The Rape of The Sun

  THE

  RAPE

  OF

  THE

  SUN

  Ian Wallace

  Contents

  The Preparation Phase COORDINATED PROBE OF A COSMIC MYSTERY

  Part One THREE EARTHLY LOVES AND A SUN-MISSION

  Part Two THREE OTHER-WORDLYLOVES AND ANOTHER SORT OF MISSION

  Part Three DARK FOAM ON THE RADIANT BEER

  Part Four REALISTIC MYSTIC SHOWDOWN

  Action Phase Alpha OUR SUN-RUN

  Part Six SPACE-INTIMATIONS OF THE DRAGON FLEET

  Part Five LIFT-OFF, DROP-OFF

  Part Seven CONTACT OFF SUN

  Action Phase Ultima LEVELS OF CONFLICT

  Part Eight LAIR OF THE DRAGON

  Part Nine PROSPERO’S PENTECOST

  Part Ten MACULATE DESDEMONA

  Part Eleven THE PRICE OF EARTH

  Epilogue: THE TREVI FOUNTAIN

  I'll put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes.

  —Puck, in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream

  This is true fairy stuff—because, in freefall orbit. Puck would have to swing it 2,494 kilometers underground.

  —Ian Wallace

  Late, as I rang'd the crystal wilds of air

  In the clear Mirror of thy ruling Star

  I saw, alas! some dread event impend,

  Ere to the main this morning sun descend;

  But heav'n reveals not what, or how, or where.. •

  —Ariel, in Pope's The Rape of the Lock

  Novels by Ian Wallace:

  THE RAPE OF THE SUN *

  THE LUCIFER COMET *

  HELLER'S LEAP *

  Z-STING *

  THE SIGN OF THE MUTE MEDUSA

  THE WORLD ASUNDER *

  A VOYAGE TO DARI *

  PAN SAGITTARIUS

  THE PURLOINED PRINCE

  DEATHSTAR VOYAGE

  DR. ORPHEUS CROYD

  EVERY CRAZY WIND

  * Published by DAW Books

  Copyright ©, 1982, by Ian Wallace.

  All Rights Reserved.

  Cover art by David B. Mattingly.

  FIRST PRINTING, FEBRUARY 1982

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

  PRINTED IN U.S.A

  PHASES AND PARTS OF THE STORY

  Prologue: A Vision of Diminution

  The Preparation Phase

  COORDINATED PROBE OF A COSMIC MYSTERY

  Part OneThree Earthly Loves and a

  Sun-Mission

  Part TwoThree Other-Worldly Loves

  and Another Sort of Mission

  Part ThreeDark Foam on the Radiant Beer61

  Part FourRealistic Mystic Showdown99

  Action Phase Alpha

  OUR SUN-RUN

  Part FiveLift-Off, Drop-Off

  Part SixSpace-Intimations of the Dragon Fleet

  Part SevenContact Off Sum

  Action Phase Ultima

  LEVELS OF CONFLICT

  Part EightLair of the Dragon

  Part NineProsperous Pentecost

  Part TenMaculate Desdemona

  Part Eleven The Price of Earth

  Epilogue: The Trevi Fountain

  To

  MY LIB

  because, among multitudinous blessed reasons,

  she was with me at the Trevi Fountain.

  The Rape

  of

  The Sun

  Prologue:

  A VISION OF DIMINUTION

  Science fiction has dealt with many distant-future eras when high technology is able to detect in a hurry a developing hazard and quickly summon up titanic resources to meet it; when people having prolonged and extensive interstellar experience are mentally ready to recognize the most remote cosmic threat as a live possibility. The story is the action.

  In our late twentieth century, however, even our fairly advanced technology is not up to swift assessment of indirect and subtle effects which are systematic warnings of imminent cosmic catastrophe, or to dealing swiftly and effectively with it when it comes. Nor are people prepared to receive such warnings, once issued, as anything but insanity. (The Orson Welles Mars thing involved a fairly nearby planet, so it could hardly be considered cosmic.)

