The Last Hour of Gann Read Online Free PDF

She applied this to one of the bracelets on her cart and fit it onto Amber’s wrist, pinching it to make it tight. “There you go! Enjoy your flight! May I take your print, please?” she chirped, turning her sunny, Manifestor’s smile on Nicci.
    Amber watched the Fleetman run his restless, military stare out over the crowd of would-be colonists. He looked bored. When his eyes met hers, she said, “Are you coming with us to Plymouth?”
    “Hell, no,” he replied. “They had to pay me double just to do this much.”
    That earned hi m as dirty a look as the registrar seemed capable of manufacturing on her perky, young face. He shrugged one shoulder in something like an apology, tipped Amber a wink when the registrar resumed the legal stuff, and went back to crowd-watching. Nicci got her bracelet. The trudge through the queue continued.
    Not just ‘no’, but ‘hell, no’…
    The next time the line took them close enough to a registrar, Amber reached out and waved for the accompanying Fleetman’s attention and asked if he was boarding.
    “No, ma’am,” he replied firmly, which was not as unsettling as ‘hell, no,’ but was still pretty negative.
    “I was told there was going to be a Fleet presence on Plymouth. I mean, the flight crew are all Fleet, right? They’re not…um…” … a bunch of Director-worshipping space-zealots ?
    The Fleetman smiled. “There will be a full military flight crew, ma’am. Six hundred and forty proud men and women of the first United States Deep-Space Fleet.”
    “Is that all?”
    “This isn’t a military operation,” the registrar inserted with a disapproving frown. He was a lot better at that than the last registrar.
    The Fleetman gave him a knowing sort of glance and asked Amber if she had any other questions. She did not and the line was moving, so she shuffled on ahead and let them get started on the next colonist.
    Six hundred and forty. Didn’t seem like a lot of crew for a ship the size of a football stadium, let alone the police force for fifty thousand people.
    ‘We’ll be way too busy colonizing to need policing anyway,’ Amber told herself, but couldn’t make herself believe it. She didn’t think it mattered how tiring life on the farm was going to be. People were always going to need policing, especially when things were new and scary and people were apt to be at their worst.
    Nicci was looking at her, all wide eyes and apprehension. Amber smiled and squeezed her hand, disguising her misgivings with an ease born of many long years of practice. Worrying was useless now; the bracelet on her wrist was as good as handcuffs.
    ‘I’m not scared,’ thought Amber, stepping up to the head of the line at last. ‘I’m the tough one. I’m the strong one. I’m the one Nicci’s going to lean on for the next five years, so suck it up, little girl.’
    They ran them and their duffel bags through the usual set of scanners, checked their thumbprints against their bracelets, gave them each a smile and the opportunity to opt out and be arrested—Nicci opened her mouth, but Amber squeezed her hand and she closed it again, shivering—and then they were sent down the tunnel and onto the shuttle, which was, in spite of its size and the cool lights and the seatbelts that locked them in and had no release button, just a big airplane. It smelled like one, especially when all the other people got squeezed in around them; it sounded like one, once the pilot droned out the weather conditions and how it affected their launch time; it felt like one when they taxied away from the terminal and turned onto the runway.
    “Here we go,” said the pilot, sounding comfortingly bored.
    No one else made a sound.
    The shuttle began to move, slowly at first, but picking up speed fast until Amber could feel the funny tugs of lift under its wings. She squeezed Nicci’s hand again, but her sister did not respond—not with a word, not with a shiver, not even with tears. The shuttle bumped