James P. Hogan - Giants 1 - Inherit The Stars

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Giants 1 -- Inherit The Stars -- James P. Hogan
(Version 2002.02.07 -- Done)
To the memory of my Father
Prologue
He became aware of consciousness returning.
Instinctively his mind recoiled, as if by some effort of will he could
arrest the relentless flow of seconds that separated non-awareness from
awareness and return again to the timeless oblivion in which the agony of
total exhaustion was unknown and unknowable.
The hammer that had threatened to burst from his chest was now quiet.
The rivers of sweat that had drained with his strength from every hollow of
his body were now turned cold. His limbs had turned to lead. The gasping of
his lungs had returned once more to a slow and even rhythm. It sounded loud in
the close confines of his helmet.
He tried to remember how many had died. Their release was final; for him
there was no release. How much longer could he go on? What was the point?
Would there be anyone left alive at Gorda anyway?
"Gorda...? Gorda...?"
His mental defenses could shield him from reality no longer.
"Must get to Gorda!"
He opened his eyes. A billion unblinking stars stared back without
interest. When he tried to move, his body refused to respond, as if trying to
prolong to the utmost its last precious moments of rest. He took a deep breath
and, clenching his teeth at the pain that instantly racked again through every
fiber of his body, forced himself away from the rock and into a sitting
position. A wave of nausea swept over him. His head sagged forward and struck
the inside of his visor. The nausea passed.
He groaned aloud.
"Feeling better, then, soldier?" The voice came clearly through the
speaker inside his helmet. "Sun's getting low. We gotta be moving."
He lifted his head and slowly scanned the nightmare wilderness of
scorched rock and ash-gray dust that confronted him.
"Whe -- " The sound choked in his throat. He swallowed, licked his lips,
and tried again. "Where are you?"
"To your right, up on the rise just past that small cliff that juts out
-- the one with the big boulders underneath."
He turned his head and after some seconds detected a bright blue patch
against the ink-black sky. It seemed blurred and far away. He blinked and
strained his eyes again, forcing his brain to coordinate with his vision. The
blue patch resolved itself into the figure of the tireless Koriel, clad in a
heavy-duty combat suit.
"I see you." After a pause: "Anything?"
"It's fairly flat on the other side of the rise -- should be easier
going for a while. Gets rockier farther on. Come have a look."
He inched his arms upward to find purchase on the rock behind, then
braced them to thrust his weight forward over his legs. His knees trembled.
His face contorted as he fought to concentrate his remaining strength into his
protesting thighs. Already his heart was pumping again, his lungs heaving. The
effort evaporated and he fell back against the rock. His labored breathing
rasped over Koriel's radio.
"Finished...Can't move..."
The blue figure on the skyline turned.
"Aw, what kinda talk's that? This is the last stretch. We're there,
buddy -- we're there."
"No -- no good...Had it..." Koriel waited a few seconds.
"I'm coming back down."
"No -- you go on. Someone's got to make it."
No response.
"Koriel..."
He looked back at where the figure had stood, but already it had
disappeared below the intervening rocks and was out of the line of
transmission. A minute or two later the figure emerged from behind the nearby
boulders, covering the ground in long, effortless bounds. The bounds broke
into a walk as Koriel approached the hunched form clad in red.
"C'mon, soldier, on your feet now. There's people back there depending
on us."
He felt himself gripped below his arm and raised irresistibly, as if
some of Koriel's limitless reserves of strength were pouring into him. For a
while his head swam and he leaned with the top of his visor resting on the
giant's shoulder insignia.
"Okay," he managed at last. "Let's go."
