Jeffrey A. Carver - The Chaos Chronicles 3 - The Infinite Sea

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Books by Jeffrey A. Carver
Seas of Ernathe
*Star Rigger's Way
*Panglor
* The Infinity Link
* The Rapture Effect
Roger Zelazny's Alien Speedway.. Clypsis
From a ChangeBng Star
Down the Stream of Stars
*Dragons in the Stars
*Dragon Rigger
The Chaos Chronicles
*Neptune Crossing.. Volume One
*Strange Attractors.. Volume Two
*The Infinite Sea: Volume Three
*denotes a Tot book
THE INFINITE SEA
THE CHAOS
CHRONICLES:
VOLUME THREE
JEFFREY A. CARVER
TOR®
A Torn Doherty Associates Book
New York
PRELUDE
JULIE STONE
SHE AWOKE TO the sound of the ventilators in her space-
suit. Where am I? Julie thought. And then she remem-
bered: She was in a cavern on Triton, and she'd just made
contact with the alien artifact. But what had she--had she
lost consciousness? Distant memories jangled in her mind.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a voice in her ear. The helmet
comm: "Julie--can you hear me? Ron, I can't get a reading on
her monitors, but I think she's alive."
Klm. Her supervisor.
Of course I'm alive. Why wouldn't I be?
"Her eyes are open!" Someone bending over her, hands shading
her faceplate to cut the reflection. "She's breathing, I think. Julie,
can you hear me?"
Can you hear me? The words drifted back, voices in her head: Mission yet to
fulfill.., require your assistance, Julie Stone... Assistance? What kind
And as consciousness had slipped away, the voices simply
moved farther inside...
·.. John Bandicut sacrificed everything toprotect Earth... saved
his homeworld . . . rogue comet...
"Julie!"
She started, flinching where she lay on her side, the hard casing
of her suit digging into her shoulder and hip. "Yes. Yes! I'm
okay; help me up."
The looming helmet moved away, and hands were lifting her
by the arms, helping her to stand. And then she was on her feet,
PRELUDE
JULIE STONE
ll SHE AWOKE TO the sound of the ventilators in her space-suit.
Where am I? Julie thought. And then she remembered:
She was in a cavern on Triton, and she'd just made
contact with the alien artifact. But what had she--had she
lost consciousness? Distant memories jangled in her mind.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a voice in her ear. The helmet comm :
"Julie--can you hear me? Ron, I can't get a reading on
her monitors, but I think she's alive."
Klm. Her supervisor.
Of course I'm alive. Why wouldn't I be?
"Her eyes are open!" Someone bending over her, hands shading
her faceplate to cut the reflection. "She's breathing, I think. Julie,
can you hear me?"
Can you hear me? The words drifted back, voices in her head: Mission yet to
fulfill.., require.your assistance, Julie Stone... Assistance? What kind of--?
And as consciousness had slipped away, the voices simply
moved farther inside . ..
·. . John Bandicut sacrificed everything toprotect Earth... saved
his homeworld . . . rogue comet...
"Julie!"
She started, flinching where she lay on her side, the hard casing
of her suit digging into her shoulder and hip. "Yes. Yes! I'm
okay; help me up."
The looming helmet moved away, and hands were lifting her
by the arms, helping her to stand. And then she was on her feet,
8, JEFFREY A. CARVER
tottering, surrounded by a knot of her crewmates from exoar-chaeology.
Triton, yes. She was on Triton, in an underground
cavern, bluish ice and a bit of rock, halogen lights shining off
everything.
And it talked to me. The artifact talked to me. She struggled to
remember...
· . . stopped the immediate danger.., but may be other...
... other...
... other...
· . . require your assistance...
What kind of danger--?
"What happened, Julie?" someone was asking.
She shook her head, the bits of memory unraveling and disappearing.
"Not sure. What did you see?"
She couldn't quite focus, didn't know who was talking. It was
Kim's voice: "The object glowed. It appeared to be engaged in
increased activity. You passed out. The activity continued for
about ten seconds, then returned to normal. That's when we got to
you."
Increased activity? She remembered the appearance of the artifact:
a collection of black and silver spheres, seeming to twirl and
move through each other, all balanced like an inverted pyramid.
"Did you hear anything?"
Through the reflective faceplates, she couldn't see faces, but she
Could sense the puzzlement in the voices. "We didn't hear anything,"
Klm answered. "What did you hear?"
