Bowl of Heaven by Gregory Benford & Larry Niven

Author:Gregory Benford & Larry Niven
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-EIGHT

Cliff awoke to feel the ground trembling. Blinking, eyes gritty, he looked around at the small copse of ellipsoidal ferns they had sheltered under. Nothing visible in the shadows. No odd scuttlings.

But he could make out a faint, ominous rumble from below. There was no actual geology here, so it had to be machinery moving on the outer face of the Bowl. He got up and walked barefoot, feeling the vibration. It seemed louder in one direction and as he moved, the ground trembled a bit more. Birds rustled and chirruped in response to it.

Then it began to fade, though he kept walking, and by the time he reached a slab of fused rock, he could feel nothing. The source must have passed, so maybe it was a moving platform on the other side, an elevator or similar.

Then he noticed he was out of the trees. Feeling vulnerable alone, he glanced at the mercifully empty sky and quickly sought the canopy cover. Like a terrified rodent, he thought ruefully.

But he couldn’t get back to sleep. He had been deep in a softly erotic dream of Beth. Their biggest problem was the unending day. They all had trouble sleeping because there was always something up and active, rustling through foliage, setting off their apprehensions. Now, though, the others were snuffling and snoring and he envied them. At least he could use the time to think, to plan.

He lay back and looked through the canopy at the dim presence of the star. The jet was a scratch across the sky, flexing with whorls and tendrils. Near the star little flashes of brilliance lit the base. He was getting used to this sky, to this place—and that was dangerous.

So much here had a familiar feel—the sudden sizzle of lightning splintering a sky, a patter of rain, moaning breezes—but the tremor just now gave him an important warning. Here they all lived with a strangeness made all the more discomforting by its deceptive likeness to a world they all knew, and would never see again.

So they had to use everything, especially deception. They were torn between the need to stay out of sight and the drive to explore. They had disguised their craft, making it sand colored. From a distance, the sand ship made no impression, but close up it did move and attract the eye. The fixed wing aerial surveys they occasionally saw in the distance had missed them. Cliff hoped their pursuers were losing interest, because the fliers were getting spotty. Luckily, no intelligent aliens seemed to live in this vast desert.

But his gang of five was getting surly and hungry. They had learned to spot and shoot the large, savage lizards that lived in the rock outcroppings. The meat was nearly as leathery as the brown hide, but over a roaring fire of hardwood that did not give off smoke, it supplied protein they badly needed. No talk; they ate eagerly. Carbohydrates were harder to find, and water always an issue.

He had tried to forage for edibles, but the problem was tough.

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