Starquake.pdf

field. Cliff-Web had returned to normal rapidly and had taken a prospecting trip out on the ten-meter ball
while the others were building up their strength.
"The portable analyzer says that the crust has a high percentage of high-strength metals," he said upon
returning. "The volcanic regions where we inserted the monopoles have ejecta containing some of the
rarer neutron-rich isotopes that we might need for alloying, but other than that, the composition of the
crust is pretty much the same everywhere. Let's set up the power generators and start the mass
separators and foundries going."
Within half a great, the mass separators were pouring out powdered raw materials that were turned into
working stock by the foundries. The first structure they constructed was a simple space fountain. It only
had one stream of rings and only went up 50 meters to a crude top platform, but it sufficed as a landing
dock for other spacecraft in the fleet. Soon, most of the space cheela were on Otis, working to make the
gravity ma-
chines that would enable them to return from their enforced exile from Egg.
Their next task was the construction of a large gravity catapult capable of accelerating the lander at many
times Egg gravity so it would reach the escape velocity of Egg after less than 10 centimeters of travel.
Unlike the ancient gravity catapults now lying dormant on Egg, which had only to toss small spacecraft
into the sky, this gravity catapult had to be big enough to toss a miniature copy of itself to those speeds. It
took nearly four greats of turns to fabricate the twenty-centimeter ring with its meters and meters of
high-strength tubing full of ultra-dense liquid and the battery of pumps to accelerate the fluid to high
velocities rapidly. The uniformity of the resulting gravitational repeller field was important.
"Run it up again," Cliff-Web ordered. He was monitoring the display of the array of gravity sensors
spread across the center of the gravity catapult ring. The ring was large in diameter, but small in
thickness. Cliff-Web had pushed every rule of gravitational engineering to make it. It only had to work
once, but if it worked, it was worth it. The tests they were doing now were at fractions of its operational
power levels. That would do—until the final blink when full power was applied. The machine hummed,
and the sensors displayed a contour map of gravitational force levels.
"There is only a difference of a billion gravities across the central centimeter portion," Engineer Push-Pull
announced. "Surely the lander can handle that."
Cliff-Web looked carefully at the contours, made minor adjustments to some trim loops and closed
down the display.
"The launch ring is ready. Next is the lander," he said. "We have passed apoapsis, so we have only four
greats of turns to build it."
"It will be ready long before that," said Push-Pull.
"I'm sure," said Cliff-Web. "But there is someone else we must consult with before it is properly
delivered." He reset his tread screen, treaded a brief formal message, then left without waiting for a reply.
The reply would come later, much later.
21:02:03 GMT TUESDAY 21 JUNE2050