A Galaxy Unknown by Thomas DePrima Read Free Book Online Page A

by the captain of the ship sent to investigate the disappearance of the Hokyuu. When the call was over, the six-foot one-inch officer put his hands to his face and sobbed in the privacy of his office. He refused all calls after that and left work several hours early.
    Arriving in front of the comfortable two-story brick and wood frame house he and his wife had purchased when he was still a lieutenant, Carver dropped the landing pads and let the ‘oh-gee' vehicle settle the final quarter-meter to the ground. Currently between off-planet duty tours, the ‘opposed gravity' car was about the closest he came to flying these days. At best, it could only achieve twenty-meters AGL. To fly higher than that above ground level was a violation of both military and civilian traffic laws for passenger vehicles. Some people removed the factory-installed governors, or incapacitated them, but the fines for doing so were stiff, and the penalty for violating airspace above twenty-meters AGL without a pilot's license could even include jail time if the legitimate flight path of another craft was disrupted. Even worse were the penalties for driving outside the permitted traffic lanes, but that never seemed to stop certain immature adolescents whose greatest pleasure in life seemed to be buzzing homes and knocking over sat dishes on rooftops.
    After sitting quietly in his vehicle for a good ten minutes, Carver climbed out and walked to the house.
    "Who's there?" he heard his wife say from upstairs as he stepped inside the front door.
    "Just me, dear," he called back softly, as he did every evening when he arrived home.
    Annette Carver came down the stairs smiling. Although three-inches shorter than her daughter, her resemblance to Jenetta was remarkable. Her husband lowered his head as she stretched to meet him and they kissed lightly in the habitual greeting manner of all longtime married couples still in love.
    "You're home early, dear," she said, as he lifted his head.
    "Yes, I wasn't feeling well," he said, avoiding eye contact with her.
    Annette, fifty-three, attractive and slim, but developing a little tummy from lack of exercise since the children had all moved out of the house and into outer space, scrutinized her husband's face without appearing to. After thirty-two years of marriage, she knew him well. His eyes were a little bloodshot, but she knew that he would never come home early simply because he wasn't feeling well. Before he left work early, he would almost have to be ill enough to be hospitalized.
    "What is it, Quint?" she asked softly. Knowing that only the most serious of news could account for his demeanor, she asked, "Is it about Jenetta?"
    He exhaled loudly and grimaced powerfully before closing his deep blue eyes briefly and nodding. His throat had constricted and he couldn't utter the words that he had been practicing all the way home.
    "How bad?" she asked, her concern growing immeasurably as she watched his face.
    His continued silence, and the failure of his red-rimmed eyes to make contact with hers, was answer enough. It felt as though someone had plunged a knife through her chest, and for a few seconds she had difficulty breathing. As all her strength seemed to leave her body and her knees started to buckle, her husband grabbed her and pulled her to him. Held tightly against his chest she began to sob, slowly at first, then uncontrollably as images of her only daughter flashed through her mind. Although a grown woman and officer in the Galactic Space Command, Jenetta would always be her baby. She loved each of her sons dearly, and would grieve no less if an accident befell one of them, but few relationships are closer than the ones between mothers and daughters. It wasn't always so during the teenage years, a time when most children begin to assert their individuality and independence, but the bond had redeveloped stronger than ever as Jenetta matured during her Academy years.
    Annette had always imagined that she