（外文电子版资料）Stephen Baxter - Gossamer.pdfVIP

Gossamer by Stephen Baxter The flitter bucked. Lvov looked up from her data desk, startled. Beyond the flitters translucent hull, the wormhole was flooded with sheets of blue-white light which raced toward and past the flitter, giving Lvov the impression of huge, uncontrolled speed. Weve got a problem, Cobh said. The pilot bent over her own data desk, a frown creasing her thin face. Lvov had been listening to her data desks synthesized murmur on temperature inversion layers in nitrogen atmospheres; now she tapped the desk to shut it off. The flitter was a transparent tube, deceptively warm and comfortable. Impossibly fragile. Astronauts have problems in space, she thought. But not me. Im no hero; Im only a researcher. Lvov was twenty-eight years old; she had no plans to die—and certainly not during a routine four-hour hop through a Poole wormhole that had been human-rated for eighty years. She clung to her desk, her knuckles whitening, wondering if she ought to feel scared. Cobh sighed and pushed her data desk away; it floated before her. Close up your suit and buckle up. Whats wrong? Our speed through the wormhole has increased. Cobh pulled her own restraint harness around her. Well reach the terminus in another minute— What? But we should have been traveling for another half-hour. Cobh looked irritated. I know that. I think the Interface has become unstable. The wormhole is buckling. What does that mean? Are we in danger? Cobh checked the integrity of Lvovs pressure suit, then pulled her data desk to her. Cobh was a Caucasian, strong-faced, a native of Mars, perhaps fifty years old. Well, we cant turn back. One way or the other itll be over in a few more seconds. Hold tight. Now Lvov could see the Interface itself, the terminus of the wormhole. The Interface was a blue-white tetrahedron, an angular cage that ex