Read Online Tachyon Web by Christopher Pike - Free Book Online Page A

belonged to Eric and Strem, though, was because they were physically the strongest; they were hoping to come away with twenty gallons of coolant each, and the stuff was heavy. At least along the outer rims of the alien vessels.
    The Kaulikans generated their gravity the old-fashioned way – they rotated. On the route in, the two of them were going to carry inflatable containers under their jackets. The return trip, with the bulbous bottles on their backs, was planned to be quick and smooth, and without too many questions.
    On the other hand, the question of who was best qualified was meaningless. Eric and Strem were going because they wanted to go, and no one was going to stop them.
    The fleet was getting closer, visible out the forward window as a nebulous cloud, approximately twenty million miles distant. Eric studied the holographic image, magnified and adjusted for the Doppler effect, instead of relying upon his naked eye. The craft were all of essentially the same design: three massive silver wheels spaced equally along a gray central shaft that ended in the rear in a huddle of four black domes. On the surface, these domes appeared to generate the purple fountains of charged particles that drove the Kaulikans toward the stars. The flagship at the tip of the fleet was an exception; it had nine wheels and was entirely blue.
    “This stuff smells,” Strem complained as Jeanie rubbed her closed-eyed boyfriend’s face with golden oil. Eric had already been oiled and had been pleased to see it was an improvement. He looked like a well-tanned tourist who had just returned from a month on an exotic beach in the center of a globular cluster. The white of his painted eyebrows and eyelashes didn’t look that bad either, though he had yet to try on the curly wig as the white dye on it was still drying.
    “Hush, don’t move,” Jeanie said. “The smell goes away when it dries.”
    “Then it starts to itch,” Eric muttered.
    “Two minutes,” Sammy said. “Start tidying up our loose ends.”
    “These lenses are going to look wicked on you guys!” Cleo said, sitting squat on the floor, coloring the contacts. Eric knelt beside her and began collecting pieces of clothing, scissors, tape, brushes – putting them back in Cleo’s suitcase.
    “Have you decided where to attach Excalibur ?” he asked Sammy.
    “Yes.” Besides navigating the ship, Sammy was studying a perimeter Kaulikan craft on screen under extreme magnification. “We are going to tuck in the rear wheel. There is a lip along the edge where we should be able to hide.”
    “Be sure to put us down with our heads toward the axis,” Eric said. As soon as they were locked onto the rotating structure, they would be under the influence of the Kaulikans’ pseudo gravity, and would hit the ceiling if they didn’t orient themselves properly. Sammy knew that, of course.
    “Enough!” Jeanie told Strem, putting down her oil-cloth. She laughed. “You look so cute!”
    Strem opened his eyes and immediately strode to his sleeping quarters and a mirror, reappearing a minute later. “Not bad, not bad, probably wouldn’t even get me expelled from school. Where’s the jacket I’m supposed to wear?”
    The opants, when turned off, resembled the plain clothes the average Kaulikans appeared to wear while on duty. Yet, Eric was as much concerned about the flaws in their dress as the discrepancies in their voices and skin color. ‘Resembled’ and ‘identical’ were two words with plenty of room in between where suspicions could be raised. What were they going to say if they got caught? Well, you see Mr. Kaulikan, we really did have green eyes but they changed color when we stared at the nova too long...
    “Say, ‘I’m from one of the farm worlds,’” Eric told Strem. To the aliens, their ships were worlds. As they had to spend the rest of their lives inside them, it was easy to understand why.
    Strem glanced out the window at the purple nebula, which was steadily