Read Online Bowl of Heaven by Gregory Benford and Larry Niven - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Gregory Benford and Larry Niven
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of … Cupworld? She didn’t like Redwing’s term but couldn’t think of a better one. No mirrors there. Continents, yes, cloud-shrouded and green. Deserts as well, sandy and bright under the unending glare of a star that never set. Indeed, never set on all this colossal construction. And what lives here?
Her hands were trembling even more.
This immensity was impossible, too much; Beth looked away.
“They’ve made a world … a habitat out of the bowl,” Mayra said wonderingly. “A vast green thing.”
Beth took a long breath. For safety— pilots must be focused— she took her hands off the command boards.
Cliff thumbed up a display board. “We worked up a sketch to get the essentials of this thing in one view. Have a look.”
She studied the line drawing, feeling woozy. “Yes, right. You’ve labeled the regions out from the axis with the equivalent gravs…”
“Yup, and the clumps in the edge plain are supposed to be topological features. Only my splotches are bigger than whole planets, a lot bigger.” He waved his hands helplessly, grinning. But he frowned, too, worried at her fatigue.
“Right, hard to grasp the scale—this is inconceivable, but a sketch helps. You caught how the jet bulges out near the star.”
More hand waving. “Looks to me like the magnetic fields in it are getting control, slimming it down into a slowly expanding straw…”
“A wok with a neon jet shooting out the back … and living room on the inside, more territory than you could get on the planets of a thousand solar systems. Pinned to it with centrifugal grav…”
“They don’t live on the whole bowl. Just the rim. Most of it is just mirrors. Even so, it’s more than a habitat,” said Cliff. “It’s accelerating. That jet! This whole thing is going somewhere. A ship that is a star. A ship star. We humans only built a star ship.”
* * *
There wasn’t much redundancy among SunSeeker ’s auxiliary boats. Designs were modular: tanks or skeletal cargo carriers could substitute for passenger shells.
There were two fliers, Hawking and Dyson, twin lifting body designs. “We can’t use reentry vehicles,” Redwing decided. “We’d tear holes in whatever’s holding the air in.”
Abduss said, “Captain, these are the tankers.”
“ Ceres and Eros are tankers, too, for mining asteroids. We just add the tank,” Redwing said.
Mayra said, “There aren’t any asteroids or comets. The locals must have cleaned out everything that might have threatened their habitats, or even used it all to build the bowl.”
“Really?”
“We haven’t found anything at all,” Mayra said.
“What, in four days? Four days to do a thousand years’ worth of astronomy in a brand-new solar system?”
The Wickramsinghs were silent before Redwing’s sarcasm. Indeed, the autoinventory had found no asteroids. “It’s been vacuumed clean.”
“Um,” Redwing said. “So nothing hits the bowl.”
Cliff listened with half his attention; this wasn’t his business yet. The automatic search cameras were smart, quick. Probably Mayra was right: The whole solar system had been scoured long ago. But he didn’t want to cross Redwing over a minor point; best to husband his credit with the irascible captain. The man had gone without much sleep, too. Cliff had found him pacing the corridors, checking and rechecking ship status, when he was supposed to be asleep.
He wished he had someone else to talk to about this, but the Wickramsinghs kept their own counsel. And Beth was sleeping. She’d done a lot of that, still recovering from cold sleep and the grueling flight through the Knothole.
Redwing chopped air with his hand. “Okay, for the moment we’ll take that as given. No asteroids, no comets. We’ll put a tank on Eros . It can carry water, mine it out of a comet, even—and it can land . Landing legs and a high-thrust fusion motor. We thought there’d be moons.”
Mayra asked blandly, “Where are you planning
Her hands were trembling even more.
This immensity was impossible, too much; Beth looked away.
“They’ve made a world … a habitat out of the bowl,” Mayra said wonderingly. “A vast green thing.”
Beth took a long breath. For safety— pilots must be focused— she took her hands off the command boards.
Cliff thumbed up a display board. “We worked up a sketch to get the essentials of this thing in one view. Have a look.”
She studied the line drawing, feeling woozy. “Yes, right. You’ve labeled the regions out from the axis with the equivalent gravs…”
“Yup, and the clumps in the edge plain are supposed to be topological features. Only my splotches are bigger than whole planets, a lot bigger.” He waved his hands helplessly, grinning. But he frowned, too, worried at her fatigue.
“Right, hard to grasp the scale—this is inconceivable, but a sketch helps. You caught how the jet bulges out near the star.”
More hand waving. “Looks to me like the magnetic fields in it are getting control, slimming it down into a slowly expanding straw…”
“A wok with a neon jet shooting out the back … and living room on the inside, more territory than you could get on the planets of a thousand solar systems. Pinned to it with centrifugal grav…”
“They don’t live on the whole bowl. Just the rim. Most of it is just mirrors. Even so, it’s more than a habitat,” said Cliff. “It’s accelerating. That jet! This whole thing is going somewhere. A ship that is a star. A ship star. We humans only built a star ship.”
* * *
There wasn’t much redundancy among SunSeeker ’s auxiliary boats. Designs were modular: tanks or skeletal cargo carriers could substitute for passenger shells.
There were two fliers, Hawking and Dyson, twin lifting body designs. “We can’t use reentry vehicles,” Redwing decided. “We’d tear holes in whatever’s holding the air in.”
Abduss said, “Captain, these are the tankers.”
“ Ceres and Eros are tankers, too, for mining asteroids. We just add the tank,” Redwing said.
Mayra said, “There aren’t any asteroids or comets. The locals must have cleaned out everything that might have threatened their habitats, or even used it all to build the bowl.”
“Really?”
“We haven’t found anything at all,” Mayra said.
“What, in four days? Four days to do a thousand years’ worth of astronomy in a brand-new solar system?”
The Wickramsinghs were silent before Redwing’s sarcasm. Indeed, the autoinventory had found no asteroids. “It’s been vacuumed clean.”
“Um,” Redwing said. “So nothing hits the bowl.”
Cliff listened with half his attention; this wasn’t his business yet. The automatic search cameras were smart, quick. Probably Mayra was right: The whole solar system had been scoured long ago. But he didn’t want to cross Redwing over a minor point; best to husband his credit with the irascible captain. The man had gone without much sleep, too. Cliff had found him pacing the corridors, checking and rechecking ship status, when he was supposed to be asleep.
He wished he had someone else to talk to about this, but the Wickramsinghs kept their own counsel. And Beth was sleeping. She’d done a lot of that, still recovering from cold sleep and the grueling flight through the Knothole.
Redwing chopped air with his hand. “Okay, for the moment we’ll take that as given. No asteroids, no comets. We’ll put a tank on Eros . It can carry water, mine it out of a comet, even—and it can land . Landing legs and a high-thrust fusion motor. We thought there’d be moons.”
Mayra asked blandly, “Where are you planning
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