for Section Two. Celine, in a bizarre way, felt vindicated. She had expected trouble, and here it was—and thanks to Celine they were ready, food and water fully stocked, extra instruments installed so they would know exactly what was going on outside.
Not much space, of course. They were in an emergency shelter, not a luxury hotel. But Celine sat bug-rug-snug and not unhappy between Wilmer and Ludwig, watching the gamma-level readout.
It was calibrated so that a level of zero equaled the mean solar gamma flux with a quiet sun. The current level—sixty-three—only meant something if you knew that the readout scale was the base-e log of the gamma intensity. That was easy to deal with if you knew, as Celine did, that e 3 is about equal to twenty. So an increase of three in readout value was equivalent to a factor of twenty multiplier in actual gamma-ray level. Readout level sixty-three then meant that the current gamma flux was 20 63/3 of the usual value. 20 21 was rather more than 10 27 . Space outside the shielded compartment of the Schiaparelli was hot, hell-hot, with the gamma-ray burst from Supernova Alpha.
And still Celine, who would conclude in retrospect that she was an idiot, thought they were sitting pretty inside their shield. She hadn't even bothered to include a display showing anything of what was happening back on Earth. It was Ludwig, sitting with his miniature ear-link tuned to open communications channels, who after a few seconds grunted, sat upright, and said, "What the hell is going on?"
Nothing special, according to Celine's displays. She turned to him. "What do you mean? What do you hear?"
He had his control unit on his lap, scanning frequencies. He shook his head. "I don't like this. I was monitoring S-band, low data rate ground-to-space vocal. Then it went dead—and now so has everything else. I'm getting nothing at all, not even video or general communications uplinks from Earth."
It was Wilmer, on Celine's other side, who stirred from an apparent trance and said, "Check space to ground."
Ludwig said nothing, but his fingers stabbed at another section of his lap set. After a few seconds he glanced across at Wilmer. "Weird. Nothing going down from low Earth orbit, voice or image or computer bit stream. But for the geosynchronous metsats, higher up, it's business as usual. Do you want me to look at their image data stream?"
"Yes. But not what's being sent out now. Do you receive and store past data?"
"Some. It's a moving window. We store metsats for the past twenty-four hours, that's all."
"That will be ample. Tap us in to fifteen minutes ago, and run a display."
Zoe was finally taking an interest. She had not actually been listening, but she reacted to Wilmer's and Ludwig's tone of voice. She leaned forward toward them. "Hey, what's going on? How long before this gamma surge fades, and we can get out of here?"
Celine glanced across at the readout: forty-two. "It's fading already," she said. "It's down by twenty-one from the last value I saw. That's a factor of more than a billion. If it keeps going like this, we can all leave here in a few minutes."
"I'm going to borrow your display, Celine," Ludwig said. "Here's the metsat images."
Alpha Centauri vanished. In its place came the familiar and comforting sight of Earth as seen from geosynchronous orbit, thirty-five thousand kilometers above the surface. They stared in silence at the great globe, half lit by sunlight, half in darkness. Without knowing how to give a name to it, Celine could see a strangeness to the cloud patterns. Instead of broad bands or hurricane swirls, the clouds had an unusual north-south streaky structure, as though the equator—that already imaginary entity—had disappeared.
Peculiar, yes. But menacing? Not really. All seven of them sat watching in silence. At last, as Zoe was saying, "All right, I've enjoyed as much of this as I can stand," it came.
A blue glow started at the South Pole and shimmered north. Like
Not much space, of course. They were in an emergency shelter, not a luxury hotel. But Celine sat bug-rug-snug and not unhappy between Wilmer and Ludwig, watching the gamma-level readout.
It was calibrated so that a level of zero equaled the mean solar gamma flux with a quiet sun. The current level—sixty-three—only meant something if you knew that the readout scale was the base-e log of the gamma intensity. That was easy to deal with if you knew, as Celine did, that e 3 is about equal to twenty. So an increase of three in readout value was equivalent to a factor of twenty multiplier in actual gamma-ray level. Readout level sixty-three then meant that the current gamma flux was 20 63/3 of the usual value. 20 21 was rather more than 10 27 . Space outside the shielded compartment of the Schiaparelli was hot, hell-hot, with the gamma-ray burst from Supernova Alpha.
And still Celine, who would conclude in retrospect that she was an idiot, thought they were sitting pretty inside their shield. She hadn't even bothered to include a display showing anything of what was happening back on Earth. It was Ludwig, sitting with his miniature ear-link tuned to open communications channels, who after a few seconds grunted, sat upright, and said, "What the hell is going on?"
Nothing special, according to Celine's displays. She turned to him. "What do you mean? What do you hear?"
He had his control unit on his lap, scanning frequencies. He shook his head. "I don't like this. I was monitoring S-band, low data rate ground-to-space vocal. Then it went dead—and now so has everything else. I'm getting nothing at all, not even video or general communications uplinks from Earth."
It was Wilmer, on Celine's other side, who stirred from an apparent trance and said, "Check space to ground."
Ludwig said nothing, but his fingers stabbed at another section of his lap set. After a few seconds he glanced across at Wilmer. "Weird. Nothing going down from low Earth orbit, voice or image or computer bit stream. But for the geosynchronous metsats, higher up, it's business as usual. Do you want me to look at their image data stream?"
"Yes. But not what's being sent out now. Do you receive and store past data?"
"Some. It's a moving window. We store metsats for the past twenty-four hours, that's all."
"That will be ample. Tap us in to fifteen minutes ago, and run a display."
Zoe was finally taking an interest. She had not actually been listening, but she reacted to Wilmer's and Ludwig's tone of voice. She leaned forward toward them. "Hey, what's going on? How long before this gamma surge fades, and we can get out of here?"
Celine glanced across at the readout: forty-two. "It's fading already," she said. "It's down by twenty-one from the last value I saw. That's a factor of more than a billion. If it keeps going like this, we can all leave here in a few minutes."
"I'm going to borrow your display, Celine," Ludwig said. "Here's the metsat images."
Alpha Centauri vanished. In its place came the familiar and comforting sight of Earth as seen from geosynchronous orbit, thirty-five thousand kilometers above the surface. They stared in silence at the great globe, half lit by sunlight, half in darkness. Without knowing how to give a name to it, Celine could see a strangeness to the cloud patterns. Instead of broad bands or hurricane swirls, the clouds had an unusual north-south streaky structure, as though the equator—that already imaginary entity—had disappeared.
Peculiar, yes. But menacing? Not really. All seven of them sat watching in silence. At last, as Zoe was saying, "All right, I've enjoyed as much of this as I can stand," it came.
A blue glow started at the South Pole and shimmered north. Like
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