Timemaster Page 4
"You four go have fun," said Philippe. "I've got to stay here and run a base." He put on his helmet and went back out the airlock.
Bob lifted the flitter on its jets and took off toward a distant rock still invisible out in the black void around them. After a short trip, they came to rest some distance from the small asteroid. Next to it, floating in space, was a small nest of waving silvery wires. It was the Silverhair.
"When we first found it, it was a lot bigger," said Bob. "It was almost as large as that asteroid it had been eating."
"Now that we've set up daily visits to it," said Siritha, "it has stopped eating the asteroid and just waits until we come to feed it. That indicates it has a reasonable amount of memory and intelligence, and can engage in long-range planning."
Bob helped Siritha don her outeralls, helmet, and pack harness that included a jetpack, and soon she was shooting off from the airlock toward the Silverhair. In one tiny gauntleted hand she held a plasma torch, powered by a battery module jury-rigged to the jetpack.
The minute Siritha started toward the Silverhair it seemed to grow. The threads grew longer and reached out in a large circular fan shape toward the tiny trainer, as if wanting to take her into their silver embrace. Siritha slowed slightly, but continued on, unafraid of the gigantic beast that was now almost twenty meters from tip to tip.
"It can obviously see you," said Randy through her suit links. "But I don't see any eyes."
"I believe the individual threads are sensitive to light," replied Siritha. "I have seen one twirl itself around a piece of trash that had come loose from my boot treads, as if it were 'looking' at it."
"It's that amazing growth in size we don't understand," said Kip. "We've been thinking it must have a dense core and it grows these long silver strings when it's feeding."
"I brought along a Forward Mass Analyzer on this trip so we can measure not only its mass, but its mass distribution," said Bob.
"Good idea," said Randy. "Do it."
Bob started tapping the control screen. "I'll set it for a large scan radius," he said, "to keep the sensing elements far away from those threads."
He switched on the intersuit radio and called to Siritha outside. "Come on back, skinny but beautiful. You may not weigh much, but you might louse up our mass measurement."
While Bob was talking, there was a rumbling from the rear of the spacecraft, and a launching arm reached out from a cargo pod and set a rotating package out into space next to them. Bob backed the spacecraft away in the general direction of Siritha. Once she was aboard, and the spacecraft was at a safe distance, he tapped his finger on the screen. A small jet started the package moving slowly toward the distant Silverhair, which was slowly contracting its large fan shape as it realized Siritha had left. The rotating package separated into six smaller packages connected together by long tethers to form a large spinning ring.
"Let's see," said Bob thoughtfully, punching data into the screen. "Got to put in the mass and position of the spacecraft so the computer can separate its gravity field from that of the Silverhair. Same for the asteroid. The mass analyzer can measure the asteroid shape and position accurately with its imager, but we'll leave its mass an unknown to be solved for." Randy and Kip came forward to look at the screen over Bob's shoulder, while Siritha watched with concern out the forward porthole as the mass analyzer came closer to the still-contracting Silverhair.
The rotating ring passed around the body of the Silverhair, the six gravity gradient sensors tracing out a spiral pattern in space. The pattern was repeated on Bob's console screen, and in the center, a three-dimensional map of the mass distribution of the Silverhair was building up.
"Basically a fan-shaped mass distribution, with most of the mass concentrated in a core somewhat off from the center," said Bob as the sensors continued their spiral pattern.
As the ring of sensors passed the Silverhair and the amplitude of the data started to decrease, the console beeped and a large red message appeared at the bottom of the display.
ANALYSIS ERROR!
"Hmmm," said Bob, reading the display. "The analysis program has given part of the Silverhair mass distribution a negative mass!"
"Must be something wrong with the program," said Kip disgustedly.
"The asteroid is totaling out at roughly sixty thousand tons, while the Silverhair has a net mass near zero. That's funny enough by itself, but the Silverhair seems to have a small, dense core off to one side, with a positive mass of four hundred and twenty-three tons, while the fan-shaped body structure that we see has a negative mass of minus four hundred and twenty-three tons," said Bob.
