The Night's Dawn Trilogy by Peter F. Hamilton Read Free Book Online

them all, spiralling, diving, swooping in huge loops, heedless of the stress, of the toll its frenzy extracted from the precious
     patterning cells. Energy was free, coursing through the ring. Cosmic radiation, the planet’s undulating magnetic flux, the
     doughty gusts of solar wind;
Iasius
swept it all in with the distortion field, concentrating it into an abundant coherent stream which the patterning cells absorbed
     and redirected.
    By the time it reached the Encke division the power surplus was enough to energize the first egg.
Iasius
let out a shrill cry of triumph. The other voidhawks responded. They had followed tenaciously, striving to match the giddy
     helter-skelter route
Iasius
had flown, boring down the passage it had broken through the ring mass, desperately deflecting the whirling particles tossed
     about by its wake. The leader of the flock kept changing, none could equal the speed, nor match the carefree audacity; often
     they were caught out by the savage turns, overshooting, blundering about in a squall of undisturbed particles. It was a test
     of skill as well as power. Even luck played a part. Luck was a trait worth inheriting.
    When
Iasius
called the first time,
Hyale
was the closest, a mere two hundred kilometres behind. It surged forward, and
Iasius
relented, slowing fractionally, holding a straight course. They rendezvoused,
Hyale
sliding in to hold position ten metres away, their hulls overlapping perfectly. Ring particles skidded round them like snow
     from a ski blade.
    Hyale
began to impart its compositional pattern through their affinity bond, a software DNA flowing into
Iasius
with a sense of near orgasmic glory.
Iasius
incorporated the
Hyale
’s structural format into the vast energy squirt it discharged into the first egg.
    The egg,
Acetes
, awoke in a blaze of wonder and exhilaration. Alive with racing currents of power, every cell charged with rapture and purpose
     and the urge to burst into immediate growth.
    Iasius
filled space with its glee.
    Acetes
found itself propelled out into the naked vacuum. Shattered fragments of
Iasius
’s hull were spinning away, a dark red hole set in midnight blue receding at a bewildering speed.
    Free! the egg sang. I’m free!
    A huge dark bulk hung above it. Forces it could sense but couldn’t understand were slowing its wild tumbling. The universe
     seemed to be composed entirely of tiny splinters of matter pervaded by glowing energy bands. Voidhawks flashed past at frightening
     velocities.
    Yes, you are free,
Hyale
said. I bid you welcome to life.
    What is this place? What am I? Why can’t I move like you?
Acetes
struggled to make sense of the scraps of knowledge fluttering around its racing mind,
Iasius
’s final gift.
    Patience,
Hyale
counselled. You will grow, you will learn. The data you possess will be integrated in time.
    Acetes
cautiously opened its affinity sensitivity to cover the whole of Saturn’s environment, and received a chorus of greetings
     from the habitats, an even greater wave of acknowledgement from individual adult Edenists, excited trills from children; and
     then its own kind offered encouragement, infant voidhawks nesting within the rings.
    Its tumbling halted, it hung below
Hyale
’s lower hull, looking round with raw senses.
Hyale
began to alter their trajectory, moving the egg into a stable circular orbit around the gas giant where it would spend the
     next eighteen years growing to full size.
    Iasius
plunged on towards the cloudscape, ploughing a dark telltale furrow through the rings for any entity watching with the right
     kind of senses. Its flight produced enough power to energize two more eggs,
Briseis
and
Epopeus
, while it was still in the A-ring.
Hesperus
emerged while it was passing through the Cassini division.
Graeae, Ixion, LaocoÖn
and
Merope
all awoke in the B-ring, to be borne away by the voidhawks whose compositional patterns they had been given.
    Udat
caught up with
Iasius
near the inner edge of the