  Here and now, the story is: first, the arduous detection and persuasion; second, the bumbling effort to cope.

  Least comprehensible by our people are alien value-systems, even in alien cultures here on Earth; nor is any Earth-culture equipped to grasp valuations by extraplanetary or extragalactic beings. For example, to us on Earth, our sun, apart from its historical and prehistorical mythic significance, represents daylight, warmth, growth, and energy; to others elsewhere in the cosmos, our sun may be accorded values of an entirely different sort. In 1995, some of us on Earth were excitedly pursuing Sun’s energy-value when alien disaster struck.

  One who entered into immediate intuitive grasp of Earth’s 1995 catastrophe was a seer named Collins:

  His first pertinent vision hit Collins as being real- unreal: frightening actuality in its meaning,

  fantastic in its self-presentation....

  Primus: The solar system spread before him in its entirety (but evidently with interplanetary distances reduced relative to planetary sizes): Sun hot-bulbous at center; and variously scattered around their parent star, all of Sun’s brood: little Mercury, larger Venus, larger Earth with her magnificent moon, smaller Mars with his tiny moons, Jupiter glow-colossal with his moons and his phantom ring, Saturn only a shade smaller than Jupiter with his moons and with a band of rings resplendent, smaller but Earth-dwarfing Uranus and moons, Uranus-size Neptune and moons, Mercury-size Pluto, and several minuscule outer planets.

  Item: New pairs of scarlet and blue contrails helixing the solar system outside Pluto orbit, then progressively crossing the plane of the system above and below; lines diffusing as they lagged until they merged into royal purple translucently cocooning the system and drifting inward among the planets.

  Item: Cut to a small outer segment of the growing purple: tail-seeding the scarlet and blue color-haze trails, a malevolent creature like a manta ray with long helical horns and a nasty-toothed bat-snout and a sinuous tail.

  Item: Cut to a cut of Earth, a cross section from surface down to center; the purple haze enveloping Earth, seeping into Earth: down through crust, through mantle, through molten magma, and all the way in to heart of hot-rigid core.

  Penultima: All the earth diminishing.

  Ultima: All planets and the sun diminishing, each drawing in upon itself and the others.

  —Helen Carr-Cavell

  The Preparation Phase

  COORDINATED PROBE OF A COSMIC MYSTERY

  Part One

  THREE EARTHLY LOVES AND A SUN-MISSION

  1

  I bless the day I met Welland Carr, and even more do I bless the day I married him.

  Alternately I bless and curse the day I met Sven Jensen. In more than one way, he took me to the sun—and burned me with it.

  I am even more ambivalent about the devastating materialization of the mythical dragon called Tiamat. In case you don’t remember her, Tiamat was a sun-swallowing monster invented by most-ancient Sumer, or maybe it was specifically the Sumerian city-state called Babylon, to explain eclipses of the sun. To Earth’s great cost, Tiamat is not a myth anymore.

  I’m Helen Cavell; friends often call me Hel. This bit of history which I am contributing should have been written by my husband, Wei. He couldn’t bring himself to do it, but I’ve had the benefit of his dose and loving criticism. From some of the things I put in about events and thoughts and feelings to which I was not privy, you may come to suspect that I am psychic; I am not psychic, I merely have good informers—although one psychic is a major actor in my
drama of just-past actuality.

  ... Or should I say—Wel’s drama?

  As I begin to write, the year is 1996. And what rises instantly to mind is the day in January 1995 when Sven re-invaded my life and sold me and my corporation on our Sun Project

  You need a bit of background here. During the past four years I’ve been a vice-president of Southeastern Power, a seventy-year-old corporational octopus which originated modestly in Sylvania, gradually acquired most of the power interests in Sylvanopolis, and progressively reached out to touch everybody south of the Ohio River and east of the Mississippi. We handle everything from electricity through satellite communications to Ma Bell. In 1993, early in my vice-presidency, we invaded in spades the field of solar power. I mean mass distribution of it, which had been hard to justify economically until we projected our dandy Sun-Moon receptor field.

