Superluminary

by perpetrator

  Lord Jupiter had been frowning in his golden beard. He looked up to see the single lens in the featureless helmet of Lord Pluto turned toward him, and started. “Sorry, what? I heard my name come up. Solution, yes, I suppose. My servominds are still combing through the math. Who understands their weird thoughts? But in theory—”

  Aeneas said, “Lord Jupiter, no time for theory. I am turning the war department over to you. Call on any resources you need.”

  Lord Jupiter laughed a hearty laugh, clearly pleased, as thousands of machines, as well as teams and schools of men in high-speed timewarp chambers and high-speed timewarp moons, all made links with his mind. He imagined what he wanted done, and saw it being done.

  He smiled in his golden beard. “I can explain easily enough while doing. See those solar flares? Convection current is what creates the sunspots and coronal loops. It is all done magnetically! I don’t need any resources.”

  Lady Venus said, “What do you mean, brother? Our whole civilization cannot possibly have enough energy to erect an energy field to pry open a volume of plasma eight million miles in radius reaching two hundred million miles below the photosphere!”

  Jupiter smiled his avuncular smile. “Father never showed me how to reach the information layer or the memory layer of the cosmos, but there is an instruction layer above them which gives the orientation to photons. This layer coordinates the Lorentz contractions between observers and keeps the speed of light constant. How else can a photon passing through one of two slits cooperate with its brother photons to go its right place in an interference pattern? Or get photons to follow Fermat’s path of least time for a medium they only just are entering?”

  Aeneas said, “I have not yet ordered all of us to swap our secrets, uncle. You need not explain at length.”

  Jupiter, despite his blustery appearance, was a subtle man. He understood the implication. Instead of whatever he had been about to say, he said only, “My science is to counterfeit the instruction layer for photons. The energy required is minimal. Like a judo throw, I use the field’s own strength against itself. The greater the energy field being manipulated, the easier it is to manipulate.”

  Lady Luna said, “So, all this time, when you claimed to have one hundred interplanetary strength beam weapons, and we all scrambled to build interplanetary beams of our own — ” The young redheaded cousin of Aeneas seemed to have trouble retaining her composure. Her eyes flashed and her bosom heaved with anger.

  Jupiter spread his hands, “A trick. I encouraged an arms race. I have the ability to seize control of any electromagnetic beam you might fire, so I wanted you to build a lots. My arsenal consists of a device small enough to embed in a finger ring, which lets me talk to lighting.”

  Lady Venus said, “Have you ever actually done this before, brother? Driven a tube of empty space into the heart of Sol, for example?”

  “Of course not!” roared Jupiter in a joyful, if manic, voice. “Why would I ever drive a tunnel into Sol? First time for everything!”

  Lady Venus shook her head wearily, and all the thought-ports and mind-energy emitters in her coronet clashed like bangles. “It is the insanity of power. We are all turning into Father.”

  Jupiter grinned and winked at Aeneas. “I can hold the tunnel of solid solar fire open while the other worlds pass down the tunnel and ram into the War Dyson’s cannon mouth at the far end. What you plan after that, you tell me, lad!”

  His grin faltered a bit when he saw Aeneas looking stern.

  All the Lords of Creation, except, perhaps, for the Lords Pluto and Uranus, flinched when their rings showed them the human occupied gas giants plunge into the eye of the whirlpool of fire. This was the tunnel entrance.

  Then they were falling down a well of fire. To either side was plasma, the substance of a sun in flame, a mess of subatomic particles in an environment where the heat and pressure broke and reformed all atoms in a continual storm of nuclear fusion.

  The size of the star could not be grasped. Ninety-six billion spheres the size of Sol could have been packed inside this unthinkably huge orb, and forty billion more poured in to fill up the spaces left over between such packed spheres. The gas giants were less than dust specks in comparison.

  Even the War Dyson Spheres of the enemy, as wide in radius as the old orbit of Venus, wallowing their titanic bulk through the mudlike opaque fluid of the fiery plasma, were lost in the immensity. Five hundred or more such spheres could have been fitted inside Ara A without crowding. There were only forty.

