Alastair J Archibald Grimm Dragonblaster 03 Questor (v5.0)
Gordon Dickson Space Winners
Christopher Moore NajgśÂupszy AniośÂ (2)
GR470. Greene Jennifer PocaśÂunek ksićÂcia
2006 05. Paryśź dla dwojga 3. Shalvis Jill Sen o Paryśźu
045. Mortimer Carole Szansa na miśÂośÂćÂ
Harry Turtledove V
Courths Mahler Cierniowy Szlak
Uleczyć nieuleczalne MichaśÂ Tombak
77.Fiolki sa niebieskie .JAMES PATTERSON
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machinery of the Infrastructure. Even if the khorkoi apparatus was beginning to fail, it was still more than
capable of attending to the garbage left behind by its users. But occasionally, pieces lingered in the
system (as if the walls had indigestion?), waiting to be swept up by Qilian's ships, and eventually brought
home to this moon.
As often as not, though, it was a trivial matter to classify the consignments, requiring only a glance at their
contents. The work became so routine, in fact-and the quantity of consignments so high-that eventually I
had no choice but to take a step back from hands-on analysis. I assembled six teams and let them get on
with it, requiring that they report back to me only when they had something of note: a new empire, or
something odd from one of those we already knew about.
That was when the golden egg fell into our hands. It was in the seventh month of my service under Qilian,
and I immediately knew that it originated from a culture not yet known to us. Perhaps it was a ship, or
part of one. The outer hull was almost entirely covered in a quilt of golden platelets, overlapping in the
manner of fish scales. The only parts not covered by the platelets were the dark apertures of sensors and
thruster ports, and a small, eye-shaped area on one side of the teardrop that we quickly identified as a
door.
Fearing that it might damage the other relics if it exploded under our examinations, I ordered that the
analysis of the egg take place in a different part of the mining structure. Soon, though, my concern shifted
to the welfare of the egg's occupants. We knew that there were beings inside it, even if we could not be
sure if they were human. Scans had illuminated ghostly structures inside the hull: the intestinal complexity
of propulsion subsystems, fuel lines, and tanks packed ingeniously tight, the fatty tissue of insulating
layers, the bony divisions of armored partitions, the cartilaginous detailing of furniture and life-support
equipment. There were even ranks of couches, with eight crew still reclining in them. Dead or in
suspended animation, it was impossible to tell. All we could see was their bones, a suggestion of
humanoid skeletons, and there was no movement of those bones to suggest respiration.
We got the door open easily enough. It was somewhat like breaking into a safe, but once we had
worked out the underlying mechanism and the curiously alien logic that underpinned its design-it
presented no insurmountable difficulties. Gratifyingly, there was only a mild gust of equalizing pressure
when the door hinged wide, and none of the sensors arrayed around the egg detected any harmful gases.
As far as we could tell, it was filled with an oxygen-nitrogen mix only slightly different from that aboard
our own ships.
"What now?" Qilian asked, fingering the patch of hair beneath his lip.
"We'll send machines aboard now," I replied. "Just to be safe, in case there are any booby traps inside."
He placed a heavy, thick-fingered hand on my shoulder. "What say we skip the machines and just take a
look inside ourselves?" His tone was playful. "Not afraid, are we, Yellow Dog?"
"Of course not," I answered.
"There's no need to be. I'll go in first, just in case there are surprises."
We walked across the floor, through the cordon of sensors, to the base of the attenuated metal staircase
that led to the open door. The robots scuttled out of the way. My staff exchanged concerned glances,
aware that we were deviating from a protocol we had spent weeks thrashing out to the last detail. I
waved down their qualms.
Inside, as we already knew from the scans, the egg was compartmented into several small chambers,
with the crew in the middle section. The rear part contained most of the propulsion and life-support
equipment. Up front, in the sharp end, was what appeared to be a kind of pressurized cargo space. The
egg still had power, judging by the presence of interior lighting, although the air aboard it was very cold
and still. It was exceedingly cramped, requiring me to duck and Qilian to stoop almost double. To pass
from one compartment to the next, we had to crawl on our hands and knees through doors that were
barely large enough for children. The external door was larger than the others, presumably because it had
to admit a crew member wearing a spacesuit or some other encumbrance.
Qilian was the first to see the occupants. I was only a few seconds behind him, but those seconds [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
