Titan 5 - Over a Torrent Sea Read Online Free PDF Page B

wasn’t highly emotional by humanoid standards, he was a creature of pure impulse when it came to intellectual curiosity and experimentation.
    The captain turned to Vale. “Christine? It’s your mission.”
    “Well, Vig, um…I wouldn’t want all that work togo to waste…but Droplet doesn’t seem like the kind of planet where we’d need an engineer along.”
    “Oh, I’ve uploaded the xenobiology and planetary science databases into my memory buffer, Commander,” he said. Much of the Choblik’s intelligence was assisted by the bionic implants that some unknown benefactors had given them millennia in the past; without them, Torvig would be only a fairly bright woodland animal. He thus had the ability to upload new knowledge at will, though it took his organic brain some time and practice to process it. “Besides, the aquashuttle systems are largely untested, so it might be a good idea to have an engineer along. And I don’t take up much room, ma’am.”
    Vale chuckled, conceding the point. “Okay, okay. If nothing else, you can keep us cool with your, umm, fan there.”
    “Thank you, Commander. I am a fan of yours.”
    “Oh, no,” Vale whispered to Riker as the Choblik clambered aboard the shuttle, stumbling a bit on his newly enlarged feet. “Now that he’s discovered puns, he’s going to be ‘experimenting’ with them for weeks and driving us all out of our minds.”
    “Look on the bright side,” Riker replied. “Down there, he won’t take it badly if you tell him he’s all wet.”

CHAPTER T WO
    DROPLET
    T he away team’s first destination was a small cluster of floating islands at a high southern latitude, comfortably removed from the equatorial storm belt. The winds on an ocean planet built up swells that never broke against land and thus could grow to mountainous size. There was wind at these latitudes, of course, the same steady, predictable circulation patterns that could be found planetwide. But sensors showed no major swells heading toward this grouping. Swells of such size could be fairly gentle and would pose no risk to the aquashuttle; but until the nature and behavior of the disklike islets were determined, it was better not to take chances.
    Melora Pazlar gazed out the forward ports with fascination as Aili Lavena brought the aquashuttle down to a flight trajectory just a few kilometers above the waves. “Astonishing,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much water at one time.” Since the planet was so large, more than halfagain the radius of a typical M-class world, the horizon was unusually distant, all but lost in atmospheric haze. It was easy to imagine the water stretching to infinity. It couldn’t have been more different from Gemworld, the artificial crystalline planet where her Elaysian species resided. But then, her world was different from any other world in the galaxy, so that wasn’t much of a standard of comparison.
    “I know,” Lavena replied. “It’s gorgeous! I’m going for a swim first thing once we land.”
    “Hold on there,” Commander Vale said. “Before you do that, I’d like to get a little sense of what the ocean’s like. With the interference, we should double-check our scans of its chemistry, make sure there’s nothing toxic. And there’s no telling what kind of sea monsters might be lurking down there.”
    Pazlar threw her an amused look. “Do you suppose that’s what these islands are? Some kind of giant turtles or something?”
    Torvig turned to Kekil. “Relatives of yours, perhaps?” The pale green Rigellian Chelon, so called because of his people’s somewhat turtlelike appearance, simply ignored him.
    Soon, the cluster of islets was in naked-eye range. The sight left no doubt that they were floating atop the water, rising and falling with its slow swells. The larger clusters flexed and warped somewhat as they rode atop the changing surface, but their saucerlike components remained connected. They were a pale yellowish