Martian Rainbow

by Robert L. Forward

  "They aren't working on a Nuclear Rapier, are they?" Alexander asked, concerned.

  "No," General Sam reassured. "I have a special group constantly monitoring their activities in that area. They haven't hit upon what our owlies have.

  "So, although you can bottle neutrons, they decay away before you can use them." He switched to the next animated diagram. It showed four white balls orbiting around one another. Each ball was also spinning about its axis and had an arrow coming out of the top. The four arrows pointed in the same direction. Vertically through the image flowed rippling blue lines.

  "Then, one of our particle pushers at Los Alamos National Lab was playing with a new ultrahigh-magnetic-field solenoid made from the new hot superconductors ..."

  "Like we used in the antimatter rockets on the Yorktown?" Alexander asked.

  "Exactly," Jerry said. "In fact, this discovery was made back in '38, before we were Unified. It was brought to my attention when I set up the SOI office and asked for new ideas. Los Alamos had done a lot of the background engineering. All my SOI office had to do was grab it and run with it.

  "Anyway, he had put a bottle of ultraslow neutrons in a high magnetic field to see if he could produce a bottle of polarized neutrons, with their magnetic spins all oriented in the same direction. It would be useful as a target in some types of particle experiments. To his amazement, when the end of the day came and he turned off the superconducting magnet, there was a crackle of radiation from the bottle, which he had last filled with neutrons four hours ago. He had made the first spin-polarized tetraneutrons. Unlike single neutrons, they are stable."

  "Spin-polarized tetraneutrons?" Di asked, trying to get it straight. "What the shit does all that gobbledygook stand for?"

  "The scientific name isn't important," Jerry said. "It's just four neutrons bound together in an excited state. It takes a very strong magnetic field just to form them, that's why they were never observed before. Once they are formed, however, they are quite stable. Since they have all their spins pointed in the same direction, they are also magnetized. So you can use magnetic fields to pipe them from one point to another, shoot them out of guns, and store them in bottles. We have almost a hundred kilograms of liquid tetraneutrons in orbit now in the three orbital forts equipped with neutrino telescopes and the Nuclear Rapier." He switched the flatscreen to an image of a standard orbital fort, with its long particle-beam weapon, laser mirrors, and racks of defensive and offensive hit-to-kill kinetic energy weapons. The image zoomed to a short barrel made of loops of wire on a swivel mount.

  "Is that it?" Alexander asked, not very impressed.

  "With the new high-magnetic-field hot superconductors, you don't need much length to get the tetraneutrons up to speed," Jerry said. "Makes the gun easier to repoint for the next target, too. Let me show you some of the test results."

  The next image was back at a test site out in the desert. A missile tipped with a nuclear warhead was lowered into a deep hardened silo and the thick concrete lid lowered into place. An array of boxes with lights were placed on posts all around the she.

  "Those are battery-powered neutron detectors with lights, so you can see the neutrons when they hit," Jerry said. "Otherwise, you wouldn't see anything happening."

  Suddenly a large patch of the lights lit up, the center of the patch slightly to one side of the heavy silo door. The next instant the heavy slab of concrete was flying into the air, and the glowing hell of nuclear fire was rising from the depths of the silo.

  "The tetraneutrons stop in the first few meters of soil, but then continue to bounce around and penetrate further until they are absorbed by the uranium in the weapon or an occasional rare isotope in the dirt. That test took only ten milligrams of tetraneutrons. If we were trying to get a submarine a few hundred feet down, we would keep the beam on longer and flood the area with a few grams."

  "Milligrams? Grams?" Alexander said. "Didn't you say you had hundreds of kilograms of those tetraneutrons in orbit?"

  "Why, yes ..." Jerry admitted. "We thought it would take a lot more particles to make a kill, so we collected plenty for our test plan."

  "Forget the test plan," Alexander said. He turned to General Sam. "How many nuclear missiles do the Russians have?"

