Free Bowl of Heaven by Gregory Benford and Larry Niven Page B

construct accelerates very slowly.” Fred looked at the jet in the distance, a brilliant ivory pillar of ever-shifting tendrils. “That plasma’s pushing a star. ”
    “Odd minds, gotta be. But engineering’s a universal. Things work or you change them.”
    “You want to reverse engineer this place?” Fred grinned, nodding his bald head so it caught the gleam of the lights. “Good. Good.”
    Cliff had close-upped the region where sunlight reflected off the atmosphere membrane. He and Fred kept up their banter while he tried to see deeper. The shiny surface was probably some tough but thin layer to keep their air in—19 percent oxygen, 72 percent nitrogen, and traces of carbon dioxide and noble gases. Then he saw it. A patch that didn’t reflect.
    They used the maximum magnification of the scopes and then called Redwing. “I think we’ve found an area sealed off from the membrane,” Cliff said, showing him the barren circle. “It’s about a hundred kilometers across.”
    “How can they tolerate it? Won’t their air leak out?”
    Fred said, “Maybe they opened it for us, just recently. A thing this big can take a little loss.”
    Redwing looked at every view, across the spectrum, before finally saying, “Open areas, yeah. Makes sense. Apparently for landings from space?”
    “That’s what we figured,” Fred said.
    “Solves our landing problem, then,” Redwing said with a thin smile of satisfaction. “Let’s go in.”

 
    SIX
    If your heart is large, Memor thought, and contains volume enough to envelop your adversaries, then wisdom can come into play. One can then see their transparency, and so then diffuse or avoid their attacks. And once you envelop them, you will be able to guide them along the path indicated to you by your own hard-won wisdoms.
    He shook himself. This insight came from some new part of him … the restless part of his mind that would soon be her mind. For Memor was now amid the fevered straits of the Change.
    Not the optimum time to confront a crisis unlike any within the last eight-squared of generations. Lifeshaping should be done in peace, but that was not to be Memor’s destiny. He would be female within a few short cycles, but he had not yet lost the male’s sense of reach and joy, the Dancing. He could even smell the seethe of fructifying change within him. Hormones raged; molecules fought for dominance in his bloodstream. Fevers came in like chemical reports from a raging battlefield. These changes had been designed by the Founders and their following generations, now well sanctified by endless eras. Memor knew his shifting moods and jitters paid the cost of acquiring greater wisdom. But the cost was high and hard to endure amid a crisis.
    “Order descends,” the Prefect called in ancient tones for the assembly of Astronomers.
    “Order prevails,” came the answering chorus as they took their places of rest beneath the great dome.
    Memor let the details of unfurling discussion play over him. He kept his body still while his inner mind fretted at the vagrant impulses within his changing self. Even his Undermind, normally serene, showed a surface wrinkled by fretful winds. Waves of knotted concern broke across its steady currents.
    The technical summary was as he had heard. A starship of boldly simple design approached from aft. Diagnostics astern had seen it turn and approach, as though their flight had not been directly for the Bowl. Perhaps they were bound for the star ahead, where the gravitational waves emerged?
    The audience of Astronomers murmured. Speculation fueled their excited chatter. Monitoring the approaching ship’s transmissions picked up several bursts directed back along the ship’s path. Trailing satellites had picked up these, yet intensive study by the linguist minds gave little more than a simple sense of their grammar and contextual constructions. Their habits of mind as revealed in language did not seem remarkable. Linear logics, few layers of