Hour after hour the thin snake of footprints, two pinpoints of color at
its head, wound its way westward across the wilderness amid steadily
lengthening shadows. He marched as if in a trance, beyond feeling pain, beyond
feeling exhaustion -- beyond feeling anything. The skyline never seemed to
change; soon he could no longer look at it. Instead, he began picking out the
next prominent boulder or crag, and counting off the paces until they reached
it. "Two hundred and thirteen less to go." And then he repeated it over
again...and again...and again. The rocks marched by in slow, endless,
indifferent procession. Every step became a separate triumph of will -- a
deliberate, conscious effort to drive one foot yet one more pace beyond the
last. When he faltered, Koriel was there to catch his arm; when he fell,
Koriel was always there to haul him up. Koriel never tired.
At last they stopped. They were standing in a gorge perhaps a quarter
mile wide, below one of the lines of low, broken cliffs that flanked it on
either side. He collapsed on the nearest boulder. Koriel stood a few paces
ahead surveying the landscape. The line of crags immediately above them was
interrupted by a notch, which marked the point where a steep and narrow cleft
tumbled down to break into the wall of the main gorge. From the bottom of the
cleft, a mound of accumulated rubble and rock debris led down about fifty feet
to blend with the floor of the gorge not far from where they stood. Koriel
stretched out an arm to point up beyond the cleft.
"Gorda will be roughly that way," he said without turning. "Our best way
would be up and onto that ridge. If we stay on the flat and go around the long
way, it'll be too far. What d'you say?" The other stared up in mute despair.
The rockfall, funneling up toward the mouth of the cleft, looked like a
mountain. In the distance beyond towered the ridge, jagged and white in the
glare of the sun. It was impossible.
Koriel allowed his doubts no time to take root. Somehow -- slipping,
sliding, stumbling, and falling -- they reached the entrance to the cleft.
Beyond it, the walls narrowed and curved around to the left, cutting off the
view of the gorge below from where they had come. They climbed higher. Around
them, sheets of raw reflected sunlight and bottomless pits of shadow met in
knife-edges across rocks shattered at a thousand crazy angles. His brain
ceased to extract the concepts of shape and form from the insane geometry of
white and black that kaleidoscoped across his retina. The patterns grew and
shrank and merged and whirled in a frenzy of visual cacophony.
His face crashed against his visor as his helmet thudded into the dust.
Koriel hoisted him to his feet.
"You can do it. We'll see Gorda from the ridge. It'll be all downhill
from there..."
But the figure in red sank slowly to its knees and folded over. The head
inside the helmet shook weakly from side to side. As Koriel watched, the
conscious part of his mind at last accepted the inescapable logic that the
parts beneath consciousness already knew. He took a deep breath and looked
about him.
Not far below, they had passed a hole, about five feet across, cut into
the base of one of the rock walls. It looked like the remnant of some
forgotten excavation -- maybe a preliminary digging left by a mining survey.
The giant stooped, and grasping the harness that secured the backpack to the
now insensible figure at his feet, dragged the body back down the slope to the
hole. It was about ten feet deep inside. Working quickly, Koriel arranged a
lamp to reflect a low light off the walls and roof. Then he removed the
rations from his companion's pack, laid the figure back against the rear wall
as comfortably as he could, and placed the food containers within easy reach.
Just as he was finishing, the eyes behind the visor flickered open.
"You'll be fine here for a while." The usual gruffness was gone from
Koriel's voice. "I'll have the rescue boys back from Gorda before you know
it."
The figure in red raised a feeble arm. Just a whisper came through.
"You -- you tried...Nobody could have..." Koriel clasped the gauntlet
with both hands.
"Mustn't give up. That's no good. You just have to hang on a while."
Inside his helmet the granite cheeks were wet. He backed to the entrance and
made a final salute. "So long, soldier." And then he was gone.
Outside he built a small cairn of stones to mark the position of the
hole. He would mark the trail to Gorda with such cairns. At last he
straightened up and turned defiantly to face the desolation surrounding him.
The rocks seemed to scream down in soundless laughing mockery. The stars above
remained unmoved. Koriel glowered up at the cleft, rising up toward the tiers
of crags and terraces that guarded the ridge, still soaring in the distance.