  Sam raised his eyebrows, reached under the front of his Cap of Contact to scratch his bald head, and replied carefully, "Two thousand four hundred and sixty-eight missiles that can reach the Unified States directly. Another one thousand sixteen aimed at other countries, and twenty-four submarines, each with twelve to eighteen missiles. The submarines are being phased out, now that everyone has neutrino telescopes and knows where they are."

  "Less than four thousand targets," Alexander said. "You could throw a gram at every one and still have tetraneutrons left over."

  "Yes," General Sam admitted.

  "Do it," Alexander said firmly.

  "Sir?" General Sam replied, taken aback.

  "Now!" Alexander shouted, jumping to his feet. "The minute the next orbital fort with a Nuclear Rapier passes over Russia, I want it to start firing, and keep on firing until every single one of their missiles has blown up in their neocommie pinko faces!"

  "Oh, my God!" Rob muttered into his hands.

  "Yes, my Infinite Lord," General Sam said, flipping his viewer in front of his left eye. He paused with his fingers on the control pad of his Cap of Contact, then turned to Alexander. "May I wait until we have two orbital forts within firing range?"

  "If it would make you feel more comfortable," Alexander said calmly and agreeably, his recent passion over. He walked over to a cabinet and, getting out a bottle, poured himself a drink. Rob got quickly to his feet and poured himself one, too.

  "But I haven't finished the testing program yet," Jerry objected. "What if we don't get them all, and they start launching missiles at us? Whole cities would be destroyed."

  "I'll just launch our missiles back at them," Alexander said, unconcerned. "We'll come out ahead in the end, because they don't have the Nuclear Rapier, and I do." He smiled and came over to pat Jerry on the shoulder. "Thanks to you and your fine bunch of owlies. You have served your Infinite Lord well, Jerry."

  Hearing these words of praise from his master sent Jerry's spirit soaring. He was loved, he was wanted, he was appreciated. He would do anything for this man.

  "Stations Alpha and Charlie will be in good position in about ten minutes," General Sam reported.

  "We're in luck!" Alexander said, pleased.

  "If you don't mind, I'd like to go down the hall to the office and switch over to a data console with a high-res screen and a faster data rate," General Sam said. "I need to put our boys on alert. In the meantime, perhaps Jerry can arrange a real-time link from the Winged Eyes and you can watch the show."

  "Great idea!" Jerry said. He activated his Cap of Contact, and in a few minutes the large flatscreen had a number of views on it. One was of a stretch of open ocean off the icy coast of Greenland. The peaceful floes suddenly bulged upward in a roil of radioactive water.

  "Got the bastards!" Di yelled, clapping her hands and bouncing in her seat.

  Rob stared at the smug, self-satisfied look on Alexander's face as the Infinite Lord watched a field full of Russian missile silos blowing open one after another in rapid succession. He shook his head and buried his face again in his pudgy gold-ringed fingers.

  "Oh, my God ..." was all he could say.

  IT WAS all over in twenty minutes, the time it takes for a space fort to orbit from Minsk to Petropavlovsk. The Russians had managed to get three missiles away, but they were stopped in midflight by the standard laser and particle beam defenses of the decades-old orbital forts.

  Alexander was enjoying another drink. Rob wasn't enjoying his.

  "Tell them they have one hour to surrender," Alexander said to Sam when Sam returned from the office after the engagement was over. "The terms are unconditional surrender, complete disarmament, disbanding of their armed forces, and incorporation in
to the Unified States."

  "I don't think Gorki is going to accept all that without argument," Sam said. "He knows as long as he tells his troops not to shoot at us, we won't use our nuclear warheads."

  "What do you mean?" Alexander blustered. "If he doesn't agree, I'll blast his whole damn country off the Earth!" He paced back and forth a little. "No." He shook his head. "Can't do that ... would look bad in the newspapers." He turned suddenly to Di.

  "Get him on direct video contact, with Eric's translator program operating, and start negotiating with him," Alexander said. "But have the CIA boys figure out where he is and pass the coordinates along to Jerry. If he gets hard-nosed, he can expect a visit from the Silver Scythes. Keep working your way down the chain of command until you find someone who will agree to unification. You can promise him he can be my regent and run things pretty much as he did before, but that damn neocommunism has got to go, and they have to become unified with the rest of my people."

