Spherical Harmonic Read Free

from Elsewhere. But waves of what? Existence? I didn't understand. Yes, sure, quantum theory said all matter was waves, including human beings. But it didn't work like this. People were solid. I felt tenuous. Insubstantial. So sorry, I seem to have misplaced the J=236 partial wave of an electron in my eyelash.
     
     
Pah. I rubbed my eyes. I needed to sleep.
     
     
The air vibrated with hostility.
     
     
I took a sharp breath. Stop it. Air consisted of gas molecules. It had no emotions.
     
     
I tackled the root again, and this time I made it to the top. Hooking my arms over its edge, I stared out at the other side.
     
     
More trees.
     
     
"Shit," I muttered.
     
     
I heaved myself over the top. Halfway down the other side, my fingers tired. I slid the rest of the way and crumpled into a heap on the ground. So weary. But I couldn't stop, not now. I hauled myself to my feet and trudged off again, pushing through the brush, escaping that undefined menace. The shadows lightened into a ruddy predawn. I stumbled through a mass of tripods—
     
     
Saints almighty.
     
     
I had come out on a promontory of rock. The shelf extended for about ten steps in front of me and two on either side. Its sides fell away in vertical cliffs, far down to a lake. The water glittered in the crimson light as if its swells were lit with spectral fire. Forest surrounded the lake down there, dark and primitive, almost black. Nothing but forest. Tripod trees covered the world. But what stole my breath, what made me stare, had nothing to do with lakes or trees.
     
     
I wasn't on a world. This was the moon of a planet.
     
     
A huge planet.
     
     
It dominated the view. Even with only half that giant orb showing above the forest, it spanned the horizon. The topmost edge of the disk reached a third of the way up the sky. It smoldered. Bronze bands striped it, their turbulence visible as storms wracked its atmosphere. It had to be a superjovian planet, almost massive enough to be a star. It glowed only with its heat of formation, but that was plenty. It lavished fiery light on this moon.
     
     
Planet and moon were almost certainly locked face to face, which meant that monstrous, glowering world would always stay on the horizon, forever setting. The planet was probably mostly gas; otherwise, its tidal forces would have ripped this moon apart. Given the moon's small size, it had to be dense to have even this low gravity. The horizon was so close, I could see its downward curve. The trees looked like they were falling off.
     
     
Day came fast. A halo appeared at the edge of the gas giant. Suddenly the tiny parent star rose past the planet, a bead of white studded like a diamond into the lurid sky.
     
     
" 'So is the splendor of what nature has wrought,' " I murmured, quoting a poet I had long admired, though I only just now remembered. Splendor or no splendor, I wanted to be away from this place and its undefined hostility.
     
     
The lake reminded me of my thirst. Could I drink the water? Another memory stirred; the nanomeds in my body had a limited ability to make antidotes. I could further improve my chances by boiling the water. I knew how to make a fire. Well, in theory, I knew. It required friction, enough to ignite flammable matter. Whether I could actually manage it was another question. Nor would the moisture-laden plants here burn well, particularly with the low oxygen atmosphere. But if I could make a torch, it could also serve as a weapon.
     
     
All right. I had a plan: start fire, make torch, boil water, drink, cook arthrops, eat the nasty things, find people.
     
     
Rustles came from the forest.
     
     
I spun around, my hair swinging around my body, covered with glistening black and gold flyers. Shadows cloaked the forest, but light still touched its top. Clouds drifted among the luminous crowns, and mist curled around the shadowed trunks. It looked surreal, as if the tree tops floated in a world separate from the