Final Inquiries Read Online Free PDF

previously scheduled unforeseen circumstances are sorted out."
    He went over to his RTG duffel, zipped it open, grabbed a couple of mealpacks and bottles of water from the crates of rations, and rummaged around inside the bag for a few other things. Next he pulled out a vest that was made mostly out of pockets into which he started stuffing his supplies. Hannah watched for a second, then went over to her own RTG and started to follow suit. "That is unlikely to be necessary," said Brox.
    "No offense, Brox, but Jamie's got a point. We've gotten unpleasant surprises before."
    "All set?" Jamie asked.
    "How could I be when we don't know what comes next?" asked Hannah, stuffing a few more foodbars into her vest. "But let's go."
    Jamie reached into his duffel one last time, as casually as he could, and hoped it looked like he was just squaring away the contents before closing it up. He managed to activate the hidden control without being obvious about it. No, Brox, he thought, we don't have hidden transmitters. But you weren't all that far wrong. He was nearly certain that Hannah had switched on the recorder hidden in her bag as well, but he wasn't about to ask.
    The Kendarian and humanoid sims led the way down the corridor. It was about fifty meters long, and ended in a circular hatch that irised open as they approached. The sims stepped over the edge of the hatch and into a mazelike compartment full of intimidatingly complex fittings and gleaming equipment that was impossible to make sense of at first, other than gathering a general impression of silvery, mirror-bright metal and a whole constellation of glowing and blinking indicator lights. Jamie and Hannah followed cautiously, and Jamie turned to watch Brox entering last of all.
    The hatch whispered shut the moment the Kendari's tail was through it, almost close enough to slice off a bit of it. He flicked it away, almost too late, and looked at Jamie. "Our host would seem to be in a hurry," he said in a low voice, before speaking again in louder tones, to the open air. "As you can see, we are arrived, SubPilot Greveltra. As per our agreement, I now give you formal permission to proceed."
    "Conditions are not yet suitable," said a voice from somewhere inside the compartment. "The human's small transport vehicle ceased acceleration after reaching only a very limited relative velocity. It has not cleared the minimum safe operating distance standard."
    "Then, obviously, proceed when all safety conditions are met," Brox said, a note of irritation in his voice.
    "Your authorization is noted and accepted."
    Brox looked toward Hannah and Jamie. "If you find rule-bound behavior and similar traits as irritating as I do, I fear you are in for an unpleasant journey. Come along."
    The two sims stood--utterly inert, out of the way--by the outer wall of the compartment, drooping over a bit, almost like inflatable toys that had developed slow leaks. Whatever, exactly, they were and were for, they had plainly been deactivated for the moment, and Jamie dismissed them from his thoughts. There was plenty else to worry about.
    He was starting to make a bit more sense of the compartment's interior. They were in a spherical chamber, maybe thirty meters in diameter, and the decking they were standing on cut right through its center. Jamie decided to think of the desk as the equator and the top of the sphere as the north pole. There were conduits and openings on the floor decking. Jamie could see bits of the lower, "southern," half of the sphere below. The skin of the sphere itself was a milky grey that Jamie had seen before on other Elder Race hardware. It was the "neutral" default-setting color of a material that could be adjusted to appear any color, or serve as a video display, or set to full or partial transparency.
    Big, boxy, gleaming cubes and cylinders and other shapes, most about three meters tall or so, were bolted to the midway deck so as to form a series of narrow passageways between them.