His lips curled back to show his teeth.
"So -- it's just you and me now, is it?" he snarled at the Universe.
"Okay, you bastard -- let's see you take this round!"
With his legs driving like slow pistons, he attacked the ever steepening
slope.
Chapter One
Accompanied by a mild but powerful whine, a gigantic silver torpedo rose
slowly upward to hang two thousand feet above the sugar-cube huddle of central
London. Over three hundred yards long, it spread at the tail into a slim delta
topped by two sharply swept fins. For a while the ship hovered, as if savoring
the air of its newfound freedom, its nose swinging smoothly around to seek the
north. At last, with the sound growing, imperceptibly at first but with
steadily increasing speed, it began to slide forward and upward. At ten
thousand feet its engines erupted into full power, hurling the suborbital
skyliner eagerly toward the fringes of space. Sitting in row thirty-one of C
deck was Dr. Victor Hunt, head of Theoretical Studies at the Metadyne
Nucleonic Instrument Company of Reading, Berkshire -- itself a subsidiary of
the mammoth Intercontinental Data and Control Corporation, headquartered at
Portland, Oregon, USA. He absently surveyed the diminishing view of Hendon
that crawled across the cabin wall-display screen and tried again to fit some
kind of explanation to the events of the last few days.
His experiments with matter-antimatter particle extinctions had been
progressing well. Forsyth-Scott had followed Hunt's reports with evident
interest and therefore knew that the tests were progressing well. That made it
all the more strange for him to call Hunt to his office one morning to ask him
simply to drop everything and get over to IDCC Portland as quickly as could be
arranged. From the managing director's tone and manner it had been obvious
that the request was couched as such mainly for reasons of politeness; in
reality this was one of the few occasions on which Hunt had no say in the
matter.
To Hunt's questions, Forsyth-Scott had stated quite frankly that he
didn't know what it was that made Hunt's immediate presence at IDCC so
imperative. The previous evening he had received a videocall from Felix
Borlan, the president of IDCC, who had told him that as a matter of priority
he required the only working prototype of the scope prepared for immediate
shipment to the USA and an installation team ready to go with it. Also, he had
insisted that Hunt personally come over for an indefinite period to take
charge of some project involving the scope, which could not wait. For Hunt's
benefit, Forsyth-Scott had replayed Borlan's call on his desk display and
allowed him to verify for himself that Forsyth-Scott in turn was acting under
a thinly disguised directive. Even stranger, Borlan too had seemed unable to
say precisely what it was that the instrument and its inventor were needed
for.
The Trimagniscope, developed as a consequence of a two-year
investigation by Hunt into certain aspects of neutrino physics, promised to be
perhaps the most successful venture ever undertaken by the company. Hunt had
established that a neutrino beam that passed through a solid object underwent
certain interactions in the close vicinity of atomic nuclei, which produced
measurable changes in the transmitted output. By raster scanning an object
with a trio of synchronized, intersecting beams, he had devised a method of
extracting enough information to generate a 3-D color hologram, visually
indistinguishable from the original solid. Moreover, since the beams scanned
right through, it was almost as easy to conjure up views of the inside as of
the out. These capabilities, combined with that of high-power magnification
that was also inherent in the method, yielded possibilities not even remotely
approached by anything else on the market. From quantitative cell metabolism
and bionics, through neurosurgery, metallurgy, crystallography, and molecular
electronics, to engineering inspection and quality control, the applications
were endless. Inquiries were pouring in and shares were soaring. Removing the
prototype and its originator to the USA -- totally disrupting carefully
planned production and marketing schedules -- bordered on the catastrophic.
Borlan knew this as well as anybody. The more Hunt turned these things over in
his mind, the less plausible the various possible explanations that had at
first occurred to him seemed, and the more convinced he became that whatever
the answer turned out to be, it would be found to lie far beyond even Felix
Borlan and IDCC.
