Odyssey by Jack McDevitt

Author:Jack McDevitt
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Published: 2013-08-11T16:00:00+00:00

chapter 23

Solitude is only a good idea if you have the right people along to share it.

—Gregory MacAllister, “The World in the Sky”

Neither Eric nor Amy wanted to leave. “This is where the action is,” Amy said, after they’d watched a grim-faced Peter Arnold tell them to get well clear of 36 Ophiuchi. Put as much distance as you can between yourselves and the moonriders. Don’t talk to them. Don’t answer if they say hello. “How do we ever find out about them if we run?”

Valya put an arm around her shoulder. “No choice, glyka mou. We have to do what they tell us.”

When he was able to speak to MacAllister alone, Eric explained that the Academy was protecting Amy. “If she wasn’t on board,” he said, “nobody would really care about you and me.” He tried to make it into a joke, but MacAllister could see he believed it. The three adults were expendable.

That sort of perspective would never have occurred to MacAllister. And he readily dismissed it. Of course the Academy didn’t want to take any chances with Amy, but they also knew he was on board.

Valya kept her feelings to herself. She simply shrugged when the message ended and told them to buckle down. “Vega’s next,” she said. “We’ve backtracked a bit, so the jump will take longer than it would have from Origins.” A bit under two days, she added. Minutes later they were accelerating away from the asteroid.

Seventeen years.

How did these creatures think? Were they going to come back to watch the fireworks?

MacAllister disliked bullies. And people who were cruel to animals. Here were these malevolent sons of bitches, with all that technology, and they were like kids stomping on an anthill. Pathetic. He wondered whether they were related to the idiots who’d devised the omega clouds.

Whatever, he wasn’t unhappy to get away. The prospect of sitting around waiting for the moonriders to come back was not appealing. Who knew what they might be crazy enough to do? Still, with Valya on the scene, he tried to look dismayed that they were leaving. It was safe because he knew Valya, like a good captain, would listen seriously to the protests of her passengers but follow her instructions.

“What’s particularly annoying,” Eric said, “is that we came so close. If we’d stayed here the first time, we might have been able to wave them down. Say hello. Or tell them to go to hell. Something.”

Go to hell, MacAllister thought, would have made a great opening in a dialogue with another species. That would look inspirational in the schoolbooks. He immediately began thinking of other moving first lines. Stick it in your ear, you nitwits.

Get your sorry asses on the next train out of town.

Sorry, boys, but we don’t cotton to strangers here.

He sighed. Imagined himself as a sheriff in the long ago, standing quietly in the dusk with a six-gun on his hip, watching three horsemen slink away.

ERIC WAS GENUINELY frustrated. All his life he’d been watching other people come back on the Academy’s ships after scoring triumphs.

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.