I En djup i himlen upptäcker Arachnids diamant nano-tech partiklar blandade med skifferformationer från det antika förflutna på planeten. När det siktas från den omgivande skalan, återaktiverar nano-tech uppenbarligen och uppvisar anti-gravitation egenskaper (blir ett material som kallas "kavorit").
Men i En eld på djupet får vi veta att viss teknik, inklusive agrav, bara kan byggas i High-Beyond och Transcend:"The Beyond and below are like a deep of ocean, and we the creatures that swim in the abyss. We're so far down that the beings on the surface -- superior though they are -- can't effectively reach us. Oh, they fish, and they sometimes blight the upper levels with poisons we don't even understand. But the abyss remains a relatively safe place." She paused. There was more to the analogy. "And just as with an ocean, there is a constant drift of flotsam from the top. There are things that can only be made at the Top, that need close-to-sentient factories -- but which can still work down here. Blueshell mentioned some of those when he was talking to you: the agrav fabrics, the sapient devices. Such things are the greatest physical wealth of the Beyond, since we can't make them."
Inte bara kan de enda skapas i High-Beyond eller Transcend, men de behöver också uppenbarligen vara i dessa zoner för att upprätthålla långsiktig funktionalitet
I mitten Beyond:
At Sjandra Kei the annual income of an academician might pay for a square meter of agrav fabric -- junk that might not last a year. Here there were millions of hectares of the stuff, supporting billions of tonnes. Just replacements for dead fabric required more High Beyond commerce than most star clusters could command.
I det låga:
It was a team game the two Skroderiders played. While Blueshell chattered, Greenstalk watched everything around them, running her skrode's recorders on all bands, trying to place this environment in the context of others they had known. Technology: What would these people need? What could work? In space this flat, there would be little use for agrav fabric. And this low in the Beyond, a lot of the most sophisticated imports from above would spoil almost immediately. Workers outside the long windows wore articulated pressure suits -- the force-field suits of the High Beyond would last only a few weeks down here.
Och i den långsamma zonen:
"That's only part of it. I think we Tines are more flexibly minded than the poor Two-Legs. Can you imagine what it will be like when we make more radio cloaks, when we make our own flying machines?"
Woodcarver smiled, a little sadly now. "Pilgrim, you dream. This is the Slow Zone. The agrav will wear out in a few years. Whatever we make will be far short of what you play with now."
Hur håller kavoriten sin funktion i OnOff-systemet, vilket är tydligt i den långsamma zonen (och var på en punkt i de otänkbara djuparna), trots att kavoriten var miljontals år gammal?
Spoilers här, för En eld på djupet och "The Blabber" (som är en novella satt i Zones of Thought universum, eller åtminstone ett tidigare utkast till det):
In "The Blabber" we are introduced to an artifact that works in the Slow Zone but exhibits functionality normally only available in the Beyond (FTL communication, albeit very slow). As a side-effect, it sucks enough energy from the local star to dim it by 0.5%. In A Fire Upon the Deep, Countermeasure produces Transcendent-level effects in the Beyond (continuing for a while into the Slow Zone), and temporarily extinguishes the light from the Tines World sun while doing so.
Så jag drar slutsatsen att är möjlig att driva och behålla högre nivåteknologi i den långsamma zonen så länge du har stellära energinivåer tillgängliga och att OnOff-stjärnan är Av för de flesta av tiden eftersom dess energi används för att hålla levande Beyonder eller transcendenta artefakter som finns på planeten i sådan överflöd att de bildar geologiska lag.
Läs andra frågor om taggar vernor-vinge zones-of-thought Kärlek och kompatibilitet Skor Gear 12 Stjärntecken Grunderna