Quiet

06:55:16 GMT TUESDAY 21 JUNE 2050

When the Rescue Expedition returned from its successful mission, the Commander of the East Pole Space Station arranged a formal reception for Admiral Star-Glider and his staff. Admiral Milky-Way and a number of the sextant leaders from the Legislature jumped up for the occasion.

Cliff-Web dutifully shined up his engineer badges, painted his body in a pattern of silver and yellow that Moving-Sand had assured him was stylish, plugged his remaining holding sphincters with glow-jewels, and suffered through the event.

The reception started at turnfeast and lasted three dothturns. The foodmats were covered with enough food and drink to gorge a Flow Slow. There was a whole roasted hatchling with its pouches full of triposter-nut stuffing and tastefully garnished to cover the accident scar, cubes of Flow Slow marinated in a pungent sauce that Cliff-Web didn’t care for, a chopped fruit he hadn’t seen before, topped with pickled Tiny Shell eggs, and baskets piled high with tiny bags of sparkling juice from White Rock City. Cliff-Web took two and broke one in his eating pouch. The delicate flavor of the distilled pulp juice was heightened by the spurts of energy from the fissioning uranium nuclei added just before the distillate was bagged. Cliff-Web stayed until Admiral Milky-Way climaxed the event by a promotion ceremony for Admiral Star-Glider. Three sextant leaders and three Space Force officers formed a circle around Star-Glider and each replaced a single twelve-pointed star with a two star cluster. Star-Glider took the opportunity to choose a new name for himself. He was now Admiral Steel-Slicer.

Cliff-Web decided it was time to leave when Schuler-Period started making eyes at him. She was at least two pulp-bags past her limit and was trying to get him to come to her quarters to sample her locker. She wasn’t bad looking and would have been fun to tread, but he made it a point never to get involved with government officials. He did too much business with the government. He slipped away while she was admiring Steel-Slicer’s new stars.

A dothturn later, stripped of his reception finery, he was at the launch deck of the space station, waiting for a Web Construction Company shuttlecraft to pick him up. The launch deck was on the Egg-facing side of the spherical space station. He looked out at his glowing home world and tried to make out the cities below. At 406 kilometers distance the cities were blurred patches on the yellow crust, and the only thing that showed up was the cool patch of the East Pole mountain range with his Space Fountain rising up from it.

The top of the Space Fountain stopped at 405,900 meters, while the East Pole Space Station was in synchronous orbit at 406,300 meters. The space station was located slightly to one side of the Space Fountain so he could not only see the nucleus of what was to be the Topside Platform, but the long stalk that held it up over the East Pole mountains. As he watched, a glowing dot rose from the platform below him. It started to drift off to the west, but thrusters brought it back under the space station. The speck grew larger, turned into a Web Construction shuttlecraft, and settled on the launch deck. Cliff-Web recognized the pilot as Heavy-Egg, one of the shift supervisors for the Topside Platform crew. With the two stations this close together, it didn’t require a trained space pilot to move from one to the other. Just another example of how the Space Fountain was going to revolutionize space travel on Egg.

Cliff-Web moved along the curved ramp that allowed his body to transition from the gravity field of the black hole in the center of the space station to the field of the tiny black hole in the center of the four-cheela shuttiecraft.

“How is the job going, Heavy-Egg?” Cliff-Web asked.

“Like a greased Swift, Boss,” Heavy-Egg replied, lifting the shuttlecraft vertically out of its dimple in the launch ramp area. “We’re way ahead of schedule. We stopped 100 meters short of top-out three turns ago. I’ve got the crew making Topside Platform look decent for the topout ceremony. The Chief Engineer says there’s going to be a bunch of big badges from Bright’s Heaven and the Space Force coming for it.”

Cliff-Web was not looking forward to another formal reception, especially one he would be paying for; but it was all part of doing business. They berthed in a hemispherical cradle near the middle of a 50-millimeter flat disk covered with busy workers engaged in the long task of expanding the disk into a large, 200-millimeter diameter platform that would have low walls to divide the deck into offices and compounds for the operations crew, and shops and eating places for the passengers and tourists. This was the top of the three decks in Topside Platform where the passengers and cargo would be transferred from the Fountain to various space stations and spacecraft and back again.

Cliff-Web and Heavy-Egg glided off the spherical shuttlecraft onto the flat deck.

“It sure feels good being on a flat surface again after all that time in space on curved decks,” Cliff-Web remarked.

“I know what you mean,” Heavy-Egg agreed. “I never did trust them black holes. I like to be under Egg gravity, even if it is kind of weak.”

“During top-out just make sure you stop your crew after 100 meters,” said Cliff-Web. “The gravity from Egg will still be strong enough to keep us together. But if you go 300 meters more, the gravity will drop to zero…”

“And whoosh! We get as big as humans.”

“Become a cloud of plasma, is more like it,” said Cliff-Web. “Things are progressing well here on Topside, let’s take the elevators to the middle deck.”

They went to a special freight elevator reserved for the operations personnel. The tread pad in front of the elevator door recognized Heavy-Egg’s tread and let them board. They stopped at the middle deck and moved off into a cavernous room. The deck beneath their tread vibrated with energy. The bottom of the deck above was not cooled to simulate sky, but was only covered with silver paint. It helped some, but even though he was an experienced engineer, having something overhead still bothered Cliff-Web.

There was a loud clang from nearby.

“Still getting pushouts?” Cliff-Web asked.

“Three or four per turn,” Heavy-Egg answered. ’The Chief Engineer makes us save them and send them to Quality. An up-deflector on platform 200 caused some trouble, but that got fixed. Now Quality says we are just weeding out bad rings.“

They moved over to a massive tube that rose out of the deck, curved into a large arc that touched the ceiling overhead, then came back down to penetrate the deck again. Six of them were equally spaced around the center of the deck. In a bin near the tube was a glowing-hot ring suspended in a magnetic field. A young roustabout was fishing out the ring with a hook. As soon as the ring was placed on the deck, she sucked her manipulator inside her body to cool it off.

“Bright’s Turd!” she swore. “That eye-ball-sucking catcher field is hot!”

She hadn’t sensed their approach on the noisy deck, but now saw them coming with one of her eyes. She didn’t know who the stranger was, but from all the metal hanging off him, he must be some sort of big badge. She pulled her still stinging manipulator out and picked up the ring.

“I’ll get this right over to Quality, Supervisor,” she said.

“Just a blink, youngling,” said Cliff-Web. “I want to feel it.” The young roustabout looked at her supervisor, who flicked his eyes at the deck. She put the ring down and the big badge flowed over it.

The ring was large, half the diameter of a cheela. Made of highly polished monopole-stabilized superconducting metal, it was a precision part in a precision machine. The ring was subject to terrific accelerations as it was thrown upward at nearly half the speed of light. Any flaw in the polished surface could cause local heating and the possibility of the loss of superconductivity.

