Andromeda Day and the Black Hole Read Online Free PDF Page A

Anti-Matter Drive space flight, and Spica, who’d been the first
woman to leave the solar system. Andi imagined that their faces, too, had held
the same spark of excitement and absence of fear.
    Or was it absence of sense? Certainly her
father seemed to lack the inner caution that most people had. But then perhaps
if everyone were afraid to take the first step, Earth people would never have
gone anywhere.
    After crossing the bridge, Deneb pulled
Andi with him into the elevator. “Quarters, first level,” he directed the
Waiter.
    “Yes, Deneb.” The elevator started to
descend.
    Deneb turned and smiled at her. “So, are
you ready for your first big adventure?” His eyes seemed to spark with
excitement, like lightning across a dusky sky. “Remember, don’t go getting into
any trouble.”
    She grinned at him. “I think it’s me that
should be saying that to you, if your past expeditions are anything to go by.”
    He pulled a face at her, and she stuck out
her tongue as they made their way out of the elevator and along the green
corridor to their quarters. They had a suite of rooms next to each other and,
leaving him at his door, she jogged along to her own quarters.
    She pressed her thumb against the pad on
the door panel and, after a few seconds, the door slid aside silently. “Lights,
please,” she requested as she entered, and the Waiter raised the lighting to
her specified daytime level.
    Her suite consisted of four rooms. To the
left was a day room which housed the Virtual Reality pad where she attended
class and enjoyed the occasional hour on the Playdeck. It also had her main
computer station, an exercise bike, books, and other recreational items. The
central room was a lounge, with a large sofa and two comfy chairs, and an LCD
screen on which she could watch any of the hundreds of micro-discs of films and
documentaries in the Antiquarian archives. There was also a fridge and a
small heating unit so she could prepare her own food if she didn’t want to go
down to the mess. The third room was her bedroom, smaller than the main room
but still a fair size, with a large closet containing her relatively meager
selection of clothes. Off this was her bathroom, with a shower and drying unit.
    Andi now walked through the center room and
bedroom to the closet and proceeded to get dressed for the forthcoming journey.
She chose a nondescript dark blue top and trousers, firm boots, and a warm navy
jacket, as the temperature reading on the bridge had said it was only ten
degrees Celsius on the surface of the continent they were heading for. She took
a bag and put in it her Wordbox, on which she made corrections and additions to
the interpreter clip, her sonar gun, which had enough power to stun, although
not to kill, and some chocolate in case she got hungry. She lifted the strap
over her head, putting the bag on her hip. Then she went to meet Deneb outside
his quarters.
    When he came out he was dressed much the
same as her, although his suit was dark green, and his jacket was black. He
pulled a black hat down over and almost hiding his hair, and then winked at her
before grabbing her hand and pulling her along the corridor to the elevators
once again.
    “Ready for adventure?” he asked, going into
the pod and requesting the cargo bay.
    “I suppose so.” Andi sighed inwardly. Should
she tell him that she had a bad feeling about this trip? Possibly not, or he
definitely wouldn’t let her go with him. She thought about what Merak had said,
that she couldn’t think or feel things properly because she had a metal brain
and heart. She wondered about this as the elevator sank slowly through the
floors. What was it in one’s body that gave you feelings? Was it something
other than electrical impulses and muscle contractions, which she still had,
albeit triggered by metal rather than organic organs? Or was it something more
than that, something that resided in a human heart, which she no longer possessed?
    “Are you all