Лю Цысинь - Ball Lightning

“Where?” Lin Yun asked, but then answered immediately, “My God! Inside of us!”

“Yes. Your blood, too.”

We all took a chilly breath. The prospect of all the blood in their bodies turning to steam in the blink of an eye was too much to imagine.

“That means that when ball lightning selects a target to release its energy, the target’s boundary conditions are very important,” Ding Yi said thoughtfully.

Someone said, “Professor Ding, you ought to be thinking about thunderballs that have already released their energy. What were they called? Bubbles? There ought to be one in the battery.”

Ding Yi nodded. “The capture process was carried out with high precision. It ought to be in there.”

We all grew excited, and began to take the superconducting battery off the helicopter. There was more than a bit of irony in this excitement, since most people had already guessed what the outcome would be. The proceedings were a relaxing comedy to celebrate the helicopters’ safe return.

“Professor, when can you bring out the bubble and give us all a look?” someone asked after the heavy battery was finally out. We all expected that Ding Yi would secrete the battery in the lab so that as few people as possible would witness his failure, but his answer caught us by surprise: “Right away.”

Cheers sounded in the crowd, like we were a group of deviant onlookers awaiting a beheading.

Colonel Xu took a step up the ladder of one of the helicopters, and said loudly, “Listen up. Extracting the bubble from the battery requires care and full preparation. The battery will now be taken to Lab 3 and we will inform you of the results presently.”

“Colonel, everyone’s put in so much effort, particularly Captain Liu and Major Lin, who risked their lives. I think they have the right to be compensated,” Ding Yi said, to another chorus of cheers.

“Professor Ding, this is a significant experimental project, not a children’s game. I order the battery to be returned to the lab immediately,” Colonel Xu said firmly. I sensed his kindness, and knew he was doing his best to preserve Ding Yi’s dignity.

“Colonel, don’t forget that the bubble extraction portion of the experiment should be my sole responsibility. I have the right to decide what steps to take for this experiment and when to take them!” Ding Yi said to Colonel Xu.

“Professor, I suggest you calm down,” the colonel said to him quietly.

“And what’s Major Lin’s opinion?” Ding Yi asked the silent Lin Yun.

With a toss of her hair, she said decisively, “Do it now. Whatever it is, it’s better that we face it sooner rather than later.”

“Precisely.” Ding Yi waved his hand. “Next, I’d ask the engineers from the superconductivity department to come forward.”

The three engineers in charge of operating the superconducting battery pushed forward, and Ding Yi said to them, “I’m sure you’re quite clear on the extraction procedure we discussed yesterday. Have you brought the magnetic retaining field assembly?” Receiving an affirmative answer, he said, “Then let’s begin.”

The cylindrical battery was situated on a workbench. One engineer strung a superconducting lead, with a switch attached, to the cathode. Ding Yi pointed at it. “When that switch is pressed, the lead will be connected to the battery, and the bubble within it will be released.”

At the other end of the lead, two engineers set up a device composed of several spools of wire set at equal distances. Ding Yi said to the crowd, “When the bubble is released, no vessel will be able to contain it. It can pass through all matter and move of its own accord. But the theory predicts that the bubble will bear a negative charge, so it can be constrained by a magnetic field. This device produces a containment field to hold the bubble in place for you to observe. Good. Now turn on the field.”

An engineer flipped a switch and a small red light on the field device came on.

Ding Yi took out a square object from behind him. “I brought this along so you’ll be better able to see the bubble.” To our great surprise, it was a Go board.

“Next, let’s welcome this historic moment.” Ding Yi went over to the superconducting battery and placed a finger on the red switch. With everyone’s attention focused on him, he pressed it.

Nothing happened.

Ding Yi’s expression remained dead calm as he pointed at the space within the field generator and declared solemnly, “This is ball lightning in an unexcited state.”

There was nothing there.

For a moment there was silence, other than the faint hum of the field generator. Time passed sluggishly like sticky paste, and I ached for it to flow faster.

A sudden burst behind us made us jump, and we turned around to see Captain Liu doubled over. He’d taken a drink of water, but couldn’t hold back his laughter, and had sprayed it out.

Through his laughter he said, “Look at Professor Ding! He’s basically that tailor from ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’!”

It was an apt analogy, and we burst out laughing at the humor and sheer audacity of the physicist.

“Simmer down and listen up!” Colonel Xu said, waving his hand to suppress the laughter. “We ought to have a proper understanding and attitude toward the entire experiment. We knew that it would fail, but we arrived at the common understanding that a safe return of the experimental personnel would be a victory. Now that outcome has been satisfied.”

“But someone’s got to be responsible for the outcome!” someone shouted. “More than a million yuan has been put into it, and a helicopter and two lives were gambled on it. Is this farce all that we get in return?” The remark drew immediate rejoinders from the crowd.

Then Ding Yi raised up the Go board to a level higher than the generated magnetic field. His movement caught people’s attention, and the hooting quickly died down. When there was complete calm, Ding Yi eased the board downward until the bottom made contact with the generator.

People drew closer to look at the board, and what they saw turned them as still as statues.

Some of the squares on the board were deformed. There was a clear curve to their edges, as if the board had been placed behind an almost perfectly transparent crystal ball.

Ding Yi removed the board, and everyone bent down to peer straight on at the space. Even without the aid of the board, the bubble was visible, a faint circular outline vaguely described in the air, like a soap bubble lacking all markings.

Captain Liu was the first of the frozen crowd to move. He extended a trembling, fingernail-less hand to touch the bubble, but pulled it back in the end without making contact.

“Don’t worry,” Ding Yi said. “Even if you stuck your head in, it wouldn’t matter.”

And so the captain really did stick his head into the bubble. This was the first time that a human had looked at the outside world from within ball lightning, but Captain Liu saw nothing unusual. What he saw was a crowd cheering once again—only this time, their cheers were genuine.

The base was close to the Kangxi Grasslands northwest of the city. To celebrate the experiment’s success, we took a trip to have roast whole mutton. Dinner was outdoors on the edge of that fairly small grassland.

Colonel Xu gave a small speech: “In olden days, there must have been a day when someone had a stroke of inspiration and understood that they were surrounded by air. Later, people learned that they were constrained by gravity, and that their surroundings were an ocean of electromagnetic waves, and that cosmic radiation passes through our bodies at all times…. Now we know something else: that bubbles are there around us, floating nearby in space that appears empty. Now, let me speak for us all, and offer Professor Ding and Major Lin my well-deserved admiration.”