Giant Series 01 - Inherit the Stars Read online

  James P Hogan

  Inherit The Stars

  Giant Series #1

  To the memory of my Father

  prologue

  He became aware of consciousness returning.

  Instinctively his mind recoiled, as if by some effort of will he

  could arrest the relentless flow of seconds that separated

  non-awareness from awareness and return again to the timeless

  oblivion in which the agony of total exhaustion was unknown and

  unknowable.

  The hammer that had threatened to burst from his chest was now

  quiet. The rivers of sweat that had drained with his strength from

  every hollow of his body were now turned cold. His limbs had turned

  to lead. The gasping of his lungs had returned once more to a slow

  and even rhythm. It sounded loud in the close confines of his

  helmet.

  He tried to remember how many had died. Their release was final;

  for him there was no release. How much longer could he go on? What

  was the point? Would there be anyone left alive at Gorda anyway?

  "Gorda. . . ? Gorda. . . ?"

  His mental defenses could shield him from reality no longer.

  "Must get to Gorda!"

  He opened his eyes. A billion unblinking stars stared back without

  interest. When he tried to move, his body refused to respond, as if

  trying to prolong to the utmost its last precious moments of rest.

  He took a deep breath and, clenching his teeth at the pain that

  instantly racked again through every fiber of his body, forced

  himself away from the rock and into a sitting position. A wave of

  nausea swept over him. His head sagged forward and struck the

  inside of his visor. The nausea passed.

  He groaned aloud.

  "Feeling better, then, soldier?" The voice came clearly through the

  speaker inside his helmet. "Sun's getting low. We gotta be moving."

  He lifted his head and slowly scanned the nightmare wilderness of

  scorched rock and ash-gray dust that confronted him.

  "Whe-" The sound choked in his throat. He swallowed, licked his

  lips, and tried again. "Where are you?"

  "To your right, up on the rise just past that small cliff that juts

  out-the one with the big boulders underneath."

  He turned his head and after some seconds detected a bright blue

  patch against the ink-black sky. It seemed blurred and far away. He

  blinked and strained his eyes again, forcing his brain to

  coordinate with his vision. The blue patch resolved itself into the

  figure of the tireless Koriel, clad in a heavy-duty combat suit.

  "I see you." After a pause: "Anything?"

  "It's fairly flat on the other side of the rise-should be easier

  going for a while. Gets rockier farther on. Come have a look."

  He inched his arms upward to find purchase on the rock behind, then

  braced them to thrust his weight forward over his legs. His knees

  trembled. His face contorted as he fought to concentrate his

  remaining strength into his protesting thighs. Already his heart

  was pumping again, his lungs heaving. The effort evaporated and he

  fell back against the rock. His labored breathing rasped over

  Koriel's radio.

  "Finished. . . Can't move. .

  The blue figure on the skyline turned.

  "Aw, what kinda talk's that? This is the last stretch. We're there,

  buddy-we're there."

  "No-no good. . . Had it. . ." Koriel waited a few seconds.

  "I'm coming back down."

  "No-you go on. Someone's got to make it."

  No response.

  "Koriel . . .

  He looked back at where the figure had stood, but already it had

  disappeared below the intervening rocks and was out of the line of

  transmission. A minute or two later the figure emerged from behind

  the nearby boulders, covering the ground in long, effortless

  bounds. The bounds broke into a walk as Koriel approached the

  hunched form clad in red.

  "C'mon, soldier, on your feet now. There's people back there

  depending on us."

  He felt himself gripped below his arm and raised irresistibly, as

  if some of Koriel's limitless reserves of strength were pouring

  into him. For a while his head swam and he leaned with the top of

  his visor resting on the giant's shoulder insignia.

  "Okay," he managed at last. "Let's go."

  Hour after hour the thin snake of footprints, two pinpoints of

  color at its head, wound its way westward across the wilderness

  amid steadily lengthening shadows. He marched as if in a trance,

  beyond feeling pain, beyond feeling exhaustion-beyond feeling

  anything. The skyline never seemed to change; soon he could no

  longer look at it. Instead, he began picking out the next prominent

  boulder or crag, and counting off the paces until they reached it.

  "Two hundred and thirteen less to go." And then he repeated it over

  again. . . and again. . . and again. The rocks marched by in slow,

  endless, indifferent procession. Every step became a separate

  triumph of will-a deliberate, conscious effort to drive one foot

  yet one more pace beyond the last. When he faltered, Koriel was

  there to catch his arm; when he fell, Koriel was always there to

  haul him up. Koriel never tired.

  At last they stopped. They were standing in a gorge perhaps a

  quarter mile wide, below one of the lines of low, broken cliffs

  that flanked it on either side. He collapsed on the nearest

  boulder. Koriel stood a few paces ahead surveying the landscape.

