Cheela - Starquake Part 6

"Just a blink, youngling," said Cliff-Web. "I want to feel it." The young roustabout looked at her supervisor, who flicked his eyes at the deck. She put the ring down and the big badge flowed over it.

The ring was large, half the diameter of a cheela. Made of highly polished monopole-stabilized superconducting metal, it was a precision part in a precision machine. The ring was subject to terrific accelerations as it was thrown upward at nearly half the speed of light. Any flaw in the polished surface could cause local heating and the possibility of the loss of superconductivity.

"No dents, but there is a hot spot on the outside and a tiny stress crack," said Cliff-Web. He flowed off the ring and the youngling picked it up and took it off. Cliff-Web then moved over to the side of the up-pipe and peered through a view port in the side. Illuminated by the glowing metal of the room-temperature pipe, the procession of cold silvery rings blended into a seemingly solid bar that waved slowly back and forth to show that it was a moving stream. The rings had started at nearly half light-speed at the surface, but as they drifted upward, they lost speed from the intense pull of Egg and the tiny tugs at each deflector platform. They were still going at one-twelfth light-speed when they reached Topside Platform.

Cliff-Web peered upward where he could see the black nothingness of the cold bending magnet that turned the rings around and sent them back down again. Cliff-Web watched the stream carefully for a while.

"Very steady flow," he finally said. "Every acceleration bucket must have a ring in it."

"At last break-turn in Swift's Climb, the Base Plant Supervisor bragged they were at three elevens."

"The entire crew is doing an excellent job," Cliff-Web remarked. "I'd like to ride it down."

"We got some spare lifts," said Heavy-Egg. "I'll get one set up. I'm almost at break-turn, so I'll take you down."

They took the elevator to the bottom deck. This would be the transfer point for pa.s.sengers, so the ceiling was cold black with simulated stars. The lifts on the s.p.a.ce Fountain rode the streams up to this deck, while the streams of rings continued on to the turning magnets above them on the middle deck. The pa.s.sengers and freight transferred to smaller elevators that took them to the top deck, while the lifts were detached from the streams, pulled back from the hole in the platform and stacked until a down-going lift was needed.

As Cliff-Web watched, a lift was removed from a stack, placed on glide-rails and moved out on support arms until its deflection coils surrounded the tubes carrying the flowing streams. Each lift used three stream pairs for safety. The support arms were pulled back, and the lift bounced lightly as it s.h.i.+fted its load to the streams. A roustabout hurried over with a ramp to cover the crack between the platform and lift. Cliff-Web waved him back with a flip of his eye-stubs.

"Save it for the crust-crawlers," he said, gliding over the six-micron-wide crack. He tried to keep his eyes focused off in the distance, but some of them insisted on looking down at Egg, 406 kilometers below his tread.

The things a boss must do to maintain respect,he said to himself.

Heavy-Egg activated the lift controls. As soon as they cleared the bottom deck, the pipe covering the ring stream ended, and they could see the reflection of Egg's glowing crust in the silvery flow. Except for the first 100 millimeters, where a vacuum pipe was needed to keep the weak electron and iron vapor atmosphere of Egg from heating the rings, there was no solid structure in the tower, not even a skeleton framework, just flowing rings.

"If you don't mind, Boss, I got a few ch.o.r.es to do while I take you down," Heavy-Egg said.

"The job comes first. It would be different if I were a paying pa.s.senger."

"I got to finish the checkout on this lift and later on down deliver a part to Platform 40."

"What kind of checkout?' Cliff-Web asked.

"The stream selector controls," Heavy-Egg replied. "Right now we ride on all six streams. Drag on the up-streams and push on the down-streams. I just got to check that we can turn off a coupler if a stream gets rough and the automatic doesn't do it."

Cliff-Web wasn't worried. He knew this part of the design well. The lift could theoretically levitate on just one stream, although, if it were badly unbalanced, the torque rebalance requirement could cause problems at the next deflector platform. Two or three streams were more than adequate for a smooth ride. He watched with interest as Heavy-Egg turned off one coupler after another and checked the response of the other five couplers as they took up the load. Then Heavy-Egg turned off all three down couplers and rode only on the up-streams. He reversed the controls and they switched to riding the downstreams only without a noticeable glitch in the motion.

"No problems there," said Heavy-Egg. "We're coming up on Platform 40."

Hearing the decimal number for the platform at 40 kilometers alt.i.tude made Cliff-Web's eye-stubs twitch.Every engineering measurement on Egg used the base twelve numbering systemexcept distance.

They had inherited meters, kilometers, and millimeters from the humans and seemed to be stuck with it despite many attempts to switch to a non-metric length system where the units were in easily calculated multiples of twelve.

