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Timemaster Page 5


  "Grab my feet and push me as close to the Silverhair as is safe," he said to Siritha. As she took his boots and pushed him slowly toward the fanned-out Silverhair, he spoke again over the intersuit radio link.

  "Hiroshi and Kip!" he called. "Go to opposite sides of the other Silverhair and let me know if you see anything strange."

  Siritha had steered her boss as close to the Silverhair as she dared. Randy fed the end of the tape measure slowly toward the alien. The silvery tendrils pulled away to avoid contact.

  "Be careful, Mr. Hunter," Siritha cautioned. "We don't want to hurt the Silverhair."

  "I'll go slowly," said Randy. "Got my thumb on the automatic rewind in case there's a problem."

  Randy pushed the end of the tape deep into the hairy center of the Silverhair. The body of the Silverhair, avoiding contact, formed a deep cavity around the penetrating sliver of metal. Randy used his other hand to push out meter after meter of tape and feed it into the center of the giant alien.

  "Something's happening!" said Kip with excitement. "Some of the threads are pulling apart. There's a hole developing ... I can see the end of the tape measure coming out!"

  "That's enough for now," said Randy, activating the automatic rewind but using his gloved fingers to keep the tape under smooth control. As soon as the end of the tape could be seen, Siritha activated her jets and pulled her boss well back from the Silverhair. Kip and Hiroshi jetted over to join them.

  "How far apart would you say those two Silverhairs are?" asked Randy. "Twenty meters?"

  "Thirty, at least," said Kip, gauging the distance.

  "I agree," said Hiroshi.

  Randy held up the tape measure. "Less than ten meters," he said, "... on the inside."

  came the plaintive call from the nearer Silverhair.

  "The poor thing is hungry after all that effort," said Siritha. "Turn on some music, Bob."

  "I wonder if they like hard rock?" Bob muttered as he punched the icons on his control console. Out of the radio antenna came the opening bars of the latest hit offering by the Deadly Scum—a screechingly loud, descending glissando from a virtuoso guitarist overlying the hard driving beat of a master drummer. Bob blinked in shock at the result. The Silverhairs had disappeared!

  "Where'd they go?!?" he exclaimed.

  "Bob! You bonehead!" yelled Siritha. "You scared them away!" She jetted to where the nearer Silverhair had been.

  "There's nothing here but a silver blob the size of a golf ball," she reported. "Wait! I see a single silver thread about two meters away from the blob. It's only a few centimeters long. There's something funny with one end of it. It looks like it's distorted."

  "That's probably the entrance to the space warp," said Randy. "Stay well away from it. It may be strong enough to drag you in."

  "The thread is wiggling," she reported. "Maybe we can coax it out. Turn on some music again—waltz music this time!"

  "Yes, ma'am," said Bob contritely. Shortly, the soft music of the "Blue Danube Waltz" drifted out again over the airwaves. The single silver thread started to wave and grow longer; then more threads peeked out in all directions from the single point in space. Siritha danced with the Silverhair and soon it was the same size as before. Then she went over and coaxed the other Silverhair from its hole in space. There was no blob near this one.

  The silver golf ball floated by itself, showing no signs of life despite the music and Siritha's dancing presence. The Silverhairs ignored it, and in fact seemed to move away as they grew so as to avoid contact with it. Siritha fed the Silverhair some more iron molecules from the plasma gun.

  Kip was watching the performance thoughtfully. "Bob was right. What we see of the Silverhairs is only a small portion of the total animal. Most of their body must be hidden away in the wormhole, like an octopus backed into an amphora in a Mediterranean shipwreck. Only the feeding tentacles come outside, while the bulk of the body is somewhere else in space, reaching through the wormhole to this point in space where there's food."

  Once the Silverhairs were back to normal size, Siritha waved good-bye to them and headed back toward the ship.

  "It's been a long day," she said as she took off her helmet. "Let's head for Hygiea."

  "I want to find out what that silver ball is!" said Randy.

  "We really ought to be going back, boss," said Bob. "The zero-gee toilet in this tub doesn't always do what it's supposed to."

