Starfishers Volume 2: Starfishers Read Online Free PDF Page B

“Sit down here. I’ll get you something.”
    He dropped onto the couch. A devil kicked the back of his skull with a steel-toed boot. It was a vicious little critter. It kept hammering away. He could not restrain a groan.
    The headache became a bass drumbeat overshadowing his other pains. He looked up into the girl’s pale blue eyes. They were perfectly suited to her pale complexion and colorless hair. He tried a smile of gratitude.
    “Be back in a minute,” she told him. “Hang en.” Off she hurried, her hips moving in a languorous way that belied her haste. BenRabi’s head left him no time to appreciate the nicety.
    His frayed nerves jumped. They had migraine tablets on hand? That was strange. And her curiosity. Why was she interested in his health? She had become intrigued and apprehensive the instant he had mentioned migraine.
    He had stretched the truth this time, but he had had headache trouble all his life. He had gobbled kilos of painkillers in his time.
    Still, he had not been bothered recently. The susceptibility was noted in his medical file as a cover for the pain his tracer would cause . . . 
    Why the hell switch him on now?
    His headaches were a mental thing, Psych had declared. They were caused by unresolved conflicts between his Old Earth origins and the demands of the culture into which he had climbed.
    He did not believe it. He had never met a Psych he trusted heaving distance. Anyway, he had had headaches even before he had begun to consider enlisting.
    For at least the hundredth time he asked himself why the Bureau had implanted an imperfect device. He answered himself, as always, with the observation that the tracer was the only way they had to follow a Seiner ship to a starfish herd.
    Completely nonmetal, the tracer was the only device that could be smuggled aboard without being detected.
    There was no satisfaction in knowing the answers. Not when they were so damned unpleasant. He wished to hell that he could take a vacation. A real vacation, away from anything that would remind him of who and what he was. He needed time to go home and get involved in something with known, realizable, and comfortable challenges. He longed for the private universe of his stamp collection.
    The Seiner girl returned with another of those big, warm smiles. She carried a water bottle in one hand, a paper pillbox in the other. “This should put that right,” she said. That damned smile tried to eat him up. “I brought you a dozen. That should last the whole trip.”
    He frowned. How long would they be aboard this piece of flying junk?
    “I asked if I could stay with you till we make orbit. Jarl turned me down. Too much else for me to do.” She smiled, felt his forehead.
    He had had a feeling she would report him to somebody. It was the way she had reacted to his mention of migraine.
    What was so remarkable about a headache? Even a migraine? Something was wobbling on its axis and he could not get a grip. The pain just would not let him think.
    Hell. He was probably just feeling the first ground tremors of culture shock. Fly with it, Moyshe , he told himself. You’ve raced a sunjammer in the starwinds of the Crab  . . . What could the lady do that was less predictable, or more terrifying?
    She was leaving. He did not want her to go. “Wait.” She turned. His heart did a teenager’s flop. “Thank you. My name’s benRabi. Moyshe benRabi.” Now wasn’t that a gimp way of feeling for an opening? But she responded with a quick little smile.
    “I know, Moyshe. I remember from your papers. Mine’s Coleridge. Amaranthina Amaryllis Isolte Galadriel de Coleridge y Gutierez.” She yielded a half-laugh because of his rising eyebrows. “Mother was a reader. Amy’s good for everyday.”
    There was a long, unsure moment. It was that period of uncertainty preluding potential relationship where he did not know if he dared open up a little more. She said, “I’m in Liquids Systems too.”
    He nodded. She had