Heavy-Egg brought the lift to a smooth stop. A small crew was busy repairing a redundant deflector on stream four-up. Cliff-Web glided over to the edge of the platform. The gravity acceleration on the platform was now significantly stronger, about one sixteenth that on the surface of Egg. He looked out over the barrier. At 40 kilometers alt.i.tude he could make out the outline of Swift's Climb and see the kilometer-long streak of the Jump Loop on the east side which he would shortly be using for the jump home. He hadn't heard anything from Moving-Sand, so La.s.sie was still alive, but he wondered if she was still mentally alert enough to remember him.

It was nearly turnfeast when Cliff-Web returned to his compound. As the front door slid into its recess he was engulfed with a swarrn of happy snuffling Slinks. Even La.s.sie was there, having dragged herself from the mat next to the oven as soon as she had heard his familiar scuffle as he came up the street.

La.s.sie's cl.u.s.ter had grown with the addition of a clutch of hatchlings. They had never seen Cliff-Web before, but that didn't stop them from joining the happy throng, leaking from both intake and output orifices in their hatchling eagerness. He twirled them all around the eye-rims again and again, until, finally satisfied, they rumbled off. Rollo must have forgotten him, because he was back hiding behind Slurge, which was just managing to push its way through the magnetic fence that bordered the tasty patch of parasol plants. Cliff-Web flowed over to the miniature Flow Slow, and, forming a large bony manipulator, gave Slurge a hard rap on the armored plate just below one of its tiny eyes.

"Back on the lawn!" he hollered.

Slurge retracted its eyes from the side toward the parasol patch. Without the constant reminder of the tasty plants coming to its almost nonexistent brain-clump, it quickly forgot about the garden and started back in the other direction onto the lawn, where it continued its methodical munching and sucking. With the Flow Slow moving in the proper direction, Cliff-Web had time to look at the arrangement of his garden. Moving-Sand must have had some success breeding the fountain plants, for there was a tall one in the center of the circular patch with six more arranged in a hexagon around the central one. All seven were sending up healthy showers of sparks. He then finally noticed something odd. If he had not just come from the East Pole he would have noticed it earlier. All the showers of sparks were going straight up into the air. That was really unusual, for the magnetic declination in this portion of Egg was nearly a quarter-pi off vertical.

"Moving-Sand!" he pounded into the crust.

From off on a distant corner of the compound came a gruff reply. "About time you came back."

The ancient tracking senses built into the super-sensitive undertread of Cliff-Web instantly triangulated the position of the sound and placed Moving-Sand in the northeast corner of the potting compound. With his attention riveted on that portion of the surrounding territory, his tread could now pick out the motion of someone else with Moving-Sand.

He flowed across the outer courtyard to the opposite side of the large compound.

"That is an amazing display of fountain plants," Cliff-Web said as he rounded the potting compound wall.

"One of those plants looks as if it has been growing for a half-dozen turns or more. How did you accomplish that? And how did you get the fountains to go straight up?"

"She helped a little," said Moving-Sand, his eye-stubs twitching in the direction of the stranger. She was a large, slightly over-bulky female who was obviously well past her egg-bearing prime, but still not quite ready to quit and tend hatchlings. The normal motion of her eye-stubs switched to the converging wave greeting pattern as she spoke.

"I am Zero-Gauss, Doctor of Magnetics at the Inst.i.tute," she said. "I specialize in the study of the interaction of magnetic fields on plants."

"Then it is your compound that has the cleft-wort trained to climb the staircase of supports on the window."

"Yes," she replied. "When Moving-Sand came over to inquire about my technique, I learned that you had a large collection of strange plant forms. We have had such an interesting time while you were away.

I've explained my various tricks in using magnetic fields to train plants and animals, and Moving-Sand has supplied me with a number of new types of plants that you collected in your various journeys around Egg.

They are not only lovely additions to my garden, but some of them are proving valuable in my research at the Inst.i.tute."

"I noticed that you two have really improved the performance of the fountain plant in the front circle bed," Cliff-Web said. "What did you do?"

"I brought over a large superconducting coil with a persistent current in it, and we buried it in the crust below the root system. We tilted it so that the direction of the combined magnetic fields of the coil and Egg is vertical. That way, the jet of sparks from the fountain plant can rise straight up as it does at its home location at the East Pole."

"Was a lot of work. But it did the trick," said Moving-Sand grudgingly. 'That fountain plant has lasted more than a dozen turns and is still growing. Best I could do before was three turns. Was hardly worth bothering to plant them."

"I guess even plants thrive best when conditions are similar to what they are familiar with," said Cliff-Web.

"Not necessarily. In my research laboratory at the Inst.i.tute," Zero-Gauss explained, "I have found that many plants grow faster and healthier if there is no magnetic field at all."