  On the evening of January 10, 1995, Wei (who is Science Editor for the Sylvanopolis Herald-Tribune) bustled into our suburban apartment, emoting: “Hey, Hel—guess who's coming to town tomorrow? Sven Jensen!” Usually when he said “guess who or what,” Wei gave me a chance to guess, but in this case, Sven burst out of him. My heart flipped; I credit it to my husband that he probably anticipated this and wanted to give me the pleasure.

  In retrospect, I feel certain that Sven, having come with his definite idea, awaited his perfect moment to throw it at us. And of course, being Sven-pushovers, we provided the moment.

  Before long, I will be reporting our doings on Wednesday, January 11, which turned out to be remarkable, quite apart from the unsettling effect on my emotions. Right now, I consider it to the point to report a major aftermath—the action conference that I arranged for Sven with my big boss, J.C. The conference date was, not insignificantly, Friday the thirteenth.

  We sat around the mighty table in J.C.’s private office and conference room which is the size of a theater stage and as impressive as a throne room. Why not? J.C. is president and board chairman of a power behemoth; J.C. for his private purposes might prefer less, but his instinct for the persuasion power of an elaborate environment allows him no less.

  J.C. hadn’t arrived; we had. With us I had brought the chiefs of my team in my Division of Technical Research and Production: Dr. Hugh Graben, my dark saturnine German physicist, and his aide, a Dr. Sato; Dr. Robert Mullett, my square-built sandy-haired country-type electrochemist; and sober senior Dr. Ramsey Smith who pushed my communica-tions-satellite production. Also with us was my chief secretary, a personable young man named Carter.

  Enter J.C., just on time, a big handsome guy with an exquisitely bartered gray mane, wearing an impressively tailored suit; he was in his fifties, now, after half a dozen years at the helm. Smiling his,usual smile, he said, “Good friends, pray excuse me for a moment or two, there are a couple of things I must settle,” and he sat himself at his desk, hit papers, and ignored us. There were irreverent company jokes about what the initials J.C. stood for in J.C.’s mind; I thought the jokes rather silly—J.C. did put out a great P.R. front behind which he was firm and decisive and perceptive, but he really wasn’t remarkably vain.

  In the waiting silence, I turned to Sven Jensen at my left; our eyes met and I repressed a desire to shiver-shudder Sven—a tall Viking blond with frightening blue eyes and a hard straight nose and a mouth and chin built for audacious decisions; diction terse, inward wit Voltairean, energy electromagnetic, personality silently snarling like a self-muffled jaguar. Sven—once my fearsomely arousing lover. Sven— here as guest-star, having persuaded me to bring him here with my own endorsement, to hit my boss, J.C., with a proposal that would change the course of Southeastern Power and of human life on Earth. My God, now I thought about it, I hadn’t even fully understood the proposal! Sven, Sven, you have got to bring it off well; I can’t, and / am at stake. . . .

  To compose myself, I concentrated on my own executive image: tall, slender brunette in my prime at forty-four (three years older than Sven), looking my best in leaning-back profile that highlighted my low-lidded eyes and my long Arabian nose; great at hiding my intellectual power by making a languid show of being agreeably ornamental. This pose I must hold, during this pregnant conference, despite my disturbance in the presence of Sven. J.C. was platonically in love with this mask of mine; if he was to be won, it had to be in terms of Sven’s presentation with the influence of my mask.

  Oh Sven, do do it well!

  J.C. took his place at table-head (I sat at the foot with' Sven beside me), exchanged brief greetings with each of my cohorts, then turned to Sven. “Captain Jensen, you are most welcome here, I know of your work at NASA; you are a true

  space hero. And now Helen tells me that you have a proposal for Southeastern Power. I think she said you were suggesting an augmentation of our solar satellite program—am I misquoting you, Helen?”

  “Only approximately.” I thin-smiled. “J.C., do you mind if my secretary Mr. Carter tapes this?”

