Starquake.pdf

machines that would allow the ultra-dense cheela to power and control the tenuous human equipment
without damaging it.
"Humans in tanks," said Neutrino-Maker/84. "Proceed."
"Proceeding," Void-Maker/111 replied as she set her crew of disinto robots to work.
The communicator had two connections through the hull to the electronics inside Dragon Slayer. One
was an electrical power cable for the laser power supply, and the other was a fiber-optic modulator
cable that carried the information. Moving carefully, the disinto robots formed microthin fans of
disintegration rays and cut the two cables right at the connectors. Being careful to avoid the free ends of
the cables as they waved slowly back and forth in the variable gravity fields outside Dragon Slayer, the
disinto robots then attacked the mechanical support structure. The laser communicator came loose.
Void-Maker/111 rubbed her tread screen, and the image of another Web-Con engineer appeared. It
was Graviton-Maker/321. His engineering badges had a circle for gravity instead of a triangle for disinto.
"To you," said Void-Maker/111.
"To me," replied Graviton-Maker/321. "Next to electromagnetic-makers."
"Don't touch!" chirped Void-Maker/111 at the screen.
"Nor you," said Graviton-Maker/321 as the screen went blank.
Graviton-Maker/321 set his crew of gravity robots in the path of the slowly tumbling laser
communicator. His job was to get the laser under control and bring it to a halt. He had to catch it without
touching it, for the fragile human instrument could not stand the lightest touch by any cheela machines.
His squadron of Web-Con gravity robots were specially designed for this job. They were spherical in
shape, and each had a small black hole in the center. The black hole provided the basic gravity field that
the robot used. The hull of the robots contained powerful gravity exchangers and diverters that modified
the shape, strength, and even the direction of the gravity forces coming from the black hole. Staying care-
fully off at a distance, the robots pushed and pulled at the tumbling laser communicator until they brought
it under control. They then took it out through the whirling ring of compensator masses to a safe place
where the electromagnetic-makers could try to operate it.
Electromagnetic-Manager/1 was waiting patiently for the arrival of the laser communicator from the
Slow Ones' orbital position. He had his team of electromagnetic engineers ready. There were young ones
who would provide the drive that they needed and experienced ones who would provide the caution, for
they were treading on new crust when they tried to couple their ultra-dense nucleonic machines to the
expanded matter electronic machines that the humans used.
The electromagnetic-makers were a strange breed. It took a perverse type of personality to specialize in
a field like electromagnetic engineering where there was almost no opportunity to practice the craft. In
general, electromagnetic engineers just talked to themselves, devised exotic experiments involving
electromagnetic conductors that stretched hundreds of meters across the surface of Egg to measure the
ultra-long electromagnetic waves coming from space, and worked on improving the instructional
programs in the Master Teacher Program in case some other student was strange enough to want to
become an electromagnetic engineer, too.