His thoughts were interrupted by a voice issuing from somewhere in the
general direction of the cabin roof.
"Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. This is Captain Mason speaking. I
would like to welcome you aboard this Boeing 1017 on behalf of British
Airways. We are now in level flight at our cruising altitude of fifty-two
miles, speed 3,160 knots. Our course is thirty-five degrees west of true
north, and the coast is now below with Liverpool five miles to starboard.
Passengers are free to leave their seats. The bars are open and drinks and
snacks are being served. We are due to arrive in San Francisco at ten thirty-
eight hours local time; that's one hour and fifty minutes from now. I would
like to remind you that it is necessary to be seated when we begin our descent
in one hour and thirty-five minutes time. A warning will sound ten minutes
before descent commences and again at five minutes. We trust you will enjoy
your journey. Thank you."
The captain signed himself off with a click, which was drowned Out as
the regulars made their customary scramble for the vi-phone booths.
In the seat next to Hunt, Rob Gray, Metadyne's chief of Experimental
Engineering, sat with an open briefcase resting on his knees. He studied the
information being displayed on the screen built into its lid.
"A regular flight to Portland takes off fifteen minutes after we get
in," he announced. "That's a bit tight. Next one's not for over four hours.
What d'you reckon?" He punctuated the question with a sideways look and raised
eyebrows.
Hunt pulled a face. "I'm not arsing about in Frisco for four hours. Book
us an Avis jet -- we'll fly ourselves up."
"That's what I thought."
Gray played the mini keyboard below the screen to summon an index,
consulted it briefly, then touched another key to display a directory.
Selecting a number from one of the columns, he mouthed it silently to himself
as he tapped it in. A copy of the number appeared near the bottom of the
screen with a request for him to confirm. He pressed the Y button. The screen
went blank for a few seconds and then exploded into a whirlpool of color,
which stabilized almost at once into the features of a platinum-blonde, who
radiated the kind of smile normally reserved for toothpaste commercials.
"Good morning. Avis San Francisco, City Terminal. This is Sue Parker.
Can I help you?"
Gray addressed the grille, located next to the tiny camera lens just
above the screen.
"Hi, Sue. Name's Gray -- R. J. Gray, airbound for SF, due to arrive
about two hours from now. Could I reserve an aircar, please?"
"Sure thing. Range?"
"Oh -- about five hundred..." He glanced at Hunt.
"Better make it seven," Hunt advised.
"Make that seven hundred miles minimum."
"That'll be no problem, Mr. Gray. We have Skyrovers, Mercury Threes,
Honeybees, or Yellow Birds. Any preference?"
"No -- any'll do."
"I'll make it a Mercury, then. Any idea how long?"
"No -- er -- indefinite."
"Okay. Full computer nav and flight control? Automatic VTOL?"
"Preferably and, ah, yes."
"You have a full manual license?" The blonde operated unseen keys as she
spoke.
"Yes."
"Could I have personal data and account-checking data, please?"
Gray had extracted the card from his wallet while the exchange was
taking place. He inserted it into a slot set to one side of the screen, and
touched a key.
The blonde consulted other invisible oracles. "Okay," she pronounced.
"Any other pilots?"
"One. A Dr. V. Hunt."
"His personal data?"
Gray took Hunt's already proffered card and substituted it for his own.
The ritual was repeated. The face then vanished to be replaced by a screen of
formatted text with entries completed in the boxes provided.
"Would you verify and authorize, please?" said the disembodied voice
from the grille. "Charges are shown on the right."
Gray cast his eye rapidly down the screen, grunted, and keyed in a
memorized sequence of digits that was not echoed on the display. The word
POSITIVE appeared in the box marked "Authorization." Then the clerk
reappeared, still smiling.
"When would you want to collect, Mr. Gray?" she asked.
Gray turned toward Hunt.
"Do we want lunch at the airport first?"