  "Hmmm ..." Randy considered his options. "I'll have Philippe come out with another crew."

  Chapter 3

  Return to Rose

  THE NEXT day, Philippe gave Randy a briefing on what the engineers had found out about the silver ball the Silverhairs had generated. Jim Meriweather was there too, arm still in a cast. The three of them floated around a conference table, fingertips keeping them levitated at the same height in Hygiea's low gravity.

  "The silver ball seems to be made of the same material as the Silverhair, but it's not alive and it doesn't seem to have any connection to a wormhole," reported Philippe. "It has a negative mass of about ten tons, which gives it an approximate density of a ton per cubic centimeter."

  "Certainly not normal material," said Randy. "That's a much higher density than anything previously known."

  "It also has a very high electrical charge," said Philippe.

  "As it would have to ..." said Jim Meriweather.

  "What do you mean by that?" asked Randy, puzzled.

  "Since this cast keeps me out of a tightsuit, I've been spending my time talking with some physics experts on Earth about the Silverhair," said Jim.

  Randy looked perturbed. "I was trying to keep the Silverhair secret!" he said sternly. "Have you been blabbing about its existence to a bunch of academics? They can't keep secrets."

  "I've only talked to Reinhold employees," Jim assured him. "And made them understand it was company-confidential," he added. "Everyone said the same thing—'Talk to Steve Wisneski.' So I did."

  Randy knew Steve Wisneski well. He was a bright and brash theoretical Ph.D. at the Reinhold Research Laboratories. "What did Steve have to say?" he asked.

  " 'You're crazy. There's no such thing as negative matter.' "

  "That's Steve, all right," said Randy. "Then what did he say?"

  "After I gave him all the facts and showed him some video segments, he conceded that maybe negative matter could exist after all. What really convinced him was the description of my injury, where the cut edges looked like a thin sliver of material had been evaporated."

  "Why is that?" asked Randy.

  "Well, as Steve explains it, according to one theory, when negative matter touches normal matter, equal amounts vanish—nothing is left, not even energy. The process is called nullification. It's like the annihilation of matter by antimatter, but in the nullification process, since the normal matter has positive rest mass and the negmatter has negative rest mass, the net rest mass is zero, so zero energy is released. That's why we didn't notice any radiation when the Silverhair and I collided."

  "What else did Steve have to say?" asked Randy.

  "He told us to look for electric or magnetic fields around the Silverhair and the ball," said Jim. "Negative-matter particles repel each other gravitationally, so they would normally tend to spread far apart from each other. But since the negative-matter particles in the Silverhair and the ball are jammed together at high density, there must be some other force field involved that holds them together."

  Philippe spoke up. "Hiroshi found a very strong positive electric field associated with both the ball and the Silverhair. It's as if the material were all made of particles with the same charge."

  "Normally, particles of the same charge would repel each other and be pushed apart," said Jim. "But according to Steve, when you attempt to repel a negative-matter particle, it responds in a perverse manner and comes toward you."

  "That explains one thing," said Randy. "Siritha noticed some static-cling effects of space dust on her helmet. But the
re was nothing large—no lightning bolts."

  "Both the Silverhair and the ball rapidly develop a cloud of orbiting electrons around them," said Philippe. "They must attract the negative electrons from the plasma in space while repelling the positive ions. The negative electric charge of the electron cloud cancels out the positive electric charge of the negative matter, unless, of course, you get inside the orbiting cloud of electrons and very close to the surface of the negative matter. Hiroshi got some good measurements of the electric field around the ball by enclosing it in a plastic container, sweeping up all the electrons near the ball with a grounded metallic plate, then making measurements inside the container while all the interfering electrons were forced to stay outside the container. We then did some experiments on the ball."

  "What kind of experiments?" asked Randy, looking intently at Philippe.

  "Since the ball is charged," Philippe answered, "it's easy to push it by charging up a metal plate placed near it. Of course, being negative matter, when you push it, it comes toward you."

  "That can get dangerous," said Jim, holding up his cast. "If it gets too close, you get nullified."