"Run the sensor package over the asteroid," Randy suggested. "If there's some bug in the program, it should give the asteroid a negative mass, too."
"Good idea, boss-man," said Bob, punching the console screen. The ring of six sensors sped up their rotation as they came together into a single package again. Bob jockeyed the package around until it was headed for the potato-shaped asteroid. The six sensors spread out into a ring again and passed slowly over the rock.
"Looks like a normal mass-distribution analysis," said Bob as he watched the data build up again on his display. "Most of the asteroid is dirt, except for that nickel-iron knob the Silverhair was feeding on."
"There's no error message this time," remarked Randy.
"Total mass for the asteroid is six thousand three hundred twenty-three tons ... positive," said Bob.
"What was the estimate for the Silverhair this time?" asked Kip. Bob punched the screen and the data came up, but there was an error message attached to it.
"The mass estimates for objects outside the scanned region are subject to a lot of error," said Bob. "The Silverhair still nets out to near-zero mass, but now the central core is only plus one hundred ninety tons while the body is minus one hundred ninety tons."
"That's considerably less than the first measurement," said Randy.
"That's because it's been shrinking," Siritha said from the window.
"That doesn't make sense!" Kip blurted.
"Neither does negative matter," said Randy. "But there it is."
"Negative or not, matter has to be conserved," insisted Kip. "If the mass isn't here, then it has to go somewhere. Maybe it's evaporating into space and shrinking that way."
"I don't think so," said Siritha. "The Silverhair is always small when I come to dance with it, but then it grows very large when I feed it. It can't grow by 'un-evaporating'. I'll go out to dance with it again, and you can take another measurement after it gets bigger again." As she suited up, she took a petarom chip-cartridge out of her chestpack. "I'm tired of this music," she said to Bob. "Do you have any chips with waltzes?"
"You've got to be kidding, brown-eyes," Bob said. "All my audio chips are heavy-metal rock."
Siritha looked around at the others. "Anybody have any chips with music you can dance to?"
"Sorry ... opera," said Kip.
"Language lessons," said Randy.
"Well, I guess I'm stuck with this," she said, putting the cartridge back in her chestpack.
"Wait, babe," said Bob, turning to the console. "I'm sure the ship's library files have what you want. You just go out there and I'll broadcast it to you."
"Great!" said Siritha, giving him a dazzling smile. She put on her helmet and headed for the airlock. "Find some nice slow waltzes. This jetpack has a pretty slow response speed."
"Waltz ... slow ..." muttered Bob as he punched at his console.
Soon Siritha was making her way with her jetpack toward the Silverhair, swaying slightly to and fro to the strains of the "Blue Danube Waltz" being beamed in her direction by the ship's radio antenna. She watched the creature carefully as she approached. Then, sensing something different in its waving motion, she came to an abrupt halt and held herself perfectly still. Ahead of her, the Silverhair was growing in anticipation of her arrival, and as it grew, the silvery hairs were swaying gracefully in wide arcs that grew larger an
d larger. But even though she was now motionless, and supplying no dance cues to the Silverhair, its threads were waving in perfect time with the music coming by radio from the distant prospector spacecraft.
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"Bob," Siritha called quietly over the intercom, her voice low so as not to overpower the music.
"What is it, beautiful?" Bob replied.
"Turn off the music for a few seconds, then turn it back on."
"Want me to find you some other tune?"
"No," said Siritha. "Just turn it off, then turn it on, but watch the Silverhair as you do it."
"OK," said Bob, interest peaking in his voice. He turned to Randy and Kip. "She says to watch the Silverhair." They looked out the port at the swaying flood of silver threads.
Bob turned off the music. Off in the distance, the coordinated swaying of the Silverhair soon became random, then stopped. Bob started the music again, and the swaying resumed, exactly in time to the music, although Siritha was still holding herself motionless.
