Back | Next
Contents

CHAPTER 1

Magnetar

Tap—Tap—Tap went the claw on the window.

Commander Frisco pressed her eyelids together tighter than a virgin’s knees in the hope that the damn thing would go away.

Tap—Tap—Tap.

It didn’t—go away that is.

She opened her eyes slowly and very reluctantly. The goblin leered at her from the other side of the airtight screen from where it perched on the blunt shovel-nose of her ship. Triangular was a word that summed it up, triangular and blue. Its head was a downwards pointing triangle ending in a long pointed chin. Its mouth V-shaped with triangular teeth, its chest V-shaped, even its bloody ears were triangular.

Stroppy was another good descriptive word. The creature thrust vigorously upwards with two fingers topped with triangular claws. It made the time-honored Brasilian gesture indicating that she should indulge in sex and travel. She tried not to notice what it was doing with its other hand.

Most of the time the Continuum looked like a seething mass of multicolored energy but every so often ship crews saw and heard illusions. The philosophical postulated that such phantasms were the product of some sort of arcane interaction between the human mind and energy leakage through the ship’s field. In truth, no one had a clue why the phenomenon occurred but the illusions were usually specific to each individual.

Such ghosts materialized when one was under stress, causing fears to be dredged from deep within the mind. Helena Frisco was hard pressed to explain why her subconscious might harbor blue goblins with triangular body parts and obscene habits. It was probably Finkletop’s fault; most current problems in Helena’s universe originated with feckin’ Finkletop.

Satisfaction with her promotion to commander and the captaincy of the Brasilian Research and Exploration Ship Reggie Kray, nicknamed the Twin-Arsed Bastard by the other ranks, rapidly eroded when she shared her first cruise with Professor Obadiah Finkletop. The good professor held a Personal Chair in Cosmic Evolution at Blue Horizon College. No doubt his peers considered him a learned savant. Helena considered him a pain in the arse.

Finkletop alone she might have coped with but the old fool was completely under the spell of his research student, a curvaceous young lady who went by the name of “Flipper” Wallace. What Flipper wanted Flipper, got and her desires were entirely capricious when looked at from a naval perspective.

The catamaran hulled Reggie Kray, hence its nickname, had all the naval equipment including the engines and field generators in the “A” hull so that various “B” hulls stuffed with different scientific equipment could be added or detached as required by the current mission objective. The mission in this case was to convey Finkletop’s research group to a neutron star deep in the Hinterlands. The exercise involved gathering “stuff” to test some scientific hypothesis or other concerning nova chains. Finkletop failed to volunteer details and Helena felt no desire to inquire.

The Reggie Kray was about as large a ship as could usefully be navigated within the Hinterlands where the gravity shadows of star systems were tightly packed in the Continuum. This stellar proximity channeled chasms, or streams, of boiling energy that made the passage of larger ships too slow and laborious to be viable. Speed equaled range in the Continuum because passage time was capped.

The Reggie Kray handled like a pig because of the asymmetric design. On the plus side Helena did not have so socialize too much with the bloody academics. They tended to keep to their own territory in the “B” hull.

A symbol flashed in the area by her command chair reserved for holographic controls. Finkletop desired communication. She sighed and keyed the comm symbol, ignoring a mischievous impulse to activate the B hull emergency detachment bolts instead. The goblin gave a final leer and disappeared. Helena did not recall that the detachment icon was a blue triangle. No doubt that was just as well.

“Ah, Frisco?” said Finkletop’s voice by her chair. She had switched out the video. It was bad enough having to listen to the man without looking at a caricature of personal grooming that would cause a Naval Academy drill instructor to self-immolate. She rearranged her features into a neutral expression because he could no doubt see her.

“Professor, what a pleasant surprise to talk to you again and so soon after our last conversation.”

“Flipper, Ms. Wallace, needs to be closer to the neutron star. You will move to point gamma-3-alpha-99.”

The two ratings on the bridge with Helena froze. They developed a deep fascination with their consoles. It was not normally considered good naval practice to give orders to a ship’s captain on her own bridge. Not unless you were an admiral at any rate. Even then an order was usually couched as a suggestion. As research team leader Finkletop had the authority to choose the survey sites but the bloody man could show some deference to her rank.

