Read Online He Without Sin by Ed Hyde - Free Book Online

time for a short break if anyone needs one. I use these few minutes to lean over to Carol and ask what’s up.

    “What do you mean?” she asks back.
    “You know, the look you gave me.”
    “I gave no ‘look’ but was wondering if you noticed Wesley’s odd questions. As if he wasn’t following Mark at all.”
    “He probably wasn’t following. He’s a ground guy; probably can’t wait to get to work,” I say, although I don’t know why I ought to make excuses for him.
    “He’s got something up his sleeve. I don’t trust him.”
    Mark runs a sequence of surface images while people shuffle about. David signals his desire to get things moving; the members of the crew turn their attention back to the front of the room and Mark starts in again.
    “Alright. Here is where we are going to call home for quite a stretch. If you look at this mountainous region,” as he circles an area on the current image, “and we zoom in a bit, you can see this area that is enclosed in sort of a triangle.”
    “Huh? Hold up Mark. Triangle?” says David.
    “You may have to squint a bit and have a good imagination like me, but if I trace three lines here through these valleys you can see they form a triangle. There are plenty of spots inside here that we can use. First and foremost, we will be exquisitely isolated from whatever populations,” again with a meaningful look at David, “may or may not be down there. Secondly, as you can see if I zoom out a bit, we will have nearby access to practically unlimited water and silicon, not to mention the other mineral resources that will be found in the mountains themselves—several outcroppings have already been identified. There are numerous other sites around the globe to pick up the other needed elements, minerals and compounds.
    “David, I will leave it up to you to review possible locations for the bio work; I sent you the obvious potentials. There are any number of options, and we have good ground images to go by. Or I will be happy to go over them with you if you’d prefer.”
    “Yes, I want to go over that part together, but not here, not now. We’ll reserve final judgment on those until after on-site inspections. I will get with you separately. But we do need to talk about another issue right now. If there are no questions for Mark…? Thanks Mark.”
    This is as good a time as any for me to ask, “David if I may just ask the group…” and I get a nod to go ahead. “Thanks. Most of you have already responded to my comms link request and to those who have—thank you. I’ve returned a verification packet to each of you just before we sat down here. However, there are a couple null responses that need to be cleared up before any landing.”
    “Who?” asks David.
    “There’s Grigor, for one…”

    “Check again, mate. You’ll find you’re wrong about that,”
    interjects Grigor, without any hesitation and bristling slightly, looking at me, then David.
    I do a quick refresh on my communicator and confirm his statement. “Ok, you are right—thanks. Verification on its way.”
    “No worries, J-man.”
    “Then, there are a couple from the ground team that I have not heard from,” I continue, nodding towards both Tracy and Lester. Brachus has still not returned to the meeting, and I see Tracy making a few short keystrokes.
    David again chimes in, “How many and who? You mean the whole team?”
    “No, just the three. I mean, both Lester and Tracy, along with Wesley. They were included on the general request, but nothing yet. I’m sure there are a lot of preparations before landing, but this is one thing that’s got to be done.”
    Tracy says, to David, “I can’t speak for the others, but I’m not sure I received any link or login request. Jason said it was coming, but I haven’t seen it.” David nods and looks at me but does not speak. I see his mouth working, repeating the same movements over and over. “And I think Wes has some reservations about having