"It's detecting the radio signals somehow!" exclaimed Randy in an excited voice. "Now we have a method of talking with it!"
"Try saying something to it over your radio link, Siritha," suggested Kip.
"I'd better feed it first," replied Siritha, starting toward the Silverhair once again. "It's expecting that. But I'll stop midmeal and try to teach it some words."
"I've got the mass analyzer on the way, curly-top," said Bob. "How much do you weigh? I want the mass analyzer program to ignore you ... not that I ever would."
"Seventy-five kilos," replied Siritha. "With suit," she added. "Probably better add another twenty-five for the jetpack. Its tanks are pretty full."
The spiraling ring of mass detectors passed around Siritha and the feeding Silverhair as they danced together to the music.
"The error message is still coming up, Mr. Boss, sir," said Bob as he watched the screen. "But the program must be OK, because it shows three masses, one a positive ninety-six kilograms at Siritha's position, and at the Silverhair's position a dense core of a positive eight hundred and thirty tons surrounded by a fan-shaped blob massing a negative eight hundred and thirty tons."
"So the outer portion of the Silverhair's body is made of negative matter," said Kip in disbelief.
"And it seems to be able to change its mass at will," added Bob.
"Negative matter ..." mused Randy. "I remember reading an article about negative matter years ago in Astronomy magazine." He looked back at Bob. "Does this ship have the standard reference library chips?"
"The Library of Congress, all the major universities of the world, the International Patent Registry, and every magazine that's ever gotten near a scanner," said Bob. "Never know when you might need to know something to bring you back alive."
"I'm going to look up something," said Randy, heading for the console in the engineering section.
"I could recommend a good magazine if you're randy, Randy," said Bob over his shoulder. "The text is in Chinese, but the pictures of the chink chicks are something else."
"IT'S STARTING to slow its feeding," said Siritha. "Time for a language lesson. Turn off the music, Bob."
"Gotcha, sweetheart," said Bob, tapping his console screen. As the music died, the swaying stopped, and Siritha backed away from the now gigantic fan of fine, silvery tendrils.
"I Siritha," she said, pointing to herself. There was no reply.
"My wideband distress-call monitor showed some static," said Bob. "Try 'all channels' and see if you get anything."
Siritha's fingers flickered over her chestpack and changed her receiver settings. A loud hiss of static now filled her helmet, and she had to turn down the volume.
"Sir-i-tha," she said again, pointing to herself. There was a temporary increase in the level of static, but that was all.
"This is going to take a long time," said Siritha with a sigh. She pointed to herself again.
"Sir-i-tha," she said.
"I'VE FOUND it!" said Randy from the engineering console.
"What is it, top-man?" asked Bob.
"It was in an article on space warps," said Randy. "It described a new kind of space warp that didn't involve black holes. Basically, it's a wormhole or tunnel in space held open by force fields."
"What kind of force field?" asked Kip.
"Well, most of the support can come from electric or magnetic fields," said Randy. "But they're not adequate to hold open the throat of the wormhole where the contracting forces are the greatest. For that region you need something that has negative energy density." Randy paused for effect. "In other words, something that has negative mass!"
"And the Silverhair's body seems to have negative mass," said Kip.
"There's more," said Randy. "According to the article, if you pass a charge or a mass through the space warp, the electric or gravity fields get threaded through the wormhole throat. That means that if a negative mass passes through the wormhole, the input mouth develops a negative gravity field, while the output mouth develops a positive gravity field. That must be the positive mass near the center of the Silverhair that we can detect with the mass analyzer."
"So Silverlocks has a hole it can duck into," said Bob. "No wonder its mass can change. It's going somewhere else."
"I'm getting nowhere," called Siritha. "I'm coming in." She jetted away from the Silverhair and back toward the ship. Off in the distance, the tendrils of the Silverhair rippled randomly back and forth as it slowly shrank in size.
"Time to give the Silverhair a rest and let it digest its food," said Siritha. "And way past time for us to have some dinner and climb into our bedsacks. We have a busy day tomorrow."
