STARGATE UNIVERSE: Air Read Online Free PDF Page B

“This is as real as it gets, Eli.”
    He held up the papers. “And if I don’t sign? What? You erase my memory?”
    “Something like that.” Rush smiled at him, and it wasn’t reassuring. “Let’s just say it’d be easier if you did sign it.”
    Eli sighed and found the spot where his signature was supposed to go. He scrawled it in and handed the papers back to Rush, before looking down.
    Abruptly, the state of his wardrobe became clear to him. He pulled at his pajama bottoms and gave Rush a sheepish glance. “Can I get some pants?”

CHAPTER TWO
     
    Unnoticed by all but a very small percentage of the Earth’s population, the starship George S. Hammond left orbit, passing behind the far side of the moon before charging into the other-dimensional realm of hyperspace.
    Eli had insisted on being allowed to watch it happen, despite pointed suggestions from Doctor Rush that he take “the whole space thing” one step at a time. Once he’d gotten past the kidnap-abduction bit, though, Eli was starting to warm to the idea of being chosen for something this cool. And the great thing was, he hadn’t had to get to it the hard way like the Air Force types he encountered around the ship, men and women who’d clearly footslogged and fought their way up to getting a posting aboard the Hammond , one of — so he’d been told — a handful of advanced interstellar spacecraft that were now in service protecting humanity from the dangers out there in the dark. Eli hadn’t gotten around to asking exactly what those dangers might be, because he wasn’t really sure he wanted to know.
    He concentrated on the cool stuff. Watching the ship hit hyperdrive was incredible, as space melted away into a tunnel of blue-white energy and the speed of light shattered like glass. Somewhere, Albert Einstein was foaming at the mouth.
    They didn’t let him wander all over the place, though. He had a small cabin to himself, and some USAF flunky had shown the foresight to have a bag of his clothes sent up before they broke orbit. He’d asked if he could see the bridge and they’d said no. When he asked one of the crew if they had a holodeck, the guy had nodded gravely and then given Eli directions that took him to the female washroom. It had been, in retrospect, a dumb question.
    But it was still very cool. It was like that movie, The Last Starfighter . He’d been picked for his gamer prowess to help save the world. The secret dream of every player since someone dropped the first quarter on Space Invaders .
    At least, he hoped it was that. On some level, he was still holding away the fear that at any moment, the walls would retract and he would find himself on some hidden camera show called How Gullible Are You?
    And just when he was wondering what he’d be doing all the way to planet whatever, Rush sat him down with what could only be described as a library of educational movies, which were not a lot different from the ones he remembered from fourth grade — only with the added complication of being Mega-Ultra Top Secret.
    There was that line in Star Wars where Ben Kenobi tells Luke Skywalker that he’s taken his “first step into a larger world”. Eli understood exactly what he meant now, as the information films started to unfold, showing him stuff he’d never dreamed could be real. And it was clear that Old Obi-Wan had forgotten to mention that the first step was a real doozy.
    On the screen, a bookish guy in spectacles walked through the concrete corridors of a military facility, the blunt Fifties nuclear-scare design mingled in with modern-day tech retrofitted over the top.
    “ Hello, ” he began warmly, in the time-honored tradition of all educational film narrators, “ I’m Doctor Daniel Jackson… ”
    “And you might remember me from such other instructional videos as ‘ Help! I was Abducted by the Air Force! ’ and ‘ Outer Space is Rad! ’” Eli laughed out loud at his own joke, disappointed that there was no-one