The Rape of The Sun Read online

  And there were anomalies to meditate. Deep into the past here; all physical laws appeared to be ticking away normally. Gravity worked—we were orbiting Sun as calculated. Electromagnetics worked—we had maintained communications with Earth until recently, and only today Wel had telemetric-ally controlled Satellite One. The air in Mazda continued breathable, which argued active molecules. The sun beneath us continued violent, in a subdued sort of way. Only one phenomenon seemed to have changed: our window on the twentieth-century stars had closed; the star sizes now appeared normal, and their positions were those of five millennia ago— or was ago the right word? this was how we were now!

  “I want to know,” announced Wel, “what time is. Bill?”

  Haley ducked it. “I am not the one to ask. My model of concentric time-shells is epistemic only. There have been many schematic theories of time’s results, but there had been no coherent theory for time itself. What time is, I simply do not know.”

  Wel turned to Collins. “Ariel?”

  “When most people talk about time,” Collins ruminated, “they are compressing at least two terms into one.”

  Bill was interested. “Say on?”

  “It is only a feeling that I have,” Collins told us. “I have not tried to put it into words; I will now try to put it into words. Forgive me if I do not deal with future: that I see only as gathering blurred potencies interstruggling to form some definite present.

  “Doctor Haley’s model is admirable as a diagram of temporal strata: the germinal surface called now, encapsuling inexact states of fossilized past nows. I think he might avoid a difficulty if he would convert his concentric circles into a system of hyperbolas: then this stratified cosmos would be past-open, there would be no absurd problem of a terminal center; his radii into the past nows would be defined, not as radii, but as verticals to tangents. Also, the now-cosmos would be seen as infinite, rather than finite as in a circle; and my intuition tells me that this would be more nearly right.

  “But these are quibbles. Regardless whether these temporal strata be circular or hyperbolic, one signal fact remains: all these fossilized past nows exist in the present, they are still with us. They do not represent time as a kinetic fact of reality; they represent only the effects of time, the static deposits of time.

  “I feel that time as a kinetic passage is a cause, not an effect. I do not know what it consists of, or how to analyze it. Perhaps it is a remorseless Newtonian flow, a sucking of all things from their vital germinality on the surface of now down toward the infinitely distant pseudo-center of the temporal strata. Perhaps the hyperbolic bulge of the surface represents continual effort by the vital now to escape the downsucking; but nothing can escape, for the timeflow inexorably drags everything down into the temporal strata of fossilization.

  “Perhaps the destination of timeflow is the ultimate Black Hole.”

  22

  Sven brought us alert.' He was gazing at a videoscreen above the bar, a copy of one in the control room. On the screen was a diagrammatic animation: a profile of a sun-surface segment showing the topography of what we were approaching, what we were overpassing, and what we had overpassed.

  Now Sven drawled, “Speaking of bulges, it looks to me as though we might now be approaching the net-bulge that points toward the netters. Should we maybe be at stations, do you think?”

  We concentrated on the changing diagram: yes, there was a sun-surface bulge half a million kilometers ahead, we would overpass it directly in little more than an hour. We scattered for stations: Sven and Wel and I to the control room, Bill to his observatory; Collins stayed brooding in his salon chair, awaiting a call from somebody.

  Sven’s face was concentration-intent. He said low: “Hel and Wel, get on instruments and see if you can find their ship by following the general point of the bulge. Recall that their orbit seems to be a bit over a million outside of ours.”

  Wel activated his scanners while I coupled my console with his. Presently glow-shapes began to form faintly on our screens. I said tensely: “Wel, I think you’ve got it, a bit long maybe. Bring it in a little.” Sven was bending over Wel, gazing at his screen. Wel played with dials.

  A glowing batwing came clear on center-screen. Wel said: “Christ, Hel, this thing at that distance covers nearly ten degrees of my screen! You don’t have my control pips; check-out 95.1 to 104.2 horizontal, 97.8 to 102.6 vertical.”

