Timothy Zahn - Conquerors' Legacy

"Inconclusive," Max said as the lift cage started down. "But the highest probability is that the sound originated in or near the building complex."

"He's right," Pemberton said grimly, pointing toward the Zhirrzh structure. "Look—you can see smoke rising from the far side of the closest hexagon."

Pheylan nodded. "I see it. Max, are you picking up any spacecraft? Or aircraft of any sort?"

"None at all," Max assured him.

From the direction of the complex came another sharp crack, this one dragging out into almost a ripping sound, with another puff of the smoke drifting up to swirl away in the breeze. "Then it must be a booby trap," Pemberton concluded.

They reached the ground and headed at a dead run toward the Zhirrzh complex. Between the thuds of their footsteps, Pheylan could hear excited voices coming from the complex, and he braced himself for the gruesome sight of broken, bleeding bodies. He reached the first hexagon, rounded it—

And faltered to a confused stop. There in front of him, as he'd expected and feared, a meter-wide, jagged-edged gap had been blown into the smooth ceramic of the wall. Grouped around the hole were piles of equipment and a dozen or more of Williams's engineers and techs.

But none of them were lying bloodied on the ground or gazing at the hole in horror or bewilderment. Instead they were all on their feet, chattering enthusiastically to each other. And smiling.

Beside Pheylan, Pemberton skidded to a halt of her own. "What the hell?" she panted. "Williams?"

Williams's head popped into sight; he'd been kneeling beside one of the equipment piles. "Hey—Colonel," he called, snagging a rag and wiping his hands as he jogged over to them. His own grin was even wider than those of his techs. "Break out the champagne, Colonel. We did it."

"Did what?" Pemberton demanded.

"What do you think?" Williams said triumphantly, waving his rag toward the hole. "We found a way to break up Zhirrzh ceramic."

"It's real tricky stuff," Williams said as Pheylan and Pemberton joined the techs grouped around the ring of equipment by the wall. "Incredibly tough, incredibly resilient, able to handle kinetic impacts and shock waves and even flash-heating from lasers—"

"We know all that," Pheylan interrupted. The memory of those invulnerable hulls, and of the men and women from the Kinshasa who had died because of them... "Just tell us what you did."

"Well, where brute force fails, you turn to chemistry," Williams said. "We'd already used a meson microscope to map out the atomic structure, so it was mostly a matter of coming up with some kind of catalytic glop that would displace enough atoms to put a strain on critical molecular bonds." He gestured to a pair of tanks with hoses attached to stopcocks. "The stuff doesn't do metal a whole lot of good, either, but fortunately you can make it up as a binary—half the chemical in one bottle, the other half in the other, and they combine on contact to make the catalyst."

"And that's it?" Pemberton asked. "You spray the stuff on the wall and it just falls apart?"

"No, actually, that's just the first step," Williams told her. "The catalyst starts the ceramic crystallizing along irregular planes, which is what we want. But it's only a temporary effect, and as soon as the energy from the reaction has dissipated, the molecular bonds reform. Usually right around the intruding molecules of the catalyst, incidentally, which maybe helps explain why shrapnel attacks don't seem to do much good against the stuff. So before that can happen, you have to give it a good, sharp rap."

"With what, an explosive?" Pemberton frowned, looking around them.

"Oddly enough, no," Williams said, waving at a hornlike metal tube connected to a bank of electronics cabinets. "It turns out that the most effective kick is a fast, precisely modulated series of ultrasonic blasts. In creating those crystallization planes, the catalyst apparently sets up a whole new set of natural frequencies in the ceramic, and when you kick all those resonances in the right order in rapid succession, the stuff just gives up. Then it falls apart."

Pemberton shook her head. "Amazing," she said. "Congratulations are indeed in order, Lieutenant."

"I see just two small flies in the ointment," Pheylan said. "Fly number one: how do you know this same technique will work against Zhirrzh warship hulls? You said yourself the ceramics weren't exactly the same."

"We'll have to check that, of course," Williams agreed. "But I've got a copy of the full analysis Command made of the hull fragments they found at the site of the Jutland battle. Now that we know the approach to take, it ought to be pretty straightforward to figure out how to modify the catalyst to handle the other ceramic."

"Okay," Pheylan said. "Then fly number two: how in the world do you expect to use ultrasonics against a Zhirrzh warship in the vacuum of space?"

"That one's going to be trickier," Williams admitted. "I don't know yet. I've got a couple of ideas; unfortunately, it's going to take a lot more computing power than we've got here to sort them through. We'll have to send all the data back to Edo and let them run with it."

"Maybe not," Pheylan said, an idea slowly beginning to form in the back of his mind. "How much computing power do you need?"

"Oh, we'd need at least—" Williams broke off, his eyes widening slightly. "That's right, you've got a parasentient out there, don't you? What type and specs?"

"He's a CavTronics Carthage-Ivy-Gamma," Pheylan said, searching his memory. "With Class Seven decision-making capabilities, I think, and eight-point-something megamyncs of compressed memory."

"That should do it," Williams said, suddenly looking doubtful. "I don't know, though—we're talking a civilian computer here. Command probably wouldn't like us loading military secrets onto it."

"On the other hand, if the technique works, it won't be a military secret for long," Pemberton pointed out. "We'll want the technique to be as widely disseminated as possible."

"Point," Williams conceded, still looking doubtful. But the chance to test his theories was apparently too strong to resist. "All right," he said, wiping his hands again and pulling a pair of cards from a recorder. "Why don't you go to your fueler and get these loaded up. I'll go to the ship and get the hull stats and join you."

"I'll come with you, Commander," Pemberton added as Pheylan took the cards. "I'm rather curious to see how this works out."

Lieutenant Williams alters direction toward the expedition headquarters ship and enters by the starboard midship hatch. Commander Cavanagh and Colonel Pemberton continue toward me. I analyze their expressions again, calculate a probability of 0.93 that there is no urgency in opening communications with them. I therefore wait until they reach the base of the fueler and Commander Cavanagh speaks.

"Got a job for you, Max. Some heavy-duty data extrapolation and chemical-design manipulation. Think you can handle it?"

I note that there is the same moderate level of tension in his voice that I perceived earlier in his expression. "It sounds most interesting, Commander. I'll do my best."

They enter the lift cage. I activate the mechanism, bringing it to the hatch 22.82 seconds later. After 27.44 seconds more they are both again in the control room. Commander Cavanagh spends 1.04 seconds examining the labels on the cards, then chooses one and inserts it into the transfer slot. "Okay, here's the first batch of data. Take a look."

The reader requires 0.23 second to collect all the data and reassemble it into standard format. 0.18 second into the process I note via the fueler's external cameras that Lieutenant Williams has reemerged from the expedition ship and has turned in the fueler's direction. I also note that he is carrying a card in his hand.