Em Uma Profundidade no Céu , os Aracnídeos descobrem partículas nanotecnológicas de diamante misturadas com formações de xisto do passado antigo do planeta. Quando peneirada do xisto circundante, a nanotecnologia aparentemente reativa e exibe propriedades antigravitacionais (tornando-se um material conhecido como "cavorito").
No entanto, em A Fire Upon the Deep , nos é dito que alguma tecnologia, incluindo agrav, só pode ser construída no High-Beyond e no 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."
Não apenas o único pode ser criado no High-Beyond ou no Transcend, mas eles também exigem que o usuário esteja nessas zonas para manter a funcionalidade de longo prazo
No meio além:
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.
No Baixo Além:
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.
E na zona lenta:
"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."
Como o favorito mantém sua função no sistema OnOff, que está claramente na Zona Lenta (e foi, em um ponto, em The Unthinking Depths), apesar de o cavorito ter milhões de anos?