To Save the Sun

by Ben Bova

  Rice unsealed each glove from its sleeve and pulled them off, clumsily stuffing them into one of several roomy pouches sewn into the waistband of the suit.

  "Like this," Oidar said, cupping his own hands.

  Rice copied his actions and held his hands out before him, watching as Oidar carefully reached into the water and scooped up one of the little swimmers. It made no effort to swim away. He extended his webbed hands and poured the water and the swimmer into Rice's.

  His heart raced as he looked down at the form in his hands. Against the lighter color of his palms the swimmer was much easier to see than in the murky water where Oidar sat. The swimmer had a wide, flat tail and no rear legs yet, but otherwise was an exact duplicate of the broadly grinning Oidar himself. With water leaking through his fingers, Rice felt the slight pressure of the diminutive alien's tiny hands as it pushed itself up in his palms and regarded him carefully, tilting its little head in a mannerism he had grown used to seeing during the time he'd spent with the aliens. The little one rubbed several times against his palm, then, as the last of the water ran out of his cupped hands, wriggled back into the pond and swam to rejoin his water group. They greeted him by swimming and bumping against him and each other, friskily bumping one another and playing a game at which Rice could only guess. He felt he should say something to Oidar, but could think of nothing.

  "They learn from me here," Oidar said. "You understand that." Rice nodded. "Much knowledge is passed through the blood, but much more is passed through touching. So. They learn much while I carry them, but they learn still more here." He swirled his hands through the water, brushing against them as he did. "Each new touch carries a thought, an idea."

  "Thank you for sharing this with me," Rice said softly, his words almost drowned out by the buzz of a dragonfly-like insect that darted between them before disappearing in the growths to his left.

  "No. It is this one who give thanks." Oidar smiled again, his gill slits puffing out in a manner Rice had come to associate with a display of pride, and he noticed for the first time since entering the room that a single silver bob had been clipped to the skin at the edge of one of his gill slits. "You have touched one of my spawn, and have given him a bit of your knowledge, a bit of yourself. He, in turn"—he indicated the swimmers frolicking and splashing in the shallow water—"has touched the others. They all share that knowledge now and are better for it, I'm certain. Thank you, Temple."

  Templeton Rice stood transfixed by the importance of what the alien had just said and forgot, for a moment, the urgent business that had drawn him to the Sarpan ship in the first place.

  He is concerned for the condition of his water, and is correct to be so, Oidar reflected after Rice had left. He sat on the muddy bottom at the edge of the pond and held his free hand before him just under the water's surface, his children swimming freely through his fingers and against the skin of his hand. In his other hand he held the data stick that Rice had left with him. Oidar did not entirely comprehend the human trait "worry," and although he knew that "concern for the condition of one's water" was not quite the proper analogy, it was the closest he could come.

  He had not touched Temple while he related what the human Bomeer had instructed him to do, and so had not picked up a better sense of what coursed through his friend's mind. As his visit lengthened, Rice had sat with him in the water and had, on several occasions, dipped his hands into the pond as he talked. One of his children, the one the human Temple had held previously, had been braver than the others of his group and had touched with him several times while he spoke. That one had quickly passed what he had learned to his brothers, but they kept to themselves the thoughts they shared and did not pass them to Oidar when he touched them; he could only guess what feelings they had acquired from his human friend.

  As they continued swimming through his opened fingers he gently stroked at their sides, and from time to time one of them would cling to his arm or wrist and gaze upward into his eyes before jumping back into the tepid water. And as they did, he seemed to get a sense that his children shared a greater knowledge of the human feeling "worry" than did he himself.

  Oidar lifted himself from the water, walking carefully through the shallows to avoid stirring up mud around the excited children swarming at his feet. They gathered at the very edge of the pond, crawling up on the stems of reeds and low grasses at the water's edge farther than he'd seen them dare before, and competed with one another for a better look at him. Their eye membranes, unaccustomed to such prolonged exposure to the air, blinked repeatedly and they made little peeping sounds that made him want to return to the water. It would not be long, he realized, before they would follow him out of the water altogether.

  They stared at him, their little heads tilting first one way then the other, as if trying to tell him that they understood his feelings.

  He nodded, making his decision.

  So. Very well, Temple. I will send the message for you.

  He checked the room controls, hidden in a clump of leafy fronds growing to one side of the entranceway, and satisfied himself that the children would be all right while he was gone. Then, taking a last look at the tiny faces at the edge of the pond, he quietly slipped out of the room and headed for the communications center of the Flisth.

  They were nearing Luna rapidly, but it had still taken nearly a week for the transmission to reach them.

  The message from Dr. Templeton Rice, Chief Researcher at the test site, had been sent instantaneously in a recorded tachyon burst to a Sarpan ship in Earth orbit, then relayed by normal communications to the Levant. There was a great deal at the beginning of the transmission that Adela did not comprehend, but Montero assured her that it was normal protocol intended mostly for his benefit.