"No field at all?" Cliff-Web's engineering curiosity was aroused. "What do you do? Put them at the center of some Helmholtz coils and cancel out the magnetic field of Egg?"

"I do use a pair of large Helmholtz coils to start with," she replied. "The coils only zero out the field at the center, however. Even a few microns away the cancellation is poor enough that the plant is affected.

Between the coils I have built a special room lined with superconducting s.h.i.+elding where I have completely eliminated the magnetic field of Egg over a large enough volume that I can carry out tests on dozens of plant samples at the same time."

"I don't understand." Cliff-Web's eye-stubs were twitching in a confused manner as his engineer's brain tried to imagine how one could make such a room. "I suppose you could make a room with a floor and walls made out of high quality superconducting plate, but even if the walls were extremely tall, the fringing fields would come in over the top. That wouldn't work at all."

"I didn't mean a regular room, open to the sky," Zero-Gauss explained. "My laboratory is under the crust and has a domed cover of superconducting plate over the top, like the 'ceilings' or 'roofs' the humans use on their living and working compounds."

"You wouldn't catch me working in that place," Moving-Sand muttered. "I don't trust things over top of me."

"The dome is artificially cooled to simulate the cold of the sky," said Zero-Gauss. "That helps me a lot when I'm working in there. Since it is as dark as the sky, I can't see it, so it is easy to pretend it isn't there."

"That must be an amazing structure," said Cliff-Web. "I presume there are pillars and double-arches holding up the domes like those in the human cathedrals. How big is it?"

"It is thirty millimeters square and has a post every centimeter. The top of the dome is five millimeters up," she replied. "Would you like to see it?" She hesitated, then added, "We limit direct access, since each entry allows a little more magnetic field to leak in. However, we have an array of remotely controlled video cameras that will let you look at any portion."

"I would like to see it," Cliff-Web told her. He led the way back from the potting rooms through the gardens to the front door of the compound. Slurge was quietly tr.i.m.m.i.n.g the lawn, and Rollo and the Slinks were gone. As he activated the compound door, the area was suddenly full of Slinks. Using his body to block the Slinks from getting out into the street, Cliff-Web escorted Zero-Gauss out the door, for the first time touching the large female.

Moving-Sand came up to chase the Slinks from the doorway and'trummed after them. "You can't go now. You just got here. You haven't even read your message file. You must have six dozen messages to answer."

"I'll get to them later," Cliff-Web answered as he led the way down the slidewall toward the Inner Eye Inst.i.tute.

"One of them is from the Rejuvenation Selection Committee," hollered Moving-Sand. Cliff-Web paused, then continued on down the street, silently thinking.

Zero-Gauss got his attention with an electronic whisper that tickled his backside. "I am impressed. The committee only started announcing the names of those that were being selected for the rejuvenation process a dozen turns ago. You must be up at the top of the list."

"It must be a long list," he said.

"No," she said. "I know of only one scientist at the Inst.i.tute who is on it. Don't forget, the process is so time-consuming and costly that they are only able to undertake one rejuvenation every three turns-only four dozen cheela in a whole great of turns. It must be tough having to make the decision of who are to be the lucky few who are going to be allowed to live a second life while the rest of us will have to die when our time comes."

Cliff-Web was too embarra.s.sed to reply, and they moved along the slidewalls in silence, switching leads at each tack. As they came to the next intersection they switched places again so that Cliff-Web was spreading the field lines again. Snuggled up to his trailing side, Zero-Gauss tried to break the silence with a whispered comment.

"You certainly have an unusual personal robot," she said. "It is one of the most lifelike robots I have ever seen. Yet most personal robots are programmed to be deferential and polite."

"Moving-Sand is one of our newest models. I'm checking it out before we go into production. As for his personality, being owner of a large company, I meet nothing but deferential and polite people. I wanted something different at home to keep my brain-knot from getting too big for my hide. I programmed Moving-Sand's personality atter the Old One that raised me in the clan hatchery."

"Good idea," said Zero-Gauss. "Keeps you thinking like a hatchling. When I can afford a personal robot, I think I'll do the same."

"Anything to keep the egg-tending syndrome from starting," said Cliff-Web. "Gardening helps, too."

"That was one of the reasons I chose plants and small animals for my research," said Zero-Gauss. "Of course, all that may be unnecessary now that we have rejuvenation."

The rest of their journey to the Inner Eye Inst.i.tute was carried out in silence.

06:55:20 GMT TUESDAY 21 JUNE 2050.

While waiting for Amalita to finish her careful inspection of Dragon Slayer, Pierre reopened conversation with Sky-Teacher through the link to the surface of the neutron star.

"I want to thank you for saving our lives. If there is anything we can ever do to repay you... ."

