Return to Eden Read Online Free

on
earth!
    Almost the moment that thought sank in,
she heard a whirring noise and saw cracks begin to open along the
length of the strange missile. Her heart hit her chest wall and
dropped to her feet.
    “ Oh my god! It’s about to
blow!”
    Weak with terror, she looked around
frantically for some sort of protective shelter, but both of the
buildings within easy reach were way too close to the thing for
comfort. Ditto her car. She looked at it longingly for a moment,
but she realized she had no idea where her purse or her keys
were.
    A sound drew her gaze back to the
strangely alien obelisk and she saw that it was slowly opening
…almost like a flower extending new stems. There were posts now
sticking out from it in different directions and more
opening.
    Uttering an animal noise of terror, she
raced across the road, instinctively running in the direction of
home even though she was still miles and miles from that safe
harbor. Mindlessly, she ran down the embankment on the other side.
The urge to scream ‘wait for me!’ struck her as she pierced the
darkness in front of her and saw tiny, dark shadows of people
running away, probably several miles from where she was by
now.
    Cringing with the expectation of
feeling a blast from behind at any moment and fire melting her into
a puddle, Anya ignored the pain that developed in her side and her
breathlessness and struggled to reach safety before the bomb went
off.

Chapter Two
    Aidan lost sight of the artificial
satellite as it pierced the planet’s atmosphere and the fire from
its entry went out. “The object! The satellite we collided with!
Follow it! I need it!” he commanded the onboard
computer.
    Instead of responding immediately to
his command, the computer continued its damage report.
    It was unfortunate that Aidan wasn’t
technical minded enough, or familiar enough with interstellar
craft, to understand a word of it. “Is the ship capable of
landing?” he demanded impatiently.
    “ Unknown.”
    That response shook him. “What the hell
do you mean by that? Are you suggesting we’re going to
crash?”
    “ Barring other breakdown
from damaged navigational and landing equipment due to the impact,
I believe I can achieve a controlled crash.”
    That didn’t sound good, Aidan decided.
“Can you control it to crash close to the object we struck?” There
was no point in worrying about repairing the damage to his ship, he
reasoned, until they’d landed. It wasn’t as if he could repair
anything quickly. Even with the computer’s assistance in repairs it
was likely to take him a while to figure it out.
    “ Calculating the
trajectory of the object in question.”
    Aidan drummed his fingers impatiently
on the armrest of the control chair while he awaited the
answer.
    “ The object has crashed.
I’ve located a potential landing site for this craft within 15
kilometers.”
    Aidan frowned. That sounded like a long
walk—particularly considering it was an alien and totally
unfamiliar landscape and the fact that the terra-formers had
already landed. Even with the accelerated evolution, though, he
thought he might be able to make it there, collect what he needed,
and return to the craft before anything truly terrifying evolved.
“Alright. When you’ve set the ship down, I’m going to need a map to
the object.”
    “ Affirmative. Might I
suggest that you abandon ship? You have ten seconds to enter the
escape pod.”
    A jolt went through Aidan, but he was
out of his seat and racing toward the emergency escape pod almost
before the computer began the countdown. He leapt inside and
secured the hatch just as the computer announced, “three!” He was
only halfway into his safety harness when the pod was ejected.
Aborting the attempt to get the last two straps into the locking
mechanism, he merely gripped the two straps frantically and gritted
his teeth as his stomach lodged itself into his throat. It was as
well he did. The pod almost immediately began to bounce and