Seed of Stars Read Online Free

lean, long-faced, rumpled man of thirty-five. Priest of the United Christian Church, Kibbee was a liberal to the extent of bang able to put up the right prayer for any one of a dozen religions at a moment's notice, and in the right language. For him, there was truly one God. Even the nonreligious members of the crew regarded him with some awe, because it was he who had said the last prayer for former World President Oharo, when that great and good man died in the geriatric unit on Earth's moon.
    "Hello, Piet" For Kibbee there were first names only, and he remembered the first name of every crew member.
    "Hello, Bill." Piet went on working.
    Kibbee sighed. "Burials?"
    "Soon." Piet looked at the priest with concern. "Look, we'll have them parceled up for you, all neat and ready. If this upsets you, don't come in; be sensible."
    Kibbee regarded Piet's red-spattered whites with a deep sadness. "As you are?"
    "If you like."
    Kibbee shook his head, and his gaze swept round the panorama of gory, scientific dismemberment. "God knows if you're doing right I don't" And he went out
    Caiola, working steadily with the skinner, remarked: "There's a good man. Why doesn't he leave things he doesn't understand to the experts?"
    Piet grunted: "Like God is an expert?"
    Caiola eyed his superior with a reproving glance. "You have it exactly, sir."
    For a while they worked in silence. Piet found himself thinking of that brief note by the side of the injured crewwoman's name—"save her pretty face." Someone, in the heat and anguish of disaster, had found a moment to write that Someone cared, someone needed someone else. The thought of the Chinese girl who at this moment was probably in the gentle hands of Maseba made him think of her pretty sister from across the water. Mia. His Mia. Mia, who loved him so completely that their desertion from the Corps was the only possible solution for her. It was a mad idea, without logic. But who wanted to be logical about such a love? A new life ...
    A voice from the old life called from near the door. He started, and his probing knife slipped a little. Lieutenant Hoffman, clad in blue overalls which clung to her handsome figure, addressed him coolly. "Could I have a word with you, Lieutenant Huygens?"
    A voice from the past, and one which Piet could well have done without. He walked over to the door. Caiola and Palance were hidden by a store locker, but near the door a pile of souped and bagged human limbs, arranged with the careful precision of expert butchery, lay awaiting transportation back to Venturer.
    Trudi Hoffman had been working hard; on approaching he could see sweat on the tough, Nordic features. Her blue eyes had the bite of a January frost.
    "Look," he said. "You're not supposed to be in here. Kibbee must have left the door unhooked. I've got a lot of work to do—"
    Her gaze roved over the heap of bloated plastic bags and their ghoulish contents, tiien came back to him with unshaken concentration. "As you're so good at avoiding me on Vee Twelve, I thought I'd run you down here."
    "There's a time limit to this job, you know. I don't want to take back useless—"
    "Piet!" Her voice cut him short. "We had a good thing going, you and I. We had it every way we wanted it, and it was good. Anything you asked of me, you had; anything I asked of you, I got Then it stopped. Why, Piet?"
    He stared at her. What she said was true. Their sexual appetites had been well-matched. She had given him complete satisfaction, or so he had thought until his first encounter with the magic of Mia. Then he had been able to recognize his relationship with Trudi for what it was, a shared interest in sexual athletics in which each played nothing more than the function of a satisfaction machine for the other. Sex with Ma was only part of a much greater whole, a welding together of two personalities such as he had never before experienced, a giving and a complete acceptance. Trudi could have no conception of such a