Free Return - Book III of the Five Worlds Trilogy by Al Sarrantonio Page A

hands before him and legs kicking; as he went out, finding no purchases he covered his face with his arms.
    As he was lost to view through the open outer door, a single tremor, like a bolt of electrocution, went through Jerzy’s body, and its kicking diminished.
    Trel turned to see Jamal nearly at his feet, pushing himself up by his one arm to peer at the activation button, which glowed a bright red warning.
    “You’ve done it! You’ve done it! Ha ha! He got us here and now he’s dead! Hurrah for Titan!”
    Trel Clan looked calmly down at the king, who was trembling with derangement, drooling and rolling his eyes.
    “Titan is gone,” he said.
    As Trel Clan had witnessed before, the king’s face nearly transformed in an instant from lunacy to sober cunning; on his back, he smiled knowingly up at Trel Clan and pointed toward the front of the shuttle transport.
    “Look out the front shields,” he said.
    Walking past the king, Trel Clan approached the pilot’s seat and peered out.
    There before him, nearly filling the spaceshields, was a roiling yellow world, a burned, broiling, volcano-specked monster. And behind it, dwarfing this monstrosity, was an even greater brute—gigantic Jupiter itself, its broad bands of seemingly liquid color mottled with festoons of giant storms. Jupiter filled what was left of the sky and seemed ready to swallow the smaller yellow world like an onion into its stewpot of colors.
    Trel Clan turned to regard the king, who was humming to himself, rolling from side to side.
    “Jo?”
    Jamal Clan shrieked a laugh and turned a baleful, lucid eye on Trel Clan.
    “Jo! Yes, Jo! The new Titan!”
     

Chapter 10
     
    A nd still no calling came.
    In the Oort Cloud, Kay Free tried to feel like any other bit of loose rock. The fact that she was composed of energy particles, not matter at all—the fact that she was not alive—did not, though, in any way prevent her melancholy. It was a melancholy of design, she was aware, but no less effective.
    After months of facing away from the distant Sun of this Solar System, she found herself drawn to studying it from afar. Especially now that the three deadly comets—which she and her companions had nudged out of their benign orbits and sent reeling on their present courses—neared the fiery orb, growing huge tails like long beards.
    Kay Free found herself tracing the lengthy, elegant curves of those tails—slaves of physics, as she herself was—and also tracing the precise orbits of those three comets; especially the precise courses that lay ahead of them, after their imminent swing around the Sun.
    Such sadness should not have been built into her; into the others.
    “Kay Free?”
    At first Kay Free thought the tentative voice belonged to Mother; she was startled to see that it was Mel Sent, usually garrulous, if not downright loud, who had approached her.
    Kay Free turned away from Sol to face her visitor. “You are troubled?” Kay Free asked.
    “I…” Mel Sent hesitated; this was another trait foreign to her makeup.
    “Were you visited by Mother?”
    “Yes,” Mel Sent said; gone completely was all the loquaciousness that marked her as unique, replaced by puzzled sadness. “Mother visited Pel Front, also. But at least in my case it doesn’t seem to have helped.”
    “I was reassured for a time, myself,” Kay Free said. “But now …”
    She turned to regard the three stately comets in their malevolent orbits, and Mel Sent turned her attention to them also.
    “You don’t think…”Mel Sent began.
    Kay Free waited.
    “You don’t think there was a mistake made, do you?” Mel Sent uttered finally.
    Still Kay Free said nothing.
    “It’s just that…” Mel Sent said tentatively.
    “It’s just that it seems wrong,” Kay Free said. She turned to her companion. “Is that what you want to say?”
    “Yes!” Mel Front huffed with finality. “And yet, Mother seemed so sure that everything would turn out for the best.”
    “That’s