Timothy Zahn - Cascade Point

"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 God!" 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 mass 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?"

"Sixty hours. Maybe sixty-five."

Someone muttered a shocked obscenity. Carter felt his stomach trying to curl up and die. Sixty hours! His eyes swept the room of their own volition, as if looking for a way out, and finally came to rest on Kapoor's abnormally pale face. The Indian had been right to be so gloomy, Carter thought, feeling strangely light- headed. It had been sheer folly to suppose mankind could tame even a tiny black hole. They might as well have tried to hitch a tiger to a plow....

With a physical effort Carter shook the vertigo from his mind. He couldn't afford to go to pieces. "All right," he said. "You all know what that means. I want some ideas and some solutions. For starters"—he looked at Mahler—"I want the spare DeVega set up as close to the accelerator ring as possible." He raised a hand as the other started to object. "I know, at that distance it won't help much. But we need anything we can get, and it may at least buy us some time. Punch some holes in the shielding and collector sphere to let the beam through."

"Right." Mahler scribbled a note. "I'll get a crew on it right now." Sliding his chair back, the engineer launched himself through the door.

"I'm calling a recess," Carter said to the others. "We'll meet back here in an hour."

Carter remained in his chair until the others had left, staring at the table as he gently kneaded his temples with his fingertips.

"You look tired. You'd better get some sleep."

Carter looked up in surprise. "I thought you'd left with the others, Senator."

Chou shook his head, his eyes never leaving Carters face. "I meant what I said about sleep, Doctor."

"Can't afford the time." He smiled wanly. "Why the sudden solicitude? I thought you didn't like me."

"My likes or dislikes are of complete unimportance," Chou replied. "If anyone can come up with the solution we need, it will probably be you, and we can't afford to let your intellect break down from fatigue."

Even to himself, Carter's laugh sounded hollow. "Some intellect. I wasted several badly needed hours with the iron atom fiasco, and damn near lost our control of Firefly in the bargain. I tell you, Senator, if we're relying on me, we might as well quit now."

Chou was silent for a moment. "If we can't stop this, how long do we have?"

"Until the explosion? A year, probably. If our theory is right, that is; if it isn't I have no idea. Of course, Firefly will be far too hot to approach long before that."

"Dr. Carter... can we stop Firefly?"

Carter shook his head slowly. "I can't see any way to do it. No way at all. My God, Senator, what's going to happen to all those people?"

"We won't be able to evacuate them in time. Besides, where would they go? Ceres and Hestia can't absorb any excess population. Maybe we can tow the Space Colonies out of Earth orbit into the asteroid belt; they should be able to survive out there." Chou shook his head, his face a mirror of horror and pain. "But Earth has no chance."

"No."

Chou looked up. Carter avoided his eyes. The blame is not yours, Doctor," the Senator said. "We—mankind's leaders—made the final decision on Firefly. Ours is the responsibility. Not that laying blame helps any." He sighed. "Ironic, isn't it? For the past three centuries we have been continually worried about running out of energy, but now the final crisis arrives in the form of too much energy."

Something brushed the edge of Carters mind. "Say that last again, will you?"

"What? I just said our final crisis was too much energy, whereas in the past—"

"Too much. Too much." Suddenly the fatigue was gone, dislodged from his mind by a maelstrom of new thoughts and ideas. Fumbling out his intercom, he keyed for general 'cast. "This is Carter. All senior staff, report to conference immediately."

"Dr. Carter...?"

Carter glanced up and smiled slightly at the Senators uneasy expression. "Don't worry, I haven't crossed my circuits; at least, not yet. You just reminded me that there are two sides to this problem and we've been ignoring one of them. Excuse me now, I have to think."

He was still scribbling on a pad when the others arrived and took their places. "All right," he said. "First of all, has anyone else come up with anything?"

No one spoke, but Carter could feel the drop in tension throughout the room as they realized there was a hidden promise in his question. "I don't guarantee this," he warned them, "but see what you think. So far we've been concentrating on getting more mass into Firefly. Maybe we can hit the problem from the other direction; namely, to decrease the density of the particle cloud that's keeping the neutrons out in the first place."