  Yet the interior of the star was opaque. Only at the surface, where the plasma particles, no longer hemmed in, unfolded into photons, was there light.

  The channel was a slight curve, reaching from the boiling corona to the inward convection layer. The closest of the forty Dysons was somewhere before them.

  Lady Luna said, “You do have a plan, have you not, sire?”

  “How long before the Dyson can fire again?” Aeneas asked.

  Neptune answered. His signet ring displayed into their brains the images his graviton observatories had gathered of the Dyson down whose firing channel they ran. Gravitons could pass through the dense fluid of the solar interior as no electromagnetic wave could. “The Dysons are six lightminutes in radius. Even using contortion technology to render the surrounding plasma disinert, no material thing can move faster than lightspeed. So six minutes is the fastest theoretical maximum for refilling the firing chamber.”

  Aeneas said, “How would it draw the plasma into its interior?”

  Lord Jupiter answered, “Magnetic beams. A field of gravitic and kinetic force crushes the solar masses into a black hole to release the nova-amounts of energy.”

  Aeneas said to Jupiter, “Can you protect us from such beams when we drive through them?”

  “With ease. After preventing the largest star in the galaxy from collapsing on us, you think I cannot hold back a mere Dyson’s scoop engines? I should be insulted!” And Lord Jupiter roared with laughter, slapping himself on the knee, and sending his son, Lord Ganymede, for a wine goblet.

  The War Dyson loomed in the views from the observatories orbiting Neptune: a vast gray sphere with a sharply defined black dot at the center, embedded in an endless volume of star-substance. The convection swirls of solar plasma rearing and falling to each side formed endless tornadoes, each rotating oppositely from its neighbors, producing smaller whorls, hurricanes and tornados of fire.

  Like the arms of a kraken, scores of tornadoes reaching outward and upward had their feet resting on the surface of the Dyson Sphere. These were currents established by the magnetic aura of the solar-system sized engine drawing solar plasma into itself.

  The firing aperture of the War Dyson was simply a ring of magnetic engines, less than eight million miles in radius, or roughly as wide as Saturn’s outermost ring, embedded into the surface. Thus was smaller than a pinprick compared to the vast sphere beyond.

  The World Armada, along with torrents and rivers of plasma, were drawn inside by a magnetic force.

  Suddenly mankind and all its worlds and moons were inside the sphere. The inner surface was a crosshatching of hexagons and triangles, each one a lightsecond in width.

  The firing aperture was behind them, hidden in a spreading pool of plasma that entered with them and was ignited into radiance. The radiant pressure drove the disinert gas giants fleets forward ever nearer to the center of the Dyson.

  After a minute or two of travel, the erupting globe of plasma rushing in at the Dyson’s mouth was behind them, as bright and distant as a noonday sun.

  At twelve points evenly spaced about the sphere, but orbiting beneath its roof, were dark stars, carved into the shape of staring eyeballs. It would take a moment for light to travel from the World Armada to the nearest and return with an image of the eye stirring itself to wrath. The farthest would not be seen to turn toward them until a quarter an hour had passed.

  In the very center of the sphere was a hole in space, shining utte
r black in gravitic image, a reddish smear erupting with x-rays in electromagnetic images: the black hole left over from the collapse of the whole volume of plasma which once had been here into a nova.

  Lady Luna said, “The dreamlands are filled with images of hunger, despair, and hate. Mounds of corpses eating each other, famished. Pyramids of skulls, all screaming.”

  Lady Venus said, “Judging from the flow of thought-energy, there are the equivalent of six hundred million civilizations occupying the surface. All automatons. All undead.”

  Lord Uranus said, “All six hundred million are controlled by groups of master cities at the pole of the War Dyson. The masters are necroforms, but have free will.”

  Lord Neptune said, “The surface itself is an unknown, artificial material, possibly a force field dense enough to reflect light. The hull panels are disinert, and held in a latticework of neutronium.”

  Just then, the whole interior of the Dyson sphere lit up, bright with energy both kinetic and gravitic.

