Beyond Varallan Read Online Free PDF Page B

I headed out for the launch bay. I still got lost in the spiraling turns of the vessel’s expansive twenty-eight levels. Some crew member always found me and sent me in the right direction. They treated me the same way they would a little kid. It was understandable. I was roughly the same size as Fasala Torin.
    Fasala. She had come close to being cut to pieces. What had happened to make that buffer explode?
    I kept mulling over the possibilities throughout my shift that day. Still lost in thought as I came off duty, I turned to enter the gyrlift, and walked into the only other Terran on board the Sunlace . Startled, I backed into a corridor panel and bumped my head.
    “Reever!” Automatically I rubbed the sore spot on my skull. “That’s it. I'm going to strap a proximity alert beacon on you.”
    “Perhaps you should wear the device.” His voice sounded as bland as his expression. “ Your lack of attention invariably causes such incidents.”
    Tall, fair-haired Duncan Reever was a handsome specimen of Terran male, if you skipped the unemotional face and cold eyes. As usual, he was wearing uninspiring black garments. In one hand he carried the portable database unit he was upgrading to allow our vocollars to continue to function away from the Sunlace .
    Reever, who had been K-2’s Chief Linguist, had come on board the Sunlace after my rescue. He’d offered his services to Captain Pnor in exchange for transport to the Varallan Quadrant. Since he was a telepathic linguist, and knew or could learn every language of every species the Sunlace might encounter, Pnor had welcomed him with open arms.
    I, on the other hand, wasn’t so crazy about the idea. Reever's main motive for joining the crew, I suspected, had nothing to do with getting a free ride, and a lot to do with me.
    “Are you trying to be funny?” I asked.
    Reever simply gestured for me to proceed him into the gyrlift. He was always so calm, so controlled. I could smack him just for that.
    The gyrlifts whirled around the outer hull spirals, transporting crew members from one end of the ship to the other. The concept that you could walk one corridor and tour the entire ship from top to bottom always confused me. Apparently Jorenian engineers had planned vessel construction very cannily. How the tech involved worked was far beyond the limits of my attention span.
    It worked, that was the important thing.
    The Sunlace resembled an elongated Terran nautilus sea shell in design. The hull was one big, revolving corkscrew, while the vessel’s stardrive had the capability of boring through dimensional barriers. That enabled the Captain to whisk the Sunlace away from any threat in a hurry.
    A shame I couldn’t do the same thing whenever Reever showed up.
    I shouldn’t have felt that way about another human being, but Reever wasn't exactly an ordinary Terran. He'd been born and raised in space, and had traveled extensively around the galaxy with his parents. During his childhood, something had happened that prevented him from displaying normal human emotion. Or maybe he never learned how. Reever didn't exactly gush at length about himself.
    He turned to me. “You are scheduled for the sojourn to NessNevat.”
    “Yeah, I am. Have you ever been on this planet before?” I hated to make small talk. I was lousy at it.
    “You haven’t been accessing your relays again.” At my blank look, he frowned. “I sent you a concise briefing on the planet's native inhabitants.”
    “I’m so sorry.” A lie. “I've been busy.” The truth. “Why don't you give me the short version?” Wishful thinking.
    “According to available commerce reports, the NessNevat are humanoid, warm-blooded, five sensory, verbal, highly intelligent life-forms.”
    “Why are we relying on traders for data?”
    “They have had the only contact with this species. The information appears to reflect relatively accurate accounts.”
    I didn’t question his opinion. Duncan Reever's parents were the