Hunt grimaced. "Not after that party last night. Couldn't face
anything." His face took on an expression of acute distaste as he moistened
the inside of the equine rectum he had once called a mouth. "Let's eat tonight
somewhere."
"Make it round about eleven thirty hours," Gray advised. "It'll be
ready."
"Thanks, Sue."
"Thank you. Good-bye."
"Bye now."
Gray flipped a switch, unplugged the briefcase from the socket built
into the armrest of his seat, and coiled the connecting cord back into the
space provided in the lid. He closed the case and stowed it behind his feet.
"Done," he announced.
The scope was the latest in a long line of technological triumphs in the
Metadyne product range to be conceived and nurtured to maturity by the Hunt-
Gray partnership. Hunt was the ideas man, leading something of a free-lance
existence within the organization, left to pursue whatever line of study or
experiment his personal whims or the demands of his researches dictated. His
title was somewhat misleading; in fact he was Theoretical Studies. The
position was one which he had contrived, quite deliberately, to fall into no
obvious place in the managerial hierarchy of Metadyne. He acknowledged no
superior, apart from the managing director, Sir Francis Forsyth-Scott, and
boasted no subordinates. On the company's organization charts, the box
captioned "Theoretical Studies" stood alone and disconnected near the inverted
tree head R & D, as if added as an afterthought. Inside it there appeared the
single entry Dr. Victor Hunt. This was the way he liked it -- a symbiotic
relationship in which Metadyne provided him with the equipment, facilities,
services, and funds he needed for his work, while he provided Metadyne with
first, the prestige of retaining on its payroll a world-acknowledged authority
on nuclear infrastructure theory, and second -- but by no means least -- a
steady supply of fallout.
Gray was the engineer. He was the sieve that the fallout fell on. He had
a genius for spotting the gems of raw ideas that had application potential and
transforming them into developed, tested, marketable products and product
enhancements. Like Hunt, he had survived the mine field of the age of unreason
and emerged safe and single into his mid-thirties. With Hunt, he shared a
passion for work, a healthy partiality for most of the deadly sins to
counterbalance it, and his address book. All things considered, they were a
good team.
Gray bit his lower lip and rubbed his left earlobe. He always bit his
lower lip and rubbed his left earlobe when he was about to talk shop.
"Figured it out yet?" he asked.
"This Borlan business?"
"Uh-huh."
Hunt shook his head before lighting a cigarette. "Beats me."
"I was thinking...Suppose Felix has dug up some hot sales prospect for
scopes -- maybe one of his big Yank customers. He could be setting up some
super demo or something."
Hunt shook his head again. "No. Felix wouldn't go and screw up
Metadyne's schedules for anything like that. Anyhow, it wouldn't make sense --
the obvious thing to do would be to fly the people to where the scope is, not
the other way round."
"Mmmm...I suppose the same thing applies to the other thought that
occurred to me -- some kind of crash teach-in for IDCC people."
"Right -- same thing goes."
"Mmmm..." When Gray spoke again, they had covered another six miles.
"How about a takeover? The whole scope thing is big -- Felix wants it handled
stateside."
Hunt reflected on the proposition. "Not for my money. He's got too much
respect for Francis, to pull a stunt like that. He knows Francis can handle it
okay. Besides, that's not his way of doing things -- too underhanded." Hunt
paused to exhale a cloud of smoke. "Anyhow, I think there's a lot more to it
than meets the eye. From what I saw, even Felix didn't seem too sure what it's
all about."
"Mmmm..." Gray thought for a while longer before abandoning further
excursions into the realms of deductive logic. He contemplated the growing
tide of humanity flowing in the general direction of C-deck bar. "My guts are
a bit churned up, too," he confessed. "Feels like a crate of Guinness on top
of a vindaloo curry. Come on -- let's go get a coffee."
