“I can’t believe that,” Lissa answered. “Something like this must require all kinds of sensitivities, yes, and computer power. If it isn’t conscious the way we are, it must at least have capabilities for evaluating information and making decisions, like a spaceship’s but surely greater.”
The thought ran chill: Probably not a pseudo-personality like
Hebo nodded inside his helmet. “Yeah. To handle the unexpected. Bound to crop up now and then, if only a freak storm or groundquake. In fact, I’m getting a hunch that this whole system wasn’t laid out from the beginning. How could the Forerunners know exactly what the planet would be like millions of years in the future? My current guess is, the original ‘seed’ wasn’t a preprogrammed von Neumann device. It had as big a database as they could provide, and general instructions. When it ‘woke’ it designed things according to what best fitted local environments. As it gained ‘experience,’ it modified those specs. You might say the different complexes didn’t ‘grow,’ they evolved.”
The party searched onward. They seldom stopped to rest, and then just for a few minutes, with a gulp of water from their drinking tubes and a bite of food from their chowlocks. They were strung too tightly. Yet nothing ever responded or threatened or did anything but work its mysteries.
A few installations looked weirdly half-identifiable. Well, Lissa thought, maybe the Forerunners weren’t really very far ahead of us today, three million years ago. Our scientific and technological growth curve isn’t rising as steeply as it used to, but it’s still upward. Give us a few more decades, and we may be able to equal everything of theirs we’ve come upon.
But what are they like now?
Meaningless question.
All right, what would we find if we or our probes could survive at the galactic heart? What have the Earth people learned?
What, maybe, have they taught?
The sun trudged westward. Shadows lengthened. Dust scudded thinly on an evening wind between the great shapes.
“Okay,” said Hebo. “We’ve pretty well quartered the whole place, got enough stuff already to keep the scientists out of mischief for the next twenty years, and I, at least, hear some cold beers calling me, and dinner, and about ten hours’ worth of sleep.”
“You’re not unique, my dear,” Lissa sighed. Suddenly the weight on her dragged, feet and muscles ached, nerves seemed to slump instead of quiver.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to take a rain check on what we were talking about earlier,” said Hebo.
Again she must infer his meaning, obvious though it was. A chuckle rose dry in her throat. “That’s mutual too. Let’s consider it a loan.”
“To be repaid at a high rate of interest.”
They laughed aloud, humanly ridiculous, humanly snatching after any hint of gladness. Dzesi purred assent.
They took the shortest route back to open desert. As if standing sentinel, a helicoid towered there, a hundred meters into heaven. They passed through the haze. The sun blazed low above icy hills.
A voice snapped from their spaceband receivers. Lissa knew it, Esker’s. An image of the ugly little man sprang up in her mind. He’d be hunched forward, sweat a-glisten on brow and cheeks, eyes burning like yonder sun. “So, you’re done for the day!”
Hebo and his companions turned their transmitters on. “About time,” he growled.
“Yes, yes. You should have stepped clear and reported every hour or two. We watched, but didn’t dare send. Who could tell how the robots would react to a message straight into their domain. Or how it might interact with that force-field? If you’d come to grief, what a treasure we’d have lost!”
“Including us.”
“Send your data immediately.”
“Look, we can’t do that till we’re back in the ship and have downloaded. There’s a lot.”
“That’s what I meant, you dolt. No letting it wait till morning. What might happen meanwhile?”
“If you’re that concerned about safety, which I can understand,” Lissa interjected, “we’ll lift straightaway.”
“No. You’ll stay. You’ll send your data, and tomorrow go back for more. You can barely have skirted the fringes of what’s there.”
She stiffened where she stood. “In other words,” she said, “to you we’re information-collecting machines. To be worked to destruction.”
“No. No. But can’t you see, this is an absolutely priceless opportunity? I don’t think another will ever occur. We’re risking ourselves also, you know. It’s worth it. Why, just a study of the hyperwave system—”
“What?”
“There’s got to be something of the kind, a transmitter, somewhere on the planet, perhaps at every site. In all our searching, we detected no trace of anything like a relay. Yes, hyperphenomena aren’t supposed to occur so deep in a gravity well. But somehow, here, they do. The Forerunners knew, know how to
“Well,” Hebo blurted, momentarily caught by the passion in spite of himself, “we did find a big something that looked as though it might be some such.”
“I thought so!” Esker yelled. “The technology may not be very important to us by itself, but, but what we can learn about the structure of space—natural laws we haven’t suspected—don’t gamble with your data! Get back to your ship and send them!”
Dzesi snarled.
A flat translator voice broke through, a Susaian tongue behind it. Lissa well-nigh saw Esker shoved aside. She heard the urgency: “Ironbright here. Beware. A strange airborne object has come over our horizon. It’s bound for you at high speed. Take shelter if you can. It may be hostile.”
LI
Seconds later, the thing flew into their sight. It was dull-blue metallic, maybe three lean meters long, and something in the nose caught the sundown light to a flash like a lens. There was no sign of jets or engines, yet it came too fast, low above the desert, for Lissa to get more than a glimpse.
“Back!” Hebo roared. He caught her arm, whirled her around, and half-dragged her into the force-shimmer. She shook loose and ran on her own beside him. Dzesi loped behind. They slipped through the lattice at the bottom of the tower, slammed to a halt, and stared out.
Dzesi unslung her launcher and latched the rack of little missiles into place. “Easy,” gasped Hebo. “We don’t know it’s a threat.” But his rifle was in his hands.
The flyer braked to a halt and hung some thirty meters away, five or six meters up. Its outline rippled in Lissa’s eyes. She thought it must be—peering—through the haze, at them.
She felt and smelled the sweat cold on her skin, her heart slugged, but the clarity of endangerment was again upon her and she had no time to wonder why the thing hadn’t arrived until now. If it was to study them, stop them if they started doing damage—
Her faceplate darkened itself. Even so, the glare from the lens left blinding after-images. She turned away, and the plate cleared. Dzesi’s yowl rang in her receiver.
Either Rikhan eyes were less readily dazzled or she had kept from staring straight at it. Yes, a dryland hunter.… Hebo must also have been spared, for she heard him: “My God, watch out! That was close!” Once more he yanked at her.
She stumbled back. Vision began to recover. She saw a strut glow red. Melted metal congealed below a deep gouge. Had she not been spacesuited, she would have felt the heat.
Another fire-spot erupted on another girder. And the one beyond it. An energy beam, she knew, sweeping
