Planetfall Read Online Free

nauseous. They were the first things she wrote when she woke from her coma, before she even spoke or asked where she was or why she was in the hospital.
    â€œIt’s a place, Ren. There’s a planet in the exact location the numbers describe.” She laughed, the first time she’d laughed since the day she wrote them down. “Isn’t it wonderful? We know what it means now!”
    I shook my head. “No, I don’t think we do.”
    All these years later, this stranger has tears in his eyes too. “I knew it wasn’t true,” he says. “I knew it was real and I knew you wouldn’t kill me.”
    Mack is speechless for the first time in the forty-odd years I’ve known him.
    â€œOf course we’re not going to kill you,” I say.
    â€œMy name is Lee Sung-Soo.” He grasps my hand tightly and I can’t help but squeeze back. “My grandmother was the Pathfinder.”
    I want to take a moment to let it sink in, but Mack is obviously struggling and I need to make this boy think everything’s all right. “I’m Ren—Renata Ghali—and this is Cillian Mackenzie, but we all call him Mack.”
    He smiles at me—I want him to never stop and I want to never see it again, all at once—and then he looks at Mack, who musters one of his warmest smiles as he shakes Sung-Soo by the hand.
    â€œHow did you find us?” Mack asks.
    â€œThe planet’s topography was on one of the pod servers,” he replies. “I pieced together some of the things my parents said and worked it out.”
    â€œWhat did they say?” Mack is trying not to look terrified. I’ve known him too long to be fooled though. That clench in his jaw says it all.
    â€œAbout the mountain and the plain below it, the things the Pathfinder saw before we got here.” His gaze shifts to focus behind us. “That’s it, isn’t it? That’s God’s city.”
    I nod. “Not the bit at the bottom—that’s the colony—but the rest is.”
    â€œIt’s . . . amazing,” he says and then laughs. “That sounds so stupid. They said it was all a lie, but here I am looking at it!”
    â€œWhere are the rest of the people who . . .” Mack doesn’t know how to describe them.
    Sung-Soo’s eyes lose their joy. “They died. I’m the only one left.”
    Mack takes the pack from his shoulders and puts it on his own back; then we both take an arm, wrap it over our shoulders and hoist him up between us. There’s barely any weight to him at all.
    We head back toward the colony, and I can’t help but look up at God’s city, just like Sung-Soo does but with less wonder. I’m used to it now, but it still draws my eyes up.
    It stretches above the colony like a huge forest of ancient baobab trees tangled around one another, forming an organic citadel. The outer membranes of the structure are black, to absorb the most sunlight, and at this time in the morning the nodules at the top of the structure are spherical.
    â€œIt changes with the weather,” I tell him as he walks between us. “When it gets hot, the nodules in the upper levels grow tendrils and look a bit like dendritic cells. It increases the surface area to—”
    â€œTo manage the heat,” he says, nodding. “My father taught me some of my grandma’s knowledge.”
    Mack’s silence feels like a fourth person stalking us through the grasses.
    â€œWe’ll take you to Mack’s place,” I say. “To check you over and let you rest.”
    â€œThank you. Can I stay? There’s nothing to go back to. There was a storm . . .”
    I glance at Mack. He’s staring up at the top of the city and doesn’t notice. I know where his mind is. I don’t want to go there. “Of course you can. Right, Mack?”
    He snaps his head to look at me.