Crescent by Homer Hickam

Author:Homer Hickam
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: ebook, book, (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯)
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2013-02-28T13:00:00+00:00

::: TWENTY-THREE

Crater rotated the jumpcar and backed down onto the Moontown mobile pad. He did a post flight while being transported into the hangar, then climbed down the ladder where Riley waited for him. “Thanks for everything, Riley,” he said and tossed his helmet to her. “If I’m not back in a few hours, how about flying the jumpcar over to Cleomedes and picking up the doc?”

“Roger, wilco, sir, but do ye have a second now?” Riley asked.

“Later, okay?” Crater said and ducked through the hangar hatch, leaving her frowning after him. Crater loped through the tubeways, saying, “Sorry, ma’am,” and “Excuse me, sir,” to the tubewives and tubehusbands as he ran by. He arrived at the Colonel’s office, surprising the new executive assistant, a young olive-skinned woman from Greater Israel. She rose to stop him. “See here, sir, you can’t go in there!”

“Don’t worry. He’ll want to see me,” Crater said and flung open the great door, only to find the office empty. He turned around as the assistant came up behind him. “Where is he?”

Her eyes were wide. “On the scrapes.”

“Where on the scrapes?”

She took a step back. “I don’t know.”

Crater thought she was lying but he didn’t have time to worm the truth out of her. “Thank you,” he said, his inherent politeness asserting itself, then ran past her and headed for the sheriff’s office only to find it empty too. He next headed for his assigned dustlock, climbed into his biolastic sheath, pulled on his suit and helmet, and went outside. He jumped aboard a fastbug and headed for the scrapes. There were eight of them being worked. It was on the fifth one that he found the Colonel.

The Colonel was dressed in the white coveralls of a supervisor as were the two men accompanying him. “Sir, a word, if you don’t mind.”

“I am inspecting this scrape at the moment, Crater,” the Colonel said. “Make an appointment.”

“This is very important, sir.”

“So are the scrapes,” he said. “I’m doing my job. Now, go away and do yours.”

“Colonel, you said that if I could produce evidence showing Crescent innocent, you’d let her go. I want to tell you what I’ve found out.”

The Colonel sighed. “Go to my private channel.” When that was done, the Colonel said, “I should have known it was about that barbaric creature.”

“Colonel, do you know who Deputy Jones was back on Earth?”

The Colonel’s eyes turned frosty. “President Warto of Centropia. I didn’t know that until after I’d hired him. He covered his tracks very well.”

“Even though you knew he killed millions of people, you kept him on your payroll?”

“Actually, at the time of his murder, I was considering how to rid myself of him.”

“Do you know who else in Moontown is from Centropia?”

“No, I don’t,” the Colonel replied with a sigh, “but I suppose you do.”

“Kurto, the chef at the Dust Palace. He’s also a Tovar, the people Warto all but wiped out. According to Deputy Zageev, the night Warto died, Kurto told him that Warto was seen near the Dust Palace.

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