Helix Read Online Free PDF

blurred.
    “My
identification. You can access the relevant data if you have an up-to-date
com-system.”
    “Okay...
okay, so the Lovelock is heading for the stars. What are the chances of
finding somewhere habitable? Surely pretty low?” Not that this, he thought,
would be any deterrent to his accepting the job. His reward would be to have
Chrissie again.
    “The Lovelock will be heading for a star system a little over five hundred light
years from Earth. Before the Mars colony was disbanded, radio telescopes
gathered data on Zeta Ophiuchi, a blue main sequence star. We processed the
data after the withdrawal, and discovered that the star possesses a planet,
which, from spectrographic analysis, is a good candidate for habitation. This
will be the Lovelock’ s first port of call.”
    Hendry
nodded, attempting to come to terms with what Bruckner was telling him.
    A
purpose to life, after so long without one. A chance to be with Chrissie, to
build a colony out there among the stars...
    “When
do you need my reply, Mr Bruckner?”
    The
official indicated his card. “My details are there,” he said. “If you contact
me within the next two days, shall we say, we can send a helicopter for you.
There will be a period of training in Berne before departure. Contractual
details will be discussed in Berne, should you accept the offer.”
    Bruckner
stood, inclined his head, and indicated a sheaf of paper on the tabletop. “Read
through the mission synopsis before you contact me.” He paused, then said,
“Goodbye, Mr Hendry. I hope we meet again.”
    Hendry
watched him go, step carefully over the remains of the fence, and cross to the
helicopter. Seconds later the chopper took off, whisking Bruckner away. Hendry
watched it, snickering over the parched brush, and wondered if he’d dreamed the
conversation.
    That
night Old Smith contacted him again. “Well, given any more thought to the
offer?”
    “I
thought about it long and hard, Smith. But something’s just come up. My
daughter wants me to join her.”
    “And
you’re going?” Old Smith looked crestfallen.
    Hendry
smiled. “It’s an offer too good to refuse,” he said.
    “So
you’re going up to Switzerland?”
    Hendry
smiled. “Somewhere up there,” he said.
    They
chatted a while longer before Old Smith waved a frail hand. “Good luck on the
journey, Hendry. It’s a long way...”
     

5
    The helicopter ferried him as far as Sydney—now little more than a fortified military base—from where
an ESO sub-orb ship carried him the rest of the way to Europe. Strapped into
the acceleration couch behind the taciturn pilot, Hendry had the very real
sense that he was indeed going to the stars. The chopper ride to Sydney had
failed to bring home to him the fact of where he was going, merely what he was
leaving. Now, cocooned by the high-tech apparatus of space flight, much of
which was familiar but a lot of which had been developed since his days in
space, he knew that what Bruckner had told him was, amazingly, true: he was
going to be frozen in a suspension unit and fired off to the stars. The fact
brought home to him the immense privilege of being saved like this, and at the
same time what a small cog he was in the vast, impersonal machine of the
European Space Organisation’s colonisation mission.
    The
sub-orb ride took five hours. From an altitude of 40,000 feet, planet Earth
looked little different from how it had appeared fifty years ago, a little
greyer, perhaps, and the landmasses reconfigured thanks to the rising tides.
But at lower altitude, after take-off from Sydney and when coming in low over
southern Europe, the full effect of global warming could be seen: the sere land,
denuded of vegetation, with not a tree in sight. The cities were static, roads
broken like fragile threads, buildings derelict.
    At
the midpoint of the journey, as they were sailing high over Southern Asia and
the Middle East, the pilot spoke for the first time. “That’s India down