“You had one more question?”
“Yes. Why should a hyperspace flier fall toward the surface of the black concavity and escape only by the full thrust of its impulse engines, as Ariel described to me last night-an effect of the curvature of spacetime-when the atmosphere, the air inside the dome, does not fall toward the blackness likewise?”
“You answered your own question,” Synapo said.
A small green flame hissed from the blackness a decimeter below his eyes, and his voice took on a note of irritation, as though his patience were about to be exhausted.
“The curvature of spacetime, as you suggested. The flier was beyond the neutral shell, in the gravitational field of the black concavity. The planet's atmosphere is within the neutral shell, in the gravitational field of the planet.”
With a note of finality, Synapo concluded with a question.
“Did not your jumper have to achieve normal escape velocity to drive into the blackness before it could reverse and try to escape back to the planet?”
Quickly, before Derec had time to fully digest those last remarks, Ariel regained control of the meeting. With firmness, she said, “Now, honorable Ceremyons, our schedule calls for the first phase of our effort to be completed in two months. That effort will provide sufficient farm area and production-1000 square kilometers-for proof of environmental passivity.
“Concurrently, we will modify the city to provide terminal facilities for local and interstellar transport vehicles. Those facilities will project through the opening in the dome, but will be insulated and force-ventilated to ensure that all harmful radiation and emissions will be retained within the dome.
“Wolruf, our farm engineering specialist, and Derec, our city engineering specialist, will now describe the detailed schedules for those two activities.”
SilverSide recorded all that, but her attention, her whole being, was concentrated on the alien, Synapo. His domination of the dialogue told her that he was the superior of the two aliens and potentially more powerful, more intelligent, than any of the mammals she had become familiar with. Inshort, she had found the ultimate target for her final imprint, or so she believed.
She left off recording the meeting with the aliens. She had found a new role model to fit the beings the Laws of Robotics compelled her to serve. She was no longer obligated to observe the orders of lesser beings. Still, she gave Wolruf a last thought filled with fondness, that new emotion she had found in her consideration of LifeCrier, now far, far away. She would continue to protect Wolruf with just a little less weight than she gave herself under the Third Law, the law of self-preservation.
She turned her attention back to the alien on the right, Synapo, and concentrated now on the technical details of the imprint, particularly the aerodynamic characteristics that would be the hardest to duplicate. The calculations quickly showed that her wingspread and airfoil area would have to be several-fold greater than that of the aliens in order to support her body weight. Their body mass must be light indeed, with mostly hollow structural reinforcements.
And she would have to increase the dimensions of her body to provide the geometry needed for the wing connections and the leverage required for the wing manipulators. Not surprisingly, that was going to decrease her body density to match that of the aliens.
She worked on the eyes next. They were compound, radiating red and infrared. The radiation came from a ring that surrounded the conventional animal optic in the center and provided controlled illumination for viewing objects when the sun's radiation was blocked by the planet.
Then she turned her attention to the blackbody surface and found that to be more of a problem than the aerodynamics and the optics. She experimented on her arm as she sat in the back seat of the lorry but finally had to give up and settle for a blackish gray with a soft, silvery lustre, just as she had finally given up matching the details of hair and skin coloring of the mammals.
Next, she attacked the source and nature of the green flame that had burst from the alien, Synapo. She had the feeling that it was a tool, if not a weapon, that was required to provide a satisfactory imprint. She designed a small electrolytic cell, compressor, and high-pressure storage containers for hydrogen and oxygen and a release orifice at the rear of her oral cavity, but she kept her conventional speakers for communication. And she added a small factory to fix nitrogen in the form of ammonia to provide the trace of that compound that gave the flame its green color.
All during that period of analyzing the alien, Synapo, she was absorbing the powerful masculinity he radiated, intercepting and recording the red glare of his eyes, sopping up his physical essence, the body language, the subtle mannerisms that escaped that otherwise all-absorbing black silhouette.
Finally she was ready, and she set the organometallic cells of her body and their pseudoribosomes to the task of altering her genetic tapes-her robotic DNA, her equivalents of messenger and transfer and ribosomal RNA-and the myriad other factors contained in her multibillion microbotic cells that would finally effect the alien imprint.
As her form changed, she stepped up to stand on the back seat of the open lorry to give her forelegs room to develop into wings, and then as her long hind legs shortened and thickened, she braced them against the back of the seat to steady herself.
With their attention on the meeting, the two robots in the front of the lorry did not observe the transformation, nor did the mammals in the meeting who faced away from her. She was under observation only by the aliens, and they seemed not to notice or to care.
Finally, the transformation was complete, save for the hook and its tether, that she had programmed last because of its different matrix, a stainless form of shining steel configured in a hollow curved horn and a fine-stranded but sturdy flexible cable. She hoped to fly, but she had abandoned the balloon and the act of ballooning she had witnessed the evening before. The hook, then, was purely for effect.
Comfortably masculine now, SilverSide was standing on the back seat of the lorry, fully erect-three meters high-with his wings folded tightly against his body as though he had just emerged from a cocoon like a newly metamorphosed butterfly. He felt the need to open and exercise them, to get the feel of them, and with that he recalled flying in bird form on the wolf planet.
The mammals and the aliens were still absorbed in their meeting. The aliens apparently thought the growing SilverSide was a natural phenomenon associated with the lorry, for they gave no sign of looking directly in SilverSide's direction.
Slowly he opened his wings. The thin, tough, organometallic membrane rustled faintly as he unfolded the airfoil to its full twenty-five meters. He found then that he could not avoid measuring air currents.
He had not been aware of even a faint breeze as he had stood there on the back seat with his wings folded, but now he felt the gentle pressure acting on his wings, pressing his simulated, feathery cold-junction against the back o(the seat. He resisted the torque that was endeavoring to tumble him out of the back of the lorry only with a distinct effort by digging his toes into the seat cushion.
The effort was more than he cared to maintain, so he folded his wings back against his body, reducing the wind area.
Then he turned, walked across the seat to the side of the lorry, hesitated-looking at Wolruf who was running toward him and shouting his name-and then spread his wings again and hopped over the side. He felt again the glorious sensation of flight, of being airborne, as he gently glided to the ground. When his feet touched, he fell flat on his face, his wings outspread, with a feeling of slow motion that began with his dragging toes digging shallow furrows in the dust next to the roadway.