Andromeda Day and the Black Hole Read Online Free PDF

right?” Deneb frowned,
touching her hair lightly.
    “I’m fine.” She shrugged off his hand,
deciding not to tell him about her forebodings. It wouldn’t make any difference
anyway. Whether it was to their victory or to their doom, they were going to
Thoume, and there was nothing she could do about it.
    The elevator descended slowly through the
upper cube to the middle section. Actually there was no real ‘up’ or ‘down’ on
the ship, as the computer-controlled gravity which operated through the floors
meant that a person could be standing ‘upright’ on the top cube while another
person stood ‘upside-down’ on the bottom. The lack of old-fashioned rocket
thrusters after the invention of the Anti-Matter Drive also meant that the ship
had no real forward or aft and could as easily fly ‘sideways’ as ‘forwards’. However,
Andi liked to think of the bridge as being at the top of the Antiquarian, and
considered a trip to the cargo bay as a descent through the ship.
    The elevator passed through the main
section doors into the middle levels, and she and Deneb admired the view of the
exhibits as they descended the floors in companionable silence. They were both
extremely proud of their museum, and although the middle section was under the
control of Ioto, the museum curator, they both took a walk through it together
every morning, just enjoying being amongst the artifacts.
    There was a great variety of exhibits. The
Earth section was the largest, naturally, and the eclectic collection ranged
from Old-Time prehistoric African tools fresh from the cradle of mankind,
through medieval Crusader swords supposedly held by Saladin himself, to
full-size Terracotta Warriors from China that Deneb had somehow ‘acquired’. There
were also objects that had played a part in the exploration of space, such as
one of the cups used by the astronauts on the Apollo 11 mission to the moon,
and a complete suit worn by Spica as her spaceship passed through the Kuiper
Belt, past Neptune’s orbit. Deneb was especially proud of the exhibit that
described Earth’s first colony on Mars, including a handwritten diary by one of
the original colonists—Andi didn’t like to think how he had come by that
valuable artifact.
    But there were also a great many items from
other species and cultures throughout the Galaxy. He was most fond of the
exhibit illustrating the first alien species that Earth people had encountered,
on a planet circling the nearest star to our Sun, Proxima Centauri. The artifacts
there included household objects and weapons of that slightly more primitive
society, as well as a whole skeleton curled in the fetal position inside their
distinctive elaborate circular coffins, complete with fantastic jewelry and
precious metal artifacts. The dignified Proximian generals had donated them so
that others in the Galaxy would know how wealthy and important they were.
    Andi, however, was most proud of the
Kachinas art exhibit. The people of that planet had learned how to project and
record their emotions, and had given Andi and Deneb a breathtaking collection
of pieces of glass displaying the swirls and colorful patterns of their
innermost thoughts. These glass pictures were hung from rafters in one section
of the museum, and Andi spent hours there, staring up at the swirling designs
and trying to imagine which emotion they depicted.
    In all it was a wonderful collection, Andi
thought as the elevator slid past the levels, most of which were darkened until
the museum opened to visitors, and it was a wonderful place to exhibit them. She
didn’t know which was most awe-inspiring: the thousands of artifacts, or the
array of white and colored stars that wheeled above the museum’s transparent
roof like fireworks.
    Gradually the elevator descended into the
bottom cube, through the hotter, smellier engineering sections, until
eventually it arrived at the cargo bay. When the elevator doors slid back, Andi
and Deneb crossed the large