A Hole In Space

Walters sat slumped, staring straight ahead of him. "She didn't understand and she didn't care. She was taking it like we'd been all through this before but we had to do it again but let's get it over with." He spoke in a monotone, but the nervous stutter was gone. "Finally I hit her. I guess I was trying to get her attention. She just took it and looked at me and waited for me to go on."

He

"Where do you think? I hit her with it."

"Then it was hers, not yours."

"It was ours. When we broke up, she took it. Look, I don't want you to think I wanted to kill her. I wanted to scar her."

"To scare her?"

"No! To scar her!" His voice rose. "To leave a mark she'd remember every time she looked in a mirror, so she'd know I meant it, so she'd leave me alone! I wouldn't have cared if she sued. Whatever it cost, it would have been worth it. But I hit her too hard, way too hard. I felt the crunch."

"Why didn't you report it?"

"But I did! At least, I tried. I picked her up in my arms and wrestled her out to the booth and dialed for the Los Angeles Emergency Hospital. I don't know if there's anyplace closer, and I wasn't thinking too dear. Listen, maybe I can prove this. Maybe an intern saw me in the booth. I flicked into the Hospital, and suddenly I was broiling. Then I remembered that Alicia had an old booth, the kind that can't absorb a difference in potential energy."

'We guessed that much."

"So I dialed quick and flicked right out again. I had to go back to Alicia's for the malachite box and to wipe off the sofa, and my own booth is a new one, so I got the temperature shift again. Cod, ft was hot. I changed suits before I went back to the Club. I was still sweating."

"You thought that raising her temperature would foul up our estimate of when she died."

"That's right." Walters' smile was wan. "Listen, I did try to get her to a hospital. You'll remember that, won't you?"

"Yah. But you changed your mind."

All the Bridges Rusting

Take a point in space.

Take a specific point near the star system Alpha Centaurus, on the line linking the center of mass of that system with Sol. Follow it as it moves toward Sol system at lightspeed. We presume a particle in this point.

Men who deal in the physics of teleportation would speak of it as a "transition particle." But think of it as a kind of super-neutrino. Clearly it must have a rest mass of zero, like a neutrino. Like a neutrino, it must be fearfully difficult to find or stop. Despite several decades in which teleportation has been in common use, nobody has ever directly demonstrated the existence of a "transition particle." It must be taken on faith.

Its internal structure would be fearfully complex in terms of energy states. Its relativistic mass would be twelve thousand two hundred tons.

One more property can be postulated. Its location in space is uncertain: a probability density, thousands of miles across as it passes Proxima Centauri, and spreading. The mass of the tiny red dwarf does not bend its path significantly. As it approaches the solar system the particle may be found anywhere within a vaguely bounded wave front several hundred thousand miles across. This vagueness of position is part of what makes teleportation work. One's aim need not be so accurate.

Near Pluto the particle changes state.

Its relativistic mass converts to rest mass within the receiver cage of a drop ship. Its structure is still fearfully complex for an elementary particle: a twelve-thousand-two-hundred-ton spacecraft, loaded with instruments, its hull windowless and very smoothly contoured. Its presence here is the only evidence that a transition particle ever existed. Within the control cabin, the pilot's finger is still on the TRANSMIT button.

Karin Sagan was short and stocky. Her hands were large; her feet were small and prone to foot trouble. Her face was square and cheerful, her eyes were bright and direct, and her voice was deep for a woman's. She bad been thirty-six years old when Phoenix left the transmitter at Pluto. She was three months older now, though nine years had passed on Earth.

She had seen a trace of the elapsed years as Phoenix left the Pluto drop ship. The shuttlecraft that had come to meet them was of a new design, and its attitude tets showed the color of fusion flame. She had wondered how they made fusion motors that small.

She saw more changes now, among the gathered newstapers. Some of the women wore microskirts whose hems were cut at angles. A few of the men wore assymetrical shirts-the left sleeve long, the right sleeve missing entirely. She asked to see one man's left cuff, her attention caught by the glowing red design. Sure enough, it was a functional wristwatch; but the material was soft as cloth.

"It's a Bulova Dali," the man said. He was letting his amusement show. "New to you? Things change in nine years, Doctor."

"I thought they would," she, said lightly. "That's part of the fun."

But she remembered the shock of relief when the heat struck. She had pushed the TRANSMIT button a light-month out from Alpha Centaurus B. An instant later sweat was ru

There had been no guarantee. The probability density that physicists called a transition particle could have gone past the drop ship and out into the universe at large, beyond rescue forever. Or ... a lot could happen in nine years. The station might have been wrecked or abandoned.

But the heat meant that they had made it. Phoenix had lost potential energy entering Sol's gravitational field and had gained it back in heat. The cabin felt like a furnace, but it was their body temperature that had jumped from 98.6° to 102°, all in an instant.

"How was the trip?" The young man asked.

Karin Sagan returned to the present. "Good, but it's good to be back. Are we recording?"

"No. When the press conference starts you'll know it. That's the law. Shall we get it going?"

"Fine." She smiled around the room. It was good to see strange faces again. Three months with three other people in a closed environment...it was enough.

The young man led her to a dais. Cameras swiveled to face her, and the conference started.

Q: How was the trip?

"Good. Successful, I should say. We learned everything we wanted to know about the Centaurus systems. In addition, we learned that our systems work. The drop-ship method is feasible. We reached the nearest stars, and we came back, with no ill effects."

Q: What about the Centaurus planets? Are they habitable?

"No." It hurt to say that. She saw the disappointment around her.

Q: Neither of them checked out?

"That's right. There are six known planets circling Alpha Centaurus B. We may have missed a couple that were too small or too far out. We had to do all our looking from a light-month away. We had good hopes for B-2 and B-3-- remember, we knew they were there before we set out-but B-2 turns out to be a Venus-type with too much atmosphere, and B-3's got a reducing atmosphere, something like Earth's atmosphere three billion years ago."

Q: The colonists aren't going to like that, are they?

"I don't expect they will. We messaged the drop ship Lazarus II to turn off its JumpShift unit for a year. That means that the colony ships won't convert to rest mass when they reach the receiver. They'll be reflected back to the solar system. They should appear in the Pluto, drop ship about a month from now."