Castle Dreams Read Online Free PDF Page A

hiked along for about ten minutes, keeping the sun to his left as he threaded his way around upthrusting strata of greenish-blue. Yellow streaking ran through the rocks.
    As he was coming down into a shallow canyon, a loud report shattered the air and made him jump. It was quite unexpected.
    He looked up. No thunderclouds, and he was momentarily mystified until he saw the contrail of a fast-moving object in the sky. The noise had been a sonic boom.
    â€œOh, damn."
    He'd have to head back. Despite his intuitions to the contrary, this world was not only inhabited but technologically sophisticated.
    Nevertheless, for the moment he stayed, watching the thing make a harrowing high-g turn away from the sun and head back in his direction. It was an aircraft of some sort, and as it neared it looked rather like a small space shuttle. Silver-colored, compact and delta-winged, it was convincingly futuristic yet appeared eminently practicable.
    But how was it going to set down? From his vantage point, Gene surveyed the available landing area. There wasn't nearly enough. Not unless the thing had vertical-landing capability.
    The craft was floating along now, circling the canyon, staying airborne against all aerodynamic odds, when by rights it should have gone plunging groundward in a stall. Its flight path looked wobbly. After making a complete circuit of the canyon, the silvery vehicle began its approach for a landing. The only sound it made was the faint whoosh of air over its gracefully curving surfaces.
    At the last second, the craft went out of control and hit the floor of the canyon hard—and flipped over. Gene dove behind a rock. But there was no explosion.
    He got up, slapped his pants clean, and looked toward the crash site. The craft was silent and still except for a cloud of dust rising from the wreckage. Nothing else moved in the canyon. He jogged toward the downed craft.
    As he neared, he slowed to a cautious walk. No telling who the survivors—if any—were. There was no way of knowing what they were, human or nonhuman, or how they would react. The plane said “human” to him, somehow, but that didn't make him any the less wary, it perhaps made him more so.
    An oval hatch opened near the craft's blunt nose, dilating like an iris. A sigh of escaping air came to Gene's ears. He stopped. No one came out. He edged closer.
    He peered into the interior. It was dark, and what was visible looked cramped and crowded with instrumentation. But there was room for him to enter, if he so decided.
    He decided. He dropped his backpack and climbed through the hatch. Wires dangled in front of his face. He brushed them aside. Squeezing toward the nose, he walked gingerly over banks of instruments on the inverted overhead bulkhead.
    Ahead, a human form hung upside down, snared in a tangle of straps, cables, and tubes. The pilot, he surmised, in a blue-and-silver pressure suit and transparent helmet. He got closer and bent over the still form.
    It was a woman. And a very unusual-looking one. The hair, ghostly albino white, was cropped short. Her skin was suntan-dark, a Palm Beach mulatto. Her features were regular and broad, high cheekbones. Quite a striking face. A beautiful one, once you got used to the contrasts. He put his face close to hers and peered through the helmet. Her eyelids opened slightly.
    She was no albino. Her eyes were the darkest blue he had ever seen. They were purplish-blue besides, and he thought he detected flecks of green. He looked her over. There was a bloodied rip in her suit along the rib cage.
    He didn't know quite what to do. He could not move her without risk of further serious injury, but he was reluctant to leave her hanging like this. She was obviously bleeding inside that suit. It would take at least twenty minutes to run back to the castle to get help, and a further twenty, minimum, before help arrived. He'd best get her down very gently, somehow, and then see what he could do to stabilize