Read Adventures of the Starship Satori 4: No Plan Survives Contact for Free Online Page B

He keyed the radio again.
    "Charline, I think this is going too easy," he said. "Why don't you come back over here and we'll find another way?"
    "Too easy?" she asked. "I just had to hack my way through some of the best computer locks I've ever seen. It took some serious dancing. This is not as easy as it looks!"
    "Charline, you're attacking an AI system with enough power to wipe every computer we had in under a minute," Dan said. "And you're doing it with a laptop. I know you're good, but..."
    "Yeah, I hear what you're saying. I'll try laying the charges here just inside the door," she said. "Set. Returning to Satori now."
    There was a long pause. Dan waited for the satellite's outer hatch to open up and Charline's head to pop out. The tension was so strong he had to remind himself to breathe. A couple of minutes passed.
    "You OK over there?" he asked.
    "Still trying to hack the outer door," she said. Another pause. "The computer's locked this thing down good, Dan. I'm gonna keep trying, but I'm pretty stuck.”

11
    B eth's yelp tore John’s attention from the strange tracks in the dirt he was investigating. He rushed from the entrance toward her, giving the pool of water a wide berth. Something about that pool didn't sit well with him. Maybe it was just an old fear of the unknown, of places he couldn't see. But he stayed well clear of it.
    "What happened?" Andrew asked. He'd reached Beth's side just before John.
    "I'm OK. Just startled," Beth replied. John caught a good look at her face in the glare of his flashlight. Her cheeks were pink, but even more telling was that her ears had gone a tinge rosy. A clear sign in Beth that she was feeling self-conscious.
    "What startled you?" John asked. He scanned the floor with a sweep of his flashlight, but didn't see anything unusual. Just the same bits of rubble that were scattered all over the room. His light glinted off water - another pool. This one was much smaller than the other, only a dozen feet across. He was about to move the flashlight away when he saw movement. The surface of the pool was rippling.
    "Something ran over my foot," she said.
    "What?" Andrew asked. He was sweeping his own light side to side now, scanning the floor for movement.
    "What was it?" John asked her.
    "Don't know. Couldn't see it. Maybe the size of a mouse, no bigger than a rat," Beth said.
    He took another two steps toward the small pool, shining his light into the water. Something was making ripples across the surface. It could just be drips from the ceiling, but somehow he didn't think that was the case. He'd been fishing enough times to know what it looked like when a fish was traveling close to the surface.
    The pool wasn't deep. He could see the rough rocky bottom, dotted here and there with little spots where sand had accumulated in a small hollow. A flash caught his eye, a bit of reflection from his flashlight as something zipped across the edge of the area it illuminated. He shifted quickly, trying to find it again.
    "Gotcha," he said. "I think I found your mouse, Beth."
    The others came up alongside him. The creature in the pool looked a bit like a centipede, except it was using its legs to swim instead of crawling. It dashed one way and then another, trying to evade his light. John kept it within the beam of his light, tracking it so that they others could see. It dodged frenetically, diving this way and that to evade the light. Something about it looked strangely familiar, but he couldn't quite place it.
    "Ugh," Beth said. She shuddered. "It crawled over my foot."
    "Interesting. So they're amphibious," John said. The creature zigged when he thought it was going to zag and he lost sight of it. His flashlight beam could only light a small portion of the pool. "Andrew, Beth - help me light this thing up?"
    "No problem," Andrew said, cracking another half dozen glow sticks. He tossed the lights into the water, scattering them so that the entire pool glowed green.
    There was a squeaking