Transvergence by Charles Sheffield Page A

don't believe that's what it was really told by the Builders. You can get things screwed up pretty bad in five million years. Atvar H'sial agrees with me—the constructs are conscientious, an' real impressive when you first meet 'em. An' they got lots of power, too. But they're not very smart ."

    "If that's true, where are the Builders? And what do they really want the constructs to do?"

    "Beats me. That's more your line than mine. An' right now I don't much care. We got other worries." Nenda turned, to where Atvar H'sial had finished connecting the supply lines. "Like how we land on Bridle Gap. We'll be there in two days. The Erebus can't go down, because J'merlia and Kallik were dumb enough to buy us a Flying Dutchman. An' we don't have credit to rent a downside shuttle. So you better cross your fingers."

    Atvar H'sial was turning spigots, and the pipes leading to the brown ovoid were filling with cloudy liquid. Darya followed Louis Nenda and bent to stare at the shiny surface of the egg.

    "What is it?"

    "That's the question of the moment. This is the gizmo that Julian Graves found when he was pokin' around the other day. No one could identify it, but yesterday At took a peek at its inside with ultrasonics. She thinks it might be a ship-seed. The Erebus is a Tantalus orbital fort, so it never expected to land anywhere. But there would be times when people on board needed to escape. There were a dozen of these eggs, stacked away close to the main hatch. In a few hours we'll know what we've got. 'Scuse me. At says I hafta get busy."

    He hurried away from Darya to crouch by the spigots and control their flow. Fluids were moving faster through the supply lines, and the glossy surface of the ellipsoid was beginning to swell ominously. A soft, throbbing tone came from its interior.

    "Don't get too close," Nenda called.

    The warning was unnecessary. As the egg began to quiver, Darya turned and headed out through the exit of the auxiliary engine room. Nenda had given her a lot to think about.

    Atvar H'sial watched until Darya was out of sight. "That departure is not before time, Louis Nenda." The pheromonal message carried a reproving overtone. "As I remarked before, the human female provides an undesirable distraction for you."

    "Relax, At. She don't care about me , and I don't care about her. All she's worried about is the Builders, and where they are."

    "I am not persuaded; nor, I suspect, is Captain Rebka."

    "Who can go stick it up his nose. And so can you." Louis spoke in irritated tones—but he did not provide his final comment in pheromonal translation.

     

    The world of Bridle Gap had never been settled by humans.

    The reason for that was obvious to the crew of the Erebus long before they arrived there. The parent star, Cavesson, was a tiny fierce point of violet-blue at the limit of the visible spectrum, sitting within a widespread shell of glowing gas. The stellar collapse and shrugging off of outer layers that had turned Cavesson into a neutron star forty thousand years earlier would have vaporized Bridle Gap—if that world had been close-by at the time. Even today, the outpouring of X- rays and hard ultraviolet from Cavesson created an ionized shroud at the outer edge of Bridle Gap's atmosphere. Enough ultraviolet came blazing through to the surface to fry an unshielded human in minutes.

    "It must have been a rogue planet," said Julian Graves. The Erebus had sat in parking orbit for a couple of hours, while the ship's scopes revealed as much surface detail as possible. Now it was time for action.

    "It was on a close-approach trajectory to Cavesson," he went on, "and if the star hadn't blown up, Bridle Gap would have swung right on by. But the ejecta from Cavesson smacked into it and transferred enough momentum to shove it to a capture orbit."

    "And if you believe that," Hans Rebka said softly to E.C. Tally, "you'll believe anything."

    "But you reject that explanation?" The embodied computer was