The Aftermath Read Online Free PDF

aboard killed. Pauline, he thought. Angela. Theo.
    He couldn’t even call his attacker and surrender, Victor realized. The bastard’s knocked out my antennas. We’re mute. And deaf. He could be singing Christmas carols to me and I’d never hear him.
    The intercom link with the ship’s living quarters was down, too. He saw the sullen red lights glaring at him from the control panel.
    How can I…?
    A desperate idea popped into his head. Looking up at the display screen again he saw that the attacking ship was at the edge of the swirling, tumbling cluster of rocks he’d released. It was only a matter of seconds now.
    His pulse hammering in his ears, Victor lifted the safety covers over the escape system’s dual butter yellow buttons.
    â€œGoodbye, Pauline,” he murmured. Then he pressed his stubby fingers against the twin buttons.
    Explosive bolts blew away the connectors holding the command pod to Syracuse ’s main body. The pod’s internal rocket engine lit automatically; Victor felt himself pressed deep into the command chair’s padding. The control panel’s lights flickered madly, then winked out.
    He stared fixedly at the main screen. The camera view jerked violently, then swung its focus back on the attack vessel. Just as Victor had hoped, just as he’d prayed, the attacker swerved to follow him.
    They both left Syracuse far behind, dwindling into an invisible speck against the starry black of space.
    He thinks I’m carrying Fuchs with me, Victor thought gratefully. He thinks I’m trying to help Fuchs escape. He’s following me and leaving Pauline and the kids alone. I’ve saved them. I’ve saved them.

ABANDONED
    Dad’s going to be boiled at me if he ever finds out, Theo thought as he hesitated at the lip of the auxiliary air lock hatch. He was fully suited up, with his helmet visor down and sealed. Standing on the ladder leading up to the hatch set in the ceiling, his head and shoulders above the hatch’s edge, Theo saw the long tube leading from the family’s living quarters to the control pod stretching above him, a narrow dimly lit tunnel of buckyball filament, stronger than steel, lighter than plastic.
    So he boils, Theo said to himself. This is an emergency. And he started climbing up the rungs set into the tube’s circular interior. It was laborious work in the cumbersome space suit. The emergency hatches were closed tight, he saw. Every hundred meters the tunnel was divided by double hatches that served as mini-airlocks. Usually they were kept open, but if a part of the tunnel was punctured, the hatches automatically sealed shut to prevent all the air from escaping into space. Now they were closed.
    Not a good sign, Theo told himself. The tunnel’s been punctured somewhere.
    Gravity melted away as he climbed; soon he was taking the rungs three, four, five at a time. As he approached the tunnel’s midpoint, where the g force was effectively zero, his booted feet weren’t touching the rungs at all.
    Once past the ship’s center, he allowed himself to fall, slowly at first, then with increasing speed as he neared the end of the tunnel. But the closed hatches of the airlocks stopped him from dropping all the way. He had to stop and manually open each hatch, then proceed to the next one. No tunnel diving, they way he used to when he was just a kid, eight or nine years old. Just drop from the midpoint to the end of the tunnel, let yourself fall like a stone. When his father had found out, the old man had exploded with fearful anger.
    â€œYou could kill yourself falling against the rungs!” Victor had roared. “Tear your arms out of their sockets when you try to stop! Break every bone in your empty head!”
    But tunnel diving was too much fun to ignore. Theo had even gotten Angie to dive with him. Of course she banged herself up, broke an arm, and loudly wailed Theo’s guilt. Dad had confined Theo