PILLAR OF FIRE Millions of Years before humanity and other intelligent races learned to roam the Milky Way, the Zheltyana had created an empire among the stars - rose, triumphed, and vanished. All that remained were a few ruins, some artifacts, and the knowledge that their powerful scientific secrets awaited rediscovery. One such secret had been found on the feudal planet Naxos, under the tyranny of the half-mad Idalia Ancanette. Her scientists had tapped its mystery to create a pillar of energy which promised to make Idalia mistress of a hundred worlds - if it did not destroy Naxos before it could be harnessed. Such an event called for the attention of Earth's master agent, Cap Kennedy, and his scientific crew. Because that column of atomic fire was a beacon that could herald a millennium or end in A WORLD AFLAME.
Release date:
September 29, 2011
Publisher:
Gateway
Print pages:
128
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Framed in the circle of illumination cast by assembled spotlights, the little party had all the appearance of a mechanical
tableau set among the shadows of a vast and echoing stage. The small figures barely moved and the murmur of their voices faded
in dying whispers, like ancient ghosts muttering restlessly in their endless sleep. Around them the glint and shimmer of complex
apparatus made an enigmatic spider web: parabolic reflectors, monitoring panels, the twisted coils of Heen-Shalt condensers,
the humped bulk of electron projectors—a mass of equipment the woman barely understood.
Standing at the head of the short flight of stairs which led to the floor of the area, Idalia Ancanette lifted her eyes with
instinctive caution. Above she saw nothing, but her imagination and previous knowledge dispersed the shadows to reveal the
upper galleries, the higher reaches of the huge man-made cavern. The stone torn from the side of the mountain had been crushed
and fused to form the structure of the Valdarh Station; the space thus created had stored the components and housed the workers,
both long gone now. The artifacts had been used to build the installation; the workers were paid off and sent back to their
farms and homes.
Twenty years ago—a long time, thought Idalia, as she recalled the hopes and aspirations which had attended the building of the station. Cheap and plentiful power was promised for all, the key to turn the deserts into paradises—but
the deserts still remained and power was more expensive than ever.
This area was almost forgotten now, an empty space hidden behind the bulk of the station, a shadowed vastness with the appearance
of a stage.
One of the figures turned suddenly and something metallic rang as what he carried struck against a metal stanchion. The spell
was over, the tableau broken, the scene turning into a living reality.
“We should be making tests, resolving the potential.” As always, Greer Noyor was impatient. His thin face, framed by long
russet hair, reflected his irritation. “We waste time, Revekka.”
“We have time,” answered Hueh Chone, a squat, gruff man whose spatulate hands belied their deft skill. “A day, ten days,
what does it matter?”
“Nothing, as long as we are sure.” Luet Talbor, a young man with mature self-confidence, touched an instrument and took a
reading. “We must check and countercheck each step of the way. Everything we do must be recorded for later analysis. A mistake,
a moment of carelessness, and all could be ruined. We may never get such an opportunity again.”
“We shall never get it again,” said Yondo Revekka with conviction, cradling a box in his arms. He turned as the woman walked
toward them. “Madam!”
She acknowledged his bow with a slight inclination of her head. Her face, transparently pale, was firm with pronounced bone,
the lower lip full, the upper thin, the jaw determined. She seemed taller than she actually was because of the mound of silver
hair which rose in a high coif over her neatly rounded skull. No longer young, her body held the taut lines of physical discipline,
the curves ripened with maturity. She wore silver pants and a tunic to match, silver shoes on her feet, silver on her lips
and on the upper lids of her eyes, which were distinctively pink beneath silver brows. Twenty years ago she had been a gawky adolescent; now she was a strongly attractive woman.
Halting some twenty feet from where the group stood beside their machines, she said, “Revekka, you have it?”
“Here, madam.” He lifted the box. “Exactly as I promised. You wish to see?”
“If you please.”
A low table stood to one side, covered with papers, graphs, lists of equations. Revekka swept them away and set down the box,
adjusting a desk lamp so its cone of brilliance fell directly on the lid. For a moment he rested his hands on the box, a middle-aged
man with brown hair parted in the middle and swept up in two side curls. Then, abruptly, he lifted the lid.
Something glowed within the box.
A ring of twisted and engraved metal seemed to catch the light and guide it, bemusing the eye with conflicting scintillations.
The brightness seemed to blur, recoil on itself and dissolve into a misty haze of shimmers.
With trembling hands Revekka lifted it from the box and set it to one side.
“The Xuyen Torus,” he whispered. “The most percect example of Zheltyana science ever found.”
She took one step closer, then another, reflected light catching the silver of her garments and bathing her in a nacreous
glow.
“Is it genuine?”
“Undoubtedly.”
