Hogan, James - Giant Series 04 - Entoverse (v1.1)

by Entoverse [lit]

  The energy to create the toroids was directed through i—space by colossal generating systems located in space, consuming matter from the cores of burnt-out stars. However, to avoid causing orbital per­turbations and all the attendant disruptions, the ports were never projected into planetary systems, but well away in the surrounding voids. To travel between planetary surfaces and the i-space ports, the Thurien ships used an advanced form of the more conventional gravitic drive pioneered by their ancestors on Minerva. Even so, a complete interstellar journey was typically measured in days.

  Since the Thurien starships also drew power from the same i-space distribution grid that supplied the energy to create the transfer ports, they could be quite modest in size. Others were huge. The roughly globoid Vishnu, twenty miles across, was of intermediate size.

  Three days after Hunt and Danchekker talked with Caldwell, they were part of a mixed group that boarded one of the Vishnu’s daughter craft at Andrews AFB, Maryland. Hunt’s deputy, Duncan Watt, had joined the group as hoped, and so had Sandy Holmes from Danchek­ker’s lab at Goddard.

  It was all as simple and informal an affair as Hunt had expected. The Thurien crew offered them soft drinks or coffee and invited them to take a seat. Each of the arrivals was also issued with a communications device in the form of a small, flexible disk, about the size of a dime and looking like a Band-Aid, that self-attached behind the ear. It was a connection to VISAR, operating via relay from the mother ship orbiting twenty thousand miles overhead. By coupling directly into the wearer’s sensory neural areas, the communicator could, upon command, convey to VISAR what was seen, heard, or spoken; in the reverse direction it could inject information from VISAR, which the wearer would experience as hearing and vision. It thus afforded not only instant access to the ship’s system, but also person-to-person communications with other Terrans, as well as to Ganymeans through VISAR acting as interpreter.

  “Welcome back,” the computer’s familiar voice said, seemingly speaking in Hunt’s ear. “I’ take it you’re getting restless again.”

  “Hello, VISAR. Well, you seem to be offering a more stylish service these days.” The first vessel that the Thuriens had sent to

  make initial contact had landed at a disused Air Force base in Alaska and, to evade the Jevlenese-managed surveillance operation, had been built to resemble a conventional Terran aircraft.

  “We like to keep the customers happy,” VISAR said.

  The ferry craft took off shortly afterward. Barely ten minutes later, it entered the immense composition of soaring hull structures and sweeping metallic surfaces curving away for miles on every side that made up the outer vista of the Vishnu. It entered a brightly lit cavern of projecting docking structures that looked like the Manhattan sky­line stood on its side, and berthed alongside another of a fleet of daughter vessels of every size, shape, and description.

  Some of the Thurien crew conducted the party through the access ramps and antechambers into a high space with wide corridors lead­ing away on either side and overlooked by several levels of railed walkways. More Thuriens were waiting, scattered about. It seemed to be a terminal area for transportation links to other parts of the vessel, but exactly what one was supposed to do to get there was far from immediately obvious.

  The starship manufactured its own internal gravity, creating “up,” “down,” and transitions between in whatever direction suited the purpose from place to place. The result was an Escherian confusion of corridors, shafts, intersecting planes and spaces, and surfaces that served as walls here, floors there, and elsewhere curved to transform from one into another. What had previously been below could unexpectedly appear overhead without one’s experiencing any sense of having rotated, and through it all, streams of Ganymeans were being carried along in open conveyor shafts on directed g-field cur­rents—rather like invisible elevators traversing the ship in all direc­tions. Hunt and Danchekker had seen this kind of thing before, but the others around them were stopping and staring in bewilderment.

  “Well, Chris, here we go again,” Hunt said, looking around. “But this will be a darn sight quicker than last time.”

  “And a bit more comfortable when we get there, too,” Sandy Holmes murmured in a slightly dazed voice as she struggled to take it all in. She had been with them on the UNSA Jupiter Five mission. When they had joined that ship, before its lift out from lunar orbit, the voyage ahead of them had been six months, and the accommodation waiting at the other end of it had been cramped quarters in the subsurface part of a scientific base situated on Ganymede’s ice sheets,

  with the constant vibration of machinery and an ever-present odor of hot oil.

  “Yes,” Danchekker agreed. “And I recollect being adamant at the termination of that escapade that I would never set foot inside one of these contraptions again.” He sighed. “However, the designers re­sponsible for this accomplishment would appear to have been from a different school from their terrestrial counterparts, whose imagina­tive limits one must suppose to have been set by experiences with submarines and tanks.”

  “And it will get you far, far away a lot faster,” Hunt reminded him.

  “Hmm, there is that.”

  Duncan Watt did a quick mental calculation. “Something like seventy million times faster, in fact,” he said. He was thirty—two, with a ruddy, vigorous complexion and thick, jet black hair. He had the rugged kind of looks that made Hunt think of him as belonging more on a football field or in a boxing ring than in a mathematical physics lab.