In the star-strewn black velvet one thousand miles farther up, the
Sirius Fourteen communications-link satellite followed, with cold and
omniscient electronic eyes, the progress of the skyliner streaking across the
mottled sphere below. Among the ceaseless stream of binary data that flowed
through its antennae, it identified a call from the Boeing's Gamma Nine master
computer, requesting details of the latest weather forecast for northern
California. Sirius Fourteen flashed the message to Sirius Twelve, hanging high
over the Canadian Rockies, and Twelve in turn beamed it down to the tracking
station at Edmonton. From here the message was relayed by optical cable to
Vancouver Control and from there by microwave repeaters to the Weather Bureau
station at Seattle. A few thousandths of a second later, the answers poured
back up the chain in the opposite direction. Gamma Nine digested the
information, made one or two minor alterations to its course and flight plan,
and sent a record of the dialogue down to Ground Control, Prestwick.
Chapter Two
It had rained for over two days.
The Engineering Materials Research Department of the Ministry of Space
Sciences huddled wetly in a fold of the Ural Mountains, an occasional ray of
sunlight glinting from a laboratory window or from one of the aluminum domes
of the reactor building. Seated in her office in the analysis section,
Valereya Petrokhov turned to the pile of reports left on her desk for routine
approval. The first two dealt with run-of-the-mill high-temperature corrosion
tests. She flicked casually through the pages, glanced at the appended graphs
and tables, scrawled her initials on the line provided, and tossed them across
into the tray marked "Out." Automatically she began scanning down the first
page of number three. Suddenly she stopped, a puzzled frown forming on her
face. Leaning forward in her chair, she began again, this time reading
carefully and studying every sentence. She finally went back to the beginning
once more and worked methodically through the whole document, stopping in
places to verify the calculations by means of the keyboard display standing on
one side of the desk.
"This is unheard of!" she exclaimed.
For a long time she remained motionless, her eyes absorbed by the
raindrops slipping down the window but her mind so focused elsewhere that the
sight failed to register. At last she shook herself into movement and, turning
again to the keyboard, rapidly tapped in a code. The strings of tensor
equations vanished, to be replaced by a profile view of her assistant, hunched
over a console in the control room downstairs. The profile transformed itself
into a full face as he turned.
"Ready to run in about twenty minutes," he said, anticipating the
question. "The plasma's stabilizing now."
"No -- this has nothing to do with that," she replied, speaking a little
more quickly than usual. "It's about your report 2906. I've just been through
my copy."
"Oh...yes?" His change in expression betrayed mild apprehension.
"So -- a niobium-zirconium alloy," she went on, stating the fact rather
than asking a question, "with an unprecedented resistance to high-temperature
oxidation and a melting point that, quite frankly, I won't believe until I've
done the tests myself."
"Makes our plasma-cans look like butter," Josef agreed.
"Yet despite the presence of niobium, it exhibits a lower neutron-
absorption cross section than pure zirconium?"
"Macroscopic, yes -- under a millibar per square centimeter."
"Interesting..." she mused, then resumed more briskly: "On top of that
we have alpha-phase zirconium with silicon, carbon, and nitrogen impurities,
yet still with a superb corrosion resistance."
"Hot carbon dioxide, fluorides, organic acids, hypochiorites -- we've
been through the list. Generally an initial reaction sets in, but it's rapidly
arrested by the formation of inert barrier layers. You could probably break it
down in stages by devising a cycle of reagents in just the right sequence, but
that would take a complete processing plant specially designed for the job!"
"And the microstructure," Valereya said, gesturing toward the papers on
her desk. "You've used the description fibrous."
"Yes. That's about as near as you can get. The main alloy seems to be
formed around a -- well, a sort of microcrystalline lattice. It's mainly
silicon and carbon, but with local concentrations of some titanium-magnesium
compound that we haven't been able to quantify yet. I've never come across
anything like it. Any ideas?"
The woman's face held a faraway look for some seconds.
"I honestly don't know what to think at the moment," she confessed. "But
I feel this information should be passed higher without delay; it might be
more important than it looks. But first I must be sure of my facts. Nikolai
can take over down there for a while. Come up to my office and let's go
through the whole thing in detail."
