Trade World Saga 1: Manual Interpretation Read Online Free PDF Page A

through him, Andrew hit with his fist to the alien's general throat area but only hurt his hand on the tough skin. The alien then slung him around the room bellowing and holding its ear with one hand while holding onto Andrew's arm with the other and smashing him from one side of the room to the other. In desperation, with the room passing back and forth from wall to wall, Andrew jabbed his fingers of his right hand into one of the alien's eyes.
    The alien began to bellow louder and smashed Andrew down onto the table but let go and started threshing around the room alternately trying to grab Andrew and its head at the same time.
    Andrew jumped past the alien and made for something that looked like an exit to the room and came to a short closed corridor almost immediately. It was a door, but was it an exit? Andrew could hear the whimper and scream of the alien and this added impetus to his desire to escape this place. The door had a grip mechanism that took all of Andrew's strength with both hands to squeeze it, the pain from his left arm numbing his strength. Andrew put one foot against the wall and arched his back with the pull since the door appeared to open inward somehow. The door suddenly swung straight in and then slid to the right almost parallel to the right wall. Andrew thanked his luck and jumped down to the dirt only a couple of meters below the doorway. In the dim night air, Andrew stumbled and ran from the 'ship' without looking back. After running until his chest was burning, Andrew collapsed gulping for air. So much for interstellar diplomacy, Andrew thought as he passed out.
    REVERSE ENGINEERING – NEW POWER
    When Andrew came to, it was dawn and quite chilly. Every part of his body ached. His left arm was bruised deeply and quite swollen. Andrew could hardly swallow…his mouth was so dry.
    This had better be a bad dream because I'm ready to wake up. The discomfort and outright pain seem real enough thought Andrew. Guess I’d better see about getting back to the university before dark.
    I'd wager that my friends haven't even missed me yet. I wasn't supposed to meet anyone until Monday, before our group meeting.
    It was early enough in the morning to see which direction the sun had risen from and there were still tracks on the ground showing the direction he had run from last night.
    Damn. Now, I have to go back the way I came to get back to the vicinity of the university. There isn’t much of anything out in the direction I was headed except more of this desert. Too bad I didn't get a direction from the stars last night, so I'd, at least, have been heading right but I didn’t have time for a star sighting I guess. Andrew doggedly plodded along his tracks.
    It wasn't tough going, but when you are totally exhausted, hungry, and thirsty, even a straight walk becomes a trial. It was a tribute to Andrew's physical conditioning that it only took the better part of an hour to stumble back to the area of the alien's ship.
    Andrew lay in the dirt and rocks on a slight hill overlooking the ship . What a design. The damn thing wasn't nearly as big as I imagined. It was only about five meters in diameter. An upright gray cylinder about five or six meters high resting on a curved, gimbaled disc about seven meters in diameter with a large, round, mesh-like umbrella dish about the top of the cylinder. Tiny ship… compared to even the old, Russian or Chinese shuttles… even if anyone flew shuttles anymore…which they didn’t. There hadn’t been any manned flights that he knew about, in years. Hell. No one will believe anything about this…this incident…and space stories aren’t vogue…at all. People still don’t travel as much as they used to before the sickness years.
    The door or hatch was open and was within reach of the ground, but there wasn't any ladder. Well, I know that I'm at least a day's walk away from the university, but that means walking without any water and hoping I end up near the car on my