[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
neck to tie in front like a kind of a necklace-getting ready for the launch,
you see. She leaned against my lips. "Khuligan." She sighed. "But not bad
khuligan."
The hotel wasn't really a fleabag. They had given us a comfortable suite on
the top floor, looking over the lake and the loop. Besides, we would only be
in it for a few hours. I left Essie to key in her programs on the hotel PV
screen while I wandered over to the window, telling myself~ indulgently, that
I wasn't really a hooligan. But that wasn't true, because it certainly was not
the act of a responsible senior citizen of wealth and substance to skylark off
into interstellar space just for the glamour and excitement of it.
It occurred to me then that Essie might not be taking quite that view of my
motives. She might think I was after something else.
It then occurred to me that maybe my own view was wrong. Was it really the
Heechee I was looking for? Sure it was, or anyway could be; everybody was
desperately curious about the Heechee. But not everybody had left something
else out in interstellar space. Was it possible that somewhere in the down-
deep hidden part of my mind, what was driving me out and on was the hope that
somehow, somewhere, I might find that misplaced thing again? I knew what the
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ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
thing was. I knew where I had left it. What I didn't know was what I would do
with it-or, more accurately, her-if I found her again.
And then I felt a sort of quivery not-quite-pain in my middle. It had nothing
to do with my two point three meters of new gut. What it had to do with was
the hope, or the fear, that somehow Gelle-Klara Moynlin might indeed turn up
in my life again. There was more emotion left over there than I had realized.
It made my eyes tear, so the spidery launch structure out the window seemed to
ripple in my sight.
But there were no tears in my eyes.
And it wasn't an optical illusion. "My God!" I shouted. "Essie!" And she
hurried over to stand beside me and look at the tiny flare of light from a
capsule on the launch run, and the shaking, shuddering of the whole thread-
thin structure. Then there was the noise-a single faint blast like a distant
cannon shot, and then the lower, slower, longer thunder of the immense loop
tearing itself apart. "My God," Essie echoed faintly, clutching my arm.
"Terrorist?"
And then she answered herself. "Of course terrorist," she said bitterly. "Who
else could be so vile?"
I had opened our windows to get a good look at the lake and the loop; good
thing, because that meant they weren't blown in. Others in the hotel were not
so lucky. The airport itself wasn't touched, not counting the occasional
aircraft sent flying because it wasn't tied down. But the airport officials
were scared. They didn't know whether the destruction of the launch loop was
an isolated incident of terrorist sabotage, or maybe the beginnings of a
revolution-no one seemed to think, ever, that it might have been just a simple
accident. It was scary, all right. There's a hell of a lot of kinetic energy
stored in a Lofstrom loop, over twenty kilometers of iron ribbon, weighing
about five thousand tons, moving at twelve kilometers a second. Out of
curiosity I asked Albert later and he reported that it took 3.6 x lO'~ Joules
to pump it up. And when one collapses, all those Joules come out at once, one
way or another.
I asked Albert later because I couldn't ask him then. Naturally, the first
thing I did was to try to' key him up, or any other data-retrieval or
information program that could tell me what was going on. The comm circuits
were jammed; we were cut off. The broadcast PV was still working, though, so
we stood and watched that mushroom cloud grow and listened to damage reports.
One shuttle had been actually accelerating on the ribbon when it blew-that was
the first explosion, perhaps because it had carried a bomb. Three others had
been in the loading bypass. More than two hundred human beings were now
hamburger, not counting the ones they hadn't counted yet who had been working
on the launcher itself, or had been in the duty-free shops and bars underneath
it, or maybe just out for a stroll nearby. "I wish I could get Albert," I
grumbled to Essie.
"As to that, dear Robin," she began hesitantly, but didn't finish, because
there was a knock on the door; would the señor and the señora come at once to
the Bolivar Room, por favor, as there was a matter of the gravest emergency.
The matter of the gravest emergency was a police checkup, and you never saw
such a checking of passports. The Bolivar Room was one of those function
things that they divide up for meetings and open for grand banquets, and one
partitioned-off part of it was filled with turistas like us, many of them [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl ocenkijessi.opx.pl
neck to tie in front like a kind of a necklace-getting ready for the launch,
you see. She leaned against my lips. "Khuligan." She sighed. "But not bad
khuligan."
