Watson, Ian - Novel 08 Read Free Page A

serenity and
balance.
                 “That
isn’t a natural formation,” said Austin softly. “Is it?” He sounded doubtful.
                 “It’s
a building,” affirmed Denise. “Probably their factories and whatnot are
underground. It would follow, wouldn’t it, if the winter night lasts an
extremely long time? It looks almost armored, though I suppose it’s rock. Immensely strong. Contoured to resist any weight of ice. Maybe it retracts
into the ground? Closes up like a flower? That loop at the top looks like an
aerial of some sort, and the,” she giggled, “ the divining
rod could be an aerial too.”
                 “Copernicus would have rejected this
world if it had nights and days as long as years,” said Tanya acidly.
                 “Maybe
they had no choice? Degradation of ship systems?”
                 “An aerial?” Paavo shook his head. “Broadcasting on what
frequency? The air waves are dead.”
                 “Maybe
it’s some kind of psychotronic radiation generator?” blurted out Denise.
“Maybe it taps natural energies and broadcasts them? Biological energy,
expressing itself in this riot of life forms! There were experiments along
those lines on Earth long ago before we spread so much merde around. Yes, maybe that’s how they produce those enormous
berries and fruits out there. If they’ve found out how to do this, it’s worth,
oh, coming any distance. You don’t see evidence of farming and cultivation
because it’s going on on a psychotronic level. In direct
contact with nature.”
                 Tanya
laughed derisively. “I don’t know about broadcasting energy to the berries,
but it’s had a wild effect on the birdlife! Is that thing a finch down there?
You do realize, even in this gravity, it’s far too big to use its wings? Oh,
it’ll need giant berries to eat. It’s a wonder it doesn’t gobble up people too,
like worms!”
                 Denise
blushed. “Maybe the beacons broadcast, hmm, benign harmonies?”
                 “You
know, it all reminds me of something,” said Sean. “That rock. The whole landscape.”
                 The
landscape itself wasn’t the only puzzle, of course. This planet was slightly
smaller than Mars, yet it held an Earthlike atmosphere. It must be far denser
than Mars or Earth—rich in heavy elements, a superb industrial lode—since the
surface gravity was fully three-quarters that of the Earth’s. Somehow the
climate was temperate, even though the world was apparently rotation-locked to
its sun (an implausibility at this distance). Not only
was it temperate, with a mere twenty- degree temperature gradient from the
poles to the equator on the dayside, but the darkside had those extensive hot
patches. Even if that was evidence of extensive vulcanism on the darkside,
though, there was no sign of volcanoes along the three giant rift valleys which
stretched neatly all the way from pole to pole down the eastward and westward
terminators between day and night and two-thirds of the way across the
dayside—forming a great divide. Apart from this great divide, the dayside
terrain was remarkably regular. And it was all land: rolling hills and meadows
interspersed with lakes and rivers and streams. No seas. The great dayside
divide could have been a thin pole-to-pole sea, but it wasn’t. So where was the
water reservoir? And where was the atmospheric circulation pump?
                 Dayside—itself
divided geographically into one-third and two-thirds by the great divide—was
neatly embraced by the eastern and western terminator rifts almost as though
the dayside was confined inside a frame . . .
                 The
contents of this frame—the landscape—were the telling clue. As Sean stared
out, a black head and a golden head emerged from the crack in the
pomegranate-bell—still dazed by the starship’s