The Engines of Dawn Read Online Free PDF

commanding brown eyes quite unlike anything Benjamin had ever seen before.
    The young woman looked directly at Ben from up above. She pointed to the animal in Ben's arms. "Is that my bear?"
    Ben could only read her lips, since the fire alarms were still clamoring about mem, but he understood.
    He had just located the elusive Julia Waxwing.

5
     
     
    Julia Waxwing, a mixed descendant of Apache and Zuni Indians from distant Earth, had almost vanished. She had almost been swept into the arms of Death-like a titmouse taken in the claws of an Arizona sparrowhawk.
    The twenty-three-year-old archaeology student had escaped that fate. But the incident with the disassembler did remind her how her grandfather, Stan Chasing, had once described the death of a human being: a fading from human memory, with nothing to show that he or she had ever walked the Earth.
    Julia understood the manifold perils of space. Ships blew up, colonies died out, explorers soared into the abject blackness of the unexplored Alley, never to be seen or heard of again. But a man-made catastrophe was something no one should have to put up with. That was just bad manners, totally unbecoming of the dignity of Homo interstellaris.
    However, the strange silver fog that took out nearly all of the physics department below as well as part of the archaeology department above was no longer of interest to her. Her little bear, a going-away present from her family, had been her only link to that familiar world. Now that link had been destroyed.
    As the ship's crisis-control people surveyed the damage done by the weapon's bite, interviewing those who had witnessed the event, Julia descended into grief. She hugged the body of Jingle Bear where she sat next to the corridor wall in the physics department.
    The young man who had brought the bear to her stood by, as if not knowing what else to do.
    "Listen, I'm sorry about your bear," the young man said to her.
    His back to the wall, he slid down beside her. "I tried looking for you in your dorm, but your pager was switched off and nobody knew where to find you."
    An intentionally disengaged com/pager was, theoretically, a university misdemeanor. The com/pagers in the chevrons on the collars of everyone's tunic were supposed to be turned on at all times. This was for cases of emergency where university officials might need to know where their three thousand wards were.
    But Julia honored her American background by defying authorities in minor, but annoying ways, and she had taken some of that with her when she came to Eos University two years ago in order to study with the famous Albert Holcombe. This was to be Professor Holcombe's last Alley circuit and Julia couldn't pass up the professional opportunity of studying under so famous a scholar. The death of Jingle Bear, however, had taken some of the wind out of her sails, leaving her demoralized.
    "My name's Ben," the boy with the ponytail said. "I teach in the physics department. Or what's left of it, anyway."
    "I'm Julia," she said softly, cradling her bear. She did like his smile. And his eyes. They hinted of intelligence and the possibilities of great mischief. He seemed more like a jock than a physics teacher.
    "I'm a lecturer," he said, as if feeling the need to qualify his last remark. Or perhaps just to make conversation.
    "I'm just a research assistant," she said. "It pays my way." Ben nodded.
    People kept arriving to assess the damage, the Grays of the administration as well as campus security, some of whom were armed with the ship's only weapons-crowd-control stunners.
    Off to their right, a transit portal glowed and a major Gray appeared in the iridescent ring. Julia recognized the head of campus security, Lieutenant Theodore Fontenot. He sported a black mustache of military smartness, and his snappy gray tunic had nary a wrinkle or crease. He was accompanied by an assistant with a shouldercam already sweeping the area. The story was that Lieutenant Fontenot was a