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[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] Encyclopedia of All Knowledge is available for the home data-bank, at a much lower fee than ours... never mind that you will not provide your customers with the constant updating service that ours re-ceive. "So! Even with much rewriting, your basic idea is still illegal, still infringes upon our copyrights, does it not? Well, now the answer is no longer quite so clear-cut. But believe me, our lawyers will try, have tried in similar cases, to sue you for a bundle, as soon as they find out what you have done. "Now you show up for trial, and are on the witness stand, though not with your life at stake of course... Commander Ridolfi, I the prosecuting attorney ask you: Is it true or not, that you have compiled your so-called reference work virtually entirely from EG? Now think carefully, for on your answer your whole defense will stand or fall. "Of course it is not true! you answer ringingly. You used the Merchant Astrogation banks, you used periodicals and the records from dusty ar-chives, you looked in books, you queried eminent authorities in many fields, just as does the great EG itself. "Ohh? I ask, and now my voice is of the softest, and I cast an eye toward the jury. Then tell me, sir, which of these many indispensable sources did you use to cross-check your information on the planet Angkor Apeiron?" Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html There was another silence in the dayroom, a different sort of silence this time, and death that had all along seemed close was suddenly light years off again, at one with the berserker's wake that faded in subspace. Novotny felt the difference and began to sag. "Because you see, sir, we have made this entry up, population, industries, discovery date and all, as encyclopedists have made up entries for the same reason from very ancient times. We made it up to catch such plagiaristic fish as you, and put it as bait for you within the great EG, and nowhere else in the great universe of worlds or information storage does Angkor Apeiron exist...there are a number of other baits like this one, Commander, among our forty million entries. Quite a few, like this one, I had a hand in making up myself; but how many there are altogether I do not know; no one man or woman knows them all. The ordinary user is of course never going to hear of Angkor Apeiron anywhere and is therefore never going to look it up. If he comes upon it while browsing at his reading machine, he is only treated to a dull and minor fantasy that he will soon forget." Novotny let himself sink back into a chair that no longer seemed to be a dock above the edge of death. Then he turned his head to a wallscreen showing space, and looked off into the nebular cloudbanks of the Deep. "I wonder if it can even wonder how it was tricked, or how it tricked itself... I know that it could never understand." There are times when no weapon less strong and direct than the truth will serve. But, to use the truth, one first must find it out. INHUMAN ERROR When the dreadnought Hamilcar Barca came out of the inhuman world of plus-space into the blue-white glare of Meitner's Sun the forty men and women of the dreadnought's crew were taut at their battle stations, not knowing whether or not the whole berserker fleet would be around them as they emerged. But then they were in normal space, seconds of time were ticking calmly by, and there were only the stars and galaxies to be seen, no implacable, inanimate killers coming to the attack. The tautness eased a little. Captain Liao, his lean frame strapped firmly into the combat chair in the center of the dreadnought's bridge, had brought his ship back into normal space as close to Meitner's Sun as he dared operating on interstellar, c-plus drive in a gravitational field this strong was dangerous, to put it mildly but the orbit of the one planet of the system worth being concerned about was still tens of millions of kilometers closer to the central sun. It was known simply as Meitner's Planet, and was the one rock in the system habitable in terms of gravity and temperature. Before his ship had been ten standard seconds in normal space, Liao had begun to focus a remote-controlled telescope to bring the planet into close view on a screen that hung before him on the bridge. Luck had brought him to the same side of the sun that the planet happened to be on; it showed under magnification on the screen as a thin illuminated crescent, covered with fluffy-looking perpetual clouds. Somewhere beneath those clouds a human colony of about ten thousand people dwelt, for the most part under the shelter of one huge ceramic dome. The colonists had begun work on the titanic project of converting the planet's ammonia atmosphere to a breathable one of nitrogen and oxygen. Meanwhile they held the planet as an outpost of some importance for the interstellar community of all Earth-descended men. There were no flares of battle visible in space around the planet, but still Liao lost no time in transmitting a Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html message on the standard radio and laser communications frequencies. "Meitner's Planet, calling Meitner's. This is the dreadnought Hamilcar Barca. Are you under attack? Do you need immediate assistance?" There came no immediate answer, nor could one be expected for several minutes, the time required for signals traveling at the speed of light to reach the planet, and for an answer to be returned. Into Liao's earphones now came the voice of his Detection and Ranging Officer. "Captain, we have three ships in view." On the bridge there now sprang to life a three-dimensional holographic presentation, showing Liao the situation as accu-rately as the dreadnought's far-ranging detection systems and [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |