Farthest Reef Read Online Free Page B

American cinema. Alex never quite caught what Mel said to them as they rubbed slowly past him, but they giggled and seemed glad for the experience. So was Mel; the smile didn’t leave his face for quite a while.
    Soon thereafter everyone went to sleep. After talking to Mary one last time, Alex took the capsule that had been included in his complimentary flightpack. The commercial lines mandated sleep stasis for long flights because it saved air and other consumables. For the purpose they supplied a relaxant to make the ride a pleasant one.
    “Synthopium,” he muttered to himself. “A pleasant ride, all right.”
    He popped the pill into his mouth and washed it down with his stale geebrew, then he strapped himself into his bunk. As he hoped, he dreamed of Mary.

Chapter 2
    1 Through the window the Goddard was a featureless fat white needle, hanging above the red globe that was by now a familiar sight to Alex. Mars was having dust storms, but he couldn’t pride himself on noticing. It had been mentioned in the Martian weather broadcast he’d heard over coffee. He wondered if the subtle contrasts of peach and sand would have stood out so clearly to him if he hadn’t been tipped off they were there. He was still blurry and shaking from cold-sleep. The geebrew wasn’t all that conducive to stasis, either, and he had awakened with the worst headache of his life. To his relief, it was gone by the time he got a message from Stubbs. Professors Stubbs and Baltadonis, Tony Sciarra, and a team of other experts were already aboard the Goddard , the first Earthcorp service class gee-pulse starship. They were waiting for him, the message said, and the ship was already rigged for the first jump. And there was a personal attachment to the message.
    The self- erasing recording was of a voice he didn’t recognize, and it proved to be mostly about Mary. The recording explained in blunt terms that Earthcorp possessed full records of all activities leading up to Alex’s discovery of the reef and reminded Alex that he had been exempted from prosecution for stealing an Earthcorp vessel and abducting a member in active service to Earthcorp, as a gesture of appreciation and as a reward for his service to mankind.
    The cabin was cool, but Alex broke out in a sweat when Mary was mentioned. Earthcorp flatly claimed her by right of birth. Theirs, they said, was a universal parentage claim to all clones that could ordinarily be revoked only at death. Mary was a hero, so for political reasons she’d been given freedom to choose a life of her own, but circumstances now demanded her services as a Sensor. Her recent modifications had been done specifically for the coming mission. These new bio-mechanical implants were now hundreds of times more powerful than before and upgraded her to the newly created classification of Remote Sensor.
    When it was over, the message erased itself. Almost simultaneously there was a knock at the door. “Shuttle, Mister Rose,” said an unfamiliar voice.
    Alex was overwhelmed with a mix of shock and anger, but the truth the message contained seemed so obvious now that he mentally kicked himself. Everything began to add up. They’d brought him to Mars, out of range of Mary, to tell him that rather than being free of her Sensor duties, she was still a slave and might always be one. Of that, Earthcorp was confident. After all, they had a prison sentence to slap on Alex if he refused to cooperate. He and Mary weren’t being invited to be part of a great mission. They were being drafted, and blackmailed for insurance. The worst of it was that nothing he could do could change any of this. Refusal was out of the question. He took a deep breath and got his gear together.
    He was on the red cable in half an hour. The men who escorted him to the Goddard were Corporate Marines, Earthcorp’s Praetorian Guard. Alex guessed they were clones, like Mary, but that tempered his resentment for them only slightly.
    Alex had a chance to