  Lord Mars said, “We are under attack, my lords. The compression fields lining the inside of the Dyson have been turned on. The Dyson sphere does not need to be filled with plasma for the firing mechanism to fire. All matter caught in the field is compressed to a mathematical point. The World Armada is about to be crushed. Your orders, Sire?”

  Aeneas looked from face to face once more, still scowling. He said, “Dive into the black hole.”

  The uproar of objections and expressions of shock were drown out by the shrill blast of alarms and sirens.

  31. Event Horizon

  Aeneas gave the command. Three gas giants and the remnant of a fourth, with all the lesser planets, worldlets and asteroids orbiting among their moons, leaped toward the black hole at the core of the War Dyson. The countless orbital engines of Lord Mercury removed all inertia from these bodies, so they immediately came to the maximum speed without any intervening moment of acceleration.

  At the same time, force fields of combined gravitic and kinetic energy began to radiate from each square AU of the Dyson hull. These fields could seize a sphere of solar plasma six light minutes in radius and compress it to microscopic size, and focus the resulting explosion into a coherent beam. The fields were concentric bubbles of energy, wave upon wave, rushing inward.

  The twelve dark stars here to act as gravitational shepherds were obviously not meant to be inside the zone of action when the weapon fired: the kinetic fields overtook them.

  One after another, the vast orbs of neutronium were seized. As each dark star was struck by a wall of force, and was accelerated, it lost coherence, became oblate, grew red-hot, then white-hot. Anger and terror shined from the sculpted eyes as each dark star mind realized how it had been betrayed by its masters. Cracks into which a thousand earths could have fallen with room to spare now broke open in the surface. Each dark star ignited, not into atomic fusion, as objects of ordinary matter would have done, but into exploding clouds of neutrons.

  The heat was superconducted instantly through the entire neutronium volume of each undead star, destroying the unliving servant minds housed in its crystalline core, and obliterating lesser fighting slaves occupying in the cities and emplacements of its surface. Lady Luna winced as the dream-images of their death throes were intercepted by her receivers.

  Neutrons broke into protons, electrons, and antineutrinos. The fusions and fissions of this storm of particles became an almost-solid wave of high energy cosmic rays.

  These spheres of cosmic rays expanded at the speed of light, which was swifter than the inward collapsing motion of the compression fields. Hence, before the compression field could grapple any world or moon of the human armada, the disinert bodies were instantly accelerated to the speed of the incoming particles. Like a surfer balanced on a tidal wave, the worlds of man were darted at immense velocity toward the core of the War Dyson.

  The distance from the hull of the Dyson to the core was sixty-seven million miles, roughly six light minutes.

  In this place, the inertia-free World Armada could approach the speed of light, but not exceed it, since the interior of the Dyson, after firing, was a perfect vacuum. The on-coming vast of crushing, destructive kinetic and gravity force would reach the centerpoint a moment after the World Armada, and their inertialess condition would not save them. Photons bounce disinert bodies up to full speed without any sensation of acceleration, but gravitons do not.

  Aeneas guided the course. Straight toward the deadly black hole they raced.

  Lord Jupiter dropped his wine goblet and came to his feet, roaring with questions; Lord Mercury leaped to his feet, also shouting in his high, thin voice; Lord Mars, bright red and nude save for his baldric, scabbards and holsters also came to his feet, his eyes narrowed in shock.

  The mask of Lord Uranus matched his own features beneath, but showed no expressions except what it was programmed. Yet his voice was also querulous with fear.

  Lord Pluto wore a helmet, kept his seat, and kept his silence.

  Brother Beast was already on his feet, as he had no seat at the table, but he crossed himself, dropped to his knees, and clasped his hands in prayer.

  The Ladies Ceres, Luna and Venus were too well bred to jump up or shout, but looked terrified, annoyed or bewildered, each according to her nature.

  Gray-eyed Lady Pallas altered her expression by not even an iota, but, like Aeneas, was narrowly studying the faces of her relatives at the table.

  Only Lord Neptune seemed unperturbed. His narrow, sardonic and sapphire face was grinning a small grin.

