Read Morning Song: A Seeders Universe Novel for Free Online

there is anyone alive in there and it’s not just a robot ship.”
    That question just hung there in the air along with all the small images of vast galaxies and a dotted line of an impossible journey.
    “My question exactly,” Maria said. “At our full trans-tunnel speed, going directly from that galaxy to this one would take about nine hundred years is all. So doing this makes no sense.”
    Roscoe had nothing more to ask or even say. His mind was overwhelmed.
    Across from him, Maria sat down and clicked off her device and the galaxies floating in the air vanished.
    Ray looked around at everyone, then nodded to Maria. “Great job, Chairman Boone.”
    Maria nodded, but didn’t smile. Roscoe had a hunch his question just tossed in another dimension to the reality of her specialty of tracing back the Seeder’s path.
    Ray looked at his wife and then at Fisher. “Thank you for the wonderful breakfast. May we impose on you again tomorrow at the same time?”
    “Of course,” Fisher said nodding.
    “He loves cooking almost more than anything else,” Callie said.
    “Good,” Ray said. “I think we need to adjourn until then to think about what Chairman Boone has presented and continue preparing for our first boarding attempt.”
    Then with a nod to Fisher again, Chairman Ray and Tacita vanished.
    “That was amazing,” Roscoe said to Maria.
    “And that was a great question I hadn’t thought about,” Maria said.
    They stared at each other for a moment and Roscoe couldn’t think of a thing to say. The attraction to Maria was more than he could remember ever feeling before.
    Fisher and Callie both started to clean up, so finally breaking his gaze from those fantastic golden eyes, Roscoe stood and took his plate and empty orange juice glass and headed for the kitchen.
    “I’ll be glad to wash,” he said.
    “And I’ll dry,” Maria said from behind him.
    “And we’ll take you both up on that,” Callie said, laughing.
    Suddenly Roscoe wasn’t sure what he had gotten himself into. But he liked the idea of spending a little more time with Maria.
    If he could manage to not break any dishes.

 
     
     
     
    SEVEN
     
     
    MARIA REALLY ENJOYED the short time she had standing beside Roscoe at the sink in the old lodge. Every so often their hands would touch as he handed her a plate, and each time it felt like a small shock.
    He kept glancing at her the entire time as well.
    He was so damned good-looking, and it had been so long since she had even allowed herself to look at another man. She didn’t dare look at her crew as the Chairman of the ship, and she hadn’t spent much time away from her ship in some time.
    So maybe she was just desperate. But she didn’t think so. Roscoe was handsome and funny and clearly very, very smart.
    Callie had excused herself and transported to their ship and Fisher had stayed in the kitchen to clean up the grill, and bring them the remains of the dishes from the counter.
    Roscoe had quizzed Fisher on the lodge and then got both of them laughing with his incredible sense of humor.
    In a moment when Fisher had gone back into the diner area to make sure they hadn’t missed a dish, Roscoe turned to her. “So how far out were you when Chairman Ray recalled you to help with this?”
    She laughed. “Far out describes it,” she said. “We had gone through three seeded galaxies and were on the other side of the third headed toward a small group of stars at the edge of the Local Group.”
    “Wow,” he said, shaking his head, causing his long brown hair to swirl back and forth on his collar which took her a moment to pull her attention away from and back to the plate in her hand.
    “I can’t even imagine that,” he said, focusing on scrubbing out a pot in the sink like an expert, “yet from what you were talking about, it’s a small distance compared to what that huge ship has crossed.”
    “A very small part,” she said. “And it still took us two full weeks at full drive to get