Chewing Rocks Read Online Free PDF Page A

to turn our gross profits around in half the time.”
    Wallace did not reply. That was fine with Queene because no reply was necessary. She only required him to respond when she asked him a specific question. Otherwise, he made a wonderful sounding board.
    Queen asked, “Have we found out about the ownership shares of Whyte?”
    Wallace nodded, “Yes , we have. Almost everyone in town thinks that when the founder of Whyte Mining old man Snowden Whyte went missing, he left all of his assets to his son. Willem Whyte had his father declared legally dead eighteen months after he went missing. This, as you know, is the longest time a human has been revived out of a medical stasis chamber. So, if the old man had an accident and had gotten to a stasis chamber, he would have been dead in eighteen months whether he had been found or not. No record in twenty years of Snowden Whyte’s ship or his signal beacon.”
    Queene said, “You said almost everyone thinks he left Whyte mining to his son. That is not the case?”
    Wallace answered, “No, M iss Queene. Data clearly indicates at the time of the daughter’s birth, the Whyte’s had ownership in a fifty-fifty split. At the time of Snowden’s death, he and Willem were joint owners. The old man’s will settled his half to his granddaughter upon his death.”
    Queene asked, “O wnership didn’t rely on Willem Whyte’s trusteeship and then revert to the daughter when she reached maturity?”
    Wallace shook his head, “No such requirement exists on Ceres. The daughter has been half owner of the Whyte Mining Company since she was a little over five years old. This is probably why Willem is unable to keep her from taking the Sedona, her mining ship, out on her own without any crew. It seems the Whytes are content to let some people think Willem is the sole owner. It is not a very closely guarded secret though.”
    “Well ,” Queene said, “we knew the daughter would be a problem in one form or another. We do have a plan in place to deal with this contingency. This child will not hinder our plans to take over Whyte. From what I hear, her disappearance will be no loss to polite society anyway.”
    Chapter 3.1
    “Hey, Doc!” The voice shouted over the communication speaker rousing Doctor Martin Savage from a deep sleep. “Get up to the bridge, would you? We are coming up on the micro-jump.”
    Doc mashed the comm button and shouted back, “So what ?! Daryl, you just press the big blue button and be done with it. You don’t need me to do that.” Still, Doc rolled out of his bunk, rubbed his eyes and looked around for his pants.
    Daryl replied. “Yeah, Doc. I know it sounds easy. I’d be happy to, but you set up the coordination so all three ships could jump together. We thought you might want to be up here.” Daryl lowered his tone a bit. “Besides, Joey is up here and you know he gets nervous about jumps.”
    Doc nodded , forgetting neither Daryl Graham nor his son Joey could see him. It did not matter if everyone on all three ships tried to explain to Joey that there were no ill affects to jumping a ship. The ship and all of its contents, people included, were in one place. Then, they were not; they were just somewhere else. This was their third micro-jump and Joey still got nervous.
    Normally Joey acted like a bit of a goof; pulling pranks and making bad jokes only he understood. Doc knew most young teenage boys acted silly occasionally since he had been one once. Joey made silliness a lifestyle and Daryl put up with it because he was just happy to have the boy with him. However, when Joey got nervous he began to whine like a runaway electric motor wound way too tight.
    Doc sighed. “Give me five minutes and I’ll be up there. I have to visit the facilities first. Have you commed the other ships?”
    Daryl replied, “Oh, yeah. Steadham and Oritz on the Nod have been on playing ‘Zombies in Space’ on the computer-link with Joey for an hour, though I don’t know