Starship Spring Read Online Free PDF Page A

prescience,” Hannah reminded him.
    “I’m getting there,” he said. “Anyway, one night on El Habib, I had a dream. This figure approached me, said that on our return to Chalcedony we’d spend some time here, Tamara Falls. It said that my presence was vital here.” He laughed. “I know, crazy! Anyway, I forgot about the dream pretty quickly—and then a couple of months later Maddie calls and suggests an all-expenses-paid holiday at Tamara Falls. Of course it brought back the dream in a rush.” He gestured. “Don’t ask me to explain it.”
    “Some coincidence,” Hannah said.
    “There’s more. When we got back to Chalcedony, I looked into how to get here from Mackinley—I didn’t fancy a five-hour mono-train ride. I found out they had a landing pad here… and only then did I recall something else the vision in the dream told me: that I should make the trip to the Falls in my starship.”
    “Did it say why?” Hannah asked.
    “No, not that I recall. Anyway, that’s what I did.”
    I let a silence develop, mulling over what he’d said, before asking, “Can you recall what this figure in your dream looked like, Hawk?”
    His aquiline pirate’s face mimed concentration. “Well, it wasn’t human. I seem to recall it was greenish, reptilian, and extraordinarily thin…” He shrugged. “Like no alien I’ve ever seen.”
    I lay back and stared into the swaying foliage overhead, my heart loud in my ears. He had described, pretty accurately, the same apparition that had spoken to me that night aboard the Mantis …
    The Yall.
    “So here you all are,” a voice called out. Maddie climbed the steps from the patio and squatted beside us. “Look at you all. What a collection of lazybones. I was up at the crack of dawn, exploring.”
    “And what did you find, virtuous one?” I said.
    “I walked for miles along the jungle walkway.”
    “Miles? After all you drank last night?”
    She stuck her tongue out at me. “You know I never suffer, David. Anyway, I found a few old shrines, predating the first stone-working Ashentay, apparently.” She waved the paper map she was holding.
    “Predating?” I said. “I thought there was no one here before the Ashentay.”
    Hawk laughed. “Where have you been, David? You don’t recall all the fuss in the news a few years ago: the discovery of ancient monuments in the vicinity of Tamara Falls? It’s what led to the excavations and discovery of the caverns.”
    I shrugged. “Must have been on Earth at the time,” I said, to excuse my aberrant memory.
    “We’ll find out more about that this afternoon,” Maddie said. “Ella, I have something for you.”
    “Where’s Matt?” Hawk asked.
    “Still snoring,” Maddie said, ooph ing as Ella landed in her lap.
    She extricated a small box from beneath my daughter and held it up on the palm of her hand. “For you, Ella, all the way from Sirius II.”
    “What do you say, Ella?” Hannah prompted.
    “Thank you,” Ella said, taking the box and hastily tearing off the wrapping paper. She set the small silver box on the edge of my lounger, knelt and opened the lid.
    A small golden cone, the length of Ella’s hand, sat in a plush velvet nest. “It’s… beautiful,” Ella gasped, lifting it carefully from the box. “What is it?”
    Maddie laughed. “An ancient alien artefact,” she said. “Now a necklace.”
    The cone was on a chain, and Ella looped it around her neck. The golden cone sat against her bathing suit, coruscating in the sunlight.
    I pulled Ella to me and examined the necklace. The cone was engraved with a spiral, like a helter-skelter, the thread inscribed with what might have been alien hieroglyphs.
    Hannah said, “It is beautiful, Maddie. Thank you.”
    “Don’t thank me,” she said. “Thank an alien art patron called Dr Petronious.” She explained to Hannah who Petronious was.
    “Petronious gave it to you?” I said.
    Maddie nodded. “The odd thing was, he knew all about us. He’d read the