David Brin: Sundiver

C.A. : “The ‘mumbo jumbo’ worked when the new stuff failed, though.”

P.K.: “In all fairness, Commissioner, I’d have to say that that was a lucky break. The saboteur believed they’d make no difference, so he didn’t try to wreck them, at first. He was denied an opportunity to correct his error.”

Commissioner Montes: “There’s one thing I don’t understand, Dr. Kepler. I’m sure some of my associates here share my mystification. I understand the Sunship Captain’s use of the Refrigerator-Laser to blast out of the chromosphere. But to do so she had to boost at an acceleration greater than the surface gravity of the Sun! Now they could get away with this as long as the internal gravity fields held. But what happened when they failed? Weren’t they immediately subjected to a force that would squash them flat?”

P.K.: “Not immediately. Failure came in stages; first the fine-tuned fields used to maintain the gravity-loop tunnel to the instrument hemisphere, ‘flip-side,’ then the automatic turbulence adjustment, and finally a gradual loss of the major field which compensated internally for the pull of the Sun. By the time the latter failed, thley had already reached the lower corona. Captain deSilva was ready when it happened.

“She knew that to climb straight out after internal compensation failed would be suicide, though she considered doing it anyway to get her records out to us. The alternative was to allow the ship to fall, braking only enough to impose on the occupants about three gees or so.

“Fortunately, there is a way to fall towards a gravity sink and still get away. What Helene did was to try for a hyperbolic escape orbit. Almost all of the laser thrust then went into giving the ship a tangent velocity as it fell back again.

“In effect she duplicated the program that had been considered for manned dives decades before contact; a shallow orbit, using lasers- for thrust and cooling, and E.M. fields for protection. Only this dive was unintentional, and it wasn’t very shallow.”

C.A. : “How close did they go?”

P.K.: “Well, you’ll recall that they’d fallen twice before in all of the confusion: once when the g-thrust failed, and a second time when the Solarians lost their grip on the ship. Well during this third fall they came closer to the photosphere than on any of the previous occasions. They literally skimmed its surface.”

C.A. : “But the turbulence, Doctor! Without internal gravity or time-compression, why wasn’t the ship smashed?”

P.K.: “We learned a lot of solar physics from this inadvertent dive, sir. At least on this occasion the chromosphere was far less turbulent than anyone ever expected… that is anyone but a couple of my colleagues to whom I owe a few abject apologies… But I believe the most significant factor was the piloting of the ship. Helene quite simply did the impossible. The auto-recorder is being studied now by the TAASF people. The only thing greater than their delight with the tapes is their chagrin at not being able to give her a medal.” General Wade: “Yes, the condition of the crew was a cause of great distress to the TAASF rescue team. The ship looked like Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow ! With no one alive to tell what happened, you’ll understand our mystification until the tapes were played back.”

Commissioner Nguyen: “I can imagine. You seldom expect to get a special shipment of snowballs from hell. Can we assume, Doctor, that the ship’s Commander weighted the heat pump system on the cold side for the obvious reason?”

“In all honesty, Commissioner, I don’t believe we can. I think her reasoning was to keep the interior cold so that all of the records would survive. If the ReferLaser system erred too much the other way they’d have been fried. I believe her sole idea was to protect those tapes. She probably expected to come out of the Sun having roughly the consistency of strawberry jam.

“I don’t think the biological effects of freezing were on her mind.

“You see, in many ways Helene was a bit of an innocent. She stayed up to date in her field but I don’t think she knew about the advances in cryosurgery we’ve made since her day. I think she’s going to be very surprised, a year from now, when she wakes up.

“The others will probably take if as a routine miracle. Except for Mr. Demwa, of course. I don’t think Mr. Demwa would be surprised by anything… or consider his revival miraculous. The man is indestructible. I think by now, wherever his consciousness drifts in its frozen sleep, he knows it.”

In the springtime the whales go north again.

Several of the grey humps that broached and spumed in the distance had not been born when he last stood on a shore and watched a California migration pass by. He wondered if any of the grey whales still sang “The Ballad of Jacob and the Sphinx.”

Probably not. It never-was. a favorite of Greys anyway. The song was too irreverent, too… beluga for their sober temperament. The Greys were complacent snobs, but he loved them anyway.

The air boomed with the noise of the breakers, crashing into the rocks at his feet. It was wet with sea water and filled his lungs with the paradoxical satiated-hungry feeling that others got from breathing deep in a bakery shop. There was a serenity that came with the pulse of the ocean, plus an expectation that the tide would always wash up changes.

They’d given him a chair, at the hospital in Santa Barbara but Jacob preferred the cane. It gave him less mobility, but the exercise would shorten his convalescence. Three months after waking up in that antiseptic organ factory had left him desperate to get back on his feet, and to experience something that was pleasantly, naturally dirty.

Such as Helena’s way of talking. It defied all logic that a person born at the height of the old Bureaucracy would have so uninhibited a mouth as to make a Confederacy Citizen blush. But when Helene felt she was among friends her language became impressive and her vocabulary astonishing. She said that it came from being raised on a power satellite. Then she smiled and refused to explain any further until he reciprocated With acts she knew he wasn’t ready yet to perform. As if she was!

One month to go before the physicians would take them off of hormone suppressants, after the bulk of cell regrowth was completed. Another month before they’d be cleared for anything as rigorous as space flight. And yet she insisted on pulling out that dogeared copy of NASA Sutra, wondering teasingly if he would have the stamina!

Well, the doctors said that frustration helps recuperation. Sharpens the will to get back to normal, or some such nonsense.

If Helene keeps up her teasing much longer they’re all going to be surprised! Jacob didn’t believe much in timetables anyway.

Ifni ! That water looks good! Nice and cold. There has to be a way to make nerves grow faster! Something that helps even better than auto-suggestion.

He turned away from the rocks and slowly walked back to the patio of his uncle’s long, rambling house. He used the cane liberally, perhaps more than necessary, enjoying the dramatic touch. It made being ill slightly less unpleasant.

As usual, Uncle James was flirting with Helene. She encouraged him shamelessly.

Serves the old bastard right, he thought, after all the trouble he caused.

“My boy,” Uncle James threw up his hands. “We were just about to go after you, truly we were.”

Jacob smiled lazily. “No hurry, Jim. I’m sure our interstellar explorer here had plenty of interesting stories to tell. Did you tell him the one about the black hole, dear?”

Helene grinned nastily and made a surreptitious gesture, “Why, Jake, you yourself told me not to. But If you think your uncle would like to hear it…”