  "I'll have the State Department set up the link right away," Di said, flipping the viewer of her Cap of Contact in front of her left eye and starting to finger the control pad on the ear flap.

  "But Alex," Rob objected. "The Church of the Unifier is just a gimmick. You're taking it too seriously."

  Alexander stopped abruptly. He turned around slowly. "The Infinite Lord, Unifier of All, is always serious," he said. He stared at Rob, steel-gray eyes slitting, the deadly arrows forming.

  "Do you understand?" he asked menacingly.

  "I understand!" Rob agreed, acquiescing.

  "Good," Alexander said, brightening the mood with a broad smile. "You have been very helpful to me, Rob. I would hate to lose you."

  Somehow, Rob didn't feel comforted by those last words.

  With Di and Sam busy talking over their cap comm links, Alexander paced up and down the room, musing to himself. "Once I have the Russkies saved from neocommunism, then I should start working on the rest of the world. That's going to be a little tougher. Can't just go marching in with armies. Doesn't look good in the history books." He then remembered the infrared pictures of the prime minister of Australia; that was some broad he was humping. Maybe the prime minister would prefer the job of being the regent of Australia instead of having no job at all ... It was blackmail; but then, political blackmail was just another form of diplomacy ... He stopped pacing.

  "Jerry," he said, putting his arm around the shoulders of the eager young man.

  "Yes, Infinite Lord?" Jerry replied, basking in the warm friendship.

  "I'd like you to assemble a large stable of Watchers. Have them keep a careful eye on all the influential people around the world. Whenever you catch them doing something they shouldn't, make a careful record of it."

  "Like the Arab and the Australian prime minister? No problem. In fact, most of the Watchers I've been using seem to be very good at catching that kind of stuff ... Second nature, I guess."

  "Give the information to Rob," Alexander said. "He'll make sure it gets to the senior people in the Church of the Unifier in that country. Then they can see that these improper leaders are replaced with good ones who are properly respectful of the Infinite Lord and his desire to unify all the world into one great family."

  "That will be a wonderful day," Jerry said, beaming. "I will do all in my power to hasten it."

  CHAPTER 13

  Found Uninteresting

  THE CRAWLER humped itself over the peak of the frost-covered reddish-brown dune, its articulated frame twisting as the engineering and living sections started to follow the cockpit section down the other side. A red warning light flashed on the control console.

  "Damn!" the driver said.

  "What's the matter?" the copilot asked.

  "The right center wheel motor is running hot," the driver said, bringing the crawler to a halt.

  "I'll suit up and check it," the other said, getting up.

  A mop of stringy, orange-red hair turned around in the engineering section above.

  "What are we stopping for, Pete?" Red Storm asked.

  "Must be another damn missile fiber wrapped around the hub," the tech said, putting on his helmet. "I'm going out to untangle it."

  "Oh ..." Red turned back to continue planning the next day's survey with Viktor.

  The tech was cycling the inner airlock when Red's head swiveled back around. The wide blue-green eyes had a questioning—almost eager—look, as if they were on to something important.

  "According to Viktor's map," Red said, "we're almost a hundred eighty degrees around the polar ice cap from Boreal Base. It's over fifteen hundred kilometers as the crow flies—or the missile flies, in this case. I don't know much about missiles, but I doubt they would have that much fiber in them." She reached for her helmet on the rack. "I'm coming with you to take a look."

  Red stuck her helmet on her head with a practiced twist and crowded into the airlock with the tech. The outer airlock door was almost opposite to the right center wheel, and sure enough, there was a glittering nest of fine fiber wrapped around the hub. Red reached for a loose strand.

  "Careful, Miss Storm," the tech said. "That stuff is tough. You could slice a gash in your glove. Here, let me show you how to break it."

  He laid a strand across his forefinger, held it down with his thumb, made a large loop in the fiber, and slipped the free end between his thumb and forefinger so that it overlay the beginning of the loop. Then he pulled on the fiber, making the loop tighter and tighter, being careful not to let the loop slip over his pinched thumb and finger. The loop finally became so small it disappeared under his thumb. Suddenly the fiber snapped and he was left holding the two ends.

