Barrington Bayley - The Zen Gun

Suddenly he remembered the Claire de Lune .

Ragshok was roaring with delight on the mezzanine, clad in a shaggy bearskin coat, the beast’s dead snarl a helmet for his skull, a gun in each hand, while turmoil and the satisfying silent flicker of scangun beams filled the music-blasted area below him.

It was incredible. Star Force, terror of the galaxy, dreaded arm of the hard-faced Empire, and here was its real face: a motley of old women (though they seemed trim of figure, he observed), animals and children, and not one of them with the guts to do anything but run and scream.

It would be different with the commando troops, but there probably weren’t many of those, and then only on a few ships. He was putting two hundred men and women apiece into Standard Bearer and some of the capital ships where he guessed they were stationed. Generally he had to try to take each vessel with only a few dozen.

A sweating Morgan swaggered up in a leather cuirass and tigerskin pants. Ragshok’s people often wore animal-derived clothing; it was a way of expressing one’s ferocity. In this case Ragshok had ordered them to do so, knowing how much it would dismay and outrage the animals who far outnumbered the humans on the fleet. A good many of their hides would be hung out for curing by the end of the day.

“It’s a walkover,” Morgan said.

“It sure is so far,” Ragshok agreed.

To Ikematsu, the change in the mental ambience was instantly obvious. Withdrawing his concentration from the room where Pout and Gruwert conversed, he diffused it, taking in the whole surrounding atmosphere of thought.

The whole ship was in a state of blood-curdling fright, which in the direction of the ballroom was like a thick, clotted mass.

Quickly he spoke to the two boys, pointing down the corridor. “Something bad is happening. Go, and hide yourselves.”

Trixa looked bewildered. Sinbiane, attuned to his uncle’s perceptions, and used to obeying him instantly, tugged at his friend, urging him to run.

A kosho facing danger without his weapons… he truly had let himself be put at a disadvantage, Ikematsu thought wryly; and for a second time, and for the same cause.

Stealth would be called for, until he could obtain new weapons… Gruwert, he thought then, might know where his own armoury was stored. The pig might be prevailed upon to divulge…

As he turned towards the door, it opened and Pout emerged, blinking. Ikematsu’s gaze lit upon him, then upon the two boys running down the corridor, then to the end of the corridor.

Not long previously he had fleetingly observed threadlike lines in the air, barely visible. He had taken them for hallucination, a by-product of his mental concentration on radiated thought. But now, approaching from the far end of the corridor, came what looked like a horizontal grid of glistening metal rods. They seemed to move slowly at first, their tips lurching forward, now some in advance, now others, but suddenly they accelerated. The two running boys were momentarily transfixed, and in the same instant they vanished. Then Pout was touched, and vanished.

The rods speared through Ikematsu. He felt nothing, but from the blackness that enveloped him he knew that he, too, had vanished.

Electric force differs from other forces in having two forms, which conventionally are called positive and negative. Particles bearing the same form of electric charge repel one another, but those bearing opposite charges attract one another.

Actually there is only one fundamental symmetry in nature, and this is the symmetry of left—and right-handedness. “Charge symmetry” is related to this; it arises because there maybe two directions of spin about any axis.

Electric charge originates to begin with when particles within the Hubble sphere are prevented from receding from one another at their natural rate. This puts strain on the recession lines acting between them. The “thwarted recession” finds its outlet by adopting an angular component. The angular action of all “strain” lines taken together is called “pseudospin”. In some ways these “strain lines” act like lines of force with quasi-material properties. They can even be thought of as “wrapping around” the particles, though this is not what happens.

To begin with the charge that is thus created is attached to pre-existing particles, but the “strain space” so created is also capable of generating its own entities consisting purely of electric charge. These are positrons and electrons.

Pseudospin is not like the spin that could be possessed by a material body. To the charged particle itself it would seem that the whole Hubble sphere is rotating around it, not on one axis but on all axes simultaneously. Another strange difference between pseudospin and the spin of a material body is that its sense is absolute, not relative to the observer. If a material disk is set rotating it will appear to be spinning clockwise if looked at from one side but anti clockwise if looked at from the other. Pseudospin, however, will appear to have the same sense of rotation no matter from which side it is looked at. Negative charge will always appear to be clockwise, and positive charge will always appear to be anticlockwise.

Think for a moment what this means. In effect whenever two charged particles interact each selects a direction of spin for the other. Take two electrons. Each electron will look at the other and see clockwise pseudospin. However, seen objectively, i.e. from the standpoint of a third party, the spins that each has selected for the other will be contrary. Likewise an electron will select anticlockwise pseudospin for a proton but the proton will select a clockwise pseudo spin for the electron. Seen objectively, these spins, though subjectively contrary, have the same sense. Hence it transpires that the rule for electric force it that like attracts like and unlikes repel one another—the opposite of how it appears superficially.

Once the principle of pseudo spin is understood it is easy to see how magnetism arises. You have already seen how tilting a spinning gyroscope produces “gyroscopic action” in which an applied force is turned through a right angle. Every charged particle has attached to it a pseudo spin “gyroscope” the size of the Hubble sphere. Moving the particle is equivalent to tilting the gyroscope…

(From How the World Works , a physics primer for young people)

Under the vast spans of Archway City all apparently was at peace. The sky boulevards, beneath which—gentle clouds floated, sparkled brilliant as ever. The levitating balconies which were the city’s public transport system rose and descended with the same air of leisure. And the air fizzed as ever, laden as it was with billions of tiny popping bubbles containing a mix of psychotropics and pure oxygen.

But within that tranquil architectural grandiosity was an atmosphere of uncertainty and dismay. Imperial Council Member Koutroubis sat in his study, his head in his hands. The study, occupying a location a mile high in one of the shining arches, was open to the air; through its broad windows drifted the cheering bubble fizz, carried on a warm breeze. But it failed to lift the spirits of Koutroubis.

What was he going to tell the Methorians?

They were impatient to depart, waiting only for the data he had promised. But he had been unable to contact the science team that was supposed to be working on the problem of the space rent, or even to ascertain whether it existed!

He felt so helpless!

There was news of a disorder in many parts of Diadem, of fighting, even, between Biotists and those loyal to the Council, though he didn’t really believe there could have been serious violence. Still, it was lucky they had not brought in the two Star Force fleets, as had been planned. With one on the side of the Council and one of the side of the Biotists, well…