  “Excellent, excellent. I am videotaping it, of course, but two tapes are better than one, ha ha—in case of erasures, heh heh. Well, Captain?”

  “Sir, I want to thrust right into this,” Sven opened soberly. “A major problem with getting into solar energy on a wide-distribution basis has been that the amount of Sun’s energy which reaches the surface of Earth at any single point on Earth is too small to distribute economically. Hence the solar enthusiasts have had to resort to local receptor installations like the one in the new house being built by Dr. Cavell and her husband, Dr. Carr.” J.C. bent a severe stare upon me, a mock scolding because Wei and I were not using Southeastern power; I half-shut my eyes and did the languid smile bit.

  “I am fully aware,” Sven continued, “of the magnificent entry into solar now being mounted by Southeastern Power. I want to summarize my understanding of this; pray correct any errors. You are preparing to loft a solar receptor field at an unprecedented altitude: 302,000 kilometers out, just slightly this side of Moon; and this laudable field will spread a kilometer in diameter with a built up thickness averaging fifty meters. Indeed, sir, you are jumping into solar with all four feet in the trough—or was that an unfortunate metaphor?”

  J.C. was silently chuckling. “Indeed, it is pleasantly unfortunate,” he managed. “Pray proceed.” I swallowed my nearly upchucked larynx.

  “Your field,” Sven went on, “is tentatively scheduled for launch during this coming summer. Because it will move in a polar orbit, nothing this side of Moon will ever intercept its intake or its output. It will circle Earth once in 478.7 hours—which is twenty days, one earth-rotation day being slightly less than twenty-four hours.

  “While your field is orbiting from north to south to north around Earth, our planet will be rotating from west to east within this orbit. Therefore, to an observer on Earth, the completely plotted trail of the field will be a multiple girdling of Earth in a double helix. Thus, during each twenty-day orbit, your field will pass directly or almost directly above most of the world’s population centers, including those in unfriendly nations.

  “However, your Southeastern Power will be able to control the energy transmission from the field so that it will go only to reception-distribution centers designated by Southeastern. Transformers orbiting with your field will convert the solar radiation into electromagnetic waves at very high frequencies which can be transmitted to Earth without harming anything which may briefly pass through them. Earthside receptor stations, receiving this energy on tight beams, will re-convert it and send it by cable to your customers.

  “At first, your rates will be high and buyers will be few, by reason of Earth’s distance from Sun. Any square centimeter of Earth’s outer atmospheric surface, and therefore of your infra-moon field, can collect only two thousandths of one percent of the power output from a square centimeter of sun- * surface. But that is six times the amount that can be collected at earth-surface, after sun-rays have been diffused through more than a hundred kilometers of atmosphere. Your project does make mass
distribution of solar energy feasible; eventually, more such satellite fields will make it profitable.

  “Sir, have I fairly summarized your project?”

  J.C. was admiring-sober; certainly it had gone well until now. “Captain, you have it fairly. I am amazed at the extent of your information.”

  “The generalities of it,” Sven remarked (and I blessed him), “came from the excellent Sunday feature article by Welland Carr in the Sylvanopolis Herald-Tribune. And more, although nothing of a secret nature, came from some of your people who regularly contact NASA on your satellite programs: Doctors Graben and Smith here, and a couple of others. For example, I know that you are building three earth-stations to receive the field’s output during your pilot program: near Baltimore, near Atlanta, and near New Orleans. Your orbiting field will discharge stored energy to these three stations as it near-overpasses each one; it will send to these stations enough solar energy to supply the full requirements of a limited and marginally profitable number of industrial customers. To that extent, it will replace the use of fossil fuels including uranium.

  “Indeed, your field has solar storage capacity far beyond the present demand-potential on these three stations; so that regrettably, when its capacity is pressed, it must discharge some of its load uselessly into space. But as you acquire more customers, and particularly as you build more earthside reception-distribution stations, eventually all of the field’s capacity can be used. And there is no reason why you and your competitors may not loft other such fields and massively reduce the function of fossil fuels in the energy picture.