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"Okay, just don't show it to me." "Certainly not, sir." But even if I couldn't see what was happening to space outside the ship, I could feel it. All I could do was lie limply, but not feeling limp. My eyes were squeezing out of my head, and my throat was coming up and out of my mouth. Through my terror, I wondered how the first man had made it through to discover the sand. The only thing that kept me going was the knowledge that this would be over in less than an hour. The first explorer wouldn't have known that. I thought about that for a while, and was still thinking about it when the phenomena started to let go. "Approaching the sand, sir," announced the ship. I sat up slowly. "Okay, I'll look at it," I managed to mumble. The ship revealed the Sandwall stretching completely across the sky. It had a dim creamy glow (or anyway that is the way ships always show it . . . maybe it is really dark) and was featureless. I stared. It's a strange sight to look at, and even stranger to think about. The sheer size stuns the imagination. A solid surface of stuff that englobes the whole universe like a bubble. But it's not just a bubble, or even a wall, even if it is called the Sandwall. Maybe it goes on forever, and has other universe bubbles in it by the billions. The Pipe's pipers have probed it to a depth of five light-minutes, and the sand is still there. Just where it is in it that souls go to . . . I shrugged. I was wasting time mooning over religious riddles. "Are we close enough to detect hermitages yet, ship?" "Just coming into range now, sir." "Good. Let's start searching." The ship went into a search spiral along the surface of the Sandwall. "A hermitage is just a ship, isn't it, pushing against the Sandwall?" "Yes, sir." "If I stayed in the same place all the time, I'd want something more elaborate than a ship," I mused. "That would be difficult for a hermit sandpiper, sir. If the hermit traveled away from his stationary residence on the Sandwall, he would be unable to return to it." "Oh? Why not?" "He would be unable to find it, sir." "But of course he could find . . ." I started to object, and then stopped. That surface was big, and featureless, and the area of edge phenomena did strange things to navigation. If a hermit took a jaunt into the inhabited part Page 42 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html of the universe, he might come back to a point on the wall a trillion lights from where he started. He'd never find his residence. That thought led to another, and the pit fell out of my stomach. "How many hermit sandpipers are there, ship?" "Slightly more than six million, sir." Six million little ships, scattered over a surface that ran all around the universe! "This," I said with apathetic calm, "is about as hopeless a search as trying to find Profanis by visiting every body in the universe." "The difficulties are of similar orders of magnitude, sir," the ship agreed. "Discontinue the search and give me a Hallypuff," I said. After a pause, the ship replied, "Very well, sir," and lifted me the reefer. I sat smoking it, not giving a damn how many Units it might cost me. I was beaten. Sunk without a trace. The End. The last of the red-hot twirl-chasers. I giggled and threw away the butt of my Hallypuff. "Just two choices left, ship. Suicide or become a hermit, and I'm not high enough for suicide. Push down to the surface." "Yes, sir." The Sandwall moved closer. There was a slight bump as contact was made. "We're there, sir." "Well, open me a compartment against the wall. I can't pipe sand through your damned hull." The ship constricted a bulkhead on the wall side, and I climbed over the lip to squat in actual contact with the Sandwall. It was so slick it felt wet, but it wasn't. I could see the sand grains just beneath the slickness, but couldn't touch them. Nothing but thought, such as a soul or a piper's probe, could penetrate that slickness. I sat still, glared very hard at a sand grain, and concentrated. Five minutes or an hour later I giggled and gave it up. I couldn't make a mental probe, evidently; so I couldn't pipe sand. I climbed back over the bulkhead lip and flopped in my lounger to laugh about it. "I can't do a thing , ship!" I roared merrily. "Not one universal thing! Isn't that remarkable?" "Yes, sir." "How much did that Hallypuff cost me'?" "Six Admiration Units, sir." This startled me out of my hysterics. Just six? But then I realized I hadn't Admired the reefer. I'd been too far overboard for that. I'd just taken it like medicine. "I can't even go bankrupt," I said, but the hilarity was gone. "Oh, sand, sand, sand. Make a suggestion, ship." "Your proposal to consult a hermit sandpiper had promise, sir." "Have you gone back to counting by twos?" I yelped in disdain. "We just tried . . ." I shut up when it dawned on me that I had let something slip by. I nagged myself into remembering what it was. "Okay, so the hermits take trips into the inhabited universe now and then. Where should I look?" "You might try one of the planets on which they sell their sand, sir. These are in the edge clusters, and specialize in religious tourism. The sand is purchased by novelty dealers for inclusion in sacred mementos." "Oh, yeah," I remembered. "My great-aunt Jodylyn had one. What planet?" "Hussbar is perhaps the most famous of the commercialized meccas, sir." "Well, head for it." Page 43 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html * * * [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |