Beyond the Farthest Suns Read Online Free PDF Page B

of. Already they’d been surprised several times. And her first lieutenant, Nilsbaum, had worked the problem out on an alternate com­puter, a human-manufacture Datapak. It had given them an eighty percent chance of hitting a singularity if they linked and performed a protogeometry jump. The Heu­ritex had disagreed. But still, the danger existed.
    â€œI can’t blast the bastard,” Anna said, “because every pot­shot is registered by the tattling machines I had to hook up to pass USC regulations. I can’t tamper with them—they retreat into stasis whenever they’re not registering.”
    She looked sharply at the Polynesian. He looked back at her, his face blank and expectant. “Go take a shower,” she said. Then, softer, “Please. You’ve helped me—very much.” She turned over and relaxed to the sounds of the door closing and water running.
    She was staring at the drifting colors on the nacreous ceiling when the intership chimed. She reached over to depress the switch and listened half-drowsily. The voice of the Heuritex brought her fully awake.
    â€œMadame, we’ve contacted Fairchild’s ship. First Lieu­tenant Nilsbaum requests your presence on the bridge.”
    â€œI’ll be there. Any answer from Disjohn?”
    â€œHe refuses to allow a link-up. He says he has two reasons—first, that he will not jeopardize your life; and second, that his computers predict failure if such a plan is carried out. I don’t understand these machines of human construc­tion.”
    â€œDid he say anything else?”
    â€œHe warned you to leave.”
    She rolled over in bed and cupped her chin in her hands. The shower was still running. “Another question,” she said.
    â€œYes, madame.”
    â€œWhat happens if we hit a black hole?”
    â€œDepending on the angle of impact, we have several var­ieties of doom. If we go straight in, perpendicular to a tangent, we pass through two or more event horizons, de­pending on the theoretical geometry you subscribe to.”
    â€œWhat are event horizons?”
    â€œSimply the horizons beyond which no further events can be seen. The gravitational field at that point has accelerated any particle close to the speed of light. From an outside point of view, the particle’s time has slowed to almost zero, no motion at all, so it will take an infinite time to hit the singularity below the event horizon.
    â€œBut from our point of view—if we are the hypothetical particle—we will hit it. Not that it will matter to us, though. Long before we pass through the inner event horizon, tidal forces will strip us down to subatomic particles.”
    â€œNot too pleasant.”
    â€œNo, but there are other options. At a lesser angle, we might pass through an outer event horizon at a speed suf­ficient to propel us into another geometry, and out again someplace else—a different place and time in our own uni­verse, perhaps, or in another universe. We might survive that, if certain theoretical conditions prove true—though it would be a rough trip and the ship might not emerge in one piece.”
    â€œHow can there be more than one event horizon?”
    â€œBecause black holes rotate. May I draw you a compari­son of two Kruskal-Szekeres diagrams?”
    â€œBy all means,” Anna said, activating the display screen on the intership.
    But the mosaic-like charts did little to help her compre­hension. She had forgotten most of her physics decades before.
    â€œOut of half-phase,” Kamon said to himself, “now!”
    The image reappeared. He had misjudged the geodesic slightly. The ship was a light-hour farther away than he had predicted, which meant the ship’s appearance was an hour off from actual emergence. He felt a brief confusion. But the ruse—if ruse it was—had gained them a very small advantage.
    He immediately switched to