As they continued swimming through his opened fingers he gently stroked at their sides, and from time to time one of them would cling to his arm or wrist and gaze upward into his eyes before jumping back into the tepid water. And as they did, he seemed to get a sense that his children shared a greater knowledge of the human feeling “worry” than did he himself.
Oidar lifted himself from the water, walking carefully through the shallows to avoid stirring up mud around the excited children swarming at his feet. They gathered at the very edge of the pond, crawling up on the stems of reeds and low grasses at the water’s edge farther than he’d seen them dare before, and competed with one another for a better look at him. Their eye membranes, unaccustomed to such prolonged exposure to the air, blinked repeatedly and they made little peeping sounds that made him want to return to the water. It would not be long, he realized, before they would follow him out of the water altogether.
They stared at him, their little heads tilting first one way then the other, as if trying to tell him that they understood his feelings.
He nodded, making his decision.
So. Very well, Temple. I will send the message for you.
He checked the room controls, hidden in a clump of leafy fronds growing to one side of the entranceway, and satisfied himself that the children would be all right while he was gone. Then, taking a last look at the tiny faces at the edge of the pond, he quietly slipped out of the room and headed for the communications center of the Flisth.
They were nearing Luna rapidly, but it had still taken nearly a week for the transmission to reach them.
The message from Dr. Templeton Rice, Chief Researcher at the test site, had been sent instantaneously in a recorded tachyon burst to a Sarpan ship in Earth orbit, then relayed by normal communications to the Levant. There was a great deal at the beginning of the transmission that Adela did not comprehend, but Montero assured her that it was normal protocol intended mostly for his benefit.
“Dr. Montgarde,” the recording began once the aliens’ introductory material had concluded, “I have circumvented Imperial directives to see to it that the information contained in this communication reaches you. I considered going around Academician Bomeer, the director here at the test site where your theories are being put to practical demonstration, and filing this with the Emperor’s staff directly; but I had no assurances that it wouldn’t be intercepted by the academician. He is a man of extraordinary scientific genius, but he is also cunning in a way that would be difficult for me to describe at this time.”
Adela smiled. Rice had no way of knowing it, of course, but she knew only too well how formidable an opponent Bomeer could be.
“For that matter,” Rice’s transmission went on, “I have no guarantee that this will reach you at all, but I felt it imperative to make the attempt.” He paused and seemed unsure as to how to continue, then took a deep breath and said, almost apologetically, “We have found an error in your calculations. Because of our findings, my colleague and I recommended that the physical test be delayed until your return, so that you can join us via the tachyon link to discuss the figures and adjust the testing accordingly before proceeding further. However, the academician wishes to proceed with the physical test based on your original equations, stating that it would be better for you to have complete results to review upon your return. Personally I get the feeling that he wishes for the test to fail, although I admit that I can’t explain my suspicions.”
Rice turned in the screen and tapped out a command on the control pad set into the desktop in front of him, then slipped a data stick into the keypad input port.
“In any case, the test is scheduled to proceed,” he went on, his eyes downcast. “The test will fail. We’ll have an extensive recording of the entire experiment, beginning to end, for review waiting for you when you arrive. Perhaps the academician is right, and the full results will serve you better; I can’t say. But I’m appending to this file the full report of the modeling tests to date”—he indicated the data stick—“to give you an idea of what you might expect on your return. Have a safe conclusion to your journey. Thank you.”
His image faded out and was replaced by a notification indicating that several data files followed the verbal communication.
“That’s it,” Montero said. “System. Screen off.” The screen obediently darkened. “I’ve taken the liberty of routing this recording, as well as the associated files, directly to your ID node in the computer, Doctor. You’ll find them waiting for your personal attention whenever you want them.”
“Thank you, Commander,” she replied, her voice subdued. “And thanks for bringing this to my attention so quickly.”
Montero sat, quietly pulling at one of the tips of his moustache. “This is highly irregular, you know.” He nodded at the darkened screen. “A communication from an Imperial researcher who, purposely sidestepping his superiors, sent it through the facilities of the Sarpan without the knowledge or permission of those closest to the project…” He let his voice trail off when he noticed she wasn’t listening.
“Doctor?”
She hadn’t heard him, and concentrated instead on the feeling of sudden fear spreading uncontrollably through her.
An error, he’d said. An error. An error. An error.
It was there.
Adela ran the figures that accompanied the modeling, and it was there. Plain as the sun in the sky.
As Dr. Rice and the alien Oidar had noted in the results of both of the models, her original figures had been correct, but only so far as it theoretically applied to a technology that had yet to be developed. There had been blanks in the equation for which there were no currently available figures to plug in. Her theories took into account that shield technology would have to be developed to put her ideas to practical use, and much of the generations-long research had taken this into account. But there had been no way to project—at the time—how the application of the nonexistent technology itself would affect the results.
Adela had needed to make several educated guesses as to how the necessary shield technology, required to make the theory work successfully, would behave. She had guessed incorrectly.
“It is the character of the shield generating process itself,” she recited into the recording lens, “that accounts for the difference in energy levels between the two stars. I had assumed that the shielding used to keep the singularities stable would be nonintrusive, and that the energy transfer would occur at a ratio of one to one.
“However, I was only half right. The shielding containing the negative singularity introduced into the feeder star is impassive, in that the energy needed from the star is drained off in a one-way manner in the expected amounts without being affected by the shield itself. What I could not anticipate, not having a working shield concept at the time, was that the emitted energy of the shield generating process is also drawn into the singularity, resulting in more energy being sent through the wormhole to the breeder star. This extra energy in the breeder star, however, is not only released by the positive singularity, but is further amplified by the reflective nature of the shielding there.
“The net result is that the amount of energy released in Sol, the breeder star, is far greater than anticipated. The total effective release is a factor of…” She paused and glanced at the readout displayed in the handheld in her lap, compared it to the figures floating in the air above the frozen image of the second model Rice had sent her, still displayed in the holo viewing area in the corner of her stateroom. “A factor of approximately one point nine one.”