“No dents, but there is a hot spot on the outside and a tiny stress crack,” said Cliff-Web. He flowed off the ring and the youngling picked it up and took it off. Cliff-Web then moved over to the side of the up-pipe and peered through a view port in the side. Illuminated by the glowing metal of the room-temperature pipe, the procession of cold silvery rings blended into a seemingly solid bar that waved slowly back and forth to show that it was a moving stream. The rings had started at nearly half light-speed at the surface, but as they drifted upward, they lost speed from the intense pull of Egg and the tiny tugs at each deflector platform. They were still going at one-twelfth light-speed when they reached Topside Platform.

Cliff-Web peered upward where he could see the black nothingness of the cold bending magnet that turned the rings around and sent them back down again. Cliff-Web watched the stream carefully for a while.

“Very steady flow,” he finally said. “Every acceleration bucket must have a ring in it.”

“At last break-turn in Swift’s Climb, the Base Plant Supervisor bragged they were at three elevens.”

“The entire crew is doing an excellent job,” Cliff-Web remarked. “I’d like to ride it down.”

“We got some spare lifts,” said Heavy-Egg. “I’ll get one set up. I’m almost at break-turn, so I’ll take you down.”

They took the elevator to the bottom deck. This would be the transfer point for passengers, so the ceiling was cold black with simulated stars. The lifts on the Space Fountain rode the streams up to this deck, while the streams of rings continued on to the turning magnets above them on the middle deck. The passengers and freight transferred to smaller elevators that took them to the top deck, while the lifts were detached from the streams, pulled back from the hole in the platform and stacked until a down-going lift was needed.

As Cliff-Web watched, a lift was removed from a stack, placed on glide-rails and moved out on support arms until its deflection coils surrounded the tubes carrying the flowing streams. Each lift used three stream pairs for safety. The support arms were pulled back, and the lift bounced lightly as it shifted its load to the streams. A roustabout hurried over with a ramp to cover the crack between the platform and lift. Cliff-Web waved him back with a flip of his eye-stubs.

“Save it for the crust-crawlers,” he said, gliding over the six-micron-wide crack. He tried to keep his eyes focused off in the distance, but some of them insisted on looking down at Egg, 406 kilometers below his tread.

The things a boss must do to maintain respect, he said to himself.

Heavy-Egg activated the lift controls. As soon as they cleared the bottom deck, the pipe covering the ring stream ended, and they could see the reflection of Egg’s glowing crust in the silvery flow. Except for the first 100 millimeters, where a vacuum pipe was needed to keep the weak electron and iron vapor atmosphere of Egg from heating the rings, there was no solid structure in the tower, not even a skeleton framework, just flowing rings.

“If you don’t mind, Boss, I got a few chores to do while I take you down,” Heavy-Egg said.

“The job comes first. It would be different if I were a paying passenger.”

“I got to finish the checkout on this lift and later on down deliver a part to Platform 40.”

“What kind of checkout?” Cliff-Web asked.

“The stream selector controls,” Heavy-Egg replied. “Right now we ride on all six streams. Drag on the up-streams and push on the down-streams. I just got to check that we can turn off a coupler if a stream gets rough and the automatic doesn’t do it.”

Cliff-Web wasn’t worried. He knew this part of the design well. The lift could theoretically levitate on just one stream, although, if it were badly unbalanced, the torque rebalance requirement could cause problems at the next deflector platform. Two or three streams were more than adequate for a smooth ride. He watched with interest as Heavy-Egg turned off one coupler after another and checked the response of the other five couplers as they took up the load. Then Heavy-Egg turned off all three down couplers and rode only on the up-streams. He reversed the controls and they switched to riding the downstreams only without a noticeable glitch in the motion.

“No problems there,” said Heavy-Egg. “We’re coming up on Platform 40.”

Hearing the decimal number for the platform at 40 kilometers altitude made Cliff-Web’s eye-stubs twitch. Every engineering measurement on Egg used the base twelve numbering system except distance. They had inherited meters, kilometers, and millimeters from the humans and seemed to be stuck with it despite many attempts to switch to a non-metric length system where the units were in easily calculated multiples of twelve.

Heavy-Egg brought the lift to a smooth stop. A small crew was busy repairing a redundant deflector on stream four-up. Cliff-Web glided over to the edge of the platform. The gravity acceleration on the platform was now significantly stronger, about one sixteenth that on the surface of Egg. He looked out over the barrier. At 40 kilometers altitude he could make out the outline of Swift’s Climb and see the kilometer-long streak of the Jump Loop on the east side which he would shortly be using for the jump home. He hadn’t heard anything from Moving-Sand, so Lassie was still alive, but he wondered if she was still mentally alert enough to remember him.

It was nearly turnfeast when Cliff-Web returned to his compound. As the front door slid into its recess he was engulfed with a swarrn of happy snuffling Slinks. Even Lassie was there, having dragged herself from the mat next to the oven as soon as she had heard his familiar scuffle as he came up the street. Lassie’s cluster had grown with the addition of a clutch of hatchlings. They had never seen Cliff-Web before, but that didn’t stop them from joining the happy throng, leaking from both intake and output orifices in their hatchling eagerness. He twirled them all around the eye-rims again and again, until, finally satisfied, they rumbled off. Rollo must have forgotten him, because he was back hiding behind Slurge, which was just managing to push its way through the magnetic fence that bordered the tasty patch of parasol plants. Cliff-Web flowed over to the miniature Flow Slow, and, forming a large bony manipulator, gave Slurge a hard rap on the armored plate just below one of its tiny eyes.

“Back on the lawn!” he hollered.

Slurge retracted its eyes from the side toward the parasol patch. Without the constant reminder of the tasty plants coming to its almost nonexistent brain-clump, it quickly forgot about the garden and started back in the other direction onto the lawn, where it continued its methodical munching and sucking. With the Flow Slow moving in the proper direction, Cliff-Web had time to look at the arrangement of his garden. Moving-Sand must have had some success breeding the fountain plants, for there was a tall one in the center of the circular patch with six more arranged in a hexagon around the central one. All seven were sending up healthy showers of sparks. He then finally noticed something odd. If he had not just come from the East Pole he would have noticed it earlier. All the showers of sparks were going straight up into the air. That was really unusual, for the magnetic declination in this portion of Egg was nearly a quarter-pi off vertical.

“Moving-Sand!” he pounded into the crust.

From off on a distant corner of the compound came a gruff reply. “About time you came back.”

The ancient tracking senses built into the super-sensitive undertread of Cliff-Web instantly triangulated the position of the sound and placed Moving-Sand in the northeast corner of the potting compound. With his attention riveted on that portion of the surrounding territory, his tread could now pick out the motion of someone else with Moving-Sand. He flowed across the outer courtyard to the opposite side of the large compound.

“That is an amazing display of fountain plants,” Cliff-Web said as he rounded the potting compound wall. “One of those plants looks as if it has been growing for a half-dozen turns or more. How did you accomplish that? And how did you get the fountains to go straight up?”

“She helped a little,” said Moving-Sand, his eye-stubs twitching in the direction of the stranger. She was a large, slightly over-bulky female who was obviously well past her egg-bearing prime, but still not quite ready to quit and tend hatchlings. The normal motion of her eye-stubs switched to the converging wave greeting pattern as she spoke.