Chapter Three
The Portland headquarters of the Intercontinental Data and Control
Corporation lay some forty miles east of the city, guarding the pass between
Mount Adams to the north and Mount Hood to the south. It was here that at some
time in the remote past a small in-land sea had penetrated the Cascade
Mountains and carved itself a channel to the Pacific, to become in time the
mighty Columbia River.
Fifteen years previously it had been the site of the government-owned
Bonneville Nucleonic Weapons Research Laboratory. Here, American scientists,
working in collaboration with the United States of Europe Federal Research
Institute at Geneva, had developed the theory of meson dynamics that led to
the nucleonic bomb. The theory predicted a "clean" reaction with a yield
orders of magnitude greater than that produced by thermonuclear fusion. The
holes they had blown in the Sahara had proved it.
During that period of history, the ideological and racial tensions
inherited from the twentieth century were being swept away by the tide of
universal affluence and falling birth rates that came with the spread of high-
technology living. Traditional rocks of strife and suspicion were being eroded
as races, nations, sects, and creeds became inextricably mingled into one
huge, homogeneous global society. As the territorial irrationalities of long-
dead politicians resolved themselves and the adolescent nation-states matured,
the defense budgets of the superpowers were progressively reduced year by
year. The advent of the nucleonic bomb served only to accelerate what would
have happened anyway. By universal assent, world demilitarization became fact.
One sphere of activity that benefited enormously from the surplus funds
and resources that became available after demilitarization was the rapidly
expanding United Nations Solar System Exploration Program. Already the list of
responsibilities held by this organization was long; it included the operation
of all artificial satellites in terrestrial, Lunar, Martian, Venusian, and
Solar orbits; the building and operation of all manned bases on Luna and Mars,
plus the orbiting laboratories over Venus; the launching of deep-space robot
probes and the planning and control of manned missions to the outer planets.
UNSSEP was thus expanding at just the right rate and the right time to absorb
the supply of technological talent being released as the world's major
armaments programs were run down. Also, as nationalism declined and most of
the regular armed forces were demobilized, the restless youth of the new
generation found outlets for their adventure-lust in the uniformed branches of
the UN Space Arm. It was an age that buzzed with excitement and anticipation
as the new pioneering frontier began planet-hopping out across the Solar
System.
And so NWRL Bonneville had been left with no purpose to serve. This
situation did not go unnoticed by the directors of IDCC. Seeing that most of
the equipment and permanent installations owned by NWRL could be used in much
of the corporation's own research projects, they propositioned the government
with an offer to buy the place outright. The offer was accepted and the deal
went through. Over the years IDCC had further expanded the site, improved its
aesthetics, and eventually established it as their nucleonics research center
and world headquarters.
The mathematical theory that had grown out of meson dynamics involved
the existence of three hitherto unknown transuranic elements. Although these
were purely hypothetical, they were christened hyperium, bonnevillium, and
genevium. Theory also predicted that, due to a "glitch" in the transuranic
mass-versus-binding-energy curve, these elements, once formed, would be
stable. They were unlikely to be found occurring naturally, however -- not on
Earth, anyway. According to the mathematics, only two known situations could
give the right conditions for their formation: the core of the detonation of a
nucleonic bomb or the collapse of a supernova to a neutron star.
Sure enough, analysis of the dust clouds after the Sahara tests yielded
minute traces of hyperium and bonnevillium; genevium was not detected.
Nevertheless, the first prediction of the theory was accepted as amply
supported. Whether, one day, future generations of scientists would ever
verify the second prediction, was another matter entirely.
Hunt and Gray touched down on the rooftop landing pad of the IDCC
administration building shortly after fifteen hundred hours. By fifteen thirty
they were sitting in leather armchairs facing the desk in Borlan's luxurious
office on the tenth floor, while he poured three large measures of scotch at
the teak bar built into the left wall. He walked back to the center, passed a
glass to each of the Englishmen, went back around the desk, and sat down.
