Castaway Planet by Eric Flint, Ryk E Spoor Read Free Book Online Page B

got a few weeks at least.”
    That was an excellent suggestion, and she checked LS-5 ’s systems. “Yes, I think I can do that, and it shouldn’t interfere with other operations. Good thinking, love. What about other survival issues?”
    “ LS-5 is nuclear powered, and there’s a lot of equipment and material we can use in her. We were, after all, going to a colony world that’s just opening up. She’ll serve as excellent shelter for a long time, and we can move around as we need. Don’t worry, Laura, if we find such a planet, we’ll be okay.”
    She looked over at Whips, who was floating at his own station, clearly awake, probably observing the comparator. His people, Laura remembered, didn’t generally sleep in the same cycles as human beings. They went into a sort of not-entirely-unconscious torpor for a few hours, then woke for several hours before going back into the recuperative torpor. Only when they were severely exhausted or injured did they seem to sleep deeply the way humans did—although they did, in torpor, have something like human dreams. “It’s a good thing he is so close to Sakura.”
    Akira glanced in that direction, some of his black hair trying to escape its netting. “Yes. He has a connection to us and that should help against the loss of his pod.”
    Suddenly, Whips stiffened, and then shouted in his deep, vibrating voice, “Found one!”
    The others jolted awake, Sakura blinking blearily at her friend, Hitomi giving a little yip! of startlement, and Melody glaring at the big alien. But Caroline seemed instantly alert. “A planet? Where?”
    “Here—I’ll send you the coordinates in my viewing field.”
    Sakura unsnapped and drifted herself over to the controls. “Everyone secure? I’m going to turn us towards the coordinates so Caroline can use the telescope.”
    Laura checked on everyone, especially Hitomi, who had a habit of unsnapping herself at the most inopportune times. “Everyone’s secure, Sakura.”
    The ship pivoted and turned and the stars swirled by, then steadied. “Okay, Caroline, that should do it.”
    Caroline studied the view, her hands twitching slightly with control gestures. Suddenly she stiffened. “Oh. My. God.”
    “What is it?”
    For answer, Caroline sent the image to the main channel. Laura heard herself give a gasp.
    Floating in the star-speckled blackness was a world, illuminated in a crescent by the nearby sun, a crescent that showed swirls of white and brown but mostly a beautiful, rich green.
    “Caroline?” Akira said tensely. “Where is that? Is it—”
    “Measuring now, Dad. Sakura, can you check me?”
    “Now that you’ve bullseyed it, I can track back through the data for the parallax, yes.”
    Another few moments passed, then Caroline leaned back, and her voice was shaky. “I put it at one hundred nineteen million kilometers from the primary, a little inside the middle of the habitable zone.”
    “Yes, yes, I check you, Caroline! It’s there, it’s a planet in the Goldilocks zone.”
    “It’s the right size, too,” Caroline said, her voice showing almost as much excitement as Sakura’s. “I make it about thirteen thousand kilometers across.”
    “Caroline,” Akira said calmly, “give me the feed, please. And Melody, your spectroscopic app?”
    “Yes, Dad,” they both said. Laura understood what he was looking for, and said a silent prayer to whoever, or whatever, might be out there.
    Hitomi was staring at the image of the planet. “It’s so pretty! What’s its name?”
    She smiled. “It doesn’t have a name yet, little girl. We get to name it.”
    Hitomi stared up at her with huge eyes. “We do ?”
    “We do.”
    The eight-year-old looked back at the screen and then gave a nod so emphatic that it would have caused her to spin if she hadn’t been strapped in. “Then I wanna call it Lincoln!”
    “Lincoln?” repeated Melody in a puzzled tone. “Why would you ever call it after President