Read Online Ascendant Sun: A New Novel in the Saga of the Skolian Empire by Catherine Asaro - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Catherine Asaro
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chat among themselves using chemical messages. That let them form a crude picoweb which could interact with the picowebs of other series.
Decon meds had one goal: search and destroy. Like nano-thugs cruising the cellular neighborhood, they relentlessly analyzed anyone who entered their decon chamber, seeking contaminants that might endanger the ship. They compared what they found to their databases of allowed and forbidden species, and ran tests on unknowns. Then they tackled unwanted invaders and rumbled with them until they disposed of the intruder or fell apart trying. If any decon meds remained intact after they finished their work, they disintegrated into pieces the body could use or flush out of itself.
The meds in Kelric's body kept up his health, repaired his cells to delay his aging, and attacked unwanted chemicals. Both decon and health meds had to meet certain standards and should recognize one another as acceptable species. But what if standards had changed? For all Kelric knew, the decon meds might attack his mutated meds or the medicine Doctor Tarjan had given him to slow the mutation rate. His meds might retaliate with their own thuggery. The last thing he needed was nano-gang warfare in his body.
He floated with Maccar in the chamber, trying to relax. The captain monitored the decon process on a palmtop computer he unhooked from his belt.
Fortunately, the nano-thugs approved of Kelric. They only cleaned out a few species of bacteria. He and Maccar left the chamber, drifting weightless in the docking tube. They boarded a magcar, and it raced off into a smooth-sided tunnel like a glittering bullet hurtling down a shiny bore.
The car took them to the far end of the ship, where the hemispherical section capped the cylinder. They disembarked into an air lock. After they cycled through the air lock, they floated into the hemisphere, an area about one quarter kilometer in diameter. The ship's bridge.
Maccar's command chair hung "above" them, though up and down had no real meaning here, without gravity. The chair faced the forward curve of the hemisphere and had its back to the cylinder, giving a sense that the captain looked forward into space and the unknown. Of course, without the holoscreens on, they saw only the interior of the bridge. It glinted silver and black, studded with equipment. Consoles ridged its curve, their controls and screens glittering in a rainbow of lights.
Most captains spun the bridge for at least a portion of each shift, to provide a break from the weightless environment and to help stabilize the counter-rotating cylinder. Although the result bewildered some spacers, Kelric enjoyed the strange effects. If you imagined the cylinder's rotation axis extending into the bridge, it passed through the center of the hemisphere and pierced the hull forward of Maccar's chair. The pull of gravity increased with distance from the rotation axis. So right on top of the axis, you had no weight at all no matter how fast the ship rotated.
As you walked away from the rotation axis along the hull, gravity increased. "Down" always pointed radially out from the axis, so the inner surface of the hemisphere turned into a steep slope. Consoles jutted out like terraces. The slope gentled as you moved farther away from the point where the axis intersected the hemisphere, toward the back of the bridge, until at the "equator" where the bridge met the cylinder, the ground became level and gravity was full strength. If you looked "up," across the quarter-kilometer diameter of the bridge, you could see other crew members blithely walking around upside down on the "sky."
Right now Maccar's chair was suspended in the middle of the hemisphere, near the rotation axis, so even during rotation it would have almost no weight. However, the massive chair served as the terminus of a similarly massive robot arm that could easily move within the bridge.
Kelric and Maccar propelled off a bulkhead and flew through the bridge.
Decon meds had one goal: search and destroy. Like nano-thugs cruising the cellular neighborhood, they relentlessly analyzed anyone who entered their decon chamber, seeking contaminants that might endanger the ship. They compared what they found to their databases of allowed and forbidden species, and ran tests on unknowns. Then they tackled unwanted invaders and rumbled with them until they disposed of the intruder or fell apart trying. If any decon meds remained intact after they finished their work, they disintegrated into pieces the body could use or flush out of itself.
The meds in Kelric's body kept up his health, repaired his cells to delay his aging, and attacked unwanted chemicals. Both decon and health meds had to meet certain standards and should recognize one another as acceptable species. But what if standards had changed? For all Kelric knew, the decon meds might attack his mutated meds or the medicine Doctor Tarjan had given him to slow the mutation rate. His meds might retaliate with their own thuggery. The last thing he needed was nano-gang warfare in his body.
He floated with Maccar in the chamber, trying to relax. The captain monitored the decon process on a palmtop computer he unhooked from his belt.
Fortunately, the nano-thugs approved of Kelric. They only cleaned out a few species of bacteria. He and Maccar left the chamber, drifting weightless in the docking tube. They boarded a magcar, and it raced off into a smooth-sided tunnel like a glittering bullet hurtling down a shiny bore.
The car took them to the far end of the ship, where the hemispherical section capped the cylinder. They disembarked into an air lock. After they cycled through the air lock, they floated into the hemisphere, an area about one quarter kilometer in diameter. The ship's bridge.
Maccar's command chair hung "above" them, though up and down had no real meaning here, without gravity. The chair faced the forward curve of the hemisphere and had its back to the cylinder, giving a sense that the captain looked forward into space and the unknown. Of course, without the holoscreens on, they saw only the interior of the bridge. It glinted silver and black, studded with equipment. Consoles ridged its curve, their controls and screens glittering in a rainbow of lights.
Most captains spun the bridge for at least a portion of each shift, to provide a break from the weightless environment and to help stabilize the counter-rotating cylinder. Although the result bewildered some spacers, Kelric enjoyed the strange effects. If you imagined the cylinder's rotation axis extending into the bridge, it passed through the center of the hemisphere and pierced the hull forward of Maccar's chair. The pull of gravity increased with distance from the rotation axis. So right on top of the axis, you had no weight at all no matter how fast the ship rotated.
As you walked away from the rotation axis along the hull, gravity increased. "Down" always pointed radially out from the axis, so the inner surface of the hemisphere turned into a steep slope. Consoles jutted out like terraces. The slope gentled as you moved farther away from the point where the axis intersected the hemisphere, toward the back of the bridge, until at the "equator" where the bridge met the cylinder, the ground became level and gravity was full strength. If you looked "up," across the quarter-kilometer diameter of the bridge, you could see other crew members blithely walking around upside down on the "sky."
Right now Maccar's chair was suspended in the middle of the hemisphere, near the rotation axis, so even during rotation it would have almost no weight. However, the massive chair served as the terminus of a similarly massive robot arm that could easily move within the bridge.
Kelric and Maccar propelled off a bulkhead and flew through the bridge.
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