[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.What could they possibly have been told?The brig's lone inhabitant received no warning at all that an end was imminent to the last leg of his first space flight, any more than he had been warned of his incarceration.Not until the journey's last few minutes, when there came a subtle twisting of the artificial gravity, and then a slight jar felt through the deck like that of a boat grating on a sandy bottom.That, Chen knew—the adventure stories again—was the interstellar drive cutting out, and the forces employed to move the ship in normal spacetime taking over.A few more minutes passed in isolation.Then suddenly the door to the brig was sliding open.A Templar voice said: "Come along.We're getting you off first."And at last, being escorted watchfully along a hull passage, Chen passed an unshielded viewport again and had a good chance to see where he was going.They were still in space, and he discovered that the Fortress of the Templar Radiant, seen from outside and at close range, had a certain resemblance to the descriptions that he had heard and read of the larger spacegoing berserkers; it was an enormous, rough-skinned sphere, replete with cracks and wounds from ancient battles, and still formidable-looking with what Chen supposed were varieties of offensive and defensive armament.Heavy shadows occluded much of the sphere's rugged surface, because here a lot of the background space was dark nebula instead of stars.The Eight Worlds and their spatial environs, of which this was an extended part, were somewhat isolated from the rest of the Galaxy by enormous Galactic clouds of dark dust and gas, and were accessible only by circuitous passages from the hundreds of other human-occupied planets whose people tended to think of themselves as making up the mainstream of Galactic civilization.The vast sphere ahead of the transport grew quickly larger, until to Chen's inexperienced eye it had assumed what looked like planetary dimensions.Then the interstellar ship that he was riding, that had looked so large to Chen when he approached it aboard a shuttle, went plunging into a mere pore of the onrushing planet's surface.This comparatively narrow passage, Chen soon observed, did not lead straight in to the dock facilities, which he assumed were near the center of the enormous Fortress, or at least somewhere on its inner surface, but made many turns.And presently he realized that this zig-zagging of the passage must have a defensive purpose too.There had evidently been some preliminary radio communication between transport and Fortress concerning him because, immediately after the transport docked, Chen was hustled off ship ahead of anyone else.Surrounded by his silent Templar escort, he was made to walk in what felt like normal gravity along a narrow paved way that appeared to be some kind of a city alley, though it was much cleaner than most of the alleys he had seen.Resting in another dock nearby was a tourists' ship, a huge but perversely normal object.What looked like almost normal sunlight was filtering down through nearby branches, vine and tree, their small leaves quaking in a breeze that after Chen's days aboard ship certainly suggested the openness of a planet's surface.That wind had to be, he realized, somehow artificially induced and managed.Before Chen thought to look up at the famous bright enigma that here served as a sun, he had beenGenerated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.htmlhustled underneath a roof and into shadow.Now he was ordered to sit on a stone bench and wait, a sturdy and uncommunicative Templar on each side of him.But he had hardly sat down before they were dragging him to his feet again."The base commander wants to talk to you," warned an approaching officer."Watch your manners."And here she came, at a brisk walk, with escort.The base commander surprised Chen somewhat by being a young woman—well, not really that young, he supposed.He supposed also that he ought to salute, or something, as some of the people around him were doing.But as yet no one had officially taught him how.He tried to read hope into the lady's blue-eyed stare as she came to a sharp halt before him, confronting him at close range.But what he saw there looked more like menace.Words issued crisply from her soft mouth."I am Commander Blenheim.I understand that you have enlisted in the Templars in order to avoid legal prosecution on Salutai.""Uh.yessir.ma'am.uh [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]