The Crucible of Time by John Brunner

Author:John Brunner
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Fiction, General
ISBN: 9780345312242
Publisher: Orion
Published: 1983-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

PART FIVE

BLOOM

I

The city of Voosla was allegedly approaching her landfall, but Awb

could scarcely credit it. There was too much dark on the horizon.

Wherever there was habitable ground there were people, and even more

than food-crops the folk cultivated plants which, after sundown, either glowed of 'their own accord or gave back the light they had basked in

earlier. Troqs who had taken to caves for refuge in desert regions where houses would not grow, squimaqs who eked out their existence around the poles where darkness could last for half a year--they knew that trying to manage without luminants was to risk being driven into dreamness as

certainly as by starvation, if not so quickly.

And indeed, throughout the voyage until now, there had always been

distant glimmerings: nothing like as bright, of course, as the lights of the city, but discernible with even a crude telescope like Awb's, which he had made himself and was very proud of. Thilling the picturist had ceded him a couple of lenses too worn for fixing perfect images, and fitted into a tube they afforded a view of the strange northern coasts they were paralleling.

However, they also showed, much too plainly for comfort, that blank

gap on the edge of an otherwise populous continent. There was something so eerie about it that it made his weather-sense queasy. He found himself longing for the familiar scenery of the tropics which, since his budding, the city had never previously left.

To think that one new moon ago he had been beside himself with

excitement at the prospect of this journey to the intended site of the World Observatory... I

Swarming along the branchways in search of distraction, he shortly

discovered that a crowd had gathered on the lookout platform at the prow, including most of the delegation from the University of Chisp. Their chief, Scholar Drotninch, was conferring with Mayor Axwep.

Awb also found it disturbing to have so many foreigners traveling with them. Voosla was by no means a large city, and he knew all her inhabitants at least by sight. Before this trip he had been used to meeting strangers, if at all, by ones and twos, not scores together. Still, the scientists were polite enough, and some--like Thilling--were positively friendly, so he decided to chance a rebuff and draw close enough to overhear.

And was considerably reassured by an exchange indicating that he was

not alone in worrying about this unnaturally lightless shore.

"Amazing, isn't it?"---from Drotninch. "Last time I came up here, this was the brightest spot for padlonglaqs."

To which Axwep: "The city's growing fractious, as though she senses something amiss. Could be a taint in the water; we're well into the estuarial zone. I'd be inclined to hold off until sunrise. It won't mean too much of

a delay, and it'll give us a chance to feed and rest the musculators. I can send a pitchen ahead to explain why we aren't landing at once."

Drotninch pondered, and one could almost scent her indecision.., but,

like most landlivers nowadays, she coated her torso with neutralizing

perfumes. It had become

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