Helena gritted her teeth and keyed in the necessary course as she couldn’t think of a good reason to refuse. She automatically checked storage heat levels as she did so. Ships’ fusion engines supplied effectively unlimited fuel but electromagnetic radiation could not pass out through the Continuum field reality bubble to any extent. Waste heat had to be “stored” in heat sinks made of frozen iron cores. Captains worried constantly about heat build-up. When levels got too high there was nothing for it but to find a suitable world with available water to dump heat and refreeze the cores.

Unfortunately the Reggie Kray still had an adequate reserve in the sinks. She hit the command key. Her staff would attend to the details of the course change.

“And could you part phase so we can observe the system.”

“Why not?” Helena asked, waving a hand to the appropriate minion to indicate that he should comply. “Anything else we can do for you? Brew up some tea and send it ‘round to your hull, perhaps?”

“We are too busy for a tea break. Some of us have work to do,” Finkletop replied, killing the link.

The bloody man was impervious to sarcasm.

The pilot slowly part-dephased the ship on approaching the neutron star. With its fields at low power the reality bubble enclosing the Reggie Kray was subject to a degree of interaction with electromagnetic energy from realspace. That meant that the crew saw into the real universe, albeit in monochrome. In return, light-speed limitations slowed the ship to a crawl. Not an issue in this case as they had only a short distance to travel.

The neutron star was tiny despite its huge mass. It gave off only a dull glow in the visible spectrum. Helena had to look hard to find it against the background star-field but the body’s effects were out of all proportion to its size. It probably weighed about 1,000,000,000,000 kilograms per milliliter. That gave it a gravitational field so strong that escape velocity would be measured in significant fractions of light speed.

A large chaotic debris field rotated at high speed around the star. Helena found it unnerving to watch the lumps of ice, metal and rock tracked on the navigational hologram. No doubt similar junk hurtled through the ship’s realspace location at speeds too high to be visible to the naked eye. She could create a holographic representation of the bombardment for the crew’s edification but doubted they would enjoy the experience.

Deep space made sailors uneasy. Most voyages started and ended on the surface of habitable worlds, the ships phasing within the world’s air envelope. Fields enclosed air within the reality bubble so most commercial vessels and small frames omitted an air-tight hull as an unnecessary expense. The naval architects designed the Reggie Kray to sustain human life even with the fields off because of its unusual research function.

Massive tidal effects commonly produced swirling fields of junk around a neutron star but this one was positively frenzied. Helena ran an analysis using the limited electromagnetic radiation that penetrated the ship’s field.

The comm link lit up. Helena sighed and keyed it.

“We may’ve found it,” Finkletop’s voice shook slightly with excitement.

“Oh good,” Helena said, wondering what “it” was.

“You must dephase completely and turn off the shields so we can obtain samples.”

“Must I?”

“Yes, it’s possible the frame field might interfere with the specimens.”

Helena touched the “hold” icon while she recovered her calm.

“Have you looked outside at all, Professor?” Helena eventually asked. “You may have noticed something of a debris storm.”

“Never mind the paintwork on your ship. This research is too important to be held up by petty military regulations. I’d explain but you wouldn’t understand.”

“It may have escaped your notice, Professor, but I captain this vessel. As such I am responsible for it and the crew. If I decide your request,” Helena emphasized the word if, “is too dangerous then it won’t happen.”

“I shall complain to the Grant Committee!”

“Indeed.”

The opinion of an academic grant committee carried about as much weight with Helena as a petition from a delegation of rock apes. She answered to the Navy Board and she doubted they cared a fig what a bunch of academics thought either. On the other hand the Board could be downright unreasonable to captains who smashed up their ships.

“It may also have escaped your notice, Professor, but that is not just a neutron star out there but a magnetar, a star with a massive magnetic field—”

“I know what a magnetar is.”

Helena continued remorselessly as if he hadn’t spoken.

“—which is why the debris field is so energetic and chaotic. Iron debris is subject to different forces to nonmagnetic rocks and hence has different trajectories. The resulting collisions cause endless fragmentation. It would be like dephasing into a shotgun blast of hypersonic pellets.”