The hotel wasn't really a fleabag. They had given us a comfortable suite on
the top floor, looking over the lake and the loop. Besides, we would only be
in it for a few hours. I left Essie to key in her programs on the hotel PV
screen while I wandered over to the window, telling myself~ indulgently, that
I wasn't really a hooligan. But that wasn't true, because it certainly was not
the act of a responsible senior citizen of wealth and substance to skylark off
into interstellar space just for the glamour and excitement of it.
It occurred to me then that Essie might not be taking quite that view of my
motives. She might think I was after something else.
It then occurred to me that maybe my own view was wrong. Was it really the
Heechee I was looking for? Sure it was, or anyway could be; everybody was
desperately curious about the Heechee. But not everybody had left something
else out in interstellar space. Was it possible that somewhere in the down-
deep hidden part of my mind, what was driving me out and on was the hope that
somehow, somewhere, I might find that misplaced thing again? I knew what the
Page 76
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
thing was. I knew where I had left it. What I didn't know was what I would do
with it-or, more accurately, her-if I found her again.
And then I felt a sort of quivery not-quite-pain in my middle. It had nothing
to do with my two point three meters of new gut. What it had to do with was
the hope, or the fear, that somehow Gelle-Klara Moynlin might indeed turn up
in my life again. There was more emotion left over there than I had realized.
It made my eyes tear, so the spidery launch structure out the window seemed to
ripple in my sight.
But there were no tears in my eyes.
And it wasn't an optical illusion. "My God!" I shouted. "Essie!" And she
hurried over to stand beside me and look at the tiny flare of light from a
capsule on the launch run, and the shaking, shuddering of the whole thread-
thin structure. Then there was the noise-a single faint blast like a distant
cannon shot, and then the lower, slower, longer thunder of the immense loop
tearing itself apart. "My God," Essie echoed faintly, clutching my arm.
"Terrorist?"
And then she answered herself. "Of course terrorist," she said bitterly. "Who
else could be so vile?"
I had opened our windows to get a good look at the lake and the loop; good
thing, because that meant they weren't blown in. Others in the hotel were not
so lucky. The airport itself wasn't touched, not counting the occasional
aircraft sent flying because it wasn't tied down. But the airport officials
were scared. They didn't know whether the destruction of the launch loop was
an isolated incident of terrorist sabotage, or maybe the beginnings of a
revolution-no one seemed to think, ever, that it might have been just a simple
accident. It was scary, all right. There's a hell of a lot of kinetic energy
stored in a Lofstrom loop, over twenty kilometers of iron ribbon, weighing
about five thousand tons, moving at twelve kilometers a second. Out of
curiosity I asked Albert later and he reported that it took 3.6 x lO'~ Joules
to pump it up. And when one collapses, all those Joules come out at once, one
way or another.
I asked Albert later because I couldn't ask him then. Naturally, the first
thing I did was to try to' key him up, or any other data-retrieval or
information program that could tell me what was going on. The comm circuits
were jammed; we were cut off. The broadcast PV was still working, though, so
we stood and watched that mushroom cloud grow and listened to damage reports.
One shuttle had been actually accelerating on the ribbon when it blew-that was
the first explosion, perhaps because it had carried a bomb. Three others had
been in the loading bypass. More than two hundred human beings were now
hamburger, not counting the ones they hadn't counted yet who had been working
on the launcher itself, or had been in the duty-free shops and bars underneath
it, or maybe just out for a stroll nearby. "I wish I could get Albert," I
grumbled to Essie.
"As to that, dear Robin," she began hesitantly, but didn't finish, because
there was a knock on the door; would the señor and the señora come at once to
the Bolivar Room, por favor, as there was a matter of the gravest emergency.
The matter of the gravest emergency was a police checkup, and you never saw
such a checking of passports. The Bolivar Room was one of those function
things that they divide up for meetings and open for grand banquets, and one
partitioned-off part of it was filled with turistas like us, many of them [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]