The Last Horizon by Anthony Hartig Read Free Book Online Page A

my ocular headset, a bottle of water.
    The next thing I knew, all the lights flashed back on and I’m back in hyper-drive. The Zephyr was shaking hard, so I decelerated by ramping down the hyper-drive core. I could barely control the craft, and everything that was floating in
    the cockpit fell to the floor and I was pushed into my seat by the g-forces. G-force s in space, Scotty. Impossible.
    I looked at the monitors and don’t recognize any of the star systems around me. I started a plotter scan and started getting read-outs. I was in the Polaris region. It all happened in seconds. One second I was in Tal-Seti, the next , I’m in Polaris. It happened that fast.”
    “Christ.” Scott gasped.
    “No bandits or sign of them. No damage to the Zephyr.”
    “How many times have you been through this?”
    “Not counting this trip, nine.”
    “Anything else I need to know?”
    “Not really. It’s just...”
    “What?”
    “It’s just that every time I get back from a journey there’s always something a little different about things. I haven’t been able to put my finger on it, but things seem a tad off. People mostly.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Ah, nothing. May be I’m imagining it.”
    “No seriously, Nikki,” Scott demanded, “what do you mean that people seemed off every time you come back from one of these journeys?”
       “I didn’t notice it right way. It took months before I began to perceive any changes in the people that I’ve known; there’s something about the way they act or the things they do that’s out of character for them.”
    “Maybe it’s not them but you that’s changed.”
    “Well anyway, I’ll tell you one thing that changed me.”
    “What’s that?”
    “I believe in the impossible now.”

Chapter 4
     
    Kurlie
       I ’ve got less than two weeks to get a make on this guy and figure out where to go from there. Max told me Scott brought two bags with him for the trip.
       “So Tommy, what did you find on this Fenmore Scott character?”
       “Not much, boss. We staked him out and all we’ve got is that he’s at the La Plume de Ma Tante Hotel. Early riser. Eats like a horse in the morning. It took a lot of digging, but we finally found out that he came from somewhere up in the northeast. Some sparrow-fart town called North River. All the data bases divulge is that he owns a couple of houses in a rural area. He seems to be a recluse.
       A passenger list from the airlines show that Scott flew into New Detroit two nights ago on a red-eye and checked right into the Plume. No family, no one close to him that we can use. Records show some higher education. Spotty employ ment history in the trades, maybe inherited some money, but that’s it.”
       “What else?”
       “Birth records show November 3, 2360. Oregon, Earth.”
       “Where in Oregon?”
       “I’m still looking. The trail goes cold in Oregon.”
       “Keep digging. This guy’s got a story and I wanna know what it is. I wanna know who he works for.”
       “You want him taken care of when he gets to Nexus?”
       “No, I want to keep an eye on him. I wanna know what kind of business he’s got there. I’m gonna send Tony and Mick up north to poke around. What’s that place?”
       “North River.”
       “Get them the address to Scott’s house and have them go today. Let’s see what we can find out.”
       A couple of days passed and my boys didn’t find anything up in North River except Scott’s empty house being kept up by the neighbors. Nothing about this Scott’s life stands out as unusual, and everything about him indicates an ordinary guy; a little too commonplace if you ask me, like he doesn’t want to draw attention to himself.
       His immediate neighbors don’t know anything personal about him except that he’s a nice landlord that brought them some firewood a couple of times. With the exception of a few small business owners that had a brief encounter