Read Online Morning Song: A Seeders Universe Novel by Dean Wesley Smith - Free Book Online

“They are frontline seeder ships almost identical to the ones working Andromeda Galaxy right now.”
    Again both men nodded.
    “Noticed that,” Roscoe said.
    “And because Seeders always just move to the next closest galaxy,” she said, smiling at Roscoe’s wonderful eyes as he intently stared at her. “And the closest galaxies were not in this direction from that huge spiral galaxy. In fact, taking this route to our Local Group of galaxies might be the third wave of Seeders that left that galaxy.”
    “Oh,” Roscoe said, shaking his head.
    “Do we Seeders ever do anything small?” Fisher asked.
    “No, even my headache is large trying to grasp this,” Roscoe said.
    At that, Maria wanted to just stand and kiss him as she laughed. But somehow, she managed not to.
    Barely.

 
     
     
     
    FOURTEEN
     
     
    TO ROSCOE, SPENDING that first night on Fisher’s ship seemed almost like camping back when he was a kid on his home planet.
    He could feel the pressure of the huge ship around him like he was in a deep forest a long ways from any city.
    And he could really feel the responsibility of the safety of the fourteen people in the ship with him. So far nothing at all had seemed threatening, and the more they learned about the big ship, the more he doubted there was much to worry about as far as attack.
    But even still, for the moment, he and his men had set up a rotating guard. And Maria and Fisher both had one of their people each stay on the scanning duty, running as many scans as possible continuously.
    So at any given point, three of the twelve of them were awake.
    He wasn’t scheduled for a two-hour guard shift yet, but there was no chance that he could sleep. He normally didn’t need much sleep, but he knew at some point he would have to get some. However, just lying there in the small room they had assigned him and staring at the ceiling wasn’t going to work, and he knew himself enough to know that.
    So, he took a shower, then changed clothes into a white t-shirt and comfortable slacks, then with his pulse rifle over his shoulder, he wandered back first to the dinner area and picked up a container of water and a piece of dark bread that had tasted fantastic and slightly sweet at dinner. Then he went down the wide hallway to the big scanning room.
    Not only were the two there that had shifts, and Jonas standing against the wall near them on guard duty, but Maria was there, hunched forward, staring at something in her heads-up projection.
    Obviously, she couldn’t sleep either, although her red hair looked damp like she had also taken a shower, and she had on what looked like a form of cotton pajama bottoms with blue flowers and a sweatshirt and slippers of some sort.
    Her red hair was pulled back tight and he could see the freckles on her neck.
    She was unbelievably attractive, even hunched forward over a work station like that. He just wanted to go up and rub her shoulders and kiss her neck, but now was far, far from the time.
    “Couldn’t sleep either, huh?” he asked about halfway across the room after he nodded to Jonas.
    She turned and smiled at him, her smile beaming, clearly glad to see him. He liked that a lot.
    “Far too excited,” she said. “Take a look at this.”
    She turned back to her board and the image floating in the air in front of her.
    He stared for a moment, but couldn’t make any sense of it. It seemed to be some sort of writing. “What am I looking at?”
    “I think it’s the name of this big ship,” she said.
    Her fingers were running over her board faster than he had ever seen anyone move. The freckles on her shoulders almost moving in a dance as her arms and hands flashed over the controls.
    “I’m working on language programs,” she said. “As with all human cultures, languages all have certain basics and when I hit on the right combination, I’ll have the language. We’ve been loading language into our language program from around the big ship since the first