Starquake.pdf

"That was a big one," Heavy-Egg thought, as his tread felt the change in pitch of the vibrations in the
deck.
There was a loudclang. A pushout, the first in many turns, was hanging in the catcher, the extra strain
having proved too much for the ring.
The shock waves from the crustquake penetrated to the center of the neutron star where they were
bounced back and forth by the density differences between the various layers. A number of the bouncing
shocks met each other at one of the boundary layers and concentrated their energy in a very small region.
The extra pressure was just enough to initiate a phase change in the material, and it shrank in volume.
Once started, the phase change spread at nearly the speed of light. An inner layer of star almost a
kilometer thick changed density and shrank by two meters, leaving the outer layers of the neutron star
unsupported. The outer layers fell, and the crustquake became aStarquake.
The gigantic Starquake rose to the surface and shook the crust like a Swift shredding a Flow Slow. The
crust alternately buckled and spread, sending anything loose moving across the surface at high speed to
smash into walls, plants, or cliffs. The
magnetic fields embedded in the crust shook along with the crust and accelerated the electrons and ions
in the thin, tenuous atmosphere. The atmosphere heated up until it reached a temperature of a billion
degrees. Electron-positron pairs were created, only to annihilate again to produce a continuing flood of
X-rays. The X-rays bounced off the high speed electrons in the super-heated atmosphere and with each
bounce increased in energy until they were a deadly, penetrating glare of gamma rays.
Time-Circle felt the crust drop beneath him once again. Unlike the first time, the dropping motion didn't
stop. The whole world around him was dropping and dropping. The gravelectromagnetic fields in the
Time-Comm machine lost control of the spinning black hole at the heart of the machine. The black hole
converted back into energy, blowing up the Time-Comm compound and Time-Circle.
Neutron-Drip had been expecting a second series of shocks as the crustquake circled around Egg and
returned again. It returned early. She was still trying to understand why the quake seemed stronger than
before, when she found herself sliding helplessly at high speed toward the array of instruments she had
been tending. The sharp edges on the instruments cut her to ribbons.
Zero-Gauss was in her underground laboratory. She was picking up some pellets that had missed the
catcher on a fountain plant during the initial crustquake. The starquake hit and she and all the plants and
animals were swept across the metal floor to one corner of the room. The support pillars buckled, and
the roof fell in.
A pulsating sheet of fire flickered over the surface of the neutron-star, generating a high-energy blast of
radiation that spread out into space. It only took a millisecond for the high-energy ultraviolet, X-rays, and
gamma rays to reach Dragon Slayer in its synchronous orbit above Bright's Heaven. The stronger of the
gamma rays sheeted through the tough hull of the spacecraft, through the thin protection of Amalita's
space-suit, and irradiated her body with three times the lethal dose. The ultraviolet radiation bounced off
the star image telescope mirror, burned through the protective filters, and poured unim-
peded down on the star image table, flooding the Science Deck and Amalita's eyes in an ultraviolet
glare.
Amalita's eyelids closed too late over cloudy-white corneas and started to blister under the intense
radiation. Following on the heels of the electromagnetic radiation pulse came a three-pulse burst of