“Good enough,” he agreed, feeling less confident of that much time on horseback then about the journey itself.
“Have your people gather up what equipment they need and get a good night’s sleep,” the sergeant told him. “Meet me out front here at eight tomorrow morning. Pack very light and take only what’s essential, but try to draw some good, thick pants and wear a good pair of boots, sir. Because you’re not used to it, it’ll be a fairly lazy pace, but it’s a long time for someone out of condition on horseback to spend in the saddle.”
“Don’t I know it,” he grumbled.
Pulling what rank he could, he did manage to get the whole crew new boots and jeans that more or less fit, and some pullover shirts that were rather optimistically labeled “one size fits all.” They were overly large and soft and reacted to the body’s moisture to contract and almost wrap themselves around the wearer. They would do, but they were hardly made for durability.
The horses were large and tough-looking, yet gentle and easy to ride. Signals generally used mechanized vehicles powered through the grid for their work, but they had their own complement of horses and other animals for situations that called for them. Brigadier Ryan’s staff had learned from having to hook up the first few Anchors along the equator.
A pair of corporals had been assigned to the expedition from Craig’s troops, both of whom had extensive earlier experience in the void. One was a tall, lanky blond fellow originally from Perth named John Gorton, the other a tall, tough-looking Kenyan woman with very short woolly hair who said her named was Singer Macalla. Both were very professinal and businesslike and looked very imposing in their black uniforms complete with bush hats, although neither seemed any too pleased about this assignment.
The engineers had started the trip with a mixture of little kids’ excitement at an adventure and many reservations about their lack of real provisions and their distance from a horse’s back, but this quickly gave way to more professional approaches as they crossed the area that they had so carefully and lovingly designed and made within the past few weeks.
It was something of a shambles. The surface damage was shocking, and the land had been badly cut through. Trees were mangled or damaged everywhere, and there were broad mud patches where once there had been flowers and grass. Still, the damage was more surface than serious; if they could pick up the pieces back at the camp and get some of those farming experts in with proper seed and some work crews, the place could be put right in no time—if more damage did not occur. The extent of this one was telling proof that they had to get this mission done or lose it.
Field provisions were limited but not that bad. There were thin trays of a variety of foods that needed only activation and then a few minutes to self-steam themselves into perfection. They mostly tasted like paper, of course, but they looked right and they were filling.
Billy left them in early afternoon as they reached the northern limit of the finished area. He had the easiest job— just a few kilometers and he’d be on station. Now Jody and Lo would go with Corporal Macalla, while he and Connie would go down the other side with Gorton. They bade their farewells, and split apart, although once on station they would be in full radio contact, and, in a pinch, Macalla and Gorton could contact each other and even Craig’s headquarters from the void itself.
It seemed to Toby and Connie that Gorton picked up the pace as they headed across the dirt floor of the Anchor base at an angle best calculated to save time and distance, although they stopped once for a brief snack and to allow the engineers to take simple measurements and determine that there was sufficient Flux bled into the base for what they needed. It was almost not worth testing; the place was covered in a pinkish-gray fog as it was, with twinkling little lights.
“It’s going to be hard to tell the void from the bubble,” Haller noted.
“No, sir, you’ll know the void when you hit it,” Gorton responded. “This is only a sample.”
“What’s the hurry?” Connie called out to him. “We’re on time, and my legs and ass are killing me!”
“We’ll spend the night in the void,” he told them. “Best to acclimate yourself as quickly as possible to it. Sort of like going hiking in the mountains. Spend a night at altitude before trying strenuous activity.”
“But it’s only a two-day ride!” she protested.
“Yes, ma’am. But one of those days is going to be in the void, and it’s like ten days through here.”
Night fell dramatically on New Eden, and it was nearly dark by the time they reached the invisible boundary of. the Anchor bubble. It was true that, with Flux bled into the bubble, there wasn’t much difference between the two areas as far as looks were concerned, but there was definitely a difference you could feel. Gorton halted them just before the entry.
“All right,” he said with a sigh, “we’re about to go in, and in the dark you won’t see much. We’ll camp inside. The air will seem stale and flat, although there’s some induced circulation by the machinery and some by convection where it seeps through to the Anchor base and vice-versa. It’ll be quite dry, far drier than the absolutes maintained in the base area, and while the oxygen level is always within tolerable limits, there’s some unevenness in the mix, so if you feel oxygen-starved, take a hit or two from the oxygen generator in my pack. You might also get the reverse, particularly this close to Anchor, so if you start feeling light-headed or giddy, just relax and wait it out. It usually doesn’t last long. The important thing is to focus on the practical and don’t let your mind wander. Don’t let it get to you.”
“If you’re trying to make me nervous, you’re succeeding,” Toby told him. He’d heard that Signals made every effort at making their specialized jobs and knowledge seem relatively more difficult, even unique to their abilities. Gorton was quite effective at it. Realistically, though, neither he nor Connie expected a great deal of difference from the medium in which they normally worked. There seemed no reason to expect any differences anyway.
Because the level of Flux created inside the Anchor bubble was so great now, there was no real way to tell the boundary by sight, but it was a tangible crossing. The Anchor had seemed deathly quiet, but now it was almost as if they’d gone deaf. Everything, even the sounds of the horses, seemed oddly muffled. It was quite dark now, but Flux was alive with an eerie glow crested by the discharges that were constantly taking place. It provided a kind of illumination, but not enough to read by, for example. All three horses had bright lights on their bridles and saddles for easy location, and they were needed.
Gorton had no trouble in the murky silence; he had a small instrument cluster forward on his saddle which was constantly receiving updated location information from the orbiting satellites and the grid that was beneath them. Both Toby and Connie looked around and began to wonder just what would happen to them if that machine went bad.
After a half hour or so the corporal halted them and got down and prepared to make camp. After unloading and brushing down their mounts, it was time for the first use of the god gun, and it was fascinating.
There was no sign of an actual grid on the surface. In fact, the surface felt slightly spongy and soft, although it was impossible to penetrate and seemed smooth to the touch. It was a conductive material laid down over the grid as soon as all seven Gates were operational and power to the grid could be supplied, mostly as a protectant for that power and sensor system. Once an atmosphere and heat were introduced, the grid became vulnerable to a host of problems and this was the best way to insulate it while still obtaining maximum access. The material, a synthetic widely used on Earth but hardly on this scale, was transparent to the electromagnetic grid, yet was impervious to cold down close to absolute zero and heat up to several thousand degrees. When one had command of energy-to-matter conversion by remote computer, the network was essentially self-repairing.
The cable that attached to the god gun terminated in an interface plug in the grip and then attached by some sort of suction to the grid itself. The corporal simply ran the grid end over an area until he felt some kind of attraction, then let go, and it stuck as if built there. Haller guessed that terminator and grid were made for each other, and when it came across a power line, some sort of magnetic field was generated that held it firm.
They watched Gorton with growing curiosity. He seemed almost in a trance state, pointing the gun at an angle at a nowhere point about three meters in front of him. Suddenly, he pulled the twin triggers, and there was a familiar if muffled crackling sound where the “shot” would have hit. There was now a huge bale of hay there, neatly tied off as if just come off the harvest. Gorton turned, repeated the act a bit over, and again pulled the trigger. A depression formed in the impervious floor, and filled itself with clear water. The horses needed no invitation and showed no fear about the sudden appearance of food and water nor any reluctance to partake of the feast. Clearly, they had been trained in this sort of environment.
The corporal rejoined them. “Well, what do you think of our little toy?” he asked.