Flight of the Outcast Read Online Free PDF

center of the rotating station, the rotation itself providing the illusion of gravity. The man led her to a doorway, paused beside it, and looked at her with an uncomfortably hard stare. "Carlson Locke is dead?"
       She nodded, her throat tight. "Cybots brought in what was left of his body. Particle bomb."
       "One was stolen in a raid on the Fedder System a month ago," the man said. "Raiders."
       "They just seemed to want food. They stole our crops."
       "They may have been starving," the man said with no hint of sympathy. "Or they may want to sell it. Plenty of struggling colonies that would give top money. There seems to be a lot of this sort of theft going on lately. Earl Vodros and his allies have tightened restrictions—" He sighed and broke off, touching the wall. A door shimmered open. "I imagine you're too young to care about politics. Lucky you. You can have these quarters. I'm issuing you standard rations and giving you a limited clothing allowance. If I were you, I'd put together a basic wardrobe for your trip."
       "Why are you helping me?" she asked him, surprised.
       "Because I knew your father," the man said shortly, and he turned on his heel and walked away.

    * * *
    Life on the High Docks was dull but not difficult. There were pulsebooks to read, a gym for exercise, and people to talk to on the rare occasions when they were not working. There was even a commissary, a kind of small restaurant, where you could eat while watching the planet on the viewscreen, as if you were looking out a real window. Asteria practiced her boy act there.
       The woman who had first interviewed her was named Celicia, Asteria learned, and she was a career administrator for the High Docks. "I haven't gone far in life," she said with a rueful smile one day as she and Asteria sat at a commissary table drinking jalava juice. "I was born right there on the planet. You see that little cluster of lights on the equator, just inside the edge of the night?"
       The planet far below was half in light, half in dark, and just inside the dark edge, near the equator, pinpricks of light marked out a city. "Central," Asteria said. "We visited it once."
       "Big city," said Celicia mockingly. "Nearly a hundred thousand people."
       "Were you born there?"
       Celicia nodded. "My mother was an entertainment girl in the baron's court. I mean the old baron, not his son. Rumor had it that my father was one of his deputies. I never knew for sure. But I didn't want that kind of life, so I made sure to concentrate on studies that would lead me to a civil appointment. I didn't know it meant I'd wind up here." She looked musingly at Theron hanging in space.
       Asteria asked, "Do you go back often?"
       "Not since my mother died," Celicia replied. She thought for a minute. "I haven't left this station in six Standard years now. I don't intend to leave it. There's nothing for me down there."
       "Me either," Asteria said.
       "I'm off-duty now," Celicia said. "What are you doing?"
       "I should be shopping," Asteria said. "Only I don't know what a cadet needs."
       "They didn't send you a list?"
       Asteria shook her head.
       Celicia shrugged. "Well, the Academy will issue you a set of uniforms. You'll need clothes for travel and for downtime, though. I'd get three outfits if I were you. Tunics, pants, underwear, socks. You need space shoes, too, the soft-soled ones. You're wearing dirt boots. You need those only on the surface."
       Asteria thanked her and did her shopping later that day, buying the three outfits and a synthetic tote bag to carry them in. Some toiletries completed her preparation. But she felt as if she were moving in a fog; nothing seemed real. Would the Academy buy her boy act? Should she even try to keep it up?

    * * *
    The High Docks could be a busy place when ships paused. And one seemed to dock about three or four times every Standard day. For a couple of hours, the