“I am Zero-Gauss, Doctor of Magnetics at the Institute,” she said. “I specialize in the study of the interaction of magnetic fields on plants.”

“Then it is your compound that has the cleft-wort trained to climb the staircase of supports on the window.”

“Yes,” she replied. “When Moving-Sand came over to inquire about my technique, I learned that you had a large collection of strange plant forms. We have had such an interesting time while you were away. I’ve explained my various tricks in using magnetic fields to train plants and animals, and Moving-Sand has supplied me with a number of new types of plants that you collected in your various journeys around Egg. They are not only lovely additions to my garden, but some of them are proving valuable in my research at the Institute.”

“I noticed that you two have really improved the performance of the fountain plant in the front circle bed,” Cliff-Web said. “What did you do?”

“I brought over a large superconducting coil with a persistent current in it, and we buried it in the crust below the root system. We tilted it so that the direction of the combined magnetic fields of the coil and Egg is vertical. That way, the jet of sparks from the fountain plant can rise straight up as it does at its home location at the East Pole.”

“Was a lot of work. But it did the trick,” said Moving-Sand grudgingly. ’That fountain plant has lasted more than a dozen turns and is still growing. Best I could do before was three turns. Was hardly worth bothering to plant them.“

“I guess even plants thrive best when conditions are similar to what they are familiar with,” said Cliff-Web.

“Not necessarily. In my research laboratory at the Institute,” Zero-Gauss explained, “I have found that many plants grow faster and healthier if there is no magnetic field at all.”

“No field at all?” Cliff-Web’s engineering curiosity was aroused. “What do you do? Put them at the center of some Helmholtz coils and cancel out the magnetic field of Egg?”

“I do use a pair of large Helmholtz coils to start with,” she replied. “The coils only zero out the field at the center, however. Even a few microns away the cancellation is poor enough that the plant is affected. Between the coils I have built a special room lined with superconducting shielding where I have completely eliminated the magnetic field of Egg over a large enough volume that I can carry out tests on dozens of plant samples at the same time.”

“I don’t understand.” Cliff-Web’s eye-stubs were twitching in a confused manner as his engineer’s brain tried to imagine how one could make such a room. “I suppose you could make a room with a floor and walls made out of high quality superconducting plate, but even if the walls were extremely tall, the fringing fields would come in over the top. That wouldn’t work at all.”

“I didn’t mean a regular room, open to the sky,” Zero-Gauss explained. “My laboratory is under the crust and has a domed cover of superconducting plate over the top, like the ‘ceilings’ or ‘roofs’ the humans use on their living and working compounds.”

“You wouldn’t catch me working in that place,” Moving-Sand muttered. “I don’t trust things over top of me.”

“The dome is artificially cooled to simulate the cold of the sky,” said Zero-Gauss. “That helps me a lot when I’m working in there. Since it is as dark as the sky, I can’t see it, so it is easy to pretend it isn’t there.”

“That must be an amazing structure,” said Cliff-Web. “I presume there are pillars and double-arches holding up the domes like those in the human cathedrals. How big is it?”

“It is thirty millimeters square and has a post every centimeter. The top of the dome is five millimeters up,” she replied. “Would you like to see it?” She hesitated, then added, “We limit direct access, since each entry allows a little more magnetic field to leak in. However, we have an array of remotely controlled video cameras that will let you look at any portion.”

“I would like to see it,” Cliff-Web told her. He led the way back from the potting rooms through the gardens to the front door of the compound. Slurge was quietly trimming the lawn, and Rollo and the Slinks were gone. As he activated the compound door, the area was suddenly full of Slinks. Using his body to block the Slinks from getting out into the street, Cliff-Web escorted Zero-Gauss out the door, for the first time touching the large female.

Moving-Sand came up to chase the Slinks from the doorway and ’trummed after them. “You can’t go now. You just got here. You haven’t even read your message file. You must have six dozen messages to answer.”

“I’ll get to them later,” Cliff-Web answered as he led the way down the slidewall toward the Inner Eye Institute.

“One of them is from the Rejuvenation Selection Committee,” hollered Moving-Sand. Cliff-Web paused, then continued on down the street, silently thinking.

Zero-Gauss got his attention with an electronic whisper that tickled his backside. “I am impressed. The committee only started announcing the names of those that were being selected for the rejuvenation process a dozen turns ago. You must be up at the top of the list.”

“It must be a long list,” he said.

“No,” she said. “I know of only one scientist at the Institute who is on it. Don’t forget, the process is so time-consuming and costly that they are only able to undertake one rejuvenation every three turns—only four dozen cheela in a whole great of turns. It must be tough having to make the decision of who are to be the lucky few who are going to be allowed to live a second life while the rest of us will have to die when our time comes.”

Cliff-Web was too embarrassed to reply, and they moved along the slidewalls in silence, switching leads at each tack. As they came to the next intersection they switched places again so that Cliff-Web was spreading the field lines again. Snuggled up to his trailing side, Zero-Gauss tried to break the silence with a whispered comment.

“You certainly have an unusual personal robot,” she said. “It is one of the most lifelike robots I have ever seen. Yet most personal robots are programmed to be deferential and polite.”

“Moving-Sand is one of our newest models. I’m checking it out before we go into production. As for his personality, being owner of a large company, I meet nothing but deferential and polite people. I wanted something different at home to keep my brain-knot from getting too big for my hide. I programmed Moving-Sand’s personality atter the Old One that raised me in the clan hatchery.”

“Good idea,” said Zero-Gauss. “Keeps you thinking like a hatchling. When I can afford a personal robot, I think I’ll do the same.”

“Anything to keep the egg-tending syndrome from starting,” said Cliff-Web. “Gardening helps, too.”

“That was one of the reasons I chose plants and small animals for my research,” said Zero-Gauss. “Of course, all that may be unnecessary now that we have rejuvenation.”

The rest of their journey to the Inner Eye Institute was carried out in silence.

06:55:20 GMT TUESDAY 21 JUNE 2050

While waiting for Amalita to finish her careful inspection of Dragon Slayer, Pierre reopened conversation with Sky-Teacher through the link to the surface of the neutron star.

“I want to thank you for saving our lives. If there is anything we can ever do to repay you…”

“I have studied the speculation past literature of the human race in order to better understand you,” Sky-Teacher responded. “It is amusing to me that your present offer coincides with that in the ancient fable by Aesop about the lion and the mouse. At one time in the distant past, you did help us, and we appreciated it. We hope that we have been of some help in correcting your recent predicament. As for the future, it is difficult to see how you, with your limited technology, could be of any help to us, but we appreciate your thoughts. If everything is in order once again for you to leave, I will once again say goodbye.”

With the last words, the screen went blank again.

06:56:20 GMT TUESDAY 21 JUNE 2050

It was turnfeast, and Time-Circle shuffled listlessly past the foodmats in the faculty dining compound. He took a few staple items from the wide selection, stuffed them in a carrying pouch, picked up a large bag of unfermented pulp juice and made his way to the eating area. Over the topsides of some diners already enjoying their turnfeast, he saw three eyes up on stalks waving at him. He cheered up a little and made his way over to join the newest member of the faculty club, D. C. Neutron-Drip, who had received a Doctorate in Crustallography and chosen a new name only three turns ago.