  The mingled voices drowned individual words, but the tone of panic made the message clear: the worlds of man were in the middle of a firing chamber of a star killing weapon as it was firing. Why had Aeneas ordered the Armada into a black hole, into certain death?

  Aeneas leaned back in the three-wolf-headed throne, and heaved a sigh. “A narrow escape, my lords and ladies! I was not sure if the dark stars would ignite into a sufficient number of photons to give us acceleration. Lord Mercury, your engines will continue to remove the inertia from every ship, moon, asteroid, and planet in the World Armada? Even a split second failure would be fatal.”

  Several of his uncles were shouting questions at him, but rather than raise his voice, Aeneas used the imperial override circuit in his throne to put these words directly into their minds. Being Emperor, after all, allowed him certain privileges.

  Aeneas raised his hand. The Lords fell silent, faced red with anger or pale with fear. “We have roughly six minutes, traveling a fraction below lightspeed, before we reach the center of the Dyson, where the black hole is. Shall we take a short break? The store of spirits and liquor for anyone who needs a drink to steady his nerves. Some of us seem jumpy of late. Smoke ’em if you got ’em.”

  Along with eternal youth, the biotechnology bestowed on mankind allowed all old vices to be indulged without physical harm, and new ones to be invented.

  With horror the Lords examined the information from the World Armada observatories. Behind them, Doppler shifted into extremely low frequency radio waves only, came the images of exploding dark stars and the oncoming wave of the compression fields. Ahead, the images were as gamma rays. Only the equator of their motion showed an undistorted picture of the blazing Dyson interior as the firing sequence continued. Because of the distortion, the Dyson seemed immensely flattened in their direction of motion, not a sphere but a hollow discus.

  Lord Jupiter said, “Lad, I mean, Your Imperial Majesty, the Twelve would be gratified by the answer of how we are expected to survive falling into a black hole?”

  Lord Mercury said, “Retreat is possible! I have had my people drop a planetary-mass pearl behind us as we fled. We can contort the whole Armada back to our previous location ...”

  Lady Luna said sarcastically, “To the spot where the nova beams are aiming?”

  A spasm of anger passed across the boylike features of Lord Mercury, and he clenched his little fists.

  Aeneas
leaned back, folded his arms behind his head, and crossed his legs at the knees. He stared idly at the dark, high ceiling of the chamber. “This Dyson is the size of Venus’s old orbit: the diameter of Deneb. Call it two hundred solar masses. The black hole is formed by the implosion when the outer layers explode outward into a nova. So we are not dealing with anything larger than twenty solar masses. I estimate the Schwarzschild radius of a non-rotating, uncharged black hole of that mass is a tenth of a meter. About the size of a baseball, over a thousand times the mass of all our worlds together.”

  Lord Mercury said tensely, “The x-rays from the accretion disk will fry us if I release the planetary disinertia engines, and will repel us if I do not.”

  Lady Ceres said, “And we will be crushed by the gravity!”

  Lady Venus cooed, “How are four gas giants all going to fit into a baseball?”

  Lady Luna scowled. “Look at him! Aeneas is enjoying watching us guess and squirm! The jackass!”

  Aeneas wagged a finger. “Tut, fair cousin! Remember the proper forms of address!”

  She rose from her seat, curtseyed, and seated herself again, saying, “Look at His Imperial Majesty! His Majesty is enjoying watching us guess and squirm! The imperial jackass!”

  Aeneas rolled his eyes. “Much better. Lord Mercury, please send a second planetary pearl through the first, and have it move at contortion speed to just inside the Dyson firing aperture.”

  The boy frowned in puzzlement, but saluted. “As you command, sire.”

  Aeneas sat back erect. “Lord Neptune! You seem placid. You do not fret that the black hole gravity will crush us. Why not?”

  Lord Neptune said, “Because we are in free fall, sire. The only thing we have to worry about is tidal effects. When the gravity pulling on the nearside of a heavenly body is greater than the farside, the difference elongates the body. We will be ripped into angstrom-thin spaghetti strands as we approach the singularity. But, hey! No worry about being crushed by gravity.”

  Aeneas said, “The prospect alarms you not, my lord?”