“It doesn’t seem possible,” murmured Talbor. “A product of the Zheltyana found beneath five hundred feet of debris on a site
at Xuyen. It was encrusted with dead barnacles, so it must have rested beneath the sea at one time. How long ago, Yondo? Ten
thousand years? Fifty? A hundred?”
“More,” said Revekka. “Much more.”
Idalia Ancanette looked again at the thing lying on the table, the glow drawing her like a moth to a flame. It was more than
just the light, something beside the phototropic reaction. The thing held a mystery which defied the most knowledgeable brains, even after brilliant men had devoted
their lives to it.
The Zheltyana!
The old, unknown Ancient Race had flowered and spread all over the known galaxy, only to vanish and leave nothing but enigmatic
fragments behind: stones, metals and ceramics fabricated in teasing shapes, forgotten, discarded, old long before the forebears
of humanity had ventured from the seas. The fragments and the design known as the Zheltyana Seal, a pattern of convoluted,
interwound circles, was still used as a good luck symbol on a host of worlds.
What had they looked like? Where had they come from—where had they gone? What had happened to the incredible knowledge they
must have possessed?
Idalia Ancanette shook her head, uneasily conscious of the presence of the unknown. Irritated, she looked away from the table
and what it supported.
The past was dead, she felt, useless, of value only as it could help the future.
She said impatiently, “Let us begin.”
Talbor was first at the table, his voice a rising susurration as echoes caught and repeated his words in diminishing reverberations.
“It is just as we thought from the photographs and the cast. Those lines of engraving seem to be a variable wave guide. Note
how the thickness of the metal is not a constant. The curves follow a complex pattern similar to that proposed by Aoizou of
Vanarva in his work on interspatial relationships, and the circle is not true. It is composed of arcs of varying radii, resulting
in a complex arrangement of vectors. Hueh?”
“A wave guide has to be a closed system, but it is possible that, when energized, subspatial stress may provide the completion
of the barrier. My guess is that any induced energy will follow a closed cycle of mounting stress which will be concentrated
and focused by the external parameters. Naturally we shall have to determine the exact point, but that will be a matter of simple mathematics. Greer?”
“The work has already been done. I am curious as to how a super-conductor can function at a high temperature, but preliminary
work indicates that it is possible, assuming material and design are within rigid specifications. In such a case all that
remains is to determine the initial charge necessary to induce a self-maintaining system of ever-increasing potential. I suggest
that we first …”
His voice, all their voices, became merged into a whispering drone as they bent over the artifact. Talk for the sake of it,
she decided; they had arrived at their conclusions before, but the actual sight of the torus had turned hopeful theory into
imminent action. She saw Revekka approaching her and stepped back from the circle of radiance, lifting a hand to halt his
approach.
“How long?” she asked.
“Before the test?” He shrugged. “Not long, madam. As soon as they have finished their discussion.”
She caught the hint of dissatisfaction in his voice and guessed the reason. His work, in a sense, was done. Now others would
take over and use what he had given them. Tactfully she said, “They are entranced, Yondo. Remember, this is the first time
they have seen the actual artifact. But, without you, nothing would have been possible.”
“Thank you, madam.”
He took a step closer and she suffered it; he had worked well and it would be churlish to be arrogantly impolite, but, as
he took another step she retreated further into the shadows.
“You have done well,” she said. “And it will not be forgotten. Will it work?”
He said frankly, “Madam, I cannot be certain.”
“But—”
“All we can be positive about is that the Zheltyana must have had a tremendous mastery of scientific knowledge. My life has
been spent probing and questing into their secrets. It is obvious that, in order to expand as they did, they must have had a highly efficient source of power. I believe that the Xuyen Torus could be part of one of
their machines—the heart of a generator of unimagined potential. If my suspicions are correct and we can reconstruct the mechanism
then—”
Then the millennium would have arrived! She felt again the heady euphoria of the concept, seeing once more in mental imagery
the deserts bloom, the planet shake off the bonds of insufficiency. Power would flow like a river to give all men the ability
to achieve their full potential. Naxos would rise, no longer a poverty-stricken world ringed in by powerful, uncaring neighbors,
but a strong, new world. Naxos would reach out and make itself the master of its immediate area, the suns and worlds and clusters
all around.
And she would rise with it.
“Madam!” Revekka had seen the glowing luminosity of her eyes, the transformation of her face. He added warningly, “The test
could fail. I, we, all of us could be wrong.”
“You think that?”
“No!” Her enthusiasm was contagious; he shed the lingering trace of doubt, the result of years of always being sceptical,
of never allowing himself to step beyond accepted boundaries. “No!” he said again. “I am sure that we shall succeed. If those
men are any good at all they will solve the secret of the Zheltyana. One of the secrets, at least. A small one, maybe, but
a beginning.”
The men were very good, fanatical per. . .
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