Ancestor's World Read Online Free PDF

kilometers. This shortcut was indeed shorter--but boring. Below him the backcountry of Ancestor's World was a desolate vista of dry washes, sandstone mesas, and a few isolated settlements.
    Well, there was a solution to his boredom problem. Bill turned on the jet's tail camera and aimed it southward, then watched the screen.
    The Mountains of Faith stretched like a gray wall across the entire southern horizon. They were a white-capped rampart of raw granite rock, flaming volcanoes, and black thunderstorms that swept down over the Scablands of the backcountry. With the storms came lightning--incredible lightning. Bright yellow streaks of flame shot from heaven to earth, booming in one's ears like the kettle drum of doom. When he'd first come to Spirit, the lightning storms had scared him.
    Then he'd felt his first earthquake.
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    Ancestor's World pursued an elliptical orbit around its older yellow star, an orbit that brought with it major climate shifts, dangerous electrical storms, and terrible earthquakes whenever the single moon pulled just right on the planet's tectonic plates. It got even worse when the sun and moon lined up.
    Then the entire planet vibrated. But the ancient Na-Dina people had persevered through their cycles of earthquakes, floods, death, and rebirth.
    Century after century, they rebuilt their cities of stone. They raised up monolithic temples dedicated to their Revered Ancestors. And they pursued a life of religious devotion mixed with fatalistic acceptance of their dangerous environment. Bill had to respect them.
    The Interrelator swung the camera to the east, where a silver ribbon flowed along like an overfed snake. At least the seasonal flooding by the River of Life came just once a year, in the spring. But when it didn't flood, suffocating ash spewed out from volcanoes in the Mountains of Faith. And at camp, each night was stone cold once the sun went down. Not what you'd call paradise.
    Bill shut off the camera and concentrated on his flying. He did hope the Na-Dina wouldn't sacrifice all their ancient heritage in the rush to modernize a society already well into its own Industrial Revolution. Hindsight, as they said, was twenty-twenty, and nothing could change the past. Ten months ago a Sorrow Sector privateer had landed, made an unauthorized First Contact, and traded for native arts, jewels, and gold nuggets. They'd left behind an FTL communicator, which the Na-Dina used to put out a call to anyone listening, inviting them to come and trade. The call had been answered by a geological survey team from the Nordlund Combine, a construction consortium with ties to Sorrow Sector.
    The Na-Dina were within their rights to invite Nordlund to land and set up trade agreements--which Bill suspected had been the Combine's objective all along. The CLS had been left holding the bag of a botched First Contact, trying to help an alien people still in shock over learning that other peoples existed, while the Modernist faction pushed for
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    rapid industrial development as the means of gaining independence from the CLS aliens.
    Behind him, something scraped.
    Bill turned in his pilot's seat and looked back at the interior of the jumpjet.
    What was that? The jet had been empty when he'd entered. The long tube of the jet had a simple layout: the pilot's cabin up front, the passenger cabin in the middle, and the sanitary unit at the far end. Below the central aisleway lay the cargo holds, but they had no access to the pressurized part of the jet.
    Frowning, he touched on the autopilot, then released his seat straps and stood up. It was probably a sandrat that had sneaked aboard when the jet landed near the City of White Stone to pick up the laborers. Sandrats posed no threat to people, but they loved to gnaw on cables and wires.
    The skittering scrape sounded again.
    Bill stepped up to the bulkhead doorway and peered into the passenger area. A row of benches lined each side of the metal tube. At the far end, the