Island in a Sea of Stars Read Free Page A

folded his hands on his desk. “You’re one of my most important employees, Elisa.”
    She thought he was going to refuse her request. “I understand this is a very critical time for Iswander Industries, sir. You’re just leaving for Newstation—”
    His expression softened. “And I understand that this is even more important. Choose a ship of your own, any one you like—you’ve earned it. You’ll be going alone, I take it? I’ll inform the other team leaders that you’re taking an unspecified amount of time for a personal matter.”
    Elisa should have felt relieved, but her anger wasn’t dampened, merely focused. “Yes, Mr. Iswander. This is definitely personal.”

3
    GARRISON REEVES
    In uncharted, empty space, Garrison and Seth floated among the mysterious globules for two days of unthreatening quiet and just relaxed. They played games. Garrison told Seth about Roamer history, about other planets they would someday see. He knew they couldn’t stay here forever, and he had to decide what to do next, where they would go, what new life they would make. Although the knot in his stomach didn’t go away, it loosened a little.
    The strange bloaters drifted around them, occasionally sparkling, moving onward like slumbering space jellyfish.
    They were cut off from all communication, and he prayed that his concerns about the Sheol lava-processing operations were exaggerated. He would rather be proved wrong. But if nothing happened, Elisa would insist that his alarms were paranoid irresponsibility, and that he had willfully stolen her son. Garrison knew his wife could be vindictive if she wanted to be—and after what he had done, she would definitely want to be.
    He remained alert, keeping watch out the windowports of his ship, observing the odd nodules as they shifted around. The things were beautiful and exotic.
    Olaf Reeves had had very little patience for distractions or any opinions other than his own, but he had insisted that Garrison and his younger brother Dale respect the unknowns of the cosmos. This majestic cluster was certainly representative of that.
    Garrison didn’t want to admit it, but he was afraid that his most viable alternative would be to take Seth back to the bustling safety of clan Reeves. His family would take the two of them in, but Garrison knew that would involve an apology from him and lengthy rebukes from the stern clan leader. He would have to slide himself back under Olaf’s thumb and let Seth be raised in that environment.
    Yes, though Lee Iswander and Elisa represented impersonal human ambitions, Garrison also didn’t care for the isolationist Roamers. He didn’t accept his family’s scorn for “clans tainted by civilization.”
    No, he would find somewhere else. He had many different skills and interests, and he could apply for any number of useful jobs. His resourceful Roamer background guaranteed that, at least.
    â€œLook, there’s static on the screens,” Seth said. “A sort of pulse every thirty seconds. You think it’s a signal from the bloaters? Maybe they’re trying to communicate with us.”
    On the screen, Garrison saw a tiny blip, a flicker of static. Seth counted, and when he reached thirty, the blip appeared again. “See!”
    Garrison ran some diagnostic routines, trying to pinpoint the origin. “It’s not coming from the bloaters. They’re all around us, but this signal is … coming from our hull.” A chill ran down his spine—some kind of a tracer? “I’m going to suit up. I better go outside and check it out.”
    He donned the flexible environment suit with easy familiarity. Everyone who grew up among the gypsy Roamer clans spent half their childhood in a suit. They knew how to fix things, tinker with all sorts of machinery; they could rig life support from the most unlikely assemblage of scraps. For a long time,