Time-Circle had taken part in the ceremony as the senior representative of her in-clan family and had given the clan approval for the name change. The two were the only members of their clan at the Inner Eye Institute, since the clan home was far from Bright’s Heaven at the East Pole. He knew from her age that she wasn’t from one of his eggs so he didn’t have to be concerned about his relationship with her. Now that she was no longer a student, he intended to get to know her better.

Neutron-Drip moved over as he approached and spread out to share the resting pad with her. Reaching into his pouch, he pulled out his food and set it on the eating mat.

“What an uninspired turnfeast you have there,” said Neutron-Drip, her eye-stubs waving back and forth in disapproval. “Three ground-meat loaves, two crunch-fruits, and a bag of pulp juice. Turnfeast is supposed to be a feast, not a refueling stop.” She formed a manipulator, picked up a small portion of baked Flow Slow egg covered with a tangy pulp nut sauce and held it before his eating pouch.

“Here,” she said. “Try this, maybe it will cheer you up.”

He took the morsel, very much aware of the feel of the strange manipulator in his eating pouch as he did so.

“It is very tasty. I may have to go back and get some for myself,” he said, his eye-stub pattern assuming a more normal wave-pattern as the taste of the nut sauce penetrated the back of his eating pouch.

“I thought that would cheer you up,” she said. “What is bothering you?”

“My research project,” he replied. “It used to be fun, but now it is giving me nothing but trouble.”

“Is there something wrong with the Time-Comm machine?” she asked.

“It could be something wrong with the machine or it could be I don’t understand the theory well enough yet. Either way I don’t get any money for a new 24-channel machine until I figure out what this one is doing. This first machine only has four channels each way and it takes forever to get any data. I even had to turn down a graduate student last turn. He was eager to do research on time communication, and I would have loved to have a bright youngling to work with, but I honestly couldn’t allow him to spend the next dozen greats waiting to collect enough data to complete a doctoral project.”

“I know the student,” said Neutron-Drip. “It was Eager-Eyes. He came to me after you turned him down. He and I are going to set up a crustquake detector array around the East Pole mountains. With any luck, his thesis should establish the basis for a theory to predict East Pole crustquakes.”

“With a decent-size crustquake every three or four turns at the poles, at least he will have some data to analyze.” Time-Circle sounded dejected. “But why bother predicting crustquakes? Except for a few accidents when a high-speed glide-car hits the ground during a big quake, the only thing a crustquake does is crack a few compound walls or underground utility mains. At least we don’t have the problem of a ’roof’ overhead the way the humans do.”

“You sound just like the grant committee. Always wanting to know, ‘What good is it?’ “ She drew the edges of her tread back. “What good is a new hatchling?”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m just feeling pessimistic about everything.”

“Tell me about it,” she said, drawing closer.

“In the beginning the project was fun,” he began, “I had two bright graduate students. One doing the experiments and one working on the theory. We sent messages back and forth in small increments of time—just a few turns at first. Then we set up a series of progressively larger jumps until we were sending short messages over a whole great of turns. We could code the messages in such a way that the essential data was certain to get through, while the remainder of the message contained codes that allowed us to determine the number of bits the channel was able to pass. We showed that the number of bits the channel could handle was inversely proportional to the distance in time the message was sent. Except for slight statistical variations, the bit-time product was always 864 bit-greats.”

“So you could send a yes-no answer over 864 greats of turns,” she said.

“Or 124,416 bits over one turn,” said Time-Circle, his tread ’trumming out the familiar train of numbers. “Then, as the climax to both of their doctoral projects, we simultaneously sent messages on the three forward-time channels to times two, three, and four greats into the future. The fourth channel we always keep clear in case an urgent message needs to be sent.”

Four greats is a long time to wait before you can finish your thesis,“ she said.

“We didn’t have to wait at all,” said Time-Circle. “Somewhere there was a minor calibration error between the forward-time channels and the back-time channels. Before we sent out the test signals, we received a response back from the future saying that all the signals had been received and giving the number of bits that had made it through each channel. They all agreed with the theoretical prediction of 864 bit-greats.”

“But suppose you had then decided not to send the test messages into the future?” she asked.

“One of the students suggested that,” he replied. “But I had already trod their edges on that subject early in the project. Until we have a theory for these machines so we can understand the implications of creating a paradox, we can’t afford to take a chance. My guess is that every major paradox causes a bifurcation of the universe. But it would take a good theory to suggest an experiment that would prove that bifurcation had taken place.”

“And you have a good theory?” she asked.

“Until a few turns ago, I thought I did,” he said dejectedly. “Now, I’m not so certain.”

“What happened?”

“After the success with the three multi-great transmissions, I had no trouble getting the grant committee to authorize the construction of a 24-channel machine with a greatly increased channel capacity in each channel. Getting the money approved took a while, and while the preliminary design work was underway the time came for the first of the transmissions to be received, the one sent over two greats of turns. The two ex-students as well as members of the grant committee were there as the message came out of the machine from two greats in the past, and they watched as I measured the bit count and sent the confirmation back to myself in the past. I should have quit then.”

“What happened?”

“Since I now had two channels free in each direction, I decided to show the committee how the Time-Comm machine worked by sending a message six greats into the future. As I prepared the message for the forward-time channel, I was a little surprised that the back-time channel had not already indicated the message had been received. Thinking that the differential calibration had drifted off so that the back-time channels were now shorter than the forward-time channels, I sent the message off six greats into the future and waited for a reply.”

“And?”

“It didn’t come,” he said. “I didn’t find out what had happened until a great of turns later, long after the grant committee had decided to hold up on the construction of the new machine.”

They had finished eating, and the faculty dining compound was nearly empty.

“You have to get back to your work,” he said. “I can’t do anything until the next channel clears a few dozen turns from now, so you spread the fields and I’ll snuggle along behind and tell you the rest of the sad story.”

She headed across the grounds of the Institute and he switched to a soft electronic whisper that tickled through her hide.

“I was really dejected until the time came for the reception of the three-great-long message. That came through on schedule, and I sent the reply through the back-time channel. Almost as soon as the reply was on its way through the channel into the past, the channel was full again with a message from the future, eight greats away. At eight greats time distance, you can only send 108 bits of information, so the message was brief. Both the six great and the eight great messages had been received, but the response to the six-great message had been blocked by some spontaneous emission in the back-time channel.”

“Spontaneous emission?”

“That bewildered me at first. My time communication theory, although based on the quantization of space and time, didn’t predict any spontaneous emission of signal energy in the channels,” he said. “I brought in a bright theoretical student, and we soon found a third-order effect that could produce spontaneous emission of a bit pair that travels simultaneously backward and forward in time for a short period, then emerges in the receiver. Even though the ‘message’ is only one bit, that is enough to keep the channel from being used by any other message. It is only supposed to happen once every dozen generations or so, and it had to happen just as I needed that channel to impress the committee.”

“Did your new results get the committee to resume the work on the 24-channel machine?” she asked.

