The Flight Of The Horse by Larry Niven

Author:Larry Niven
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Unknown
Published: 2013-01-26T16:00:00+00:00

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Whyte kept his hand covered as he dialed. "Secret," he said. "JumpShift experimental laboratory. We don't need a lot of room, because experiments with teleportation aren't particularly dangerous. ..." but there was room, lots of it. The building was a huge inflated Quonset hut. Through the transparent panels Jerryberry could see other buildings, set wide apart on bare dirt. The sun was 45 degrees up. If he had known which way was north, he could have guessed longitude and latitude. A very tall, very black woman in a lab smock greeted Whyte with glad cries. Whyte introduced her as "Gemini Jones, Phd." "Gem, where do you handle disposal of radioactive waste?" "Building Four." The physicist's hair exploded around her head like a black dandelion, adding unnecessary inches to her height. She looked down at Jerryberry with genial curiosity. "Newstaper?""Don't ever try to fool anyone. The eyes give you away." They took the booth to Building Four. Presently they were looking down through several densities of leaded glass into a cylindrical metal chamber. "We get a package every twenty minutes or so," said Gem Jones. "There's a transmitter linked to this receiver in every major power plant in the United States. We keep the receiver on all the time. If a package gets reflected back, we have to find out what's wrong, and that can get hairy, because it's usually wrong at the drop-ship." Jerryberry said, "Drop-ship?" Gemini Jones showed surprise at his ignorance. Whyte said, "Backup a bit, Barry. What's the most dangerous garbage ever?" "Give me a hint." "Radioactive wastes from nuclear power plants. Most dangerous per pound, anyway. They send those wastes here, and we send them to a drop-ship. You've got to know what a drop-ship is." "Of course I-" "A drop-ship is a moving teleport receiver with one end open. Generally it's attached to a space probe. The payload flicks in with a velocity different from that of the drop-ship. Of course it's supposed to come tearing out the open end, which means somebody has to keep it turned right. And of course the drop-ship only operates in vacuum." "Package," Gem Jones said softly. Something had appeared in the metal chamber below. It was gone before Jerryberry could quite see what it was. "Just where is your drop-ship?" "Circling Venus," said Whyte. "Originally it was part of the second Venus expedition. You can send anything through a drop-ship: fuel, oxygen, food, water, even small vehicles. There are drop-ships circling every planet in the solar system, except Neptune. "When the Venus expedition came home, they left the drop-ship in orbit. We thought at first that we might send another expedition through it, but-face it, Venus just isn't worth it. We're using the planet as a garbage dump, which is about all it's good for. "Now, there's no theoretical reason we can't send unlimited garbage through the Venus drop-ship, as long as we keep the drop-ship oriented right. Many transmitters, one receiver. The payload doesn't stay in the receiver more than a fraction of a second.

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