Читать книгу The Emperor's Ride - Tom Ph.D. Anderson - Страница 4

The Lindle were a species that had lived on only three planets before their explorers discovered the first gloride worlds. The Lindle scientists found ways to distil gloride ore into a fuel which made travel between the stars practical. They also discovered the metals in the gloride that when combined with other metals made inexpensive spaceships possible on a massive scale. Almost overnight the Lindle settled most of the habitable planets in the galaxy.

Regeneration techniques had given way to an immortality treatment by which any organism maintained itself virtually forever. The Lindle population exploded. With billions of births and no deaths it soon became difficult to find enough habitable planets for the Lindle to live on. The ability to procreate was excised from the race. There was no longer any need for young to care for the old or to replace the lives lost to old age and death.

The Lindle did not fight other Lindle. Accidental deaths still occurred, so if lack of population became a problem, new citizens could always be produced through cloning techniques. With a population of some ninety trillion, lack of population was not seen as a possibility.

Almost two million years went by. The Lindle lived for pleasure. They saw their lives stretching into an endless eternity. Technological progress was almost nonexistent. Without the prod of old age there was no hurry to do anything. Why rush when you have forever. Then something went wrong. Their bodies started to decay. Not the decay of old age, rather the decay of rot from within. Some rotted slowly, most rotted quickly. Trillions died. They could find no cause or cure except that in gloride deposits the decay stopped. Nothing ever rots in a gloride deposit. Gloride deposits are naturally riddled with tunnels and caverns. All the remaining Lindle moved to gloride worlds. They built new cities deep underground in gloride caverns.

The reprieve was only temporary. After a period of about a quarter of a million years, here and there, individuals would simply drop dead. No warning. No symptoms. One moment they were alive, the next moment they were dead. The numbers at first were small, only a few dozen per billion per year, but with Lindle dying and no Lindle being born the effects began to become serious.

The entire emphasis of the newly invigorated Lindle scientific community sprang into action, but to no avail. Ancient cloning techniques were revived in hopes of producing new Lindle so that the species might go on, but Lindle tissue refused to clone.

As Lindle population declined, they would empty a handful of worlds to cluster on one world. Then the clustered worlds began to be depleted and a handful of clustered worlds would be emptied to cluster on one world. The last world, the final clustered world, where all the remaining Lindle went to spend their last days was Lindle 4.

It was called Lindle 4 because it was the fourth Lindle world to be discovered. Lindle 4 was the most impressive of all the Lindle worlds. The other Lindle worlds had been packed up before they had been abandoned. Only Lindle 4 had not been packed up. It was prized beyond all the other Lindle worlds combined.

Lindle 4 had been found when it was part of the Empire of Shonlin the Great. The work to examine the sight was slow and methodical. Gloride deposits are unstable. As the fuel for its radiation becomes depleted, the way the fuel is utilized changes. As a result the deposit reaches a state where the radiation increases a thousand fold, to the point where it became deadly to all living things.

Lindle 4 was the first time a known gloride world became super radioactive. It happened during the Empire/Barony wars when the sight had been temporarily abandoned. Lindle 4 was in the section of the Empire of the Lan-Thu that was ceded to the Baronies of the Sons of Shonlin and at first it was thought the Empire had intentionally made the mine dangerously radioactive to spoil the sight for its new Barony owners.

Eventually the process was understood and other gloride worlds were found that were also super radioactive. Near the end of the gloride deposits life the depleted fuel on the gloride world would cause it to become super radioactive, with brief interludes when it was barely radioactive at all. When the fuel was finally totally depleted the gloride deposit would collapse to perhaps one hundredth of its former size, causing the entire world to collapse to a much smaller sphere.

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The Emperor was overjoyed when he was told that Lindle 4 was to have a 500 hour window of low radiation. This was to be followed by a brief burst of super radiation before the planet's collapse. The Baronies knew that only the Empire of the Lan-Thu had the resources to mount an expedition of sufficient size and scope to truly take advantage of this 500 hour gift. There were those who worried that this was a Barony trap. The Emperor's death would cause chaos and confusion that could be used to split off a piece of the Empire, perhaps conquer the entire Empire to form a new Empire with the Baronies in control. The Empire's own scientists went over the mathematics and did their own tests. It was confirmed. There would be a 500 hour window of low radiation followed by planetary collapse.

No expense was to be spared. The sight was to be emptied of all significant Lindle artifacts during that 500 hours and the Emperor was going there to watch. The Emperor completely dismissed the idea of a Barony trap. The Barony forces were no match for the fleets of the Empire. There was no one strong leader among the Households of the Baronies, and the Baronies had their hands full defending against raiders from the outer worlds and pirate raiders from the Market Sphere.

The Emperor was an avid collector of Lindle artifacts. If he had been passed over for the throne the Emperor would have been an archaeologist and devoted his life to studying the Lindle. The Emperor had to go. Lindwella (or Linda as she was called by her family and close friends) alone among the Emperor’s children shared his passion for the Lindle. Lindwella also would go.

Lindle 4 had the worst of the Lindle ghoul infestations. They were larger and far more numerous than at other Lindle sights. It had been three hundred and fifty years since all life had ended on Lindle 4. How could any ghoul have survived? Still no chances were to be taken. As modern weapons were totally useless in a gloride formation, the best ghoul hunter teams in the Empire, as well as the best teams from the Baronies and the Market sphere were to come. Also the 900 men of the Emperor’s personal guard, the finest fighting men anywhere, newly trained in ghoul hunting techniques and armed with the finest ghoul hunting weapons were also to go. Even a single man ghoul hunter team was offered the chance to come, at twice his normal fee. He alone declined. He didn't do bodyguard work. The man saw the job as an excess of caution. How could any ghouls have survived?

The Lindle site was huge. Only about a tenth of it had been thoroughly explored. Archaeologists went with teams of workmen, deciding which items to remove and which items to merely record and leave behind. Thousands of huge packing crates were constantly being moved into, and spread throughout the mine. As the empty crates were being filled, they were constantly monitored and their contents meticulously recorded. The amount of artifacts being removed was enormous, a continuous flow. The ghoul hunter teams kept their eyes open but mostly just kept out of the way.

The Emperor stayed with half a dozen of the most prominent archaeologists, examining the ruins and discussing the last days of the Lindle. The Emperor was in heaven. Lindwella went off alone, in the company of a contingent of her father's guard of course. They were content to follow, not lead. They had no eye for the ancient splendor. Lindwella's safety was their only concern.