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might be an Imperial quarantine force in place or until some faction of the
Byzanian Armed Forces happened onto his ship, particularly given the shortness
of his power reserves.
Now there was nothing he could do but finish the trip.
"Position at two seven five relative, distance two point five,
inclination point seven. Ship is in opposition," the AI announced in its
professional and impersonally feminine voice.
"Interrogative short jump. Power parameters."
"Short jump possible. Depletion of reserves to point five. Interface
probability is less than point zero zero nine. Power consumption will leave
ship with three point five plus stans at norm, plus half reserves."
"Jump."
"Commencing jump."
This time he let the AI handle the jump, with the milliseconds of
apparent jump time so short he scarcely noticed them.
"Time to Aswan?"
"Two plus at norm."
"Normal acceleration. Notify, full alarm, if anything approaches the
ship or if any anomalies appear."
The odds were that he'd hear the alarm at Ieast three times before they
hit orbit distance, but he obviously wasn't up to watching himself.
Four alarms later, the Caroljoy was in orbit, ready for planetdrop for
the planet he called Aswan.
None of the alarms had amounted to anything besides debris, not thait
Gerswin had expected them to, since the system was out of the way, to say the
least.
Aswan was the fourth planet, and the one of two that orbited the G-2 sun
in the "life zone." The third planet of the relatively young system might
develop intelligent life someday, unless it already had, but without overt
signs of such development. Gerswin doubted it, but since no one had
intensively scouted the surface, who could say?
The fourth planet, Aswan itself, offered a different dilemma. Certainly
some intelligent life had built the wall of white stone across the flat plain
of the perhaps once-upon-a-time ocean. Bridge? Dam? Who could say?
With no moons other than tiny and captured asteroids, and a thin
atmosphere mainly of nitrogen, Aswan was not on anyone's list of places to
visit. But someone or something had indeed built a bridgelike structure nearly
two thousand kays long, straight as an arrow, running from northwest to
southeast, or, if one preferred, from southeast to northwest. The bridge was
clearly visible from orbit against the maroon dirt/dust/crystal that covered
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most of the planet, the two-thirds that was not out-and-out rock.
While the dam, as Gerswin mentally identified it, rose out of the maroon
crystalline to a height of nearly one kay, the high point was not at either
end, nor in the center, but two-thirds of the way from the southeast toward
the northwest end. As if to balance, in a strange way, one-third of the way
from that southeast end, connected to the dam, rose a four-sided
diamond-shaped towerùprovided a set of unroofed walls rising more than three
hundred meters skyward above the level of the dam itself could be called a
tower.
The tower itself was roughly two kays on a side, while the dam was only
four hundred meters wide.
The stones which composed both dam and tower seemed identical for their
entire length. Identical and hugeùeach as large as the Caroljoy and each a
glistening white shot through with streaks of black.
When he had first scouted Aswan, he had taken scans and samples for
analysis. Granite, that had been what the geologists at Palmyra had said, but
a variety they had never seen, with an internal structure that suggested
tremendous building properties.
Gerswin had refrained from laughing.
The samples he had obtained by trimming the interior of the tower. He
had found no stone unattached to the dam or tower. None.
The flush-fitted top layer of stones made touchdowns and takeoffs easy,
with nearly as much ground effect as on Old Earth.
The pilot shook himself out of his reverie and began the descent that
would take him to the base he had built within the tower, the core of which
was the atmospheric power tap system, which had cost enough, but which
produced power in abundance, in more than abundance.
"Descent beyond limits," advised the Al.
Gerswin shook himself and made the corrections, forcing alertness until
the Caroljoy was settled next to the power tap connection.
Slowly, slowly, he unstrapped, and pulled on the respirator pack and
helmet, dragging himself to the lock.
Once the ship was connected to the power system, he could and would
gratefully collapse.
The cable system was bulky, obsolete, but relatively foolproof, and did
not require constant monitoring, unlike the direct laser transfer systems used
by most ports, and particularly by deep-space installations.
"Still," he muttered, under his breath and behind his respirator, as he
touched the transfer stud to begin the repowering operation, "what isn't
obsolete? You? The ship? Your self-appointed mission?"
He licked his upper lip.
"Who cares about Old Earth? Do all the Recorps types really want the
reclamation effort to end? Will anyone really remember the devilkids and the
blood they spent on a forgotten planet?"
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He snorted. The thought occurred to him that, if by some remote chance,
his biologics actually worked, that he would be the one in the legends and the
devilkids who had made it possible would be the forgotten ones.
As if that would ever happen!
He glanced at the white stone rising overhead into the maroon twilight,
stone that seemed to retain the light long past twilight, though that retained
light never registered on the ship's screens.
He sighed, shook his head again, and trudged back to the ramp up to the
Caroljoy, up to swallow ship's concentrates and water, up to sleep, and to
heal.
XII
LIKE THE PIECES of a puzzle snapping together, the fragmented ideas that had [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
