Star Trek Read Online Free PDF

spot on Pattie’s chest.
    â€œStruck a nerve, did I?” she asked. “Why don’t you give it back so we can have a real conversation?”
    The keeper’s eyes shifted from Pattie’s chest to her face. She could not believe he mistook the reasoned tones of her bell-like language for animal noises. Whatever he thought they were, however, scared him. He dropped the sprig of greenery and backed away from the cage.
    â€œDon’t overreact,” she said. “I’m really quite harmless.”
    This did not seem to reassure the humanoid. Turning quickly, he disappeared behind a rack of smaller cages. A few moments later Pattie heard what sounded like an exterior door slamming shut.
    â€œThat went well.”
    The animals in the nearest cages—and given the zookeeper’s mistake, she studied them for several minutes before deciding those in her immediate area were animals—regarded her silently. They knew she didn’t belong there, but there was nothing they could do about it. Counting, she saw they all had eight legs. A few of the smaller ones even had exoskeletons. So the zookeeper wasn’t a complete idiot; she did bear a passing resemblance to the local fauna. Or at least what a humanoid might mistake for a resemblance.
    Except there weren’t supposed to be any humanoids—zookeeper or otherwise—on Zhatyra II.
    But that was a question for another time. Right now her priority was escape.
    Thirty minutes of thorough study later, she decided to reassess her priority hierarchy. At least in the short term. The cage was solidly built and the lock unreachable from the inside. And neither any of the bog plants nor the packing box were sturdy enough to pry the mesh work open far enough for her to squeeze through.
    Evidently the most recent addition to the zoo, her cage faced an open expanse of floor and the rest of what was apparently a warehouse of some sort. The walls she could see were log, though the roof looked like metal. She thought the floor was made of half logs fitted tightly together, their sawn faces sanded smooth but unfinished. If her theory was correct, floor polish was likely a low priority.
    Directly in front of her cage was an assembly and repair area, judging by the organized tool racks and various stains on the wood floor, with storage of parts or materials beyond. There was also an office area of sorts, with desks and cabinets along the nearest wall.
    There were a dozen things she could see that would have made short work of her prison. The closest was three meters out of reach.
    â€œSince I can’t get myself out,” Pattie explained to a neighbor with reddish fur or feathers, she wasn’t sure which, “I’ll have to convince our host that I don’t belong here.”
    The neighbor seemed to agree. At least it bobbed up and down several times, which seemed to indicate assent.
    Thus encouraged, Pattie began cleaning out her cage. The neat piles of vegetation were transferred, still neatly arranged, outside her cage. She then improvised a shovel from a panel torn from the packing crate and scooped as much of the dirt as she could from the enclosure. It wasn’t as neat, shoving the dirt through the mesh, but she did her best to ensure it was clearly an organized effort and not the random behavior of an animal. What she couldn’t get out she swept into a neat pile in one corner of the cage.
    By the time she was done the room full of cages had become almost dark. Though she could see no windows from where she was, Pattie suspected the illumination was natural. Either a storm was coming or night was falling. The gradual dimming and the lack of wind noises convinced her it was nightfall.
    So did the falling temperature. It had been over twenty when she had awakened. Now it felt closer to ten. Not cold, but cooler than she liked.
    Particularly in her exhausted state. Whatever her injuries from the tunnel’s collapse, not to