[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
example were likely to lie. The approach was a bit like highlighting a
newspaper ad with a tar brush, but in a situation where it reduced possible
solutions numbered at "almost-infinity" by an amount "almost-infinity-minus
something," the result was a problem that VISAR could generally find
manageable. In short, while it wasn't possible to hit a specific target by its
characteristics, they could usually lob a shell onto more or less the right
continent.
Given some indication by the data fed back of where and when they were within
those limits, the technique then was to try and hop the device closer by
sending it a series of corrections. The corrections didn't always have the
expected effect, but correlating the directives sent with the result returned
was producing the fragments that it was hoped would one day connect together
into a map. But nobody yet knew what the scale was, and to make matters worse
the scale seemed to vary in every one of innumerable directions. VISAR said it
was nice to have something challenging to do.
The voice of the Thurien supervisor directing the operation came over the
local circuit. "Beacon lock-on is holding steady. Bell distributor drawing
h-input and charging. Drone wave function registering on all matrixes. Pilot
beam synched." An exchange of numbers and status checks with VISAR followed.
It meant that the raft out in the Gate was ready to go, and the array of
projectors positioned in space around it was almost up to power. The "beacon"
was for VISAR to home the raft on a probe that had been sent through about
thirty minutes previously to a fairly "nearby" location in the Multiverse that
could be identified with some confidence. A fix from the returned astronomical
observations and intercepted Thurien communications signals put it about a
half million miles from an unremarkable planet of one of Gistar's neighboring
systems, and several months in the past.
"Well, with luck we'll soon know if you were right," Hunt said to Chien. The
test involved an aspect of the return-wave that she and some of the Thuriens
had been investigating. An object was brought back by reversing the projection
process effectively creating a progression of wave representations in the
return direction. It had been demonstrated successfully with a series of small
objects sent via the old MP2 chamber. The raft would be the first attempt with
a larger body, using the Gate.
"Being sure about the part that gets us home again is something that interests
me greatly," she replied dryly.
"Vic, by the way," Caldwell said from his window in Hunt's head. "Owen stopped
by to visit today. Asked me to say hi. He was hoping to be in on this too, but
he couldn't stay." The test had been postponed a couple of hours due to some
last-minute changes out at the Gate.
"That's too bad," Hunt said. "How's he liking retirement?"
"Doing okay. Catching up on his reading and traveling, he says, and still
thinking about writing that book about his UNSA days. But I think he misses
the firm. Did I ever tell you I thought about retiring too around a year or
two ago?"
Hunt's eyebrows arched in surprise. "No, you never did. Seriously?"
"Sure. It was touch and go. Maeve talked me out of it in the end. I think she
was terrified of the thought of having me under her feet all day, every day.
I'm glad she did. I think I was going through a "
VISAR cut in "Excuse me, but Bytor is asking to have a word with Gregg." Bytor
was one of Thurien engineers assisting near the supervisor's panel.
"Back in a second, Vic."
"Sure."
Caldwell vanished. Hunt returned his attention to the screens. The views from
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ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
the raft's imagers showed the sixteen projector bells as disks of blue-violet
light spaced around in all directions against the background of stars, with
MP2 showing as a bright light on one view and the distant globe of Thurien
beyond. The Thuriens around the Control Center sat intent at their tasks. By
now, nobody expected any real surprises. Hunt reflected on how quickly even
something like this, which a year ago would have been viewed as outlandish,
could come to be accepted as routine. The countdown was approaching zero.
"Sequencing out. . . . Transferring."
And the gate was empty. That was it. There were no spectacular effects. One
moment the raft had been there, centered at the focus of the array pattern,
and then it was gone across several light-years of space and several months
back in time, if all was according to plan.
"Looks like another good one," Chien said, her eyes busy taking in displays
and numbers.
"And we're sitting here getting ho-hum about it. Do you realize how staggering
this all is, really?" Hunt shook his head.
