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

Moses’s return, we had the ARC ready to go. Hamilton wanted to wait one hour more for daylight to cover the near side of the earth—less chance of being spotted. During the twenty-first century, thousands of telescopes were pointed toward the night sky. We would try to keep the moon between Earth and us for as long as possible. Our parents always stressed that the most important rule of time travel was not letting yourself be seen.
    We strapped ourselves into our seats in the ARC Control Center. I always got excited right before a lift-off. So did my stomach, but I knew it would calm down as soon as the engines roared to life.
    Sam sat in Dad’s chair between Hamilton and me—she was in charge. She had a long checklist displayed on the monitor connected to a swivel arm on her seat. Even Mom and Dad didn’t know everything it took to get the ARC off the ground.
    Sam tapped her finger on the screen. “Pods ready for departure, Noah?”
    I scrolled down the long row of numbers on my monitor. All had a steady green light.
    “Pods are go.”
    “Power and pressure systems?” Sam said.
    “Power is nominal. Pressure is holding at a steady one atm .” Hamilton, who had a better idea how the ship operated than Sam or I, was in charge of the vital systems.
    “Ham, do you have a lock on the time-stream for Dad?”
    An image on the screen showed a pulsing beam of light connecting a long line of round Earths, like a string of blue pearls moving off into the darkness of space.
    “Northern Europe, 8512 B.C., requiring three hundred and twenty-six jumps.” Hamilton looked at Sam. “Warp-processors powered and ready.”
    “Disengage the docking clamps,” Sam said. The screens switched to an external view of the ARC . Cameras, mounted on several sides of the crater we called home, showed the ship from every angle.
    “Take us out of here.”
    I felt the tiniest shudder as the main thrusters fired.
    Sam turned to me, then Hamilton, and gave us a thumbs-up.
    “Let’s go get Mom and Dad.”
    On screen, our giant ship erupted in flames along its bottom edge. Normally, ships used maglifters to launch, creating a magnetic field polar opposite the field of the planet or moon. The ARC was so big it needed conventional rockets to help get it off the ground. The ship, shaped somewhat like an enormous snub-winged manta ray, with deck after deck flickering in blue light, slowly rose from the moon’s surface. From the outside, with no frame of reference, the ARC didn’t look as big as it really was— at more than sixteen kilometers long and eight kilometers wingtip to wingtip, larger than most twenty-first-century cities on the planet below us.
    Thrusters fired as soon as the ship cleared the rim of the crater, tilting the nose of the ARC upward.
    “Brace for main engine ignition.” The shipboard computer’s mechanical voice filled the room.
    “Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Ignition.” An enormous ball of fire exploded from the rear of the ship, and the holoscreens flickered out for a second. The craft shook and rumbled all around us. I felt the vibration in my bones. It had been a long time since we last moved the ARC and I’d forgotten how much force it took to get her going. If I didn’t know better, I’d have worried the ship was going to fall apart around us. I hoped Obadiah wasn’t too scared in his crate back in my room.
    The screens changed to show the stars above us. The round, cratered horizon of the moon was just visible along the bottom edge. For several long minutes the acceleration was so great I could barely lift my arms.
    “Reaching moon orbital altitude in ten-seconds,” Hamilton said. He peered at his own monitor closely.
    “Five seconds.”
    I switched my monitor to the rear view. The moon’s surface fell away at an astonishing rate.
    “We’ve reached moon orbital altitude.”
    My body grew light and my stomach lurched as gravity changed to zero-g. A smile crept across my face. I couldn’t wait to fly