Halo Gate by Latner Alexis Glynn

Author:Latner, Alexis Glynn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Avendis Press
Published: 2024-01-06T00:00:00+00:00

10

DOL

A halo gate on Dhal. He hadn’t expected that. When he reviewed the theoretical modeling behind his equations, it seemed impossible. Val decided that he needed more information about Dhal, in particular, its motion through interstellar space. If it moved fast, like most rogue planets, it might have been at a much different location in the past.

Rogue planets like Dhal were the true unknowns of star exploration. Never mind colonization—there wouldn’t even be abortive attempts. Rogues, wandering in deep space far from suns with their bright habitable zones, were too strange for human sensibilities. They had no days, just perpetual night skies. All warmth came from the planet’s interior with primordial radioactivity and volcanism. Even worse, there was no way to know what kind of life forms might be already living there, at what depths under a cold crust of rock or water, with what resentment or opportunism with respect to human invaders.

A halo gate on Dhal could explain the infestation of dhalrats in the Vere network.

But turn off the moonbase gate? Val didn’t know if he could do that. Ever since he got into Vere, his research had been driven toward turning inactive gates on. Off or on, he needed vastly capable computing power to model that kind of change in the Vere network. The moonbase had the kind of computational power he needed. It was going to be risky, though, with the secret intelligence agency already prying into the research station.

The night Radzi found Val, while Radzi himself slept the sound sleep of intense relief, Val, Lane, Arond and the Mayor of Underport came up with a plan. As it happened, part of Arond’s ostensible reason for going to Stannto was to recruit laboratory technicians for the base. It was arranged for four Sleighters to return to Tellas with Arond. All of them were well qualified as research technicians.

Interesting, the backgrounds of people who counted themselves as Sleighters. They were not all interstellar riffraff. In fact rather few of them were true riffraff, for all that they liked to play the part.

With changes to Val’s hair color and skin color, and by adding a cosmetic scar to his face, he would look a great deal like one of the four. And that was the goal.

Val gave it a few weeks for them to return to Tellas with Arond and then settle in and weave themselves into the social life of the research station. Meanwhile he feverishly compiled all he knew, studied the Stannto gate since it was the closest and most available halo gate, and figured out what he dared to try at the moonbase. He finally concluded that turning a gate off would be easier than turning one on.

Chanciest of all would be redirecting the doorways, if he even ever dared to do so. The doorways were the seven-league boots across the stars—an exhilarating act every time he went through a doorway. His calculations indicated that doorways could be reset to go to different gates. It would be a long time before he tried that.

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