Surviving The Theseus by Randy Noble Read Free Book Online Page A

looked like a thin smile. “The thing
that really surprised me was that they were both girls and only
fourteen.”
    “Well, if I were their parents, they’d be
grounded for four years,” Mary said.
    George nodded. “It will be worse after the
SPARS council finishes with the parents, reaming them out over how
their kids knew the controls in the ship. They will probably be
demoted and put on suspension for awhile.”
    “Yeah, they are --“ Michael stopped himself
when the door opened and a short man with a gray mustache and gray,
wavy hair walked in, looking about the same age as George.
    “Good day, people,” said the man as he walked
in, carrying a small rectangular device in his right hand, about
the size of a paperback book.
    “Hello, Brad,” George said.
    The others nodded to Brad as he looked up at
them, and then took a seat at the head of the table, putting the
device down in front of him.
    Michael came away from the window and sat
down at the other end of the table from Brad.
    They all waited patiently as Brad got ready.
“Screens,” Brad said, and instantly twenty glass screens, as flat
as paper, popped up through openings in the table. Everyone had his
or her own screen to view. There was one for every chair at the
table. “Give me a second.” Brad fiddled with the device he put down
on the table. His device was a smaller version of the screens
before them, clear as glass and paper-thin. He talked into it.
“Pyramid Cruise Line case file. Slide one, please.”
    A picture of the Pyramid Cruise ship appeared
on all the screens. It looked like an Egyptian pyramid had been cut
in half, from the top down and then flipped on its side so the flat
part from the slice faced up, and then the whole thing got
stretched out. There was a rounded dome on the whole top section.
The levels of the ship were like levels on a pyramid, with the
shortest level at the bottom and the longest level at the top.
    Brad let them study the image of the ship for
a few seconds and then said, “In case you haven’t guessed already,
your team is being pulled from the Planetary Games security patrol
to a new assignment.” Brad placed his handheld device onto the
table in front of him. “Your control devices have been updated with
the same information --“
    Brad nodded towards his device.
    “-- that this one has.”
    Michael watched his screen. The image of the
ship rotated. It looked like a model representation of the real
thing. There was no detail on it. And no stars in the background.
Just the image rotating on a black background.
    Brad leaned in a little and spoke into his
device. “Next slide.”
    A mapping image popped onto the screens,
revealing a small picture of the Pyramid ship, gates, and
planets.
    Brad continued. “If you look at your screen,
you can see the path the Pyramid has taken, and where it is
supposed to be right now.”
    Michael noticed a lined path from one planet
to a planet in another system, where the Planetary Games happened
to be about to take place. But the ship’s path only went three
quarters of the way there.
    “We got a call,” Brad said, “from Pyramid
headquarters that they lost contact with their ship over eight
hours ago, and have not been able to reach them.”
    “They’re the only ship in the fleet so far,”
Mary said. “Not the maiden voyage, but pretty close. Probably some
bugs in the system still.”
    Brad looked over at Mary, his eyebrows
furrowed. “That’s what their headquarters think. They said there
have been no problems with communications before, but they did just
have some software upgraded and think it may be the culprit.” Brad
looked over at George, his eyebrows back to normal, his brown eyes
soft and kind. “It’s probably nothing, but I need you to take your
team and track them down and make sure they’re okay. But -- “
    Michael knew it before Brad said it.
    “-- you’re on your own. I need all available
resources for security at the games. Those idiots who