Drednanth: A Tale of the Final Fall of Man Read Online Free

towering Blaran was asking.
    “No, they’re vanilla,” Zeegon said, “but 3’s still up on blocks with that weird drive thing.”
    “‘Weird drive thing’,” Decay repeated. “Didn’t you fix the weird drive thing?”
    “No, that was the weird heat-shield-deployment thing,” the helmsman replied. “When I fixed that , the weird drive thing started to happen. Seriously though, you’ll be fine with lander 1. It’s just got steering columns as well as a touch interface. You’ll probably find it easier to fly than the standard layout. It’s practically designed to be operated with four hands.”
    “It’s thick, stormy marine atmosphere down there,” Decay said in exasperation “and I’m not a pilot.”
    Zeegon shrugged. “Who is?”
    “Guys,” Waffa said, “it doesn’t matter anyway,” he raised his hand and tapped his watch. “Pretty much all of it will be automated, you’re just there to make sure everyone gets on board safely.”
    “And take out any Fergunak that happen to get in close,” Clue added, most likely for Sally’s benefit. “But since we’ll be landing on the hub roof in turns, it seems unlikely.”
    “How many turns are we going to have to take?” Sally asked, checking her weapons coolly and pretending she hadn’t just heard Z-Lin tell them they’d be landing on the roof.
    “Each lander has seats and straps for twelve people, including the pilot,” Z-Lin replied, consulting her pad, “and with five of us on each one that leaves space for seven passengers on each trip, which means two trips each to get all twenty-seven of them,” she looked up. “Leaving the rover docks empty should give us the space we need to either bring up equipment or personal possessions, or additional people if it looks like an emergency. We could probably get the whole lot in one trip if we squeezed, without overloading the engines.”
    Five red-uniformed eejits, slack-faced and square-shouldered, were waiting for them at the lander bay. Contro was there too, chatting happily with one of the impassive clones.
    “…and that’s when I came up with the jingle ‘zolo premium roast keeps you at your post, but beans on toast is yum the most’!” the nuclear transpersion physicist was saying. The eejit just looked at him vacantly. “I think I’ll send it off to the beans people when we get to a bigger settlement! Or maybe to the zolo people, I don’t know if there are beans people! Hello all!”
    The five eejits Clue had commandeered were part of the Tramp ’s fairly extensive stock that were unqualified to actually perform the tasks for which they had been printed due to configuration failure, but were relatively psychologically stable and capable of following simple instructions. Search, load and rescue were at the top end of their capabilities but as long as they were left with simple tasks and not forced into a position where they had to improvise, they ought to be more help than hindrance.
    “Hey there, Chief,” Sally greeted Contro in idle puzzlement before Waffa could take the conversational reins and begin confusing the poor fellow, “what’s up?”
    “Nothing!” Contro replied merrily. “Why? Is something the matter?”
    “Nope,” Sally said, keeping it simple. “We were just wondering what brings you out of main engineering.”
    “Well, it’s right next door! And Sleepy here said we were needed at the landers,” Contro explained, pointing the eejit he’d been telling about his beans on toast jingle. Sleepy didn’t look particularly sleepy – in fact he looked about as awake as eejits generally did, which wasn’t saying much. “I was just talking with him and he said we were meant to come out here.”
    “He was talking about him and his colleagues,” Z-Lin, always ready to err on the side of believing Contro was capable of coherent linear reasoning, explained despite both Sally and Waffa making subtle gestures indicating that she should give up. “The request