Wine of the Gods 4: Explorers by Pam Uphoff Read Free Book Online Page B

after the prior gate? Why?"
    " Three weeks after we go in. That gives me a week to find out what we don't have, send the order with the return trucks and get it two weeks later. I prefer more frequent contact the first few months. In case of disaster. Or people who just can't handle the isolation. Once that's settled, I'll stretch out the supply runs, probably to once a month. Looks like I'll be jumping straight to once a month on this one. I'll offset JJs gates so the warehouse people aren't so rushed. I'll see what sort of schedule JJ settles for, then shift mine so they don't coincide." He drummed his fingers. "He's got a gap of more than a month . . . I'll grab this open spot late on April 13th. Keep an eye on him. If he doesn't get at least a month's supply of stuff on his April 7th gate, you can switch the gate on the 13th to him and send him a month's worth of food and fuel even if he hasn't remembered to order it. I'll be ready for that gate, and if it doesn't happen, I'll be ready for the 28th. If I make the 13th, we can decide whether JJ needs the 28th, or we can cancel it, or the next one."
    "Right. I hope we don't need that sort of flexibility. Thanks, Lon."
    Lon sig hed, but . . . an ice age world. He might be glad of the extra week into spring. He turned to the Cadre bulletin board and posted the new departure time, and last acceptable arrival time to the Asian Gate Complex that everyone referred to as Nowhereistan.
     
     
    Three weeks later, n ine large trucks and four gyps drove through the gate to a new world.
    Lon grinned in delight, as they emerged from pre-dawn Nowhereistan into a bright sunny day. Rolling green hills, deer bounding away, then stopping to stare at the new comers. His gyp kept going, bumping over thick tufts of long grass. The first rule of gate travel was never ever stop in the gate or stop where someone else will be halted in the gate. Collisions in transit tended to get energetic. The big trucks were all coordinating well, splitting left and right to immediately space themselves, and then turning as they reached their designated distances. "Loop around, Roxy."
    Roxy Seabaugh was an old hand at dri ving around new worlds. She turned right and swung around to give him a good view of the deployment. He spotted the red flagged final vehicle—Ray's gyp—as the glowing night view of the gate complex shrank and disappeared. They were on their own.
    This world, like all the so-called parallel worlds, was an Earth with a slightly different history. The gate should have put them down somewhere with in a two thousand mile radius of the same location on their Earth. Exactly where they were would be one of the first things they'd try to find out. Then they'd find out if the same rock formations were present, check for known ore bodies, or start from scratch if the geology was different.
    Ray was already in action, taking a long steady look around the gate area and nodding in satisfaction. Next he'd grab his soil tester, yep, there he went. Lon turned around and took a look himself. "Roxy, top of that hill there, please." The view was close to spectacular. Rolling green hills climbing to foothills and then mountains to the southwest. The tall pointed peaks of volcanoes stood up against a cloudless deep blue sky. East of them, a large river wound between hills, perhaps three miles away. Beyond it, a long steep ridge running more or less north-south poked sharp edges at the clean blue sky. North held more white, a long ridge, and to the south, rolling hills faded into the distance. The air was chilly, and would be down right cold tonight, but the grass didn't look like it had been frost burned. Everything was green and fresh, and Lon could feel himself grinning. "Now this is a lovely world. I hope we find something here to rival that mountainous mess of Twelve-seventeen."
    Roxy sniffed. "I know all about mountains." She turned up the collar of her company jacket.
    Lon chuckled. "I suspect we've got