  "Fibers can't take a small radius of curvature," said the tech, handing one end to her.

  Red let the tech work away at untangling the mess while she broke off a short piece to look at. It was clear and un-coated. Acting on a hunch, she raised an end up to her Diamondhard faceplate, just above the neck fixture, and rubbed it hard. She peered down and her eyes widened.

  "Coming in!" Red called, cycling the lock and leaving the tech outside. She was soon seated at the science console in the engineering section, looking through a microscope and busy with some liquids. By the time she was finished, Viktor had gotten up from the flatscreen plotting table and was standing beside her on the tilted floor. She turned around and, using the technique the tech had taught her, snapped off a ten-centimeter length of the fiber and handed it to Viktor.

  "Have a diamond," she said with a pleased smile, blue-green eyes sparkling.

  "A diamond!" Viktor exclaimed, looking with surprise at the glassy thread.

  "Crystal diamond on the outside and glassy diamond on the inside—just like the eyerods on those Lineup critters," Red said. "I read all about it in volume three of a nanodisk series edited by one Viktor K. Braginsky. It was in a paper called 'The Optical Properties of Lineup Fanrods'. I forgot the author's name, but I didn't forget his techniques for measuring the density and index of refraction. It's diamond all right. It even scratched my Diamondhard faceplate."

  "A very strange diamond," Viktor said, looking at the fine thread. "Not very large ..." he said dubiously.

  "What you have is small," Red agreed. "But while I was measuring I was calculating. That fiber is about ten microns in diameter, not much per meter, but that comes to two carats per kilometer! And there may be thousands of kilometers of the stuff lying around. And as for it being strange, why that just jacks up the price. You'd be surprised at what people will pay for oddities."

  "That sounds wonderful!" Viktor said in a pleased tone.

  "Wonderful for me. Not so wonderful for you."

  "Not so ..." Viktor said, a little bewildered.

  "You're out of a job," Red said in a matter-of-fact tone, but biting her lower lip as she did so. "You'll have to go back to being a scientist at practically nothing a day."

  "I guess you are right," Viktor said with a shrug. "But it was fun while it lasted. I will miss being a
round you, Red."

  "Don't give me that malarkey," Red replied with a wave of her hand. "What you'll miss is the caviar and vodka."

  "That, too," Viktor agreed with a nod.

  Red slid open the partition to the crew quarters.

  "Hey, Charlie!" she yelled. A muffled "What?" came from one of the insulated sleeping bunks.

  "Rise and shine," Red hollered. "We've got to make some mods to a wheel and we'll need everybody. Get a move on. The sooner we get it done, the sooner you get back to the sack."

  A few hours later the crawler was moving off over the sand dunes again, only now, instead of following a previously determined course, they followed the lead of a thread of diamond fiber that glistened in the glare of a floodlight beam as it was lifted from the sand by a hook stuck out ahead of the crawler on a long, jury-rigged pole.

  The fiber was directed by wire loop guides around the body of the crawler, there to be wound around the right center wheel, which had been converted into a take-up reel. The wheel suspension system had been adjusted to keep the wheel clear of the ground, its load-bearing task now shared by the other two wheels on that side, and the speed of its independent electric motor was varied to keep the fiber taut.

  The fiber took them north—toward the North Pole.

  "WE'RE coming up to an ice canyon," the driver said after a number of hours.

  Red was up in the hemispherical dome in the top of the engineering section, watching the huge spool of fiber grow thicker. They had collected over a hundred kilometers worth already—and only one break where the fiber had been buried under a large dune. Fortunately, it had been easy to pick it up again on the other side.

  "What's our coordinates?" she asked, jumping down.

  "Eighty-five north and one hundred eighty-five west," the driver said.

  "Keep on going," Red said.

  "I'm having to take it slow, since the fiber is buried under a lot of snow," the driver said. "Fortunately it's strong and cuts its way out if I don't hurry it."