(eng) Kim Stanley Robinson by Galileo's Dream

Author:Galileo's Dream [Dream, Galileo's]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

OUTSIDE THE CRAFT, standing on the ground, Galileo looked around. Yellow sleet drifted down onto the slag a few miles away, splashing like rain when it struck. Out of this bizarre fountain shot twenty more sleek oval silver things, rocketing sideways with a dreamy speed. One of these craft tried to land right in the gap between two big low buildings of the settlement; a gate shut on it, and the craft buckled as it was caught. Hera shouted at the sight.

“Get their power off!” she snapped viciously, reminding Galileo of his mother. Uneasily he understood her as a general conducting a siege; no military officer he had ever met gave him the frisson of fear that he felt now as he regarded her. Imagine Giulia a general! The carnage would have been universal.

“Come on,” she snarled over her shoulder, and started running over the rugged plain toward the base. It had a kind of outer rock wall, it seemed, or was simply built on a broad low plateau. Galileo followed her toward it, struggling to keep up with her. She was big, and fleet of foot in a way he could not emulate, given the light pull of this moon, which caused him to launch up and forward with every stride, landing fearfully but again lightly, so that he could leap forward from one unsteady jaunt to the next, keeping his eye on Hera midleap, as it seemed to help his balance.

The slaggy plain of the volcano’s side was bigger than it looked. Silver craft still fell like stars out of the black sky. Behind them the towering yellow plume of the volcano rained down, plashing onto its previous spew. Figures in helmets, looking like white statues of the Swiss Guard, emerged from the gates of the city and pointed at them. Red afterimages suddenly crisscrossed Galileo’s vision, without him having seen anything to stimulate them in the first place. Hera stopped and held out a hand indicating he should stop too. In the general hissing silence, which was perhaps the rolling impact of the nearby plume striking him through his feet, he could not hear her voice. He could see that she was talking to him and that she thought he could hear her, but something must have gone wrong with his helmet, because there was no sound but the background hiss.

Abruptly she was off again. Galileo hurried after her, fearful of losing her and therefore his way.

They were approaching the village of silver buildings from an unexpected angle, it seemed, for the defenders were all focused on an attack from the other direction. Hera simply leaped forward onto two of these people, flying twenty or thirty feet before smashing into them like something thrown by a trebuchet. Down they went, while she bounced up and with a ferocious punch to the gut leveled another of them. Galileo followed her as fast as he could, but now she was really off, and no matter how hard he tried he could not keep up.

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