McCade's Bounty Read Online Free PDF Page A

watch the ship?"
    McCade had expected something of the kind and was secretly grateful. He hated to leave Void Runner unattended. "Thanks, Maggie. I'll call you from dirtside."
    McCade was just starting to turn away when Maggie cleared her throat. "McCade?"
    "Yeah?"
    "I'm sorry."
    McCade looked in Maggie's eyes and knew she thought Sara and Molly were dead. It was a logical conclusion but one he refused to accept. A lump formed in McCade's throat and he forced it down.
    "Thanks, Maggie. Keep a sharp lookout. There's always the chance that they'll come back."
    Maggie nodded silently and the screen faded to black.
    The trip dirtside was a dark and somber affair. Heavy winds buffeted the shuttle as it entered the atmosphere and snow fell at lower altitudes.
    McCade brought the shuttle down through the lowest layer of dark gray clouds and sent it skimming over pristine whiteness. He flew low and slow. Rocky hills swelled here and there, bare where the wind had scoured them clean, their sides covered with low vegetation.
    Then the hills were gone and the shuttle entered the mouth of a long, low valley. Days of snow had hidden most of the damage, with only wisps of smoke and a higher-than-usual radiation count to indicate damage had been done.
    McCade knew that to the north and east a number of low-yield nuclear devices had exploded, each destroying a surface-to-space missile battery, but leaving the underground population centers untouched. At least that strategy had worked.
    Now, as the shuttle neared the capital city of New Home, the damage became more apparent. Shattered domes, covered with a dusting of new snow; wrecked crawlers, sitting at the center of fire-blackened circles; half-blasted radars, still searching the skies for targets long disappeared; and here and there, the pitiful huddle of someone's last stand, now little more than bumps under a shroud of white.
    McCade bit his lip and glanced at Rico. The other man's feelings were effectively hidden behind his beard, but his eyes were on the view screen, and they were as cold as the land below.
    All was not death and destruction however. Here and there signs of life could be seen. Fresh vehicle tracks in the snow, a hint of underground warmth on the infrared detectors, and the vague whisper of low-powered radio traffic. There was life down there, less than before, but life nonetheless.
    McCade stuck an unlit cigar between his teeth. "Run the frequencies, Rico. Someone's talking. Let's see who it is."
    Rico flipped some switches and ran the freqs, starting with commonly used civilian bands and working his way upward. "Rico here . . . anybody read me?"
    The response was almost instantaneous. A surprisingly cheerful male voice said. "Pawley here, Rico . . . nice of you to drop in."
    Rico grinned. "Pawley? What the hell are you doing here? I thought you were down south working the G-Tap."
    McCade knew, as did all the planet's citizens, that "G-Tap" stood for "geothermal tap," and was a project to harness the energy resident in the planet's core. A lot of effort and a lot of tax money had flowed into that project, and Brian Pawley was the G-Tap team leader.
    "We were lucky," Pawley replied soberly, "either they missed us, or thought us unimportant. In any case we survived and came back to help. Everybody's pitching in. Ranchers, miners, you name it, they're all lending a hand."
    McCade saw the landing pad up ahead. Two piles of snow-dusted wreckage marked where a ship and a shuttle had been caught on the ground. Energy weapons had cut a confusing hatch work of dark lines into the ground. McCade cut speed and prepared to land.
    "We're about to land," Rico said. "Where should we head?"
    Pawley was silent for a moment. When he spoke there was a forced cheerfulness to his voice, as if he felt one way, and was saying something else.
    "Stay on the pad . . . I'll pick you up."
    McCade killed the shuttle's forward motion, fired repellors, and settled gently onto the pad.
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