The Portal Read Online Free PDF Page A

dressing and some cream on the cut on his finger and tried to stop his brain from endlessly going over the impossible things it had absorbed that morning.
    While they were eating, Mrs Duggan appeared.
    â€˜How’s it going?’ she asked.
    â€˜Fine,’ said William. ‘Thank you.’
    Mrs Duggan nodded. ‘Your uncle around?’
    â€˜He’s… working,’ said William. ‘Did you want him for something?’
    â€˜Wasn’t urgent,’ said Mrs Duggan.
    There was a muffled bark from outside and she opened the door. Timber trotted in with a basket of eggs in his teeth.
    â€˜Got him to check the henhouse for you,’ said Mrs Duggan, putting the basket on the table. Shesniffed. ‘Need to be down in Bottom Field this afternoon. Wondered if Amy could stay here?’
    â€˜Yes, of course,’ said William. Amy usually spent most of her time up at the farm anyway.
    Mrs Duggan looked round at the bags of shopping that littered the floor. ‘Make sure she helps you put this lot away.’
    â€˜Right,’ said William. ‘I’ll do that.’
    â€˜The bricks,’ Uncle Larry explained, ‘are how the Federation worlds communicate with each other.’
    Using a pair of oven gloves, he held up a black brick, slightly larger and smoother than the household variety, that had emerged from the Portal a few seconds before, like Arthur’s sword rising from the lake.
    â€˜In fact, they’re what makes the Federation possible.’ Uncle Larry tossed the brick in the air and caught it as he walked over to the wall. ‘In here, we have dispatches, trade treaties, legislation, scientific journals, films, newspapers, books, music, poetry, letters, television programmes – there’ll be at least a billion separate items on this one brick… and your job is to put it in here. You see?’
    As he spoke, he dropped the brick into a chute set into the wall at the far end of the room.
    â€˜You put it in there so Emma can look at it,download any information that’s specifically for this station, and upload any messages you might want to pass on to anyone else. And you do that every time the bricks come in, which is every ten hours and seventeen minutes.’
    There was a gentle grating sound as the brick reappeared on a ledge to the right of the chute. Uncle Larry picked it up and carried it back to the Portal.
    â€˜You know how long it takes for a message to travel forty thousand light years from the core of the galaxy to out here on the Rim?
Less than three days!
Can you believe that?’
    William did his best to look impressed, and waited as Uncle Larry placed the brick in the centre of the Portal, then stood back as it silently sank from view.
    â€˜Right.’ Uncle Larry took off the oven gloves and passed them to William. ‘That was the brick going upline, and in a minute or two we’ll get the one going down. Think you can manage?’
    William took the gloves and, a minute and a half later, watched as the downline brick rose up through the milky surface of the Portal with a faint
blup
noise and sat there. He stepped forward and took it. It was lighter than he expected and he could feel the warmth even through the gloves as he carried it over to the chute and dropped itin. A moment later, it reappeared on a ledge to one side and he carried it back to the Portal.
    â€˜On a station like this, most days, there won’t be anything specifically for us,’ said Uncle Larry, ‘but we give it to Emma all the same. One of the things she does is take a copy in case something goes wrong. Not that it ever does. But we don’t take chances with the bricks. Too important.’ He nodded happily as the brick disappeared below the surface of the Portal with the same ease with which it had arrived. ‘Now… You know when the next one gets here?’
    Uncle Larry had said that the time between bricks was ten hours and