Hyperion Cantos 3 - Endymion by Dan Simmons

Author:Dan Simmons [Simmons, Dan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Space Opera, Adventure, Science Fiction, Life on Other Planets, Pilgrims and Pilgrimages, Interplanetary Voyages
ISBN: 9780553572940
Publisher: Random House Digital, Inc.
Published: 1996-11-01T07:00:00+00:00

We slept again before the suns rose, and after another breakfast I got up to sight in the weapons. Philosophical poetry by moonlight was all right, but guns that shot straight and true were a necessity.

I hadn’t had time to test the firearms aboard ship or after our crash on the jungle world, and carrying around unfired, unsighted weapons made me nervous. In my short time in the Home Guard and longer years as a hunting guide, I’d long since discovered that familiarity with a weapon was easily as important as—and probably more important than—having a fancy rifle.

The largest of the moons was still in the sky as the suns rose—first the smaller of the binaries, a brilliant mote in the morning sky, paling the Milky Way to invisibility and dulling the details on the large moon, and then the primary, smaller than Hyperion’s Sol-like sun, but very bright. The sky deepened to an ultramarine and then deepened further to a cobalt-blue, with the two stars blazing and the orange moon filling the sky behind us. Sunlight made the moon’s atmosphere a hazy disk and banished the surface features from our sight. Meanwhile, the day grew warm, then hot, then blazing.

The sea came up a bit, easy swells turning into regular two-meter waves that jostled the raft some but were far enough apart to let us ride them without undue discomfort. As the guidebook had promised, the sea was a disturbing violet, serrated by wave-top crests of a blue so dark as to be almost black, and occasionally broken by yellowkelp beds or foam of an even darker violet. The raft continued toward the horizon where the moons and suns had risen—we thought of it as east—and we could only hope that the strong current was carrying us somewhere. When we doubted that the current was moving us at all, we trailed a line or tossed some bit of debris overboard and watched the difference between wind and current tug at it. The waves were moving from what we perceived as south to north. We continued east.

I fired the .45 first, checking the magazine to make sure that the slugs were securely in place. I was afraid that the archaic quality of having ammunition separate from the structure of the magazine itself would make me forgetful of reloading at an awkward time. We did not have much to toss overboard for target practice, but I kept a few used ration containers at my feet, tossed one, and waited until it had floated about fifteen meters away before firing.

The automatic made an indecent roar when it went off. I knew that slug-throwers were loud—I had fired some in basic training, since the Ice Claw rebels often used them—but this blast almost made me drop the pistol into the violet sea. It scared Aenea, who had been staring off to the south and musing over something, right to her feet, and even made the unflappable android jump.

“Sorry,” I said, and braced the heavy weapon with both hands and fired again.

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