He also wasn’t prone to associate withthe sort of people that might be able to help him in that area—evenif he could come up with the credits to pay for illegaltransport.
Soul-searching had produced the creditshe needed, but although he’d managed to justify the use of hisresearch funds for the expedition in his mind, he knew, deep down,that his use of funds intended for research on the home world was along way from being the most ethical thing he’d ever done. It wastrue that he hoped/intended to put the credits to use foranthropological research, but he couldn’t pretend, even in hismind, that the government agency that had provided the fundingwould approve of his choice of location for hisresearch.
He’d deal with that, he decided, whenand if the time came. He was certain—hopeful—that his mission wouldbe successful and the agency would be so awed and thrilled with hisfindings that they would dismiss the little matter of the fundshaving been used to study alien life rather than cultural aspectsof their own world.
The ship, as it turned out,wasn’t as difficult to obtain as he’d hoped/feared it wouldbe—hoped because his niggling doubts had led him to think he mightbe better off if he failed to obtain the wherewithal to shit-canhis career. Feared because, at the same time, his certainty that hewas right and he would find just what he expected would insure thathe actually had acareer notable enough to warrant the years he’d spent studying tomake his mark on the scientific community—to makehistory.
He’d tracked down an oldschoolmate whose reputation was a little less than sterling due tohis tendency toward ‘grave robbing’. Aidan had always consideredthat that sobriquet was splitting hairs. Lance was an archeologist,after all, and the very nature of that disciplinewas grave-robbing, or atleast desecration since there was no way to study ancientcivilizations without digging them up and, naturally, that includeda tomb now and then. His tendency to sell artifacts of value on theblack-market wasn’t exactly ethical, but then again, like everyoneelse in his particular field, there were always funding problems.It wasn’t greed or lack of appreciation for the history heuncovered, Aidan reasoned, but practicality. He always dutifullyturned over the best of his finds to the government for theirmuseums—or vaults.
Lance was suspicious when he firstbroached the subject, but it wasn’t hard to stimulate his interestin the possibilities. Alien artifacts, if any could be found, wouldbe tremendously more valuable than anything he’d managed to unearthon the home world.
Lance arranged transportation bypurchasing a revamped interstellar ship that Aidan had an uneasyfeeling had been used by pirates since it looked far more like aluxury yacht than a research vehicle or even a commercialtransport.
He resolutely closed his mind to thatpossibility, however, focusing on the importance of his proposedmission. If he could find what he was looking for, it meant morethan a huge boon to his career. It meant saving who knew how manyhigher life-forms.
The shared guilt of what they intendedcomforted him, as well. Realistically, he knew it wouldn’t make abit of difference if the authorities decided to prosecute. Theywould both be charged, but Lance didn’t seem to be overly concernedabout that possibility and he was insensibly cheered by Lance’sattitude.
He wasn’t superstitious but, inretrospect, he wondered if he shouldn’t have considered it an evilomen that Lance was so severely injured on his latest dig-site thathospitalization was required and he was unable to communicate—dueto his coma—much less join Aidan when the time came to leave.Instead, he loaded his supplies and took off alone, his grimdetermination to see it through unshaken.
That determination toignore ‘bad luck vibes’ suffered a setback when he made his firstfold/jump. He’d experienced the jumps before. As a linguisticanthropologist in a time when very few ‘new’ discoveries were madeof ancient civilizations, most of his living was made following thelecture circuit and most of his studies involved the evolution oflanguage and culture on the outpost colonies. He’d neveractually performed a jump himself, however, having previously traveled viacommercial transportation and it made him extremely uneasy to holdhis own life in his hands when he wasn’t trained to pilot a ship—atleast not an interstellar one.
As he had from the moment he’dconceived the hair-brained notion to investigate G-1493 himselfsince he couldn’t convince the scientific community to do so,though, he merely gritted his teeth, closed his mind to thepossibility of disaster, and did it.
He was a man on a missionand he wasn’t going to allow anything to deter him, certainly notthe minute possibility that the computer might malfunction in theantiquated ship he was using or miscalculate the jump exit inuncharted space and emerge in the middle of a meteorfield.
A little shaken but relieved when thefirst fold was performed flawlessly, he was able to put disasterfrom his mind and focus on his goal as the ship performed the nextthree jump/folds as flawlessly as the first. Particularly since heemerged from the last with his goal in sight.
That was when he discovered thebastards at the forum had kept him out of the loop.
Chugging along at sub-light speed sinceit wasn’t safe to fold within a system, he was nearing the first ofthe trio of planets that were the targets for the terra-formerswhen he saw hundreds of bursts of light that indicated impacts onthe planet’s surface. Shock held him in its blank grip for ahandful of minutes, his mind struggling to decipher the explanationfor the explosions.
Then comprehension hit him.
He was too late! The fucking bastardshad sent the terra-formers!
That was when Aidan did somethingimpulsive for the first time in his life.
He shot toward the surface of thetarget planet in a desperate attempt to collect data of some kindbefore it was lost forever in the dust of reconstruction. Thelanding was a hard enough jolt to jog his mind into gear—to adegree. He was scrambling into a suit while the ship performed thelanding maneuver
