When the foam swept back from their bodies, they could see indigo sky spread from one side of the Docks to the other, and the glint of starships. When the surf came forward, the two Riders were submerged in the turbid chill, surrounded by the coralesks and intertidal creatures that built their little homes here. And at high "tide" the flexure of the sea floor held steady for an hour or so. Then the water cleared, and if in daylight, they could see patches of glassy sea-bottom ... and through them,
Mbt sport shoes, a thousand kilometers below, the surface of Groundside. Blueshell tried to clear his mind of care. For every hour of peaceful contemplation, a few more natural memories would accumulate.... No good. Just now he could no more banish the worries than could Greenstalk. After a moment, he said, "Sometimes I wish I were a Lesser Rider." To stand a lifetime in one place, with just a minimum skrode. "Yes," said Greenstalk. "But we decided to roam. That means giving up certain things. Sometimes we must remember things that happen only once or twice. Sometimes we have great adventures: I'm glad we took the rescue contract,
MBT Sawa,
复件 (69) air max, Blueshell." So neither of them were really in the mood for the sea today. Blueshell lowered the skrode's wheels and rolled a little closer to Greenstalk. He looked deep into his skrode's mechanical memory,
mbt m walk green, scanning the general databases. There was a lot there about catastrophes. Whoever created the original skrode databases had considered wars and blights and perversion very important. They were exciting things, and they could kill you. But Blueshell could also see that in relative terms, such disasters were a small part of the civilized experience. Only about once in a millennium was there a massive blight. It was their bad luck to be caught near such a thing. In the last ten weeks a dozen civilizations in the High Beyond had dropped from the Net,
复件 (42) air max1, absorbed into the symbiotic amalgam that now was called the Straumli Blight. High trade was crippled. Since their ship was refinanced, he and Greenstalk had flown several jobs, but all to the Middle Beyond. The two of them had been very cautious, but now -- as Greenstalk said -- greatness might be thrust upon them. Vrinimi Org wanted to commission a secret flight to the Bottom of the Beyond. Since he and Greenstalk were already in on the secret, they were the natural choice for the job. Right now, the Out of Band II was in the Vrinimi yards getting bottom-lugger enhancements and a huge stock of antenna drones. In one stroke the OOB's value was increased ten-thousand-fold. There had been no need even to bargain!... and that was the scariest thing of all. Every addition was a clear essential for the trip. They would be descending right to the edge of the Slowness. Under the best of circumstances this would be slow and tedious exercise, but the latest surveys reported movement in the zone boundaries. With bad luck, they might actually end up on the wrong side, where light had the ultimate speed. If that should happen, the new ramscoop would be their only hope. All that was within Blueshell's range of acceptable business. Before he met Greenstalk, he had shipped on bottom-luggers, even been stranded once or twice. But -- "I like adventure as much as you," said Blueshell, a grumpy edge creeping into his voice. "Traveling to the Bottom,
复件 (66) air max1, rescuing sophonts from the claws of wildthings: given enough money, it's all perhaps reasonable.