Part 6 (2/2)
There was a mad scramble for the door, but as Carter turned to leave he found his way barred by Senator Chou. ”Dr. Carter, a word with you, please.”
”I'll be up in a minute,” Carter called to Rurik over Chou's shoulder. Rurik nodded and glided from the room, not bothering to use his Velcro shoes. ”What is it, Senator?” Carter said when the others had gone. ”Make it fast, please. I'm in a hurry.”
”What are our chances of stopping it, do you think?”
”Is that what you wanted? I have no idea. You'll just have to wait until the rest of us know.”
”I can't wait for certainties-probabilities must do for now. I have a duty to the people of Earth. If anything goes wrong here we will have to begin taking steps to protect them, and the sooner we start the fewer will have to die.”
Carter looked at Chou with new insight. For the past several months he had seen the Senator as simply an opponent, a cardboard cutout violently and irrationally opposed to the Firefly Project. Now, suddenly, Carter saw him as a human being. ”You really care about Earth, don't you?” he said softly.
”It's my profession to care, Doctor. You may recall that I wanted the black hole placed a good distance further from Earth, where it would have been less of a danger to both the planet and the s.p.a.ce Colonies. I am not anti-technology, despite your side's efforts to paint me so, but I wished for a larger safety factor.”
”Senator, there wasn't a decent safety factor available. If we can't stop the runaway, Earth has had it no matter where Firefly is.”
”I don't understand.”
Carter took a deep breath. ”If we can't stabilize Firefly's temperature, it will keep getting hotter and hotter. The hotter it gets, the faster it radiates its ma.s.s as energy until it basically explodes. According to current theory, in the last tenth second of its existence it will radiate with one percent of the sun's total power output.”
Chou's eyes were very wide. ”Good Lord! And you allowed this-this nova to be placed in Earth orbit? You must be insane!”
”Senator, if Firefly lets go anywhere in the solar system Earth is finished. The sun will go crazy with all that extra radiation hitting it. If the extra solar heat doesn't sterilize the inner system, the extra radiation will. But we had no real choice in the matter. I don't think more than a handful of people realize this, but if we had just ignored the black hole from the very beginning the same thing probably would have happened. Firefly was already too close to blowing. We didn't deliberately put Earth in danger, Senator; we were trying very hard to save it. And we still are. Excuse me, but I have to get to the control room.”
It was an hour later before Carter was satisfied that the DeVega accelerator crews had the technique down well enough to be able to switch beam materials in the shortest possible time. The Project's chief design engineer, Felix Mahler, floated by Carter's shoulder as the control-room personnel waited for word that the changeover had been completed.
”Santos and Trumbell are the best techs I've got,” Mahler said into the brittle silence as the minutes ticked by. ”If anyone can get the DeVegas going in ten minutes it's them. Matter of fact, Ray, I'll bet you they'll do it in nine.”
The speaker crackled. ”Beta station; Santos. We're ready here.”
Rossetti, at the control board, didn't wait for Carter's nod. ”Firing,” he said.
”Eight and a half,” Mahler muttered to no one in particular. ”They're better than I thought.”
Carter smiled slightly, but it was an automatic response. His full attention was on the meters that gave Firefly's luminosity and temperature, both of which had been running. The indicators jumped wildly, as always happened when a new beam was brought to strength, and Carter's heart rate jerked in sympathetic response.
”Beam's steadying down,” Rossetti muttered.
”How's it look?””It's hard to say, Doc. We're getting extra power just from the gravitational energy effects-since the iron atoms are heavier than neutrons-and that's fouling all our calibrations.” Rossetti stared hard at the temperature indicator. ”If Firefly's cooling down I can't tell from this. Not yet, anyway.”
”We could s.h.i.+ft the feed on the other DeVegas,” Mahler suggested. ”That would make any temperature change more visible.”
”I'd rather not risk shutting off the neutron beams for the time that would take,” Carter said. ”Not until we're sure it'll do us any good. Let's give this an hour or so and see what happens.”
The results after two hours were very clear. Firefly's temperature was still increasing.
”d.a.m.n!” Carter muttered through clenched teeth. ”It's got to work. Galton's numbers prove that. What's going wrong?”
He threw a glance around the room, a glare br.i.m.m.i.n.g with frustration that most of the others seemed to interpret as fury. ”I've looked over Galton's work, Ray,” Rurik spoke up with some hesitation. ”I can only think of one effect that hasn't been taken into account.”
”Well?”
”We're dealing with iron atoms here, much larger than neutrons, and with electron clouds at-relatively-great distances. As the atoms approach Firefly, the first things to be swallowed will be an electron or two, which will leave the atom with a net positive charge. Since the black hole is also positive, the atom-the ion, now-will be deflected slightly before the nucleus gets to Firefly.”
”And some of the shots that would otherwise have hit don't make it in,” Carter growled. ”Makes sense. Unfortunately. Is it worth switching the other two beams, do you think?”
”I doubt it. We'd gain a little, maybe, but most of that would be offset by the losses while the DeVegas are being altered.”
”Doc, would it help to run the beams faster?” Rossetti asked. ”If the time interval between ionization and contact was smaller, the atoms wouldn't be deflected as far.”
Carter looked at Mahler and raised his eyebrows. ”Possible?”
”Sorry. These DeVegas were specially designed to deliver high-particle currents, and for technical reasons we can't boost the velocities any higher than they are now.”There was a moment of silence. Then Kapoor's soft voice broke into the others' thoughts. ”Dr. Carter, are you going to switch back to a neutron beam?”
”Why? The iron atoms aren't doing any worse than the neutrons are and we'd just lose ten more minutes of beam during switchover.”
”It seemed to me, sir, that if the black hole is absorbing one or two electrons from even those atoms which are deflected-”
Kapoor never got to finish his sentence. ”My G.o.d!” Rurik exploded. ”He's right, Ray. We've got to change that beam, fast.”
”Right.” Carter had caught Kapoor's drift at the same time Rurik had, and his heart was pounding violently in his ears. ”Felix, get your men on that beam, now.”
Mahler was already talking urgently into his intercom.
”I don't understand, Dr. Carter,” Senator Chou murmured from his left.
Carter turned to face him. ”The only thing that keeps Firefly in place is the electric field from the main plates, and for that to work Firefly has to have a heavy positive charge. Each extra electron that goes in cancels one of those charges. If the charge goes down to zero, we'll have no way of holding Firefly in the neutron beams.”
”You couldn't recapture it?”
”Not in time. Possibly not at all.”
Mahler looked up. ”Okay, Ray, Beta's down again. Santos and Trumbell will have it running with neutrons in a few minutes.”
”And I've just talked to the control room,” Rossetti added. ”Firefly's still holding positive charge, well within safety limits.”
Rurik leaned back in his chair. ”We were lucky,” he muttered to no one in particular.
”Yes,” Carter agreed. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly before continuing. ”Gentlemen, we still have a crisis on our hands. We have got to find a way to get more ma.s.s into Firefly. Suggestions?”
There was a long silence. ”I don't suppose it would help to enclose Firefly in degenerate matter of some kind,” Rossetti said hesitantly.
Rurik shook his head. ”We'd need better than neutron star density to make any headway-and even if we could make material like that we'd never get it near Firefly. The thing's just too hot.”
Mahler looked up from a tablet he'd been writing on. ”Whatever we're going to do, we have to do it fast,” he announced quietly. ”At the current rate of temperature increase, Firefly's radiation pressure will soon match the driving force behind the neutron beams. When that happens the DeVegas are, for all practical purposes, useless.”
Carter had to force the words out. ”How long?”
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