Starquake.pdf

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"Am I glad to see you!" Carole Swenson said as Pierre's face appeared on her screen. "Is everyone okay?" "So far," said Pierre. He reached to his control panel and set up a split screen display format that combined the images of the remaining crew members of Dragon Slayer with that of Carole. "I'd sure like to see what those busybodies are doing to us," said Abdul. "But the monitor cameras went with the rest of the ship." "We have the large telescope trained on you," Carole told him. "At this distance, each of your acceleration tanks is just a blob, but we can resolve the compensator asteroids easily. We can even detect the activities of the cheela. Although they and their machines are too small to see, they are white-hot and we can get a lot of information from speckle interferometry. Except for a few machines near you, they seem to be concentrating out at the asteroid ring. Let me transfer a picture." The screen blanked and a visual image overlaid with computer graphics appeared on the screen. The computer had strobed the picture at the rotation rate of Egg so the asteroids looked as if they were standing still. "One of the asteroids is smaller than the others," said Jean. "According to the plan they left with me," Carole explained, "they are going to shrink all the asteroids by dumping magnetic monopoles in them. Then they are going to shrink the radius of the ring until the asteroids coalesce into a solid rotating ring of magnetically charged, ultra-dense matter. I don't like that. The tides from the gravity field of the ring are going to get orders of magnitude larger than the tides from Egg. I don't think even your acceleration tanks are going to help you survive that." "You forgot the augmentor masses," Seiko told her. "What are those?" asked Carole. "The augmentor masses were well covered by the cheela in their briefing to us, Commander Swenson," said Seiko. "I'm sure the information was in your briefing." "I just scanned it quickly," admitted Carole. "The augmentor masses are dense masses just like the compensator masses, but there are only two of them. Instead of being placed in a ring around the point to be protected, they are placed above and below the place to be protected. In that position the two masses add to the tides of the neutron star." "But that would just make the tides worse," said Carole. "Not in this case. When they shrink the size of the ring of compensator masses, the tides from the ring get stronger than the tides from the star, so the star tides have to be 'augmented' by the augmentor masses."
"The cheela are bringing them now." Cesar was looking out the porthole in his acceleration tank. The augmentor masses were modest-sized, old-fashioned cheela spaceships about the size of a softball. They had black holes in the middle of them to provide enough gravity to keep the cheela in their condensed state. "Looks like we each get two augmentor masses," Abdul said as he watched the activity outside his porthole. "I thought there would be two big ones." "Because of the way that tidal forces add," said Seiko. "They can do a better job if they null out the tides for each one of the tanks individually." "The asteroids are now tiny dots," said Jean. "And the ring is starting to shrink," Pierre added. "I'll never complain about a mere 200 gees per meter again," said Abdul. "Hey! The ultrasonic pressure drivers have started. This is getting serious!" "The ring of asteroids is now at 50-meters radius and has coalesced into a solid ring," said Carole. "Things seem to have halted." Suddenly the screens blanked and a message appeared on all their screens. NEXT PHASE STARTS IN 10 SECONDS. DRAGON SLAYER CREW WILL RETURN IN SIX MONTHS. The ten seconds passed slowly. The next two milliseconds were full of activity. Each tank was jerked upwards away from the center of the ring. The ring was collapsed until it was only a few meters in diameter. As it shrank, its glowing surface turned redder and redder, finally turning into a deep, dark, impossible black. It did not even reflect the yellow-white light from Egg. Then, one by one, the tanks were thrust through the hole in the center of the invisible ring. The heavy steel tanks distorted visibly as they passed through. They did not come out the other side. 04:03:01 GMT WEDNESDAY 22 JUNE2050 Pierre screamed as his arms slammed against the creaking walls of the heavy steel tank. Just as he thought that his fingers were going to be pulled off his hands, it was over. He coughed up some water he had inhaled, cleared his mask, and tried his control panel. The video display was dead, so he looked out
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STARQUAKE Acknowledgments
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Prelude Burrowing through the dark
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science instruments and consoles, w
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Please take a rest." "Doctor Wong,
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about half a day we will be in prop
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Amalita floated over to the table a
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One of her near eyes caught him loo
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"All you need to do is shrink the h
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Pierre spoke quickly to the robotic
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slid open. He entered the security
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Slinklings, and Cold, Chilly's mate
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page and didn't like what he saw. "
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He activated a conference link and
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egg-tending fever. Every time I see
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A glowing speck swung around the to
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"If only Dragon Slayer had some mea
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"That gives us four greats of turns
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"I see someone in the back." "Brigh
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with spots of different emittance t
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Web Construction is the biggest con
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activated. "There are 144 connector
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With the X-ray illuminators in plac
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up and wait. Then there would begin
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06:55:16 TUESDAY 21 JUNE2050 Quiet
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There was a loud clang from nearby.
