Echoes of an Alien Sky Read Free

never got around to it at all.

    The first item on their agenda was to meet for lunch with Borgan Casselo, who ran the physics side of the Earth Exploration Expedition, of which they were now to become part. After that, Kyal was due to meet Director Sherven, the overall scientific head. Casselo had hoped to meet them off the ship personally as would have befitted someone of Kyal's seniority, but just as they were disembarking he had called to apologize and say that one of those "things" had come up that was unavoidable and would detain him slightly.

    "You would hardly have been sent to Earth if you weren't the kind of person to be busy and in demand," Kyal replied.

    "The Master is too generous." As the occasion demanded, referring to Kyal's professional title: Master of Engineering. "One of our people here can stand in for me. But she will be a few minutes."

    "It isn't necessary. We'll learn more seeing something of the Explorer 6 than waiting. Why don't we meet you at the place where we're having lunch?

    "Are you sure?"

    "Absolutely."

    "If you're sure. It's the staff dining room called Patagonia. I can give you directions. They will have given you deck plans already, no doubt?"

    "Of course," Kyal affirmed confidently.

    "Very well. Here's the one you need, on your screen now. What you do is go through the double doors you'll see ahead of you at the far end of the disembarkation hall . . ."

    After checking at a reception point inside the docking port, they were soon lost in the labyrinth of galleries, shafts, and metal-walled corridors with color-coded floors leading off in all directions. They followed a terrace above an open area described as the Central Concourse, with staircases going up and down, and spaces opening off, and after negotiating a couple of communications nodes marked by emergency isolation doors where major sections of the structure joined, found themselves coming back into the Concourse again from a different direction. After asking directions, they eventually found the entrance to the Patagonia set a short distance back behind a sitting area part way along a pedestrian thoroughfare traversing the outer parts of the structure. This was where Casello was to meet them, but he had apparently yet to arrive. They settled down in a couple of the broad, padded chairs to wait, watching the intermittent flow of figures in work clothes, casual gear, and occasional crew uniforms going about their business. The section of roof above the pedestrian way in front of them was formed from curved window sections. Through it, framed on one side by the gray metallic lines of other parts of Explorer 6 , was Earth itself. Not on a screen this time. Not electronic at all, or any other kind of reproduction. But real.

    Kyal had harbored a fascination toward anything concerning Earth since his student days. It had been recognized as the only other planet in the Solar System that showed signs of supporting life long before the first probes were sent, making it an object of widespread curiosity and speculation. Then had come the excitement of the first pictures transmitted back from orbit, followed shortly thereafter by the incredible scenes captured by surface landers. Ever since those first days of actual exploration, Kyal had devoured the news from the first manned expeditions and reports of findings that had poured forth subsequently as a major interest aside from his own principal work. And now it was really out there, shining above is head, and he was a part of that work.

    He picked out the bulging coastline of the southern continent that had been known as Africa, home of the darkest Terran race. Farther north, reconstructed more from memory than visible among the curving ranks of cloud, would be Europe, which along with the northern part of the double continent America, lost in the curvature across the ocean to the west, seemed to have originated most of the lighter skins. How the various groups came to be as mixed