Convergent Series Read Online Free PDF

small, patient woman with nut-brown skin and golden eyes. She did not appear intimidating, but Darya Lang found it hard to face her. "And since you reported it, we have confirmed it for every Artifact. No one is trying to deny you full credit for your discovery. And we all admit that you are our expert on the Builders, and are most knowledgeable about their technology—"
    "No one understands Builder technology!" Even in her irritation, Darya could not let that pass.
    "Most is a comparative term. No one in the Alliance knows more. Since, I repeat, you are most knowledgeable about the technology of the Builders, you are clearly the best-qualified individual to pursue the anomaly's significance." The woman's voice became more gentle. "But at the same time, Professor Lang, you must admit that you have little experience of interstellar travel."
    "I have none, and you know it. But everyone, from you to my house-uncle Matra, tells me that interstellar travel offers negligible risk."
    The legate sighed. "Professor, it is not the travel we question. Look around you. What do you see?"
    Darya raised her head and surveyed the garden. Flowers, vines, trees, the cooing birds, the last rays of evening sunlight throwing dusty shafts of light through the trellis of the bower . . . It was all normal. What was she supposed to see?
    "Everything looks fine."
    "It is fine. That is my point. You have lived all your life on Sentinel Gate, and this is a garden world. One of the finest, richest, most beautiful planets that we know—far nicer than Miranda, where I live. But you are proposing to go to Quake. To nowhere. To a dingy, dirty, dismal, dangerous world, in the wild hope that you will find there new evidence of the Builders. Can you give me one reason for thinking that Quake has such potential?"
    "You know the answer. My discovery provides that reason."
    "A statistical anomaly. Do you want to endure misery and discomfort for the sake of statistics ?"
    "Of course I don't." Darya felt that the other woman was talking down to her, and that was the one thing she could not stand. "No one wants discomfort. Legate Pereira, you admit that no one in the Fourth Alliance has more knowledge of the Builders than I do. Suppose I do not go, and someone else does, and whoever goes in my place fails for lack of knowledge where I might have succeeded. Do you think that I could ever forgive myself?"
    Instead of replying, Pereira went to the window and beckoned Darya Lang to her side. She pointed into the slowly darkening sky. The Sentinel gleamed close to the horizon, a shining and striated sphere two hundred million kilometers away and a million kilometers across.
    "Suppose I told you that I knew a way to break in through the Sentinel's protective shield and to explore the Pyramid at the center. Would you go with me?"
    "Of course. I've studied the Sentinel since I was a child. If I'm right, the Pyramid could contain a library for the Builder sciences—maybe their history, too. But no one knows how to break the shield. We have been trying for a thousand years."
    "But suppose we could crack it."
    "Then I would want to go."
    "And suppose it involved danger and discomfort?"
    "I would still want to go."
    The legate nodded and sat in silence for a few seconds as the darkness deepened. "Very well,"she said at last. "Professor Lang, you are said to be a logical person, and I like to think that I am, too. If you are willing to run the risks of the Sentinel's shield, and those are unknown risks, then you have a right to endure the lesser risks of Quake. As for travel to the Dobelle system, we humans built the Bose Drive, and we understand exactly how it works. We know how to employ the Bose Network. The experience is frightening at first, but the danger is small. And perhaps if you can use that Network to explore the statistical anomaly that you alone discovered, it will finally provide the tool you need to crack the secret of the Sentinel. I cannot deny that chain of