Salvage and Destroy by Edward Llewellyn

Author:Edward Llewellyn [Llewellyn, Edward]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Fiction, General, Science Fiction
ISBN: 9780879978983
Publisher: DAW
Published: 1984-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

PART THREE

Chapter XIV

Hyperion slid down the cataracts of time, rolled in the after-turbulence of the vortex, and glided out into calm cotemporal space. She drifted quietly for a few minutes, as though recovering from extreme exertion, then vibrations built up along her hull as her engines came on load, storing energy from the angular momentum of the Galaxy, the energy to drive her up to interstellar speeds; preparing to launch herself toward the distant Sun.

New constellations with familiar names swept across the viewscreens as she swung her bows onto the great-spherical course for Earth. Saul had taken us across twenty starfields, through twenty vortices, to within sight of our goal. We were at the edge of the solar system with Edrin sixty light-years astern and Earth only five light-hours ahead. A wave of excitement swept the intercom as the crew sighted their ancestral star—a pleasure no Ult could hope to share. Our own world of origin is lost in the confusion of our early history.

"There she blows!" Saul checked the chatter. "All stations report! Navigation?"

"I have Sol on visual and the Monitor on radio!" Triumph warmed Martha's cool voice.

"After station?"

"Ara vortex buoy full strength. Departure bearings entered." Sharon's report rang like a paean. "Marker launched and signaling." Saul had ordered her to drop one of our own navigational buoys after each of the last twelve vortices.

"Main drive?"

"Capacitons fully charged. Ready to drive!" Slammer was aching to go.

"Make your thrust for one gravity."

Slammer might be disappointed but the rest of us relaxed. An easy sweep past Sol, curving down to Earth. No more muscle-wrenching accelerations until we started back toward Edrin.

"Predictors?"

"All futures acceptable." Mark paused. "Direct Terran signals detected on all channels!"

"You're reading Earth?"

"Heavy noise and deep fading but I'm getting snatches of speech and scraps of images. I'm feeding them into the analyzers."

"How long before you can synthesize an image?"

"Depends what you want. Skipper. Could probably give you the composite of an Earth female now. That category's filling fast."

"I know what a human female looks like! What I want to see is a Terran spaceship. Start your machines working on that!"

"Terran spaceship it is. It'll take longer. They can't be broadcasting many pictures—"

"Then get on with it!" Saul continued with his regular post-vortex routine.

I stayed in Cardinal Control for several hours after most of the other stations had switched to automatics. I too was anxious to see a full image of the only ships in the Cluster besides our own. The signal-restorers on Clur had produced the outlines of chemical-driven rockets but the news that Terrans had launched orbiting manned laboratories suggested their ship design had been advancing at the same breakneck speed as the rest of their technology. I was still hunting the will-o'-the-wisp of intelligibility among the mush when an indicator lit and I intercepted Mark's call to the flightdeck. "Skipper—I'm getting something I think you should see."

The fact that he was using closed-circuit meant that he did not want anybody else to see it. I switched my screen into parallel with Saul's.

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.