Bitter cadences of violent color washed over Beq’qdahl. <There must be some way to recover.>
<We could simply not speak of the mission,> Quath said. <As long as we satisfy the minimum requirements, perhaps no attention will be paid. After all, this is a minor task.>
<We must bring back some of the vermin for analysis, remember,> Beq’qdahl said sourly.
<Ah…> Quath recalled. It had seemed a small matter at the time they received their orders. <To see if they are the same Noughts which have pestered us.>
<And very nearly killed me,> Beq’qdahl added sharply. She still seemed to take that past battle as a personal affront.
<The Tukar’ramin prefers certainty in these matters,> Quath answered diplomatically. <And such caution is well repaid, in this case. These Noughts are canny, if they are the same as the pack I slaughtered.>
Beq’qdahl fretted. <I would like to cover every possible source of complaint.>
Quath did not relish the prospect of having to run down one of the quick, darting shuttles, then pry it open and rummage inside for a sample Nought. They might easily squash them all and then have to go after yet another shuttle. All that, in full view of the thermweave crews who worked in preparing the great metal-mountains. Was there some other way…? She poked at her subminds, rummaging for any notion that might help. They chorused their partial visions.
Beq’qdahl said, <I am quite certain, however, that this taking of a sample is a minor matter. Surely the Hive will not fault us for such a negligible—>
<Wait,> Quath said brightly. <Wait, I have an idea.>
FIVE
The yellow-white hell soared away above Killeen’s head. The walls nearly seeped a sullen red, but even this was a relief after the incandescent fury that dwindled now, a fiery disk fading above him like a dimming, perpetually angry sun.
Killeen panted deeply, though it seemed to do no good. Prickly waves washed over him, bringing him unbearable itches that moved in restless storms across his skin. His lungs jerked irregularly. His arms trembled. Muscles and nerves fought their private rebellions and wars.
But he had managed to keep his arms and legs straight. The light pressure would not have forced him in only one direction if he had spun or tumbled.
Had it been enough? The long minutes at the core had crawled by, bringing agonizing lungfuls of scorched air.
Now the searing ebbed slightly.
We are, after all, just another radiating body. We can only lose heat by emitting it as infrared waves. So we must wait for cooler surroundings before this intolerable warmth can disperse.
His Arthur Aspect seemed remarkably collected, given the hysteria which had beset it only minutes before. “How…how ’bout that cooling thing?”
You mean our refrigerator? It can only function by ejecting waste heat at a cooler sink. As yet there are no colder surroundings, as you can see.
“So we wait till we get out?” It seemed an impossibly long time. Between his boots he could see the blackness of the planet’s mantle, thousands of kilometers of dead rock they must shoot through before regaining the dark of space itself. And there he would somehow have to make good this attempt, or else he would slow and pause and then plunge again. He wished again that he had saved his thruster fuel. It would give him some freedom, some hope of being something other than the helpless, dumb test particle in a grotesque experiment.
We do have some fluids we could eject, but…
“But what? Look, we try everything. Got no hope otherwise.”
The refrigerant fluids. We could bring them to a high temperature and vent them.
“Think it’ll help much?”
To lose the coolant meant he would have no chance whatever if he failed up ahead and fell back into the tube. He would fry for sure.
I cannot tell how much momentum we picked up from that maneuver. Pushing a large mass such as ourselves with mere light pressure…
Killeen gave a jittery laugh. “I’m the mass here—you weigh nothin’ at all. And don’t you worry ’bout calculatin’ what’ll happen. Time comes, up at the top of this hole, I’ll have to grab whatever’s in sight. Fly by the seat of my pants, not some eee-quation.”
Then I should vent the refrigerant fluids?
“Sure. Bet it all!” Killeen felt small icy rivulets coursing along his neck as he let the Aspect take fractional control of his inboard systems.
I am warming the poly-xenon now.
“And when you spray it, just use the spinal vents. That’ll give us another push in the right direction. Could make the difference.”
Oh, I see. I did not think of this possibility.
“Trouble with you Aspects is you can’t imagine anythin’ you haven’t seen ’fore.”
Let us not debate my properties at quite this time. We are rising toward the surface and you must be ready. I believe the wall you face is nearer now. Notice the sparkling?
“Yeasay. What’s it mean?”
That is where the mantle rock is forced by sidewise pressure against the passing cosmic string. It is disintegrated on impact. I cannot see whether it is somehow incorporated into the string, or whether it is simply forced back. For whatever reason, the rock is held back. Clearly, the cyborgs must relax this hoop pressure somehow, down in the core, in order to fill this tube with the liquid iron we saw before.
“Maybe they just slow it down some? Let the iron squish in a li’l ’fore the next time the string comes whizzin’ by?”
In the midst of techtalk he lapsed back into the short, clipped speech of his boyhood in the Citadel. The carefully assumed veneer of Cap’n rubbed away under the press of action. Killeen fumbled with the suit refrigerator controls. He knew he had to understand more about the hoop.
Possibly. Clearly the rotating string exerts great pressure against these rocks.
Killeen watched the quick flashing in the walls. For him to see these sparks at all, they must be enormous, since his speed took him by kilometers of the ruby-red rock in an instant. He had no bodily sensation of speed, but knew from the 3D simulation Arthur ran in his left eye that he was rising toward the surface, slowing as gravity asserted itself.
