Space Magic Read Online Free

find. She can have my share.”
    “I have already given her your share, and mine, and everyone’s who could spare any. This field is too thin.”
    “We must find another field, then.”
    “Yes. But we don’t know how far that might be. She might die on the journey.”
    “It’s all we can do.” She called to the tribe. Wearily the foragers prepared for another search.
    Old John moved close to Gunai and whispered hoarsely. “There may be another way,” he said.
    “Go on.”
    “My intuition isn’t as good as yours, but its memory is unsurpassed. The war for which I was... built, it was a long and brutal one. We had caches of energy and supplies all over the Inner System. Some of them may still be there.”
    “You said it was a million years ago!”
    “We knew it would be a long war. Those caches were well-preserved, and well-defended. Only one who knows the old codes could open them.”
    Gunai thought hard. It seemed a thin chance, but Old John’s wisdom had proven itself many times. The alternative was even thinner. “Very well. Take Enaji and Huss. Travel quickly and find one of these caches. I will follow with the rest of the tribe. Good luck.”
    “I’ll do my best.”
    Old John, Enaji, and Huss formed into a single needle and moved off, while Gunai explained the plan to the tribe. She had expected protests, but her explanation met only weary stares; the tribe was too tired, too demoralized. She was ashamed, knowing her poor decisions had led them to this point.
    The tribe grouped into a streamlined shape, with unconscious Teda cradled in its center and Gunai at the leading edge. She stroked Teda with a field as they melded together.
    Gunai’s motivators screamed in protest as she helped to accelerate the tribe into the oncoming wind. There was no starbow this time—they lacked the energy for those velocities. There was just a steady, slogging push, and the moans of exhausted tribe members.
    The solar wind gusted and keened, battering them harder and harder as they came closer to the dying star. Old John’s signal was a steady, unmoving point ahead of them. The weary tribe passed a gas giant, its surface roiled and its ring system pushed off-center by the wind’s unnatural pressure. They entered a region scattered with chewed-up planetoids and worthless, abandoned hardware.
    Finally they came in sight of Earth itself.
    None of them had ever seen it before, but Old John’s many stories had taught them what it had been. A delicate ball of white and blue, he’d said, clad in the thinnest gossamer of atmosphere, the subtle breath of life.
    No longer.
    The atmosphere had been stripped away—by the war, by the wind, or by human action, there was no telling. What remained was a picked-over skull of a world, a gray mottled thing pocked with craters and circled by belts of detritus. Old John was in one of those belts, in synchronous orbit over the night side of the planet.
    The tribe passed gratefully into the Earth’s shadow, relaxing as they left the pummeling solar wind. The dying star’s corona flared wildly as it fell behind the horizon.
    They found Old John, Enaji, and Huss orbiting near a battered lump of aluminum and titanium. Old John’s relative position was steady; the other two flailed and fluttered, now falling back, now catching up. They had no experience with orbital mechanics this close to a primary.
    Gunai came up to Old John, who steadied her with a field. Weary though she was, Gunai could see Old John was wearier still—tired as the ruined world below, from which his gaze did not stray. “I’m a million years old, Gunai,” he said. “I don’t think I ever really felt the... depth of that before.”
    “Only as the planets measure time, John.”
    “I think that’s the only way that really matters.”
    They were silent for a time.
    “I’m sorry,” Gunai said at last, “but Teda needs help. We will be passing into the solar wind again soon. What have you found?”
    “It’s not