Starhunt: A Star Wolf Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

welds give easily, exposing a gaping hole, an open mouth screaming in silent outrage at two gay-colored cyclopes. The cyclopes look silently at each other, then touch their great dark eyes together to confer without the use of the radio. After a moment, they break apart and again bend to the task before them.
    Satisfied that the work is progressing, Brandt nods to himself. Idly, he glances around the bridge. Most of the crew is following the operation on the screens, though one or two are still casually monitoring their boards.
    Brandt nudges Korie, who has moved back to stand on the control island, just to one side of the seat. “Who’s minding the store?” he asks.
    “Huh?” Korie is startled out of his thoughts.
    Brandt indicates the bridge with a sharp nod. For the first time Korie notices the distracting influence of the large viewscreens.
    Taking the captain’s remark as an indication to act, he steps down into the pit, calling angrily, “Let’s keep an eye on those boards! We’re not here to entertain you!”
    The crew reacts as if stung; they turn quickly back to their control boards and pretend to be busy.
    Korie’s blue-gray eyes drift inevitably back to the huge forward screen. He folds his arms across his chest and relaxes into a more comfortable stance. A lean figure in a blue and gray uniform, he stands alone in the center of the pit and gazes resolutely ahead.
    Around the bridge, behind him, the crew silently follows his example. One by one they turn away from their boards to again watch the progress of the work.
    Brandt smiles—a tightening at the corners of this mouth. Abruptly he purges it in a quick flash of annoyance: annoyance at Korie for giving an unenforceable order, annoyance at the crew for lack of discipline. He makes a mental note to bring it up at the next briefing, knowing as he does so that unless he writes it down, he’ll probably forget, but—
    A sudden voice cuts into his thoughts. “Captain?”
    Startled, Brandt looks up—it is Barak, a headset pressed to one ear. “It’s radec, sir. He says he’d blown the bogie!”
    Brandt straightens in his seat. Korie’s head jerks around. “What was that ?”
    Barak repeats it. “We can’t find the bogie anywhere—he’s dropped out of warp!”

THREE
    The rocket made space travel possible; the energy field made it practical.
    —GUNTER WHITE,
    The Economy of the Stars
    The warp theory of my esteemed colleagues (and I am sure they will correct me if I am wrong) is based on the principle that two separate units of anything cannot exist in the same place at the same time; nor can they coexist without each having an effect upon the other. When the units are energy fields, the effect is supposed to be spectacular. (The effect is spectacular—I will admit that. As my esteemed colleagues have already so admirably demonstrated, the effect is certainly spectacular . . . though I somewhat doubt that this was the specific effect they had hoped for.)
    Theoretically—at least, as their theory says—when two continuous fields are overlapped, it will cause a wrinkle in the fabric of existence. Unfortunately, the continuous energy field is only a myth—a mathematical construction. It is a physical impossibility and cannot exist without collapsing in upon itself.
    Of course, there are still some members of this learned academy who insist on remaining doggedly skeptical of this fact of life. It is almost pitiful to watch them continue these attempts to generate an energy field that is both continuous and stable. So far, the only thing that they have succeeded in doing is to convert several dollars’ worth of equipment, buildings, and surrounding property into so much slag. (Oh, and incidentally, in doing so, they have also proven me correct.)
    —DR. J. JOSEPH RUSSELL, PhD, MA, etc.,
    comments to the Board of Inquiry
    into the Denver disaster
    Insufferable old windbag!
    —ANONYMOUS “ESTEEMED COLLEAGUE”
    Dammit! It’s like trying to stack