Infinity's Shore

Damn! Kaa cursed. He had ordered Zhaki and Mopol to stay within a kilometer of the dome, and restrict themselves to monitoring spy eyes already in place at Wuphon Port. Above all, they were supposed to avoid direct contact with the sooners.

“They got bored,” Brookida explained. “Now that Streaker has Alvin and other local experts aboard, our team is a bit redundant. It’s why I’ve been tracing the subduction-zone magma flows. My first chance since Kithrup to test out an idea I had, based on Charles Dart’s old research. You recall those strange beings who lived deep under Kithrup’s crust? The ones with the weird, unpronounceable species name?”

Peepoe spoke up. “You mean the Karrank-k%?’

She did a creditable job of expressing the double-aspirated slide tone at the end, sounding like a steam kettle about to explode.

“Yes, quite. Well, I’d been wondering what kind of ecosystem could support them down there. And it got me thinking …”

Brookida halted. Then all three dolphins whirled around as the wall segment behind them began emitting a low, scraping hum. The grating vibration hurt Kaa’s jaw.

Soon, the entire habitat groaned to a rasping sonic frequency Kaa recognized.

It’s a saser! Someone’s attacking the dome!

“Harnesses!”

At his shouted command, they all dived toward the rack where heavy-duty tool kits were hung, ready for use. Kaa streaked through the open end of his well-worn apparatus, and felt its many control surfaces slide smoothly into place. A control cable snaked toward the neural tap behind his left eye. Robotic arms whirred as he jerked the harness free of its rack. Peepoe’s unit popped loose just half an instant later.

A rough rectangle crept across the opposite wall, above and below the waterline, glowing hot.

“They’re cutting through!” Peepoe cried.

“Breathers!” Kaa shouted. From the back of his harness, a hose swarmed over his blowhole, covering it with a moist kiss and tight seal. A blast of canned air tasted even more tinny than the recycled stuff within the dome. Kaa sent a neural command activating his torch cutter and saser, tools that could second as weapons in close combat.…

But they didn’t respond!

“Peepoe!” He shouted. “Check your—”

“I’m helping Brookida!” she cut in. “His harness is stuck!”

Kaa slashed the water with his flukes, squealing a cry of frustration. With no better options, he interposed his body between theirs and the far wall…

… which abruptly collapsed in a wave of pummeling froth.

Gillian

I HAVE DISCOVERED SEVERAL THINGS OF INTEREST,” the Niss Machine told Gillian, after she wakened from a brief induced sleep. “The first has to do with that wonderfully ostentatious native machine, built and operated by the urrish tinkerer, Uriel.”

Sitting in her darkened office, she watched a recorded holo image of wheels, pulleys, and disks, whirling in a flamboyant show of light and action. Not far from Gillian, the ancient cadaver, Herbie, seemed to regard the same scene. A trick of shadows made the enigmatic, mummified face seem amused.

“Let me guess. Uriel created a computer.”

The Niss reacted with surprise. Its spiral of meshed lines tightened to a knot.

“You knew?”

“I suspected. From the kids’ reports, Uriel wouldn’t waste time on anything useless or abstract. She’d want to give her folk something special. The one thing her founding ancestors absolutely had to throw away.”

“Possession of computers. Good point, Dr. Baskin. Uriel could aim no higher than to be like Prometheus. Bringing her people the fire of calculation.”

“But without digital cognizance,” she pointed out. “An undetectable computer.”

“Indeed. I found no reference to such a thing in our captured Galactic Library unit. So I turned to the precontact 2198 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. There I learned about analog computation with mechanical components, which actually had a brief ascendancy on Earth, using many of the same techniques we see in Uriel’s hall of spinning glass!”

“I remember hearing about this. Maybe Tom mentioned it.”

“Did he also mention that the same thing can be achieved using simple electronic circuits? Networks of resistors, capacitors, and diodes can simulate a variety of equations. By interconnecting such units, solutions can be worked out for limited problems.

“It provokes one to consider the military potential of such a system. For instance, operating sneak-attack weapons without digital controls, using undetectable guidance systems.”

The Niss holo performed a twist that Gillian interpreted as a shrug.

“But then, if the notion were feasible, it would have found its way into the Library by now.”

There it was again. Even Tymbrimi suffered from the same all-pervading supposition — that anything worth doing must have been done already, over the course of two billion years. The assumption nearly always proved true. Still, wolfling humans resented it.

“So,” Gillian prompted. “Have you figured out what Uriel is trying to compute?”

“Ah, yes.” The line motif spun contemplatively.

“That is, perhaps.

“Or rather … no, I have not.”