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Giants 1 -- Inherit The Stars -- James P. Hogan
(Version 2002.02.07 -- Done)
To the memory of my Father
Prologue
He became aware of consciousness returning.
Instinctively his mind recoiled, as if by some effort of will he could
arrest the relentless flow of seconds that separated non-awareness from
awareness and return again to the timeless oblivion in which the agony of
total exhaustion was unknown and unknowable.
The hammer that had threatened to burst from his chest was now quiet.
The rivers of sweat that had drained with his strength from every hollow of
his body were now turned cold. His limbs had turned to lead. The gasping of
his lungs had returned once more to a slow and even rhythm. It sounded loud in
the close confines of his helmet.
He tried to remember how many had died. Their release was final; for him
there was no release. How much longer could he go on? What was the point?
Would there be anyone left alive at Gorda anyway?
"Gorda...? Gorda...?"
His mental defenses could shield him from reality no longer.
"Must get to Gorda!"
He opened his eyes. A billion unblinking stars stared back without
interest. When he tried to move, his body refused to respond, as if trying to
prolong to the utmost its last precious moments of rest. He took a deep breath
and, clenching his teeth at the pain that instantly racked again through every
fiber of his body, forced himself away from the rock and into a sitting
position. A wave of nausea swept over him. His head sagged forward and struck
the inside of his visor. The nausea passed.
He groaned aloud.
"Feeling better, then, soldier?" The voice came clearly through the
speaker inside his helmet. "Sun's getting low. We gotta be moving."
He lifted his head and slowly scanned the nightmare wilderness of
scorched rock and ash-gray dust that confronted him.
"Whe -- " The sound choked in his throat. He swallowed, licked his lips,
and tried again. "Where are you?"
"To your right, up on the rise just past that small cliff that juts out
-- the one with the big boulders underneath."
He turned his head and after some seconds detected a bright blue patch
against the ink-black sky. It seemed blurred and far away. He blinked and
strained his eyes again, forcing his brain to coordinate with his vision. The
blue patch resolved itself into the figure of the tireless Koriel, clad in a
heavy-duty combat suit.
"I see you." After a pause: "Anything?"
"It's fairly flat on the other side of the rise -- should be easier
going for a while. Gets rockier farther on. Come have a look."
He inched his arms upward to find purchase on the rock behind, then
braced them to thrust his weight forward over his legs. His knees trembled.
His face contorted as he fought to concentrate his remaining strength into his
protesting thighs. Already his heart was pumping again, his lungs heaving. The
effort evaporated and he fell back against the rock. His labored breathing
rasped over Koriel's radio.
"Finished...Can't move..."
The blue figure on the skyline turned.
"Aw, what kinda talk's that? This is the last stretch. We're there,
buddy -- we're there."
"No -- no good...Had it..." Koriel waited a few seconds.
"I'm coming back down."
"No -- you go on. Someone's got to make it."
No response.
"Koriel..."
He looked back at where the figure had stood, but already it had
disappeared below the intervening rocks and was out of the line of
transmission. A minute or two later the figure emerged from behind the nearby
boulders, covering the ground in long, effortless bounds. The bounds broke
into a walk as Koriel approached the hunched form clad in red.
"C'mon, soldier, on your feet now. There's people back there depending
on us."
He felt himself gripped below his arm and raised irresistibly, as if
some of Koriel's limitless reserves of strength were pouring into him. For a
while his head swam and he leaned with the top of his visor resting on the
giant's shoulder insignia.
"Okay," he managed at last. "Let's go."
Hour after hour the thin snake of footprints, two pinpoints of color at
its head, wound its way westward across the wilderness amid steadily
lengthening shadows. He marched as if in a trance, beyond feeling pain, beyond
feeling exhaustion -- beyond feeling anything. The skyline never seemed to
change; soon he could no longer look at it. Instead, he began picking out the
next prominent boulder or crag, and counting off the paces until they reached
it. "Two hundred and thirteen less to go." And then he repeated it over
again...and again...and again. The rocks marched by in slow, endless,
indifferent procession. Every step became a separate triumph of will -- a
deliberate, conscious effort to drive one foot yet one more pace beyond the
last. When he faltered, Koriel was there to catch his arm; when he fell,
Koriel was always there to haul him up. Koriel never tired.
At last they stopped. They were standing in a gorge perhaps a quarter
mile wide, below one of the lines of low, broken cliffs that flanked it on
either side. He collapsed on the nearest boulder. Koriel stood a few paces
ahead surveying the landscape. The line of crags immediately above them was
interrupted by a notch, which marked the point where a steep and narrow cleft
tumbled down to break into the wall of the main gorge. From the bottom of the
cleft, a mound of accumulated rubble and rock debris led down about fifty feet
to blend with the floor of the gorge not far from where they stood. Koriel
stretched out an arm to point up beyond the cleft.
"Gorda will be roughly that way," he said without turning. "Our best way
would be up and onto that ridge. If we stay on the flat and go around the long
way, it'll be too far. What d'you say?" The other stared up in mute despair.