Finkletop said. “Well, if you’re frightened—”

“Be careful, Professor,” Helena’s knuckles clenched until they were white.

An officer of the Brasilian Navy could display many faults from drunkenness to licentiousness and still prosper. Cowardice was the one intolerable weakness.

“We’d also have a major problem with magnetic forces such as diamagnetism which is the—”

Finkletop attempted to interrupt. “I know what diamagnetism is but I don’t see—”

“—temporary opposing magnetic force induced in materials by an ultra-magnetic field. Our ceramic hull is a good example as it is repelled by the star. Other materials are paramagnetic and will be dragged towards it. Furthermore, while naval architects use nonmetallic materials as far as possible in a ship’s construction to limit drag and hence heat build-up while moving through the Continuum sometimes there are no acceptable nonmetallic substitutes. Our large iron heat sinks are a good example.”

Finkletop tried again. “Well—”

“So if I dephase at our current location the ship’s hull and heat sinks will push in opposite directions while I try to dodge high velocity debris on chaotic trajectories.”

Dead silence.

There was a compromise option. She told herself she was all kinds of a fool for even considering it. Unfortunately, Finkletop was stupid enough to insult her honor without seeing that she would have to call him out. That could wreck her career. No one would openly blame her for protecting her reputation. Nonetheless, she would always be remembered as the captain who killed her charge. Actually, she reflected, Finkletop wasn’t stupid. A Blue Horizon professor just couldn’t be stupid. He was simply incredibly focused and limited in his world view.

“How big a specimen do you need?” Helena asked.

“What? Just a few micrograms would do.”

“Very well, I’ll harmonize the field of a small jolly boat to pass through the ship’s fields. The boat can phase out for the few seconds necessary to recover your sample without endangering the whole ship. Magnetic tidal effects are limited on such a low mass object. It will also present a smaller target to incoming rocks. I won’t risk trying to bring the jolly back in through the ship’s field as the harmonization will drift out of phase within minutes. We will rendezvous and recover the boat from a quiet area beyond the debris field. Is that satisfactory?”

“I suppose so, seems a lot of stuff and nonsense to me, usual bureaucratic ineptitude, typical of the military—”

She cut the link while Finkletop was still blathering and gave the necessary orders.


The Reggie Kray’s field shimmered metallic green when the jolly boat passed through. The phase harmonization with the boat’s field was less than perfect. That observation caused Helena little surprise. No human procedure in the history of the universe had ever achieved perfection. She saw no reason to assume that this was about to change any time soon for her benefit.

Finkletop insisted on supervising the sampling personally. Helena had been equally insistent that a naval rating coxswain the small craft, not one of the academics. She watched the boat’s progress on a holographic screen. Once clear, the boat adjusted its heading and moved to match speeds with a debris pile. It stopped while the coxswain waited for a signal from the ship indicating he could dephase safely. Well, not safely perhaps but at least without facing instant destruction. Safety is one of those irregular nouns.

Communication was impossible over any distance through the Continuum. Anything not protected by a field rapidly decayed or was ejected into realspace. At short range lasers could exchange narrow bandwidth data. Small open frame crews often resorted to hand gestures and flashing lights.

The ship’s information analyzers tracked and predicted the immediate debris field. An icon indicated a break in the debris bombardment. It was now or never. She sent confirmation to the jolly boat.

The boat’s field flicked off and it drifted towards the debris. Steering thrusters fired to brake the craft alongside a stream of gravel and match velocities. A mechanical arm extended and took a sample. Sparkles ran along the arm where microscopic dust moving at a high relative speed struck the ceramic surface.

The arm had almost withdrawn when the jolly boat shuddered. Its hull flexed under the impact of particles larger than microscopic dust. A ceramic plate peeled off and span away. Jets of escaping air distilled into arches of silver crystals that fanned out in the magnetar’s strong tidal gravitational and magnetic fields like a celestial peacock’s tail.

Helena swore.

The jolly boat should have been safe enough in realspace for that short period of time. The ship’s autos predicted a ninety-five per cent chance of success. She should have anticipated that the unlikeliest disaster would happen at the first opportunity. The gods of probability delighted in shitting on mankind’s collective head from a great height.