"I have studied the speculation past literature of the human race in order to better understand you,"

Sky-Teacher responded. "It is amusing to me that your present offer coincides with that in the ancient fable by Aesop about the lion and the mouse. At one time in the distant past, you did help us, and we appreciated it. We hope that we have been of some help in correcting your recent predicament. As for the future, it is difficult to see how you, with your limited technology, could be ofany help to us, but we appreciate your thoughts. If everything is in order once again for you to leave, I will once again say goodbye."

With the last words, the screen went blank again.

06:56:20 GMT TUESDAY 21 JUNE2050.

It was turnfeast, and Time-Circle shuffled listlessly past the foodmats in the faculty dining compound. He took a few staple items from the wide selection, stuffed them in a carrying pouch, picked up a large bag of unfermented pulp juice and made his way to the eating area. Over the topsides of some diners already enjoying their turnfeast, he saw three eyes up on stalks waving at him. He cheered up a little and made his way over to join the newest member of the faculty club, D. C. Neutron-Drip, who had received a Doctorate in Crustallography and chosen a new name only three turns ago.

Time-Circle had taken part in the ceremony as the senior representative of her in-clan family and had given the clan approval for the name change. The two were the only members of their clan at the Inner Eye Inst.i.tute, since the clan home was far from Bright's Heaven at the East Pole. He knew from her age that she wasn't from one of his eggs so he didn't have to be concerned about his relations.h.i.+p with her.

Now that she was no longer a student, he intended to get to know her better.

Neutron-Drip moved over as he approached and spread out to share the resting pad with her. Reaching into his pouch, he pulled out his food and set it on the eating mat.

"What an uninspired turnfeast you have there," said Neutron-Drip, her eye-stubs waving back and forth in disapproval. "Three ground-meat loaves, two crunch-fruits, and a bag of pulp juice. Turnfeast is supposed to be a feast, not a refueling stop." She formed a manipulator, picked up a small portion of baked Flow Slow egg covered with a tangy pulp nut sauce and held it before his eating pouch.

"Here," she said. "Try this, maybe it will cheer you up."

He took the morsel, very much aware of the feel of the strange manipulator in his eating pouch as he did so.

"Itis very tasty. I may have to go back and get some for myself," he said, his eye-stub pattern a.s.suming a more normal wave-pattern as the taste of the nut sauce penetrated the back of his eating pouch.

"I thought that would cheer you up," she said. "What is bothering you?"

"My research project," he replied. "It used to be fun, but now it is giving me nothing but trouble."

"Is there something wrong with the Time-Comm machine?" she asked.

"It could be something wrong with the machine or it could be I don't understand the theory well enough yet. Either way I don't get any money for a new 24-channel machine until I figure out what this one is doing. This first machine only has four channels each way and it takes forever to get any data. I even had to turn down a graduate student last turn. He was eager to do research on time communication, and I would have loved to have a bright youngling to work with, but I honestly couldn't allow him to spend the next dozen greats waiting to collect enough data to complete a doctoral project."

"I know the student," said Neutron-Drip. "It was Eager-Eyes. He came to me after you turned him down. He and I are going to set up a crustquake detector array around the East Pole mountains. With any luck, his thesis should establish the basis for a theory to predict East Pole crustquakes."

"With a decent-size crustquake every three or four turns at the poles, at least he will have some data to a.n.a.lyze." Time-Circle sounded dejected. "But why bother predicting crustquakes? Except for a few accidents when a high-speed glide-car hits the ground during a big quake, the only thing a crustquake does is crack a few compound walls or underground utility mains. At least we don't have the problem of a 'roof' overhead the way the humans do."

"You sound just like the grant committee. Always wanting to know, 'What good is it?' " She drew the edges of her tread back. "What good is a new hatchling?"

"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm just feeling pessimistic about everything."

'Tell me about it," she said, drawing closer.

"In the beginning the project was fun," he began, "I had two bright graduate students. One doing the experiments and one working on the theory. We sent messages back and forth in small increments of time-just a few turns at first. Then we set up a series of progressively larger jumps until we were sending short messages over a whole great of turns. We could code the messages in such a way that the essential data was certain to get through, while the remainder of the message contained codes that allowed us to determine the number of bits the channel was able to pa.s.s. We showed that the number of bits the channel could handle was inversely proportional to the distance in time the message was sent.

Except for slight statistical variations, the bit-time product was always 864 bit-greats."

"So you could send a yes-no answer over 864 greats of turns," she said.

"Or 124,416 bits over one turn," said Time-Circle, his tread'trumming out the familiar train of numbers.

"Then, as the climax to both of their doctoral projects, we simultaneously sent messages on the three forward-time channels to times two, three, and four greats into the future. The fourth channel we always keep clear in case an urgent message needs to be sent."