geometry out there.”
So
the two strange ships converge. So they collide, and pass into each other,
becoming one. That one is the mirror image of Pilgrim. Rapidly the echo of Pilgrim out there shrinks to a vanishing point in the grain of High Space. We’re quite
alone again.
“So
what were we firing our missiles at?” asks Captain K wearily.
“At
their doppelgangers. Themselves,
before they were fired. They exploded in proximity to themselves. I hope we
haven’t lost much headway because of this.” Turning, Heinz marches magnetically
across the deck to where the control peak of the alien drive pokes up from
below ...
SEVEN
The high space drive was an iridescent
crystalline pyramid some four metres high. It seemed alive, but in an unknown
mineral manner. It seemed that it might have grown up there like a crystal,
transmuting the black gravel of the Gobi to build its substance. And it was an
object of thought projected from elsewhere, one which formed a sufficiently
complex system of cognita to endure,
apparently permanently.
Russian
and Chinese planes discovered the pyramid sitting on a stony tract of wasteland
north-west of Gashiun Nor, where Mongolia and Chinese Inner Mongolia
ambiguously meet. Small in itself, it registered a considerably larger blip on
groundsearching radars, as though a great ellipsoid zeppelin invisibly
surrounded it.
Set
against one face of the pyramid, up high, was a flat translucent rhombus.
Within this plate a pattern of sparkling dots —a star map, perhaps even a coded
flight plan—indicated 82 Eridani as the target sun. Since the plate was
immovable it merely remained very likely that thousands of alternative courses
—thousands of flight plan templates—could be set; or even that this same
rhombus could be modified internally to map out other possible flights. (Such
as a return to Earth? We do not know that till we re-activate the pyramid, out
by 82 Eridani. The knowledge did not present itself. We do not know.)
On
a second face, high up, was inset the probability meter, as it came to be
known: a triangular orange crystal with a thin green line across the bottom
calibration. One sensed that it was so. One sensed much about its workings from
being close to it— except how it
worked.
On
the third face was a milky crystal enclosing a tiny pyramid within an ellipse
of light. When this crystal was touched, a series of design alternatives
appeared one after another within the confines of the ellipsoid: possible
starship hulls, as well as some that were frankly not very possible. The effect
was three-dimensional. Every tenth hull became too large for the ellipsoid, and
broke up in fire. Thus were the size constraints laid down.
The
fourth face bore a plate, black as night, with a tiny white pyramid perched on
a green ball afloat within. The pyramid fell free of the ‘planet’, and only
when the two were separated by some distance did the pyramid suddenly englobe
in its ellipsoid of light. Below, was the activator itself: one simple switch.
Again, one knew what it was; the knowledge insinuated itself . . .
Below
again, the ‘psychometer’: a blue panel with a stylized stick figure within—and
at the edge of vision hints of other possible entities, squat, rotund,
four-legged ... On either side of the psychometer were shallow recesses with
small knobs surely intended to be grasped.
The
first scientific teams found themselves learning by a welling up of
understanding (so much, and no more) out there in the Gobi in a no-man’s-land,
while soldiers watched each other and helicopters circled, and the Chinese and
Soviet embassies argued (and American satellites resolved in detail what was
happening on the ground).
So
the two strange ships converge. So they collide, and pass into each other,
becoming one. That one is the mirror image of Pilgrim. Rapidly the echo of Pilgrim out there shrinks to a vanishing point in the grain of High Space. We’re quite
alone again.
“So
what were we firing our missiles at?” asks Captain K wearily.
“At
their doppelgangers. Themselves,
before they were fired. They exploded in proximity to themselves. I hope we
haven’t lost much headway because of this.” Turning, Heinz marches magnetically
across the deck to where the control peak of the alien drive pokes up from
below ...
SEVEN
The high space drive was an iridescent
crystalline pyramid some four metres high. It seemed alive, but in an unknown
mineral manner. It seemed that it might have grown up there like a crystal,
transmuting the black gravel of the Gobi to build its substance. And it was an
object of thought projected from elsewhere, one which formed a sufficiently
complex system of cognita to endure,
apparently permanently.
Russian
and Chinese planes discovered the pyramid sitting on a stony tract of wasteland
north-west of Gashiun Nor, where Mongolia and Chinese Inner Mongolia
ambiguously meet. Small in itself, it registered a considerably larger blip on
groundsearching radars, as though a great ellipsoid zeppelin invisibly
surrounded it.
Set
against one face of the pyramid, up high, was a flat translucent rhombus.
Within this plate a pattern of sparkling dots —a star map, perhaps even a coded
flight plan—indicated 82 Eridani as the target sun. Since the plate was
immovable it merely remained very likely that thousands of alternative courses
—thousands of flight plan templates—could be set; or even that this same
rhombus could be modified internally to map out other possible flights. (Such
as a return to Earth? We do not know that till we re-activate the pyramid, out
by 82 Eridani. The knowledge did not present itself. We do not know.)
On
a second face, high up, was inset the probability meter, as it came to be
known: a triangular orange crystal with a thin green line across the bottom
calibration. One sensed that it was so. One sensed much about its workings from
being close to it— except how it
worked.
On
the third face was a milky crystal enclosing a tiny pyramid within an ellipse
of light. When this crystal was touched, a series of design alternatives
appeared one after another within the confines of the ellipsoid: possible
starship hulls, as well as some that were frankly not very possible. The effect
was three-dimensional. Every tenth hull became too large for the ellipsoid, and
broke up in fire. Thus were the size constraints laid down.
The
fourth face bore a plate, black as night, with a tiny white pyramid perched on
a green ball afloat within. The pyramid fell free of the ‘planet’, and only
when the two were separated by some distance did the pyramid suddenly englobe
in its ellipsoid of light. Below, was the activator itself: one simple switch.
Again, one knew what it was; the knowledge insinuated itself . . .
Below
again, the ‘psychometer’: a blue panel with a stylized stick figure within—and
at the edge of vision hints of other possible entities, squat, rotund,
four-legged ... On either side of the psychometer were shallow recesses with
small knobs surely intended to be grasped.
The
first scientific teams found themselves learning by a welling up of
understanding (so much, and no more) out there in the Gobi in a no-man’s-land,
while soldiers watched each other and helicopters circled, and the Chinese and
Soviet embassies argued (and American satellites resolved in detail what was
happening on the ground).
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