She crossed metaphorical fingers and waited for the jolly boat’s field to reform. Survival suits would protect the crew for a while. She counted slowly to three but it never happened. The boat’s field generator must be knocked out. The gods were piling improbability upon improbability today. They probably didn’t like Finkletop any more than she did but why stick the boot in on her watch?

The boat’s crew were in the deepest possible fertilizer. It was only a matter of time before a bigger impact smeared them like raspberry jam across a slice of toast.

“Close and try to enclose the jolly boat in our Continuum field,” Helena ordered. “Finkletop you feckin’ lunatic,” she added under her breath.

The Reggie Kray’s pilot swung the ship around as if it was a one-man frame and accelerated smoothly. They reached the boat just as its field unexpectedly flicked back on. The two energy bubbles interacted dynamically in a sharp release of violet lightning. The boat couldn’t penetrate the ship’s field because its field had drifted out of phase during the off-on transition. The debris strike probably hadn’t helped either.

The ship pushed the smaller vessel with its field like a ball on the edge of an avalanche.

“All halt,” Helena said, trying to keep her voice calm.

Then something happened, something unfathomable, something she had never witnessed before in all her years in the navy.

The boat imploded soundlessly leaving nothing but a black stain. Helena had the impression of spreading darkness. A dark spear thrust into the Reggie Kray, collapsing its field like a pin going into a balloon. The ship rang like a bell struck by a hammer. That’s not possible, Helena thought, we’re only semi-phased. Nothing that powerful can penetrate our field. A deep chill froze her bones and the lights went out.


Helena felt cold. Her throat hurt like hell. Water vapor condensed from her breath. It hung in the air like a superior’s admonishment. Only the glow from instruments leaking across the cabin broke the darkness. To top it all she had one hell of a headache.

“Status?” she asked.

Well, she tried to ask but what came out was a croak.

“Fusion motors decoupled. Trying to get them back on line before our batteries fail,” said a voice.

Helena located the source of said voice. Seckon, the engineering officer, stood against a console stabbing down at a screen with both forefingers. The rating who should have operated it was on the floor. Blood matted his hair. He stared at Helena with open sightless eyes. An icicle of frozen saliva hung from his lips. The poor bastard had frozen to death, making her wonder how long she’d been out.

What was the engineering officer doing on her bridge? What was she doing on the deck? Unanswered questions orbited around her mind. Nothing made any sense.

She pulled herself upright using her chair as a crutch. She realized she had missed some important piece of information. What had Seckon said? The motors were out, that was it. The emergency power must be on or she would be floating under zero gravity.

A loud crack sounded and the deck twanged like the skin on a kettle drum. Helena gripped her command chair tightly. Oh God the motors were out. That meant the field was down and they were still in the debris stream.

The lights snapped on. The ship suddenly hummed with that faint background vibration that was so normal a part of her life that she never usually noticed it at all.

“Getting there, ma’am, field on,” Seckon said triumphantly.

“Good man.”

Helena sat down and activated her chair. The navigation hologram sprang to life. She switched to damage status, causing it to light up with red and orange icons like New Year decorations in a shopping arcade. Her ship was a bloody mess but what struck her as odd was the temperature. Parts of the ship were well below freezing. She boosted power to environmental control to start hot air circulating.

“That’s not right,” said Seckon, frowning.

“Which of our many failed systems do you mean?” Helena asked.

“The heat sinks, ma’am. They’re . . . well, have a look yourself.”

Helena triggered the necessary controls and did a double take.

“My screen says they’re empty, stone cold empty,” she said.

“Mine too,” replied the engineering officer. “But they can’t be. The monitoring system must be faulty.”

“Great. Any sign of the jolly boat?”

“Haven’t looked, I was too busy starting the motors.”

Helena activated a scan. Scanning while semi-phased was inefficient but the boat should be close enough to detect. There was no sign of it at all, not even wreckage from the hull registering. She couldn’t tarry as for all she knew the heat sinks could fail at any moment. She consulted her navigation charts then pressed the icon for wideband communication.

“All crew, this is the captain. We have sustained considerable damage but essential systems are functioning.”