VISAR confirmed that the data link to the raft was functioning. The readings
coming back showed that it had found the beacon. Moments later, a visual
channel opened up, showing an altered view of stars and space, this time
without any bells, no MP2, and a planet that wasn't Thurien, farther away and
smaller.
"There it is." Chien indicated with a nod. The beacon was coming into view in
another shot, riding at a distance that VISAR reported as being eleven miles.
"We're probably causing some excitement there already," Hunt said. There could
be no hiding something the size of the raft from the Thurien monitoring system
of whatever universe they had connected with not that there was any particular
reason to want to hide it. In fact, quite the contrary.
Caldwell popped back into his visual field. "It's looking good. The raft got
there," he said.
Hunt nodded. "Seems like it, Gregg."
"Access established. We're presenting our calling card," VISAR informed the
company. It meant that via the raft's communications relay, it was in contact
with its counterpart the VISAR that existed in the target universe. In fact,
this was one of the more valuable parts of the exercise. Instead of having to
decode its way into an unfamiliar system, this way it was able to transfer
enormous volumes of information describing the reality the raft was in. After
a series of repeat performances with probes, they were no longer initiating
person-to-person contacts. The routine had gotten old, and the individuals on
the receiving end were usually too dumbfounded to supply much in the way of
anything useful enough to be worth the time.
"Wow!" VISAR didn't often insert exclamations. "You're lucky you weren't with
this outfit. They didn't power down at Quelsang and move the action out to
MP2. There was a major accident sounds like a matter clash. It took out half
the Institute. The group was wiped out except for Danchekker and Mildred, who
weren't there. I've given them our records, but I don't know if it will do any
good. Their whole project is shut down. It's causing a major political scandal
all over Thurien and back at Earth."
"Jeez!" Caldwell murmured. Hunt could only whistle silently, too taken aback
to form any words.
"Eesyan permitted it?" Chien said, sounding surprised and a little
disbelieving. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl akte20.pev.pl
example were likely to lie. The approach was a bit like highlighting a
newspaper ad with a tar brush, but in a situation where it reduced possible
solutions numbered at "almost-infinity" by an amount "almost-infinity-minus
something," the result was a problem that VISAR could generally find
manageable. In short, while it wasn't possible to hit a specific target by its
characteristics, they could usually lob a shell onto more or less the right
continent.
Given some indication by the data fed back of where and when they were within
those limits, the technique then was to try and hop the device closer by
sending it a series of corrections. The corrections didn't always have the
expected effect, but correlating the directives sent with the result returned
was producing the fragments that it was hoped would one day connect together
into a map. But nobody yet knew what the scale was, and to make matters worse
the scale seemed to vary in every one of innumerable directions. VISAR said it
was nice to have something challenging to do.
The voice of the Thurien supervisor directing the operation came over the
local circuit. "Beacon lock-on is holding steady. Bell distributor drawing
h-input and charging. Drone wave function registering on all matrixes. Pilot
beam synched." An exchange of numbers and status checks with VISAR followed.
It meant that the raft out in the Gate was ready to go, and the array of
projectors positioned in space around it was almost up to power. The "beacon"
was for VISAR to home the raft on a probe that had been sent through about
thirty minutes previously to a fairly "nearby" location in the Multiverse that
could be identified with some confidence. A fix from the returned astronomical
observations and intercepted Thurien communications signals put it about a
half million miles from an unremarkable planet of one of Gistar's neighboring
systems, and several months in the past.
"Well, with luck we'll soon know if you were right," Hunt said to Chien. The
test involved an aspect of the return-wave that she and some of the Thuriens
had been investigating. An object was brought back by reversing the projection
process effectively creating a progression of wave representations in the
return direction. It had been demonstrated successfully with a series of small
objects sent via the old MP2 chamber. The raft would be the first attempt with
a larger body, using the Gate.
"Being sure about the part that gets us home again is something that interests
me greatly," she replied dryly.