  "In the experiment Hiroshi did," Philippe went on, "he used a metal plate with a negative electric charge so it would attract the positive electric charge of the ball. The ball pulled away in the opposite direction, pulling the test apparatus, the power supply, and Hiroshi along with it. When Hiroshi saw what was happening, he quickly turned the field off. He then had to reverse the field and push on the ball for a while to bring it to a halt again."

  "It was just as Steve predicted," said Jim in awe. "A true reactionless space drive."

  "A space drive?" exclaimed Randy in amazement.

  "That is correct," said Philippe, his voice deepening as his face turned deadly serious. "When that ball of negative matter was pulling Hiroshi and his test apparatus along, there was nothing going in the opposite direction. There was no reaction mass and no energy source involved, but they moved nevertheless. That means a large enough negative-matter ball electrostatically coupled to a positive-matter spacecraft can propel the spacecraft at any acceleration the crew can stand for as long as you want. Flight to the stars at near light speed is no longer a dream ..."

  When the enormity of the finding hit Randy, a broad smile spread across his face. An interstellar space drive! He had dreamed of exploring the stars and now his dream could come true! He leaned forward over the table, eyes on Philippe.

  "What are the limitations?" he asked, knowing there must be some.

  "The mass of the negative matter must be exactly equal and opposite to the positive mass of the spacecraft," said Philippe. "If it isn't, then the separation distance between the mass and the spacecraft will change with time. If it gets too close, you risk nullification. If it gets too far away, you risk losing it."

  "You have to control the mass of one or the other, then," mused Randy. "Not easy." He thought some more. "Didn't you say the silver ball has a mass of ten tons?"

  "Yes," said Philippe. "A negative ten tons."

  "Then that one ball can drive a ten-ton spacecraft. Do you think you could arrange for a demonstration using one of the prospector flitters? They mass around ten tons."

  "Perhaps," said Philippe, thinking. His finger rose to feel the mustache under his nose, then followed it across his face and up over his ear as he thought further about the idea. "Yes," he said finally.

  "Do it!" said Randy. "I'm going to get some breakfast and then go back out to see the Silverhair. I wonder if Bob can get it to lay more of those silver eggs."

  "Careful," warned Philippe. "Don't kill the goose ..."

  A WEEK later, Philippe took Randy to the hangar cavity on the other side of Hygiea.

  "We've installed the negmatter drive in the hold," said Philippe, leading the way as he and Randy floated in through the cargo door in their space suits. "Right at the center-of-mass of the ship."

  In the center of the cargo bay was a large, cubical metal box nearly twice as tall as Randy. Surrounding the box were some large power supplies. A technician was tying up some stray wires.

  "Is the negmatter ball in there?" asked Randy.

  "Ready to go," said Philippe. "All six high-voltage supplies are operating and pushing on the ball equally from all directions. In the control room is a three-axis maglev joyball just like the ones that are used in the drop capsules on the rotovators. You push the ball forward, the fore and aft power supplies change their voltages, the negmatter ball gets pushed in the backward direction, and it responds by moving in the forward direction, pushing the spacecraft ahead of it. If you want to go sideways or vertically, just move the ball in that direction and the power supplies for those axes will respond."

  "How simple!" exclaimed Randy. "I'd like to try it out!"

  "I'll call Bob Pilcher and have him come out from the base to pilot it for you," said Philippe.

  "Call Bob out in case there's a problem," said Randy. "But I'm going to be the test pilot for this first run myself."

  "But, Mr. Hunter ..." Philippe began; then, seeing the determined look in his young boss's eyes, he stopped. After all. Randy was an accomplished airplane pilot and often flew the Reinhold company jet himself.

  "Yes, sir, Mr. Hunter," he said.

  BOB AND Randy entered the control room of the modified prospector's ship through the airlock and took off their outeralls. There was someone already there, sitting at the engineering console behind the flight deck.

  "Mr. Fixit himself," said Bob, when he saw who it was. He floated toward the pilot seat.