She shook her head. "I don't know." She stepped forward
through the knot of spacesuited people--then, on a sudden urge,
turned to look back at the object, the alien artifact. It had black and
iridescent globes, not silver. The translator; that was what John
Bandicut had called it. But she thought maybe it had said so, as well.
"Julie?" said Kim. "Can you tell us what happened?"
"I don't--" her voice caught, and she tried to recapture it. "I
don't think so. Not just yet. I think I need some quiet to think about
it." She turned to her right and was able finally to peer through the
faceplate to see the eyes of her coworker. "Can we leave now?"
Kim's eyebrows arched· "All right," he said. "Let's go, everyone!
Let's get Julie back to the rover!"
But as she followed Kim, trying to recapture the memories, the
words and images could not be formed; thoughts and voices were
THE INFINITE SEA * 9
whirling together like a storm in her mind, in her dreams, in her
subconsciousness. So difficult to remember. Except for one phrase
that kept recurring:
· .. something still out there which ia' trying to destroy your
world...
INTO AN LIEN SEA
No'ACAZV./IK thought. He peered out of the golden bubble
into a cerulean sea. Overhead, but receding with each
heartbeat, was the rippling mirror of the ocean's surface.
Below lay the darkness of the ocean depths, into which
they were sinking rapidly--trapped in the forcefield bubble that had
swept them across uncounted light-years.
Li-Jared was making frantic bonging sounds. He was terrified of
deep water, so this must have been his worst nightmare come true.
On Ik's other side the Human, John Bandicut, looked as if he had
stopped breathing. He was staring down into the twilit depths, eyes
bulging with fear and concentration. He was pointing to something,
stuttering incomprehensibly.
It is happening again, Ik thought. Rakh.
John Bandicut turned around to look at all the others. "Do you
see it?" he shouted. "Tell me I'm not crazy! Do you see it?"
Bwong-ng-ng-ng-ng-- "See what?" Li-Jared cried, lunging
drunkenly from one side of the bubble to the other. "There's no
bottom! All I see is water! We're all going to drown!"
But Ik saw now what Bandicut was yelling about. Lights. Below
them, and very dim, but growing slowly. Ik bent down to peer
through the bottom of the star-spanner bubble. The lights seemed
to be globe-shaped. They looked.., artificial. Like an undersea city.
That was what Bandicut was trying to say. They were plummeting
toward something, not just sinking to the bottom of an alien
sea. Ik didn't know what it was, but he recognized the hand of the
Shipworld Masters in it. Someone had aimed them in this direction,
and had known there would be something waiting for them in the
THE INFINITE SEA * !1
depths of this sea. Ik found a slight trace of comfort in that knowledge.
Bandicut was trying to calm the terrified Karellian. "Li-Jared,
there's something down there! Take a look for yourself]." With that,
he plunged his head directly through the side of the bubble, ex-trtding
himself into the water without disturbing the bubble at
all.
"Hrah--he's right--I see it, too!" Ik said, finding his voice at last.
He drew a deep breath and followed Bandicut's example, sticking
his head through the bubble wall. The bubble gave and stretched
over his skin; he felt a sense of pressure and cold, but no water actually
touched him. He held his breath and peered down.
He could see the lights more clearly now. They were definitely
drawing closer. Was it really possible that they were bubbles of air?
He popped his head back out of the water to take a breath.
Bandicut was looking at him, in the deepening gloom. "My
guess is we want to reach those things. Is there some way we can
steer?"
A voice from behind Ik said, "Are we certain that we want to?"
Ik turned to the newest member of their party: Antares, the
Thespi third-female, Bandicut's acquaintance. Ik barely knew her,
but she had helped them all survive their recent battle with the boojum,
back on Shipworld. "I'm not sure we have any choice," he
said. "It would certainly seem that this place is our intended destination.''
The Thespi blinked, her golden eyes wide in the failing light.
"So it would seem," she said, stroking the gemlike stones in her
throat.
"We're being carried off to one side," Bandicut said, peering outside
again. "I think we're going to miss those structures. You don't
suppose the star-spanner forgot to allow for currents, do you?"
Ik touched the side of his head, querying his voice-stones./Can
you advise on the guidance of this travel unit?/
There was a short flurry of feedback sensation, before the voice-stones
answered:
*Guidance negative. Wait for arrival.*
Bandicut's gaze had gone blank and unfocused. A moment later
it returned to normal. "According to Charlie, my stones say we've
been renormalized to this environment. Is that supposed to mean
we can breathe water?"
"Hmm, I would not be eager to test such a supposition," Ik said.
