. They were naked and hairless like the others, but had very pink skin. These men were busy washing the grey ash off the right shoulder of each of the sleeping bodies.

"Get going, kid. We have a deadline here."

Nathan got to his feet, again amazed by how light he felt. He started toward the beach, then felt a wave of dizziness and nausea.

"I'm still sick," he yelled back, then threw up as if to emphasize the point.

"Go ahead and wash off, then sit by your parents, and try to stay out of the way."

"Jawohl mein Herr!" Nathan said, giving a weak salute, and starting toward the water. The haircut and gruff treatment reminded him of military movies he'd seen. Might as well talk that way.

The feeling of being light persisted. He took a deep breath. What was that smell? He'd been to beaches before, but they had never smelled this way.

Because his skin still felt burned, he took his time gently washing off the ash.

For the first time he noticed the sky. It wasn't quite the right shade of blue. It had a slight purple cast to it. It finally dawned on him he was on another planet.

Though there were thousands of planets in the empire, he had never left Deutscherwelt.

Deutscherwelt had been settled in the reign of an earlier emporer who had not been nearly as meddlesome and restrictive as Emperor Bill.

When Emporer Bill had come to power, the first thing he had done was to declare all spacegoing vessels to be under imperial authority. Civilian vessels trying to travel without proper imperial permits were routinely destroyed by the Emporer's fleet.

As if that weren't enough, he declared all new colonization to be strictly under his control.

It was obvious that Bill would have never allowed a colony like Deutscherwelt. People of German descent throughout the empire had come together to restore the glory of the German culture. Similar colonies had been settled by American Indians, Irish, and other ethnic groups. That kind of separatism would have scared Bill silly. As it was, some were afraid Deutscherwelt would become some kind of 'Fourth Reich'.

Nathan was a second generation Deutscherwelt native. Both he and his parents had been born there.

He had laughed when he had heard about those fears in school. Deutscherwelt had become the empire's leading scientific influence, and was considered one of the most stable, middle-of-the-road societies in the empire. (Of course, Nathan had never heard that many offworlders considered the Deutschers to be intolerably conceited and self absorbed.)

All his life, Nathan had dreamed of visiting other planets. Deutscherwelt was a nice place, and Nathan really liked it's mountains, rivers, forests, etc., yet he had still dreamed of other worlds. But with Bill around, pleasure travel to other worlds wasn't going to happen.

Now, Nathan was sitting in the ocean of a new planet, and he had missed the trip! He felt cheated.

His reverie was interrupted by a shout.

"Hey kid! Don't sit in that water too long. We don't know what lives in there yet. You might become something's lunch."

Nathan was out of the water in heartbeat (or two). As he was walking back, the man who seemed to be in charge asked "Wie heisst du?"

"My name is Nathan," Nathan answered.

"Nate, I need some help. Since you are sick, I am waking your parents first. One of them can help me, and one of them can watch you. Come over here with them."

Nathan was glad to hear this news, and hurried as fast as he comfortably could.

Another man with a hypodermic gun went over to Nathan's parents. He wiped his father's now-clean shoulder with something, then gave him a shot. He then moved to Nathan's mother to do the same.

In less than a minute, Nathan's father opened his eyes, then squinted in the bright sunlight.

"Sometimes it sucks to be right," he said.

"Whatever that means," said the man with the hypo gun. "Get up. We don't have much time. We've got a lot of people to revive before the machine blows."

He sat up, and was almost knocked down again by Nathan leaning over and hugging him.

"They kept us together!" he said, smiling and hugging Nathan back.

"Alright. Reunion time later. Let's move."

When Dan stood and saw all the naked people on the beach, he laughed.

"What?" the other man asked.

"I don't know, just something about being forcibly abducted from our home and taken to a nude beach - on another planet. It just seems absurd." Dan replied.

"If you were like the others, there wasn't much force involved. Your home was gassed, and your sleeping bodies removed. That's what we were told anyway, for what it's worth. Right now, we're administering a counteragent to the knock-out gas. It'll go quicker if you disinfect their arm, and I'll follow with the shot. Saves me having to do both."

"What you were told? You don't know?" Dan asked, wiping the nearest cleaned arm with an alcohol pad.

"I'm an abductee too. We all are, I think, except maybe the guy at the machine. He says it's programmed to blow up about a minute after the last person is retrieved. If we stop the process too long, he says it will blow then too."

"Why?"

"I've got two words for that. Emperor Bill."

"That's a given, but what is the purpose behind it?" Dan asked, moving to the next person.

"Are you serious?" You expect anything Crazy Bill does to make sense? I just hope he used people who knew what they were doing. Any number of things about this planet could easily kill us otherwise."

Nathan's father was getting too far away to follow his conversation over the noise of the wind and surf. That was just as well, because his mother was now waking up.

