Starquake.pdf

"Nothing bigger than my brain-knot," she said.
"We only need three pump-walls then," said Electron-Pusher. There was a whining noise, and the back
wall of the elevator moved toward Zero-Gauss.
"Here comes the first wall," he said. "Let me know when everything is through."
The heavy superconducting metal wall stopped in the middle of the room, and a small circular orifice
opened in the door a
little way off the floor. First, Zero-Gauss emptied out her pouches and arranged the seedling pots near
the wall. Then she stuck a manipulator through the tiny hole, grabbed a handle on the other side,
narrowed herself down as small as she could, and slipped herself through the hole. The iris on the hole
followed the outlines of her body, dilating as the brain-knot went through, then finally shrinking down to
the diameter of the trailing manipulator that held the squirming Poofsie firmly in its grip.
While her body resumed its normal flattened shape, her manipulator was busy transferring plants from
one side of the wall to the other. That done, the orifice closed tightly and the superconducting wall
continued across the elevator to the door, compressing all the magnetic field lines in front of it. The
elevator door opened briefly, and the field was pushed to the outside. A second wall approached from
the back of the elevator and the process was repeated. The only difference now was that the first wall
was made non-superconducting before the final expulsion stroke. After the third wall had passed,
Zero-Gauss went over to a control plate in the floor and pressed in a code. A probe rose out of the floor
into the middle of the room.
"A good pump," she said over the audio link. "It only registers 2800 gauss."
"Close enough to zero for the chamber lock to handle," said Electron-Pusher. "Ready to fall?"
Her eye-wave pattern developed an annoyed twitch at his stale attempt at a joke. He had probably
gotten a squeal out of one of her graduate students sometime in the past at the thought of falling down
under the ground. Now he repeated it every time they went down.
"I am ready to descend," she said, her tread firmly rapping the metal plating of the floor. She didn't quite
get the right "Senior Professor" tone in the'trum. It is a little hard to sound authoritative when you are
naked.
"Yes, Professor," said Electron-Pusher, and the elevator began its slow descent beneath the crust.
At the bottom, the magnetic pumping procedure was carried out again using the pump-walls in the lock
leading to the low-field chamber. All the residual magnetic fields possible were pumped into the elevator,
which used barriers that alternated between normal conducting and superconducting states to trap
the fields. The elevator then rose again to the surface where the trapped fields were expelled to the
outside.
Zero-Gauss stopped by the dressing alcove, slapped on some neutral body paint, plugged in six
professor badges made of metal-colored plastic, and, now decent, moved out in view of the video
cameras scanning the chamber. The ceiling was a comforting black. She, Poofsie, and the plants were all
glad to be out of the stifling closeness of the elevator and locks.