The Boatmen by Boyd Jerry

Author:Boyd, Jerry
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-09-13T00:00:00+00:00

OceanofPDF.com

Bob

I was in the office, playing pool with Jeeves, when he said, “Emergence in five minutes, Boss.”

I replied, “I’ll see if I can leave one next to the pocket, so the wiggle will drop it in.”

Emergence came and went. I said, “I better see what kind of messages are waiting on me. Thanks for the game, Jeeves.”

“All part of the service, Boss.”

I looked through the messages. I had expected something from Dingus, or Joshua, but neither of them had reported yet. I doubted Dingus had met anything that could give the Armstrong any trouble, but I did worry about Joshua. We had been friends for a long time, even if he didn’t tell me that he was from out of town. None of the messages I did have was anything special, until I found the message from Steve. He said Max had gotten him in touch with the man who wasn’t there, and he had found enough dirt on the adoption judge to get the paperwork sped up. Johnny’s last name was now officially Mason. That brought a smile to my face. Jeeves said, “Captain Branham for you, Sir.”

“On screen, please, Jeeves.”

The wall filled up with John. “Hi, Bob. Have a good trip?”

“We found what we went after, and more besides. Seems Topper’s old friend had her own ‘Underbot Railroad’ going. We brought them all out.”

“Is she all Topper thought she was?”

“Must be. Saucy and Sue have had bridge watches since she came aboard. I haven’t seen much of Topper.”

“You better watch out. She might ‘Yoko’ the band.”

“I doubt that. Those bots are tight. Did you hear that Johnny’s adoption went through?”

“I did. Good news, for sure.”

“It is. I just wonder if we’re going to get a reputation for taking care of stowaways.”

John asked, “You think kids are going to start trying to get aboard our ships, every time we go to Earth, just so one of the kindly captains will adopt them?”

“I could see it happening. Up ‘til now, we’ve kept things quiet, but with Johnny’s adoption going through the courts, it’s going to get around what happened.”

“I can see your point, but we’ve helped all those ‘Do It Now’ kids, and as far as I know, we’ve only had that one case where they told someone else to get ahold of us.”

“That’s all I know about, too. That little girl had a good reason to talk to us, anyway.”

“She sure did. Her Nana was a corker, wasn’t she?”

“Sure enough. I’m a little surprised she hasn’t recommended us to any of her friends.”

“Well, Bob, I’ve got the man who wasn’t there keeping an eye on them, and they haven’t been hassled by the government. I don’t know why we haven’t heard from them.”

“As long as they’re safe, I’m not going to worry about it too much. How are things here?”

“We’re still waking people up and taking them down to the settlements on the islands.”

“They’re okay with that?”

“Most of them are surprised to wake up, to be honest. I think they all thought they were going to die on the trip.

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.