The Star King by Susan Grant Read Free Book Online Page A

Vash wanted badly. "But they'll have to give us more technology if they want us to run the mining operation ourselves."
     
    "They will," Dan said with confidence. "We get free start-up equipment and a built-in clientele. They get cheaper minerals. It's a win-win situation for both parties. Their trading federation is immense, Jas. The potential for profit is staggering."
     
    "Unless they offer to pay us in salt," she quipped— unbelievably, the stuff was a rare and costly luxury for much of the rest of the galaxy. "In which case you'd better up your shares in the Morton company."
     
    He spread his hands on the table. "Done."
     
    Laughing, she raised her glass of Red Rocket Ale. "Here's to the only other person I know who shares my obsession with our visitors from space."
     
    "Not obsession, Jas." He clinked his glass against hers. "Demonstrative intellectual and entrepreneurial fascination."
     
    Whatever Dan might label her absorption with the Vash, it had taken over her life. Although she hadn't again glimpsed the handsome spaceman who'd so unsettled her, she was channeling her preoccupation with him into a far more sensible pursuit: learning Vash Basic, the language of intergalactic trade. Night after night, she logged onto the U.N. Web site to practice Basic and study Vash history and culture.
     
    "Now I wonder what this could be," Dan muttered.
     
    A special report headline was scrolling across the TV. Jas lowered her beer glass, praying it wasn't a reinstatement of the curfew, a return to squeezing her life between dawn and dusk, battling it out every third day for gas, and having to put up with the crowds at the
     
    supermarket. But the footage showed a gathering of newspeople. Flashbulbs flickered as a distinguished-looking African-American man strode up to a podium, looking more like a young boy with his excited grin than a fifty-seven-year-old senior correspondent for CNN.
     
    An odd mix of yearning and envy squeezed her chest. "So Kendall Smith's the lucky winner," she said. The competing networks had chosen Smith from an impressive pool of candidates after the Vash had offered to bring a correspondent into space to tour their main cargo depot. Afterward, if Smith wanted, he could continue on, traveling and reporting back indefinitely.
     
    "A Vash public-relations stroke of genius," Dan remarked, "like the 'go west, young man' posters of the eighteen hundreds."
     
    Unexpectedly, Dan's words painted an image of a new life, of starting over. What would it be like to do what Smith was doing, to set out into the unknown, to feel alive again?
     
    The way she had before the crash.
     
    Longing struck her with surprising force, and the ache in her chest tightened to where she could hardly breathe. She thought of all the adventures not yet taken, of all the dreams she hadn't envisioned since before obligations and heartache had stolen them away. Quietly, she said, "I'd give anything to be in his shoes."
     
    Dan contemplated her with an understanding smile. "Within a couple of years I'm sure we'll all have the chance."
     
    "Right." A couple of years. What should have been a deflating statement of fact unexpectedly became a challenge. Was there was a way to circumvent such a long wait? Nervously she twisted the silver bangles on her right wrist. Adrenaline made her hands tremble. At the age when most women were ensconced in their nests, she was suddenly buoyed by the overwhelming urge to spread her wings.
     
    * * *
     
    As the sun reached its zenith over Andrews Air Force Base, Rom, Gann, and young Zarra, their trusty but untried translator, climbed into the backseat of the automobile. It was an antiquated vehicle, one not capable of flight, Rom noted with some relief, for he didn't relish the prospect of traveling any great distance wedged in its cramped interior. Like Gann, he struggled to fold his long limbs into a comfortable position, pressing one knee into the seat in front of him while angling his other