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Hearing the decimal number for the
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walls made out of high quality supe
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It was turnfeast, and Time-Circle s
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"After the success with the three m
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"Renegotiate them," she replied. "J
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"Those machines produce both the an
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millimeters away it fades into the
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She started with the animals. Three
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idly to the surrounding crust. She
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06:58:07 GMT TUESDAY 21 JUNE2050 Qu
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kilohertz gravitational radiation t
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"We're losing it!" Heavy-Egg shoute
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y the errant streams. Treads grippi
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"Less than a turn," said the Comm O
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"Our total space force consists of
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"Bright has cursed us all!" Hohmann
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straight toward her, moving rapidly
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You should be able to find more cag
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close. She could have done a good i
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"My plan is to use the robots on Eg
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were mixed to produce an ultra-hot
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and gravitational waves. Status 82%
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"There is someone muttering nearby.
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farming class how to tell ripe nut-
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of engineers who can fix the damage
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Eighty turns later, Qui-Qui returne
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They worked their way through the m
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other two read zero. Must be breaks
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Qui-Qui would arrive at each clan c
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satiated, however, for he would nev
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They charged, the mounted warriors
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out that what was needed was a spec
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"You must be Qui-Qui," Ferocious-Ey
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stage' for our lander. We can store
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"We are aware of that," said Plasma
Page 121 and 122: "One," said Cliff-Web. "And an infi
Page 123 and 124: field. Cliff-Web had returned to no
Page 125 and 126: "There are flying animals on the hu
Page 127 and 128: nothing, tor the forces were gravit
Page 129 and 130: "We will need to have a new power g
Page 131 and 132: "Good. Let's cut it up and haul it
Page 133 and 134: The trade was made, with the captai
Page 135 and 136: operation," said Power-Pack. "My se
Page 137 and 138: "We would rather wait to taste the
Page 139 and 140: "But she only has eight eyes now!"
Page 141 and 142: her whip-sword and urged her Swift
Page 143 and 144: for the Taker to come again." "The
Page 145 and 146: As if to punctuate his offer, there
Page 147 and 148: As he flowed up over the crumbled b
Page 149 and 150: "Focus the laser on the landing bas
Page 151 and 152: "It has been a long time since the
Page 153 and 154: their quirrls sparred with each oth
Page 155 and 156: "The humans take forever to do anyt
Page 157 and 158: "That's the last of the HoloMem sto
Page 159 and 160: to the Science Deck. Pierre looked
Page 161 and 162: "Hey! Look at the sightseers," Abdu
Page 163 and 164: choose will be a better name, anobl
Page 165 and 166: The screen on the communications co
Page 167 and 168: This was the first time there had b
Page 169 and 170: "Coupling experiments successful,"
Page 171: Manager-Director/5 set up a confere
Page 175 and 176: "Mine," replied Abdul. "She's right
Page 177 and 178: Amalita and Abdul in two segments o
Page 179 and 180: 15 min 31 g cheela generation 29 se
Page 181 and 182: and behaves much like a young cheel
Page 183 and 184: Ngw* 5. CI»ft-Wort Plant Upon reve
Page 185 and 186: We wanted Dragon Slayer at a 406-ki
Page 187 and 188: Figure 10. Gravity Catapult The wor
Page 189: 6. F. J. Tipler, "Rotating Cylinder
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