System.
And if there were a war or an embargo? As Bey left that enormous production plant, he could not help wondering what would happen if the supply line failed.
At first, nothing would be noticed at the destination. The payloads were transported to the Inner System at only a fraction of a g acceleration, so they took a long time to get there. There would be food in the pipeline of the delivery system for at least ten years, even if the supply from the harvesters were cut off at once. But then the Inner System would be in real trouble—as much trouble as the Cloud would suffer if the Inner System were one day to cut off the supply of power kernels or refuse to ship out manufactured goods. With such total interdependency of the two groups, any talk of war or of breakdown of commerce between them seemed ludicrous. And yet Bey knew that such talk was growing more and more common, more and more strident.
He had followed the local gravity vector downward and was almost back at his quarters. But the thought of the Kernel Ring led him to keep going, descending a steep staircase that dropped toward the kernel itself. Within fifteen meters he found himself on a black, seamless sphere with no visible entry points. He was standing in a thirtieth of a g field on the first of the three kernel shields. Nothing organic would survive for a millisecond on the other side of it. Twenty meters or less beneath his feet was the kernel itself, a rapidly rotating black hole held in position by its own electric charge. This one would mass a couple of billion tons. It served as the power source for one whole sphere of the harvester. Streams of subnuclear particles passed through the kernel's ergosphere, slightly slowed the kernel's rotation, and emerged with their own energy vastly increased.
The power provided by a kernel was large but finite. After maybe twenty years, its angular momentum and rotational energy would be depleted. A "spun-down" black hole with no rotation would continue to radiate according to the Hawking evaporative process, but that energy was far less controlled and useful. It was even a nuisance, since the monitor sensors within the shield needed multiple signal redundancy to assure error-free messages to the outside. A spent kernel was a useless kernel. It had to be "spun up" again to high angular momentum from some other source, or replaced by a new one from the Kernel Ring.
And if the Kernel Ring became inaccessible? Then the Cloudlanders would starve for energy, as surely as the Inner System would starve for lack of Cloudland food supplies. And yet the Kernel Ring was the least controlled part of the whole system, and it was not clear who had the most rights to it. Was it the Podders, the Halo's migrant spacefarers who lived within their spacesuits? Or maybe it was Black Ransome, waging war against both Cloudlanders and Sunhuggers from the mystery hideaway of Ransome's Hole.
Bey found the train of thought leading him again to Mary. Was she in the Kernel Ring, as Leo Manx insisted? Or was she to be found somewhere here , in the unthinkably big volume of the Cloud? If so, the Cloud's central library system might help him locate her. Assuming that he wanted to.
"Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part. Nay, I have done, you get no more of me." Mary's last message had asked him not to look for her, but in typically Mary terms. She had left an opening for ambiguity. Bey turned to head back for the stairs, thinking that if he started to learn the library access system, he would never get to sleep.
He was so preoccupied with his thoughts that he almost walked into the three strangers.
There were two men and a woman. Wolf had time for no more than a quick look at them—again, no eyebrows, and suddenly that made sense; perspiration would not trickle down foreheads in zero g—then they were advancing on him.
"What the devil are you doing here?" The shorter of the men spoke loudly and angrily. He came close and
And if there were a war or an embargo? As Bey left that enormous production plant, he could not help wondering what would happen if the supply line failed.
At first, nothing would be noticed at the destination. The payloads were transported to the Inner System at only a fraction of a g acceleration, so they took a long time to get there. There would be food in the pipeline of the delivery system for at least ten years, even if the supply from the harvesters were cut off at once. But then the Inner System would be in real trouble—as much trouble as the Cloud would suffer if the Inner System were one day to cut off the supply of power kernels or refuse to ship out manufactured goods. With such total interdependency of the two groups, any talk of war or of breakdown of commerce between them seemed ludicrous. And yet Bey knew that such talk was growing more and more common, more and more strident.
He had followed the local gravity vector downward and was almost back at his quarters. But the thought of the Kernel Ring led him to keep going, descending a steep staircase that dropped toward the kernel itself. Within fifteen meters he found himself on a black, seamless sphere with no visible entry points. He was standing in a thirtieth of a g field on the first of the three kernel shields. Nothing organic would survive for a millisecond on the other side of it. Twenty meters or less beneath his feet was the kernel itself, a rapidly rotating black hole held in position by its own electric charge. This one would mass a couple of billion tons. It served as the power source for one whole sphere of the harvester. Streams of subnuclear particles passed through the kernel's ergosphere, slightly slowed the kernel's rotation, and emerged with their own energy vastly increased.
The power provided by a kernel was large but finite. After maybe twenty years, its angular momentum and rotational energy would be depleted. A "spun-down" black hole with no rotation would continue to radiate according to the Hawking evaporative process, but that energy was far less controlled and useful. It was even a nuisance, since the monitor sensors within the shield needed multiple signal redundancy to assure error-free messages to the outside. A spent kernel was a useless kernel. It had to be "spun up" again to high angular momentum from some other source, or replaced by a new one from the Kernel Ring.
And if the Kernel Ring became inaccessible? Then the Cloudlanders would starve for energy, as surely as the Inner System would starve for lack of Cloudland food supplies. And yet the Kernel Ring was the least controlled part of the whole system, and it was not clear who had the most rights to it. Was it the Podders, the Halo's migrant spacefarers who lived within their spacesuits? Or maybe it was Black Ransome, waging war against both Cloudlanders and Sunhuggers from the mystery hideaway of Ransome's Hole.
Bey found the train of thought leading him again to Mary. Was she in the Kernel Ring, as Leo Manx insisted? Or was she to be found somewhere here , in the unthinkably big volume of the Cloud? If so, the Cloud's central library system might help him locate her. Assuming that he wanted to.
"Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part. Nay, I have done, you get no more of me." Mary's last message had asked him not to look for her, but in typically Mary terms. She had left an opening for ambiguity. Bey turned to head back for the stairs, thinking that if he started to learn the library access system, he would never get to sleep.
He was so preoccupied with his thoughts that he almost walked into the three strangers.
There were two men and a woman. Wolf had time for no more than a quick look at them—again, no eyebrows, and suddenly that made sense; perspiration would not trickle down foreheads in zero g—then they were advancing on him.
"What the devil are you doing here?" The shorter of the men spoke loudly and angrily. He came close and
Similar Books