Helena crossed her fingers at that point, for real not metaphorically. She had no idea what state the ship was really in or how long anything would function. She couldn’t trust her instruments so she was blind, but it didn’t hurt to boost the crew’s morale. If something vital failed then they were all dead anyway and her people’s morale would cease to be a concern.

“We passed a habitable world some two hours normal sailing time away and I propose to head for it. We’ll be travelling slowly so as not to test anything to destruction but we should make landfall in just over three hours. Captain out.”

She looked around the bridge for the pilot. He sat up and was noisily sick on the deck. Helena sighed.

“Please stay on the bridge Mr. Seckon,” she said to the engineering officer. “It looks as if I will be conning the ship personally and I would like you to nurse the motors for me.”

“Aye, aye, ma’am.”


Helena found a small river on her landing approach. It was bordered by trees restricted to within a few meters of the water so she set the ship down on nearby scrubland nearby not wishing to push her luck with the strained hull by trying for the tree-lined bank. That meant extra work for the crew in rigging a hose to the river but she was in no great hurry. She wanted every system thoroughly tested before they began the long voyage home.

The Reggie Kray supported its bulk on proactive self-levelling landing struts that balanced the stresses affecting the hull. Most ships dispensed with such expensive technology but most ships landed only on perfectly flat reinforced starport pads or on the water. A research ship needed to be able to land on any vaguely flat surface so it devoted valuable carrying capacity to rough terrain landing gear.

Helena observed the semi-desert terrain with a disinterested eye despite its forlorn beauty. She had stood on so many alien worlds that the novelty had long passed off—seen one wilderness, seen them all. She barely even noticed the change in smell from the tang of the sterile filtered ship’s air to the mix of organic aromas associated with a living ecosystem. She disregarded the subtly different spectrum of the sun overhead from the Brasilian standard light used on the ship.

She walked around the vessel to check the hull. It was extremely unlikely that she would spot anything not already revealed by whatever instruments were functioning. Nevertheless, a flight check was traditional and would reassure the crew.

What was left of the crew, she corrected herself bitterly. Out of fourteen naval personal she had lost two in the jolly boat and had four more casualties on the ship. Three of those lay in induced comas in sick bay until they reached civilization or what passed for it this side of the Bight. She doubted if more than two would ever be revived even with proper hospitalization. Not even modern medicine could do much with the burst cells of a frozen brain. The fourth was already dead.

The research team was harder hit as the B Hull had been closer to the jolly boat. Only Flipper Wallace and a young male technician survived. Flipper wisely kept out of Helena’s path but the technician was a practical sort who made himself useful to the shorthanded crew.

Her datapad chimed where it was hung off her belt.

“Yes,” she said.

“We’ve rigged hoses into the river and are ready to start pumping, Captain,” said the mate.

“Very good, carry on.”

“Aye, aye, ma’am.”

Helena backed up so she had a better view of her ship’s dorsal vents. The blue-white sun shone brightly causing her to shade her eyes when she looked up. She should have brought a sun shield. She should have done many things including not letting Finkletop goad her into crazy plans.

The heat vents opened. She waited for the white rush of condensing steam from the water flushing out the heat sinks. She waited but nothing happened.

After a few seconds she touched her datapad.

“What the hell’s going on Seckon? Why aren’t the pumps working?”

Seckon was at his station in Engineering.

“They’re working fine. The water’s running straight through.”

“Hold on.”

Helena ran back to the ship and peered underneath. River water gushed from vents under the A hull and trickled across the dry yellow soil.

“It seems the instruments were quite accurate when they indicated that the heat sinks are cool. We can leave any time you order,” Seckon said.

“But that’s not possible,” Helena replied. “Heat doesn’t just disappear.”

“Nevertheless.”

Helena could almost hear the shrug from her engineering officer.

“Find that bloody girl and send her to me—now.”

“Aye, aye, Captain.”

Seckon did not need to ask which girl. Whatever he did to insert a squib up Flipper’s arse clearly worked. She shot out of the ship and scuttled over to Helena, moving at a faster speed than she had hitherto employed since she came aboard.

“You asked to see me, Ms. Frisco?” asked Flipper

“No, I didn’t ask to see you I summoned you,” Helena snarled in reply. “What the hell has Finkletop done to my ship?”