  Near Duncan were a man and a woman accompanying a group of teenagers, who at that moment were standing motionless in awe. “This is a unique moment in the history of the universe,” the man muttered, moving a step closer and nodding his head to indicate his charges. “It’s the first time ever that this bunch have all been quiet at the same time.”

  Duncan grinned. “Who are they?” he asked.

  “A class of tenth-graders going on vacation. I’m still not really sure how it happened. Somebody at the school came up with the idea as a joke, and the Ganymeans said sure, no problem. Goddamnedest thing I ever heard of.”

  Then VISAR said to Hunt, “You have a reception committee waiting for you.” From the change of expression on Danchekker’s face, Hunt knew that VISAR was talking to him, too.

  “Where?” Hunt asked.

  “The two officers standing a bit to your left.”

  Hunt looked around and saw the Thuriens whom VISAR had indicated already moving forward. The millions of years that sepa­rated the Ganymeans of Minerva, as typified by the Shapieron’s com­plement, from the Thuriens had produced visible differences. Although of the same general pattern, the Thuriens were darker, almost black, more slender, and on average slightly shorter. The two who had been waiting were clad in loose-fitting green tunics, each with a halterlike embellishment of elaborately woven metallic threads hanging on either side from the neck to the waist.

  “Dr. Hunt? Professor Danchekker?” one of them inquired.

  “That’s us,” Hunt confirmed.

  “My name is Kalor, and this is Merglis. We are here on behalf of Captain Fytom to welcome you aboard the Vishnu.”

  “It seemed fitting that you should be given a personal greeting,” the other explained.

  They shook hands—the Terran custom had come to be generally accepted. Hunt introduced Sandy and Duncan.

  “The captain sends his compliments,” Kalor informed them. “He is aware that your visit to Jevlen is to study Ganymean science. If any of the Vishnu’s specialists can be of assistance during our brief voyage, consider them at your disposal.”

  “Very considerate of him,” Danchekker replied. “Convey our thanks. We will certainly bear his offer in mind.”

  “You are also invited to view the command center once we are under way,” Kalor said. “But just at the moment things there are a bit hectic, as I’m sure you’ll appreciate.”

  “Whenever is convenient. Yes, we’d like that very much
,” Hunt answered.

  “Are we invited, too?” Sandy asked hopefully.

  “But naturally,” Kalor told her.

  “I think we pick the right people to go traveling with,” Duncan said.

  “For now, we’ll take you to the section that has been reserved for Terran accommodation,” Kalor said. “Since it looks as if Terrans are going to become regular passengers on these trips, we’re making it a permanent feature of the ship.”

  He led them over to a platform jutting out into a broad, elongated space, lower than the area they had just crossed, arched at intervals by sections of bulkhead that glowed with an internal amber light, and dividing to left, right, above, and below into smaller tunnels and shafts radiating away in all directions.

  Sandy looked uncertainly at the platform as Kalor gestured. “What do I do?” she asked.

  “To take a tube anywhere, just climb aboard,” Merglis said. “VISAR will take you to your chosen destination.” So saying, he

  stepped off the platform and hung suspended on an invisible cushion of force.

  “It couldn’t be simpler,” Kalor said, gesturing again.

  “Just what we need under New York,” Hunt told her.

  Sandy drew a breath, then shrugged resignedly and followed after Merglis, who was floating a few feet from the platform, waiting for them. One by one the others did likewise, with Kalor bringing up the rear, and seconds later they found themselves being carried into the labyrinth as a group, close enough together to be able to talk easily. The field molded itself comfortably around their bodies. They en­tered a wide, vertical shaft walled by tiered galleries, which somehow transformed itself into an avenue of shining walls and huge windows of what seemed to be stores of every kind, amusement centers, offices, and eating places. It resembled an enclosed city street more than anything Hunt had ever pictured as a thoroughfare inside a spacecraft. Then they came out into a larger, open space like a plaza, but three-dimensional, with concourses and floors going off at all angles, and he completely lost what little sense of direction he had managed to retain. Like a bushman grappling with a modern-day city, he didn’t have the conceptual knack for interpreting the geometry.

  But when the party arrived at the Terran section of the ship, they found that the layout there confined itself to one recognizable plane where “up” was up and stayed that way, and everybody walked. There were reassuringly familiar sleeping cabins, a cafeteria modeled on the facilities in UNSA’s mission ships, and a common mess area, complete with bar and white-jacketed bartender. And the chairs, tables, and other fittings were made to human proportions, not Gany­mean.

  Each of the passengers had a personal suite located along a corridor a short distance from the mess area and consisting of a bedroom, a sitting area with robot kitchen unit, and a bathroom, “I trust these will be comfortable enough for the two days,” Kalor said, showing Hunt his quarters.

  “They’d be comfortable for months,” Hunt assured him.

  “Very good. Then we’ll be in touch later for you to meet Captain Fytom and his staff. Is there anything else we can do in the mean­time?’’