  "Dr. Montgarde," the recording began once the aliens' introductory material had concluded, "I have circumvented Imperial directives to see to it that the information contained in this communication reaches you. I considered going around Academician Bomeer, the director here at the test site where your theories are being put to practical demonstration, and filing this with the Emperor's staff directly; but I had no assurances that it wouldn't be intercepted by the academician. He is a man of extraordinary scientific genius, but he is also cunning in a way that would be difficult for me to describe at this time."

  Adela smiled. Rice had no way of knowing it, of course, but she knew only too well how formidable an opponent Bomeer could be.

  "For that matter," Rice's transmission went on, "I have no guarantee that this will reach you at all, but I felt it imperative to make the attempt." He paused and seemed unsure as to how to continue, then took a deep breath and said, almost apologetically, "We have found an error in your calculations. Because of our findings, my colleague and I recommended that the physical test be delayed until your return, so that you can join us via the tachyon link to discuss the figures and adjust the testing accordingly before proceeding further. However, the academician wishes to proceed with the physical test based on your original equations, stating that it would be better for you to have complete results to review upon your return. Personally I get the feeling that he wishes for the test to fail, although I admit that I can't explain my suspicions."

  Rice turned in the screen and tapped out a command on the control pad set into the desktop in front of him, then slipped a data stick into the keypad input port.

  "In any case, the test is scheduled to proceed," he went on, his eyes downcast. "The test will fail. We'll have an extensive recording of the entire experiment, beginning to end, for review waiting for you when you arrive. Perhaps the academician is right, and the full results will serve you better; I can't say. But I'm appending to this file the full report of the modeling tests to date"—he indicated the data stick—"to give you an idea of what you might expect on your return. Have a safe conclusion to your journey. Thank you."

  His image faded out and was replaced by a notification indicating that several data files followed t
he verbal communication.

  "That's it," Montero said. "System. Screen off." The screen obediently darkened. "I've taken the liberty of routing this recording, as well as the associated files, directly to your ID node in the computer, Doctor. You'll find them waiting for your personal attention whenever you want them."

  "Thank you, Commander," she replied, her voice subdued. "And thanks for bringing this to my attention so quickly."

  Montero sat, quietly pulling at one of the tips of his moustache. "This is highly irregular, you know." He nodded at the darkened screen. "A communication from an Imperial researcher who, purposely sidestepping his superiors, sent it through the facilities of the Sarpan without the knowledge or permission of those closest to the project…" He let his voice trail off when he noticed she wasn't listening.

  "Doctor?"

  She hadn't heard him, and concentrated instead on the feeling of sudden fear spreading uncontrollably through her.

  An error, he'd said. An error. An error. An error.

  It was there.

  Adela ran the figures that accompanied the modeling, and it was there. Plain as the sun in the sky.

  As Dr. Rice and the alien Oidar had noted in the results of both of the models, her original figures had been correct, but only so far as it theoretically applied to a technology that had yet to be developed. There had been blanks in the equation for which there were no currently available figures to plug in. Her theories took into account that shield technology would have to be developed to put her ideas to practical use, and much of the generations-long research had taken this into account. But there had been no way to project—at the time—how the application of the nonexistent technology itself would affect the results.

  Adela had needed to make several educated guesses as to how the necessary shield technology, required to make the theory work successfully, would behave. She had guessed incorrectly.

  "It is the character of the shield generating process itself," she recited into the recording lens, "that accounts for the difference in energy levels between the two stars. I had assumed that the shielding used to keep the singularities stable would be nonintrusive, and that the energy transfer would occur at a ratio of one to one.

  "However, I was only half right. The shielding containing the negative singularity introduced into the feeder star is impassive, in that the energy needed from the star is drained off in a one-way manner in the expected amounts without being affected by the shield itself. What I could not anticipate, not having a working shield concept at the time, was that the emitted energy of the shield generating process is also drawn into the singularity, resulting in more energy being sent through the wormhole to the breeder star. This extra energy in the breeder star, however, is not only released by the positive singularity, but is further amplified by the reflective nature of the shielding there.

  "The net result is that the amount of energy released in Sol, the breeder star, is far greater than anticipated. The total effective release is a factor of…" She paused and glanced at the readout displayed in the handheld in her lap, compared it to the figures floating in the air above the frozen image of the second model Rice had sent her, still displayed in the holo viewing area in the corner of her stateroom. "A factor of approximately one point nine one."

  Adela paused to check her notes, confirming that she had covered all the points she wanted to make in her report. Satisfied that she had included all the pertinent information, she said, "The complete figures and energy projections are included in the data file attached to this recording." She snapped the cover closed on the handheld. "System, please end current recording and send it immediately to Dr. Rice at the test site." She hesitated, a knowing smile gracing her lips.

  "Encode it for personal delivery to Dr. Rice's ID only." She had no reason to suspect that Bomeer would intercept communications intended for other members of the research team without their knowledge, but she felt better at having added the encoding.

