Read Online Missing! by Brad Strickland, THOMAS E. FULLER - Free Book Online Page A

it’s a big one. The pipeline crew have dug in and ought to be safe. We’re hoping the prep team saw the storm coming and battened everything down,” the tech said, her voice barely audible above the hiss and roar of background static. “If they can get to protection in a crater or behind a ridge, they may be okay.”
    May be, Sean thought.
May
be.
    He went to an auxiliary computer station and called up the current image of the storm. It sprawled over half the Daedalia Planum, a dark mass. Another view showed him lightning strikes. The whole cloud writhed with them.
    â€œIs there anything you can do for the prep team?” Amanda was asking.
    â€œNegative. They’re on their own to weather this one.”
    â€œKeep trying to raise them,” Amanda said. “Let them know we’ll get help to them as soon as possible.” No reply. She repeated her order and asked, “Did you get that?”
    But nothing came back, only the crackle and mutterof static. The storm had swirled right over the advance base, and it was cutting off communications.
    â€œWe’ve got to send a rescue team,” Sean said.
    â€œWe’ll get a team in as soon as we can,” Amanda replied. “IVe got the GPS system trying to locate them now. Too much interference, but when the storm lets up a little, we should be able to find them without any trouble. I’m sure they’re safe.”
    â€œThey may not be,” Sean insisted. “If the storm hit them before daybreak, it might have ripped all their tents loose. They only had one half-track, and I’ve seen storms wreck those. We’ve got to get to them—”
    â€œSean!” Amanda’s voice was sharp. “I know you’re worried. But remember, I have to worry about everyone in Marsport, not just about six members of a surface team. We operate under a standing order: Never send a rescue team in until they’re clear of danger themselves. We can’t lose a dozen people trying to save six.”
    Sean opened his mouth to argue, realized that nothing he could say made any difference, and closed his mouth again. Every instinct he had told him thatAmanda was wrong, that waiting meant losing Jenny and the others. Still, he couldn’t stack instinct up against Amanda’s orders, or against the good of the entire colony.
    Daedalia Planum bore the name of the mythical Greek inventor Daedalus, he who had crafted wings to allow his son Icarus and himself to fly. Icarus, though, got caught up in the joy and excitement of flying and had risen too close to the sun. His wings melted and he fell. It had never really happened, of course. It was mythology. Still, Sean could not help remembering that Icarus had died.
    Sean left Amanda’s office determined that he was going to do something. He might not be able to send a dozen people out to search for six.
    But he could send one.
    Himself.

CHAPTER 6
    Jenny Lasio Wondered If she would ever feel that she fit in. The Asimov Project kids had been carefully tested, screened, evaluated, and studied—so why did she sometimes feel that she was the only one of them who had slipped through by accident? Maybe that was why she always tried harder than anyone else, pushed herself to and even beyond the limit.
    Sometimes at night she lay awake and wondered if she could stand the strain, and sleep was hard to find. As often as not, she had bad dreams when she did manage to drop off, dreams of her days in an orphanage on Earth, where she was treated as a subject in an ongoing series of experiments. The sense of isolation and helplessness sometimes woke her up with a frightened jerk.
    Fortunately, the prep team worked so hard that sleeplessness was unlikely to be a problem. On thefirst day they had ridden for hours in the little Marscat rover, sometimes having to zig and zag to avoid boulders or ridges. The sun had been too low in the west to let the team do much at the impeller/