| Author: | Colin Kapp |
| Copyright: | 1982 |
| Date Reviewed: | 4/18/86 |
| Rating: | 7.0 |
Synopsis: When a Solarian shell is theorized to exist between Jupiter and Saturn, Marq the former assassin and Niklas Boxa a brilliant mathematician travel to the only unused spoke known on the Mars shell to test the theory. Boxa believes that this Exis spoke connects directly to the Boxa shell. While inspecting shuttles that have not been used in centuries, Boxa is trapped in one and is taken outward to the shell he named. After months of loneliness, he arrives and finds that this shell is totally dark and lifeless - there are no luminaries except a small one mounted atop a two mile high tower. When the tower is toppled, Boxa is prepared for the worst. He is captured by the inhabitants but soon finds them to be a gentle species genetically tailored to survive in near darkness. The inhabitants of Boxa shell have eyes that glow to provide their own light.
Meanwhile, Marq mounts an expedition to find out what happened to Boxa. Using a technique they perfected when they found Zeus - the super intelligence that built and maintains the Solarian shells, Marq's expedition will use the cageworlds to pass through each shell. Marq assembles the same crew as before: Sine Anura, Mistress of the Erotica whose ancestors lived in the sea, Cherry, Master Illusionist, and his assistants Tez and Carli. They will make the trip aboard the newly refitted Shellback.
First stop is through the asteroid shell. Going into the volcano that traps the Cageworld they are attacked by Zeus with wandering asteroids. They escape the missiles but their speed is so great that friction causes the outside of the ship to become fused. This Cageworld is in the middle of a nuclear world war. No human voices can be heard over the airwaves, only the bits of automated war machines. Whilst the crew rests on the surface readying for repairs, one of the war machines attacks. Marq would have been killed but the machine was out of ammunition. They make their escape and on the way out realize that this cageworld is devoid of life. All the humans who waged the war had been killed years ago and now only the machines fight on.
While traversing a field a million miles wide, they are escorted down by the Field Protectors whose job it was to protect a million square miles of corn from poachers. This strain of corn is almost 100% usable and can be made into foodstuff or whisky. The Field Protectors capture the crew of the Shellback but they made their escape easily.
During missile practice on their way to the Jupiter shell, Marq discovers an Exis plane directly in their path. Had they not used the missile for practice, they would have been crunched when they hit the plane at 100,000 miles per hour. Marq uses his last two missiles to knock out two of the five Exis generators thus changing the geometry of the plane. They bypass the plane to land on a Jupiter cageworld where they sink into ooze. As soon as the ship begins to sink, the intake tubes become clogged and the engines stop. The ooze is like gelatin -when heated it will contract to a hard glaze. If Marq could apply enough heat to the outside of the ship, they could make their escape. The planet is subject to immense electrical storms of the mega-amp range. As a precaution, Marq extends lightening rods into the ooze. Meanwhile Sine is captured by the planet's swimmers. When lightening strikes, the rods carry the charge into the ooze and solidify it enough to clear the intake tubes. Eventually Sine returns and they are off.
The next stop is Heaven - a cageworld in the Boxa shell. Here the crew meets the children of the Shadowy Messiah who fled from the Jupiter shell. The Jupiter shell's population export has been shut down and it is choking itself in its own human mass. There are only a few people on Heaven and they command the Shellback crew to stay and add to the gene pool. Marq agrees to spend the night with one woman to impregnate her but he will not stay. In the end they must battle to escape, the Shellback with its arsenal of technological weaponry and imagery and the rulers of Heaven who can directly manipulate nature. Finally they make it to the end of the Exis tube which terminates on the Mars shell and make contact with Professor Soo of Mars. Once again they are attacked by a Zeus war machine but in defeating it, the heavy machine crashes through the surface of the shell into the caverns below. Back at the spoke they meet Boxa who has integrated himself with the people of the shell. He is married now with two children. Boxa tells Marq that the destruction of the war machine caused the deaths of a thousand people in the caverns below the surface. Naturally most of the population are not pleased with their arrival. From Boxa they learn much about this unusual shell. This Zeus experiment contains a thousand levels - each populated by the night humans. And it works. The population of the other shells combined dwarf in comparison to this one and Zeus's intention for them to maintain the head count is obvious. The crew must get back to Mars to share this knowledge but first they must escape the mob that's out to kill them. This they do without harm to themselves although several more of the natives are killed.
The crew heads back to Heaven but to their dismay, find that the opening is now closed with an Exis field. As they begin to believe they must spend the rest of their lives on this shell without light, Marq finds another way home through the Exis tube where it all started.
Review: The second book in the Cageworld series is enjoyable if not very important or realistic. This story is the inverse of the previous one - instead of traveling in to the center of the Solarian system, our explorers travel out to ever larger shells. The cageworld novels are packed full of plot but its more of a travelogue than a series of situations that culminate in a climax. In fact the climax was somewhat anticlimactic. The only secret we learned was of the possible intention Zeus has for dealing with the overcrowded inner shells but nothing is done with this information. Perhaps that is left for the next novel.
"The Lost Worlds of Cronus" lost a few points for repetition. As in the first novel, the crew are constantly being cornered by some enemy and just narrowly escape to face the next enemy. Each situation seems more hopeless than the last. In one sequence, Sine is carried off by the water inhabitants of a cageworld and then comes back, saying a fond farewell to her former captors. The exact same thing happened in the first novel, although there she was kidnapped by a winged man. I already own the next two in the series and I plan to read them eventually. I'll probably enjoy the books but I doubt I will grow very much by the experience.