Charger the Soldier Read Online Free PDF Page B

seas
surged forth in boiling chaos, filling the void which Mahoud had
occupied. The whole world seemed to tremble, as if awed by man's
victory over the elements.
    From the eight points of the compass, the
towers that stood atop the mountains ringing Mahoud began to glow.
Joining their powers, the Nine of Nines created a dome of radiant
golden light, powered by radioactive particles, emerging from the
towers to encase the continent and people of Mahoud. Now safe in
their domed flying city, the land of Mahoud began gliding above the
surface of the planet, seeking a better place to live.
    For a hundred years, surrounded by clouds and
invisible to the ground dwellers, Mahoud drifted above Earth in
search of a more congenial location, but wherever it wandered, the
humans appeared to be as vile and primitive as those they had left
behind. The people began to despair of finding a new home.
    Visha and his eight compatriots had long
since grown to manhood. Bound to one another by their skulls in the
center of the flying state of Mahoud, they were now more than a
hundred years of age, and wise beyond all their ancestors. Great
were the powers of these Nine, for their minds, in concert, were
strong enough to control the direction Mahoud could fly. They
searched, and went on searching for many years, never finding the
place of peace they were tasked to achieve.
    The Nines then turned their gaze to the
blackness of space to seek a different world that they might own
and control, a world where they could finally be at peace. They
knew it might take many, many generations to find a new Earth, and
preparations were made to live in the black sky for thousands of
years.
    The Nine of Nines guided the antigravity
engine, first of all to leave Earth, then to have Mahoud pulled
toward the moon, then to repel the moon as they passed, and be
attracted to another planet, like a gravitational slingshot. On and
on, for years, Mahoud would fly to a planet, then push away from
that planet and fly toward another.
    The time arrived when the flying city-state
reached the last planet in our solar system, a small, cold, barren
orb. They passed it by and the vastness of empty black space
stretched out before them like an endless road might appear to an
ant. At first the Nine of Nines were confused, for their gravity
engine had nothing to grab on to, and for a while the space farer
simply drifted.
    "I wonder," Visha finally said to his eight
compatriots, "if we should set a course for Alpha Centauri. It is
the nearest solar system to that of Earth." It had been agreed by
these eight sages that Visha would act as leader when decisions
were to be made. Though their brains were joined and used as one
single powerful instrument to control the country, their minds
could still function independently, thus affording each a small but
precious measure of privacy.
    "Why not?" asked Sarama. "Earth's system is
pair-bonded with Alpha Centauri; we are binary, for we orbit the
center of the Milky Way side by side."
    "There would be many more planets to choose
from," Kumar offered.
    Visha mused, "We have traded planets in the
past, though not in recent eons. It would take us a very long time
to get there, probably thousands of years. We travel so very
slowly."
    They decided to aim for Alpha Centauri. After
all, they had nowhere else to go.
    But their flying city was destined never to
reach Alpha Centauri. One day a new planet, the tenth planet of
Earth's solar system, appeared in the distance, a black orb
invisible against the backdrop of inky black space, but whose
presence was detected by the Nines and their instruments. Visha
decided that it would be good to use this passing body as a
gravitational slingshot, speeding up their journey.
    Many generations of their people had lived
and died during the long flight, so perhaps impatience fueled the
Nine's decision, but attracting the black planet was the worst
decision they could have made. They were able to grab the rogue
planet