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.As soon as I’d thought the word, there was a brief flash, and then there was only one sphere floating at the end of the gallery, the other drifting slowly to the floor in a cloud of dust.“Just point and shoot,” I said.“Seems pretty simple to me.”“Quite impressive,” the eagle said with a sigh, and I got the feeling I was being patronized.I glanced from the eagle to the target and back.“Well, we’re just getting started.Now let’s make it a little more interesting.How fast do you think you can get one of those spheres to move?”FORTY-TWOIt was past midday, with fewer than two standard days until we would reach our destination and the end of our shakedown cruise.I was in the bridge with the brothers Grimnismal and one of the Jida emissaries.I sat in the command chair, while the two corvids, the Further’s drive engineers, gave me a tutorial in wormhole engineering and the possible benefits of faster-than-light travel.The Jida emissary, draped gracefully over one of the chairs at the control center, listened in with a bemused expression.The walls and ceiling of the bridge consisted of an unbroken dome, which had been coded to display a real-color image of the exterior view of the ship so that it seemed like four of us sat in the midst of a great expanse of empty blackness, with the stars before us shrunk almost to a single red point, the stars behind a small cluster of blue.“OK,” I said as confidently as possible, “the basics of thresholds have been explained to me.They’re initiated with both ends in one place, and then one end is dragged to its destination at slower-than-light speeds.But one can transit the threshold at any point throughout the process, right?”“Well, naturally,” one of the corvids said, as though there were something terribly wrong with me for having to say it out loud.“Though,” the Jida emissary said, “in some instances, the threshold’s journey is the destination.”I gave her a confused look, at which the corvids exchanged weary glances and sighed.“There are sailships that have thresholds as permanent onboard fixtures,” she went on.“Some carry exceedingly small ones, capable of sending only information back and forth but that allow those on board to remain connected to the infostructure—a tremendous expense, but worthwhile for some, I suppose.” She gave me an odd, unreadable look, which suggested I should have been reading more into her statement than I obviously was.“And some cruise ships are equipped with even larger ones, capable of allowing a sentient to travel through bodily; these cater to those who enjoy the romance of traveling between the stars but who prefer not to spend decades or centuries on board.They pay hefty sums of power, step through the threshold, enjoy the rugged shipboard life—from the comfort of their staterooms, naturally—and then return home at their leisure.Their clientele may be somewhat select, given the enormous costs, but even so, it’s an extremely lucrative business.” She smiled slyly.“I’ve been known to make a fair amount of power off my cruise line investments, myself.”“In any event,” the other corvid said impatiently, “you are quite right, Captain Stone, that thresholds must be maneuvered in place at sublight speeds, and given that the fastest subluminal ships can accelerate to speeds no greater than half that of light, the installation of a new threshold can be a time-consuming procedure.”“And my brother Hu fails to mention,” said the other, who I guessed must be Mu, “the problems associated with the cosmic string material that is the fundamental component of a threshold construction.”“Too true, brother, too true.” Hu nodded eagerly.“I’m sure, in your primitive era, that such things were scarcely dreamed of, but the fundamental principle of threshold engineering is negative mass.”“Yes,” Mu put in, “negative mass is required to stabilize the wormhole mouth, and before the discovery of a cosmic string in interstellar space, thousands of kilometers long but only a proton in diameter, thresholds were only theoretical.The creation of the first threshold, the moment from which their calendar is measured, was the true birth of the Human Entelechy.”“A cosmic string is a topological defect in the fabric of space time,” Hu said, interrupting his brother.“They form when different regions of space time undergo phase changes, resulting in domain boundaries between the two regions when they meet.This is somewhat analogous to the boundaries that form between crystal grains in solidifying liquids, or the cracks that form when water freezes into ice.”“Precisely right, brother.Extremely thin and with a diameter on the order of a proton, they nevertheless have immense density and represent a significant source of gravity.As a result, the transportation of cosmic string material through normal space can be a very time-consuming and costly task as well, undertaken only by those—like our erstwhile employer First Zel i’Cirea—who are quite experienced in such matters.”“But why wouldn’t you just transport the cosmic string fragments through existing thresholds like everything else?” I asked.“Why do they have to be transported in normal space?”The two corvids glanced at one another, shaking their heads sadly.“Haven’t you heard anything we’ve said? Cosmic string fragments have negative mass, correct? And so any attempt to transport it through a threshold destabilizes the support and causes the wormhole to collapse.”“And you couldn’t transport it aboard a faster-than-light ship like the Further for the same reason?” I asked.“Hardly the ‘same reason,’” Mu said, his tone scornful, “but such a childish analogy will suit for your purposes, I suppose.”“The gravitation effects and negative energy characteristics of the comic string could collapse the local distortion of the quantum vacuum,” Hu added slowly and simply, as though talking to a simpleton or a child.“Which is, of course,” the Jida emissary said, her eyes narrowed but her tone playful, “where you two come in, no doubt?”The two corvids paused for a moment, seeming to swell with pride, lifting their beaks higher and straightening their rounded shoulders.