Travels of the Orphan (The Space Orphan Book 3) by Laer Carroll

Author:Laer Carroll [Carroll, Laer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-02-08T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12 - Lizards

On December 1st the captain and owner of Cat Centaur Spaceship 101347 made an announcement to the humans of the Solar System, in 319 languages, no less. Soon 347 would have been a "guest" of humans for two years. She and her people had been treated generously. To show the appreciation Elizabeth, her captain, said 347 would host a party on New Year's Eve.

This would be a huge affair. The spaceship would float at a thousand feet up, high above where the highest of the fireworks went. It would float for twenty minutes above each of the three largest cities in each time zone.

The day before New Year's Eve shuttle craft would drop down from S-347 at each city and embark up to a thousand people, 200 of whom were invited by the Cats. The invitees would be selected by humans in each city starting December 2nd and announced a week before New Years. The remaining 800 would be selected randomly by 347's computers. All invitees would have to be 21 years or older and in reasonable but not necessarily very good health.

As the robot selections would be truly random every race, sex, ethnic, and political group would be picked. The selections would be notified by email, so they would have to have a registered email address. With each invitation would be an image of a badge which would have to be printed out. Multiple badges would not be accepted, with only the holder of the first badge admitted.

Many commentators criticized the process but Elizabeth would not yield. This led many to guess that the Cats, who were known to be big practical jokers, had deliberately left big holes in the process to remain.

<>

The Friday before the first weekend in December Jane got a text from Elizabeth asking is she could drop by Saturday night. Jane had bought a house in Colorado Springs somewhat like the one she still owned in Pasadena. She had continued the practice of having big parties at home and there would be one that weekend.

She said Sure. It would be nice to see Elizabeth again. Their schedules rarely crossed. Too, her presence at Jane's party would give Jane's already-high celebrity an even bigger boost.

"What do you think she wants?" said Phil. The two were snuggling on her couch looking out the big picture window east to where a near-full moon was rising. Her house was on a shallow hillside behind which a sprawling golf course lay. The slight elevation gave them a good unobstructed view of the sky over the suburbs beyond them and further to the Colorado Springs Airport. The rising and falling lights of planes taking off and landing made a nice light show near the right side of the picture window.

"Want?"

"Hah! Innocent. The timing is a bit too coincidental. You home from a mission, a party tomorrow, the Christmas holiday in sight, and her big New Year's Eve flyover in the works?"

"Oh. Yeah." She sat up a bit straighter. "I keep forgetting that Galactics have this social engineering stuff down to a literal science.

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.