（外文电子版资料）TITAN-JohnVarley_ch11-ch1.docVIP

CHAPTER ELEVEN The support cables came in rows of five organized into groups of fifteen, and rows of three standing alone. Each night region had fifteen cables associated with it. There was a row of five vertical cables that went straight up the hollow horn in the roof that was the inside of one of the spokes of Gaea’s wheel. Two of these came to the ground in the highlands and were virtually a part of the wall, one north and the other south. One emerged from a point midway between the outer- most cables, and the other two were spaced evenly between the center and the edge cables. In addition to these central cables, the night regions had two more rows of five that radiated from the spokes but attached in daylight areas, one row twenty degrees east and the other twenty degrees west of the central row. The spoke above Oceanus, for example, sent cables into Mnemosyne and Hyperion. The set of fifteen cables supported the ground under a region equal to over forty degrees of Gaea’s circumference. The cables that went from daylight through a twilight zone and into a night did so at a sharp angle to the ground, an angle that increased with altitude until approached sixty degrees at the point of juncture with the roof. Then there were rows of three cables, associated solely with daylight areas. These cables were vertical, rising straight from the ground until they pierced the roof and emerged into space. It was the middle of Hyperions row of three that Titanic and her crew now approached. It grew more magnificent and more intimidating with each passing day. Even from Bills camp it had seemed to lean over them. The lean was no more pronounced now, but the thing had grown in size. It hurt to look up at it. Knowing that a vertical column is five kilometers in diameter and 120 kilometers high is one thing, Seeing it is something else. Ophion made a wide loop around the cables base, starting at the south and going north before resuming its general eastward direction. It w