  A moment later, awed, I told my two. men: “One million four hundred thousand kilometers distant. Wingspread—now get this—nineteen kilometers; repeat, nineteen kilometers, kilometers!”

  I turned to see how my men. took it. Sven’s body had straightened, but his head was down and his hands were working on each other behind. Wel simply was clutching his desk staring at his bat-haunted videoscreen.

  Presently Sven clutched the Carr shoulders. “Wel, they are within range, we have got to get them. Are you staying with your decision not to fire?”

  Wel nodded once, then dropped his head. After a moment, he arose and ushered Sven into the control seat. I watched. I was scared to death, it was so frighteningly quiet between them.

  Sven cut grav-spin and queried: “To aim, I manipulate this and this and this. Right?”

  Said Wel: “Right. The missile silhouettes are down here at screen-bottom; get them aimed, and go with your judgment. Remember lead-time, though: we are moving at our orbital velocity, but they seem to be impossibly motionless in space.” Sven fiddled. Our four missiles on the screen came around to point. He punched in a lead-time factor, then considered the infinitesimally slow self-orientation of the missiles toward the target which appeared to move languidly relative to us, although it was we who were moving.

  Sven meditated aloud: “Any one of these warheads would take out a nineteen-kilometer city. So why am I hesitating?” Wel suggested: “Maybe because our missiles have just lost their smarts. They are programed to home on any magnetic field much smaller than Sun’s—but I’m not getting a magnetic field around our target. So your aim has to be perfect. There is also the consideration that the ship is probably skinned with megalite to repel the niedersinken—and mega-lite may equally repel our warheads. And maybe you are remembering what I said about dart-stung bulls.”

  Demanded Sven: “For one million four hundred thousand kilometers—what is the rocket time?”

  “Your figure, Sven,” testily I reminded him, “was acceleration 108 g’s. It would get the rockets to their target in 1632 seconds, after which there would be a 4.7-second interval before we would see the impact-flash.”

  “That’s twenty-seven minutes,” Sven translated. “How many minutes away from us is that sun-bulge?”

  “About thirty-nine,” I reported.

  “I’m firing Missile Tinker right now,” Sven asserted. That was the one on our belly. ‘Time this, Hel. Go." He pressed the button; through viewports we watched Tinker’s vanishing rocket-blossom.

  We waited. After a bit, Sven: “How far now from the bulge?”

  I said: “Twenty-one minutes.”

  Sven: “I have a feeling about that bulge, I’d like for it not to be there. So now we wait about eight more minutes for Tinker’s impact-flash. Stay on instruments—”

  On the nose of 1632 seconds after launch, I said: “Impact time; now, one-two, three-four.... Flash! we hit!”

  “Damn close to target-center,” Wel commented, watching his videoscreen. “A bit off center on the right wing.”

  “I’m not impressed yet,” Sven muttered. “Hel, Hel, watch that ship-image. Watch it. . . . Watch it. . . . No change yet Watch it. . . . Damn! Five-megaton direct hit—and nothing! How far from the bulge now, Hel?”

  “Eleven minutes to the bulge-peak.”

  “Let’s fire Evers and Chance right now, and save Hoolihan as a last resort Agree?”

  I nodded. Wel shrugged.

  ‘Time it, Hel. Go." Evers and Chance glarily departed our flanks into distant space. Ten megatons between them, perfectly aimed.
r />   “All right,” Sven sighed, “that’s begun, and if ten megatons don’t at least change their ship’s attitude, I don’t know what we can do with Hoolihan. I suppose we have to consider that in space there is no atmosphere to reinforce explosions. Anyhow, we’ll hit that sun-bulge before we know the answer. How long now to the bulge-peak?”

  “Nine.” I was gripped by Sven’s tension.

