Satan's Forge (Star Sojourner Book 5) by Jean Kilczer Read Free Book Online

Original Rosetta Stone. Watch Moses Part the Red Sea. Enter The Tombs and Touch a real Mummy. Feed a Nile Crocodile. See Our Snake Charmer Charm a King Cobra.
An Egyptian motif for all tastes
, I thought as I entered the grand structure. An open men's shop had a nice array of summer shirts. I bought a royal blue pullover web shirt that would breathe in this heat. Dannie had been taken away in my stretched-out black turtleneck.
Poor kid,
I thought as I slipped on the shirt and tied my jacket around my waist. “Where was she now?”
    The Court of Restaurants offered an extensive Terran menu, but at outrageous prices. Well, I had a packed cred count from services performed for Alpha. I ordered my favorite: mock steak, potatoes swimming in butter, salad, and mud pie. I'd have to rent a motel room and wait for Joe and the Alliance forces to arrive.
    Spirit?
    Silence.
    Yo, Spirit? Are you out there? Spirit!
    Yes. Of course. Where else would I be but at your beck and call? I'm always out here. Do you think I don't have a life, as you Terrans are so fond of saying? I'm still evolving my world, human.
    Just want to ask you a question.
    There are entire niches yet to be occupied by daughter species, and the air-breathing ocean fishes are too far from lakes to seed them with life. My forests are not yet ecologically balanced. Yet you call on me as though I were your personal servant! Look at that. A crustacean species that thinks it can climb trees and breathe air.
    Uh. Just wanted to know. Did you get the message to Lisa about the slave mine? That's all.
    I did. First she thought I was playing some human child's game! She wanted me to guess her age.
    Oh. She's six years old.
    Good for her. Then she wanted to tell me about her horse Ginger.
    Yeah. Well…the message?
    Finally she crossed her little heart and said hope to die and she would tell grandpa what you said.
    You think she did?
    I waited and heard her relay the message to your Joseph Hatch of Earth. Will there be anything else you require before I return to my trifling work of putting the finishing touches on planet Halcyon?
    No. No. Spirit?
    Yes!
    Thank you.
    You're welcome!
    He broke the link.
    The meal was good, though not worth the exorbitant creds. I took a hotel room in the Courts, overlooking the ocean.
    From the balcony, I watched white sea birds swoop down on small fish for their dinner. A school of gray-backed sea mammals plowed by, flinging spume as they leaped. My heart leaped up with them. From offshore came the bark of Earth transplanted sea lions as they basked on rocks. I located a gentle tapping as sea otters, another Earth transplant, broke shells on their bellies.
    Long waves that had originated from some distant windy clime, rolled in and cracked themselves on offshore boulders, sending their white, broken bodies crashing into the pink sky. I could almost hear the strains of “The Storm at Sea,” from
Scheherazade,
as background to nature's untamed vitality. I breathed the salt-sprinkled air. What a symphony of wilderness lay before my eyes.
    And then I saw the two Altairian mine guards strolling on the street below.
Uh oh.
I backed into the room. So they were accepted members of Wydemont? Well, why not? Their bosses paid the bills. I made sure my door was locked. From now on I would only venture out at night.
    I lay down on the bed, adjusted the softness, and turned on a wall holo that surrounded me with ocean scenes. Soothed by wild nature, I drifted into a world where I could breathe underwater in green mansions.
    * * *
    I waited until dark to buy a take-out meal, and ate it on the deserted town pier. I chewed a buttermilk doughnut for dessert and leaned on the guardrail to watch lights from casinos break into colored streamers in the bay.
    A thump behind me.
    A diver's bug bag full of crustaceans lay on the pier. Water pooled around it.
    Where'd that come from?
I thought and looked around the empty pier. I walked over and picked up the bag to examine