The Wolf Worlds Read Online Free Page A

vaguely portable and self-powered.
    Alex lumbered over to Sten and slung him over one shoulder.
    With another hand he grabbed Sten's combat harness and rolled through the tear in the Cienfuegos' side.
    Alex dumped Sten on the pile of packs and went back for another load. Sten staggered to his feet and looked at the Cienfuegos . The ship was broken almost in half longitudinally, and various essentials like the winglets and landing struts had disappeared into the lake mud. The Cienfuegos would never fly again.

    Sten battled to clear the fog from his brain, trying to conjure up a list of the supplies they'd need. He stumbled toward the rent in the ship.
    "Wait. We should—"
    But Alex ran out with more gear then spun Sten around, turning him away. "W should be hurrin", lad. Tha wee bugger's aboot t'blow."
    Within seconds, the team was assembled, packs shouldered, and stumbling up the low clifflet.
    They had barely passed over its crest when, with a rumble that echoed around the vast crater walls, the Cienfuegos ceased to exist save as a handful of alloy shards.

CHAPTER THREE
    THE EGG-SHAPED CRATER they had crashlanded in was huge, almost seventy-five kilometers long. The lake itself filled about half of the area, even though it was obviously drying rapidly, from the "big end" of the egg toward the "point," where Ida had glimpsed a break in the crater's walls.
    The ship had cashed it in about ten kilometers from the gap, leaving the team with a nice hike to clear their still muddled brains.
    By now they'd taken stock of their situation, which bore a close resemblance to dismal. They'd lost almost all their gear in the wreck, including emergency protective suits and breathing apparatus. They did have their standard ration/personal gear/water filtration packs that, rumor had it, no Mantis soldier would walk across the street without.
    The arms situation was equally bleak. The only weapons they'd brought out were their small willyguns, a sufficiency of the AM explosive tube magazines for those guns, and their combat 2
    knives.
    No demo charges. No hand-launched missiles.
    A slackit way f'r a mon, Alex mourned to himself. Ah dinnae ken Ah'd ever be Alex Selkirk.
    "Does anyone have any plans?" Bet asked mildly as she pushed her way through a clump of reeds. "How the clot are we gonna get off this world?"
    "Plans could be a bit easier if Ida would tell us where she committed that landing."
    "Beats me," the heavyset woman growled. "If you recall, I didn't have much time for little things like navigation."
    "Regardless," Bet put in. "It's all your fault."
    "Why?"
    "It always has to be somebody's fault," Bet explained.
    "Imperial Regulations."
    "An' who better'n the wee pilot?"
    Alex should have kept his mouth shut. It had teen a very long day for Ida, and she decided the joshing was no longer funny.
    She turned on Alex.
    "I'd push your eyes out," she said, "except it'd only take one finger, you bibing tub of—"
    And Sten stepped in before tempers could in fact heat up.
    "Words. Just words. They don't cross klicks."
    "Leave them be," Doc suggested. "At the moment, a little spilled blood would cheer me enormously."
    Alex whistled suddenly. "Willna y'have a lookit this!"
    They'd broken out of the reeds and were crossing an open section of terrain. Here the ground had once been covered by fine, volcanic ash, which had hardened over eons into solid rock.
    Alex was pointing at a cluster of enormous footprints, bedded deeply into the rock surface. Sten followed the prints with his eyes: They came out of what must've been the lake's edge, moved about twenty meters along it. then the being who had made them stopped for a moment—the prints were deeper there. Then they turned, hesitated as if the being had looked at something, then went on, disappearing gradually.
    Sten stood in one of the humanlike prints and raised an eyebrow. It was at least twice as large as his own foot.
    "I hope we don't meet his cousin," he said fervently.
    Ida turned