  “Stand by, stay alert,” said our captain, restoring spin. “Also, something tells me we should buckle-up and helmet.” We did so while he went on intercom: “Bill, Collins, put on protective headgear and buckle-in right now, pronto. Status report: one missile fired at enemy ship, direct hit, zilch; two more missiles fired, results won’t be known for about twenty-four minutes; apex of sun-bulge coming in about eight minutes, turbulence may be extreme. Repeat: helmet and buckle. Out.” He semi-relaxed, buckled and helmeted,

  brooded, while buckled-and-helmeted Wel and I stayed on instruments.

  Sven asked: “How long now?”

  I said: “Six to bulge-peak, twenty-one to missile impact.”

  Abruptly I unbuckled, went to Sven, hugged him hard from behind, went to Wel, kissed him tenderly, reseated myself, rebuckled, went back on instruments.

  Not too soon, either; heavy turbulence was blowing up; this bulge was the sun fighting ensnarement like a hooked tarpon. We weathered it silently; rapidly it roughened; our instruments were zany-mad. After a bit of that, I threw at my men: “I can’t make out the bulge-peak, we’re well into the bulge; my watch says missile-impact in about fourteen minutes, bulge-peak in three. Wel, can you see whether the enemy is still intact?”

  “Still no visible effect from Tinker,” my husband told us.

  Sven rasped, “With luck, Tinker may have delivered internal damage, Evers and Chance may cripple her seriously. Hold tight, now: maximum toughness ahead—”

  That was when Collins in the salon, seeing the videoscreen magnetic confusion, had a psychophysical intuition. Unbuckling, he rose to the gravity-free axis and psychophysically froze in his locus.

  Mazda was torn out of orbit and yanked away from Sun.

  Action Phase Ultima

  LEVELS OF CONFLICT

  Part Eight

  LAIR OF THE DRAGON

  23

  The vicious tractor-beam had caught the Mazda-cylinder sidewise, tearing four of us out of our safety belts and slamming us against the rotating shell; afterward we suffered repetitious punishment, being pulled away from the shell as we rotated sunwise, then jammed back against the shell as we rotated pullwise. We had been beaten senseless by the time when (later we were told) the avalanche-current relaxed—leaving Mazda outbound at freefall velocity of 316,120 kilometers per hour, already 79,000 kilometers outside her orbit.

  Collins, not seriously shaken—just in time he had stabilized himself at the no-grav cylinder axis—recognized the stoppage of pull, comprehended why the stoppage, and understood that his paramedical training would be seriously needed for the first time on this voyage. Our space-displacement at five g’s acceleration had occupied thirty minutes, insupportable if anyone had been torn loose from restraints and slammed against the hull. It was enough to kill; had it killed?

  Obviously the control room had top priority. Not bothering to hit the shell, Collins floated first to the tube through the sleep-cubicles and dove into his own to get his medical kit; then out of his cubicle he extruded himself, and he Ariel-flew forward.

  We three occupants were inert at three tertiants of the shell. Cool Collins went to Sven first as a matter of duty-priority; Sven seemed to have no bones broken, and his vital signs argued against significant concussion; so Collins applied good old-fashioned smelling salts, and Sven came around orgasmically, demanding: “What? what?” Said Collins, tersely:

  “Look to yourself, I will look to the others. We got snatched in the Dhorner pull-beam, but they have stabilized us for distant examination. You may want to cut spin and change your ship’s attitude in order to inspect them. Excuse me while I see to Doctor Cavell.”

  He came to me and (according to Sven) unemotionally felt over my body. Two ribs were broken—one of them in two places, so that a lung puncture was threatened. No evidence of serious concussion. His treatment of me was different from how he had treated Sven: he gave me a shot which mingled stimulus with tranquilization; so that I opened my eyes and knew my pain but didn’t care and didn’t move. Sven had cut grav, so the next task was eased: peeling back my suit and removing my bra, he strapped my chest with tender expertise, redressed me, and went to Wel.

  Here again, no worrisome concussion; here no rib-fracture, but an arm and a leg were compoundly fractured. Wel got a heavy sedative; Collins cut into the arm and the leg, rearranged fragments, drove in pins, closed, bandaged, applied casts, and left Wel to awaken when he would.