The rockfall, funneling up toward the mouth of the cleft, looked like a
mountain. In the distance beyond towered the ridge, jagged and white in the
glare of the sun. It was impossible.
Koriel allowed his doubts no time to take root. Somehow -- slipping,
sliding, stumbling, and falling -- they reached the entrance to the cleft.
Beyond it, the walls narrowed and curved around to the left, cutting off the
view of the gorge below from where they had come. They climbed higher. Around
them, sheets of raw reflected sunlight and bottomless pits of shadow met in
knife-edges across rocks shattered at a thousand crazy angles. His brain
ceased to extract the concepts of shape and form from the insane geometry of
white and black that kaleidoscoped across his retina. The patterns grew and
shrank and merged and whirled in a frenzy of visual cacophony.
His face crashed against his visor as his helmet thudded into the dust.
Koriel hoisted him to his feet.
"You can do it. We'll see Gorda from the ridge. It'll be all downhill
from there..."
But the figure in red sank slowly to its knees and folded over. The head
inside the helmet shook weakly from side to side. As Koriel watched, the
conscious part of his mind at last accepted the inescapable logic that the
parts beneath consciousness already knew. He took a deep breath and looked
about him.
Not far below, they had passed a hole, about five feet across, cut into
the base of one of the rock walls. It looked like the remnant of some
forgotten excavation -- maybe a preliminary digging left by a mining survey.
The giant stooped, and grasping the harness that secured the backpack to the
now insensible figure at his feet, dragged the body back down the slope to the
hole. It was about ten feet deep inside. Working quickly, Koriel arranged a
lamp to reflect a low light off the walls and roof. Then he removed the
rations from his companion's pack, laid the figure back against the rear wall
as comfortably as he could, and placed the food containers within easy reach.
Just as he was finishing, the eyes behind the visor flickered open.
"You'll be fine here for a while." The usual gruffness was gone from
Koriel's voice. "I'll have the rescue boys back from Gorda before you know
it."
The figure in red raised a feeble arm. Just a whisper came through.
"You -- you tried...Nobody could have..." Koriel clasped the gauntlet
with both hands.
"Mustn't give up. That's no good. You just have to hang on a while."
Inside his helmet the granite cheeks were wet. He backed to the entrance and
made a final salute. "So long, soldier." And then he was gone.
Outside he built a small cairn of stones to mark the position of the
hole. He would mark the trail to Gorda with such cairns. At last he
straightened up and turned defiantly to face the desolation surrounding him.
The rocks seemed to scream down in soundless laughing mockery. The stars above
remained unmoved. Koriel glowered up at the cleft, rising up toward the tiers
of crags and terraces that guarded the ridge, still soaring in the distance.
His lips curled back to show his teeth.
"So -- it's just you and me now, is it?" he snarled at the Universe.
"Okay, you bastard -- let's see you take this round!"
With his legs driving like slow pistons, he attacked the ever steepening
slope.
Chapter One
Accompanied by a mild but powerful whine, a gigantic silver torpedo rose
slowly upward to hang two thousand feet above the sugar-cube huddle of central
London. Over three hundred yards long, it spread at the tail into a slim delta
topped by two sharply swept fins. For a while the ship hovered, as if savoring
the air of its newfound freedom, its nose swinging smoothly around to seek the
north. At last, with the sound growing, imperceptibly at first but with
steadily increasing speed, it began to slide forward and upward. At ten
thousand feet its engines erupted into full power, hurling the suborbital
skyliner eagerly toward the fringes of space. Sitting in row thirty-one of C
deck was Dr. Victor Hunt, head of Theoretical Studies at the Metadyne
Nucleonic Instrument Company of Reading, Berkshire -- itself a subsidiary of
the mammoth Intercontinental Data and Control Corporation, headquartered at
Portland, Oregon, USA. He absently surveyed the diminishing view of Hendon
that crawled across the cabin wall-display screen and tried again to fit some
kind of explanation to the events of the last few days.
His experiments with matter-antimatter particle extinctions had been
progressing well. Forsyth-Scott had followed Hunt's reports with evident
interest and therefore knew that the tests were progressing well. That made it
all the more strange for him to call Hunt to his office one morning to ask him
simply to drop everything and get over to IDCC Portland as quickly as could be
arranged. From the managing director's tone and manner it had been obvious
that the request was couched as such mainly for reasons of politeness; in
reality this was one of the few occasions on which Hunt had no say in the
matter.
To Hunt's questions, Forsyth-Scott had stated quite frankly that he
didn't know what it was that made Hunt's immediate presence at IDCC so
imperative. The previous evening he had received a videocall from Felix
Borlan, the president of IDCC, who had told him that as a matter of priority
he required the only working prototype of the scope prepared for immediate
shipment to the USA and an installation team ready to go with it. Also, he had
insisted that Hunt personally come over for an indefinite period to take
charge of some project involving the scope, which could not wait. For Hunt's
benefit, Forsyth-Scott had replayed Borlan's call on his desk display and
allowed him to verify for himself that Forsyth-Scott in turn was acting under
a thinly disguised directive. Even stranger, Borlan too had seemed unable to
say precisely what it was that the instrument and its inventor were needed
for.
