Read Online The Mammoth Book of SF Wars by Ian Watson [Ed], Ian Whates [Ed] - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Ian Watson [Ed], Ian Whates [Ed]
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the ground at an angle, and far, far above him, in the air towards which that angle pointed, something large and vague rested on that pylon. Obscured by mist and cloud, distorted by the curvature of the tiny lens though which he was forced to look at it, it was nothing meaningful. He reasoned the pylon led up to the ship. He could not see the ship; he concentrated on the pylon.
Gingerly, he extended a pseudopod. It touched the metal of the ship, through which the stabilizing field ran. There was an unknown danger here, but it hadn’t seemed likely to Intelligence that the field would affect non-metallic substances.
It didn’t. The pseudopod touched the metal of the ship, and nothing untoward happened. He drew it back, and cycled an entirely new fluid through the pseudopods. Hairline excretory channels opened on their soles, blown clean by the pressure. The pads flattened and increased in area. He moved forward towards the pylon again, and this time he began to climb it, held by air pressure on the pads and the surface tension on their wet soles. He began, then, at the end of a week’s journey, to climb upon the ship no other aggression of Man’s had ever reached. By the time he was a thousand feet up, he dared look only through the fore ports.
Now he moved in a universe of sound. The leg thrummed and quivered, so gently that he doubted anyone in the ship could feel it. But he was not in the ship; he was where the thrumming was. It invaded his gritted teeth and put an intolerable itching deep into his ears. This fifty-five miles had to be made without stop for rest; he could not, in fact, take his hands from the controls. He was not sure that he shouldn’t be grateful – he would have gouged his ears with his nails, surely, if he had been free to work at them.
He was past laughter of any kind now – but exultation sustained him even when, near the very peak of his climb, he came to the rat guard.
He had studied this problem with a model. No one had tried to tell him what it might be like to solve it at this altitude, with the wind and mist upon him.
The rat guard was a collar of metal, cone-shaped and inverted downward, circling the leg. The leg here was several miles in diameter; the rat guard was a canopy several yards thick and several hundred feet wide from its joining at the leg to its lip. It was designed to prevent exactly what was happening – the attempted entry of a pest.
Runner extended the carrier’s pseudopods as far and wide as they would go. He pumped more coagulant into the fluid that leaked almost imperceptibly out of their soles, and began to make his way, head downward, along the descending slope of the rat guard’s outer face. The carrier swayed and stretched at the plastic membranes. He neutralized the coagulant in each foot in turn, slid it forward, fastened it again, and proceeded. After three hours he was at the lip, and dangling by the carrier’s forelegs until he had succeeded in billowing one of the rear pads onto the lip as well.
And when he had, by this patient trial and error, scrambled successfully onto the rat guard’s welcome upward face, he found that he was not past laughing after all. He shouted it; the carrier’s interior frothed with it, and even the itching in his ears was lost. Then he began to move upward again.
Not too far away, the leg entered the ship’s hull. There was an opening at least as large as the carrier needed. It was only a well; up here, the gleaming pistons that controlled the extension of the leg hung burnished in the gloom, but there was no entry to the ship itself. Nor did he need or want it.
He had reasoned long ago that whatever inhabited this ship must be as tired, as anxious, as beset any human being. He needed no new miseries to borrow. He wanted only to find a good place to attach his bomb, set the fuse and go. Before the leg, its muscles cut, collapsed upon the aliens’ hope of ever returning to whatever peace they dreamed of.
When he
Gingerly, he extended a pseudopod. It touched the metal of the ship, through which the stabilizing field ran. There was an unknown danger here, but it hadn’t seemed likely to Intelligence that the field would affect non-metallic substances.
It didn’t. The pseudopod touched the metal of the ship, and nothing untoward happened. He drew it back, and cycled an entirely new fluid through the pseudopods. Hairline excretory channels opened on their soles, blown clean by the pressure. The pads flattened and increased in area. He moved forward towards the pylon again, and this time he began to climb it, held by air pressure on the pads and the surface tension on their wet soles. He began, then, at the end of a week’s journey, to climb upon the ship no other aggression of Man’s had ever reached. By the time he was a thousand feet up, he dared look only through the fore ports.
Now he moved in a universe of sound. The leg thrummed and quivered, so gently that he doubted anyone in the ship could feel it. But he was not in the ship; he was where the thrumming was. It invaded his gritted teeth and put an intolerable itching deep into his ears. This fifty-five miles had to be made without stop for rest; he could not, in fact, take his hands from the controls. He was not sure that he shouldn’t be grateful – he would have gouged his ears with his nails, surely, if he had been free to work at them.
He was past laughter of any kind now – but exultation sustained him even when, near the very peak of his climb, he came to the rat guard.
He had studied this problem with a model. No one had tried to tell him what it might be like to solve it at this altitude, with the wind and mist upon him.
The rat guard was a collar of metal, cone-shaped and inverted downward, circling the leg. The leg here was several miles in diameter; the rat guard was a canopy several yards thick and several hundred feet wide from its joining at the leg to its lip. It was designed to prevent exactly what was happening – the attempted entry of a pest.
Runner extended the carrier’s pseudopods as far and wide as they would go. He pumped more coagulant into the fluid that leaked almost imperceptibly out of their soles, and began to make his way, head downward, along the descending slope of the rat guard’s outer face. The carrier swayed and stretched at the plastic membranes. He neutralized the coagulant in each foot in turn, slid it forward, fastened it again, and proceeded. After three hours he was at the lip, and dangling by the carrier’s forelegs until he had succeeded in billowing one of the rear pads onto the lip as well.
And when he had, by this patient trial and error, scrambled successfully onto the rat guard’s welcome upward face, he found that he was not past laughing after all. He shouted it; the carrier’s interior frothed with it, and even the itching in his ears was lost. Then he began to move upward again.
Not too far away, the leg entered the ship’s hull. There was an opening at least as large as the carrier needed. It was only a well; up here, the gleaming pistons that controlled the extension of the leg hung burnished in the gloom, but there was no entry to the ship itself. Nor did he need or want it.
He had reasoned long ago that whatever inhabited this ship must be as tired, as anxious, as beset any human being. He needed no new miseries to borrow. He wanted only to find a good place to attach his bomb, set the fuse and go. Before the leg, its muscles cut, collapsed upon the aliens’ hope of ever returning to whatever peace they dreamed of.
When he
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