Lost Earth by Michael McCollum

Author:Michael McCollum [McCollum, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-625675-26-2
Publisher: Jabberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.
Published: 2020-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

PART THREE

Moskva

Chapter 22

As soon as Charon docked with Coronal Fire, Lara was up and out of her seat. She pivoted in mid-air and prepared to pull herself hand-over-hand toward the airlock.

Nal, who was seated across the aisle, regarded her with surprise. “Where are you going?” he asked his wife.

“Cor sent me a message via implant,” she said. “We may have a line on Earth’s location.”

Nal’s eyes widened for an instant before he, too, levered himself up and prepared to follow. Apparently, Teo Voxman had just checked in and received the news. Lara was looking at her when she, too, jerked in her seat and began gathering her belongings.

“Hold up, everyone!” Lara called out. She then made a general announcement to the boat’s passengers about what Cor had found in the Afalonian novel. “Let us have an orderly disembarkation and then spend a couple of hours getting educated. I’ll call a meeting of after third meal and we can plan our next move.”

With that, Lara pulled herself hand-over-hand to the dorsal airlock using the acceleration couches as anchor points. She waited for pressure to be equalized in the short embarkation tube from the ship and for both of Charon’s airlock doors to retract into their recesses. She then floated upward, grasped the swing bar with both hands, and then swung through a quick ninety-degree arc into the ship’s standard one gee internal grav field.

She found Doria Teray waiting for her on the other side of the starship’s airlock.

“Welcome back, Shipmaster. How did it go?”

“Reasonably well considering the unwelcome news we delivered. I’d like to come back someday to see if the two societies are able to overcome their mutual suspicion sufficiently to stave off extinction.”

“Unlikely that we will come this way again,” Doria responded.

“True. We have given them more than enough value for what we learned, so that is all we can do. Does everyone aboard know about this clue Cor has found in the Afalonian novel?”

“Yes, Mistress. The Astronomy Group is already working on course options. They are just waiting for Scholar Voxman to give them guidance.”

“They won’t have long to wait. She will be the third face you see popping out of the tube.”

* * *

As promised, the meeting was held at 20:00 hours in the conference room off the control center. Those in attendance included the usual expedition leaders, Teodara Voxman, and the rest of her astronomy team.

“Well, Teo, what do you think?”

The astronomer looked thoughtful for a moment and said, “It’s at least as solid as the clues we have been following these past four years. I say that we act on it.”

“Do you have a course to recommend?”

“Courses, Shipmaster. We have several possibilities. If I may, my people and I have spent the last couple of hours thinking about our options.”

“We missed you at third meal. Proceed.”

Scholar Voxman slipped her personal screen out of its pouch and stroked in a few codes. The holocube in the center of the table came alight to show a cubical volume of the Orion Arm some five hundred light years on a side.

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