Luminaria E-Book

Robert Jeschonek

• Herausgeber: Pie Press
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

On a day known forever as The Silencing, millions of human colonists went missing in space without a trace. Fifty years later, a team of explorers mounts a search, riding a space elevator into the heart of the unknown. One scientist, Gabriel Shard, holds the key to the truth, the last chance to recover the missing...but he might just die before he can use it. Don't miss this story by award-winning writer Robert Jeschonek, a master of unique and unexpected science fiction that really packs a punch.

Leseprobe

LUMINARIA

A SCIFI STORY

ROBERT JESCHONEK

CONTENTS

Also by Robert Jeschonek

Luminaria

About the Author

Special Preview: Six Scifi Stories Volume Four

LUMINARIA

Copyright © 2023 by Robert Jeschonek

www.bobscribe.com

Cover Art Copyright © 2023 by Ben Baldwin

www.benbaldwin.co.uk

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved by the author.

Published by Blastoff Books

An Imprint of Pie Press

411 Chancellor Street

Johnstown, Pennsylvania 15904

www.piepresspublishing.com

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ALSO BY ROBERT JESCHONEK

100th Power Book 1

100th Power Book 2

100th Power Book 3

Blastoff!

Cosmic Conflicts

Gray Lady Rising (with Annie Reed)

In a Green Dress, Surrounded by Exploding Clowns and Other Stories

In the Empire of Underpants and Other Stories

Battlenaut Crucible

Scifi Motherlode

Sticks and Stones: A Trek Novel

LUMINARIA

As I ride the space elevator up the Skywire and out of Earth's atmosphere, I think of a helium balloon that my little boy, Rally, let go of in the park one day.  The balloon ran away from him, shooting up into the sky, never to return.

I feel like that balloon.

What I shall find at the top of the Skywire, I do not know.  What has become of humanity’s other half, no one can say.

I am on my way to find out.  I only hope that in the process, before my illness claims me, I will discover what became of Rally...and his mother, my wife.

"It seems to be running fine, doesn't it, Gabe?" says the man next to me, an engineer named Arlo Stripe.  "I’m impressed, considering how long it’s been out of service."

Fifty years ago, on a day we call The Silencing, a hauler loaded with freight and passengers climbed this elevator into space.  Instead of descending the elevator wire twenty-eight hours later, as scheduled, the hauler did not come back down for five decades.

Today, one week after the hauler returned to Earth, I ride it back up with Arlo and three others.  We are the first humans to reach space in fifty years...not counting the fifty-four million Spacesiders whom no one Earthside has heard from since the elevator’s last trip.

"Now at twenty-thousand feet and rising," says the pilot, Wayne DuBois.  He turns and winks one bright green eye. "No worries." His neck is thick, his hair shaved to black stubble--military all the way.

"My heart is pounding," says communications specialist Norrie Lomax, who sits behind me.  She tucks her long, brown hair behind her ears and gazes out the porthole at the darkening sky rushing past.  "Will we find Heaven or Hell? Life...or death?" As usual, she narrates aloud for the benefit of the flake mic stuck to her lower lip.  "Will we ever see our homes and loved ones again?" Her words are transmitted back to the rest of humanity on the ground, who wait breathlessly to find out what happened to the Missing.

"Slow going, huh?" says Arlo, who seems to enjoy baiting me.  "Too bad that brane drive of yours didn't work out. It sure would get us there faster."

I don't answer.  The brane drive was supposed to be the fasted propulsion system ever designed for space travel.  It made me king of the scientific world--for about five minutes.

Then, it melted down...and I lost everything else that mattered on the very same day.

Arlo doesn't stop trying to get a rise out of me.  "Will your friends be glad to see us?"

I run my bony fingers through my thin, white hair and chuckle.  "I sure hope so," I say, refusing to take the bait. The fact remains, though, and looms large in my mind:  I am the only person who was asked for by name. The message found seared in the hauler's hull asked for a

return-trip crew consisting of an unnamed pilot, engineer, communications specialist--and me, Gabriel Shard.

Why this is, I have no idea.  I am not the only space scientist on the planet, and I have no special connection to the Skywire project.  As far as I can tell, my only distinctive characteristic is the aggressive tumor turning my brain into goo.

Still, I cannot say that I regret being chosen for the trip.  Being among the first to return to the stars is quite an honor.

Not that I care about honor.  Not that I really care about anything other than finding out what became of my wife and child.

They were on their way to Mars when the Silencing hit.  According to what I’ve been able to piece together, they should have been riding down the Martian elevator on their way to the surface when all communications ceased.

If, by some miracle, I find her alive, my wife, Sharon, will be seventy-three years old.  My son, Rally, who was seven on Silencing Day, will be fifty-seven.

As for me, I am eighty-two and change.

* * *

The whole time that we are inside Fulcrum, the deserted station that is our first stop along the Skywire, every one of us feels like we are being watched.  We are so spooked that we agree unanimously not to split up, though it will take us an extra day to explore the whole place that way.

The worst of it is that we find no message telling us where everyone went...and we see no sign of death, destruction, or evacuation to explain their disappearance.

"There are no bodies," Norrie tells the folks at home.   "There is not a drop of blood."

Engineer Arlo says that the equipment still functions flawlessly.  The station holds steady in geostationary orbit, 35,000 kilometers above sea level.

Life support is at optimal levels, though none of us removes his environment suit.  We are able to operate the computers, though they give up no clue to what happened here fifty years ago.

Hundreds of people were aboard this station, and then they were gone.  It might as well have been magic that made them disappear.

"It's as if they were taken," Norrie says for the home audience.  "Swept away suddenly and all at once by a great wind, without warning."

More like balloons, I think.  Helium balloons let go by children, left to shoot off into the glittering blackness and out of sight forever.

* * *