Reconception: The Fall Read Online Free PDF Page A

hardware, and all that remained
were rudimentary satellite systems.
    Paul Tipman was walking hurriedly
through 1 st Quad when he spotted Morgan sitting in the cafe section,
reading the Dailies on the computer console, and stopped to talk to
him. "Morgan," he said.
    Morgan looked up and smiled an artful smile. "Hello,
Paul," he answered, taking in the look of mild distress on the
man's face. "Anything wrong?"
    Tipman sat down heavily and pressed the buttons that
would dispense a drink into a glass and convey it to the table.
"You haven't heard? Southeast's had a life support failure."
    Morgan, who had been lounging, suddenly sat up. "No!
But how?"
    "No one knows yet. There's all kinds of speculation,
but from the data received, it's possible that their food plants
have mutated. Anyway, everyone's very ill, some have died."
    "What's the prognosis?" Morgan was thinking
furiously. Here was an opportunity. He didn't know what the
possibilities were, or how he could use the chance to advantage,
but he would find out.
    "Come on, Morgan, you know as well as I that it would
take at least two months for them to build a new food plant. First
they'd have to engineer new microbes, and then they'd need time to
grow enough to eat. Even then they'd be on short rations for at
least another month or two. If all their food reserves are
inedible, they're finished."
    "Well, didn't they have backups? We have backups,
don't we?" Tipman was in charge of communications and as such he
usually had all kinds of information at his fingertips. He was also
an inveterate gossip and Morgan knew that whatever he needed to
know, he would find out, and whatever he wanted the rest of the
habitat to know, he could communicate, just once, to this man. An
idea began to take form.
    "Yeah, we have backups and so did they. Apparently,
someone was overhasty in trying to repair the damage and they
allowed the backups to be overgrown with mutated material. I don't
know all the details, but it looks like their reserves have been
destroyed."
    "Wait a minute, Paul. Why don't we try to help them
out? If we could transport the genetic material to them, we could
save their lives, couldn't we?"
    Paul considered this suggestion and shrugged. "We
could if we had some form of transport. But we don't."
    "We could build one. We could take one of those
motorized carts they use in the recycling plant and modify it,
close it in, add portable recycler, solar power ... It wouldn't
take more than three or four days. Don't you think it could be
done?"
    "I guess it could," Paul said, warming to the idea.
"But then we have to find someone to man it."
    "Oh, someone will volunteer. You'll see. Just put the
idea on the board."
    When Tipman left, enthusiastically planning the
communiqué that would go out on the electronic bulletin board,
Morgan had to struggle to contain his excitement. This was it. This
was the opening. With a land vehicle and an unsealed exit from the
habitat, he would be able to implement his own plans.

CHAPTER 4
     
    East USA Habitat 2128
     
    Four frantic days later the jury-rigged motorcar was
ready. Resembling a van, its small motor had been replaced with a
much larger one, a bank of batteries lined the floor and were
connected to solar panels on the roof. The windows were small and
well protected, designed to let in as little ultraviolet radiation
as possible. Air and water would be recycled. Solid waste would be
evacuated to the outside. Top speed of the vehicle was thirty miles
per hour, and it was calculated that the 400-mile trip to Southeast
USA would probably not cause much damage to the travelers as long
as they stayed inside the machine.
    There were only two volunteers, and they elected to
go together. When Evelyn Chandler saw the notice on the bulletin
board, she was ecstatic, and she immediately put both her name and
Garret's on the board as volunteers for the mission. To Evie, this
was the chance of a lifetime. They would see for themselves what
was going on