Space Eater Read Online Free PDF Page B

thoughtlessness,Mick y, but I do deprecate all this posturing in what’s supposed to be a factual briefing.”
    Wui shrugged, grinning.
    “You’ve explained the lights in the sky,” I said, shifting uncomfortably on the hard chair. “Where does that get us? What’s the mission?”
    Corman looked up, frowning. “Could you tell whether the sun of this second world was affected? The sun in Corvus?”
    “I was coming to that. We’re treading much more carefully these days, with a lot more theoretical guidance than the wonderful, brave pioneers I’ve been telling you about. There are small uses of AP that don’t muck up the scheme of things in any significant way. Devices like the jammer—that simply has a local effect on low-energy e/m radiation and quantum levels. The nullbomb, though it’s hardly a small use, simply has a local effect on, um, atomic stability. We have a third AP application which we think is safe to handle—a somewhat limited matter-transmitter gateway, too small (the theory says) to set the continuum twanging the way Hideyhole did.
    “It’s small. It’s restricted. It wobbles violently over large distances, unless you can anchor it at the far end. And so it’s next to useless for most purposes—push something into the tube underneath space, and the point where it comes out will be different every time. We thought it was sheer luck when we hit the Beta Corvi system first try. It wasn’t, unless sheer luck is what makes water run downhill. We—oh, you’ll have to ask Cathy Ellan for the maths, but effectively we homed in on a weak point in space.
    Which means they’re at it again . There’s a world out there; the old records called it Pallas because Corvus is a raven and you know about the raven and the pallid bust of Pallas ... The people are not simply surviving, they’re experimenting with MT themselves. Making weak points in space and hanging out flags for us without knowing it.
    “Central Command thinks they’ve got to be stopped. I suppose I agree ... Otherwise we might wake up one fine morning to see a nova rising in the east. And that’s the current aim of Project Tunnel. We started in search of pure knowledge, you know, possibly new energy sources. We end up, I’m almost ashamed to say it, we end up sending a gunboat to the colonies. O tempora! O mores! ” Wui was enjoying himself no end; I was wobbling between enjoying his speech and wanting some discipline, when Birch cut in again.
    “_Please_,Mick y. Ken, Rossa, you’ve heard enough to appreciate some of the background and the nature of our present problem. It’s imperative that these colonists be stopped, or at least persuaded not to continue MT experiments.”
    “Have you tried asking them?” said Corman.
    “Have we not?” said Wui, and he sounded bitter. “We lobbed in a mini-transmitter satellite, beaming warnings about AP and MT on a continuous loop. They couldn’t have missed it. In fact they didn’t miss it—as far as we can make out, they blew it clear out of orbit.”
    “Could be your gadget malfunctioned, went into a decaying orbit or something,” I offered.
    “Then so did the second and the third. Radio silence from Beta Corvi II except for gibberish which sounds machine-coded, plus intense microwave activity once in a while: and they knock out our satellites.”
    “We decided we had to take decisive action,” said Birch. His eyes flickered as if he’d remembered something he’d rather not have. “We submitted a tentative plan of action to Central Command in Zurich...”
    “Who piddled around for weeks,” Wui said with a bit of a rush, as though quick to lay down a smokescreen. “It seems the hawk and dove factions argued to the last semicolon. Never mind the fate of the universe, this is politics, this is the important stuff. Oh God: every decision a compromise. The mission plan’s already a botch. One lot wanted to nullbomb the planet right off, the others reckoned that even our radio