Noah Zarc: Mammoth Trouble (Noah Zarc, #1) Read Online Free PDF

tell you often enough how proud I am of you. You handle yourself better than I ever could.” I looked into her eyes. There were no tears, just a firm conviction that she would never let me go.
    Now she was gone.
    As for Dad, being with him was never that easy—he was just harder to talk to, and I guess we weren’t really close. I knew he loved me, though. I didn’t know how I’d be able to go on without either of them.
    Sometime in the middle of the night, I fell asleep. I woke up the next morning with sheets crumpled in my fists. I’d had enough self-pity. No matter what Hamilton said, we needed to get moving and find Mom and Dad now. I dressed as fast as I could and went looking for Sam.

    The biggest problem with moving the ship from the moon’s surface was gravity. Not the gravity holding the ship down—the ARC could easily break free of the moon’s pull—but the lack of gravity in space. Even in one-sixth gravity on the moon, the animals could live comfortably. It took getting used to, but I was always amazed at how fast they adapted. But once we left the moon’s surface, there’d be no gravity at all to hold them down.
    Of course Dad and the engineers back home thought through that problem when they designed the ARC . Each habitat, or pod, was constructed on its own gimbal, which meant it was a totally self-contained sphere or cylinder that could be spun independently of the ship, generating its own virtual gravity. In addition, during acceleration, all the habitats would simply pivot so that down was toward the back of the ship. Depending upon acceleration, this was a better imitation of true gravity.
    I didn’t understand how it all worked, but I loved the ride. In space, when we weren’t accelerating, only the pods had gravity. It was a blast floating around the ship in zero-g—no need for magchairs or thermsuits. I was free as a bird.
    Over the next two days, Sam and I worked together to get all the gimbals unlocked. We had to test every habitat. If there were any issues we’d go down to the pod and find out what was wrong. Most released remotely as they should, but even so it was no small task to get the rest in order.
    On the morning of the second day, Sam and I worked to release the dire wolf habitat. Something had dropped between the outer hatch and the pod’s exterior plate, causing it to jam.
    “How long do you think Mom and Dad can last?” I said.
    Sam shook her head. “Remember what Ham said? We have time on our side. The DNA sample Moses retrieved will allow us to pinpoint exactly when and where Mom and Dad are in spacetime. So even though for us it’s been two days, for them it’ll only be a few hours at most before we show up. Make sense?”
    “I guess so. It’s just hard to get your mind around it.” I thought for a minute. “I still don’t get what DNA has to do with anything.”
    Sam stopped cranking the ratchet she was using.
    “Well, I’m no expert, but the way Ham explained it to me was that the earth is constantly bombarded with cosmic rays—radiation that travels millions if not billions of miles through space from every direction. That radiation leaves markers in the DNA—signatures that when analyzed can give the location in spacetime for when and where that organism lived. Our DNA is keeping a record of everywhere we’ve ever been, and every when .”
    “Ah, now it’s perfectly clear.” I laughed. “But...I still don’t get it.”
    Sam laughed too. “Yeah, it gives me a headache too.”
    “And you and Hamilton are the smart ones—imagine what it’s like for me to try and wrap my mind around it.”
    “I’m sure you do just fine. You only pretend to be slow while you’re pulling the wool over Ham’s eyes or mine with some scheme.” She smiled and got back to work on the hatch.
    “You know he hates it when you call him Ham, don’t you? He says he’s no side of pork.”
    She laughed. “Why do you think I do it?”

    By mid-afternoon, two days after