They were just as suspicious of the coincidence as I was,“ he said. “They decided to wait until we saw the noise in the channel and could learn more about it than could be sent with 108 bits. Sure enough, about 72 turns later, out came a single bit and the channel indicator registered ‘Channel Occupied’ for almost two greats when suddenly the back-channel was empty and a forward-channel was ‘Occupied.’ Neither transmitter had activated. I analyzed and re-analyzed everything and was about to approach the committee for restarting the construction of the new machine when the final blow fell.”

Neutron-Drip stopped moving, and her edges flowed back about his in a semicircular embrace.

“Last turn I responded to an alarm and found that another back-time channel has noise in it. What is worse, it was not a single bit, but three bits with a nonsense meaning. The chance of spontaneous emission of three bits is infinitesimal. The machine has a noise source. And until we understand it, we shouldn’t spend money on a larger machine. But with only four channels, it will take forever to find out what the problem is.”

“But once you find out, you can send a message back to yourself with the answer…” she started.

“There you go, creating paradoxes again,” he said. “If it were possible, 1 would have already done it, and 1 wouldn’t be here whispering my troubles into your trailing side.” He moved around her and pushed off across the compound.

“Enough of my problems,” he said. “How about showing me how you are going to set up that net around the East Pole to trap crustquakes?”

06:57:52 GMT TUESDAY 21 JUNE 2050

Qui-Qui was surprised when she received a letter from the rejuvenation selection committee. She sent her acceptance message at once, then called her manager, Grey-Stone.

The picture over the video link was that of a small middle-aged male painted in the bright diagonal stripes that went out of fashion 20 greats ago. The already rapidly moving eye-wave pattern became even more agitated as he recognized his famous client.

“What problem have you got now?” said Grey-Stone. “You never call me unless you’ve got a problem.”

“No problem at all,” said Qui-Qui. “It’s good news. I have been selected by the rejuvenation committee for treatment. Of course, the treatment takes a half-great.”

“A half-great!” came the loud reply over the video link. “You don’t have a half-great free on your schedule until 2899!”

“I do now,” she replied. “I go west for the final interview and tests two turns from now. Unless they find something that disqualifies me, I start treatment immediately after that.”

“But your contracts…” Grey-Stone said.

“Renegotiate them,” she replied. “Just remind them they will be getting the experience of an old, flabby Qui-Qui in the body of a young, firm Qui-Qui.”

She watched the traveling wave motion in Grey-Stone’s eye-stubs slow to almost a complete halt as he pictured the image she had created.

“At twice the original fee!” he finally said.

“That’s why I have you for my manager,” she replied with a rippling overtone in her tread. “There is nothing too audacious for Grey-Stone.”

She paused, and her eye-stubs stood still while she rippled her bountiful eye-flaps in her famous gesture of shocked, innocent bewilderment.

“Of course…it could be…,” she said, the ripples of her eye-flaps coming to a stop. “That…the treatment leaves me flat.” She flicked off the video with a chirp of amusement as Grey-Stone’s eyes stood straight up in shock.

Qui-Qui programmed her housekeepers to keep her three compounds in shape while she was gone and took the Jump Loop to the West Pole Rejuvenation Center. She had been assigned there to be close to her clan home of White Rock City. At the Rejuvenation Center she had no problem passing all the physical examinations. The last step was a final interview with the senior physician in charge of the Center, Sabin-Salk. During the examinations, Qui-Qui had had plenty of time to think. Now she had some questions.

“What I don’t understand,” she said, “was why I was selected instead of some scientist or writer or musician or politician?”

“According to our evaluation, you happen to be one of the best cheela ever laid on Egg,” Sabin-Salk said matter-of-factly. “You are an expert in communication with other cheela. With a different background or training you too could have been a

writer or a musician or a politician, perhaps even a scientist, in fact, if it weren’t that you are too honest to deceive people, with your intelligence, good looks, and charisma, you could probably even convince people you were a god and start a new religious cult.“

“But all I am is an entertainer,” she protested.

“I don’t think even you believe that,” he said. “To the average holovid viewer you are nothing but twelve big eye-flaps. But those who have talked with you know that behind those eye-flaps is one of the tightest brain-knots on Egg. You have a lot of friends in large compounds. Your choice was no accident.

“Now, let me take you around the treatment facility and show you what you must undergo. The procedure will not be easy.” They entered the first compound where there were a couple of robotic attendants and a lot of exercise equipment.

“First we must exercise you and feed you until you have built up a good supply of flesh in your body. The dissolver enzymes will use that as the building material to produce support structures in the intermediate plant body. Those support structures must be of high quality or they will break in the strong gravity of Egg.”

Qui-Qui noticed someone exercising under the guidance of a robot in the far corner of the room. It was a large male, almost as large as she was. The robot spoke something to the male, who muttered curses as he increased the tempo of his exercise.

“Who is that?” asked Qui-Qui.

“It is Engineer Cliff-Web. He owns Web Construction Company.”

Qui-Qui’s eye-wave pattern slowed in puzzlement. She obviously didn’t know who Cliff-Web was.

“He was the one who built the Space Fountain and the Jumbo Bagel space motor to rescue the Slow Ones,” said Sabin-Salk.

All of Qui-Qui’s eyes turned to look in awe at the engineer.

“I was selected with someone that important?” she said.

“Actually, he was in the first selection list,” said Sabin-Salk. “But he is quite a bit older than you and, having been involved with scrollwork much of the time, he was in poor physical condition. He was in the exercise phase for almost 40 turns before he had sufficient muscle tone. Two more turns of starving, and he will be ready for treatment.”

“Starving!” Qui-Qui gasped. “I thought you said we were fed.”

“You are fed during the build-up phase,” Sabin-Salk explained. “But we must have your well-muscled body starving and near exhaustion before we inject the animal-plant conversion enzymes. They then activate the dormant genes in you that were left after our evolution from the dragon plants long ago.” He paused and observed her carefully as he continued. “I warned you that it would not be pleasant. If you would rather not take the treatment…”

“No. I want to go ahead with it,” said Qui-Qui. Her eye-stubs wavered to a halt as she asked her next question. “Will I still be conscious during the burning part?”

Dr. Sabin-Salk looked bewildered, so she continued.

“I am of the clan of the Ancient One Swift-Killer, the first cheela in recorded history to undergo rejuvenation. In the hatchling pen I was told how she struggled to climb the East Pole mountains to send the first message to the humans. After sending the message, her exhausted body was severely burned by the heat from an infalling meteorite. The burning caused her body to revert spontaneously to the dragon plant form, where the damage was mended. Later the dragon plant reverted back, and Swift-Killer found she had a new, young body.”

“Swift-Killer was extremely lucky,” Sabin-Salk stated. “Most cheela who have tried the burning approach to rejuvenation died. The only function of the burning was to shock the body and get it to produce the animal-to-plant conversion enzymes. We do not burn you. Instead we manufacture the enzymes artificially and inject them into you. They dissolve everything in the body except the nerve tissue and the outer layer of skin. That liquid is then used to make the plant.”

They left the still exercising Cliff-Web and moved on to the next compound. A large array of small machines stood in one corner of the compound, each with two tubes that connected to two larger collecting lines that led to two large tanks. A single robot was tending the machines.

