A Laughing Owl by A.C. Ellas

Author:A.C. Ellas [Ellas, A.C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Adult, Erotic Romance, GLBT, Gay, Science Fiction
ISBN: 9781487401528
Publisher: eXtasy Books
Published: 2014-12-15T06:00:00+00:00

Over the next week, Nick, Cai and the rest of the crew got acquainted with the scientific contingent as Cai sped them toward Tycho and the planet Brahe. Evie weathered her first jump, not on the bridge, for there wasn’t space, but in the transient quarters. Nick did have screens set up for the scientists so they could watch the jump, and Cai let them see things from his perspective also, particularly the physicists.

Evie told him later that her first jump had been special thanks to his and Cai’s thoughtfulness. She found Cai’s perspective to have been the most interesting. Nick agreed immediately and told her about the simulated jump he’d sat through as a cadet. The other scientists were also grateful, going so far as to say the Laughing Owl was the best host ship any of them had ever been on.

Inevitably, they reached Tycho. The star itself was a subgiant, but its outer layers had been blown away in the supernova, so it wasn’t much larger than Sol, and considerably more evolved, bearing many trace metals in its signature. Tycho was an interesting star, but what drew the eye was the fantastic nebula it nestled within. The expanding shell of gas didn’t look like much from the outside, but from within, it had a delicate, lacy structure reminiscent of a honeycomb.

According to the data available to Nick, the nebula was visible from Brahe’s surface all night and sometimes even during the day. The planet’s aurora was said to be spectacular, visible even from the habitable belt at the equator. Brahe had a much greater axial tilt than did Earth, a full thirty-five degrees. The polar ice caps melted every summer and reformed every winter, so the oceanic currents were fierce beyond belief. That, combined with almost nightly meteor showers and two large moons in competing orbits, rendered most of the planet uninhabitable and the equatorial region marginal. However, the planet was the source of many strange and wonderful compounds, pharmaceuticals and, according to Cai, was a major, but not the only, manufacturer of Synde.

To Nick, the biggest mystery of all was how the planet had ever developed life in the first place. Life was tenacious, sure, and it cropped up in the unlikeliest of places. But Brahe seemed a bit outside the parameters life needed to develop, which meant, to his mind, that the planet might have been seeded. There was evidence that this had occurred on other worlds, but there was no definitive proof, and also begged the question of why anyone would bother seeding a planet like this.

Lashed by wind and water with a sun that blew off a large amount of mass within the last couple thousand years, and yet, this planet has an established ecosystem of plants and animals larger than single-celled organisms. The more Nick thought about Brahe, the less sense it made. He went to Dr. Hull with his questions.

Darwin beamed at him like he was one his own pupils. “Very good, Captain, and exactly right.

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