Read Online Day of the Dragonstar by Thomas F. Monteleone, David Bischoff - Free Book Online Page A

here? Obviously, the intelligence that constructed this was also able to figure out how to cheat the speed-of-light barrier. If we get ahold of that” — His voice was excited — “the universe will open up to us. Mankind will spread to distant planets, as we were meant to. A glorious dream, fulfilled.”
    “Yeah,” said Fratz. “The glorious dream that I want to fulfill right now is to complete this mission and get out of here alive. You can spread your seed over the stars as much as you want, Hagar. I just want to keep my ass intact.”
    Coopersmith and Thalberg were the only ones to laugh at that. But inside, Coopersmith agreed entirely with the commander. He had a wife and a family who, he’d long since realized, were a lot more important to him than his job. Coppersmith was a tall, tightly-constructed man of forty-two. His bronze-tan complexion was not born of sunbathing, but of his parentage. His father had been a British factory worker, and his mother a West Indies Black who’d worked as a salesclerk in London. “You’ve more than a touch of the tarbrush in ye, Ian,” his father had once told him. Your mum and me dumped the whole bloody barrel on ye!”
    “Yes, well, that’s what all of this preliminary stuff is about, isn’t it, Commander?” said Coopersmith.
    Using the coordinates and telemetered data from the ill-fated Snipe, Captain Coopersmith had guided Fratz along the hull, delicately scanning the alien surface in search of anything that appeared to resemble an entrance hatch, or perhaps a launch bay. After a careful survey of the ship’s surface, several likely configurations were located, mapped, and more intensely studied.
    If Artifact One possessed more than three hatchways, they were well hidden. Coopersmith would have preferred to enter at one of the ends, but no accessway was immediately apparent. There were, however, hatches in the middle of the cylinder, each of a different size.
    An intense study of the device which had destroyed the Snipe had advised the lASA to equip the Heinlein with a phased array of active screens which should effectively neutralize tile amplified light weapons of the alien ship. After an in-depth survey, Captain Coopersmith selected the best landing and entrance site for the Heinlein’s lander module. The first step, however, was to disarm the geometrically placed blisters which covered the hull.
    Coopersmith and his assistant, Thomas Valdone, had assumed that the defensive blisters were arranged in the observed pattern because each had limited range. To test this theory, dummy probes — small gas-powered rockets — were directed towards the hull. Within twenty meters, a tight beam of light flicked out from the closest blisters. End of rockets. Coopersmith’s theory seemed to test true. And so he devised, a battery of small, shaped thermonuclear warheads with controlled explosive characteristics, protected by energy screens. By computer guidance, each warhead was directed to a defensive blister within range of the selected entrance hatch. The controlled explosions should, theoretically, eliminate the defensive blisters without causing more than superficial damage to the alien ship’s hull, thereby providing a safe work-corridor for the landing module and the EVA team which would be working to open the hatch.
    A risky operation, this, mused Ian Coopersmith. Although all available data indicated that the alien ship was dead in space, and had been so for an indefinite amount of time, there was no guarantee that an extraterrestrial intelligence was not observing them and would interpret the shaped-charge explosions as acts of aggression.
    Colonel Kemp had pointed out, though, that there had been no response from the alien vessel to any human communications attempts. There was no alternative but to attempt entrance by force. Quite simply, it was a risk which had to be taken,
    The warheads were armed. All that was necessary now was word from Copernicus Base.
    It