To Hold Infinity Read Online Free Page A

beating heart, pumping joyous power.
    Silver-capped waves flew past beneath him.
    Surface.
    The water was an icy shock to his fuselage thermal sensors. He spread his wings, exhaling to decelerate, reversing thrust.
    Â 
    {{STATUS: (12.45, 44.88, 1, 3.7892, 5.73382, 2.300, 8.999, 0.001)}}
    Â 
    Bow wave decreasing. Velocity rapidly falling to zero.
    Then he was at rest on the ocean, bobbing gently, his flyer's status a point in eight-dimensional phase space, nicely within the system-ok region.
    Â 
    {{{HeaderBegin: Module = Node00076.AA10: Type = Trinary-HyperCode: Axes = 0
    Concurrent_Execute
    Â Â Â Â Â ThreadOne: .disengage
    Â Â Â Â Â ThreadTwo: .disengage
    Â Â Â Â Â ThreadThree: .disengage
    End_Concurrent_Execute}}}
    Â 
    As Rafael's link with the exterior holocams faded, he caught a dreamlike image of nubile girls stepping gingerly from the opened crystal segments onto his smartraft, or diving adventurously into the ocean and striking out with athletic strokes towards the flyer.
    He returned his attention to the flyer's lounge.
    Voretta was watching him with expectant eyes.
    Â 
    <>
    Â 
    A smile was her only reply. It was enough.

A black hummingbird darted in front of her, startling Yoshiko. It hung in the air, wings blurred, drinking nectar from a crimson flower; then it flicked away, out of sight.
    Joyous green life stretched all around her, beneath lighting panels replicating Terran daylight. They could shine more brightly, she knew, if oxygen demand increased.
    She took a springy step onto a grassy path. This far up, centripetal acceleration was maybe two-thirds g. Maybe she should live in a space habitat.
    Never to see Ken's grave again…Pay attention.
    She should not be here. A smartcart, laden with pots of hybrid wheat, had passed her in a corridor. Unable to resist, she had followed it into an elevator, keeping to its sensors’ blind spot—a trick Tetsuo had shown her years ago, with her own lab's smartcarts.
    The smartcart's authorization had let her through the bio-area's scan-gate.
    A wispy sensation on her cheek. She stopped, gently transferred a large brown spider from her shoulder to the nearest bush. Walked into its web. Stupid old woman.
    From up ahead came faint strains of music, a melody she ought to recognize. Passing under a tree, beneath a scolding capuchin monkey, she pushed through foliage to a low cluster of white domes.
    From an open doorway came a metallic voice—“ Rekka! Look out! ”—and the hissing sound of graser fire…or rather, holodramatists’ conventional sound effect.
    The stirring theme tune played.
    A grin broke across Yoshiko's face. Chandri, Space Explorer , had been the boys’ favourite hv serial. She remembered Tetsuo and Akira, glued to the view-stage.
    From the doorway, she watched the terminal in the dome's shadowy interior.
    The tiny figure of the heroine, Rekka Chandri, was bent over a biofact, evolving (in minutes, rather than days) a deadly variant of her remote-controlled beeswarm. Cannibalistic aliens (portrayed with horns instead of antlers, forestalling litigation from the real-life Haxigoji on whom they were based), threatened Rekka's camp, while her young side-kick fired warning shots above their heads.
    Viewpoint shift: a blind Pilot, silver sockets where her eyes should have been, dropping out of mu-space and landing quickly, strapping on her ninja gear and leaping to the rescue—
    Yoshiko laughed aloud.
    There was a muffled curse, and the holodrama winked out.
    â€œLights.”
    A big square-jawed red-bearded man rose from a camp chair, and pushed back long red hair from his eyes. He tugged his blue jumpsuit into order. Behind him, on a workbench, lay a jumble of gene-splicers and ecomodellers and jury-rigged lash-ups whose purpose was hard to