“As you say, Madame Jida,” said Mu [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.As soon as I’d thought the word, there was a brief flash, and then there was only one sphere floating at the end of the gallery, the other drifting slowly to the floor in a cloud of dust.“Just point and shoot,” I said.“Seems pretty simple to me.”“Quite impressive,” the eagle said with a sigh, and I got the feeling I was being patronized.I glanced from the eagle to the target and back.“Well, we’re just getting started.Now let’s make it a little more interesting.How fast do you think you can get one of those spheres to move?”FORTY-TWOIt was past midday, with fewer than two standard days until we would reach our destination and the end of our shakedown cruise.I was in the bridge with the brothers Grimnismal and one of the Jida emissaries.I sat in the command chair, while the two corvids, the Further’s drive engineers, gave me a tutorial in wormhole engineering and the possible benefits of faster-than-light travel.The Jida emissary, draped gracefully over one of the chairs at the control center, listened in with a bemused expression.The walls and ceiling of the bridge consisted of an unbroken dome, which had been coded to display a real-color image of the exterior view of the ship so that it seemed like four of us sat in the midst of a great expanse of empty blackness, with the stars before us shrunk almost to a single red point, the stars behind a small cluster of blue.“OK,” I said as confidently as possible, “the basics of thresholds have been explained to me.They’re initiated with both ends in one place, and then one end is dragged to its destination at slower-than-light speeds.But one can transit the threshold at any point throughout the process, right?”“Well, naturally,” one of the corvids said, as though there were something terribly wrong with me for having to say it out loud.“Though,” the Jida emissary said, “in some instances, the threshold’s journey is the destination.”I gave her a confused look, at which the corvids exchanged weary glances and sighed.“There are sailships that have thresholds as permanent onboard fixtures,” she went on.“Some carry exceedingly small ones, capable of sending only information back and forth but that allow those on board to remain connected to the infostructure—a tremendous expense, but worthwhile for some, I suppose.” She gave me an odd, unreadable look, which suggested I should have been reading more into her statement than I obviously was.“And some cruise ships are equipped with even larger ones, capable of allowing a sentient to travel through bodily; these cater to those who enjoy the romance of traveling between the stars but who prefer not to spend decades or centuries on board.They pay hefty sums of power, step through the threshold, enjoy the rugged shipboard life—from the comfort of their staterooms, naturally—and then return home at their leisure.Their clientele may be somewhat select, given the enormous costs, but even so, it’s an extremely lucrative business.” She smiled slyly.“I’ve been known to make a fair amount of power off my cruise line investments, myself.”“In any event,” the other corvid said impatiently, “you are quite right, Captain Stone, that thresholds must be maneuvered in place at sublight speeds, and given that the fastest subluminal ships can accelerate to speeds no greater than half that of light, the installation of a new threshold can be a time-consuming procedure.”“And my brother Hu fails to mention,” said the other, who I guessed must be Mu, “the problems associated with the cosmic string material that is the fundamental component of a threshold construction.”“Too true, brother, too true.” Hu nodded eagerly.“I’m sure, in your primitive era, that such things were scarcely dreamed of, but the fundamental principle of threshold engineering is negative mass.”“Yes,” Mu put in, “negative mass is required to stabilize the wormhole mouth, and before the discovery of a cosmic string in interstellar space, thousands of kilometers long but only a proton in diameter, thresholds were only theoretical.The creation of the first threshold, the moment from which their calendar is measured, was the true birth of the Human Entelechy.”“A cosmic string is a topological defect in the fabric of space time,” Hu said, interrupting his brother.“They form when different regions of space time undergo phase changes, resulting in domain boundaries between the two regions when they meet.This is somewhat analogous to the boundaries that form between crystal grains in solidifying liquids, or the cracks that form when water freezes into ice.”“Precisely right, brother.Extremely thin and with a diameter on the order of a proton, they nevertheless have immense density and represent a significant source of gravity.As a result, the transportation of cosmic string material through normal space can be a very time-consuming and costly task as well, undertaken only by those—like our erstwhile employer First Zel i’Cirea—who are quite experienced in such matters.”“But why wouldn’t you just transport the cosmic string fragments through existing thresholds like everything else?” I asked.“Why do they have to be transported in normal space?”The two corvids glanced at one another, shaking their heads sadly.“Haven’t you heard anything we’ve said? Cosmic string fragments have negative mass, correct? And so any attempt to transport it through a threshold destabilizes the support and causes the wormhole to collapse.”“And you couldn’t transport it aboard a faster-than-light ship like the Further for the same reason?” I asked.“Hardly the ‘same reason,’” Mu said, his tone scornful, “but such a childish analogy will suit for your purposes, I suppose.”“The gravitation effects and negative energy characteristics of the comic string could collapse the local distortion of the quantum vacuum,” Hu added slowly and simply, as though talking to a simpleton or a child.“Which is, of course,” the Jida emissary said, her eyes narrowed but her tone playful, “where you two come in, no doubt?”The two corvids paused for a moment, seeming to swell with pride, lifting their beaks higher and straightening their rounded shoulders.“As you say, Madame Jida,” said Mu [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]