[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
But this we must."
"You're going with us, though, Para. Unless you give. us back the knowledge we
need, you'll lose your life if we lose ours."
'
"What is one Para?" the creature said. "We are all alike.
This cell will die; but the Protos need to know how you fare on this journey.
We believe you should make it without the plate, for in no other way can we
assess the real importance of the plate."
"Then you admit you still have it. What if you can't com-
municate with your fellows once we're out in space? How do you know that water
isn't essential to your telepathy?"
The Proto was silent. Lavon stared at it a moment, then turned deliberately
back to the speaking tubes. "Everyone hang on," he said. He felt shaky. "We're
about to start. Stra-
vol, is the ship sealed?"
"As far as I can tell, Lavon."
Page 36
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
Lavon shifted to another megaphone. He took a deep breath. Already the water
seemed stifling, although the ship hadn't moved.
"Ready with one-quarter power. . . . One, two, three, go."
The whole ship jerked and settled back into place again.
The raphe diatoms along the under hull settled into their niches, their jelly
treads turning against broad endless belts of crude caddis-worm leather.
Wooden gears creaked, step-
ping up the slow power of the creatures, transmitting it to the sixteen axles
of the ship's wheels.
The ship rocked and began to roll slowly along the sand bar. Lavon looked
tensely through the mica port. The world flowed painfully past him. The ship
canted and began to climb the slope. Behind him, he could feel the electric
silence of
Shar, Para, and the two alternate pilots. Than and Stravol, as if their gaze
were stabbing directly through his body and on out the port. The world looked
different, now that he was leaving it. How had he missed all this beauty
before?
The slapping of the endless belts and the squeaking and groaning of the gears
and axles grew louder as the slope steep-
ened. The ship continued to climb, lurching. Around it, squad-
rons of men and Protos dipped and wheeled, escorting it to-
ward the sky.
Gradually the sky lowered and pressed down toward the top of the ship.
"A little more work from your diatoms, Tanol," Lavon said. "Boulder ahead."
The ship swung ponderously. "All right, slow them up again. Give us a shove
from your side, Tolno, that's too muchthere, that's it. Back to normal;
you're still turning us I Tanol, give us one burst to line us up again. Good.
All right, steady drive on all sides. It shouldn't be long now."
"How can you think in webs like that?" the Para won-
dered behind him.
"I just do, that's all. It's the way men think. Overseers, a little more
thrust now; the grade's getting steeper."
The gears groaned. The ship nosed up. The sky brightened in Lavon's face.
Despite himself, he began to be frightened.
His lungs seemed to burn, and in his mind he felt his long
fall through nothingness toward the chill slap of the water as if he were
experiencing it for the first time. His skin itched and burned. Ctould he go
up there again? Up there into the burning void, the great gasping agony where
no life should go?
The sand bar began to level out and the going became a little easier. Up here,
the sky was so close that the lumbering motion of the huge ship disturbed it.
Shadows of wavelets ran across the sand. Silently, the thick-barreled bands of
blue-green algae drank in the light and converted it to oxy-
gen, writhing in their slow mindless dance just under the long mica skylight
which ran along the spine of the ship. In the hold, beneath the latticed
corridor and cabin floors, whirring Vortae kept the ship's water in motion,
fueling them-
selves upon drifting organic particles.
One by one, the figures wheeling outside about the ship waved arms or cilia
and fell back, coasting down the slope of th? sand bar toward the familiar
world, dwindling and disappearing. There was at last only one single Euglena,
half-
plant cousin of the Protos, forging along beside the space-
ship into the marshes of the shallows. It loved the light, but finally it,
too, was driven away into deeper, cooler waters, its single whiplike tentacle
undulating placidly as it went. It was not very bright, but Lavon felt
deserted when it left.
Where they were going, though, none could follow.
Page 37
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
Now the sky was nothing but a thin, resistant skin of water coating the top of
the ship. The vessel slowed, and when
Lavon called for more power, it began to dig itself in among the sandgrains
and boulders.
"That's not going to work," Shar said tensely. "I think we'd better step down
the gear-ratio, Lavon, so you can apply stress more slowly."
"All right," Lavon agreed. "Full stop, everybody. Shar, will you supervise
gear-changing, please?"
Insane brilliance of empty space looked Lavon full in the face just beyond his
big mica bull'seye. It was maddening to be forced to stop here upon the
threshold of infinity; and it was dangerous, too. Lavon could feel building in
him the old fear of the outside. A few moments more of inaction, he knew with
a gathering coldness in his belly, and he would 'be un-
able to go through with it.
Surely, he thought, there must be a better way to change gear-ratios than the
traditional one, which involved disman-
tling almost the entire gear-box. Why couldn't a number of gears of different
sizes be carried on the same shaft, not nec-
essarily all in action at once, but awaiting use simply by shov-
ing the axle back and forth longitudinally in its sockets? It would still be
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]