“The professor doesn’t like me talking about our work,” she said evasively. “He has enemies and rivals.”

“Finkletop is dead so all his problems are over. Yours are just beginning if I don’t get some answers. You address me as Captain or ma’am. As I have co-opted you into my crew you are subject to naval discipline up to and including summary execution for mutiny. Am I making myself clear?”

Helena glared at the girl so hard that she backed up a step. Actually, Helena was not up enough on military law to know if that interpretation was correct but she rightly assumed that Flipper knew even less about military law than did she.

“Um, yes,” Flipper said, flashing frightened eyes.

“Aye, aye, Captain,” Helena said, remorselessly rubbing the girl’s nose in her new pecking order.

“Aye, aye, Captain.”

“So explain that explosion to me.”

“I’m not entirely sure.”

“Indulge me, speculate wildly.”

“Do you know anything about the professor’s work?”

“No, carry on.”

“Well he was working on subatomic physics.”

“What?” Helena was astonished. “I don’t claim to be up on the latest thinking but that surely went out with bows and arrows. The ancients explored that cul-de-sac pretty thoroughly and a fat lot of good it did them. They ended up with more fairy stories than a children’s nursery book. I mean, we’re talking bloody quantum bloody mechanicals or some such.”

“Quantum mechanics,” Flipper said didactically.

Helena raised an eyebrow, which was all it took for Flipper to take the hint and hurriedly proceed with her explanation.

“It’s true that the ancients had the weirdest superstitions about the natural world but they also carried out a number of empirical experiments with interesting results. They had these high speed accelerators that they used to smash atoms apart.”

“Is this going somewhere?”

“Well, you know that the heavier an element is the more likely it is to decay?”

“Yes, so what? The heavier elements are radioactive so completely useless and bloody dangerous.”

Flipper became more animated and confident now she was on home territory. She waved her hands to illustrate her description.

“The ancients found they could make small quantities of artificial heavy elements by smashing lighter ones together. The products were ridiculously unstable, decaying in microseconds. However, the ancient’s mathematics predicted an island of stability where stable ultraheavy elements could exist around element 126, unbihexium. They never had the technology, though, to reach this island.”

“Go on,” Helena said, becoming intrigued despite herself.

“Their theoretical understanding of what was going on involved superstition about magic subatomic particles called neutrons and protons that behaved as waves. In their system unbihexium was the 126th element because it had one hundred and twenty-six protons arranged in what they called a closed proton shell and around one hundred and ninety neutrons in a closed neutron shell. Nonsense of course.”

Flipper paused and gazed unseeing at the ground, not doubt pondering how stupid were ancient people or indeed was anyone over the age of twenty-five. Helena tapped her foot. The action startled the student back into the real world.

“But their mathematics was sound if used simply as a descriptive empirical construct. The professor tried to interest academia in building a modern more powerful version of the ancients’ accelerators to see if we could manufacture these stable heavy elements. The grant committees balked at the cost.”

Flipper’s expression of contempt no doubt reflected her late professor’s opinion of nitpicking milksops who whined about money when knowledge was at stake. Actually, Helena sympathized with that view to some degree. The naval budget was always being squeezed to the detriment of The Service.

“How much would it have cost?” Helena asked.

“About half a million crowns not counting the cost of hollowing out a mountain.”

Helena’s sympathy evaporated.

“I can see why the proposal generated resistance,” she said dryly. “This is all very interesting but get to the point.”

“Neutron stars,” Flipper said, as if that was supposed to explain something.

“What?”

“It’s all about neutron stars. You know they’re formed by exploding white dwarfs or collapsing massive stars?”

Helena nodded.

“The professor predicted that if a binary supernova—”

“A death star like the one that caused the Ordovician extinction on Old Earth?”

“Yes, if a death star’s gamma beam struck a collapsing massive star—something normally big enough to form a black hole—then the massive energies involved would create a powerful magnetar combining lighter elements into the super-heavies. Most would decay almost immediately except for those in the island of stability.”

“So you were looking for Element 126?”

“Yes, a stable superactinide with unusual properties.”

“Properties like what?”

