The Phobos Maneuver Read Online Free PDF

antennas. Their legs waved in the air every time Michael drove over a bump.
    He paralleled the terrain fold to the north until he could be sure they were out of sight of the big water-splitting facility on its far side, and of the Occator Lake dome, which was over there as well. Then he turned the skimmer north. Up and over the fold they went, Kelp and Coral screaming on the roof. The soft, flaky clay of the summit crumbled under the skimmer’s wheels. They were leaving tracks that would, literally, be visible from space. Michael drove downhill so fast the skimmer left the ground and soared heart-stoppingly out over the slope.
    The wheels spun helplessly in the vacuum. The skimmer tilted to the passenger side, where Captain Haddock was sitting; he was heavier. They were going to flip, and there was nothing Michael could do about it.
    Kelp’s legs dangled down past his elbow. Coral’s legs joined them. They were shifting their weight to balance the skimmer out.
    The skimmer struck the ground with two wheels and bounced. Then it came down on all six wheels. Michael drove with more careful consideration after that.
    As they neared the spaceport, Codfish texted them. He was on board the Kharbage Collector . He had requested a launch slot for later today and gotten it. Adnan Kharbage approved of a man who was willing to start work immediately.
    “The launch slot system is a farce, anyway,” Michael said. This wasn’t Luna, where hundreds of spacecraft landed and took off every day, coordinated as tightly as trains on Earth. Or had, anyway, before the PLAN razed Shackleton City.
    He drove through the hillbilly clutter of Occator Shipyard, jinking between recycling depots and warehouses that leaned like the Tower of Pisa. A water tanker took off from just over the horizon, burning straight up. The gravity on Ceres was so low that even the biggest spacecraft could and did land on the surface. Radioactive jets of steam spurted over the horizon, dispersing in arrow-straight lines. On the roof of the skimmer, Coral and Kelp cringed and muttered about neutrons. A lot of those old tankers still used deuterium in their drives.
    “Radiation exposure quotas are for sissies,” Michael teased them. He was in high spirits, knowing now that they were going to make it.
    He drove around a couple of his father’s ships, spaced out kilometers apart. A robot refueling truck pootled past. Then the Kharbage Collector loomed over the horizon,sitting upright on its jackstands, like a twenty-storey building with a crosspiece.
    “I see you,” Codfish texted.
    “Did you spoof the external optical feed, like I said?” Michael texted back urgently.
    “I plugged in those codes you gave me.”
    Michael relaxed. “That’s all right then.”
    Codfish stood in the Engineering & Maintenance airlock, waving at them. A stairway curved down from the airlock, clearing the folded radiator vanes. Michael left his skimmer with a final set of instructions. Go home , he ordered it, and tell my father and Stepmom No. 5 that I’m dead.
    He had pondered about the most plausible fate for himself, and had tentatively chosen squashed-in-a-landslide, but the problem with that was his father would soon ascertain there hadn’t been any landslides today—and then when he saw Lake Chandler, far beneath the surface, plied by tin-can boats, its water just barely above freezing, he’d hit on the perfect story.
    I drowned.
    He did not think about the devastating effect this would have on his father and stepmother. He did think about the effect it would have on Petruzzelli. It would serve her right.
    And what a surprise she’d have when he caught up with her.
    ★
    “She hasn’t really gone back to Earth,” Michael said to Captain Haddock and his family.
    “Why do ye think she would have lied?” Captain Haddock said.
    Michael backed out from under the comms workstation. He returned his screwdriver, flashlight, multimeter, and wire cutters to his utility belt. He