“Those machines produce both the animal-to-plant and the plant-to-animal enzymes,” said Sabin-Salk. “It takes all those machines about 18 turns before we have enough for one rejuvenation.”

“Only one patient every 18 turns?” exclaimed Qui-Qui. “Surely you could handle more than that!”

“We will,” Sabin-Salk told her. “As more of the enzyme producing machines are produced, we will increase the treatment rate to at least one per turn. It will take some time though, since the other centers are also awaiting machines.”

“They don’t look very large,” said Qui-Qui. “You would think there would be plenty of money available for the production of rejuvenation machines. I guess they are complicated inside.”

“The problem isn’t money or the difficulty of making the machines,” said Sabin-Salk. “The process for producing the enzyme requires the use of a rare catalyst. It is a neutron-rich isotope found only in trace amounts in the lava shield from the Exodus volcano. Since the volcano is still quite active, mining the lava is extremely hazardous. It will take a dozen greats before we have enough of the catalyst to reach full capacity. Let us go on to the ‘garden.’”

They moved to the next compound. In the center of the compound were two very large dragon plants. They were of the single-root, inverted-canopy type similar to a parasol plant, but much larger. One of them was still growing and had a small crowd of robots and two live cheela attending it. The cheela had large medical badges in their hides with extra stars and colored spots to indicate their advanced degrees.

“That is what you will look like in 30 to 36 turns if you do your exercises properly.” Sabin-Salk motioned to the plants with a flick of his eye-stubs.

“Who were they?” Qui-Qui asked in a subdued electronic whisper.

“Are they,” Sabin-Salk corrected. “You would know them if I told you, but our policy is not to identify the plant form to strangers. Cheela do not mind being pointed out if they are wearing their body paint and badges, but you put all that aside when you are a plant. The larger plant is almost ready for re-constitution. We will let it mature for two more turns, then inject the plant-to-animal conversion enzyme. The reverse process only takes a few turns. The plant support structures are turned into fluid and used to rebuild the body. At the very last stage, the old outer skin peels off and the newly formed eyes come out from under their eye-flaps.”

“Is everything the way it was before, except younger?” asked Qui-Qui.

“Everything except the brain-knot and the rest of the nerve tissue, since they are not touched by the animal-to-plant enzymes. Except for a blank period during the rejuvenation process, the memory and brain function of the new body is identical to that of the old.” He paused and deliberately looked off in the distance as he continued. “Since you are a professional holovid performer, I am sure you are interested in what your new body will look like. I can assure you and all your loyal holovid viewers that the rebuilt body will use the same genetic tri-string that made the original Qui-Qui, and the new Qui-Qui will take up just as much volume on the holovid as the old one.”

A directional call signal vibrated through the crust that tickled the outer edge of Qui-Qui’s tread as it focused in on the position of Sabin-Salk.

“An Elder from your clan has arrived to approve the final scrollwork,” Sabin-Salk said. “If you will follow along behind, I will spread the way to my office.”

06:58:06 GMT TUESDAY 21 JUNE 2050

Zero-Gauss had left the faculty dining compound after a nourishing turnfeast and headed for her underground magnetic-field-free laboratory. She passed by some students who stopped their conversation to allow their treads to listen to her. She seemed to be simultaneously talking to herself and emitting squeaks.

“I have a delicious piece of baked Flow Slow egg for you. I wiped off most of the sauce so it shouldn’t be too hot,” she said as she formed a manipulator, reached into a holding pouch to extract the tasty morsel, then put the manipulator into another pouch. As the orifice of the pouch opened, a fuzzy little Slink hatchling tried to climb out, but was distracted by the sight of the food. It grabbed it eagerly and tried to stuff it all into its too-small eating pouch.

“A little too big for you, Poofsie?” she asked. Her manipulator sliced the bit of egg into smaller pieces, which were greedily devoured by the hungry hatchling. She closed the orifice just enough to keep the animal inside while allowing a small hole so he could keep a few eyes waving about outside to see where they were going.

She entered a small compound that was the,top of her unique research facility, which contained subcompounds for her office and those of her graduate students. A second compound a short distance away contained the machinery that operated the underground machinery and provided the cooling for the simulated sky hanging beneath the strong superconducting roof of the laboratory. The second compound had a very unusual structure in one corner—arectangular box made of thick metal with a door in one end and a covering over the top.

She went to her office and glanced through her computer net mail. There was nothing important, so she paid a visit to a compound containing two of her graduate students.

“How are the plants doing, Careful-Mover?” she asked one student.

“We did have one fountain plant die,” Careful-Mover replied. “It shot seeds all over the room as it did so. But it had lasted 46 turns, which is close to a record.”

“Did you get all the seeds picked up?” Zero-Gauss asked.

“Yes. And in the process, Fuzzy-Crust and I found another ‘hot spot’ in one corner,” said Careful-Mover.

“Is it bad?” Zero-Gauss asked. “I’d hate to have to go through the process of pumping out the whole lab again so soon.”

“It was 100 gauss right on top of the hot spot,” Careful-Mover answered. “But it’s quite small, and a few millimeters away it fades into the background variations of a few gauss. There were a few plants near the corner so we just moved the containers to another part of the room.”

Zero-Gauss turned to Fuzzy-Crust.

“I have a replacement for Peter,” she said, pulling the tiny ball of fuzz and eyes from her pouch.

“Poofsie, meet Fuzzy-Crust. He will be taking good care of you from now on,” said the professor, forming a little nest on the floor with the edge of her tread and dropping the animal into it. The Slink tried to climb over the edge, but Zero-Gauss kept it in place by rippling her skin underneath the tiny tread. The Slink stopped and looked up at Fuzzy-Crust with all twelve of its dark red eyes. The student brought an eye down to look at it.

“So now it will be Flopsie, Mopsie, Cottonball, and Poofsie,” said Fuzzy-Crust. “You found an excellent replacement. It looks just like Peter.”

“These genetically pure strains of laboratory Slinks all look the same,” said Zero-Gauss. “I just chose the one that looked the smartest.”

“You should have chosen the dumbest one,” said Careful-Mover. “Peter was smart and look what happened to him. He figured out how to open his cage and died of overeating. Set my zero-gauss horticulture thesis back half a great.”

“I’ll make sure the cage is locked this time,” Zero-Gauss promised. “Do you have anything else for me to take down?”

“A batch of seedlings,” said Careful-Mover. “They are waiting in the storage pen next to the elevator.”

Zero-Gauss checked the video monitors that showed every corner of the underground nursery and animal pens, made a mental note to check a few plants that looked like they needed attention, then made her way to the elevator in the facilities compound.

Next to the elevator was a dressing subcompound with high walls. She stripped off her six metal professor badges, took off her jewelry, wiped off all her body paint, and emptied out all her pouches, even her heritage pouch containing her clan totem. The totem was made of clay fired in the ancient manner and had a baked-in magnetic field. She rolled the totem in a wiper and put it into a drawer with a combination lock. Now, as naked as the day she was hatched, she opened the door to the dressing room and looked out. Electron-Pusher, the facilities operator, was waiting discreetly at the operations console around the corner.

