Thrice upon a Time (25 page)

The dynamics of what would happen after that were unclear. However, she told them, she had evaluated some approximate models, and the possibilities were alarming. The swarm of tiny black holes could form a mutually orbiting system within the Earth's core, exchanging energy among themselves and undergoing further excitation and agitation as new arrivals from the surface supplied gravitational energy and components of surface rotational momentum. Some of them could be thrown into violently eccentric orbits in this process—sufficiently eccentric to penetrate back up and reemerge on surface-grazing trajectories. Hence the "bugophants" that had been making appearances in recent months, Elizabeth suggested.

What was the evidence?

First there was the erosion through the lower casings of the two reactors used in the January tests. Analysis had shown that the erosion comprised a dense concentration of tiny tunnels that were identical to the ones being reported from various parts of the world. Second, the tests had been performed in mid-January; the first bugophant had been reported less than two weeks later. Third, all the incidents reported to date were scattered along a band that extended from the northern British Isles southward across the Atlantic to Panama and the top of South America, down over the southeast Pacific to miss Antarctica, and then northward from there to rejoin itself via Western Australia, northern India, central Russia, and Scandinavia. When this band was drawn on a globe, it formed a great circle around the Earth; if Elizabeth's account was correct, this marked the line of intersection between the Earth's surface and the orbital plane of the black-hole system. It was as simple as that.

There was one other thing. The two reactors had been run first independently for a day at fifteen pellets per second, and for about half of the second day in parallel at a combined rate of thirty per second. That meant there would be something like two million black holes down there.

"Surely… God, I don't know… This whole thing is preposterous, Elizabeth," Courtney said at last. "Black holes… milling around in the core like a swarm of bees? It's too far-fetched. I can't accept anything like that purely on the basis of what you've said. That isn't evidence; it's just a collection of coincidences… wild hypotheses, if you don't mind my saying so." Some of the heads around the table began nodding in mute agreement.

"I know that, Ralph," Elizabeth said wearily. "I know there isn't anything quantitative to support it. But it
is
a consistent explanation of what these things are and where they've come from.
And
it explains the erosion. It's the only one that fits both sets of facts. How many experts have been racking their brains and haven't even been able to offer a clue?"

There was one other item of evidence, an item that was conclusive, but she was obliged not to mention it. At Storbannon on the previous day, she and Charles had analyzed the data collected by the machine at the time in January when the system had been malfunctioning, which covered from Friday to Saturday before the Monday on which the Burghead test had commenced. As Lee had maintained at the time, the cause of the problem had been interference from tau waves coming from some source other than the machine itself. Cartland had analyzed the groupings and timings of the interference pulses, and found that it matched exactly with records brought by Elizabeth of the pellet-firing sequence followed in the tests at Burghead. The two had matched exactly, which could never have been explained away by coincidence. Therefore the interference picked up by the machine could only have come from the reactors being tested at Burghead. But the interference had been picked up at Storbannon
two full days before the tests at Burghead took place.
 

Therefore the Burghead reactors must have generated tau waves that had propagated back two days in time. But tau waves were generated by the annihilation of matter. The Burghead reactors were not designed to annihilate matter; they were designed to convert matter to energy via fusion. Nevertheless, they had generated tau waves; therefore they must have annihilated matter. According to the established theory upon which the designs had been based, such an eventuality was impossible. The facts said it had happened. Therefore there was something greatly amiss with established theory.

Elizabeth and Charles had spent most of the previous day reviewing the physics of fusion plasmas in the light of Charles's newer theory, and had discovered some significant discrepancies. The compression of a target pellet to black-hole density was clearly predicted from Charles's equations, though for reasons that could never have been taken into account using conventional concepts. They had agreed that Elizabeth would have to inform the Burghead directors of the conclusions, and accordingly she had called the meeting for the afternoon of the following day. Charles had been reluctant to publicize details of his research if it could be avoided, and Elizabeth had therefore elected to try in the first instance to convince the directors of the facts without mentioning the Storbannon machine or its function. She knew that this would be a tough assignment, but she had to give it a try. The first indications at the meeting were that she was unlikely to enjoy much success.

Max Wehrbaum, from the EFC's Munich laboratories, was shaking his head and looking openly contemptuous. "What is all this talk about a fundamental flaw in the theory?" he demanded. "The theoretical foundations for fusion and plasma physics have been well understood for half a century. Where is there room for any kind of flaw?"

"I agree," Simon Vickers, Technical Director at Burghead and Elizabeth's immediate boss, said from Courtney's right. "Accepted theory appears to be more than amply validated. Experimental results have always been consistent with prediction, and there are machines working all over the world without problems." He shrugged. "We've got holes through the reactor casings that we can't explain yet, and some other people in other places have found a few holes here and there that they can't explain either. I don't see any compelling reason to assume that the two are connected at all. It's certainly no reason to go tearing up physics all the way back to Galileo."

"There just isn't enough energy delivered to a pellet to get it anywhere near to black-hole density," somebody else threw in from the far side. "We all know that. It's elementary. Surely you're not suggesting that every scientist who's worked in the field over the last fifty years couldn't get a few sums right."

"Nobody has ever worked at the same combination of high energy and energy
density,"
Elizabeth replied. "Plasma phase changes are notoriously nonlinear at high-density regimes. I'm saying that I suspect we have invalidly extrapolated lower energy-density results into a realm where they don't apply. The tests entered a completely new phenomenological region dominated by processes that we failed to anticipate."

