EARTH PLAN Read Online Free Page B

needed a companion so he would not feel so isolated and alone. The computer knew what to do.
    Soon, the man got up and went to the metal wall again. He touched it at different spots, working up his courage with the cold metal. Little did he know that it was cold due to it being on the other side of the outer hull of the ship, moving through the freezing temperatures of space.
    He pounded on the metal, and the sound echoed.
    He jumped back and stopped in place.
    That sound he wasn't expecting, but it only scared him slightly, as he was getting used to unusual things around there. But the wall didn't yield.
    He moved down a few steps and hit it again. Same result.
    And again. Still the same.
    He kept going down the wall, walking and hitting it as he went, hoping to find a weak spot. What he would do if the wall did happen to open up, he didn't know, but it was better than laying on the ground and crying, he thought.
     
     
     

CHAPTER 5
     
    In another one of the small metals rooms was a female human from Earth. She had been taken near the same time the first Earth man had been taken, from a region not that far away. The computer suspected they might have even met before, seeing as how these life forms liked to roam about at times.
    She was getting used to the cleaning schedule of the room and stood by as the machines got rid of her waste, sprayed the room with jets of water and a soapy mixture, then also sprayed her with the jets. At first the machines with their flying water and strange-smelling soap caused her alarm. She thought they were trying to kill her the first time it happened.
    But then she mellowed, as she saw the cleaning machines did something good, leaving her room in a better state than it had been in before the cleaning session. Every time it happened she’d feel better about being in the room, even though she longed to get out. She did not share the same aggression as the man, and so didn’t pound on the walls nearly as much.
    The computer noticed this and studied her more closely, as she was different than the man, not just in her body but in her emotions and actions. Though not so different that she didn’t exhibit some of the same emotions and think some of the same thoughts as the man did. She didn’t like to be kept in the room either and looked for a way out, in her gentler way. She also showed signs of sadness that she was alone.
    The computer knew all this by studying her body language and also by reading the frequency of her thoughts, which it had been programmed to do; the Watchers were vast in their knowledge. The Watchers would be very interested in these humans and their advanced emotions, the computer thought.
    The computer decided the Earth woman and the Earth man should meet, and see if they would be happier together. If the meeting was successful, the computer might do the same thing with the many other humans it had in other rooms, en-route to the Watcher’s world. But for now it would try the experiment with just the two and see how it went. The computer didn’t want to risk its entire collection of humans on an action that could go wrong. No, it would test it first.
    The door to the woman’s room started to open slowly.
    The noise made the woman jump, as she had been nearly sleeping, dreaming of what it used to be like when she was not kept in a metal room. She had much the same reaction as the man had, the computer noticed; scurrying away to the back of the room, as far away from the moving door as possible. She put her arms against the back wall, trying to move it, or just get away, but she couldn’t.
    The door rose up to its full height and stopped. Silence once again reigned.
    The woman looked at the opening the door had left, and she immediately wanted to run through it. But where did it lead? She didn’t know and wondered. It may be worse out there, she thought. But it was too much for her to resist, and so she slowly took an exploratory step towards the door, then back