Heaven's Reach Read Free

cursive
P.
    â€œAye aye, o’ Person-Commander. Where to now, Henry?”
    â€œName’s Harry,” he grunted. The perky tones used by pilot mode might have been cheery and friendly in Anglic, but they came across as just plain silly in Galactic Seven. Yet the only available alternative meant substituting a voice chip programmed in whistle-clicking GalTwo. A Gubru dialect, even. He wasn’t desperate enough to try that yet.
    â€œPrepare to ease us along a perceived-flat course trajectory of two forty degrees, ship centered,” he told the program. “Dead slow.”
    â€œWhatever you say, Boss-Sentient. Adapting interface parameters now.”
    Harry went back to the window, watching the station
grow
four huge wheels, bearing giant balloon tires with thick treads. Soon they began to turn. A squeaky whine, like rubbing your hand on a soapy countertop, penetrated the thick crystal panes.
    As he had feared, the tires found little traction on the slick brown surface. Still, he held back from overruling the pilot’s choice of countermeasures. Better see what happened first.
    Momentum built gradually. The station approached the nearest yellow starfish.
    Doubt spread in Harry’s mind.
    â€œMaybe I should try looking this up first. They might have the image listed somewhere.”
    Once upon a time, back when he was inducted as Earth’s first volunteer-recruit in the Navigation Institute survey department—full of tape-training and idealism—he used to consult the records every time E Space threw another weird symbolism at him. After all, the Galactic civilization of oxygen-breathing races had been exploring, cataloging, and surveying this bizarre continuum for half a billion years. The amount of information contained in even his own tiny shipboard Library unit exceeded the sum of all human knowledge before contact was made with extraterrestrials.
    An impressive store … and as it turned out, nearly useless. Maybe he wasn’t very good at negotiating with the Library’s reference persona. Or perhaps the problem came from being born of Earth-simian stock. Anyway, he soon took to trusting his own instincts during missions to E Space.
    Alas, that approach had one drawback.
You have only yourself to blame when things blow up in your face.
    Harry noticed he was slouching. He straightened and brought his hands together to prevent scratching. But nervous energy had to express itself, so he tugged on his thumbs, instead. A Tymbrimi he knew had once remarked that many of Harry’s species had that habit, perhaps a symptom from the long, hard process of Uplift.
    The forward tires reached the first starfish. There was no way around the things. No choice but to try climbing over them.
    Harry held his breath as contact was made. But touching drew no reaction. The obstacle just lay there, six long, flat strips of brown-flecked yellow, splayed from a nubby central hump. The first set of tires skidded, and the station rode up the yellow strip, pushed by the back wheels.
    The station canted slightly. Harry rumbled anxiously in his chest, trying to tease loose a tickling thread of recognition. Maybe “starfish” wasn’t the best analogy for these things. They looked familiar though.
    The angle increased. A troubled whine came from the spinning rear wheels until they, too, reached the yellow.
    In a shock of recognition, Harry shouted—“No! Reverse! They’re
ban
—”
    Too late. The back tires whined as slippery yellow strips flew out from under the platform, sending it flipping in a sudden release of traction. Harry tumbled, struck the ceiling, then slid across the far wall, shouting as the scout platform rolled, skidded, and rolled again … until it dropped with a final, bone-jarring thud. Fetching up against a bulkhead, Harry clutched a wall rail with his toes until the jouncing finally stopped.
    â€œOh … my head …,”