Final Inquiries Read Online Free Page B

Younger Race nobodies around the Galaxy? "Hold it a second," she said. "If the briefing for this operation is supposed to be on a need-to-know basis, then, I think we're there now. I need to know."
    "Yeah, but I don't need to know," said Kelly.
    "The Commandant is quite right," said Brox. "She has been ordered to limit her own knowledge of the situation as much as possible. I can provide a limited briefing to you, soon, after her departure. I am not permitted to provide you full information until we have arrived at the--at our destination."
    "So let's get you off this bus and get your gear out and let me be on my way," said Kelly. "That's the surest way to let all of us get what we want the fastest way possible."
    Commander Kelly popped the hatch and led the way out onto the deck of the Vixan ship. Hannah and Jamie grabbed their Ready-To-Go duffels and got out as well, with the simulant following awkwardly, and Brox taking up the rear.
    A pair of charcoal-grey platforms with rounded-off corners, roughly the size and shape of midsized mattresses, came floating up toward them as they disembarked. They stopped about five meters away from the jeep-tug, hanging in midair about a meter off the ground.
    "Put on there," said the sim, directing a flipper-arm in the direction of what were obviously cargo carriers. Jamie shrugged at Hannah and dropped his RTG duffel on the closer of the two carriers, then went back for the rest of the stuff.
    The three humans did the cargo-lugging, as Brox wasn't really the right size or shape to get in and out of the jeep-tug gracefully, and it was obvious that getting the sim to understand what to do would take far longer than just doing it themselves. It took a trip or two to get the small stack of supplies out of the jeep-tug, but the job was done in a couple of minutes.
    Kelly came out with one last box of rations and handed them to Hannah. "Well," said Kelly, "I could make a long speech telling you how I'm not allowed to tell you anything, but--what's the point?"
    "Agreed," said Hannah.
    "I don't like this," said Kelly. "I've got a feeling that if I knew more, I'd like it even less. But what I do know for certain is that the stakes are high, that this is the right thing to do--and we don't have much choice in the matter anyway."
    Kelly patted Hannah on the shoulder, nodded at Jamie, then gave a mock salute to both of them. "Good luck," she said. "From here on in, you're on your own."
    And she turned and climbed back aboard the jeep-tug.

TWO
    POWER AND SPEED
    Jamie watched as the jeep-tug lifted off, turned itself around, and flew silently into the access tunnel. The tunnel hatch irised shut so smoothly and perfectly that it was difficult to see where the hatch was after it closed.
    They were standing roughly in the center of a large, cylindrical compartment, thirty meters in diameter and twenty meters high. The cylindrical wall, the deck, and the overhead bulkhead were all made of the same golden-bronze material. There were three large hatches equally spaced around the perimeter of the chamber. Smaller circular hatches were between the larger ones.
    There was nothing, absolutely nothing in the chamber but themselves and their pile of supplies. Somehow, every sound seemed muffled and deadened, though the space was custom-made for echoes. Jamie found himself squinting, his eyes straining, as they struggled to find some sort of detail to focus on in all that featureless bronze. The room was lit by some unseen source of utterly diffuse and shadowless light. He had the odd sense that they were all floating in midair in a strange golden sky.
    "I asked you once," Jamie said to Hannah, "if you ever got used to the sense of disorientation. I'm coming to realize just how dumb a question that was. If you asked me my own name right about now, I doubt I'd be able to tell you."
    "Join the club," said Hannah. She turned to Brox. "Okay," she said. "We're here, wherever that is. We're about to get under way to