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.''Yes.' What a freight of rebellion against fate was carried by thatmonosyllable! 'But why discuss it? Why reach for the unattainable? From now onwe die-we all die-unfulfilled and without product.All life in thisuniverse-in this galaxy, at least-ends with us now here.''I hope not.I think not.There are many solar systems.''To what end?' Litosa broke in, her thought a sneer.'Can you kindle utterlyfrigid fuel? Can you work in a sun's core? Or can you, perhaps, take a pieceof star-core stuff through empty space to a cold planet and.' The thoughtchanged in tone, became what would have been on Earth a schoolgirl's* The reader will please understand that I am doing the best I can with wordswe all know.E.E.S.rssBC/squeal of rapture:'You CAN! Or you wouldn't have brought up such a harrowing subject.You REALLYCAN!''Not that, exactly, but something just as good.I found sparks and kindling ona cold, solid planet.''NO!' The thought was ecstasy.'You DIDN'T!''I did.Whenever you're ready, we'll go."'I've been ready for CYCLES!'The two beings linked themselves together in some fashion unknowable to manand shot away through the airless, heatless void.Heatless, but by no meansdevoid of energy; the travelers could draw sustenance enough for theirordinary needs from the cosmic radiation pervading all space.Across Rift Two Hundred Forty they flew and on through interstellar space.They reached our solar system.On the third planet, our Earth, they foundseveral atomic power plants.There were no loose atomic vortices-then.'Hold on! Wait!' Litosa exclaimed, and the strangely-linked pair stopped justshort of the glowing bit of warmth-the raging incandescent, furiouslyradiating reactor in the heart of one of Earth's largest generatingstations-which was its goal.'There's something funny about this.How couldthere possibly be even one little spark like this, to say nothing of so many,on such an utterly frigid planet, unless some intelligent being started it andis maintaining it for some purpose? There MUST be intelligence on this planetand we must be intruding shamefully.Have you scanned? Scanned.CAREFULLY?''I have scanned.Carefully, completely.Not only on this planet's surface, butthroughout its depths.I have scanned, area by area and volume by volume, thissun and its every planet, satellite, and asteroid.There is no intelligencehere.More, there is no sign whatever of any kind of life, howeverrudimentary, latent, or nascent.I have been able to find nothing whatever tomodify our conclusion of long and long ago that we are the only life,intelligent or otherwise, in existence.Scan for yourself.'Litosa scanned.She scanned the sun, the planets, the moons and moonlets, theasteroids down to grains of sand and particles of dust.Still unsatisfied, shePage 101ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlscanned all neighboring solar systems, from Centralia to Salvador.Then, andonly then, did she accept Medury's almost unacceptable conclusion that theseprovidential sparks were in fact accidental and were in fact, by some processas yet unknown to Cahuitan science, self-balancing and self-sustaining.Medury and Litosa, woven into a fantastically intricate and complex sphere ofultra-microscopic filaments, flashed into the heart of the reactor, whichthereupon went instantaneously and enthusiastically out of control.And from the pleasant warmth of the incubator-womb-to us of Earth the raveningfury of the first loose atomic vortex- there emerged the fulfillmentMedosalitury.This entity, grave and complete and serene as an adult Cahuitanshould be, wafted itself (there is no question as to which pronoun is to beused here) sedately back to its home planet.And in the pleasant warmth of that same incubator-womb the two products,Midora and Letusy, began very slowly to gestate.Joan and Storm, minds in fusion, set out to regions never before explored byman.Downward first.One cycle per second.One per minute, One per hour; perday; per year; per century.'Hold everything, Storm! You're getting out beyond my depth.Anyway, what useare they in what we're after?''None at all, that I can see; but it's new knowledge.Nobody everdreamed-correction, please: nobody ever published- anything about it, orI'd've heard of it.Maybe the Fives know all about it, though; I'll check withthem, first chance I get.QX, we'll jump up to the radio band.''There wouldn't be any radio waves out here, and you couldn't understand thelanguage if there were.''How do you know? We'll go where there are some and find out.Maybe we canunderstand any kind of language now- maybe that's one of the natural abilitiesof a Type Three-Six fusion.Who knows?'In an instant they were receiving a short-wave broadcast at the HeavisideLayer of a distant planet.They could receive it, could de-louse it, couldseparate signal from carrier wave, could read the information; but they couldnot understand it.'Well, that's a relief,' Joan sighed.'I was getting more than half afraidthat a Type Six mind would be omniscient.''If I'm a Six you needn't worry; there's altogether too much to know [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]