Children of the Comet by Donald Moffitt

Author:Donald Moffitt
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Open Road Media Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Published: 2015-05-31T14:50:52+00:00

CHAPTER 20

“I’ve got another message coming through from Chu,” Alten said. “He’s a couple of light-hours closer than he was the last time, and he’s accelerating at a steady one G.”

Joorn looked up from his control board. “What did he say about their passenger?”

“They got him inboard without much resistance. They had to put him in the dolphin tank with Jonah. He couldn’t even take the one G.”

“That’ll be a problem. He’ll be okay while we’re coasting, but we’ve got a lot more deceleration to do before we get into the inner system. And then, of course, we’ll have to put the ship under spin. We can’t function for extended periods under null G.”

“We’ll worry about that later. He’ll either have to live with the dolphins or we can fix him up with facilities at the axis. Damned inconvenient!”

“If he lived on that comet, he’s adapted to null G, or close to it.”

“Chu says he’s about twelve feet tall and probably wouldn’t weigh more than a hundred pounds in Earth gravity. Elongated limbs and prehensile toes, from the look of his boots. He’s evolved after six billion years. But his equipment is primitive—bow and arrow, no metal of any kind, with fittings carved from some kind of animal bone, a hand-sewn spacesuit made out of some kind of animal gut. About what you’d expect of a Cro-Magnon, if they’d had to survive in space. How he heats the spacesuit is a mystery. We’ll have to get him out of it to find out.”

“Irina and her team will have their work cut out for them.”

Alten frowned. “Speaking of Irina, I haven’t heard from her. Nina should have been with her by now.”

“Hold on. I’ll put you through to her. There, you’ve got a private channel.”

Joorn went back to his piloting. Alten spoke in subdued tones to his communicator. Finally he looked up, concern showing on his face.

“She never showed up. She should have been there long before now. That’s not like Nina. She doesn’t get distracted. She wanted to be with her mother when our visitor arrived.”

There was a sudden crackle of background noise from the speaker. The private channel had somehow been breached. Joorn froze as Miles Oliver’s supercilious voice filled the control room.

“Worried about your precious daughter, Alten? She’s with me. You’ll get her back if you and your doting father do exactly as I say.”

The background noise resolved itself into a muffled babble of men’s voices. Nina came through faintly. “Don’t listen to him, Father! He’s crazy!” Then she was cut off.

Alten exploded in a sudden blind rage. “Oliver, what have you done? I promise you that if you—”

“Shut up, bright boy! Or are you bright enough to realize what’s at stake?”

Joorn cut in. “What do you want, Oliver?”

“Ah, our eminent captain speaks. You know what we want, Captain. We want you to turn the ship over to us. We’ve reinforced our numbers with recruits from a new generation, and we haven’t forgotten our pursuit of man’s greatest adventure.

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