Read Quarantined Planet for Free Online Page B

this,” she says, pacing. “Why would he do this? It’s not him.”
    “Chloe.” Gordon frowns. “Calm down.”
    “He’s going back there, to the third planet,” the translator reveals.
    “If there are other planets out here,” Nix asks, completely detached, “can we live on ‘em?”
    “Nix,” Gordon interrupts, trying to keep the chatter focused. “Why is he going there?
    “He wouldn’t say,” the translator continues, “but he took several anti-matter cells.”
    “What would he need those for? Not to power his ship.”
    “They could be turned into awful weapons.”
    Chloe is getting more unsettled. “No, this isn’t true. It just can’t be true.” She knew Amon Earl better than the rest. She knew him intimately.
    Gordon puts a reassuring hand on the young woman’s shoulder. “Look, Chloe—you, Nix, and Jane stay here.”
    “It isn’t true, Gordon,” she appeals as he motions Tivis and the translator into Sephora ’s midsection.
    Inside the ship’s storage and holding compartment, Gordon is quick to speak, barely allowing time for the door to close. “We’re going after him.”
    Tivis rolls his eyes. “Will we be taking the children home first?”
    “No.” Gordon turns his attention to the half-man, half-alien. “You know where he’s going. Can you help us get there?”
    The translator nods with his half-mechanical head.
    ***
    Nix sits down on the ship’s helm as Jane re-fastens a loose helmet to the rear wall. Chloe presses an ear to Sephora ’s midsection door.
    “We’ll need guns to stop him,” Nix says, staring blankly out into space.
    Chloe sighs, feeling queasy. “Is that your answer for everything, Nix? Let’s go get some guns?”
    “Hey, guns have solved a lot of problems through history.”
    “For the winners, I guess.” She faces him defiantly from across the room. “I keep hoping we’ll outgrow the need for them.”
    He smirks. “You’re so naive.”
    ***
    In Sephora ’s midsection, Gordon and Tivis face each other standing a few inches apart.
    “We’re no match for Earl,” Tivis tells the other man, stopping him from opening the door, “or a saucer full of slates, should we run into one. They won’t be at all happy we’re out here—might even think we’re responsible.”
    Gordon isn’t listening. “I’ve made my decision.”
    “Shouldn’t we ask Carver first?”
    “No time, yeah? We need those power cells. Regardless of what Earl has in mind for ‘em.”
    “Well, I object.”
    “This isn’t a bloody democracy.”
    ***
    Chloe, ear pressed to the door again, scrambles away as Gordon and the translator burst through.
    “Things have taken a turn for the unreal,” Gordon addresses his crew. “There’s no time to get Carver’s approval, so we’re just going to do this. We’re going after Earl. Nix, let’s go get some guns.”

Chapter Sixteen
    Nix has abandoned his seat to see the dark, cloudy world with its disfigured moon trailing all those rocky pieces behind. How he’d made it to this place and time was as unlikely as his very existence. The result of a night of backseat passion between two people who had confused physical intimacy for love, he was a mistake. It didn’t make him sad. In fact, the young man had found it liberating in a strange way, sort of like he is crashing a party.
    The translator stands behind Chloe and looks over her shoulder. Gordon and Tivis slow their ship, the third planet quickly filling her forward ports.
    “This planet have a name?” Gordon asks.
    “Yes, they have a name for it, but it doesn’t translate,” the altered human replies.
    “I think there’s a ship ahead,” Tivis says.
    Chloe squints at her screen. “Yes, but its engines are cold, no transmissions.”
    “Seems eerily familiar,” Jane chimes in from the rear of the cabin.
    “There is something,” the alien hybrid says, “coming from the planet, a signal of some kind. It’s a Grey data transmission with landing