Dragonstar Destiny Read Free

beginning?”
    Mr. Littlejohn scowled at the crowd, then nodded. “Yes, I’m afraid so ...”
    Actually Gregor did not mind this request as much as one might expect. Summarizing the events leading up to this point would at least give him a chance to “warm up” to the audience, to relax, and to allow the vodka time to do its job.
    “Very well,” he said after a decently dramatic pause. “But I promise you: I will be very brief.”
    Mr. Littlejohn nodded perfunctorily and sat down. There was a low murmur running through the assemblage, which faded away as Gregor began speaking.
    “Seven months ago, the Lunar Observatory on Copernicus Base discovered an alien artifact which became known as the Dragonstar. Theartifact was an immense cylindrical ship, more than three hundred twenty- kilometers in length and sixty-five kilometers in diameter. The cylinder rotated on its longitudinal axis once every three hundred sixty seconds. It was moving in it highly stable cometary orbit with a period of two hundred ten years.
    “First visual intercept was made by a survey/prospecting vessel just as it entered the asteroid belt. A boarding party from the IASA Heinlein successfully entered the alien vessel, and discovered the enclosed Mesozoic ecology lining the interior of the cylinder. Lakes, rivers, mountains, plateaus, and valleys perfectly re-created—an exact duplicate of the Earth more than one hundred sixty million years ago. However, the boarding party was not very prepared to deal with the carnivorous dinosaurs which soon attacked them, and only Rebecca Thalberg and Ian Coopersmith survived.”
    Gregor paused for a short sip from his glass. The vodka blazed a new path of confidence through his chest as he continued:
    “A second, specially equipped expedition soon arrived on board the Dragonstar and established a permanent base of operations. Colonel Phineas Kemp headed up the team which intended to attach outrigger impulse engines to the alien vessel, break it free from its comet-like orbit, and ferry it back to the Earth-Moon system where it could be placed in a stable Lagrange Point orbit. While this operation was being completed, Kemp organized a search party through the Mesozoic Preserve to find Thalberg and Coopersmith.
    “Meanwhile, these same two survivors trekked across the hostile terrain until they discovered the equivalent of the Great Wall of China ringing the interior of the cylinder, effectively isolating the last forty klicks of environment before it abutted against the flat end of the enclosure. Beyond this artificially constructed barrier lay the civilization of a species dubbed the Saurians by Coopersmith arid Thalberg. The creatures were a species of bipedal dinosaur, which evolved to intelligence during the last fifty million years within the sealed universe of the ship. The Saurian technology was based partly on biological as well as mechanical innovations, and operated roughly on a level equivalent to eighteenth-century Earth.
    “While Thalberg and Coopersmith established contact with the Saurians, Colonel Kemp and his crew succeeded in bringing the Dragonstar back to the Earth-Moon system. After defeating an attempted hijacking of the alien ship by terrorists of the Third World Confederation, the IASA expedition rescued Thalberg and Coopersmith and began the long project of unraveling the mysteries of the Dragonstar. ”
    Gregor risked several additional fingers of vodka before pressing onward:
    “Several uneventful months passed in which a large team of scientists established permanent installations within the alien ship. Finally succumbing to combined pressure from the media and various world governments, the IASA agreed to open up the Dragonstar ’s doors, so to speak, by producing an epic documentary to be broadcast on a worldwide basis. While the production was being prepared, scientists began detecting changes in the radiation levels on the ship. The radiation caused cancer-like mutations in