[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
thus exemplified a mature technology that had not changed radically between the times of the two ships'
construction, and the repair of the Shapieron had been possible as a consequence.
The same was not true for the computer systems. After a week of intensive analysis and probing, the
Ganymean scientists admitted they were making little headway. The problem was that the system
components that they found themselves trying to comprehend were, in most cases, unlike anything they
had seen before. The processors themselves consisted of solid crystal blocks inside which millions of
separate circuit elements of molecular dimensions were interconnected in three dimensions with
complexities that defied the imagination. Only somebody who had been trained
and educated in the design and physics of such devices could hope to unravel the coding locked inside
them.
Some of the larger processors were completely revolutionary in concept, even to the Gãnymeans, and
seemed to represent a merging of electronic and gravitic technologies; characteristics of both were
inextricably mingled together to form devices in which the physical interconnections between cells holding
electronic data could be changed through variable gravitic-bonding links. The hardware configuration
itself was programable and could be switched from nanosecond to nanosecond to yield an array in which
any and every cell could function as a storage element at one instant or as a processing site the next;
processing could, in the ultimate, be performed everywhere in the complex, all at the same time-surely the
last word in parallelism. One interested but bemused UNSA engineer described it as "soft hardware. A
brain with a billion times the speed. . ."
And every subsystem of the ship-communications, navigation, computation, propulsion control, flight
control, and a hundred others-consisted of a network of interconnected processing nodes like that, with
all the networks integrated into an impossible web that covered the length and breadth of the vessel.
Without detailed documentation and technical design information there was no way of tackling the
problem. But no documentation was available. All the information was locked away inside the same
system that they needed the information to get into; it was like having a can with the can opener inside it.
So, at the next progress meeting aboard the Shapieron, the senior Ganymean computer scientist
declared himself ready to quit. When somebody commented that the Earthmen wouldn't have given up so
easily, he thought about it, agreed with the evaluation and went back to Pithead to try again. After -
another week he came back again and stated, emphatically and finally, that if anybody thought the
Earthmen could do better they'd be welcome to try. He'd quit.
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
And that, it seemed, was that.
There was nothing further to be achieved on Ganymede. Therefore the aliens at last announced their
long-awaited decision to accept the invitation that had been extended to them by the world's
governments, and come to Earth. This did not mean that they had
also accepted the invitation to settle there. Admittedly there was nowhere else within many light-years
for them to go, but many of them still harbored misgivings at what might await them on the Nightmare
Planet. But they were rational beings and the rational thing to do was obviously to go and see the place
before prejudging it. Any decision as to what to do about the longer-term future would wait until they
were in possession of more concrete information on which to base it.
A number of UNSA personnel from the Jupiter missions were at the end of their duty tours and already
scheduled to return to Earth as the comings and goings of ships permitted. The Ganymeans offered a ride
in the Shapieron to anybody planning on going their way and were almost overwhelmed by the rush to
accept.
Fortuitously, Hunt's latest communication from Gregg Caldwell, executive director of UNSA's
Navcomms Division and Hunt's immediate chief, had indicated that Hunt's assignment on Ganymede was
considered fulfilled and there was other work to be done back at Houston~ Arrangements were being
put in hand to ship him back. He had no difficulty in getting his name deleted from the UNSA schedule
and added to the list of passengers due to go with the Shapieron.
Danchekker's main reason for coming to Ganymede had been to investigate the terrestrial Oligocene
animals found in the Pithead ship. The professor persuaded Monchar, second in command of the
Ganymean expedition, that there was plenty of room in the Shapieron to carry all the specimens of
interest; after that he persuaded his director, at the Westwood Biological Institute, Houston, that the
investigations would be carried out more thoroughly back on Earth, where all the facilities needed were
available for the asking. The outcome was exactly as he had intended: Danchekker was going too.
And so the time came for Hunt to pack his belongings and take one last look around the tiny room that
had been home for so long. Then he made the familiar walk along the well-worn corridor that led to the
Domestic Dome to join the handful of others who were shipping out. There they stood a last round of
drinks for their friends staying on and made their farewells. After promises to keep in touch and
assertions that everybody's paths would cross again one day, they trooped through into the Site
Operations Con-
trol building where the base commander and some of his staff were waiting in the airlock anteroom to
bid them an official adieu. The access tube beyond the airlock took them through into the cabin of the
tracked ice crawler that would carry them across to the landing pads, where a transporter ship was
waiting.
Hunt's feelings were mixed as he gazed out of one of the crawler's viewing ports at the shadowy
snatches of buildings and constructions that came and went among Pithead's swirling, eternal
methane-ammonia mist. Going home after a long time away was always a nice feeling of course, but he
would miss many aspects of the life he had grown used to in the tightly knit UNSA community here,
where everybody shared in everybody else's problems and strangers were unknown. The spirit of
comradeship that he had found here, the feeling of belonging, the sense of a common purpose. . . all these
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
things gave a special intimacy to this tiny, manmade haven of survival that had been carved out of the
hostile Ganymedean wilderness. The feelings he was experiencing so intensely at that moment would
soon be diluted and forgotten when he returned to Earth and again rubbed shoulders every day with
faceless millions, all busily living out their different lives in their different ways and with their different aims
and values. There, custom and synthetic social barriers served to mark out the lines of demarcation that
men needed in order to satisfy their psychological need to identify with definable cultural groups. The
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]