Starquake.pdf

his porthole.
He could make out the presence of three of the other tanks from the light coming from their portholes.
Egg and its ever-present glare was gone.
Most of the sky was black and starless. In the distance was a small elliptical patch with a few dozen
stars in it. The stars in the patch of sky were blue to ultraviolet in color. What was most confusing was
that the patch of starlight seem to be rotating, while he and the rest of the tanks were standing still.
"That was a Kerr space-warp!" Pierre said out loud.
"That is correct," came a voice. The image of Sky-Speaker was on the screen.
"That can't be!" said Pierre. "I remember from my gravitational engineering courses that a Kerr ring with
the mass of a sun would have a one-kilometer hole. The compensator asteroid masses are orders of
magnitude less massive than the sun. The biggest ring they could make would be less than a micron in
diameter. According to Einstein, that was impossible. ..."
"Einstein was intelligent, but human," said Sky-Speaker. "He failed to combine gravity and
electromagnetism. We have. The unified theory agrees with Einstein for large masses. For very small
masses, the diameters of magnetized space-warps are larger than Einstein predicted."
While Sky-Speaker was talking, Pierre noticed that the string of free-floating spheres was being moved.
The tanks with their clouds of robot-tended equipment had moved back under the rotating patch of sky.
The cheela robots formed the tanks into a circle and accelerated them until they were mov-
ing in the same direction as the whirling patch of sky above them. The acceleration continued.
"We're moving in time," said Pierre.
"Yes," said Sky-Speaker. "The rate is one month normal galactic time per ten minutes proper time for
your crew. You will return through space-warp in one hour. Six months will have passed in normal
space. The asteroid Oscar will have returned."
The cheela robots now had communication links set up between all the tanks, and Pierre could see each
of the remaining crew members on one of his miniature screens.
"Is everyone okay?" he asked.
"Yes," said Abdul. "But I'm not looking forward to going back through that meat grinder again."
"The engineering check program indicates a problem," said Jean.
"I'm surprised it is still functional after the drastic changes the cheela made," said Seiko.
"What's the problem?" Pierre asked.
"There is a leak in Tank 6," Jean replied.
"Whose tank is that?" asked Pierre.