Alien Outcomes by John Daulton

Author:John Daulton [Daulton, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fiction
Publisher: Daulton Books
Published: 2021-08-31T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 35

“We have to go to Earth first,” Altin said, turning back from a star-filled window of Calico Castle’s eastern tower. It was the same tower he’d occupied most of his life, though now entirely remade by men from Earth in steel as well as stone, the “boot,” as it was called these days. “I made such an obvious fuss about it the other night because we have to. I am not certain that I can get us to that other world, to Murk, perhaps not at all, but definitely not without my ring. It’s farther even than Yellow Fire. A hundred times farther. And we have no idea where the Hostile world is from which those people got their Liquefying Stones. That world could be a hundred times a hundred farther away than distant Murk. Going to Earth first is the only reasonable way.”

Orli shrugged. “It’s the only reasonable way if you do all the work. But you don’t have to. We’ll do it in concert. Surely Her Majesty can find a conduit among her allies. With you and Tytamon and Doctor Leopold, there’s great power right there: an Eight, a Seven, and a Three, and you with a Z. Heck, didn’t I hear you say the doctor has two Ys? I may still be learning how that all works, but you three could do it yourselves in concert if you had to, couldn’t you? And yet there are others to help. Certainly, Klovis will, and whomever else she, Tytamon, and the War Queen can round up. And, by the way, the Queen herself can help; she’s got magic—although I’ve never heard anyone talk about her magic as being all that great. But she has it. And so does Squints. I’m sure we could squeeze enough magic juice out of all of them to get us there. If we truly need a little bit of Liquefying Stone, maybe we fly out to Kolat and dig some out of the slag. Roberto’s got radiation suits on the ship. There’s got to be some fragments of Liquefying Stone somewhere in there.”

“I asked him about that last night at dinner. He said the fastest way to do that would be to blast through the glass shell made by the explosion. If we get deep enough, we might find some that is not melted beyond usefulness. That means a trip back to Earth, however, as his ship has no more explosive devices, nor any of the mining equipment he would require after cracking open the shell. It all went back with Professor Bryant, who certainly won’t have kept it all sitting in his cellar awaiting our call. We’ve already lost six days waiting on the War Queen and those two old men, prodding at every slightest possibility with divining spells, when we ought to have left by now. Not to mention, as Roberto pointed out, there’s no promise any Liquefying Stone remains, no matter how deep we go, making the whole exercise a wild chimera chase.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.