Earth

It runs in the family, he thought, smiling ironically.

He jerked slightly as someone nudged him on the shoulder. Looking up, he saw George Hutton standing over him.

“All right, Lustig, I’m here. Stan tells me you wanted to show me something before we begin the next test run. He says you’ve added to your bestiary.”

Alex jerked, still remembering the life ark. “I beg your pardon?”

“You know… black holes, microscopic cosmic strings, tuned strings…” George rubbed his hands in mock anticipation. “So, what have you come up with this time?”

“Well, I’ve been wrong before…”

“And you may be again. So? Each time you goof, it’s brilliant! Come on, then. Show me the final loop, or lasso, or lariat, or-…”

He trailed off, eyes widening at what Alex manifested in the holo tank. “Bozhe moi,” George sighed. An expression Alex knew was definitely not Maori.

“I call it a knot singularity,” he replied. “An apt name, don’t you think?”

The blue thing did resemble a knot of sorts — a Gordian monstrosity with the same relationship to a boy scout’s clove hitch as a spaceship had to a firecracker. The writhing orb was in ceaseless motion — loops popping out of the surface and quickly receding again — making Alex think of a ball of angry worms. All around the rippling sphere was emitted a shining light.

“I — I suppose that thing is made of… strings?” George asked, then swallowed.

Alex nodded. “Good guess. And before you ask, yes, they’re touching each other without reco

George nodded soberly. He pointed. “Look at that!”

The loops popping out of the roiling mass mostly throbbed and flailed quickly before being drawn back in.

Now though, a string extended farther out than usual and managed to cross over on itself beyond the knot.

In a flash it burned loose and floated away from the greater body. Released from the whole, the liberated loop soon twisted round itself again. With another flash of reco

As they watched, another loop cut itself off in the same way, drifting off to die. Then another. “I think I see,” George said. “This thing, too, is doomed to destroy itself, like the micro black hole and the micro string.”

“Correct,” Alex said. “Just as a black hole is a gravitational singularity in zero macrodimensions, and a cosmic string is a singularity in one, a knot is a discontinuity in space-time that can twist in three, four… I haven’t calculated how many directions it can be tied in. I can’t even dream what the cosmological effects might be, if any truly big ones were made back at the begi

“What all three singularities have in common is this. It doesn’t pay to be small. A small knot is just as unstable as a microstring or a microhole. It dissipates — in this case by emitting little string loops which tear themselves apart in a blaze of energy.”

“So,” George said. “This is what you now think you made in your cavitron, in Peru?”

“Yes, it is.” Alex shook his head, still unable to really believe it himself. And yet no other model so accurately explained the power readings back at Iquitos. None so well predicted the mass and trajectory they had observed during the last week. It still astonished Alex he could have constructed such a thing without knowing it was even theoretically possible. But there it was.

Silence between the two men remained unbroken for moments.

“So now you have a model that works,” George said at last. “First you thought you had dropped a black hole into the Earth, then a tuned string. Now you call it a knot… and yet it still is harmless, dissipating.”

Hutton turned back to look at Alex again. “That still doesn’t help you explain Beta, does it? You still have no idea why the other monster is stable, self-contained, able to grow and feed at the Earth’s core, do you?”

Alex shook his head. “Oh, it’s a knot all right. Some kind of knot singularity. But exactly what type… that’s what we try to start finding out today.”

“Hmm,” Hutton looked across the underground chamber, past the waiting technicians to the gleaming new thumper, freshly built to specifications Alex and Stan Goldman had developed, now tuned and ready to send probing beams of gravity downward, inward.

“I’m concerned about those earthquakes,” George said.

“So am I.”

“But there’s no way to avoid taking risks, is there, hm? All right, Lustig. Go on, give the order. Let’s see what the thing has to say, face to face.”

Alex waved to Stan Goldman, stationed by the thumper itself, who rolled his eyes in a swift prayer and then threw the master timing switch. Naturally, nobody in the chamber actually heard the sound of coherent gravitons, fired downward from the superconducting ante

Alex wondered if the others, too, were listening for an echo, and fearing just what would be heard.

□ Worldwide Long Range Solutions Special Interest Group [□ SIG AeR.WLRS 253787890.546], random sampling of today’s bulletin board queries. [□ Abstracts only. Speak number or press index symbol for expanded versions.]

#(54,891) “Why, after all these years, haven’t they figured out how to separate valuable elements from sea-water? It must be a conspiracy by the mining companies! Any comments out there? Or suggested references I can look up?”

#(54,892) “Ever since I was little, back in TwenCen, I kept hearing about fusion power — how it’d provide cheap, clean, limitless energy someday. They said it was ‘only’ twenty years or so from being practical, but that was sixty years ago! Can someone index-ref some teach-vids on the subject, so a lay person like me can find out where they’re at today?”

#(54,893) “I hear in Burma and Royal Quebec they’re letting convicted killers choose execution by disassembly, so their organs can go on living in other people. One fellow’s still 87% alive, they recycled him so well! Can anyone help me trace the origins of this concept? Where does execution leave off and a kind of immortality for felons begin?”

#(54,894) “How about fighting the greenhouse effect by sending lots of dust into the atmosphere, to block sunlight like those volcanoes did during the chill snap of ’09? I recently found a swarm of references to something called nuclear winter they were all worried about back during TwenCen. It might have been scary when there were all those bombs lying around, but right now I think we could use some winter around here! Anyone interested in starting a subforum about this?”

#(54,895) “Why jiltz poor wire-heads whose only tort is self-perving? Sure they’re vice lice, but where’s the fraction in evolution in action? I say let ’em unbreed themselves, and stop forcing therapy drugs on the pleasure-centered!”

#(54,896) “My company blood test shows a 35% higher than average genetic presensitivity to cell-muting by trace chlorine. The boss says, stop using public swimming pools or lose my supra-insurance. Can she use a company test to tell me what to do on my free time? Any public domain law programs on the subject?”

#(54,897) “Say, does anyone else out there feel he or she’s missing something? I mean, I can’t pin it down exactly, but… do you feel something’s going on, but nobody’s telling you what it is? I don’t know. I just can’t shake this feeling something’s happening…”