All Fall Down (34 page)

           
“Calculating.”

           
While the solar system model was updating, Win pulled the gas giant from the heavens and sat on it. He thought about the small delivery robot he'd encountered the previous evening. He hadn't told the team about it; after all, robots sometimes had their quirks and it hadn't exactly done anything bizarre. Maybe the colonists had added little flourishes to their behaviour. For all he knew, a subservient bow may be normal for robots here. Yet he couldn't help wondering if it was connected to the girl on the ship. He pulled a silver-rimmed, tinted lens over his eye, bringing a gravitational spectrum to the system. There were contorted gravity fields around him where he'd pulled the gas giant out of its orbit. He stood and returned it to its rightful place.

           
“Calculations complete. Point zero zero three percent inaccuracy corrected. Shall I start the simulation again?”

           
“Yes please.”

           
“And gravitation field lines, neutrino showers, EM and magnetic fields?”

           
“I'll work with my lenses, it's OK,” he snapped down a lens over his other eye, this one a concertinaed device that bulged in brass rings outward from his face. “Can you make sure you slow the simulation whenever either star eclipses, from either planet's perspective.”

           
The simulation started. Stars and planets moved. A slow millennium passed. Curving canyons of gravity grids peaked, eroded, rose again. The stars radiated neutrinos, bathing the system. The wormhole provided a fixed point for everything, anchored into its sub-space domain by more exotic physics than the pull of gravity between worlds and stars; Hades had its influence, too. Huge gaping maws opened in the blind dust masking the inner system when the planets or their magnetospheres passed near. He wondered if he ran the simulation long enough, whether the dust would accrete into another planet, possibly to be captured as a moon for Fall.

           
The gas giant lined up with the yellow and blue stars. The eclipsing suns sent an empty searchlight over the giant, darkening its brightly coloured bands. When the eclipse was full, the searchlight turned green, the blue sun's light tinged with yellow. The planet became murky. A few asteroids tumbled out of the Oort cloud far behind the giant, tumbling into the system. They were immediately assigned serial numbers that fit known asteroids’ orbits. A gargantuan solar flare erupted from the yellow sun, the blazing storm lensed and focused by the blue star. A squall of radiation followed: neutrinos, magnetic monopoles, x-rays, ³-rays. The gas planet's magnetic field bruised into life, lightning angered across its surface, pure violence, and a shocked flood of damaged atmosphere bled into space behind it. A curving smear of its injuries stained the wake of its orbital path.

           
The simulation sped up, the system settled down, the gas giant underwent centuries of storms and disruptions in its magnetosphere. A few thousand years passed. An eclipse came to Fall. The simulation slowed again. Win held his breath. This time the blue sun passed behind the yellow. Algebra filled the space around Fall, angles distended, velocity equations summarised. Fall's angular momentum had increased. With its smaller size and lower gravity, Fall had succumbed to the suns' combined gravity, rather than challenged it, and had received instead a gravity kick. Fall span slightly faster for over a thousand years, it moved further through space on its twisted orbit. Ripples spread through the system, but most were quenched in the dust cloud or soaked up by the yellow sun or gas giant. Nothing major had happened. An asteroid changed course, flung further out, through the Oort cloud.

           
Partial eclipses came and went. The yellow eclipsed by the blue, the blue by the yellow. Fall in eclipse, the gas giant in eclipse. The wormhole remained mute, steady, apparently unnoticed by, and not noticing, the physics playing out on its doorstep.

           
“Verigua, please extrapolate today's eclipse from the simulation. Give running commentary with probability weightings.”

           
“As Fall moves on its current orbital plane, it will appear to someone standing on the planet's surface that the suns are rising on opposite sides of the sky. The lining up of the blue sun, yellow and Fall will re-order gravitational fields in the dust cloud in Fall's shadow. You should see some temporary patterns in the dust. Like waves. The data sent back by your L-Delta probe yesterday confirms this. It followed a sinusoidal Ortema tube, recording the start of a standing wave, a gravitational soliton. There is a ninety eight percent probability that the asteroids zero-three-gamma-four and zero-three-alpha-six will be pushed into new trajectories. Zero-three-gamma-four then has a seventy two percent probability of hitting our gas giant within the next three hundred years. Alpha-four's trajectory will take it deeper into the dust cloud, where it will either fall apart from the bombardment of particles, or slowly accrete them and grow larger. I'm afraid not enough is known about its composition to give a probability rating either way.

           
“While the blue and yellow stars line up in front of Fall, the gas giant also comes into line. All four bodies will be in conjunction. There is a ninety nine point four percent probability that this will provoke a solar flare similar to the one seen in the historical simulation. However, Fall's magnetosphere will bear the brunt of any solar flare. The gas giant should be fairly unscathed.” A pause, then, “I say, Commander, can I comment at this stage? This is all sounding rather alarming.”

           
“Please, continue. What about the wormhole?” Win walked to the outer system, spying over the top of the wormhole, one of his lenses overlaying a straight line on his vision, stretching from the hole, through the gas giant, perfectly bisecting Fall, and the two suns at the other end of the room.

           
“Complicated. The wormhole's physics are a little beyond me. Not that I couldn't calculate them, of course. I just don't have enough of their mathematical description on file. I could guess, if you like?”

           
With one eye closed, Win continued to peer along the aligned bodies, “Access the ship, my file structure, password Win Choy Seven Seven.”

           
A moment later, an opalescent fairy appeared in the room, tiny wings fluttering madly, platinum hair piled on its head, its elfin face striking a balance between gasping beauty and cold indifference, “You people do have some fun new avatars to play with. You don't mind if I borrow it?”