"Vic, by the way," Caldwell said from his window in Hunt's head. "Owen stopped
by to visit today. Asked me to say hi. He was hoping to be in on this too, but
he couldn't stay." The test had been postponed a couple of hours due to some
last-minute changes out at the Gate.
"That's too bad," Hunt said. "How's he liking retirement?"
"Doing okay. Catching up on his reading and traveling, he says, and still
thinking about writing that book about his UNSA days. But I think he misses
the firm. Did I ever tell you I thought about retiring too around a year or
two ago?"
Hunt's eyebrows arched in surprise. "No, you never did. Seriously?"
"Sure. It was touch and go. Maeve talked me out of it in the end. I think she
was terrified of the thought of having me under her feet all day, every day.
I'm glad she did. I think I was going through a "
VISAR cut in "Excuse me, but Bytor is asking to have a word with Gregg." Bytor
was one of Thurien engineers assisting near the supervisor's panel.
"Back in a second, Vic."
"Sure."
Caldwell vanished. Hunt returned his attention to the screens. The views from
Page 123
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
the raft's imagers showed the sixteen projector bells as disks of blue-violet
light spaced around in all directions against the background of stars, with
MP2 showing as a bright light on one view and the distant globe of Thurien
beyond. The Thuriens around the Control Center sat intent at their tasks. By
now, nobody expected any real surprises. Hunt reflected on how quickly even
something like this, which a year ago would have been viewed as outlandish,
could come to be accepted as routine. The countdown was approaching zero.
"Sequencing out. . . . Transferring."
And the gate was empty. That was it. There were no spectacular effects. One
moment the raft had been there, centered at the focus of the array pattern,
and then it was gone across several light-years of space and several months
back in time, if all was according to plan.
"Looks like another good one," Chien said, her eyes busy taking in displays
and numbers.
"And we're sitting here getting ho-hum about it. Do you realize how staggering
this all is, really?" Hunt shook his head.
VISAR confirmed that the data link to the raft was functioning. The readings
coming back showed that it had found the beacon. Moments later, a visual
channel opened up, showing an altered view of stars and space, this time
without any bells, no MP2, and a planet that wasn't Thurien, farther away and
smaller.
"There it is." Chien indicated with a nod. The beacon was coming into view in
another shot, riding at a distance that VISAR reported as being eleven miles.
"We're probably causing some excitement there already," Hunt said. There could
be no hiding something the size of the raft from the Thurien monitoring system
of whatever universe they had connected with not that there was any particular
reason to want to hide it. In fact, quite the contrary.
Caldwell popped back into his visual field. "It's looking good. The raft got
there," he said.
Hunt nodded. "Seems like it, Gregg."
"Access established. We're presenting our calling card," VISAR informed the
company. It meant that via the raft's communications relay, it was in contact
with its counterpart the VISAR that existed in the target universe. In fact,
this was one of the more valuable parts of the exercise. Instead of having to
decode its way into an unfamiliar system, this way it was able to transfer
enormous volumes of information describing the reality the raft was in. After
a series of repeat performances with probes, they were no longer initiating
person-to-person contacts. The routine had gotten old, and the individuals on
the receiving end were usually too dumbfounded to supply much in the way of
anything useful enough to be worth the time.
"Wow!" VISAR didn't often insert exclamations. "You're lucky you weren't with
this outfit. They didn't power down at Quelsang and move the action out to
MP2. There was a major accident sounds like a matter clash. It took out half
the Institute. The group was wiped out except for Danchekker and Mildred, who
weren't there. I've given them our records, but I don't know if it will do any
good. Their whole project is shut down. It's causing a major political scandal
all over Thurien and back at Earth."
"Jeez!" Caldwell murmured. Hunt could only whistle silently, too taken aback
to form any words.
"Eesyan permitted it?" Chien said, sounding surprised and a little
disbelieving. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]