"Cheers, then, guys," he offered. They returned the gesture. "Well," he
began, "it's good to see you two again. Trip okay? How'd you make it up so
soon -- rent a jet?" He opened his cigar box as he spoke and pushed it across
the desk toward them. "Smoke?"
"Yes, good trip. Thanks, Felix," Hunt replied. "Avis." He inclined his
head toward the window behind Borlan, which presented a panoramic view of
pine-covered hills tumbling down to the distant Columbia. "Some scenery."
"Like it?"
"Makes Berkshire look a bit like Siberia."
Borlan looked at Gray. "How are you keeping, Rob?"
The corners of Gray's mouth twitched downwards. "Gutrot."
"Party last night at some bird's," Hunt explained. "Too little blood in
his alcohol stream."
"Good time, huh?" Borlan grinned. "Take Francis along?"
"You've got to be joking!"
"Jollificating with the peasantry?" Gray mimicked in the impeccable
tones of the English aristocracy. "Good God! Whatever next!"
They laughed. Hunt settled himself more comfortably amid a haze of blue
smoke. "How about yourself, Felix?" he asked. "Life still being kind to you?"
Borlan spread his arms wide. "Life's great."
"Angie still as beautiful as the last time I saw her? Kids okay?"
"They're all fine. Tommy's at college now -- majoring in physics and
astronautical engineering. Johnny goes hiking most weekends with his club, and
Susie's added a pair of gerbils and a bear cub to the family zoo."
"So you're still as happy as ever. The responsibilities of power aren't
wearing you down yet."
Borlan shrugged and showed a row of pearly teeth. "Do I look like an
ulcerated nut midway between heart attacks?"
Hunt regarded the blue-eyed, deep-tanned figure with close-cropped fair
hair as Borlan sprawled relaxedly on the other side of the broad mahogany
desk. He looked at least ten years younger than the president of any
intercontinental corporation had a right to.
For a while the small talk revolved around internal affairs at Metadyne.
At last a natural pause presented itself. Hunt sat forward, his elbows resting
on his knees, and contemplated the last drop of amber liquid in his glass as
he swirled it around first from right to left and then back again. Finally he
looked up.
"About the scope, Felix. What's going on, then?"
Borlan had been expecting the question. He straightened slowly in his
chair and appeared to think for a moment. At last he said:
"Did you see the call I made to Francis?"
"Yep."
"Then..." Borlan didn't seem sure of how to put it. "...I don't know an
awful lot more than you do." He placed his hands palms-down on the desk man
attitude of candor, but his sigh was that of one not really expecting to be
believed. He was right.
"Come on, Felix. Give." Hunt's expression said the rest.
"You must know," Gray insisted. "You fixed it all up."
"Straight." Borlan looked from one to the other. "Look, taking things
worldwide, who would you say our biggest customer is? It's no secret -- UN
Space Arm. We do everything for them from Lunar data links to -- to laser
terminal clusters and robot probes. Do you know how much revenue I've got
forecast from UNSA next fiscal? Two hundred million bucks...two hundred
million!"
"So?"
"So...well -- when a customer like that says he needs help, he gets
help. I'll tell you what happened. It was like this: UNSA is a big potential
user of scopes, so we fed them all the information we've got on what the scope
can do and how development is progressing in Francis's neck of the woods. One
day -- the day before I called Francis -- this guy comes to see me all the way
摘要：

Giants1--InheritTheStars--JamesP.Hogan(Version2002.02.07--Done)TothememoryofmyFatherPrologueHebecameawareofconsciousnessreturning.Instinctivelyhismindrecoiled,asifbysomeeffortofwillhecouldarresttherelentlessflowofsecondsthatseparatednon-awarenessfromawarenessandreturnagaintothetimelessoblivioninwhic...

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