Computer Viruses The Technology and Evolution of an Artificial Life Form
H Beam Piper Fuzzy 02 Fuzzy Sapiens v2.0 (lit)
H. Beam Piper Last Enemy
Jan PaweśÂ II PRZEKROCZYC PRÄÂG NADZIEI
Brian Daley Coramonde 02 The Starfollowers of Coramonde v4.1 (htm)
Christian J. Bennett Galactic Messiah (pdf)
Sword of the Guardian Merry Shannon
KrasiśÂski; O stanowisku Polski z bośźych i ludzkich wzglćÂdów
L Frank Baum Oz 06 The Emerald City of Oz
Desiree Holt Downstroke [EC Breathless] (pdf)
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
form would fall not only on Poictesme but on the entire Galaxy.
The spaceship that was building at Storisende got into the news; on-screen, it
appeared that the work was progressing rapidly. So was the work of demolishing
a block of empty buildings to get girders for the second ship, on which work
had not yet been started. The one under construction seemed to be of cruciform
design, like an old-fashioned pre-contragravity winged airplane. The design
puzzled everybody at Barathrum. Yves Jacquemont thought that perhaps there
would be decks in the cross-arm which would be used when the ship was running
on combined lift and drive.
"Well, till we can get a shipyard going on Koshchei and build some real
spaceships, there are going to be some rare-looking objects traveling around
the Alpha System. I wonder what the next one's going to look like-a flying
skyscraper?" Conn said.
"What I wonder," Yves Jacquemont replied, "is where all the old interplanetary
ships got to. There must have been hundreds of them running back and forth
from here to Janicot and Koshchei and Jurgen and Horvendile during the War.
They must have gone somewhere."
"Couldn't they all have been fitted with Dillingham hyperdrive engines and
used in the evacuation?"
"Possible. But the average interplanetary ship isn't
129
very big; five hundred to seven-fifty feet in diameter. One of those things
couldn't carry more than a couple of hundred people, after you put in all the
supplies and the hydroponic tanks and carniculture vats and so on for a four-
to six-month voyage. I can't see the economy of altering anything that small
for interstellar work. Why, the smallest of these tramp freighters that come
in here will run about fifteen hundred feet."
They didn't just disintegrate when peace broke out, that was for sure. And
there certainly weren't any of them left on Poictesme. He puzzled over it
briefly, then shoved it aside. He had more important things to think about.
In his spare time he was studying, along with his other work, everything he
could find on Koshchei, with an intensity he had not given to anything since
file:///F|/rah/H.%20Beam%20Piper/Beam,%20Piper%20H%20-%20The%20Cosmic%20Comput
er.txt (69 of 128) [2/4/03 10:08:16 PM]
file:///F|/rah/H.%20Beam%20Piper/Beam,%20Piper%20H%20-%20The%20Cosmic%20Comput
er.txt cramming for examinations at the University. There was a lot of it.
The fourth planet of Alpha Gartner was older than Poictesme; geologists
claimed that it was the oldest thing, the sun excepted, in the system, and
astrophysicists were far from convinced that it hadn't been captured from
Page 59
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
either Beta or Gamma when the three stars had been much closer together. It
had certainly been formed at a much higher temperature than Janicot or
Poictesme or Jurgen or Horvendile. For better than a million years, it had
been molten-hot, and it had lost most of its lighter elements in gaseous form
along with its primary atmosphere, leaving little to form a lightrock crust.
All that had remained had been a core of almost pure iron and a mantle that
was mostly highgrade iron ore.
130
The same process had gone on, as it cooled, as on any Terra-size planet. After
the surface had started to congeal, gases, mostly carbon dioxide and water
vapor, had come up to form a secondary atmosphere, the water vapor forming a
cloud envelope, condensing, and sending down rain that returned immediately as
steam. Solar radiations and electric discharges broke some of that into oxygen
and hydrogen; most of the hydrogen escaped into space. Finally, the surface
cooled further and the rain no longer steamed off.
The whole planet started to rust. It had been rusting, slowly, for the billion
or so years that had followed, and almost all the free oxygen had become
locked in iron oxide. The air was almost pure carbon dioxide. It would have
been different if life had ever appeared on Koshchei, but apparently the right
amino acids never assembled. Some attempts had been made to introduce
vegetation after the colonization of Poictesme, but they had all failed.
Men went to Koshchei; they worked out of doors in oxygen helmets, and lived in
airtight domes and generated their own oxygen. There had been mines, and
smelters, and blast furnaces and steel mills. And there had been shipyards,
where hyperships up to three thousand feet had been built. They had all been
abandoned when the War had ended; they were waiting there, on an empty,
lifeless planet. Some of them had been built by the Third Fleet-Army Force
during the War; most of them dated back almost a century before that, to the
original industrial boom. All of them could be claimed under the Abandoned
Property Act of 867, since all had been taken over by the Federation, and the
original owners, or their heirs, compensated.
131
And there was the matter of selecting a crew. As an influential
non-office-holding shareholder in all the companies involved, Conn Maxwell, of
course, would represent them. He would also serve as astrogator. Clyde Nichols
would command the ship in atmosphere, and act as first mate in space. Mack
Vibart would be chief engineer at all times. Yves Jacquemont would be first
officer under Nichols, and captain outside atmosphere. They had three real
space crewmen, named Roddell, Youtsko and O'Keefe, who had been in Storisende
jail as a result of a riotous binge when their ship had lifted out, six months
before. The rest of the company-Jerry Rivas, Anse Dawes, Charley Gatworth,
Mohammed Matsui, and four other engineers, Ludvyckson, Gomez, Karanja and
Retief-rated as ordinary spacemen for the trip, and would do most of the
exploration work after landing.
They got the controls put up; they would work in either position. The engines
were lifted in and placed. Conn finished the robo-pilot and the astrogational
computers and saw them installed. The airand-water recycling system went in.
The collapsium armor went on. In the news-screen, they saw the spaceship at
Storisende still far from half finished, with swarms of heavy-duty lifters and
contragravity machiners around it, and a set of landing-stands, on which the
file:///F|/rah/H.%20Beam%20Piper/Beam,%20Piper%20H%20-%20The%20Cosmic%20Comput
er.txt (70 of 128) [2/4/03 10:08:17 PM]
file:///F|/rah/H.%20Beam%20Piper/Beam,%20Piper%20H%20-%20The%20Cosmic%20Comput
er.txt second ship was to be built, in the process of construction.
A tramp hyperspace freighter landed at Storisende, the Andromeda, five months
from Terra, with a cargo of general merchandise. Rodney Maxwell and Wade Lucas
had assembled a cargo of medicines and hospital equipment which they thought
could be sold profitably.
Page 60
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
132
They began dickering with the owner-captain of the hypership.
A farm-tramp down in the tobacco country to the south, evidently ignorant that
the former commander of the Third Force was still alive, had proclaimed
himself to be the reincarnation of Foxx Travis and was forbidding everybody,
on pain of court-martial and firing squad, from meddling with Merlin. And an [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