           
Win smiled, “Verigua, the wormhole calculations, please?”

           
“Certainly. Very beautiful mathematics, this. Elegant. It has finesse.” The fairy zipped into the air, hovering over the light show like a humming bird trying to choose which flower to feed from. It pulled a small wand from behind its back, glitter falling from its tip. “Now, we have a conflict, Commander. Take the wormhole away for a moment,” the fairy waved its wand. A cartoon shooting star shot out, all golden speed lines; the wormhole disappeared in a cloud of silver flecks. “Now what we have here, with the gas giant moving in, is absolute disaster for this planet. The most likely scenario, over ninety nine percent confidence, is that the giant pulls an almighty solar flare from the yellow sun, the gas giant's gravity lensed by the blue. The solar flare erupts around the blue star, which lenses it into the system, like we saw before.” The fairy was flicking its wand, following the action in the troubled orrery. It stopped mid-flourish and looked at its hands. “I look like a conductor from a symphony orchestra, don't I? Your colleague would have become irritated by now. Would you like some suitable music? Let's see. Something archaic? Pre-Edict? There's an Old Earth recording, rather fitting, 'Holst's Planets'? That's twentieth century. Or there's Mars Colony's first native composition, 'Dines's Orbital Returnz'? I have something from the Qin Empire, very militaristic, 'Shen Zou's 'Mighty Spheres Aflame'? There's only one post-Edict piece, 'Nganwe's Kuiper Variations'. Which one would you like?”

           
Adjusting a lens with one hand, Win flapped his other hand toward the fairy, “The Mars Colony one. I don't think I've heard that.”

           
A chime rang through the room, quickly followed by electronic pulses and a synthetic percussion sound. Verigua continued its narrative, darting in towards Fall for a detailed description of the planet's impending doom, “So, the solar flare erupts here,” a wave of the wand, a fall of glitter, and a ball of broiling plasma curled into space, “it girdles the blue star, like a lover I may add, and becomes focused. Passionate. Now if it was just the gas giant out here,” the fairy flew on its back, dropped into the unfurling flare, and started a back-stroke swimming motion, “we'd see this flare start to break up in the outer edges of the dust cloud, which would take some of the heat out of it, and wash over the giant as it did before. All sorts of mayhem ensues. But!” Verigua's fairy sprang up into the air, pulled a golden rope out of the dust cloud, lassoed the flare, and pulled it back to the blue star, “Fall is in the way this time. The gravity field is modified. That creates a stronger gravitational tug.” The fairy glanced from Fall to the blue star several times, looked annoyed with the star, and waved its wand. The golden annihilation around it grew larger, fiercer, “That's better. Bigger tug, more plasma!”

           
Win's heart enlarged in his chest. He didn't like where this was going. He stood from his position behind the obscured wormhole and walked down to the inner system. In the background, the music changed key, the tempo changed, quicker, insistent.

           
“Fall's gravity acts as another focal point. So instead of splaying out as it reaches the dust cloud...”

           
“Fall concentrates the flare onto itself?”

           
“Oh yes. You should have let me finish. But not just that! Put your lens back down, you're missing the gravity element. Watch what happens. When the flare reaches here,” a tap with the wand, Fall turned into Hades, wreathed in destruction, “Fall is pulled in two directions. The flare destroys its magnetic field. Watch this. See that? The atmosphere boils away. Rather beautiful,” the fairy twirled its wand in the miasma swirling away from the cindered planet, “and the gravity on both sides should be enough to restart volcanic activity. Our gas giant and wormhole pulling one way, the suns pulling the other. Certainly the surface layers, the regolith and bedrock, will be cracked open like an egg. From space, everything is insulted black and seething orange.” The fairy settled on the charred planet, dangling its legs over sore trails of magma, “Been nice knowing you, I'd say.” The fairy cocked its head, “Your ship has enough storage space for my cortex, right? Can I come with you? I think we may need to evacuate. I'm feeling rather panicked.”

           
“The wormhole, Verigua. Bring the wormhole back in. Please, concentrate.”

           
Verigua looked blank for a second, “Well, the wormhole. OK, let's unwind all this grimness. There, good as new,” the fairy jumped onto tiptoes, executing a ballerina pose, sending a shooting star to the wormhole again, which fluoresced into existence. “Hmm. Complicated maths, this wormhole.” The fairy sped back and forth between the inner and outer system. Silver-white equations and symbols flared behind it, dimming through fractal shapes, snowflakes. It looked at Win, one eye squinted, mouth set in a tight line, “Eighty two percent probability OK for you? I can't get it any higher. I need a Level One Mind on hand to do calculations on this scale this quickly. Lots of funny interactions between the neutrino stream and the wormhole. Some of the effects travel backwards in time, weakly interact...” The avatar trailed off. It flew over to Fall, looking from side to side, licked a finger and stuck it in the photon breeze, “What I think will happen is this. Imagine you're standing on the planet surface. You look into the sky, and see the blue star pass in front of the yellow star. Then a giant sky-filling corona will snake out from the blue star in all directions. It will look like a nest of emerald vipers, flicking back and forth, looping on itself, around the complete circumference of the blue star. Which will be black at this point, being in complete shadow. This is the solar flare that the combined gravity of Fall and the gas giant are pulling out. But the wormhole exerts a complicated effect, some of which travels through sub-space, leaching out into the system at the suns' effective centre of gravity. And that's a thin patch in spacetime. Porous, you might say. The wormhole's field will hold back the flare, like burning oil flooding into a sewer, draining into sub-space.”

           
“That's good. So the planet is safe?”