  The line of crags immediately above them was interrupted by a

  notch, which marked the point where a steep and narrow cleft

  tumbled down to break into the wall of the main gorge. From the

  bottom of the cleft, a mound of accumulated rubble and rock debris

  led down about fifty feet to blend with the floor of the gorge not

  far from where they stood. Koriel stretched out an arm to point up

  beyond the cleft.

  "Gorda will be roughly that way," he said without turning. "Our

  best way would be up and onto that ridge. If we stay on the flat

  and go around the long way, it'll be too far. What d'you say?" The

  other stared up in mute despair. The rockfall, funneling up toward

  the mouth of the cleft, looked like a mountain. In the distance

  beyond towered the ridge, jagged and white in the glare of the sun.

  It was impossible.

  Koriel allowed his doubts no time to take root. Somehow-slipping,

  sliding, stumbling, and falling-they reached the entrance to the

  cleft. Beyond it, the walls narrowed and curved around to the left,

  cutting off the view of the gorge below from where they had come.

  They climbed higher. Around them, sheets of raw reflected sunlight

  and bottomless pits of shadow met in knife-edges across rocks

  shattered at a thousand crazy angles. His brain ceased to ex

  tract the concepts of shape and form from the insane geometry of
/>   white and black that kaleidoscoped across his retina. The patterns

  grew and shrank and merged and whirled in a frenzy of visual

  cacophony.

  His face crashed against his visor as his helmet thudded into the

  dust. Koriel hoisted him to his feet.

  "You can do it. We'll see Gorda from the ridge. It'll be all

  downhill from there. . . ."

  But the figure in red sank slowly to its knees and folded over. The

  head inside the helmet shook weakly from side to side. As Koriel

  watched, the conscious part of his mind at last accepted the

  inescapable logic that the parts beneath consciousness already

  knew. He took a deep breath and looked about him.

  Not far below, they had passed a hole, about five feet across, cut

  into the base of one of the rock walls. It looked like the remnant

  of some forgotten excavation-maybe a preliminary digging left by a

  mining survey. The giant stooped, and grasping the harness that

  secured the backpack to the now insensible figure at his feet,

  dragged the body back down the slope to the hole. It was about ten

  feet deep inside. Working quickly, Koriel arranged a lamp to

  reflect a low light off the walls and roof. Then he removed the

  rations from his companion's pack, laid the figure back against the

  rear wall as comfortably as he could, and placed the food

  containers within easy reach. Just as he was finishing, the eyes

  behind the visor ifickered open.

  "You'll be fine here for a while." The usual gruffness was gone

  from Koriel's voice. "I'll have the rescue boys back from Gorda

  before you know it."

  The figure in red raised a feeble arm. Just a whisper came through.

  "You-you tried. . . . Nobody could have. . ." Koriel clasped the

  gauntlet with both hands.

  "Mustn't give up. That's no good. You just have to hang on a

  while." Inside his helmet the granite cheeks were wet. He backed to

  the entrance and made a final salute. "So long, soldier." And then

  he was gone.

  Outside he built a small cairn of stones to mark the position of

  the hole. He would mark the trail to Gorda with such cairns. At

  last he straightened up and turned defiantly to face the desolation

  surrounding him. The rocks seemed to scream down in soundless

  laughing mockery. The stars above remained unmoved. Koriel glowered

  up at the cleft, rising up toward the tiers of crags and terraces

  that guarded the ridge, still soaring in the distance. His lips

  curled back to show his teeth.

  "So-it's just you and me now, is it?" he snarled at the Universe.

  "Okay, you bastard-let's see you take this round!"

  With his legs driving like slow pistons, he attacked the ever

  steepening slope.

  chapter one

  Accompanied by a mild but powerful whine, a gigantic silver torpedo

  rose slowly upward to hang two thousand feet above the sugar-cube

  huddle of central London. Over three hundred yards long, it spread

  at the tail into a slim delta topped by two sharply swept fins. For

  a while the ship hovered, as if savoring the air of its newfound

  freedom, its nose swinging smoothly around to seek the north. At

  last, with the sound growing, imperceptibly at first but with

  steadily increasing speed, it began to slide forward and upward. At

  ten thousand feet its engines erupted into full power, hurling the

  suborbital skyliner eagerly toward the fringes of space. Sitting in

  row thirty-one of C deck was Dr. Victor Hunt, head of Theoretical

  Studies at the Metadyne Nucleonic Instrument Company of Reading,

  Berkshire-itself a subsidiary of the mammoth Intercontinental Data

  and Control Corporation, headquartered at Portland, Oregon, USA. He

  absently surveyed the diminishing view of Hendon that crawled

  across the cabin wall-display screen and tried again to fit some

  kind of explanation to the events of the last few days.

