Starquake.pdf

They felt a bump as the nose of the vehicle started to tip up and they were pushed to the back of their
slots.
"We just passed over the bending magnet that deflected the belt upward," the youngling engineer
explained. "The belt is traveling at nearly a quarter of the speed of light and would go into orbit if it didn't
have to carry the weight of the pipe."
"Oh. Really?"
"Yes," said the engineer. "But don't worry, we're not going into space. The pipe rides on the moving belt
using superconducting guides and soon bends the belt over so it is traveling above the surface of Egg.
Here we go. Feel the ac-
celeration as the vehicle magnegrips start to couple to the belt?"
They sank even deeper into their slots as the vehicle started to climb up along the pipe on two tracks of
superconducting glide-ways while extracting energy from the highspeed belt inside the pipe. They built up
speed, flattened out at 10 meters and moved swiftly down the 2 kilometer long pipe. To their left was an
identical pipe carrying the belt on its return journey to the terminal they just left. A sliver shot by on the
left track, glowing slightly at the nose.
"That's an orbital jumpcraft returning from space," said the young engineer. "The real problem with the
jumpcraft is slowing down enough to land. Unlike Earth, the atmosphere on Egg is too thin for
aerobraking. Magnetic drag won't work either. It will just melt the jumpcraft. To slow down, they glide
along the pipe and put the vehicle energy into the belt. We will take some of that energy back when we
leave. Since we don't need to accelerate that much, we will probably transfer to the eastward belt at the
half-way station."
At the one kilometer point, a switch in the guide-ways sent them in a small loop that turned them to the
east. Cliff-Web, having ridden the Jump Loop many times, was able to feel the tiny increase in gravity on
his body as the gravity-field generators built into the base of the vehicle were activated. The magnegrips
grabbed the belt, and they started accelerating.
"They're supposed to turn on the gravity first!" the engineer explained, his eye-stubs twitching nervously.
"When we leave the end of the loop and fly off, we're in free fall. The gravity has to be on or we'll blow
up!"
"I'm sure the pilot is taking care of things. I understand the gravity generators are quite expensive to
operate so he is probably waiting until the last blink." The vehicle flew off the end of the pipe at a quarter
of the speed of light, and they both expanded vertically as the gravity dropped to a mere million gees.
"Doesn't feel like much, does it?" The youngling was obviously relieved. "But it's enough to keep our
electrons from going into orbits around our nuclei and causing our nuclear molecules to break up."
The sub-orbital flight one-quarter of the way around Egg only took them two methturns at their
near-relativistic veloc-
ity. But during that time Cliff-Web heard all about the youngling's new job working on the Jumbo Bagel.
"This will be the biggest inertia drive engine ever built, and probably the biggest that willever be built. But