The Seeds of Time Read Online Free PDF

scar on the ceiling revealed where a heavy chandelier had once filled the room with light.
    Around the heavy, dark table sat Russo, Brisher, and the Bureau official, Gerald Meres. Russo was perched on her chair like she had a bad case of hemorrhoids. Clio realized that she had never seen Russo off ship or station, probably because Russo hated being off ship or station. Russo waved her to join them.
    Brisher was wedged into his chair so far it might have been growing out of him. He gave her a sober smile, just the right balance of support and sternness.
    Meres was rustling with papers, hadn’t looked up. When he did, Clio’s heart wilted. Out of a pinched, narrow face stared eyes that bored into hers, seeking to ransack her mind. She crumpled into the chair next to Russo.
    “Lieutenant Hall,” Meres began, looking down at the papers in front of him.
    “That’s Finn. Lieutenant Clio Finn,” Clio said, trying to sound respectful.
I need my name
. At least that much. A privilege of Dive status, to pick your name.
    Meres looked up, frowning.
    Russo interjected: “Nobody’s called her Speery-Hall in years, Gerry. I think we can go along with her on this.”
    Meres glared at Russo. Eventually he said, “Very well.
Lieutenant Finn,”
making it sound like an unsanitary thing.
    Clio smiled in relief. Bless Russo’s cold little heart. Maybe she underestimated Russo, maybe Russo wasn’t ready to hang her.
    “You were Dive pilot on
Starhawk
for the Crippen mission, is that right?”
    “Yessir.”
    Meres looked up at her, as though already probing for lies. “I want you to tell me,” he continued, “as thoroughly and as accurately as you can recall, what happened as the
Starhawk
came out of Dive on that mission.”
    Clio swallowed. “Yessir. As
Starhawk
surfaced from Dive, the alarms were sounding, and the screens showed an object in close range bearing down on the ship. I scanned the instrumentation and took evasive action, firing thrusters to bring us around and out of the collision path. When I …”
    Meres interrupted. “What did the instrumentation show?”
    “It showed Crippen’s moon, fifteen thousand kilometers below us, and a body approximately three hundred kilometers wide moving in fast on the ship.”
    “And that’s when you took evasive action.”
    “Yessir.”
    “Describe what those actions were. If it’s not too much trouble, Lieutenant.” This last, heavy with sarcasm.
    “Yessir. There wasn’t time to do more than bring the ship around and hit the engine for a fast burn. The blast struck the asteroid’s surface, which was mostly ice, and we got hit with an eruption of superheated water vapor.”
    “That would have put the ship within thirty or forty meters of the asteroid’s surface, is that right, Lieutenant?”
    “Yessir.”
    “Close. I’d call that close. Wouldn’t you, Lieutenant Finn?”
    “Yessir, pretty close, sir.” Clio’s tongue was so dry it clicked when she talked.
    The sound of Meres’ pencil scribbling across his papers filled her ears. He glanced up. “How long would you estimate before the asteroid would have made contact with the ship. From the moment you first observed it?”
    “Fifteen seconds, sir.” Clio remembered the great ball of ice, hurtling on its path around the moon, ready to mow down
Starhawk
and anything else in its path. Moments before, she had been out cold. She woke to see her impending destruction. She hit the thrusters, her reactions kicking in so fast they left her mind meters behind. Out cold.
    Any they can’t prove it
, she reminded herself.
    Meres laid down his pencil and rubbed his eyes, sighing with apparent fatigue. “Do you realize, Lieutenant Finn, how remote, how minuscule, are the chances, on a Dive of four hundred thousand years, that you will come up on a planet, or a moon, or a planetesimal, or an asteroid, or a body of any size,
that close?
Close enough to hit it?” He arched his eyebrows and peered at her.
    “Yessir, pretty