She moved softly to the holding pens and loaded up her pouches. Poofsie went into a small pouch and the plastic pots containing the seedlings sprouting in non-magnetic soil went into her carry-all pouch. Now quite bulky, she faced the open door of the elevator. The elevator did not have a cooled ceiling, and it took all her nerve to make her tread move her body under the heavy metal roof. Once inside, she forced her eyes to look at the floor and calmed down. She activated the audio channel of the video link.

“You may shut the door, Electron-Pusher,” she said.

“Door shutting, Professor,” said Electron-Pusher. “What is the biggest diameter you’re carrying?”

“Nothing bigger than my brain-knot,” she said.

“We only need three pump-walls then,” said Electron-Pusher. There was a whining noise, and the back wall of the elevator moved toward Zero-Gauss.

“Here comes the first wall,” he said. “Let me know when everything is through.”

The heavy superconducting metal wall stopped in the middle of the room, and a small circular orifice opened in the door a little way off the floor. First, Zero-Gauss emptied out her pouches and arranged the seedling pots near the wall. Then she stuck a manipulator through the tiny hole, grabbed a handle on the other side, narrowed herself down as small as she could, and slipped herself through the hole. The iris on the hole followed the outlines of her body, dilating as the brain-knot went through, then finally shrinking down to the diameter of the trailing manipulator that held the squirming Poofsie firmly in its grip.

While her body resumed its normal flattened shape, her manipulator was busy transferring plants from one side of the wall to the other. That done, the orifice closed tightly and the superconducting wall continued across the elevator to the door, compressing all the magnetic field lines in front of it. The elevator door opened briefly, and the field was pushed to the outside. A second wall approached from the back of the elevator and the process was repeated. The only difference now was that the first wall was made non-superconducting before the final expulsion stroke. After the third wall had passed, Zero-Gauss went over to a control plate in the floor and pressed in a code. A probe rose out of the floor into the middle of the room.

“A good pump,” she said over the audio link. “It only registers 2800 gauss.”

“Close enough to zero for the chamber lock to handle,” said Electron-Pusher. “Ready to fall?”

Her eye-wave pattern developed an annoyed twitch at his stale attempt at a joke. He had probably gotten a squeal out of one of her graduate students sometime in the past at the thought of falling down under the ground. Now he repeated it every time they went down.

“I am ready to descend,” she said, her tread firmly rapping the metal plating of the floor. She didn’t quite get the right “Senior Professor” tone in the ’trum. It is a little hard to sound authoritative when you are naked.

“Yes, Professor,” said Electron-Pusher, and the elevator began its slow descent beneath the crust.

At the bottom, the magnetic pumping procedure was carried out again using the pump-walls in the lock leading to the low-field chamber. All the residual magnetic fields possible were pumped into the elevator, which used barriers that alternated between normal conducting and superconducting states to trap the fields. The elevator then rose again to the surface where the trapped fields were expelled to the outside.

Zero-Gauss stopped by the dressing alcove, slapped on some neutral body paint, plugged in six professor badges made of metal-colored plastic, and, now decent, moved out in view of the video cameras scanning the chamber. The ceiling was a comforting black. She, Poofsie, and the plants were all glad to be out of the stifling closeness of the elevator and locks.

She started with the animals. Three of the nine segments of the field-free room held multiple breeding pairs of all the major animals on Egg with the exception of the two that were larger than a mature cheela, the ponderous Flow Slow and the carnivorous Swift. These were represented by miniature genetic hybrids about the size of a Slink.

She had a number of different types of Slinks. In addition to three sets of brightly colored but stupid food Slinks bred with flesh of different flavors, there were some highly trained herding Slinks bred for intelligence. Now, with the addition of Poofsie, she had two sets of a laboratory strain especially bred with bodies that responded like the body of a cheela to environmental changes.

She had a lot to check in the laboratory. After having gone through the long, laborious task of getting into the laboratory, she was in no hurry to leave. There was at least two turns of work to do, what with taking the animals through physical checkups as well as intelligence tests. They had restocked the food lockers in the dressing alcove the last time they had pumped out the room, so she would just refuel at turnfeast from them. Besides, someone had to check the quality of the nuts and fruits on the food plants.

Steel-Slicer was looking forward to his return to the Polar Orbiting Space Station. Many things had happened since his last visit there. He had retired from active duty, was elected to the Legislature of the Combined Clans, and had been selected for rejuvenation. He was still entitled to wear his two-star Admiral cluster badges, so he put them on for his visit.

Far-Ranger had also just finished her rejuvenation and was about to warp back out into interstellar space. She had invited him up to attend her “warpfeast” before she left.

The robotic glide-car hummed through the run-down east side of Bright’s Heaven and slid to a stop in front of the entrance to the Jump Loop terminal. Steel-Slicer slid his magnecard into the payslot, and the glide-car released him. As he flowed to the walkway he noticed a small, wiry, scarred, and badgeless youngling slumped against the wall nearby. The youngling’s eyes were casually, but attentively, watching everything going on around him, especially the traffic in and out of the automatic doors to the terminal. The terminal was in a rough section of town, so Steel-Slicer moved quickly across the street and through the IN door.

Once inside, he relaxed a little and headed for the baggage queue, where he unpouched his small traveling kit. There was a little time left before the jump so he moved through the crowded terminal toward the pulp-bar. He started to circle around a small, heavily speckled female who had all eyes on the tough-looking male to whom she was talking. Suddenly, without seeming to look where she was going, the female backed away from the tough, and Admiral Steel-Slicer found himself half-enveloped with speckled female flesh.

“Excuse me,” Steel-Slicer said as he tried to move away.

“I don’t mind if you don’t,” said the nubile female as she brought a number of her eyes around and draped a few speckled eye-flaps on his topside. “Besides, you’re a lot handsomer than that rough-tread over there.” She flicked her eye-stubs at the tough, who glared at them. Steel-Slicer noticed that the speckled pattern on the female extended to her eye-balls. Some of them were pink instead of the normal dark-red.

The Admiral tried to extract himself, but found that the female had formed a number of tendrils and was holding him by his two-star Admiral’s badges. Other tendrils, hidden by their bodies, started tickling him.

“Want to have a little fun?” she said in an electronic whisper that sent tingles through his body. “I know a nice quiet little pad-place nearby.”

Steel-Slicer started to turn down the offer when he was jolted by a slap from a heavy manipulator.

“Leave my flapper alone!” said the tough, glaring at him.

Stunned by the shock, Steel-Slicer didn’t notice the loss of two of his star-cluster badges as the freckled female pulled away.

“I got them!” she hollered, and started for the IN door at full tread ripple. The tough was right behind her.

“Stop!” shouted Steel-Slicer as he finally noticed his loss. He started after them. The tough pulled a sticker from a pouch in his rapidly retreating trailing edge and waved it menacingly.

“Go suck your eye-balls, Spacer!” yelled tne tougn.

“Here comes a clanker!” warned the speckled female as they approached the door. The door was opened by their confederate outside, and it almost shut before the peace officer arrived; but he squeezed through the crack and took up the chase.

