Fatal Boarding by E. R. Mason Read Free Book Online Page B

annoyed purring sound
as I felt her ooze away from me and out of bed. Through a glassy
eye'd stare I could see her looking down at me as she pulled the
wrinkled coveralls back on. She bent over, dragging her hair across
my face, and gently bit my earlobe. She kissed me on the cheek and
in a mocking, haughty voice whispered, "Oh I'm so ashamed."
    I heard her short, throaty laugh above the
swish of the doors as she left. Clearly I had lost all credibility
as a debater of idealism. She had left me limp and beaten. I lay
with one arm draped over the side of the bed, floating in the
sensuous corona of half sleep, and decided that winning wasn't
everything.
     
     

Chapter 6
     
     
    Tuesday morning began late. I had neglected
to set a wake-up call on my terminal. I had been distracted. I
rubbed at the bristle on my face, as thoughts of the day past
flooded my mind. Oddly, no matter how I added it all up, I came out
feeling pretty good, with just a little bit of guilt on the side.
It had been a day to mark time by, a day of premier exploration,
disaster averted, and unexpected encounters.
    I pushed myself out of bed, went to the
terminal and called up my personal duty roster. My shift was
supposed to begin at 08:00. It was 08:15. I had informal security
audits of several engineering areas scheduled for 09:00, but that
had been on the calendar from before our encounter with the alien
ship. We were probably well underway by now, and those inspection
areas would be bustling with activity from the jump to light.
Besides, I had an appointment with Doctor Pacell, a medical
appointment that for once needed to be kept. A continental
breakfast would have first priority. I stuffed my blanket away, hit
the button to put the bed up, grabbed a clean gray-black flight
suit and headed for the shower.
    On my way to the mess hall, I stepped into
the corridor and crashed into someone traveling at a high rate of
speed in the opposite direction. Clayton Pell, the ship's internet
loner, was wearing a pair of music-video optics, the wire-frame
type with tiny, button-sized, tinted lenses. You can see through
the image projected into your eyes by MVOs, but charging down a
hallway while using them is not recommended. He had to grab onto me
to keep from falling down and then began profusely apologizing.
    Pell is an odd character who is more a
ship's ghost than a real crew member. He haunts many of the seldom
used access corridors within the habitat module in a never-ending
quest to keep the internet working. When you try to log on to your
personal computer terminal and the ship's icon cursor freezes
solid, you call Pell. Although everyone inevitably gets to know
him, he has never been close to anyone that I know of, which may be
part of the reason everyone calls him ‘Pell’ as though it were his
first name. He is unusually tall and lanky with stilty legs that
end in size twelve shoes. He has short-cropped, sandy-bond hair
except for the bald spot in the middle, and a sandy-tan face that
reflects a quiet personality. He has an unusually long, narrow neck
partly covered by sandpaper skin, and big hands that he keeps well
manicured. Pell seems to have a blind spot for rank. He inevitably
fails to notice or acknowledge it, and because even the highest of
ranks so fear not having the network, no one ever challenges him
about it. It takes an event such as crashing into someone in the
hallway to get him talking. His only real weakness for social
intercourse comes on occasions when he unfolds his electric guitar
to join in impromptu blues/jazz sessions that sometime take place
in the cafeteria.
    "I'm really sorry, Adrian. I wasn't paying
attention. I've been chasing the net for the entire third shift.
It's acting up like I've never seen it."
    "Funny, I haven't noticed anything."
    "Yeah, well staff terminals are logging on
all by themselves, files are disappearing and reappearing, and
people are getting cut off in the middle of E-Mail. Every time I
get there the