Misfits by Steve Miller, Sharon Lee and Steve Miller Read Free Book Online

stones.
    "Ichliad Brunner to the weather deck,
pronto. Ichliad Brunner---"
    That voice roused him, and he pushed
upright, still more asleep than awake. The weather deck--…Yes,
surely! He had told her to call for him by name--
    "Ichliad Brunner to the weather-deck,
pronto!" Again came the demand in Jack's big voice; the speaker at
his bedside taking up the cry; echoing those in the hall outside
his quarters. The door buzzer gave tongue, followed by
pounding.
    Brunner threw himself across the room,
slapped the door open and stepped back as Jack all but fell into
the room.
    "You're needed. Sorry to wake you."
    Brunner stared. "What can possibly be worth
all this--"
    "Under seal," Jack interrupted. "We'll talk
when we're private."
    * * *
    His lab room was hardly private. The
planetologist's intern huddled near the real-time monitors, openly
weeping. Brunner stopped, horrified. Why had she not been given the
privacy such emotion required? He looked 'round to Jack, but that
noisy person had stepped over to the aux monitors, toolbelts
silent, for a wonder, as if he wished not to be noticed.
    The Scout stood with Station Chief Thurton
some distance from the weeping girl, his face half-averted, as if
he, too, wished to grant her seclusion. Dr. Boylan, the
planetologist, stood at the intern's side, apparently taking the
part of kin.
    She looked up as Brunner approached, face
grim.
    "Ah, here you are, Weatherman. Estrava," she
said, carefully touching the intern's shoulder, "was following up
on my request for drift correction. We've been using the dome of
the Governor's Hall as a target, it being gold-plated and
reflective in a number of useful frequencies." She took a hard
breath and nodded at the screen. "We need you to confirm a
disaster."
    The monitor she indicated displayed a
looping series of images, first in false-color infrared mode, then
in visible wavelengths. It repeated: an area of relatively lush
valley giving way to random buildings, then to an actual urban
conglomeration dominated by a bright-lit structure all out of
proportion to the rest. Suddenly smoke--or possibly fog--intruded,
deepening from a vague white mist to a frothy greenish mass,
drifting down from the hillsides, filling the valley and the town
until only the top of the building remained visible. The image cut
back to infrared--
    "An unusual flow," Brunner said slowly. "It
seemed very dense. Were this some backworld I would say smog. But
this is Klamath, after all; fluke winds might conceivably have
trapped a sulfur exhalation and created such a fog."
    "Not fog," the intern moaned, half-bent over
the counter, like a bird favoring a broken wing. "Not fog. Not
fog."
    Brunner turned to her, keeping his face
politely neutral, which was the least he could do for her distress.
He'd had little enough to do with Estrava, the planetologist having
laid claim to the bulk of her hours, and she nervous of Liadens in
any case.
    "It's not fog," she said shrilly,
straightening to stare directly into his eyes. "Look at it! The
spectrum is wrong, the flow is wrong-- people are dying!"
    Brunner looked as directed, frowning at the
lack of definition.
    "What have we, then?" he asked the room at
large, stepping forward, his fingers already on the fine
controls.
    It was the Scout who answered.
    "Death," he said, his voice neutral to the
point of aggression. He bowed, firmly, a bow of duty required.
    "As we need to know for certain, Ichliad
Brunner. First, please confirm that what we see here is a poison
gas. If this is the case we will wish to know of its dispersal
range, potential mixing, and to track it if we might--"
    "Scout, this station is to remain neutral!"
The station chief gestured with his hands, not with sense as the
pilots might, but conveying urgency nonetheless. "The treaty
requires that we not interfere."
    "I require information!" the Scout
interrupted. "Your station is here at my whim, Chief Thurton."
    "I think Phaetera might have something to
say to that, sir!"