Steel-Slicer halted when the peace officer took off after them. He stopped, a little embarrassed, and shifted a star cluster partially to cover the bare place on his hide. It was doubtful the officer would catch the thieves. Since it was time for his jumpcraft to leave, he turned and headed for the boarding area.

“That egg-eating clanker got through!” shouted Speckle-Top. “Scatter! We’ll sell the stuff later!”

She pushed down a side street that led toward the old temple grounds, where she knew there were plenty of places to hide. Luckily the clanker had followed Crumpled-Tread. She was the one with the stolen badges so even if the clanker caught him, they would have to let him go.

Her street-trained tread heard the rapid movement of two other clankers coming, so she hurried, trying to keep the noise of her tread-ripple down. At the entrance to the old temple grounds she squeezed her skinny body through a quake-crack in the ancient outer perimeter fence. Dodging some workers carrying out restoration work, she rushed past one of the newly restored “eyes” of the ancient monument and made her way to a small crust-rock at a point where the base of the “eye-stub” met the wall that formed the “body” of the temple. Behind that rock was an ancient tunnel that she discovered a few turns ago. She had noticed a tiny hole in the wall after the huge crust-moving machines had passed. Looking for a safe place to hide stolen stuff until it could be sold, she had found that the hole opened into an underground tunnel heavily lined with an old-fashioned type of thick metal superconductor.

When originally built in the days of Pink-Eyes the prophet, the superconductor had kept the magnetic field of Egg out of the tunnel so the High Priests of Bright could travel quickly from the outer sanctuary to the top of the Inner Eye mound, where they would miraculously appear to the crowds below. The tunnel was now clogged with pinned magnetic flux that was strongly coupled to the walls.

Speckle-Top pushed her way through the flux lines until she was inside, whereupon she rolled the rock back to hide the entrance. She relaxed as the magnetic field pinned her body solidly to the surrounding crust. She was a little apprehensive about being underground, but felt sure that the clankers would never find her in her secret hideout.

The end of the shift finally turned around, and Heavy-Egg dismissed his crew. He watched them crowd onto the lifts and head for the surface of Egg and the pulp-bars with more speed than he had seen out of them all turn.

“Last lift, boss.” Hungry-Pouch was holding the lift steady.

“Wait for me,” said Heavy-Egg. “Got to see the chief.”

He took the elevator to the upper deck of Topside Platform and made his way to the compound that was the office of the chief engineer of Topside Platform. His crew had barely made their quota today, and he finally had to take some action. He didn’t mind a little squeeze and tickle during the shift, it helped make the turns go by; but when he had found Yellow-Rock treading Easy-Row behind the elevator shaft, that was the pod that toppled the plant. He wanted them replaced.

The door to the chief engineer’s compound was open. Heavy-Egg flowed in with a determined tread, then stopped. A young stranger was in the office, and the chief engineer was listening to him deferentially. The youngling had badges bigger than the chief engineer’s badges.

“Shift Supervisor Heavy-Egg,” said the stranger. “It’s good to see you again.” Seeing the bewilderment in Heavy-Egg’s eye-wave pattern, he added, “I’m your boss, Cliff-Web. I’ve been ‘rejuved’—I think they call it now. Do you have a problem?”

“It can wait until next shift,” Heavy-Egg said, reversing his tread-ripple. He moved back out the door in a daze and made his way to the bottom deck. Yellow-Rock avoided his glance as Heavy-Egg flowed onto the lift, took over the controls from Hungry-Pouch and started the long trip down the Space Fountain to the surface.

Time-Circle was feeling lonely again and was looking for someone to talk to. Another of the channels in his time machine had become clogged with noise. He wandered over to the other side of the Inner Eye Institute and visited the Crustallography compound; but Neutron-Drip wasn’t at her computer, so he went looking for her in the laboratory. All he found was Eager-Eyes, busy treading a touch-and-taste console. On either side of the console were two highly flattened

Spheroidal bowls that represented the east and west hemispheres of Egg. They were shaped according to the old-style maps where distances were marked off in tread lengths. They were flat in the regions near the magnetic poles where the cheela treads were of minimum size, and more curved near the magnetic equator where the horizontal component of the magnetic field stretched out the cheela’s tread. Now that the cheela had space travel, they realized that Egg was spherical; but the ancient shape was still useful for the crustallogists, for most of the activity in the crust took place near the poles. The maps flickered with lights showing the crust-quake activity. A bright blue spot would appear on the map, then shift down in color as the intensity of the quake died.

“I was looking for Professor Neutron-Drip,” Time-Circle told Eager-Eyes.

“I’m right here,” came a muffled voice. The voice seemed to come from under Eager-Eyes’ tread.

“She’s on-site at the East Pole,” Eager Eyes explained. “I’ll switch the picture to the visual screen on that wall over there. Things are happening fast, so I had better keep working with the touch-and-taste screen.”

“I came over to see if we could have turnfeast together,” said Time-Circle. “I didn’t realize you had gone.”

“The trip wasn’t planned,” replied the image of Neutron-Drip. She was moving among an array of acoustic transceivers that were picking up data from the distant seismic instruments buried under the crust around the East Pole.

“I jumped over early this turn to make sure the transceivers stay on scale. I think there is a big quake coming. But I can’t be sure, since this is the first time anyone has tried to record the quakes prior to a big one.”

“Things really started to happen just after last turn-feast,” Eager-Eyes reported. “I was watching the signals coming in from the array around the East Pole, when I began to see ring-like patterns.”

“Not only that,” said Neutron-Drip. “Although they started small, the magnitude of the quakes has been increasing nearly exponentially for the last ten dothturns as they close in on the root of the East Pole mountains.”

“Exponentially!” Time-Circle was clearly impressed.

“I expect a ‘Trimble-tremblor’ anytime soon,” said Neutron-Drip. She noticed the confused twitch in his eye-stub pattern. “The East Pole mountains will drop a few millimeters, and the length of a turn will increase slightly. The human Nobel Laureate Trimble was the first to predict them accurately from her observations of the Crab nebula neutron star.”

“You might be in danger! You must leave at once!” Time-Circle shouted.

“Too late now,” Neutron-Drip responded. “Keep collecting the data, Eager-Eyes!” she commanded. Suddenly the viewscreen went blank.

Time-Circle shifted his gaze to the bowl that showed the eastern hemisphere. The East Pole mountains were surrounded by flash after flash of bright blue light. Suddenly the whole East Pole exploded in a blue glare. There was a pause, then a smooth ripple spread out from the focal point. It reached Swift’s Climb…and the display went out.

Time-Circle now understood why three channels in his time machine were blocked with noise. He raced out of the lab and across the Institute compound. There was one clear back-channel left. If only he could get a message back in time to himself, he might be able to warn the rest of the population on Egg. As he pushed his body through the clinging magnetic fields coming from the crust, he fought off the specter of despair. After all, “he” that was here on this time-line, struggling to reach the time machine, had received no warning message from the future. His present time-line was doomed, but perhaps he could create a paradox—a bifurcation—that would save the “he,” and the rest of Egg, on some other time-line. He struggled on.