  According to Rice's clandestine communication, the physical test was to take place in a few days, and even though she was now less than a week away from Luna—where her report could be sent immediately to Rice using the tachyon link—the file she'd just encoded wouldn't reach him in time to be of any benefit to him for the test itself. However, her findings would arrive shortly after the testing was concluded and might help him to sort out the results of the failed test; and, no less importantly, verify the new figures.

  She felt much better now than she had when Montero had given her the recording the previous day. As is turned out, the unavoidable flaw in her original equations would work to their advantage: The small-scale physical test that Rice was about to conduct, while minuscule in scope compared with the reality of what would be done to the Sun itself, was still the largest implementation of the Sarpan shielding that had yet been attempted. The "real thing" would require far more immense shield generating facilities to contain singularities of the size that would be required for success. But her new figures—which would be borne out by the test, even when it failed—indicated that a smaller set of tuned singularities, and therefore less shielding, would yield the same amount of energy needed to save Earth's Sun.

  In fact, now that she thought about it, she wondered just how much more economical the process could be, based on the new figures. After all, if much of what she hoped to do could be done on a smaller scale, it could quite possibly be done years sooner. And since there was no way of knowing exactly how much time Sol had left, every year sooner they could move up the process would greatly increase the window of safety they had.

  Adela regarded the image still displayed in the corner and took a light pen from the breast pocket of her uniform.

  "System."

  "Ma'am?"

  "Replay current file and activate cursor, please."

  "Ready, ma'am."

  The model began again, the red cylinders forming the perfect pyramids she'd already viewed nearly a hundred times in the last twenty-four hours. She allowed the playback to continue, pointing the pen to the set of figures over the leftmost pyramid, the one at the representation of Sol, at three points—when they first arranged themselves in the geometric figure, when the shielded singularity first appeared inside it, and just before the singularity was inserted inside the star.

  "Stop playback and give me a full readout of the requested statistics. Direct the feed to my handheld." She snapped the cover open once more and studied the figures as they scrolled by: mass of containment, energy of singularity contained, length of time to arrange and insert, required distance and power of shield generators and a hundred other relevant aspects of what was happening during the model.

  Once the download was complete, she requested that a new model be created, under a different file name, using the same values as the one from which she'd just extracted the key information she needed to change the model to conform with the new energy equations. Let's see, she mused as her fingers flew over the keypad, substituting a new figure here, a different value there. The new figures were sent to the model and each change slightly altered the image, followed by a new set of readouts floating near the changed items.

  Hours passed, but Adela was so excited and involved in what she was doing that she barely noticed.

  "Run the model, please," she said once satisfied with the changes she'd entered. The image played out and a feeling of elation swept over her as the results matched the first model: There was no apparent change in the image representing Sol; the energy output reading remained as constant and steady as it had before. Only the rapidly scrolling statistics below the projection gave any indication that the star had just been given the boost of a secondary power source, a helping hand designed to keep the star healthy and stable for eons to come.

  Grinning now, she ran the model once more to verify her findings, and nearly danced giddily across the room when assured that the new numbers were valid.

  She would send the redesigned model to Rice, of course, so
he could set up another physical test utilizing the new figures, but there was no hurry. Rice and Oidar, not to mention Bomeer himself, would be actively involved in the final setup for the test at this very moment.

  There was an angry rumble in her stomach and Adela glanced at her wrist, surprised at how late it had become. All right, then, she decided; she'd head to the mess for something to eat and put together another recording containing the new model and all the figures she'd substituted when she got back. She hadn't realized it, but she was nearly as exhausted as she was hungry. Adela stretched aching joints held much too long in a sitting position hunched over the handheld. The next time, she promised herself as she left the cabin and headed for the mess, she'd walk around the room with the handheld to avoid the cramped feeling she now felt in her back and shoulders.

  Adela rubbed at her neck and wished, not for the first time since the Levant had left for Pallatin, she was back in Javas' chamber. The untimely murder of Emperor Nicholas and the importance of the upcoming trip had weighed heavily on her before she'd left, and he had rubbed her neck and shoulders then, his strong but gentle touch bringing life into weary muscles. She felt herself smiling at the memory and stopped to lean against the wall of the deserted corridor. Still smiling, she closed her eyes and tried to imagine the touch of his fingertips, the scent of him and the soft caress of his breath against her neck as he whispered into her ear…

  "Doctor? Are you all right?"

  She snapped her eyes open, startled, and stared with embarrassment into the face of a young Ensign she did not recognize. She had grown accustomed, since coming out of the tank, to how empty the ship had seemed. Many of the nonessential members of the crew would not be awakened until they were actually in orbit around the Moon, which, combined with the fact that a large number of the ship's complement had remained behind on Pallatin, almost made the Levant feel like a ghost ship. Other than Montero and the bridge crew, some of her personal team and the medical staff—all of whom were already "up"—she had seen few people aboard the big ship and had simply not expected anyone in the corridor at this late hour.