It looked like a glimmer of light dancing over the waves, a glare from the sun, or a trick of the eyes. The Puget Sound anil’s upper edge curved above the sea like the outline of a great reflective bubble. Ash held his breath, waiting for something to go boom.Īfter a tense moment, his ship began to rumble, and he took to the sky. It was something.Īsh pushed the throttle to 2,000 RPMs.
It was fairly lame as far as silver linings go, but still. The only good thing about knowing how and when he was going to die was that it freed him up to do whatever he wanted in the meantime, knowing it couldn’t actually kill him. “You don’t die today,” he said out loud, and the words calmed him, some. He curled his fingers into fists and released them one by one, trying to ready himself for another unstable trip. It was a trick for stress relief he’d picked up during his first week at flight academy, back when the other guys joked that he’d treated the fighter jets like they might bite. His leather jacket shifted and settled with the familiar movement, like a second skin. Which meant losing another day in his rapidly dwindling supply of days.Īsh tensed his shoulders and then released them again slowly, imagining each individual muscle going slack. The EM was too volatile to attempt another trip now, so his only choice was to head back to the workshop and hope things stabilized enough to check the clock the next morning. Unfortunately, he’d crash-landed several years too late. He’d spent the last year following the thinnest leads possible, but, as he’d already exhausted all the obvious places the Professor might’ve gone, he was starting to get desperate. The clock in question-the Hoeslich clock-didn’t seem particularly special, but the Professor had once said it was cool how people used to build clocks in public spaces and pointed out this clock in particular, which was all the encouragement Ash had needed. He’d been on his way to 1908, to see some dumb old clock get built on a sidewalk outside a jewelry store. Still not suicidal, but definitely entering maiming territory. The EM gauge had dropped to 45 percent after the crash, which was. Īsh double-checked the EM readings, to keep his mind off the girl and the vision and the fact that a drop of sweat was now creeping down his neck. It was hard to enjoy something when he knew it could kill him.īlack water, he thought, remembering his vision.
ENDLESS SKY SHIPS WONT FOLLLOW THROUGH WORMHOL HOW TO
He knew how to flirt-he lived with three rather attractive people, after all-but he’d lost his taste for it, the way someone might lose their taste for steak after nearly choking to death on a hunk of meat. And she’d probably make kissing noises.Īs a general rule, he didn’t flirt, so at least that explained why he was so bad at it.
He said a silent prayer of thanks that Zora hadn’t witnessed that particular exchange.ĭid you find yourself a little bride?, he imagined his best friend asking in that condescending tone she reserved especially for him. He pictured her tilting her head, asking, You don’t get lonely?, and felt heat flare up at the backs of his ears. He forced thoughts of Quinn out of his head, and the girl from the woods crept back in. It seemed wrong to allow her to taint another. There were already too many stories about her floating around his own time. The Black Cirkus assassin was rumored to eat human flesh and torture grown men without mercy and, as far as Ash was concerned, the less said about her, the better. And he did feel guilty, not for refusing the bride’s request for a ride-a girl like her wouldn’t last a day where he was going-but for taunting her with stories of Quinn Fox. Was he really sweating? Sweating? And over a girl? He looked at them and felt like he might laugh.
Ash raked a hand through his hair, and his fingers came away wet.
0 kommentar(er)