THE FOLLOWING day, when Bob, Kip, Siritha, and Randy approached the point in space where the Silverhair waited, they could see a crew of people outside in space suits with various instruments. One of the crew was dancing with the Silverhair and feeding it from a plasma gun.
"That's Hiroshi Tanaka. He don't dance near as pretty as you, skinny-butt," said Bob, patting Siritha on her tightsuited rear. She slapped his hand away and headed for the outerall rack.
"I hope he hasn't fed it too much," said Siritha. "It won't pay attention to its language lessons if it's too full."
Bob carefully checked Siritha's suit indicators and jetpack, while Kip cycled the airlock. As Siritha moved away from the prospector ship, the radio waves carrying the "Blue Danube Waltz" drifted once again over the ether. Randy, Kip, and Bob watched as Siritha approached the Silverhair on the opposite side from where Hiroshi was dancing with it.
The portion of the Silverhair closest to Hiroshi had flattened out into a gigantic circular fan that waved slowly back and forth to feed on the iron atoms being emitted by the plasma generator Hiroshi was waving. The portion of the Silverhair closest to Siritha was in its normal spherical shape, looking like a silver dandelion gone to seed.
For a while, the Silverhair ignored the music and the approaching form of Siritha. She noticed the lack of response and added that fact to the other facts about the alien she had been collecting.
"Too busy feeding to notice either me or the music," she said to herself. "It must be so dumb it can't think of two things at the same time."
Slowly the portion of the Silverhair closest to Siritha started to wave in time to the waltz music. Gradually, more and more tendrils joined in the motion, and grew into a gigantic waving fan that reached out toward Siritha as she approached. Hiroshi, seeing that Siritha was coming to take over, started to back away. The tendrils on that side attempted to follow him, feeding on the iron atoms still coming from his plasma generator.
Through the radio static on the intersuit link, they could hear the alien-sounding melodic voice as it called out over the airwaves.
ntinued to follow the retreating Hiroshi.
"It's calling me!" squealed Siritha in delight as she was nearly enveloped by the approaching fan of silvery hairs.
"Ohmygosh, look!" exclaimed Randy, pointing to a growing segment of empty space between the two fans of silver tendrils. "The Silverhair has split in two!"
Randy turned to the pilot. "Bob," he said, "ask Hiroshi to look at the space between the two Silverhairs and report if he sees anything strange ... but tell him not to get near. It might be dangerous."
"Hey, Hiroshi," called Bob into the intersuit radio link. "The boss-man wants you to look between those two hairy balls and report what you see ... and that's not supposed to be a dirty joke. Keep well off, though. There might be a warp region between them."
Hiroshi's jetpack fired and he drifted around his Silverhair toward Siritha and the other Silverhair. He pulled a rescue lanyard with a weighted hook out of his chestpack, tossed the "come-to-me" into the region between the two Silverhairs, and pulled it back through again with a jerk that formed loops of line that covered most of the region.
"Nothing strange happening," reported Hiroshi.
"Stay away anyway," said Randy. "We'll take a better look it it with instruments later." Bob watched the small, youthful ace of his boss twitch as Randy's brain raced furiously.
"I need a pole," said Randy. "A long one."
"Fresh out of ten-foot poles," said Bob. "Planning on touching something? Don't forget the Silverhairs don't like being touched."
"I'm counting on that," said Randy. "I need something long and fairly stiff ... I've got it! Do you have a tape measure?"
"There's a ten-meter one in the tool cabinet," said Kip, heading for the rear of the ship.
"Great!" said Randy. "Help me get suited up."
A SHORT while later, the diminutive figure of Siritha was joined by the even more diminutive figure of Randy. Kip, having delivered Randy to the vicinity of the Silverhair with his jetpack, pulled back. Randy pulled out the curved metal tape until it was a few meters long. With no gravity, it didn't bend, but stayed in a nearly straight line.