  "Good day, Mr. Hunter. I am Hiroshi Tanaka," said the small young man. He rose from his chair, but kept his toes hooked underneath the seat so he could push himself forward in free-fall to shake hands. "Dr. Laurin assigned me to be your engineer for this test flight."

  "Do you know the negmatter drive system well?" asked Randy.

  "I have some familiarity with it, Mr. Hunter," replied Hiroshi.

  "Don't let sushi-breath feed you that humble stuff, top-boss," said Bob over his shoulder as he buckled himself in and checked out the console. "He designed, built, and tested it. He may be a lousy dancer, but he's the best engineer I've ever seen."

  "Everything is ready for the test flight," said Hiroshi, as if he had not heard Bob.

  With Bob buckled into the pilot seat with the standard spacecraft controls in front of him, his eyes glued to the acceleration indicators, and his hands ready to move if there were problems, Randy sat in the copilot seat and put his hand into the special negmatter controller box. His fingers closed gently around the silvery superconducting ball floating in the center of the box in its invisible net of magnetic fields.

  "How many gees can it do?" asked Randy.

  "I designed it for one gee," said Hiroshi. "But until we have established all the operational parameters, I have set the acceleration limiters to a tenth-gee."

  "Good enough," said Randy. Carefully he pushed the silvery joyball forward a tiny amount and kept it there. Nothing seemed to happen.

  "Two-hundredths of a gee," announced Bob Pilcher from the pilot seat. After a number of seconds he read, "One meter per second velocity and increasing."

  "Good," said Randy. "The control motion was perceptible and the feedback push was detectable. I assume the response is logarithmic?"

  "Yes," said Hiroshi.

  "We're now at three meters per second," reported Bob.

  "I'll want to try all three axes before taking off in earnest," said Randy, pulling the joyball directly backward to bring them to a rapid halt. For the next few minutes, the three were pulled this way and that in their seat belts as Randy got a feel for the controls. Finally, he was ready.

  "Off we go!" said Randy. He pushed the silver joyball slowly forward until he hit the limits of the controls.

  "One-tenth gee," Bob announced. Their velocity slowly built up over the minutes as they pulled away from Hygiea Base.

  "Don't want to get out of sigh
t of the base," said Randy, as he pulled the joyball to one side to bring them around in a large circle.

  "We're going sideways!" he complained.

  "With only one ball of negmatter, I was unable to obtain any torque control," said Hiroshi.

  "I'll fix that," said Bob, firing some attitude rockets and turning the ship around so that it faced in the direction it was traveling. "You just do what you want with the drive controls, boy-boss, and granddaddy Bob will follow your every move and keep us lined up with the straight and narrow."

  After Randy and Bob had completed a few more practice turns, a warning chime came from the engineering console in front of Hiroshi. Randy instinctively pulled back on the joyball until they were once again in free-fall.

  "Is there a problem?" he asked apprehensively.

  "The ball of negative matter is starting to drift away from the center of the drive control box," reported Hiroshi. "As Bob uses fuel to control our orientation, the mass of the spacecraft slowly decreases."

  "Too bad we can't control the mass of the ship," said Randy.

  "There is a way to do that," said Hiroshi. "But I didn't include that feature in this first design."

  "In that case," said Randy, pushing forward on the controls again, "let's head for base and rework the drive. I want to go back to Earth in style!"

  A FEW weeks later, Randy reboarded the prospector ship. Philippe was with him, waiting for the airlock to cycle.

  "Both Bob and Hiroshi were near the end of their tours," said Philippe. "So I have arranged for them to travel home with you."

  "I can do it myself," said Randy, slightly annoyed at being patronized.

  "Including fixing the negmatter drive if something goes wrong?" chided Philippe gently.

  "You're right," admitted Randy.

  "Hiroshi's new six-degree-of-freedom negmatter drive is pretty complicated," said Philippe. "It has linear drive and torque control in all three axes. For control of the ship's mass, the hull is covered with activated metal foam that absorbs and holds on to any gas or dust that strikes it. With a constant flow of positive matter coming in, we can afford to shoot propellant out from ion engines to provide mass trim and drag makeup."