Into the Sea of Stars Read Online Free PDF

Heaven knows how I hate forms; in fact, I've already got eighty kilos' worth in the airlock." He laughed sardonically and disappeared into the forward control room.
    Sensing an impending explosion, Richard pushed past Ellen and mumbled an excuse about checking his equipment. As he drifted by Ian, his nose wrinkled at the sour smell.
    "Good luck, old boy," Richard whispered.
    "If I'd known that she was going to be aboard, I'd have stayed home in spite of the Chancellor," Ian whispered in reply. "Writing grants would be heaven compared to this."
    "I heard that, Ian."
    Richard grabbed Shelley's arm and pushed her out the hatch, abandoning Ian to what Richard told her would be "a friendly Social Science Departmental Meeting."
    The shouting between the two old rivals filled the ship until Stasz finally called it to halt and begged for a little sleep before departure.

Chapter 3
    "I thought it essential that we all sit down together before departure and briefly review what we can expect." Ian was trying to speak with an authoritative voice, but it came out more as a strangled croak. He and Ellen Redding had had such a knock-down drag out over who was in control of the mission that he had actually shouted himself hoarse. He looked across at her and tried a wan smile, but from her response it must have looked to her to be a threatening grimace. Nevertheless she said noth ing; his halfhearted threat to call the Chancellor and resign over her presence, for the moment at least, had been the lever to submission.
    "Why we've been assigned is the Chancellor's decision and not mine. But I can see where, if anything, he wished to get rid of three tenured faculty and bring in his own people—and, Ellen, I'd think even you'd agree with that." She nodded her head sadly. Most of the campus staff knew about the affair between Ellen and the Chancellor a dozen years back, when he was still the glad-handing, ever-smiling young hotshot assistant to the assistant vice president. Out of that had come the famous nickname "C.C." Redding, which most faculty could guess at but usually would not discuss with anyone less than a grad uate student.
    Leminski floated to one side of the table and looked vacantly off into space with a slightly bored expression of disdain.
    Ian cleared his throat and tried to continue. " Stasz , are we in trim for flight weight?"
    "Yeah, and one kilo under. Croce and me drained off an extra bottle of gin and just discharged it a little while ago."
    Oh, great, Ian thought, Richard has a new drinking buddy. The pilot to whom we've entrusted our lives.
    "All right then, we've got our ship, everything is loaded, and now we have to decide where to go."
    Richard looked up at Ian. "What do you mean, where do we go? Why, I thought this expedition was to look for the Lost Colonies."
    "It's not that simple," Ian said softly. "Shelley's grant request mentioned in general terms the seven hundred lost colonies, and indeed if all of them survived, which is highly unlikely, we are now presented with an inter esting piece of math which our dear sponsors never grasped."
    "Go on," Ellen said softly, without a trace of anger. When it came to questions of odds and statistics, she was all professional and, in fact, even cordial.
    "All right, here is what we know—the givens, so to speak. Starting in the year 2079 the first colonial units came to the decision to abandon Earth in light of the coming war. Their propulsion systems were stationkeep ing units, not heavy-lift devices. Given the tech level of the period, the only propulsion units available were ion drive, plasma drive, solar sail, antimatter, and thermo nuclear pulse.
    "Within four years the first unit completed its modi fications and was away. Seven hundred and twenty-three departed before August 7, 2087, when the first wave of EMP detonations on Earth and the subsequent strikes wiped out all communication."
    Ian was really getting into form now, and for once he had an interested audience.