  Whipping aft, Collins found Bill all entangled with his polyfilter holoscope; with him it was three simple rib fractures and a dislocated shoulder. How does a mere paramedic resocket a. shoulder when three ribs are broken? Having first taped the ribs, Collins opened the shoulder, thumb-levered the ball into the socket, closed, bandaged; whereafter like an ant end-dragging a caterpillar, gently he drew Bill along the nogravity axis until they were in the control room with us.

  Collins then rested. My body and Wel's were floating, more or less together, but the Collins sense of our Dhomer raptors was such that he didn’t think we were threatened by another violent pull, so he left it there. Collins himself Was normally apprehensive but not acutely alarmed.

  He floated to Sven, who now, not entirely reintegrated, had used power to change ship’s attitude and was peering through the forward window, absurdly vision-seeking the enemy. Collins joined him in the adjacent chair, not bothering to strap himself in—he was one who could keep himself from floating away. '

  “What are you seeing?” Collins queried.

  “Nothing at all, a million kilometers off. Thanks for patching us up. How are the others?”

  ‘Treated and floating; nothing serious except what you can guess from the bandages, and I have to keep watch on a double-fractured segment of a Cavell rib. Please be careful what duty you give them.”

  “For sure, if I am ever again able to give them any duty. How about yourself?”

  “No damage, thank you.”

  “How come?”

  “I have ways.”

  “Yes, I know, finally. God am I glad we took you on!” “Thank you, sir. Here come Doctors Carr and Cavell.”

  Wel and I, achieving simultaneous orientation, had gropingly gripped hands; now we were freefall-swimming toward Sven and Collins, helping each other. I was finding it difficult to writhe properly; Wel was discovering that his two casts were throwing his inertial habits off. Collins hurried to me: ‘Take it easy, Doctor Cavell? you have a floating piece of rib; here, let me help you.” Sven was with him, and they got me to my duty-chair and strapped me in, while Wel with balance problems was finding his.

  We all sat panting.

  Said Wel presently: “I take it we got caught in the bulge-wind.”

  “Right,” said Sven.

  “Pulled by the Dhomers?”

  “Inadvertently, yes.”

  “Situation?”

  “Outbound in fast freefall. Being Dhomer-inspected, says Collins.”

  “Have you looked them over, Sven?”

  “At this distance, what’s to see?”

  “I mean, on my control video.”

  Sven fisted his forehead: “My, my, who picked me for captain?” He departed his chair to peer over Wel's shoulder while Wel fiddled with the controls; I was watching with profound approval—of Wel.

  “Here they are,” Wel announced. “Jesus, Christ! Look at that magnitude indicator: definitely the thing does have a nineteen-kilometer wingspread!”

  Speaking mainly with my throat-muscles to minimize chest-movement, I squeezed out: “The snatch-trauma may have loused up your scaler.”

  Having done
a few cross-checks, Wel told me: “Not so. It’s that big. Collins, what comes next, do you think?” I had a distinct sense that Sven was nettled because Wel had questioned Collins, not Captain Sven.

  “They are getting ready to draw us in,” Collins told us. “For the sake of three patients, I hope the g’s will be low—”

  We braced ourselves for acceleration.' After five braced minutes, frowning Sven bit: “When will they yank us, Collins?”

  The Collins face was puzzled. Presently he answered: “For some reason, they have decided not to do so—”

  “Sweet creatures!” I beamed, relaxing in full faith. “Look, already we’re coasting toward them at a third of a million kph; they figure they can wait a little over three hours, giving us a bit of gentle help as the sun slows our coasting. Or maybe they’ll wait four hours, no? and give us no help at all; so we’ll ease in upon them at greatly reduced velocity, and they can slow us gently to a halt. Sven, they are loves! and after all that fifteen-megaton banging-around you handed them—”

  Said Collins low: “Evidently they have scanned us thoroughly. They know we have injuries. They don’t want to hurt us any more.”