Read Online Hyperion by Dan Simmons - Free Book Online
Authors: Dan Simmons
Tags: General Interest
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me to see this sight.
Day 8 7:
Tuk and I emerged from the smoldering northeastern edge of the flame forest at noon yesterday, promptly set up camp by the edge of a small stream, and slept for eighteen hours straight; making up for three nights of no sleep and two grueling days moving without rest through a nightmare of flame and ash. Everywhere we looked as we approached the hogback ridge that marked the terminus of the forest, we could see seedpods and cones burst open with new life for the various fire species that had died in the conflagration of the previous two nights. Five of our arrestor rods still functioned, although neither Tuk nor l was eager to test them another night. Our surviving packbrid collapsed and died the instant the heavy load was lifted off its back.
I awoke this morning at dawn to the sound of running water. I followed the small stream a kilometer to the northeast, following a deepening in its sound, until suddenly it dropped from sight.
The Cleft! I had almost forgotten our destination.
This morning, stumbling through the fog, leaping from one wet rock to another alongside the widening stream, I took a leap to a final boulder, teetered there, regained my balance, and looked straight down above a waterfall that dropped almost three thousand meters to mist, rock, and river far below.
The Cleft was not carved out of the rising plateau as was the legendary Grand Canyon on Old Earth or World Crack on Hebron. In spite of its active oceans and seemingly earthlike continents, Hyperion is tectonically quite dead; more like Mars, Lusus, or Armaghast in its total lack of continental drift. And like Mars and Lusus, HYperion is afflicted with its Deep Ice Ages, although here the periodicity is spread to thirty-seven million years by the long ellipse of the currently absent binary dwarf. The comlog compares the Cleft to the pre-tCrraformed Mariner Valley on Mars, both being caused by the weakening of crust through periodic freeze and thaw over the aeons, followed by the flow of subterranean rivers such as the Kans. Then the massive collapse, running like a long scar through the moun-tainons wing of the continent Aquila.
Tuk joined me as I stood on the edge of the Cleft. 1 was naked, rinsing the ash smell from my traveling clothes and cassock. I splashed cold water over my pale flesh and laughed out loud as the echoes of Tuk's shouts came back from the North Wall two thirds of a kilometer away. Because of the nature of the crust collapse, Tuk and I stood far out on an overhang that hid the South Wall below us. Although perilously exposed, we assumed that the rocky cornice which had defied gravity for millions of years would last a few more hours as we bathed, relaxed, shouted echoing hallos until we were hoarse, and generally acted like children liberated from school. Tuk confessed that he had never penetrated the full width of the flame forest- nor known anyone who had in this season – and announced that, now that the tesla trees were becoming fully dozen bolts of lightning from the nearest tesla arced to the hapless animal. For a mad second I could have sworn! saw the beast's skeleton glowing through boiling flesh and then it spasmed high into the air and simply ceased to be.
For three hours we have watched the end of the world.
Two of the arrestor rods have fallen but the other eight continue to function. Tuk and I huddle in the hot cave of our tent, osmosis masks filtering enough c°°! oxygen out of the superheated, smoky air to allow us to breathe. Only the lack of undergrowth and Tuk's skill in placing our tent away from other targets and near the sheltering bestos plants have allowed us to survive. That and the eight whiskered-alloy rods that stand between us and eternity.
'They seem to be holding up well!" I shout to Tuk over the hiss and crackle, crash and split of the storm.
'Dey be made to stand de hour, mebbe two,' grunts my guide. 'Any time, mebbe sooner, dey fuse, we die."
I
Day 8 7:
Tuk and I emerged from the smoldering northeastern edge of the flame forest at noon yesterday, promptly set up camp by the edge of a small stream, and slept for eighteen hours straight; making up for three nights of no sleep and two grueling days moving without rest through a nightmare of flame and ash. Everywhere we looked as we approached the hogback ridge that marked the terminus of the forest, we could see seedpods and cones burst open with new life for the various fire species that had died in the conflagration of the previous two nights. Five of our arrestor rods still functioned, although neither Tuk nor l was eager to test them another night. Our surviving packbrid collapsed and died the instant the heavy load was lifted off its back.
I awoke this morning at dawn to the sound of running water. I followed the small stream a kilometer to the northeast, following a deepening in its sound, until suddenly it dropped from sight.
The Cleft! I had almost forgotten our destination.
This morning, stumbling through the fog, leaping from one wet rock to another alongside the widening stream, I took a leap to a final boulder, teetered there, regained my balance, and looked straight down above a waterfall that dropped almost three thousand meters to mist, rock, and river far below.
The Cleft was not carved out of the rising plateau as was the legendary Grand Canyon on Old Earth or World Crack on Hebron. In spite of its active oceans and seemingly earthlike continents, Hyperion is tectonically quite dead; more like Mars, Lusus, or Armaghast in its total lack of continental drift. And like Mars and Lusus, HYperion is afflicted with its Deep Ice Ages, although here the periodicity is spread to thirty-seven million years by the long ellipse of the currently absent binary dwarf. The comlog compares the Cleft to the pre-tCrraformed Mariner Valley on Mars, both being caused by the weakening of crust through periodic freeze and thaw over the aeons, followed by the flow of subterranean rivers such as the Kans. Then the massive collapse, running like a long scar through the moun-tainons wing of the continent Aquila.
Tuk joined me as I stood on the edge of the Cleft. 1 was naked, rinsing the ash smell from my traveling clothes and cassock. I splashed cold water over my pale flesh and laughed out loud as the echoes of Tuk's shouts came back from the North Wall two thirds of a kilometer away. Because of the nature of the crust collapse, Tuk and I stood far out on an overhang that hid the South Wall below us. Although perilously exposed, we assumed that the rocky cornice which had defied gravity for millions of years would last a few more hours as we bathed, relaxed, shouted echoing hallos until we were hoarse, and generally acted like children liberated from school. Tuk confessed that he had never penetrated the full width of the flame forest- nor known anyone who had in this season – and announced that, now that the tesla trees were becoming fully dozen bolts of lightning from the nearest tesla arced to the hapless animal. For a mad second I could have sworn! saw the beast's skeleton glowing through boiling flesh and then it spasmed high into the air and simply ceased to be.
For three hours we have watched the end of the world.
Two of the arrestor rods have fallen but the other eight continue to function. Tuk and I huddle in the hot cave of our tent, osmosis masks filtering enough c°°! oxygen out of the superheated, smoky air to allow us to breathe. Only the lack of undergrowth and Tuk's skill in placing our tent away from other targets and near the sheltering bestos plants have allowed us to survive. That and the eight whiskered-alloy rods that stand between us and eternity.
'They seem to be holding up well!" I shout to Tuk over the hiss and crackle, crash and split of the storm.
'Dey be made to stand de hour, mebbe two,' grunts my guide. 'Any time, mebbe sooner, dey fuse, we die."
I
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