Max Quadrant and the Deus Crystal by Adrian Smith

Author:Adrian Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Book Guild Publishing

25

Midway through the afternoon, Max received a message from Rose stating that they should meet as soon as possible. He hadn’t been able to take her call when it had come, as he had been engaged in an interesting conversation of his own at that time. From the excited tone of her message, he assumed that she had made some progress, and when, as he stood waiting at the appointed place and time, he saw her almost rushing towards him, this assumption became a certainty.

‘Max, let’s go and sit down somewhere and have a drink, I’ve got something to tell you,’ she blurted out a little too quickly to make her words distinguishable from one another.

‘I’m fine with that, but we’d better make it coffee. I think you’ve had enough of the other stuff.’

‘I’m fine, I’m fine. I can do this all day.’

‘I think you have been.’

‘All right, Sir,’ she said mockingly, ‘whatever you say, Sir. Coffee it is.’

As they sat in the nearest coffee bar, Rose began to impart her news.

‘I’ve found him. The guy that took Mensch to Tonto. Goes by the name of Pat Mediu, although I’m not at all sure that that’s his real name. Cagey sort of fellow. Anyway, he’s the one that did the deal with Synapse. Reckons Synapse offered him a fair chunk of money, although he wouldn’t say how much, to drop Mensch off at Tonto. Said it was the easiest money he has ever earned. He was going to Tonto anyway, to deliver some medical machinery, and Mensch behaved himself impeccably all the way. In fact, he didn’t say anything to anyone for the whole trip. Now, before you start your evaluation of my information, Mr Space Detective, I know that finding this information in itself doesn’t get us any further in finding out where Synapse went to, but, when discussing the deal with Mediu, Synapse said that he couldn’t take Mensch to Tonto himself because he was going space-west from Tremscoote, whereas Tonto is, of course, space-east. So, OK, we already knew that Synapse wasn’t going spaceeast, because if he had been he would have taken Mensch himself. I think we can also assume that he is unlikely to have told Mediu the true direction he was heading, so when he left here I reckon he must have gone spacenorth or spacesouth. What do you think? At least it cuts down the possibilities.’

‘So what do we do next? Toss a coin? Heads we go spacenorth, tails spacesouth?’

‘We look at a map. See what’s spacenorth, see what’s spacesouth. Then we take an educated guess as to which way we think he went. Unless you have a better idea?’

Max sat back slightly and stirred the coffee in front of him.

‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I do.’ Max allowed himself a momentary pause before delivering his news.

‘When you tried to call me earlier, I was engaged in conversation with a gentleman whose name I do not know. The fact that he declined to provide me

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.