Timothy Zahn - Cascade Point

They just looked at me... and suddenly I understood. "Oh, no. No. Forget it. I won't do it."

"Come now, Mr. Morgan," the general said soothingly, "we can at least discuss it, can't we?"

And in the end I gave in.

—

It's been nearly a year now, and I really have no complaints. I would have preferred being on Earth, but Blaine wanted everyone involved with the project kept isolated at the new base in Mairan Crater, himself the single exception. Still, my quarters are quite comfortable and I'm treated with the courtesy due me as the chief—and only member, so far—of the new Office of Alien Communication, so I suppose I'm doing pretty well.

My Seipaic contact, Garun'Sutt, has finally gotten over her original terror at my alien presence in her dreams and is beginning to consider our relationship something of an adventure. I suspect this is partly due to her governments interest in her communication with me and the resulting attention she gets from her people. It's not everyone, after all, who can talk to an alien who's at least—we estimate— fifty light-years away. But whatever the reason, I'm not complaining. I'm still not sure why I always get her when I send out these dreams, though I suspect her face is just very similar to that of the first dead Seipai I saw. Since she seems to be my only contact I'm glad she's calming down. We've started exchanging factual data about our respective races, and are trying to figure out a way to locate each others planet. Blaine isn't absolutely sure that's a good idea, but I think that by the time we solve the problem I'll know Garun'Sutt and her people well enough to know if we can trust them. In fact, I'm secretly hoping the Seipai can get a ship here to visit us within my lifetime. The way Stark and his PR men are pussyfooting around the whole issue, I figure there's an even chance Earth won't hear about the Seipai until they actually drop anchor here.

And I'd love to be around to see the headlines that day.

Afterword

To answer the standard question "Where do you get your ideas?" I got this one, appropriately enough, from a dream. Visiting my sister in California, I dreamed of a friend back home and tried to

ask her a question. I woke up before she could answer, and dreamsending as a profession was born.

"The Dreamsender" was a bittersweet turning point in my life. It was my second sale and therefore proof that I wasn't just a single- shot writer; but the word of its acceptance came the same July 1979 day that I learned my thesis adviser had suddenly died. The combination of these two events led, five months later, to my leaving physics entirely and striking out toward the quixotic goal of becoming a professional, living-wage-earning writer.

How much the fields of physics and science fiction have benefited from that decision I can't say. I do know, however, that I've certainly gained from the deal.

Its birth had been in the fiery turbulence of the primordial explosion, and for the billions of years since then the tiny black hole had drifted quietly through the expanding universe. Not once in all that time had it found itself closer than half a light-year to any star, much less approaching to within a few million miles as it was doing now. But there is a first time for everything.

Never very large to begin with, the black hole had steadily been losing mass during its long lifetime, and its gravitational effects were virtually undetectable even tens of meters away. But the strange laws which governed its existence required that a decrease in mass be accompanied by an increase in effective temperature, and so the black hole was now radiating energy and particles as if it were at a quadrillion degrees. Without this power output it might have slipped unnoticed through the solar system; as things were, it hadn't a hope of doing so.

The black hole was just crossing the orbit of Saturn when it was first detected by a routine gamma-ray scan. Identification came soon afterwards; and on Earth, Luna, Ceres, Hestia, and the Space Colonies debates were soon raging as to what should be done about the intruder. A large body of opinion was for letting the black hole continue unmolested along its hyperbolic path, or possibly even assisting it on its way out of the system. But others saw a unique opportunity in the chance meeting, and their views eventually prevailed, though at the cost of bitter feelings and many broken friendships.

The preparations took even longer than the debates had, but finally all was ready, and on January 1, 2215, the first of four specially designed space tugs matched orbits with the black hole and began pouring protons into it. As the intruders positive charge increased, the tugs used electric fields to nudge it from its original course and, eventually, into a stable orbit at one of the Earth-Luna Lagrangian points.

Project Firefly had begun. —

Dr. Ray Carter, Director of the Firefly Project, ran his eyes over the bank of monitor screens that wrapped themselves around the main control board like a lucky horseshoe. The glance was pure reflex; everything had been ready for the past two hours and the only thing holding up the works now were the speeches still going on from the main auditorium. He felt no impatience, though; if turning Day One into a media event would help sell Firefly to the public, it had Carters blessing. Glancing around the room, Carter noticed a familiar figure staring out the port into the blackness outside. Walking carefully in his Velcro shoes, he joined the other. "You can't see it from here, Senator," he remarked by way of greeting.

Senator Chou didn't turn. "I know," he said, his voice carefully neutral. Nodding toward the port, he continued, "It's two kilometers to the DeVega dipole accelerator platform, a hundred meters to the energy collector sphere, and another half kilometer to the black hole itself. And the whole thing a superbly engineered waste of money."

Carter winced slightly. Chou had always been one of the strongest opponents of Firefly, and Carter knew better than to try to argue with him. Apparently even coming over to say hello had been a mistake. "If you'll excuse me..."

Chou turned to face him. "Sorry. No real point in screaming about it now. But it wasn't necessary, you know. Fusion plants and solar power are quite adequate for Earths needs."

"For now, sure. But what about the future? Even at the present rate of increase we would have a hard time building enough fusion plants to supply our needs by the turn of the century."

"The sun will still be there."

"Sure will," Carter nodded. "And did you know you'd need a billion and a half square kilometers of solar collectors to generate as much power as Firefly will? That's about three times the Earths surface area, I believe. Excuse me, please."

Carter went back to the control board, his annoyance at Chou evaporating quickly. Rossetti, chief operator, looked up. "The Secretary-General is just about finished, Doc," he said.

"Good. How are the collectors doing?"

"Seem to be okay. Firefly's throwing off a lot of particles, both charged and neutral, but most of them are being collected, or at least stopped. Efficiency for charges is hovering near eighty-five percent; heat exchangers about half that."

Carter nodded. Firefly—the black hole was almost universally called by the name of the project nowadays—was behaving as expected, losing its mass in a thermal spectrum that included both photons and subatomic particles. The fast- moving charged particles were no problem; a set of electromagnetic fields at the collector sphere slowed them down to safe speeds, simultaneously converting their kinetic energy into electric current. The X rays and neutral particles were captured by a special multicomponent liquid blanket, their energy absorbed as heat to be changed into electricity by more indirect means. And for the ultra-high-energy gamma rays that passed through the collectors as if they were tissue paper, there were ten meters of shielding.