Greg Bear Eon 1 Eon

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Maybe there's something else. Whatever, if we were to come zipping along at
eight or nine klicks a second, anything we hit would be in serious trouble.
That's enough to get us a moving violation, wouldn't you say?"
"I hadn't thought of that," Lanier said, settling into the pilot's seat.
"Yes, well, now that your head is more clear . . ."
Heineman glanced at him sternly and then patted him on the shoulder.
"Girls, let's find out what all the fuss is."
They replaced various instruments in ports along the floor of the aircraft and
installed new sensors in ports so far unoccupied.
Lanier stared overhead at the corridor floor, fascinated by the procession of
lights. Even with binoculars, he couldn't make the lights resolve into
anything but bright spots, contrasting against the
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file:///F|/rah/Greg%20Bear/Bear,%20Greg%20-%20Eon.txt black of the lanes.
Something large and gray covered his field of view in the binoculars and he
pulled them down. A disk at least half a kilometer wide floated slowly above
the lanes, moving south.
Another disk followed a similar course twenty or thirty degrees to the west.
"Absolutely no coherent radio signals," Heineman said.
"Waste microwaves and heat and a little X- and gamma-ray activity and that's
it. Radar--the repeater back here shows something substantial about a quarter
of a million kilometers ahead--surface area of at least fifteen square
kilometers, right on the axis dead center."
"I see it," Lanier sai looking at the primary display.
"Objegts moving around it, and all along the wall of the corridor."
"Don't ask me what they are," Heineman said, peering through the windscreen at
the gray disks. He squinted in, puzzled anxiety. "And don't ask me how long
we're going to stay up here unmolested."
"At least we're small," Farley said. "Maybe they won't notice us."
"That big thing up ahead, whatever it is, will notice us," Heineman said.
"Ten to one it's riding the singularity, too."
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Five hundred kilometers past the wall, four large brick-red
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file:///F|/rah/Greg%20Bear/Bear,%20Greg%20-%20Eon.txt twisted pyramids rose
above the tangle of lanes. From their spacing---equidistant around the
circumference, at the quadratic points--Lanier surmised they were built over
wells.
From this distance, they appeared the size of a commemorative postage stamp
held at arm's length--which made them perhaps two kilometers on a side, and a
kilometer high.
Kilometer-wide clear lanes extended straight north from each structure, for as
far as he could see.
"I think we're in over our head," Lanier murmured.
Farley put her hand on his shoulder and pulled herself into the copilot's
seat. "We've been over our heads for years, haven't we?"
"I'd always assumed the corridor was empty--I don't know why.
Perhaps because I couldn't have imagined this."
Heineman floated between them and gripped a bar on the instrument panel to
steady himself while he programmed a flight plan. "We're going to accelerate
to ten thousand klicks an hour, get as close as we can to that big object on
the singularity--slowing down on the approach, so they won't think we're going
to ram them then reverse and hightail for home. That is, of course, if you
approve." He raised an eyebrow in
Lanier's direction.
Lanier weighed the risks and realized he had no idea what they were.
"If we reverse now, what can we tell the folks back home?"
Heineman persisted. "It's obvious this place is important. But we have no
idea what is it, or what it means to us once we're back on the
Stone."
"You're stating the obvious, Larry," Lanier said. "Now tell me whether we'll
survive or not."
"I don't know," Heineman said. "But I'm having the time of my life.
What about the rest of you?"
Carrolson laughed. "You're crazy," she told him. "Crazy jock pilot
engineer."
Heineman wagged his head back and forth and proudly lifted the breast pockets
of his jumpsuit out with his thumbs.
"Garry?"
"We have to find out somehow," he admitted. "Let's go, then."
Heineman began the sequence on the computer pilot and the tuherider bore down
on the singularity, once again putting a sense of direction into the V/STOL
cabin.
When the acceleration stopped and the tuberider coasted at ten thousand
kilometers an hour, Heineman distributed sup-pen-sandwiches in foil.
packets and bulbs of hot tea. They ate in silence, Carrolson and
Heineman strapped to the bulkhead behind the cockpit. The corridor's passage
was steady and easily perceptible.
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Another circuit of rectangular structures passed, and several minutes later,
yet anOthermall connected by the four straight clear lanes and the crowded
tangled lanes of lights.
Lanier vacated the seat to Carrolson and took a nap while Heineman trained the
women in the fine points of tuberider control. He dropped in and out of a
dream about flying a light plane over jungle and tangled rivers. Somehow,
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that segued into a track meet. He awoke with the aftertaste of tea in his
mouth and undid the seatbelts, pulling himself forward. Farley was adjusting
instruments in their ports and replacing memory blocks on the slates
collecting and collating the data. She dropped full blocks into a plastic
sorting tray and slipped it into a file box. Then she held up one of the
auxiliary multi-meters built by engineering before the Death, pointing out the
display for
Lanier's inspection.
yes?" he asked, looking down at the flickering numbers.
'It s kaput," she said. '*Putting out nonsense. So are most of our
instruments. We'll be lucky to interpret half the data we've gathered."
"Reasons?"
She shook her head. wild guesses, and that's the best I can � do.
Other electrical systems seem to be working it's probable we're passing
through control fields like those that electively damp inertia on the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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