Read Online McCollum - GIBRALTAR STARS by Michael McCollum - Free Book Online

traveling on a ship crewed by subservients, he was given the most spacious accommodation onboard, the cabin of its commander, a Vithian named Muulbra.
    Sar-Say’s duties often forced him to travel beneath his standards. While barely adequate, the quarters had one feature not usually found on even the most luxurious liners. The alien furnishings included backup instruments to those in the ship’s control center. With nothing else to do, Sar-Say amused himself by using the big screen to watch the mixed crew of Vithians and Frels. He also familiarized himself with the other controls.
    The voyage was uneventful until the Hraal approached the stargate in the Nala System. There they encountered an Avenger-class warship. With a Master onboard, Muulbra had priority and moved his ship toward the gate. It had been then that the Avenger attacked.
    Sar-Say was in his cabin when the attack began, so he had not witnessed the initial volley of energy beams. By the time he found the proper hull camera, Hraal had entered the Nala gate and was desperately attempting to jump. The Avenger closed and sent a new energy bolt into the fleeing freighter.
    Up until that moment, the attack had not been real to Sar-Say. What subservient would dare attack a ship carrying a Master? Then he realized they were not after Hraal . The attack was aimed at Sar-Say himself!
    Pressing an attack so close to a stargate was foolhardy. Sar-Say remembered the sickening lurch as the energy bolt struck home. For a moment, he thought the ship had been holed. His attention was drawn to the screen on which the gate had been prominently displayed.
    It was displayed no longer. The screen showed an ebon expanse, with a small blue-white sphere half in light and dark in a lower corner. Wherever they were, it was no longer the Nala System. Nor was it Perselin.
    Whatever had happened had caught the Avenger, too. The attacker wasted no time in renewing the attack. As soon as his accumulators recharged, he fired another energy bolt that struck Hraal somewhere amidships.
    Muulbra did what he could. With no other hope for escape, he sent his ship racing for the nearby planet. It did not take long to note that the world was inhabited. Sensors reported a spherical ship in orbit, with an accompanying smaller vessel.
    Muulbra flew his ship well, performing evasive maneuvers as best he could with chunks of the freighter shot away. Despite his efforts, the Avenger landed hit after hit on Hraal . Just as Sar-Say thought he was dead, the spirits of his ancestors intervened.
    Taking its attention off the freighter for an instant, the pursuing Avenger reached out and destroyed the small alien craft as they passed it, then resumed its pounding of Hraal.
    Then it quietly exploded. One instant it had loomed large in the screen. The next it was an expanding cloud of glowing plasma.
    #
    Sar-Say lifted his torso and stretched tall on two legs in the fashion of a human. He reached up, grasped a stem of the rose bush between two of his six digits, making sure to avoid the spikes. He slowly pulled the red blossom close, buried his snout in the flower and inhaled deeply through his breathing slits. The aroma was alien, but not unpleasant. He inhaled twice more, and gently released the plant. The flower arced slowly skyward as the stem rebounded.
    The rose bush was a giant of its kind. So, too, were the other plants in the arboretum. They owed their growth to the one-sixth gravity field in which they grew and to the continuous stream of nutrients fed to their roots through carefully positioned underground pipes. Framed against the black sky beyond the atmosphere dome, partially eclipsed by the branches of the rose bush, was another glowing apparition.
    Like the disk on the screen aboard the Hraal that long ago day, this one too was blue-white, with swirls, and half in light and dark… but immeasurably larger and brighter.
    The Earth hovered perpetually in the black sky above the atmosphere dome. From