Now a strange sound came to him. Beneath the ratcheting whuum-whuum-whuum of the revolving hoop he heard bass gurglings and ringing pops.
We are picking up the whorls of the planetary magnetic fields in the core. They sound remarkably like organ notes.
The long, strumming, hollow sounds broke Killeen’s attention. He imagined they were majestic voices calling out to him, beckoning him into the utter depths of this world….
No. He shook himself, gasped, and switched the lightpipe image into his left eye.
The walls outside bristled with incandescent heat, cherry red. Globs of scorched red churned in the walls.
“Stop your calculatin’ ! Give me an answer.”
Very well. The idea might be marginally possible. I cannot estimate with certainty. However, it would require that we be close enough to the hoop-formed wall. The cyborg has placed us exactly in the center of this tube, as I measure. We need to move perhaps a hundred meters before we will be within the pressure shock wave of the hoop as it turns.
“How far’s that?”
About as far as you, ah, we can throw a stone.
“That’s not so hard. I can use that cooler stuff—”
Extract it now and we will die in seconds.
“Damnall. I’ll do it when we’re clear, then.”
That is tempting, but I fear it would not be effective. The tube opens as it rises toward the surface. Here the tube wall is only a stone’s throw away. By the time we are clear of the core, the walls will be too far to reach in time—unless we begin to move now.
“Yeasay, yeasay—how?”
Even a small pressure applied now would give us enough push to reach the wall during the rise out.
“Pressure…”
Killeen frowned. The claustrophobic suit filled with the sound of his own panting, his sour sweat, the naked smell of his fear. He felt nothing but the clawing emptiness of perpetual falling, of weightless anxiety. He squinted at the tiny image that came through the lightpipe.
The walls outside were flooded with fire. The nickel-iron core only a short distance beyond raged and tossed with prickly white compressional waves. He flew close to livid pink whorls that stretched for tens of kilometers, yet passed in a few seconds of harsh glare. The hoop’s constant whuum-whuum-whuum stormed in his teeth and jaws with grinding persistence.
For a crawling moment he remembered a similar time long ago on Snowglade. He had gone flying with his new wife, Veronica, and Abraham. Near the Citadel there had been an ancient tunnel through a mountain, dug during the High Arcology times. The prickly desert wind swept through it and funnels artfully increased the gale speed. Where the tunnel turned abruptly vertical the wind could support a man with wings. He had cast off into the roaring stream and circled around the tunnel’s wide oval bore. Veronica followed, grinning and wide-eyed. By canting their wings they could soar and plunge and bank about each other. Abraham then came swooping down, his yells swept away in the howl. They had labored against the battering wind and then harvested its incessant pressures, merrily spiraling around one another, aloft on the moment…
All gone, a time lost forever…
Now…
His tongue seemed to fill his throat. Searing air bit in his nostrils. His suit was close to overheating. He realized he was nearing the point where his grip on himself would slip. He would do something rash to escape the heat and he would die.
But something Arthur had said plucked at his memory. Even a small pressure…
“The light. You said something about it pushing us.”
Yes, of course, but that acts equally in all directions.
“Not if we turn some of the silver off.”
What? That would—Oh, I see. If we slightly lessen the silvering on the front of us, say, by robbing the autocircuits there of power…yes, then the light will reflect less well. We will be pushed in that direction by the light striking us from behind.
“Let’s do it. Not much time.”
But the heat! Lessening the reflection heightens the absorption.
Killeen had already guessed that. “Show me how to taper down the silver on my chest.”
No, I don’t—The temperature outside, it’s 3,459 centigrade! I don’t—I can’t take—
“Give the info. Now.” Killeen kept his mind under tight control. This was the only way, he felt sure of it, and seconds counted.
Not now, no! I’ll—I’ll think of something—something that will work—yes, work when we get through the core. I’ll review my back memories, I’ll—
“No. Now.”
He felt the Aspect’s fear, surging now nearly as strongly as his own. So the chip-mind had finally broken, revealed the fragments of its residual humanity.
Deliberately he reached within himself and smothered Arthur’s objections. It called plaintively to him in a small, desperate whine. Killeen clamped down, forced Arthur back into a cranny.
“Now.”
FOUR
Beq’qdahl’s ribbed pores flared a deep, angry yellow.
<The Noughts flee already!>