“Well for one thing Continuum fields would cause it to become unstable and decay. That was why samples could only be collected in realspace. No frame fields until we got it in a magnetic bottle.”

Helena wondered if she or just the rest of the world was mad.

“You had us out in a frame ship hunting for nuclear bomb fuel triggered to explode by a frame field? Was Finkletop rug-munching crazy?”

“No, no,” Flipper shook her head emphatically. “My calculations showed no release of energy. It was simply that the field would catalyze the breakdown of unbihexium into lighter elements.”

“So what happened?” Helena snapped, becoming thoroughly fed up with going around the academic houses. “What went wrong?”

“I have been going over the maths again and again.”

So that was what she had been doing, Helena thought.

“I think I got the calculations wrong,” Flipper whispered. “Unbihexium is weirder than I anticipated. Its decay isn’t energy neutral but it doesn’t lose mass and release energy like every other radioactive material. When unbihexium decays, the products weigh more than the starting material.”

Helena looked blank.

“Don’t you see? It gains mass. That’s why it’s normally stable. It can’t access the necessary energy input.”

Helena still must have looked as baffled as she felt. Flipper spelled it out, step by step.

“The coxswain must have switched the boat’s field back on before the professor finished sealing the sample into the magnetic bottle.”

Helena interrupted.

“Wait a minute. I agreed that the frame field would be switched off just for the time necessary to get samples, not to leave it off while Finkletop buggered about with his equipment. He lied to me?”

Flipper looked evasive.

“Not lied exactly, he was just economical with the truth.”

Helena snarled wordlessly.

Flipper rushed out more words. “He thought you wouldn’t agree. The field had to stay off until the unbihexium sample was completely isolated.”

Helena took a deep calming breath before speaking.

“No doubt the coxswain would be more concerned with being splattered by a meteorite than by the professor’s activities.”

“Yes, the coxswain must have disobeyed the professor and turned on the field prematurely,” Flipper said, repeating herself.

“Damn right!” Helena said. “He did the right thing.”

“No doubt he thought so but the boat’s field initiated unbihexium breakdown when it activated. Radioactive decay got the initial energy input from the frame field. I suspect the reaction ran wild after it started. It sucked in the necessary power from the surroundings, causing the implosion.”

“Impossible, something can’t suck in heat,” Helena said.

“That’s not entirely true. If you blow bubbles into a highly volatile liquid through a straw—”

Helena wondered where fizzy drinks came into it. “What?”

“—you freeze the surroundings. That’s how a ’fridge works. Energy absorption is the only explanation I can come up with. The ship’s field was interacting with the jolly boat’s so—”

“So this negative energy wave,” Helena said, for want of a better description, “went through the jolly boat’s field into the ship’s field where it froze the ship, stalled the motors and drained the heat sinks?”

“It’s not really negative energy . . .” Flipper stopped upon seeing the look on Helena’s face and merely bit her lip and nodded.

The girl’s face brightened.

“It takes a lot of energy to make a little bit of mass. The reaction must have been short lived or we would have been taken down to absolute zero. This is going to make quite an impressive publication,” Flipper said, eyes shining with academic fervor. “I might get it in Brasilian Science or even the Terran Universe Journal. I think Tee Yu would be best as it has a higher impact rating.”

“Publication, in a Terran journal, are you mad? You aren’t going to publish this anywhere,” Helena said, looking at the girl in astonishment.

Helena touched her datapad.

“Mr. Grieg?”

“Captain?” replied the mate.

“Ms. Wallace is to be placed under immediate close solitary arrest. She is not to be harmed in any way. I make you personally responsible for her welfare but she is not to talk to anybody or have any access to communication devices until we hand her over to the NID.”

Grieg responded as if the order was standard routine. “The Naval Intelligence Department, ma’am?”

“Correct, give her a fatigue suit and place all her possessions in a case locked with my authorization code.”

Helena turned her datapad off but flicked it on again when a thought struck her.

“And all of Finkletop’s stuff, as well.”

“Aye, aye, Captain,” said the mate, unperturbed by orders from officers no matter how peculiar.

Flipper gazed at Helena blankly as if she couldn’t understand what was happening. The girl really didn’t have a clue.


Back | Next
Framed