rate. When they came out of trans-state at Life-Waters, there could be a mass explosion that could vaporize the whole gate.”
“Lord and Lady!” The tug controller murmured. He liked the People, too.
“We’ve got no choice, Estiban,” Lane stated to her Assistant Director, making her final decision in the matter. “If we get down to four percent reserve without stabilization, we’re going to cut the negative energy fields and dump the hole.”
For a Gate Controller, those words were blasphemy. “You can’t be serious!” Rocardo exclaimed, “It took ten years to isolate and fix a properly oriented wormhole for the 359 system. If we dump the hole…”
“I know. If we dump the hole, it’s gone. We’ll never get it back. We may never acquire another one for Wolf system either. But if we can keep the physical gate structure intact, we’ll at least have chance to try again. If we destroy the gates, that chance will be gone, too. Power?”
Rocardo replied by looking down at his station displays. “Now down to nine per on the reserves.”
The string-of-gem city lights on the night side of Life-Waters were blinking out, fading as the orbital light- power-gatherers that fed the People’s civilization shifted their flow rays on River-’Tween-Worlds, a half cone of raw energy flooding across space and through the overloading absorption structures.
Tarrischall rode the power tasking pallet himself, nursing the straining systems like a caregiver with a sick pup, rolling each control rod with an extended claw tip. “Smoothly, smoothly,” he murmured to himself, staring into the data bubble, “I-lick-your-fur, sweet one. Steady down and quit twitching on me.”
All others in the Gathering-of-Voices were silent save for Narisara. Bouncing back and forth between her display and that of the Voice-of-Decision, she maintained Tarrischall’s situational awareness.
“Evacuation of orbit zone continuing… Voices-of-Central-Energy acknowledge the Word-of-Crisis. We have priority flow in all channels.”
“Praise to a sane bureaucrat. Thermal grade on receptor arrays?”
“Nothing is melting yet and that’s all that can be said.”
“And how are the Uprights doing?”
“As well as we are, I must presume. I detect a slight structural flux from their end, but so far the channel holds open.” She looked across at Tarrischall. “I speak as Voice-of-Physics. The wisdom is to cast loose and abandon the channel. There is great danger here and I can see no resolution.”
“No! This fish hasn’t escaped yet!”
“Tarrischall-of-the-Crystal-Springs,” Narisara’s voice softened, speaking as herself and not the Voice-of- Physics. “What avails catching the fish if one drowns doing it?”
He looked up from the display for a moment meeting her polished jet gaze. “I know, Black Fur, but I will not cast loose while there is a chance. I will not let the People go back to being alone in this Universe.”
“Yes, she’s stable and holding!” Rocardo yelled in tri-umph. “We have ambience on the power flow!” “Reserve levels remaining?” “Five percent!”
“Systems stability?”
“Power receptors and cooling systems are operating at about three hundred percent overload, but they are holding!”
Marta covered her face with her hands and exhaled, pushing aside the shutdown command that had been about to cross her lips.
They were holding. The system wasn’t supposed to operate this way, but it was. Almost the full load of the great ces-Lunar power grid had been diverted into the Worm Gate receptors, the massed output of the mighty hydrogen III fusion reactors poring up through the microwave beams from the Moon’s surface.
Deprived of their power, the low-gee manufacturing complexes and mass driver catapults that propelled the Moon’s industrial economy had been forced into a crash shutdown and even the urban habitation centers were reduced to operating on solar backup for basic life support. The screams of protest would already be starting.
But they had time now. At least a little bit to find some kind of solution.
Marta Lane allowed herself another deep breath before speaking.
“Get the backup team in here to cover the stations. All primary team members stand down for a ten-minute break, then report to the conference room for a crisis assessment group. I’ll be wanting ideas, people, any flavor you can come up with.”
Tarrischall looked on as his watchmates drifted aimlessly or hung anchored to the soft, padded walls of the rest and discussion chamber. Beyond the hiss of the passage-of-air grilles the chamber was ominously quiet.
“Very well, he said, “we have agreement that Marrun’s plan to bump the raft out of the channel with a pusher unit will not work. What will? What can affect an object in transstate that we can manipulate?”
“Very little,” Narisara swayed limberly in free fall, holding herself moored to the chamber wall with the extended claws of a single rear paw. “It is hard for us to even visualize what we are dealing with within the channel. We can describe trans-state in mathematical terms, but our minds are not made to ever understand it.”
“Slime and stinking water, Narisara, I don’t want to understand it! I just want to fiddle with it! The raft is transstate. Situation acknowledged. What effects transstate matter? I require simplicity!”
She muttered something about simple minds and flipped inverted, reseating her grip on the wall padding. “The various field effects are valid to a degree within the channel. The ultimotular forces, gravity, magnetism, all of these things can affect transstate matter.”
“That’s the birth of our problem,” Varess added shyly. “The perimeter grids at either end of the channel generate very strong magnetoelectric fields. The magnetically valid metals in the raft’s structure are caught between them.”
“Even with all the light-seasons of distance between Life-Waters and Terra? We are being affected by their gate fields?” Marrun questioned.
“Indeed,” Narisara replied to the Voice-of-Pusher-Guidance. “The area within our perimeter grid coexists with the area within that of the Upright’s when the channel is open. The two are as one with the distance between rendered invalid within the Universe structure.”
She waved a depreciatory mid-paw. “As I said, one can describe it and understand it mathematically, but our three-dimensional minds can’t create a true visualization.”
“No, but then that really isn’t important… is it?”
Tarrischall shoved off from the chamber wall, an odd glint in his eyes. “As I said, Black Fur, simplification. Reject quantum physics for now.”
His forepaws gestured out the problem. “Imagine the channel as a simple, three-dimensional structure. We would have a perimeter grid producing a magnetic field here and another one here with a tunnel in between and the raft held stuck in the tunnel by the two balanced field effects. Correct?”
The Voice-of-Physics negated with a glance away. “That’s a pup’s model.”
“I speak applied simplicity, Voice-of-Physics. Is this not a valid model?”
She tossed her head, “It is valid… vaguely.”
“Very well. And cannot the magnetoelectric field levels be modulated to a degree within the perimeter grids without losing the channel?”
“They can.”
“Very well again. So if magnetic fields indeed can affect the raft in the tunnel, theoretically, by varying those field effects, we should be able to shift the position of the raft inside, drawing it toward or pushing it away from the grids. Correct?”
The Voice-of-Physics eyes narrowed. “That’s not truly what would be happening.”
“Simplicity, Black Fur, simplicity!”
“Yes, very well, agreed,” Narisara yielded. “At least that’s what might seem to occur. But to what end? We could not push or pull the raft completely to either channel mouth against the resistance of the other grid field and that other grid field can’t be shut down or have its polarity inverted without cutting loose the channel.”
“True, but this humble Voice-of-Decision recalls that ultimotes maintain momentum in trans-state. The raft could not clear the channel this time because it lacked enough momentum to pierce the grid fields. What if we could rebuild the raft’s momentum inside the channel by shoving it to-and-fro between the grid fields until it has regained enough energy to break out?”
“Like rocking a mired land carrier out of a mud hole,” Marrun suggested.
