“Yes, but look what happened to him.”
Mark could see what was going on inside Louise’s head. With the Superet mission — with this immense stunt — she was going to be able to bypass the intimidating shadow of the future, simply by leaping over it. And she was obviously entranced by the idea of taking her technology to its limits. But he wondered if she really — really — had any idea of the scale of the problems they would face.
He opened his mouth to speak.
Louise, with unusual tenderness, laid a finder over his lips, closing them. “Come on, Mark. We’ve a thousand years to think of all the problems. Time enough. Today, the ship is bright and new; today, it’s enough for me to believe the mission is going to be fun.”
With a sudden access of vigor she twisted the handle of her scooter and hurried after the others.
Lieserl. Take it easy. You’re doing fine.
She looked up, tipping back her head. Already she was dropping out of the complex, exhilarating world of the convection region, with its immense turbulent cells, tangled flux tubes and booming p-waves. She stared upwards, allowing herself the luxury of nostalgia. The convective-zone cavern had come to seem almost homely, she realized.
Homely… at least compared to the regions she was going to enter now.
We’re still getting good telemetry, Lieserl.
“Good. I’m relieved.”
Lieserl, how are you feeling?
She laughed. With a mixture of exasperation and affection, she said, “I’ll feel better when you lose your ‘good telemetry’, Kevan, and I don’t have to listen to your dumb-ass questions any more.”
You’ll miss me when I’m gone.
“Actually,” Lieserl said, “that’s probably true. But I’m damned if I’m going to tell you so.”
Scholes laughed, his synthesized voice surprisingly unrealistic. You haven’t answered my question.
Her arms still outstretched, she looked down at her bare feet. “Actually, I feel a little like Christ. Dali’s Christ, perhaps, suspended in the air over an uncaring landscape.”
Yeah, Scholes said casually. My thought exactly.
Now she plunged through the last ghost-forms of convective cells. It was exactly like falling out of a cloud bank. The milky-white surface of the plasma sea was exposed beneath her; huge g-mode waves crawled across its surface, like thoughts traversing some huge mind.
Her rate of fall suddenly increased. It felt as if the bottom had dropped out of her stomach.
“Lethe,” she whispered.
Lieserl?
She found her chest tightening — and that was absurd, of course, because she had no chest. She struggled to speak. “I’m okay, Kevan. It’s just a little vertigo.”
Vertigo?
“Virtual vertigo. I feel like I’m falling. This illusion’s too damn good.”
Well, you are falling, Lieserl. Your speed’s increased, now you’re out of the convective stuff.
“I’m scared, Kevan.”
Take it easy. The telemetry is —
“Screw the telemetry. Just talk to me.”
He hesitated. You’re a hundred thousand miles beneath the photosphere. You’re close to the boundary of the radiative zone; the center of the Sun is another seven hundred thousand miles below you.
“Don’t look down,” she breathed.
Right. Don’t look down. Listen, you can be proud; that’s deeper than any probe we’ve dropped before.
Despite her fear, she couldn’t let that go. “So I’m a probe, now?”
Sorry. We’re looking at the new material squirting through the other end of your refrigerator-wormhole now. I can barely see the Interface for the science platforms clustered around it. It’s a great sight, Lieserl; we’ve universities from all over the System queuing up for observation time. The density of the gas around you is only about one percent of water’s. But it’s at a temperature of half a million degrees.
“Strong stuff.”
Angel tears, Lieserl…
The plasma sea was rushing up toward her, bland, devouring. Suddenly she was convinced that she, and her flimsy wormhole, were going to disappear into that well of fire with barely a spark. “Oh, Lethe!” She tucked her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around her lower legs, so that she was falling curled up in a fetal ball.
Lieserl, you’re not committed to this. If you want to pull out of there —
“No.” She closed her eyes and rested her forehead against her knees. “No, it’s all right. I’m sorry. I’m just not as tough as I think I am, sometimes.”
The wormhole is holding together. We think, after the redesign we’ve done, that you can penetrate at least the first few thousand miles of the radiative zone, without compromising the integrity of the wormhole. Maybe deeper; the temperature and pressure gradients are pretty small. But you know we didn’t advise this dive —
“I know it.” She opened her eyes and faced the looming sea once more. The fear was still huge, like a vice around her thinking. “Kevan, I’d never assemble the courage to go through this a second time. It’s now or never. I’ll even try to enjoy the ride.”
Stay with it, Lieserl.
“Yeah,” she growled. “And you stay with me — ”
Suddenly her fall was halted. It felt as if she had run into a wall of glass; her limbs spread-eagled against an invisible barrier and the breath was knocked out of her illusory lungs. Helpless, she was even thrown back up into the “air” a short distance; then her fall resumed, even more precipitately than before.
She screamed: “Kevan!”
We saw it, Lieserl. I’m still here; it’s okay. Everything’s nominal.
Nominal, she thought sourly. How comforting. “What in Lethe was that?”
You’re at the bottom of the convective layer. You should have been expecting something like that.
“Yes?” she snarled. “Well, maybe you should have damn well told me — yike!”
Again, that sudden, jarring arrest, followed by a disconcerting hurl into the air, as if she were an autumn leaf in the breeze.
Like snakes and bloody ladders, she thought.
You’re passing through the boundary layer between the radiative and connective zones, is all, Scholes said with studied calm. Below you is plasma; above you atomic gas — matter cool enough for electrons to stick to nuclei.
The photons emerging from the fusing core just bounce off the plasma, but they dump all their energy into the atomic gas. It’s the process that powers the connective zone, Lieserl. A process that drives connective founts bigger than worlds. So you shouldn’t be surprised if you encounter a little turbulence. In fact, out here we’re all interested by the fact that the boundary layer seems to be so thin…
We’re still tracking you, Lieserl; you shouldn’t be afraid. You’re through the turbulence now, aren’t you? You should be falling freely again.
“Yes. Yes, I am. So I’m in the sea, now?”
The sea?
“The plasma sea. The radiative zone.”