Karl looked surprised at Redwing’s enthusiasm. The man was elaborately casual, but conservative to the bone. Useful in a deck officer, where a captain had to balance personality types against one another. A captain had to know when to take risks, not tech lieutenants.
Redwing had always thought that life’s journey wasn’t to get to your grave safely in a well-preserved body, but rather to tumble in, wrecked, shouting,
“Well, sir, yes — I looked into that. The scoop settings we had then weren’t as good at sailing up the Jet as the ones we have now, so…” Karl hesitated, as if his idea was too risky. “Why not use
Now
“Let me walk through it. Remember when we saw the mirror zone changing, painting a woman’s face on it? I was outside with robot teams to repair the funnel struts. I could see it direct, right out my faceplate. Incredible! It was Elisabeth, the one they captured with her team, mouthing words.”
Redwing gestured slightly to speed him up and Karl took the hint. “Even that — which lasted maybe an hour, then repeated every day or so — had an effect on the Jet. Gave it less sunlight, I guess, or just rippled the light over the Jet base. Big changes! A day or two later, I saw little snarls propagating out from the base of the Jet, at the star. They grew, too, moving out.”
“We all did.” It hadn’t seemed much different from the variations Redwing had seen, over time — knots in the string. He was still amazed the bright scratch across the sky was so stable.
Karl leaned forward, eyes excited. “The mirrors focus on that spot, delivering the heat to blow plasma off the star’s surface. Plus, there are stations circling the base of the Jet that must somehow generate magnetic fields. I’m guessing those big stations then shape and confine the Jet. So — ” Karl cocked a jaunty grin. “ — why not show them what we can do to the Jet?”
Redwing exhaled a skeptical breath. “To do what?”
“Screw it up!”
“So it — ”
“Develops a kink instability. The disturbance grows as it advances out from the Jet base. It’s like a fire hose — you have to hold it straight or it snarls up and fights you like an angry snake.”
“Then when it gets to the Bowl…”
“I’m thinking we could force the kink amplitude to grow enough, it’ll snake out sideways. If it hits the atmosphere containment layer — that sheet that sits on top of the ring section — then it can burn clean through it.”
Redwing studied Karl’s eager face. This was world destruction on a scale Redwing had never imagined. Should he have?
“Then there’s the sausage instability — we get those sometimes in the funnel plasma, before it hits the capacitor sheets and slows down. A bulge starts in the flow, say, starting from turbulence. That bulge forces the magnetic fields out, and that can grow, too, just like the kink. You get a cylinder of fast plasma that looks like a snake that’s eaten eggs, spaced out along it.”
“So it gets fat and can — ”
“Scorch the territories near the Knothole, where the Jet passes closest to the Bowl. Knock out their control installations there, I bet.” The words came flooding out of the man. “I’ve studied them through our scopes, and they’re huge coils all around the Knothole mouth. I bet they’re magnets that keep the Jet away. Magnetic repulsion, gotta be.”
Redwing was aghast, but he couldn’t let Karl see that. “We do this by flying into the Jet?”
“More like tickling it. I can work out how we can zig across it, then zag back at the right time and place to drive an instability.”
“Near the Jet base, by the star?”
“Okay, so it’ll get a little hot in here, I grant you that.”
Good to know he would grant something, at least. For a man proposing to kill the largest imaginable construct, he seemed unfazed.
“At no danger to
“I can tune the funnel parameters, do some robo work on the capacitor sheets. Fix ’em up.” Karl smiled proudly. “I ran a simulation of running
“I recall a statistician who drowned in a lake that was on average fifty centimeters deep.” Redwing smiled dryly.
Karl hastily retreated. “Well, we can just skim the Jet first, try it out.”
“I’d like to see the detailed analysis, of course.” He narrowed his eyes deliberately. “Written up in full.”
If this crazy idea ever got anywhere, he wanted it documented to the hilt. Not that there would be any kind of superior review in his lifetime, Redwing mused, but it was good to leave a record, no matter what happened. Karl nodded and they went on to discuss some lesser tech issues.
After he left, Redwing stood and watched his wall screen show the unending slide of topography he still thought of as below, though of course
He had seen that this Bowl, like a real planet, still had tropical wetlands, bleak deserts, thick green forests, and mellow, beautiful valleys. No mountain ranges worthy of the name, apparently because the mass loading would have thrown something out of kilter. But terrain and oceans galore, yes, of sizes no human had ever seen. But some minds had imagined, far back in ageless time.
The truly shocking aspect of Karl was not his idea, but the eager way he described ripping open the atmosphere cap. That would kill uncountable beings and might even destroy the Bowl itself. Redwing watched the Coriolis forces do their work. He tried to see how the global hydrologic cycle here could work — and then realized that this wasn’t a globe, but a big dish, and all his education told him nearly nothing he could use.
Still, there were beings down there of unimaginable abilities. How could they survive a storm that lasted for weeks or months? That was the crucial difference here — scale. Everything was bigger and lasted longer. How long had the Bowl itself lasted? Somehow it had the look of antiquity about it.
And the creatures who made and ran it — they had both great experience and long history to guide them. Surely they would know what had just occurred to Karl.
Just as surely, they would have defenses against visitors such as Karl.
FORTY-THREE
The e-train zoomed on, at speeds Cliff estimated to be at least ten kilometers per second. Astronomical velocities, indeed. Maybe Aybe was right, arguing that to get around the Bowl in reasonable times demanded speeds of 100 km/s. The blur beyond their windows showed only the fast flickering of phosphor rings as they shot through them, until even those blended together to become a dim flickering glow.
They broke up to explore the long passenger car. There were roomy compartments with simple platforms for sitting and sleeping, and rough bedding supplied in slide shelving. Howard discovered the switches after the first hour aboard, while searching for more food. Cliff heard his shouts and came running.
“Look!” Howard said proudly when all five were there. He slid to the side a hinge switch near a compartment door. He slid a switch on the wall, and the compartment ceiling phosphors dimmed to utter dark.
They hooted, clapped, and Irma did a dance with Aybe. It was as though they had gained their freedom — freedom from sunlight.
Irma favored exploring the rest of the car, and they did. Compartments varied in size and style, mostly in the arrangement of platforms. Irma remarked, “These can accommodate passengers of varying sizes and needs. Fit to
