some better ones.” Jason
said ironically.
“That won’t
work. Even if that Glycan gave you his best crystal, you still have the limited
access.” Gloria explained.
“What is
your point?” Jason asked impatiently.
“Nothing.”
“If you
can’t help, you are wasting my time. And please don’t say stuff like that, nobody
likes it.” Jason said unhappily.
“I am
not trying to make you like me.” Gloria said in a hard voice.
“That is
fine. I am not going to like you anyway. You know what? I can tell nobody likes
you.”
“Really?
Amazing! How do you know that?” Gloria asked in a provocative tone.
“At
least I know you don’t have any friend. If you do, I won’t win this time.”
Jason said calmly. Gloria gave Jason an angry stare and stormed off.
“I
shouldn’t say that.” Jason sighed.
Chapter 9
Mark had been working on the new
assignment. He still worked as a mine worker, but since the company cut his
working hours, he made good use of his free time. He found his way into the
aviation room in the Latianium transport station. There he was able to access
the network used by the UG aviation control center. The transmissions sent by
the tracer indicated locations and travel time. Through cross referencing those
data with the navigation records, Mark found the vessel carrying the eyeball.
But after the vessel took a stop on Eva-1, Mark lost it. He assumed that
someone switched the original vessel to a military vessel which couldn’t be
tracked by civilian aviation system. Apparently, after the switch, the tracer
was still working, so Mark planned to find out which military vessel was used
to transport those eyeballs. Then he could dig out the flight plan and figure
out the destination.
Right
now Mark was on the way to planet Fslei, the mother planet of Ajiese. Ajiese
was one of the nine species and they were well known for their insane interest
in astronomy. They had been developing the most sophisticated telescope system
that contained 25 million telescopes with capability of detecting full electromagnetic
spectrum. They were scattered everywhere and to the farthest point Ajiese could
travel to. The system was so powerful that even if a vessel was travelling in
the wormhole, it still could see the vessel. Mark believed that the telescope
near the last location indicated by the tracer should be able to see the
vessel.
After
touching down on Fslei, Mark put on a face transformer and now he looked just
like an Ajiese. He headed directly to Hselel Astronomy Center where Ajiese
stored all telescope observation records. The entrance was at the bottom of a
huge telescope which was eight million years old. Mark bought a ticket and
joined the line, moving towards the entrance slowly.
Several
minutes later, Mark entered the center. The inside was magnificent, its ceiling
100 meters high, its floor the size of ten football fields. All kinds of
telescopes were exhibited on the floor, on the wall and in the air. Mark didn’t
have the appetite to look around. He quickly focused his attention on finding
the way to the data center. He went to the basement where he got into the sewer
system. In a shaft, dozens of pipes ran so deep into the ground that Mark
couldn’t see the bottom. He fixed a gravity grab on one of the pipes and
lowered himself into the shaft. He knew the data center was buried deep in the
ground. Using the gravity grab, Mark lowered himself to the bottom where all
pipes started to run horizontally. Following the pipes, he walked to a dead
end, a thick wall. He took out a pair of X-ray goggles and located quite a few
cylinders clustered on the other side of the wall. Those cylinders contained
Ajiese brain cells modified by cell infusion to store data. Mark applied Laiehe
bacteria on one pipe that he found empty for the moment. Mark bought those bacteria
on M13 and they were also called metal eater. It took less than ten seconds for
them to carve a big hole on the pipe. Mark crawled into