[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
force as surely as the violence of the Mascs. Even millennia after The Flight,
the cybs seemed to carry some of the Masc heritage.
"Greetings, Majer," I offered verbally. "Is there anything else in which I
might provide assistance?"
"Rations?"
"Food? We can provide supplies to the central kitchens, and cooks, if you
like. Would that be agreeable?"
"The supplies would be fine." Then he added, in a transmission to the locial
Page 34
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
field and probably from the lander to the orbiting ships, given the delay in
responses, "No way I'd trust their cooks."
"They might make the food edible," snapped Ysslop.
"Enough!" growled a voice after a short delay.
"I will make the arrangements," I promised and offered a very slight bow
before turning.
Behind me, the marcybs continued to march into the residence bloc. I waved
down a shuttle. I didn't know the dark-haired driver, but she knew me. "Where
to, Coordinator?"
"The landing field."
"The field it is, and we'll be picking up more of their green-coats."
"Greencoats?" I hadn't heard the term before.
"That's what Ser Dvorrak called them, and it stuck. He has a way with words."
I sat down, glad to be out of the wind. Even with the cloak, it took energy to
stay warm in the cold. The shuttle was empty except for the two of us.
"Cold out there, and getting colder." The draff driver wore a heavy leather
jacket with the golden kaliram fleece out. The jacket represented a very brave
soul, a great obligation, or both.
"I think so."
She glanced at me, both in the mirror and the screen, several times as the
shuttle whined back toward the landing field before finally asking, "Are they
going to make trouble?"
"I think that's what's on their minds," I said frankly. Anything else would
have been untrue, and even a draff would have known that. That she was a
shuttle driver trusted with carrying marcybs indicated intelligence, and that
meant she was a draff by choice, not from lack of ability.
"Why don't they just have a nice visit and go back where they came from?"
"We're working on that." I shifted my weight on the seat.
"Good. Where do you want off?"
I looked for the shuttle, and finally located it about fifty meters east of
the base of the tower. "By the tower is fine."
The driver nodded to me as I slipped off. I watched the ground shuttle whine
northward along the landing strip toward the remaining marcybs that waited
amid the scattered light flurries of white that blurred the sharp black edges
of the landers that had brought the greencoats to Old Earth.
The craft that waited for me on the permacrete was as dissimilar to a cyb
lander as a demi to a cyb. Less than thirty meters long, white, the top of the
forward cockpit no more than five meters off the permacrete, the magdrive
shuttle looked like a toy compared to a cyb lander. The side door slid open,
and I stepped into the small cabin behind the cockpit.
Page 35
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
"Coordinator." The short-haired redhead in the plain gray jumpsuit nodded.
"I'm Lieza."
"Ecktor, Lieza," I corrected. "I'm only Coordinator for now."
The shuttle pilot smiled briefly as if to dispute me, but only said, "Do you
want to sit back there or up here?"
"Up there, if you don't mind."
She nodded again, and her eyes blanked as she went full-net. I took off the
cloak and folded it into a square that I put into a locker before I strapped
in to the other cockpit couch. As I settled in, I studied the display screens,
far simpler than those on board the cyb landers, I was certain.
Appropriate technology is only one key. The cybs couldn't use magfield
drivers, not even on their landers. Even if Gates had a magnetic field as
powerful as that of Old Earth, and the cyb's home planet probably didn't,
other planetary and solar magnetic fields vary, and there usually isn't enough
power concentration in the outer fringes of most systems. Fusactors always
work, but they're heavy and require a comparatively high amount of fuel. You
can't take a ship underspace in high dust densities, and that means traveling
outsystem before un-derspacing, and that requires concentrated energy
generation systems fusactors or the equivalent.
Magfield drivers tap existing energy flows, above and below the normspace web,
whereas fusactors create an energy flow to be used.
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]