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"To go out on January day and run around on the beach under a golden sun makes a very great change in your outlook on the universe."
- Robert Silverberg
 |
| Mole Probe | ||
| Automated devices that seek underground routes, burrowing as they go. |
| At the expense of a few mole probes they found out that reaching the city through a tunnel was equally impossible. The moles burrowed into the coarse sandy soil outside the outer walls, chewed themselves passageways fifty meters down, and nosed upward again when they were beneath the maze. They were destroyed by the safety field while still twenty meters below ground level. A try at burrowing in right at the base of the embankments also failed; the field went straight down, apparently, all around the city. |
| Technovelgy from The Man in the Maze,
by Robert Silverberg. Published by Avon Books in 1969 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the mechanical mole from Oath of Fealty by Pournelle and Niven (1981), the photic borer from The Great Stone of Sardis (1897) by Frank Stockton, the mechanical earthworm from Death Dives Deep by Paul Ernst (1936), the bore-pellets from Foster, You're Dead (1955) by Philip K. Dick and the automatic shell from The Great Stone of Sardis (1897) by Frank Stockton.
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'...there's a narrow belt where the climate is moderate.'
'He wore spectacles with thick wavy lenses. The spectacles were intended to make him not only half blind, but to give him whanging headaches besides.'
'... with the Master-operator all you have to do is push one! A remarkable achievement!'
'Not like me. A T-1000, advanced prototype. A mimetic poly-alloy. Liquid metal.'
'It was riddled with holes that were the mouths of tunnels.'
'The massive feet working the pedals, arms and hands flashing and glinting...'
