The Garbage Chronicles by Brian Herbert Read Free Book Online Page B

said, examining her wardrobe ring closely “Clever little gadget. All the problems of reducing weight in space, and they’ve still got a device that gives you a regular change of clothes!”
    “You’re too easily impressed,” Javik said. He mento-locked his boots, then stepped on the top rung of the ladder inside his compartment.
    “Night, Captain Daddy,” Blanquie said.
    Javik scowled at him.
    “Did you brush your teeth, Blanquie?” Evans asked.
    “How about a little co-hab tonight, Evans?” Blanquie asked.
    She laughed. “Not tonight,” she said.
    Javik shook his head in dismay as he stepped down the ladder, pulling the hatch shut behind him. Reaching the corrugated metal floor of his compartment, Javik removed his pillbox from his pocket and slipped it into a wall-hung stuff pocket. It was a tiny room, with barely any walking space around the bed. Mirrored walls and a reflecting, gold-foil ceiling made it seem larger, A single porthole on the outside wall displayed a distant blue nebula with veinlike streaks of pink and green. Corner ceiling fixtures lit the room evenly.
    He mentoed a nightshade over the porthole. It snapped over the glassplex.
    Feeling a dull, low-level throb of pain in the back of his head around the implanted mento unit, Javik gave it a brief thought. The pain subsided.
    Javik stood next to the bed, there being nowhere else to stand in a room of this size. Staring at his wardrobe ring, he mento-concentrated on the rectangular turquoise stone. The stone glowed.
    A happy tune sounded from the ring, with a tiny computer voice that sang: “It’s fresh-up time! It’s fresh-up time!”
    Javik hated that tune.
    Now his Space Patrol jumpsuit disappeared in a puff of white smoke, leaving him wearing nothing but his moto-boots and his ring. A black thread shot out of the ring, followed by a thread of gold. For a moment, they hung poised in the air, like tiny cobras about to strike.
    Checking my size, Javik thought, recalling the demonstration class he had taken.
    Now the threads darted around Javik’s wrist and up his arm, covering the arm with finely woven black and goldcloth. Over his shoulders and around his neck the threads flowed, forming a braided collar. Then down the other arm, back up the arm and down the torso. He felt the warmth of the pajama cloth take hold.
    A white strand darted out of the ring next, and this encircled his waist and thighs to form a fresh pair of underwear. Then two new black and gold threads covered that and his legs, forming pajama bottoms.
    It is kinda clever, Javik thought. He sat on the bed, sinking into its synthetic softness. Soon the moto-boots were off and he was under the covers.
    “Captain Daddy,” he muttered, just before falling asleep. “I’ll have to speak with Blanquie about his attitude.”

    The wall-mounted transcriber worked while Javik slept below decks, making ship-log tapes from his resting brain. In the cabin above, Wizzy sat on the dashboard, rolling the gaze of his cat’s eye aft. The chrome and white plastic cabin was empty, with captain and crew belowdecks in sleeping compartments. With his sensitive tympanic sensors, Wizzy heard the low hum of the transcribing machine, despite it being in another compartment.
    Through the curving windshield he watched two closely aligned planets come into view, covered by a continuous system of swirling, mysterious clouds. Both planets were mountainous, plunging to high plains of green and thence to wide blue seas. Being so close to the twin spheres, Wizzy absorbed a torrent of animal and geological history from their energy waves, more than enough to whet his appetite for knowledge. But too soon the Amanda Marie had sped by and the planets were receding into the distance.
    I’ll return to explore someday, he thought, feeling the energy waves subside.
    Now the faint twinklings of stars, red quasars, and bright planets beckoned to him from far off. He felt a weak signal trying to find its way into