Read Online Final Inquiries by Roger MacBride Allen - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Roger MacBride Allen
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sprinkling of smeared, distorted, off-color stars to fill up the sky between the horizon and the near zenith. It took Jamie a moment to figure it out. The Eminent Concordance had turned around, pointing her aft end toward the direction of travel in order to decelerate. The ship was flying backwards, and Jamie was looking back the way they had come. The view of the stars was red shifted when looking behind.
He barely had time to understand the spectacle before it disappeared. Suddenly the sky began to change, the stars spreading out from the center of the view, expanding out of their smeared distortion and color shifts, back toward the calm and familiar stars--but in a new pattern, the constellations of Center's sky completely gone. They had slowed down from near light-speed in a matter of seconds. A human-built ship--or most Elder Race ships--would have required days or weeks.
Almost before the stars had regained their normal appearance, the Eminent Concordance pivoted around to a new heading.
At least the sight of the stars wheeling around in the sky was comprehensible. They might not have seen this sky before, but they had seen other skies do more or less the same thing. What they were not ready for was the sight of the planet Tifinda coming into view. The Vixa home world was a famously gaudy sight, and Jamie had seen endless images of it displayed in and on books, posters, video-walls, and so on. But none of those versions measured up to the real thing.
They were close, startlingly close to the planet. Jamie had assumed the paranoically safety-minded Greveltra would have vectored the massive ship into a high and distant parking orbit, just to keep that impossibly powerful propulsion system well away from populated areas. Instead, they were close enough to see the structure of the Stationary Ring on the daylight side of the planet, and the running lights of the Ring on Tifinda's nightside. They were directly over one of Tifinda's poles--Jamie had no way of telling north or south--and therefore looking straight down at the planet, with the day-and nightsides visible. The nightside of black and deep blues, set with the glowing lights of cities, made a striking contrast with the blue-white-brown-and-green world of dayside. The gleaming silver-bright Ring hung round the planet like a gleaming diadem inset with glittering jewels.
The Ring encircled Tifinda precisely at the altitude of the planet's spin-stationary orbit, the point where the orbital velocity exactly matched the planet's rate of rotation. The engineering effort must have been immense, and hideously complex and expensive, but the result was simple: The Ring, as seen from the surface, was utterly motionless.
It was linked to the surface by the Six Columns, spaced equally around the planetary equator. The columns themselves were far too slender to be visible even at as close a range as this one, but it was easy to tell where they were. Gigantic, glittering domed-over space habitats were embedded in the Ring over each column, and huge, gleaming counterweights, metallic spheres the size of small asteroids, rode on extensions of the columns, several thousand kilometers farther out from the planet itself.
"Sort of makes the Grand Elevator at Metran look like nothing at all, doesn't it?" Jamie asked.
"It sure does," Hannah agreed. "And Metran's Elevator impressed the hell out of us not so long ago. I read up on elevators after that one, and of course, there was a lot of material about Tifinda. The overall structure is beyond huge. According to most calculations, the interior living spaces of the Stationary Ring, plus the Column Cities, plus all the other structures hanging off the Ring add up to a total habitable area substantially larger than what there is on the planet's surface."
"That's not just grandiose," said Jamie. "That's borderline insane. Why the devil could they possibly need that much space? Is their population that big? I thought the Elders sneered at
He barely had time to understand the spectacle before it disappeared. Suddenly the sky began to change, the stars spreading out from the center of the view, expanding out of their smeared distortion and color shifts, back toward the calm and familiar stars--but in a new pattern, the constellations of Center's sky completely gone. They had slowed down from near light-speed in a matter of seconds. A human-built ship--or most Elder Race ships--would have required days or weeks.
Almost before the stars had regained their normal appearance, the Eminent Concordance pivoted around to a new heading.
At least the sight of the stars wheeling around in the sky was comprehensible. They might not have seen this sky before, but they had seen other skies do more or less the same thing. What they were not ready for was the sight of the planet Tifinda coming into view. The Vixa home world was a famously gaudy sight, and Jamie had seen endless images of it displayed in and on books, posters, video-walls, and so on. But none of those versions measured up to the real thing.
They were close, startlingly close to the planet. Jamie had assumed the paranoically safety-minded Greveltra would have vectored the massive ship into a high and distant parking orbit, just to keep that impossibly powerful propulsion system well away from populated areas. Instead, they were close enough to see the structure of the Stationary Ring on the daylight side of the planet, and the running lights of the Ring on Tifinda's nightside. They were directly over one of Tifinda's poles--Jamie had no way of telling north or south--and therefore looking straight down at the planet, with the day-and nightsides visible. The nightside of black and deep blues, set with the glowing lights of cities, made a striking contrast with the blue-white-brown-and-green world of dayside. The gleaming silver-bright Ring hung round the planet like a gleaming diadem inset with glittering jewels.
The Ring encircled Tifinda precisely at the altitude of the planet's spin-stationary orbit, the point where the orbital velocity exactly matched the planet's rate of rotation. The engineering effort must have been immense, and hideously complex and expensive, but the result was simple: The Ring, as seen from the surface, was utterly motionless.
It was linked to the surface by the Six Columns, spaced equally around the planetary equator. The columns themselves were far too slender to be visible even at as close a range as this one, but it was easy to tell where they were. Gigantic, glittering domed-over space habitats were embedded in the Ring over each column, and huge, gleaming counterweights, metallic spheres the size of small asteroids, rode on extensions of the columns, several thousand kilometers farther out from the planet itself.
"Sort of makes the Grand Elevator at Metran look like nothing at all, doesn't it?" Jamie asked.
"It sure does," Hannah agreed. "And Metran's Elevator impressed the hell out of us not so long ago. I read up on elevators after that one, and of course, there was a lot of material about Tifinda. The overall structure is beyond huge. According to most calculations, the interior living spaces of the Stationary Ring, plus the Column Cities, plus all the other structures hanging off the Ring add up to a total habitable area substantially larger than what there is on the planet's surface."
"That's not just grandiose," said Jamie. "That's borderline insane. Why the devil could they possibly need that much space? Is their population that big? I thought the Elders sneered at
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