12 * JEFFREY A. CARVER
He caught the eye of Li-Jared, who had stopped panting long
enough to stare back at him, the bright blue slits across his eyes
wide with fury and panic. "But according to my voice-stones, we
cannot steer; we must wait for arrival."
"Arrival?" Antares muttered. "I thought we'd already arrived."
"Yes, well--" Ik rubbed his chest uncertainly. They were sliding
farther and farther into the darkness of the depths. The surface
was no longer visible, though a blue hue overhead pointed the way
back to it. Below, the lights were pulling off to one side. Bandicut
was right; they were going to miss them.
Ik felt himself instinctively trying to will the bubble back toward
those globes. But it was no use. Soon the lights were level with
them, far off to one side. Then they seemed to slide upward and
away, as the sea continued darkening. Ik felt the air in the bubble
growing thick and dense in his throat.
"Can we do nothing?" Antares murmured.
"Hold on! Look there!" said Bandicut, pointing the other way.
Below, and on the other side, more lights were coming into
view. Ik tried to gauge the bubble's movement, and decided that
there was at least a chance they would pass close to those lights.
And what would they find?
Ik sighed through his ears, touched his forehead, and began
preparing himself for whatever world they were about to enter.
,
Something was moving in those globes of light.
Bandicut was almost certain of it. He strained to see more
clearly. The globes were growing larger, but the haze of the water
obscured his view. The array had the look of a sunken city; but he
hardly dared believe it.
He wondered how much longer the air would last in the star-spanner
bubble.
"/Not to worry.
If it can keep us alive halfway across the galaxy,
it can probably give us a few minutes more
underwater."/
The voice of the quarx in his head was laconic. The alien seemed
almost relaxed about their sudden entry into this ocean. Perhaps,
lacking a body of his own, he felt less sense of danger.
"/You think I'm too stupid to know danger?"/
Jarred by the remark, Bandicut said,/No... I don't think you're
THE INFINITE SEA * 13-
stupid./But this quarx was a very different individual from the last
Charlie, whose death was still terribly immediate in his mind.
As the lights drew closer, growing in number, something resembling
a landscape began to emerge from their illumination. The
globes were gathered in clusters, and they were attached to or suspended
from a steep submarine slope that was barely visible now,
in shadowy outlines behind and beneath them. Only a few dim,
scattered lights were visible in the darkness further below. If they
failed to connect with this cluster, they might fall forever.
"Are we going to miss them?" Li-Jared asked, as though reading
his mind.
No, Bandicut thought. Yes. He couldn't tell.
"Bandie John?" Antares' eyes caught his with sharp intensity.
Was she reading his fear? Feeling it? He hardly knew her. And
yet he was unsurprised to sense her empathic awareness. It felt right,
somehow.
Before he could answer, though, he felt a vibration under his
feet. There was a sound, like a distant murmur. "What the--?"
"Hrahh, it feels like a quake," said Ik. "A distant quake. Do you
feel the current, shifting sideways? We are going to miss those
structures!" Ik's sculpted blue face looked skeletal in the undersea
light, as he twisted around to look at them.
"I feel it," Antares said, her eyes glinting.
Bandicut closed his eyes a moment, feeling the movement. Ik
was right. If they couldn't reach those structures.., how deep was this ocean,
anyway?
He glanced at his companions, their faces dimly lit by a low-level
luminosity in the bubble itself. Ik the tall Hraachee'an, his small
dark eyes glittering with inner points of light. Li-Jared the simian-looking
Karellian, with his narrow, vertical eyes of gold, bisected
by electric-blue horizontal slits, wide with fear. Antares, so much
like a human woman and yet no such thing, her face delicately angular,
her eyes almost Asian-looking, her expressions inscrutable.
And the two robots who had traveled so far with him from Triton,
dumb machines who had somehow been transformed into sentient
beings. Bandicut was grateful for all of them. But he had no wish
to die here with them.
"Captain," said the robot Copernicus, "I am uncertain of the
medium outside the bubble. But I detect objects or entities moving
toward us."
摘要：

BooksbyJeffreyA.CarverSeasofErnathe*StarRigger'sWay*Panglor*TheInfinityLink*TheRaptureEffectRogerZelazny'sAlienSpeedway..ClypsisFromaChangeBngStarDowntheStreamofStars*DragonsintheStars*DragonRiggerTheChaosChronicles*NeptuneCrossing..VolumeOne*StrangeAttractors..VolumeTwo*TheInfiniteSea:VolumeThree*d...

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