And besides, it was a break from his own work. Scholes was supervising the assembly of one vertex of a wormhole Interface from exotic matter components. When the wormhole was complete, one of its pair of tetrahedral Interfaces would be left in close orbit around the Sun. The other, packed with an ambitious AI complex, would be dropped into the Sun itself.
The work was well paid, though demanding; but it was dull, routine, lacking fulfillment. So a break was welcome… But he had not expected to be so disconcerted by this extraordinary woman.
He tried again. “You see, we’re all scientists or engineers here,” he said. “A sense of wonder isn’t a prerequisite for a job on this project — it’s probably a handicap, actually. But that’s a star out there, after alclass="underline" nearly a million miles across — five light-seconds — and with the mass of three hundred thousand Earths. Even when I can’t see it, I know it’s there; it’s like a psychic pressure, perhaps.”
She nodded and turned her face to the Sun once more. “Which is why we find speculation about its destruction so extraordinarily distressing. And, of course, to some extent we are actually within the body of the Sun itself. Isn’t that true?”
“I guess so. There’s no simple definition of where the Sun ends; there’s just a fall-off of density, steep at first, then becoming less dramatic once you’re outside the photosphere… Let me show you.”
He touched his data slate, and the semisentient hull suppressed the photosphere’s glow. In its new false colors the Sunscape became suffused with deep crimsons and purples; the granules seethed like the clustering mouths of undersea volcanoes.
“My word,” she murmured. “It’s like a landscape from a medieval hell.”
“Look up,” Scholes said.
She did so, and gasped.
The chromosphere was a soft, featureless mist around the ship. And the corona the Sun’s outer atmosphere, extending many Solar diameters beyond the photosphere — was a cathedral of gas above them, easily visible now that the photosphere light was suppressed. There were ribbons, streamers of high density in that gas; it was like an immense, slow explosion all around them, expanding as if to fill space.
“There’s so much structure,” she said. She stared upwards, her watery eyes wide and unblinking. Scholes felt disquieted by her intensity. He restored the transparency of the hull, so that the corona was overwhelmed once more.
A sunspot — deep black at its heart, giving an impression of a wound in the Sun’s hide, of immense depth — unfolded beneath them, ponderously.
“We seem to be traveling so slowly,” she said.
He smiled. “We’re in free orbit around the Sun. We’re actually traveling at three hundred miles a second.”
He saw her eyes widen.
He said gently, “I know. It takes a little while to get used to the scale of the Sun. It’s not a planet. If the Earth were at the center of the Sun, the whole of the Moon’s orbit would be contained within the Sun’s bulk…”
They were directly over the spot now; its central umbra was like a wound in the Sun’s glowing flesh, deep black, with the penumbra a wide, gray bruise around it. This was the largest of a small, interconnected family of spots, Scholes saw now; they looked like splashes of paint against the photosphere, and their penumbrae were linked by causeways of grayness. The spot complex passed beneath them, a landscape wrought in shades of gray.
“It’s like a tunnel,” Lieserl said. “I imagine I can see into it, right down into the heart of the Sun.”
“That’s an illusion, I’m afraid. The spot is dark only by contrast with the surrounding regions. If a major spot complex could be cut out of the Sun and left hanging in space, it would be as bright as the full Moon, seen from Earth.”
“But still, the illusion of depth is startling.”
Now the spot complex was passing beneath them, rapidly becoming foreshortened.
Scholes said uncertainly, “Of course you understand that what you see of the Sun, here, is a false-color rendering by the hull of the Lightrider. The ’Rider’s hull is actually almost perfectly reflective. Excess heat is dumped into space with high-energy lasers fixed to the hulclass="underline" the ’Rider refrigerates itself, effectively. In fact, if you could see the ship from outside it would actually be glowing more brightly than the photosphere itself…” Scholes was uncomfortably aware that he was jabbering.
“I think I follow.” She waved her claw-like hand, delicately, at the glowing surface. “But the features are real, of course. Like the spot complex.”
“Yes. Yes, of course.” Lethe, he thought suddenly. Am I patronizing her?
His brief had been to show this strange old woman the sights — to give her the VIP tour. But he knew nothing about her — it was quite possible she knew far more about the subjects he was describing than he did.
The Holy Superet Light Church was notoriously secretive: about the goals of this Solar wormhole project, and the role the old woman would play in it… although everyone knew, from the way she had been handled since arriving in near-Solar space — as if she was as fragile and precious as an eggshell — that this woman was somehow the key to the whole thing.
But how much did she know?
He watched her birdlike face carefully. The way her gray hair had been swept back into a small, hard bun made her strong-nosed face even more gaunt and threatening than it might otherwise have been.
She asked, “And is this refrigeration process how the wormhole probe is going to work — to become able to penetrate the Sun itself?”
He hesitated. “Something like it, yes. The key to refrigerating a volume is to suck heat out of the volume faster than it’s allowed in. We’ll be taking Solar heat away from the AI complex out through the wormhole, and dumping it outside the Sun itself; actually we’re planning to use that energy as a secondary power source for Thoth…”
She shifted in her chair, stiff and cautious, as if afraid of breaking something. “Dr. Scholes, tell me. Will we be leaving freefall?”
The question was surprising. He looked at her; “During this flight, in the Lightrider?”
She returned his look calmly, waiting.
“We’re actually in free orbit around the Sun; this close to the surface the period is about three hours… We’ll make a complete orbit. Then we’ll climb back out to Thoth… But we’ll proceed the whole way at low acceleration; you should barely feel a thing. Why do you ask?” He hesitated. “Are you uncomfortable?”
“No. But I would be if we started to ramp up the gees. I’m a little more fragile than I used to be, you see.” Her tone was baffling — self-deprecating, wistful, perhaps with a hint of resentment.
He nodded and turned away, unsure how to respond. “Oh, dear.” Unexpectedly, she was smiling, revealing small, yellow-gold teeth. “I’m sorry, Dr. Scholes. I suspect I’m intimidating you.”
“A little, yes.” He grinned.
“You really don’t know what to make of me, do you?”
He spread his hands. “The trouble is, frankly, I’m not sure how much you know.” He hesitated. “I don’t want to feel I’m patronizing you, by — ”
“Don’t feel that.” Unexpectedly she let her hand rest on his; her fingers felt like dried twigs, but her palm was surprisingly warm, leathery. “You’re fulfilling the request I made, for this trip, very well. Assume I know nothing; you can treat me as an empty-headed tourist.” Her smile turned into a grin, almost mischievous; suddenly she seemed much less alien, in Scholes’ eyes. “As ignorant as a visiting politician, or Superet high-up, even. Tell me about sunspots, for instance.”