  “I don’t think so.. . is there, Chris?” Hunt looked at Danchekker.

  “No—oh, there is some equipment that we’ll be taking with us.

  But then I suppose that if it hasn’t all arrived, there’s not much that can be done about it now.”

  “If you think of anything, just let VISAR know,” Kalor said. He turned to Danchekker. “Your cabin is this way, Professor.”

  The door closed, leaving Hunt alone to unpack his few items of carry-on baggage and inspect the surroundings. The suite was spa­cious and comfortable. A bathrobe and slippers were provided. There was a dish of fruit on the table, including some strange forms that Hunt did not recognize as terrestrial, some candylike concoctions, and a box of his regular brand of cigarettes.

  “Nothing to drink, VISAR?” he murmured, selecting one of the cigarettes. “Tch, tch. The service is slipping. I’d have expected a six-pack of Coors and a bottle of Black Label at least.”

  “In the cold compartment, below the autochef,” VISAR replied. Hunt sighed. As usual, the Ganymeans had thought of everything.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Hunt was still in his cabin a little over an hour later, poring over an English translation of a Ganymean introductory text on the properties of i-space. In the realm beyond the transition boundary represented by the aperture of an entry port, the usual relationships of time and space were reversed: instead of three spatial dimensions and a unidi­rectional dimension of time, there existed three time dimensions in which it was possible to move freely, and a single spatial direction along which movement could only be one-way. Hunt was still strug­gling to visualize what that might mean when VISAR informed him that the TWA shuttle from the West Coast had docked. Shortly afterward, Gina called to say that she was aboard the Vishnu. VISAR presented her as a head and shoulders superposed into Hunt’s visual system against the background of the cabin.

  “Welcome aboard,” Hunt greeted. “I see you’ve got your Thurien communicator.”

  “It’s incredible. Ma Bell’s going to have to learn some new tricks.”

  “I didn’t hear from you, so I assumed everything was going smoothly,” Hunt said. In fact, Mitzi, Caldwell’s secretary, had checked discreetly to make sure that Gina was booked on the flight.

  “It was a busy couple of days, but it went just like you said. You didn’t warn me that this would be like walking into a kaleidoscope.”

  “You get used to things like that with the Thuriens.”

  “Who else did you manage to get along, finally?”

  “Chris Danchekker, as hoped. And we’ve got two others: Duncan Watt, my deputy from Houston that I mentioned; and the other is one of Chris’s lab people, a girl called Sandy Holmes. She was with us on Ganymede.”

  “It didn’t work out too badly after all, then?”

  “Not badly at all, considering the time we had. But we can talk about all that when you get here.”

  “So where shall I meet you?”

  “There’s a lounge with a bar here, where the Terrans’ quarters are. I’ll see you there after you’ve gotten straightened out.”

  “How do I get there?”

  “VISAR will take care of it.”

  “Fine.” The face vanished.

  Hunt spent a few more minutes grappling with Ganymean notions of dimensionality, then left the cabin and went along to the mess area. A good crowd had collected since he passed through with Danchek­ker and the others. He threaded his way through to the bar and ordered a Scotch. The bartender’s name tag told him that the facility was provided by the Best Western hotels group.

  “Tell me, Nick, how does your company come to have a bar installed in an alien starship?” Hunt asked as he watched the drink being poured.

  “Oh, they figured there’ll be a pretty regular traffic building up, I guess. Probably not too much volume right now, but the publicity’s good.”

  “How did they get the franchise?”

  “Just asked for it, as far as I know.”

  Even with his knowledge of Ganymeans, Hunt was surprised. “As easy as that? Wasn’t there a big scramble with the competitors?”

  “Not really. I don’t think anyone else thought of it.”

  Hunt moved away, shaking his head. Snatches of conversation from around him caught his ear as he moved through the throng with his drink.

  “Think how many people from Earth will be there, say, a year from now. I tell you it’ll be a gold mine. . .

  ‘ja. Unt der tourists, also dey vill be going. Ve haff plans . . .

  “They just need to be told about Jesus.”

  “Just checkin’ out the scene there, I guess. Shit, it’s gotta be better’n Cleveland . .

  Hunt found an empty table near a far corner and sat idly watching the company. He wondered how many more of them had also come to be there on no better authority or without any h
igher dispensation than j mist having asked. If that was a foretaste of things to come, then a large part of the meddlesome systems of rules and restrictions by which one half of the world made it its business to approve, regulate, license, and control how the other half lived could collapse in sham­bles or be laughed out of existence, he reflected.

  It was funny, he thought as he watched, how many of the people talked too fast among themselves as they strove to act normally while suppressing what was probably the greatest excitement most of them had ever experienced. Appearances were so important to Terrans. Ganymeans had no defensive compulsion about maintaining images, and readily said how they felt about things. Their origins had given them no concept of domination by appearances, or any instinct for intimidation.