  His experiments with matter-antimatter particle extinctions had

  been progressing well. Forsyth-Scott had followed Hunt's reports

  with evident interest and therefore knew that the tests were

  progressing well. That made it all the more strange for him to call

  Hunt to his office one morning to ask him simply to drop everything

  and get over to IDCC Portland as quickly as could be arranged. From

  the managing director's tone and manner it had been obvious that

  the request was couched as such mainly for reasons of politeness;

  in reality this was one of the few occasions on which Hunt had no

  say in the matter.

  To Hunt's questions, Forsyth-Scott had stated quite frankly that he

  didn't know what it was that made Hunt's immediate presence at IDCC

  so imperative. The previous evening he had received a videocall

  from Felix Borlan, the president of IDCC, who had told him that as

  a matter of priority he required the only working prototype of the

  scope prepared for immediate shipment to the USA and an

  installation team ready to go with it. Also, he had insisted that

  Hunt personally come over for an indefinite period to take charge

  of some project involving the scope, which could not wait. For

  Hunt's benefit, Forsyth-Scott had replayed Borlan's call on his

  desk display and allowed him to verify for himself that

  Forsyth-Scott in turn was acting under a thinly disguised

  directive. Even stranger, Borlan too had seemed unable to say

  precisely what it was that the instrument and its inventor were

  needed for.

  The Trimagniscope, developed as a consequence of a two-year

  investigation by Hunt into certain aspects of neutrino physics,

  promised to be perhaps the most successful venture ever undertaken

  by the company. Hunt had established that a neutrino beam that

  passed through a solid object underwent certain interactions in the

  close vicinity of atomic nuclei, which produced measurable changes

  in the transmitted output. By raster scanning an object with a trio

  of synchronized, intersecting beams, he had devised a method of

  extracting enough information to generate a 3-D color hologram,

  visually indistinguishable from the original solid. Moreover, since

  the beams scanned right through, it was almost as easy to conjure

  up views of the inside as of the out. These capabilities, combined

  with that of high-power magnification that was also inherent in the

  method, yielded possibilities not even remotely approached by

  anything else on the market. From quantitative cell metabolism and

  bionics, through neurosurgery, metallurgy, crystallography, and

  molecular electronics, to engineering inspection and quality

  control, the applications were endless. Inquiries were pouring in

  and shares were soaring. Removing the prototype and its originator

  to the USA-totally disrupting carefully planned production and

  marketing schedules-bordered on the catastrophic. Borlan knew this

  as well as anybody. The more Hunt turned these things over in his

  mind, the less plausible the various possible explanations that had

  at first occurred to him seemed, and the more convinced he became

  that whatever the answer turned out to be, it woul
d be found to lie

  far beyond even Felix Borlan and IDCC.

  His thoughts were interrupted by a voice issuing from somewhere in

  the general direction of the cabin roof.

  "Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. This is Captain Mason

  speaking. I would like to welcome you aboard this Boeing 1017 on

  behalf of British Airways. We are now in level flight at our

  cruising altitude of fifty-two miles, speed 3,160 knots. Our course

  is thirty-five degrees west of true north, and the coast is now

  below with Liverpool five miles to starboard. Passengers are free

  to leave their seats. The bars are open and drinks and snacks are

  being served. We are due to arrive in San Francisco at ten

  thirty-eight hours local time; that's one hour and fifty minutes

  from now. I would like to remind you that it is necessary to be

  seated when we begin our descent in one hour and thirty-five

  minutes time. A warning will sound ten minutes before descent

  commences and again at five minutes. We trust you will enjoy your

  journey. Thank you."

  The captain signed himself off with a click, which was drowned out

  as the regulars made their customary scramble for the vi-phone

  booths.

  In the seat next to Hunt, Rob Gray, Metadyne's chief of

  Experimental Engineering, sat with an open briefcase resting on his

  knees. He studied the information being displayed on the screen

  built into its lid.

  "A regular flight to Portland takes off fifteen minutes after we

  get in," he announced. "That's a bit tight. Next one's not for over

  four hours. What d'you reckon?" He punctuated the question with a

  sideways look and raised eyebrows.

  Hunt pulled a face. "I'm not arsing about in Frisco for four hours.

  Book us an Avis jet-we'll fly ourselves up."

  "That's what I thought."

  Gray played the mini keyboard below the screen to summon an index,

  consulted it briefly, then touched another key to display a

  directory. Selecting a number from one of the columns, he mouthed

  it silently to himself as he tapped it in. A copy of the number

  appeared near the bottom of the screen with a request for him to

  confirm. He pressed the Y button. The screen went blank for a few

  seconds and then exploded into a whirlpool of color, which