Gregory Benford: A Worm in the Well

“Whatever my grapplers hold, that’s mine. Law of Space, Code 64.3.”

“You would quote laws to me when a scientific find of such magnitude is—”

“Want it or not?”

He glanced off camera, plainly yearning for somebody to consult. No time to talk to Luna or Isataku, though. He was on his own. “All… all right. You understand that this is a foolish mission? And that we are in no way responsible for—”

“Save the chatter. I need estimates of the field strength down inside that arch. Put your crew to work on that.”

“We will of course provide technical assistance.” He gave her a very thin smile. “I am sure we can negotiate price, too, if you survive.”

At least he had the honesty to say if, not when. Claire poured another pale column into the shapely glass. Best crystal, of course. When you only need one, you can have the best. “Send me—or rather, Erma—the data squirt.”

“We’re having trouble transmitting through the dense plasma columns above you—”

“Erma is getting SolWatch. Pipe through them.”

“The problems of doing what you plan are—why, they’re enormous. ”

“So’s my debt to Isataku.”

“This should’ve been thought through, negotiated—”

“I have to negotiate with some champagne right now.”

YOU HAVE NO PLAN.

Erma’s tinkling voice definitely had an accusing edge. A good sim, with a feminine archness to it. Claire ignored that and stripped away the last of her clothes. “It’s hot. ”

OF COURSE. I CALCULATED THE RISE EARLY IN OUR ORBIT. IT FITS THE STEFAN-BOLTZMANN LAW PERFECTLY.

“Bravo.” She shook sweat from her hair. “Stefan-Boltzmann, do yo’ stuff.”

WE ARE DECELERATING IN SEQUENCE. ARRIVAL TIME: 4.87 MINUTES. ANTIMATTER RESERVES HOLDING. THERE COULD BE DIFFICULTY WITH THE MAGNETIC BOTTLES.

The ship thrummed as it slowed. Claire had been busy testing her ship inboards, sitting in a cozy recliner. It helped make the minutes crawl by a bit faster. She had kept glancing nervously at the screens, where titanic blazes steepled up from incandescent plains. Flames, licking up at her.

She felt thick, loggy. Her air was getting uncomfortably warm. Her heart was thudding faster, working. She roused herself, spat back at Erma, “And I do have a plan.”

YOU HAVE NOT SEEN FIT TO CONFIDE IN ME?

She rolled her eyes. A personality sim in a snit—just the thing she needed. “I was afraid you’d laugh. ”

I HAVE NEVER LAUGHED.

“That’s my point.”

She ignored multiple red warnings winking at her. Systems were OK, though stressed by the heat. So why did she feel so slow? You’re not up for the game, girl.

She tossed her data board aside. The effort the simple gesture took surprised her. I hope that alcohol tab worked. I’ll get another.

She got up to go fetch one—and fell to the floor. She banged her knee. “Uh! Damn.” Erma said nothing.

It was labor getting on hands and knees and she barely managed to struggle back into the recliner. She weighed a ton—and then she understood.

“We’re decelerating—so I’m feeling more of local gravity.”

A CRUDE MANNER OF SPEAKING, BUT YES. I AM BRINGING US INTO A SLOPING ORBITAL CHANGE, WHICH SHALL END WITH A HOVERING POSITION ABOVE THE CORONAL ARCH. AS YOU ORDERED.

Claire struggled to her hands and knees. Was that malicious glee in Erma’s voice? Did personality sims feel that? “What’s local gravity?”

27.6 EARTH GRAVITIES.

“What! Why didn’t you tell me?”

I DID NOT THINK OF IT MYSELF UNTIL I BEGAN REGISTERING EFFECTS IN THE SHIP.

Claire thought, Yeah, and decided to teach me a little lesson in humility. It was her own fault, though—the physics was simple enough. Orbiting meant that centrifugal acceleration exactly balanced local gravity. Silver Metal Lugger could take 27.6 gravs. The ship was designed to tow ore masses a thousand times its own mass.

Nothing less than carbon-stressed alloys would, though. Learve orbit, hover—and you got crushed into gooey red paste.

She crawled across her living room carpet. Her joints ached. “Got to be—”

SHALL I ABORT THE FUGHT PLAN?

“No! There’s got to be a way to—”

THREE POINT NINE MINUTES UNTIL ARRIVAL.

The sim’s voice radiated malicious glee. Claire grunted, “The water.”

I HAVE DIFFICULTY IN PICKING UP YOUR SIGNAL.

“Because this suit is for space, not diving.”

Claire floated over her leather couch. Too bad about all the expensive interior decoration. The entire living complex was filled with her drinking and maintenance water. It had been either that, fast, or be lumpy tomato paste.

She had crawled through a hatchway and pulled her pressure suit down from its clamp lock. Getting it on was a struggle. Being slick with sweat helped but not much. Then she snagged her arm in a sleeve and couldn’t pull the damned thing off to try again.

She had nearly panicked then. Pilots don’t let their fear eat on them, not while there’s flying to be done. She made herself get the sleeve off one step at a time, ignoring everything else.

And as soon as Erma pumped the water reserve into the rooms, Archimedes’s principle had taken over. With her suit inflated, the water she displaced exactly balanced her own weight. Floating under water was a rare sensation on Mercury or Luna. She had never done it and she had never realized that it was remarkably like being in orbit. Cool, too.

Until you boil like a lobster… she thought uneasily.

Water was a good conductor, four times better than air; you learned that by feel, flying freighters near the Sun. So first she had to let the rest of the ship go to hell, refrigerating just the water. Then Erma had to route some of the water into heat exchangers, letting it boil off to protect the rest. Juggling for time.

PUMPS ARE RUNNING HOT NOW. SOME HAVE BEARING FAILURES.

“Not much we can do, is there?”

She was strangely calm now and that made the plain, hard fear in her belly heavy, like a lump. Too many things to think about, all of them bad. The water could short out circuits. And as it boiled away, she had less shielding from the x-rays lancing up from below. Only a matter of time…

WE ARE HOVERING. THE MAGNETIC ANTIMATTER TRAPS ARE SUPERCONDUCTING, AS YOU RECALL. AS TEMPERATURE CONTINUES TO RISE, THEY WILL FAIL.

She could still see the wall screens, blurred from the water. “OK, OK. Extend the magnetic grapplers. Down, into the arch.”

I FAIL TO—

“We’re going fishing. Not with a worm —for one.”

Tough piloting, though, at the bottom of a swimming pool, Claire thought as she brought the ship down on its roaring pyre.

Even through the water she could feel the vibration. Antimatter annihilated in its reaction chamber at a rate she had never reached before. The ship groaned and strummed. The gravities were bad enough; now thermal expansion of the ship itself was straining every beam and rivet.

She searched downward. Seconds ticked away. Where? Where?

There it was. A dark sphere hung among the magnetic arch strands. Red streamers worked over it. Violet rays fanned out like bizarre hair, twisting, dancing in tufts along the curvature. A hole into another place.

THE RED AND BLUE SHIFTS ARISE FROM THE INTENSE PSEUDO-GRAVITATIONAL FORCES WHICH SUSTAIN IT.

“So theory says. Not something I want to get my hands on.”

EXCEPT METAPHORICALLY.

Claire’s laugh was jumpy, dry. “No, magnetically.”

She ordered Erma to settle the Silver Metal Lugger down into the thicket of magnetic flux tubes. Vibration picked up, a jittery hum in the deck. Claire swam impatiently from one wall screen to the other, looking for the worm, judging distances. Hell of a way to fly.