"What kinds of processes?" Courtney asked dubiously. "Substantiated by what data? What reason is there for postulating processes that nobody's had any inkling of before?… As far as I'm aware, anyway." He glanced from side to side and was rewarded by a few solemn shakings of heads. "Nor anybody else by the look of it," he added.

"Oh, I can't describe them in precise detail at this stage," Elizabeth said. "But I contend we must assume they exist, and we should investigate them. Look at the map here. The plot passes right through Scotland… and the first incidents were reported within days of the tests here. Surely that tells us something."

She couldn't tell them that Charles had already determined where the flaw in conventional theory lay and explained how it was possible for the beams to crush the pellets to far higher densities than had been predicted. In the energy-dense core of the pellet, pair-production of electrons and positrons would be induced, followed by mutual annihilations sufficiently concentrated to generate minute tau waves; these tau waves would amplify rapidly as a consequence of a complicated, positive-feedback mechanism. The amplified tau waves would propagate out of the universe entirely, carrying away energy that should have been available to oppose the implosion. This process would invalidate the predictions of conventional theory completely by effectively increasing the beam-power in the core region by a factor of millions. Conventional theory took no account of tau waves.

"That track on the map is a pure fabrication." The speaker this time was Maria Galdarini from Turin, another member of the European delegation that was at Burghead that week to investigate the erosion problem. "There is only a handful of points on it. The trend is illusory. There's nothing but a scattering without any statistical significance at all."

"Anyway, besides all that, there's another thing," Simon Vickers added. "Even if we suppose for the moment that you are correct and these things are black holes, Elizabeth, they'd be microscopic. You said that yourself a few minutes ago. They'd be very short-lived because of Hawking radiation. They could never have continued to exist since January. But the latest bugophant was reported only a few days ago. So how could it have been a black hole that was produced here when we ran the tests? It's impossible."

Elizabeth had discussed this issue at great length with Charles as well. According to accepted quantum mechanics, a particle trapped inside a black hole had a certain probability of being able to "tunnel" its way out. The probability grew larger with particles that were more energetic, and with holes that were smaller. A small hole would therefore lose particles at a higher rate, and continue to do so in an accelerating fashion until the hole "evaporated." But accepted quantum mechanics failed to allow for the energy lost to the tau waves produced whenever a new particle fell in. Therefore the trapped particles would be left with less energy than accepted theory said. Therefore they would not be able to tunnel out as easily as accepted theory said. And that meant that the hole would last longer than accepted theory said.

"I do know about Hawking radiation," Elizabeth said. "All I can say is that if we did drive the plasma into a new region of nonlinearity, then we might be mistaken in assuming that we can apply the same concepts that work for other regions." None of the listeners appeared very convinced. What Elizabeth had said sounded too much like bending the facts to suit the answer, and she knew it.

"If such things ever existed, which to say the least is very unlikely in my opinion, then most of them will already have extinguished themselves," Max Wehrbaum declared. "After all, weren't there supposed to have been two million of them? Perhaps a few statistically extreme cases have survived for this long. If so, then in a few more days they will have disappeared too."

"So there's really no problem," Vickers said. "If we did manufacture them here, which I very much doubt, all we have to do is turn the wick down a bit when we get the reactors fixed." He paused and reconsidered his words for a moment, then looked up at Elizabeth. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to sound flippant. Obviously if it did turn out that you were right, we'd all have some very serious problems to think about. It's just that… well, I can't see it… never in a million years." He shrugged, spread his hands, and left it at that. Elizabeth looked appealingly at Courtney.

"I'm sorry, Elizabeth," Courtney said in a regretful voice. "But I think we all agree with Simon. I must say, I wish you'd given me a better idea of what this was going to be about before we called this meeting. If you could show us something tangible to suggest even that what you've said is possible, let alone fact, then of course that would put an entirely different light on things. We'd have to reappraise the whole world fusion program from basics." He sighed and waved toward the map. "But we need something more convincing than that, I'm afraid. Until I've seen something that's more specific, I'm certainly not going to lose any sleep over it."

"Och, don't worry yourself about it," Charles said from the screen in Elizabeth's office a half hour later. "You did your best, and I appreciate it."

"So where do we go from here?" Elizabeth asked with a heavy sigh. "Are we going to have to tell them the whole story?"

"It looks like it, I'm afraid," Charles said. "I'll talk to Ralph Courtney myself and see if I can come up and talk to him at Burghead. I'll probably bring Ted along with me as well."

Elizabeth bit her lip and looked unhappy at the idea. "Is it absolutely necessary?" she asked. "You know, I'm beginning to wonder if perhaps we're overreacting a little bit. If the holes are going to disappear before much longer, what's the point in you coming up to Burghead to tell Ralph and the rest something that they'll find out eventually in their own time anyway? Why can't you simply stay out of it and leave them to it?"

Charles shook his head gravely.

"If I were certain that the holes will just go away, I'd do exactly that," he replied. "But I'm far from certain. I've been running the accretion functions all morning here with Murdoch. We're not sure yet whether or not some of the expressions are convergent so we can't be absolutely sure, but I'm beginning to suspect that the holes
won't
just go away. If the tau losses extend the lifetimes sufficiently for the accretion rate to overtake the Hawking depletion rate, the holes will become permanent. After that, they'll only be able to get bigger."