Read Online Forbidden the Stars by Valmore Daniels - Free Book Online

Most of those in attendance were regular evening shift. A few had not left after their shift ended, and stayed on through the emergency to lend their expertise.
    Michael glanced at his watch.
    The second night shift would arrive in four hours to spell the day shift. It did not matter what the emergency was; tired people made mistakes. Michael would direct them to go home himself, if it came to that. For the time being, he felt secure with an abundance of intellect in the room.
    Raymond Magrath spotted them as they entered, and hurried over. With his thought-link patch secured to his temples over his widow’s peak, he nodded to the two, and directed their attention to the central screen.
    Raymond was young, in his early thirties, but competent in his duties, regularly performing beyond his job description as administrative assistant.
    Raymond wasted no breath with pleasantries. “It happened just over two hours ago.”
    “What happened?” Alliras pressed.
    Michael glanced over to Calbert, hovering over a technician.
    Raymond squinted: a sign he was giving the CPU a command through the thought-link. Everyone had their own way of showing they were thought-linking, even though no physical movement was required. The central DMR casement flicked, and a new image superimposed itself for their scrutiny.
    The legend explained that they were looking at Segment 14568 of the charted asteroid belt. The screen showed a number of large bodies, some rotating, others stationary.
    The AI filtered out any rock smaller than a kilometer in diameter, to avoid creating a cluttered DMR display.
    Many of the rocks had a white circle sketched on their surfaces, with a direct legend detailing their physical attributes and statistics, SMD mine number, and name, if they had one.
    Michael saw an anomaly in one of the SMD asteroids.
    One of the circle designations—Macklin’s Rock—showed that the site was in the process of being surveyed, but there was no real-time image of the asteroid itself on the screen.
    “What happened?” he asked, repeating his superior’s question.
    “The whole damned asteroid just vaporized on us. We have the EPS record cued and ready for playback.”
    Just then, Calbert Loche spied them, and hurried over.
    “Two surveyors were on that asteroid when it exploded. Although exploded is not quite the right term,” he added. “Disappeared, vaporized, vanished, who knows?”
    At the moment, Michael was more concerned with the deaths rather than the technical explanation for the incident. “Who?”
    “Margaret and Gabriel Manez, two senior geologists. They were checking a Nelson II at local site 14 when it happened.”
    Raymond thought-linked to a smaller DMR monitor, and an archived image of Macklin’s Rock appeared, magnified, showing the location of the TAHU, and the thirty-seven prospective sites. Site 14 was illuminated in red.
    Michael searched his memory. He prided himself on remembering the names of every person in the SMD, all 532 of them. A particular fact came to him, and he had trouble swallowing.
    “There was a ten-year-old boy on that rock as well.”
    “Yes,” Calbert answered, his voice low and solemn. “Alex, I believe is—was his name. Their son.” The hard look on his face told Michael that he felt just as responsible and remorseful as the VP.
    “Survivors?”
    “Sorry, Michael.” Calbert remained silent a moment, then concluded. “We don’t know what happened exactly.”
    “Collision?”
    “No. The EPS sent by the TAHU’s Hucs indicated something approaching them near light speed.”
    “Light speed?” he blurted, shocked. “A Sunburst? Electric cloud storm? What was the point of origin?”
    “None. We have no indication that it even originated off surface. We think it might be something they found at the site. Their Hucs’ long-range sensors picked up nothing, but the short-range picked up the anomaly about thirteen seconds before impact. Again, I’m not sure ‘impact’ is the