open mouth, making her teeth throb a little
as if she had drunk icy water. She tugged the stick again, leaning back to help
the nose up, and the town below slid out of view beneath her. Though her cheeks
were frozen, she was streaming with sweat inside her flight suit. Wearing a
lopsided grin, she left the settlement behind and cruised nonchalantly east,
where the last of the sun’s rays were reflecting on the silver - grey rocks of
an outcrop set like an island in the sea of grass.
Chapter 9
Athena
felt she had to be here even though she knew that everything was done
automatically. Such a great deal depended on success that it seemed wrong to
let the occasion pass without some acknowledgement. Besides, she had
about twenty more minutes to kill before Lana reached the Amish, and this was
one way of using them productively. She also wanted, at this critical moment,
to be alone with her thoughts and away from the bustle of the control room. Out
here the evening was still and calm, and the eastern horizon, as it darkened,
was shot with the tiniest glimmers which would soon become the awesome display
of the Skagorack.
As
she crossed the final few steps to her machine she could see no visible change
in its status, no change in the pitch of the gentle thrumming of the focussed
power within. The only outward sign was the ticking down of the gauge. She
watched the countdown reached zero and the mining machine went seamlessly,
without even a click to show a change in its function, over to “Extraction”.
Far below her, magnetic force beams reached into the core of the planet and
drew out the metallic elements from the olerite. The elements were pulled into
the shaft, and on being released from the tremendous pressure they had been
under, sprang out of the liquid metal state and into the gaseous one. From this
the problem wasn’t so much drawing the metal up the shaft as holding back the
excess. Athena had once seen a histortainment visual about an olerite mining
disaster from the late twenty-second century; it had been excruciating, with
chronological errors which even an amateur fan of early space like herself had
had trouble ignoring. It had been famous really for its near – life special
effects, and those had been pretty spectacular. A volcano of molten
metal had grown up before her, and she had seemed to smell the burning of her
own hair as the planetary atmosphere had cooked. When the volcano had grown to
full size, and had bulged out of the side of the dying planet like a ghastly
beak, its own weight had driven it back towards the core and she had seen, from
space, the whole planet turn itself inside out; pieces of crust tens of kilometres
wide upending in seas of glowing magma, cracks spreading round the entire
surface of the planet as seas turned to steam, hiding the pandemonium below
beneath a white death shroud of cloud. In the real events the vid portrayed,
ten billion people had been killed, only sixty million had escaped.
That
was long ago of course, and techniques had completely changed. Still, it was a
sobering thought that just below her feet; planet killing forces were being
held in check by a machine that she had built. She checked the time, she still
had about five minutes she could spare before she had to get back to witness
Lana’s meeting with the Amish, that should be just enough time…
As
she watched, from the far end of the machine, a cloud of super – heated metal steam
jetted out of the long chimney. The heat glowed on her skin as she smelled
again the smell of ozone which was an integral part of an olerite mine.
Personally she quite liked the smell, but she knew that many people hated it,
and she could understand why. Though harmless, it did leave a somewhat cloying
taste in the back of your mouth.
Now
came the moment of truth; incredibly powerful magnetic forces took hold of the
cloud of molten metal particles and drew them together, shaping them at the
same time into a
as if she had drunk icy water. She tugged the stick again, leaning back to help
the nose up, and the town below slid out of view beneath her. Though her cheeks
were frozen, she was streaming with sweat inside her flight suit. Wearing a
lopsided grin, she left the settlement behind and cruised nonchalantly east,
where the last of the sun’s rays were reflecting on the silver - grey rocks of
an outcrop set like an island in the sea of grass.
Chapter 9
Athena
felt she had to be here even though she knew that everything was done
automatically. Such a great deal depended on success that it seemed wrong to
let the occasion pass without some acknowledgement. Besides, she had
about twenty more minutes to kill before Lana reached the Amish, and this was
one way of using them productively. She also wanted, at this critical moment,
to be alone with her thoughts and away from the bustle of the control room. Out
here the evening was still and calm, and the eastern horizon, as it darkened,
was shot with the tiniest glimmers which would soon become the awesome display
of the Skagorack.
As
she crossed the final few steps to her machine she could see no visible change
in its status, no change in the pitch of the gentle thrumming of the focussed
power within. The only outward sign was the ticking down of the gauge. She
watched the countdown reached zero and the mining machine went seamlessly,
without even a click to show a change in its function, over to “Extraction”.
Far below her, magnetic force beams reached into the core of the planet and
drew out the metallic elements from the olerite. The elements were pulled into
the shaft, and on being released from the tremendous pressure they had been
under, sprang out of the liquid metal state and into the gaseous one. From this
the problem wasn’t so much drawing the metal up the shaft as holding back the
excess. Athena had once seen a histortainment visual about an olerite mining
disaster from the late twenty-second century; it had been excruciating, with
chronological errors which even an amateur fan of early space like herself had
had trouble ignoring. It had been famous really for its near – life special
effects, and those had been pretty spectacular. A volcano of molten
metal had grown up before her, and she had seemed to smell the burning of her
own hair as the planetary atmosphere had cooked. When the volcano had grown to
full size, and had bulged out of the side of the dying planet like a ghastly
beak, its own weight had driven it back towards the core and she had seen, from
space, the whole planet turn itself inside out; pieces of crust tens of kilometres
wide upending in seas of glowing magma, cracks spreading round the entire
surface of the planet as seas turned to steam, hiding the pandemonium below
beneath a white death shroud of cloud. In the real events the vid portrayed,
ten billion people had been killed, only sixty million had escaped.
That
was long ago of course, and techniques had completely changed. Still, it was a
sobering thought that just below her feet; planet killing forces were being
held in check by a machine that she had built. She checked the time, she still
had about five minutes she could spare before she had to get back to witness
Lana’s meeting with the Amish, that should be just enough time…
As
she watched, from the far end of the machine, a cloud of super – heated metal steam
jetted out of the long chimney. The heat glowed on her skin as she smelled
again the smell of ozone which was an integral part of an olerite mine.
Personally she quite liked the smell, but she knew that many people hated it,
and she could understand why. Though harmless, it did leave a somewhat cloying
taste in the back of your mouth.
Now
came the moment of truth; incredibly powerful magnetic forces took hold of the
cloud of molten metal particles and drew them together, shaping them at the
same time into a
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