The Trimagniscope, developed as a consequence of a two-year
investigation by Hunt into certain aspects of neutrino physics, promised to be
perhaps the most successful venture ever undertaken by the company. Hunt had
established that a neutrino beam that passed through a solid object underwent
certain interactions in the close vicinity of atomic nuclei, which produced
measurable changes in the transmitted output. By raster scanning an object
with a trio of synchronized, intersecting beams, he had devised a method of
extracting enough information to generate a 3-D color hologram, visually
indistinguishable from the original solid. Moreover, since the beams scanned
right through, it was almost as easy to conjure up views of the inside as of
the out. These capabilities, combined with that of high-power magnification
that was also inherent in the method, yielded possibilities not even remotely
approached by anything else on the market. From quantitative cell metabolism
and bionics, through neurosurgery, metallurgy, crystallography, and molecular
electronics, to engineering inspection and quality control, the applications
were endless. Inquiries were pouring in and shares were soaring. Removing the
prototype and its originator to the USA -- totally disrupting carefully
planned production and marketing schedules -- bordered on the catastrophic.
Borlan knew this as well as anybody. The more Hunt turned these things over in
his mind, the less plausible the various possible explanations that had at
first occurred to him seemed, and the more convinced he became that whatever
the answer turned out to be, it would be found to lie far beyond even Felix
Borlan and IDCC.
His thoughts were interrupted by a voice issuing from somewhere in the
general direction of the cabin roof.
"Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. This is Captain Mason speaking. I
would like to welcome you aboard this Boeing 1017 on behalf of British
Airways. We are now in level flight at our cruising altitude of fifty-two
miles, speed 3,160 knots. Our course is thirty-five degrees west of true
north, and the coast is now below with Liverpool five miles to starboard.
Passengers are free to leave their seats. The bars are open and drinks and
snacks are being served. We are due to arrive in San Francisco at ten thirty-
eight hours local time; that's one hour and fifty minutes from now. I would
like to remind you that it is necessary to be seated when we begin our descent
in one hour and thirty-five minutes time. A warning will sound ten minutes
before descent commences and again at five minutes. We trust you will enjoy
your journey. Thank you."
The captain signed himself off with a click, which was drowned Out as
the regulars made their customary scramble for the vi-phone booths.
In the seat next to Hunt, Rob Gray, Metadyne's chief of Experimental
Engineering, sat with an open briefcase resting on his knees. He studied the
information being displayed on the screen built into its lid.
"A regular flight to Portland takes off fifteen minutes after we get
in," he announced. "That's a bit tight. Next one's not for over four hours.
What d'you reckon?" He punctuated the question with a sideways look and raised
eyebrows.
Hunt pulled a face. "I'm not arsing about in Frisco for four hours. Book
us an Avis jet -- we'll fly ourselves up."
"That's what I thought."
Gray played the mini keyboard below the screen to summon an index,
consulted it briefly, then touched another key to display a directory.
Selecting a number from one of the columns, he mouthed it silently to himself
as he tapped it in. A copy of the number appeared near the bottom of the
screen with a request for him to confirm. He pressed the Y button. The screen
went blank for a few seconds and then exploded into a whirlpool of color,
which stabilized almost at once into the features of a platinum-blonde, who
radiated the kind of smile normally reserved for toothpaste commercials.
"Good morning. Avis San Francisco, City Terminal. This is Sue Parker.
Can I help you?"
Gray addressed the grille, located next to the tiny camera lens just
above the screen.
"Hi, Sue. Name's Gray -- R. J. Gray, airbound for SF, due to arrive
about two hours from now. Could I reserve an aircar, please?"
"Sure thing. Range?"
"Oh -- about five hundred..." He glanced at Hunt.
"Better make it seven," Hunt advised.
"Make that seven hundred miles minimum."
"That'll be no problem, Mr. Gray. We have Skyrovers, Mercury Threes,
Honeybees, or Yellow Birds. Any preference?"
"No -- any'll do."
"I'll make it a Mercury, then. Any idea how long?"
"No -- er -- indefinite."
"Okay. Full computer nav and flight control? Automatic VTOL?"
"Preferably and, ah, yes."
"You have a full manual license?" The blonde operated unseen keys as she
spoke.
"Yes."
"Could I have personal data and account-checking data, please?"
Gray had extracted the card from his wallet while the exchange was
taking place. He inserted it into a slot set to one side of the screen, and
touched a key.
The blonde consulted other invisible oracles. "Okay," she pronounced.
"Any other pilots?"
"One. A Dr. V. Hunt."
"His personal data?"
Gray took Hunt's already proffered card and substituted it for his own.
The ritual was repeated. The face then vanished to be replaced by a screen of
formatted text with entries completed in the boxes provided.
"Would you verify and authorize, please?" said the disembodied voice
from the grille. "Charges are shown on the right."
Gray cast his eye rapidly down the screen, grunted, and keyed in a
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