Chou turned to face him. "Sorry. No real point in screaming about it now. But it wasn't necessary, you know. Fusion plants and solar power are quite adequate for Earths needs."
"For now, sure. But what about the future? Even at the present rate of increase we would have a hard time building enough fusion plants to supply our needs by the turn of the century."
"The sun will still be there."
"Sure will," Carter nodded. "And did you know you'd need a billion and a half square kilometers of solar collectors to generate as much power as Firefly will? That's about three times the Earths surface area, I believe. Excuse me, please."
Carter went back to the control board, his annoyance at Chou evaporating quickly. Rossetti, chief operator, looked up. "The Secretary-General is just about finished, Doc," he said.
"Good. How are the collectors doing?"
"Seem to be okay. Firefly's throwing off a lot of particles, both charged and neutral, but most of them are being collected, or at least stopped. Efficiency for charges is hovering near eighty-five percent; heat exchangers about half that."
Carter nodded. Firefly—the black hole was almost universally called by the name of the project nowadays—was behaving as expected, losing its mass in a thermal spectrum that included both photons and subatomic particles. The fast- moving charged particles were no problem; a set of electromagnetic fields at the collector sphere slowed them down to safe speeds, simultaneously converting their kinetic energy into electric current. The X rays and neutral particles were captured by a special multicomponent liquid blanket, their energy absorbed as heat to be changed into electricity by more indirect means. And for the ultra-high-energy gamma rays that passed through the collectors as if they were tissue paper, there were ten meters of shielding.
Pity we can't use the neutrinos, too, Carter thought wryly. Firefly's temperature, he noted, was still increasing, and he hoped the Secretary-General's speech wouldn't take much longer.
A yellow light flashed twice. They were ready in the auditorium. "Okay, Rossetti. Fire when ready."
"Aye, aye, Admiral." Rossetti's hands moved over the controls as Carter watched the indicators. Kilometers away, the three massive DeVega accelerators came to life, sending narrow beams of neutrons directly into the tiny black hole. Firefly's radiation levels jumped as the gravitational energy of the falling neutrons began to reach the collectors. Rossetti carefully adjusted the flux levels and Firefly's temperature began to stabilize.
"That's it, Doc," Rossetti said at last. "Total neutron flux about ten to the twenty-eighth per second; total Firefly luminosity one point six times ten to the eighteenth watts. Temperature holding near ten to the fifteenth degrees Kelvin. We've got steady state and she's running like a champ."
A loud cheer erupted in the control room, echoed, no doubt, in the auditorium. Someplace a cork popped loudly, accompanied by the steady hum of video cameras. Carter smiled for the reporters, his first real smile in weeks. After months of argument and backbreaking work, the closest thing to a total matter converter that mankind was ever likely to have was finally operational.
There were still things to be done, of course, but most of them were routine. He would first have to give a statement to the assembled dignitaries and cameras in the auditorium. Then came a check of the maser banks that would be beaming the energy to Earth and Luna, a quick trip to each of the DeVega accelerators to personally congratulate the operation crews there, and spot checks of other parts of the complex.
Five hours later he was finished, and he made a last stop back in the control room. "Any fluctuations in the plate potential?" he asked the dark-skinned man who had taken Rossetti's place at the main control board.
"No problems, Dr. Carter," Kapoor said, his gloomy face in marked contrast to the smiles worn by the rest of the Firefly Project staff today. "The black hole is holding position to a small fraction of a fermi, as nearly as we can tell."
Carter nodded satisfaction. The carefully shaped electric field of the main plates was all that held the positively charged black hole suspended in place at the focus of the three neutron beams. If it drifted even slightly the beams would miss the tiny object. "Anything else to report?"
"No, sir."
"Okay. Well, I'm off. See you in three weeks."
Kapoor glanced up. "You're going on vacation?"
"Theoretically, yes. Practically, it'll be one week of rest and two of speeches on Earth and Luna."
"It will be a nice change for you, anyway."
"Yes." Talking to Kapoor always depressed Carter a little. Something about the Indian's attitude seemed to indicate disapproval, although it was nothing you could put your finger on. As near as Carter could remember, Kapoor's geniality had evaporated during the Assembly's debates on a name for the project. It had come within a hair of being called Shiva, after the destroyer/regenerator of Hinduism, and Carter strongly suspected that Kapoor had considered even the suggestion to be sacrilegious. "Well, take care of the project, Kapoor," he said, a bit lamely, and left the room.
It could have been worse, Carter thought, walking down the hall. The Assembly had also considered the name Lucifer.
—
As things turned out, Carter was not away from Firefly for three weeks. He was gone for exactly fifty-eight hours, and the ship that returned him to the station was a big Patrol craft that made the trip in record time. No one aboard would tell him what was going on, but the message was painfully clear.
Something was terribly wrong at Firefly.
—
The entire senior staff was assembled in the conference room when Carter arrived and slid into his usual chair. Nodding to the group, he turned to the Deputy Director and asked, "What's happened, Paul?"
Dr. Paul Rurik looked like he was next in line for a oneway tumbril ride. "We may have a runaway on our hands, Ray."
Carter felt his hands tightening into fists under the table. "Fill me in."
Rurik touched a switch and a set of graphs appeared on one of the displays. "During last night's Owl shift Firefly's temperature started to rise. When we tried to restabilize this morning we discovered we couldn't do so. We tried everything we could think of and then sent the Patrol to get you." "Who was the operator last night?"
"I was, Doctor," a young man spoke up, a slight quaver in his voice.
"It wasn't Galton's fault," Rurik said. "The temperatures were within the allowable range we've calculated."
Carter nodded heavily. An operator couldn't be expected to notice that the rate of temperature increase was not following the theoretical curve. Only one of the scientists like Rurik or himself would have had the necessary knowledge.
Rurik went on, "I suspect Firefly drifted a little out of place, causing one or more of the neutron beams to miss it"
"No." Carter pointed to a display. "If that had happened you'd have gotten a big energy jump in the heat exchanger directly across from the beam that's missing. Instead, that extra neutron flux is spread out over several exchangers; furthermore, it's happening for all three beams. The beams aren't missing—they're being deflected."
"How?"
Carter looked toward the voice in surprise. "What are you doing here, Senator?"
"I was still here at Firefly when the crisis occurred," Chou said. "It is my right to be kept informed. How are the neutrons being deflected, Doctor?"
"Firefly emits particles in a thermal spectrum," Carter explained. "That means there are some at every speed from zero to near lightspeed. The ones that are moving slowly tend to stay near the black hole, forming a sort of cloud around it, and it's this cloud that's deflecting the beams."