"Mutti," Nathan said.

"Why do I feel so lousy, and why is it so breezy?" she asked, eyes not yet opened.

"We were gassed, and now we're on another planet. The gravity is even lighter."

She sat up, eyes still shut tight. She then put a hand up as an sunshade and squinted her eyes open a tiny crack.

"Are you naked?" she asked Nathan, puzzled.

"We all are, Mutti. It's kind of funny. No one has any hair."

Mariah's hand went to the top of her head. "Bald!" she exclaimed.

"We all are," Nathan reiterated.

"Oh," was all she could say.

She forced her eyes open and looked around, blinking in the harsh sunlight.

"What in the world is going on here?" she asked.

"See that machine over there?" Nathan pointed. She nodded.

"About every minute a new person pops out. They had us in storage. They said that our hair and clothes would catch fire and burn us when they brought us out."

"What's this?" Mariah asked, rubbing at the grey ash.

"Some of your skin. They told me to wash off in the ocean. Come on, the water's nice and warm." Nathan grabbed his mother's hand.

Reluctantly, she got up and let Nathan lead her to the water. At one point, she caught Dan's eye and he waved, then gave a wolf-whistle and a thumbs-up.

She shook her head, and continued to the water. "Your father was right, and I'm never going to hear the end of it." As if suddenly remembering, she asked "How are you feeling?"

"Less weak, but now I keep getting a little cold, even in this sun."

'This sun' was nearly sunset orange, even though it was high in the sky.

"Your father said you would have a fever for a few days." She abruptly cut herself off, as if remembering something.

"What is it?" Nathan asked.

"Looks like an ocean," she answered, attempting humor.

"Be sure to wash behind your ears," he replied, attempting his own humor.

Those not actually involved in the procedure were moved about 500 meters down the beach. The group was mostly families, with a few single adults. Many, if not most had never been naked in mixed company before. Almost to a person, they were surprised at how quickly they lost their discomfort with the situation. Most of the younger kids were simply delighted to romp around naked on the beach.

The teens seemed to have the most trouble adjusting. Many of them spent extra time in the surf, effectively hiding until they were made to come out for safety concerns.

But on the average, within 15-20 minutes, everyone had adapted to the nudity. Complete strangers sttood around discussing why they had been abducted, and how corrupt/crazy/stupid Emperor Bill was, etc., most not even noticing each other's nakedness any more.

Word had already been passed that two minutes after the last person was retrieved, the retrieval system would self destruct. That was why everyone was now a safe distance away. The machine operator now shouted "This is the last one!"

When the process was complete and the chamber opened, the operator and three other helpers picked up the new man's unconscious body and carried it at a near-run to where the others were waiting.

About two minutes after they had picked the man up, a small puff of smoke was seen coming out of the control panel.

"That's it?" someone asked. "It fried its own control board. Big deal."

A second or two later, one of the feed tanks exploded in a white-hot flash, taking the rest of the hardware with it.

"Uncontrolled plasma release," the operator said. "I wondered how they were going to do it."

He raised his voice to address the crowd. "Listen up, folks!" When everyone quieted down, he continued.

"I got drafted to run that machine. I was also told where a cache of food rations and seed is. I was told there was enough food for two years if we don't waste it. We're supposed to plant the seeds and have crops established by then. If we don't, we starve. We're on our own from now on. Sort of.

"There are six groups like ours scattered around the planet," he went on. "Potentially, we can aid each other in the future, but we don't even know where the other groups are, now."

"If there really are any," another voice said.

"True. We don't actually know if there are. Nor do we know if the cache of food is really there, but that we can go check.

"So now you all know what I know. I am not your leader or anything."

"Who is?" Someone asked.

"We should decide that before we do anything else. Once we're settled in somewhere with food and shelter, we can decide on whatever government we want. Right now, we're in a survival situation, and I think we need one capable, strong leader. Anyone want to make a bid for it?"

There was a lot of murmuring, and finally a lone voice was raised "You're doing pretty well already."

A number of voices agreed.

"I'm not interested in the job," the former operator said.

"So much the better," said Nathan's father. "You aren't power-hungry."

"Who needs another Bill?" someone shouted. Several others voiced agreement.

"Do we have any serious nominations or volunteers?"

"I nominate you," Dan said.

"Anyone else?"

No one spoke.

"Come on now, I'm not a 'people person'. You wouldn't want me as your leader. I'm just a get-it-done guy."

"Exactly what we need till we get settled," Dan said. "Who votes for - uh what's your name, anyway?"

"Lars," he sighed in resignation.

"Who votes for Lars?" Nearly every hand went up.

"Alright," Lars said, defeated. "Let's find the food cache." He started walking, and 120 people followed.