A Forest of Stars - Kevin J. Anderson [186]
She shaded her brown eyes as the sun lowered toward the horizon, thinking she saw movement out in the canyons. What if the mysterious murderer was coming back to attack her before she could leave? Let him try!
Then she recognized the silhouette, saw the man’s dead-weary gait. “Davlin!” He stopped and raised one hand, then shambled forward.
Rlinda wasn’t up for a mad dash across the rough terrain. Instead, she powered up the hoverlift and skimmed across the desert to meet him. Davlin seemed so dazed that he didn’t even notice her approach until she pulled the craft to a halt beside him. “It’s about time you got back, mister! If I was your mother, I’d ground you for a month.”
He didn’t have the energy to respond to her humor. She grasped his hand and hauled him onto the hoverlift. He slumped with exhaustion onto the platform, while Rlinda began jabbering about how much she’d worried about him. “You’re lucky I stuck around. I was about ready to leave.”
Back at the Curiosity, she fed him and—as she had expected—he simply gobbled the food, paying no attention to the taste. All the while, he seemed to be gathering energy. But she could tell he was bursting with news about what he had seen and experienced. His eyes were shining.
Finally, he told her what had happened and described all the places he had gone via transportal after transportal. “We came here to search for missing archaeologists, and instead we discovered something that’ll change the Hanseatic League forever.” Davlin spoke with such excitement that Rlinda couldn’t get in a comment of her own.
“Any sign of Margaret Colicos?” she asked.
He appeared briefly troubled, but more optimistic than she had seen him before. “No…but she could have gone anywhere. The possibilities are enormous—world after world, all of them suitable for supporting life. Not garden spots, maybe, but certainly livable.”
She grinned, listening to his adventures. “I’d say that’s a good enough reason to open my last and best bottle of wine.” Rlinda hurried up the ramp, unlocked her private store, and returned with an old bottle. She had intended to share it with BeBob, but this was a sufficient excuse. By the time she made it back to Crenna, she’d have a large enough reward from Basil Wenceslas that she could buy a whole case of any vintage she chose.
After she pulled the cork and poured them each a glass, Davlin surprised her by taking the initiative, raising his wine in a toast. “Rlinda, thank you for waiting. Your persistence may just be responsible for giving humanity an enormous advantage. Even I can’t imagine how much this is going to affect the human race. It’ll save the Hansa, maybe even civilization. Those Klikiss transportals lead to dozens, maybe hundreds of human-compatible worlds—all of them completely empty.”
Rlinda clinked her glass against his. “Knowing human beings, those planets won’t stay empty for long.”
Davlin took another sip, then suddenly looked impatient. “How long will it take to get your ship ready to leave?”
“I’d already started packing, remember?” She gestured around the camp. “And it’s not absolutely vital to take all this junk with us.”
“Good.” Davlin finished his wine in a long, rushed gulp.
Rlinda shook her head with a long-suffering sigh. “The finer things in life are just plain wasted on you. I might as well give you reconstituted grape juice.”
He stood. “Never mind that. We have to get back to Earth so I can report to Chairman Wenceslas. He’s going to be thrilled to hear what we’ve found. And if you’ve ever met the Chairman, you’ll know how extraordinary that is.”
98
DD
Plunging down and down…accelerating into the unknown hells of a gas giant. DD was terrified by the out-of-control descent, but even more than that, he feared what the Klikiss robots intended to do to him next.
Seeking comfort, he played and replayed