quiet of her home study. A doctor had told her that fighting this disease would be like the late career of a fading boxer: pacing yourself, resting when you could, so you could go a few hard rounds when you had to. She had a countdown to heed, and now the Center had one, too, with the intruder.
A few days after the entrance of the U Agency, she noticed a small detail in the high-resolution pictures of the intruder’s spectacular collisions.
The hottest region had an extended magnetosphere, a glowing dot that kept expanding with each collision. She compared images from all available kinds of telescopes—starting with the radio’s spindly jet, up through an infrared blur of hot gas, on into the visible spectra that revealed sharp streamers of agitated atoms arcing like geysers from the core, and finally on into the X rays that showed a white-hot center of intense heat, a seething central furnace that grew larger with every collision.
The entire range of deep space telescopes now sent images to the Center, a gusher of data each time the intruder devoured another hapless chunk of matter in its path. One collision had decidedly different spectral signatures. Careful analysis showed emission lines from silicon, carbon, iron. Ithad struck an asteroid. With the same outcome—a jet of microwave-emitting electrons, hot gas, and plasma, trailing the intruder, a neon sign seen all the way across the solar system.
Overlaying all these results with some sophisticated graphics, she got a consistent picture.
The strong magnetic field was building in a huge active region, lighting up brilliantly, growing. She suggested some adroit observations, brought them to Kingsley’s attention, and soon enough the big-dish “ears” of Earth’s radio telescope net were mapping the moving magnetic region in intricate detail. They were the first to see a bull’s-eye disk, with circular lanes of varying luminosity centered on an unresolved blur.
So she took it into the Center and the Gang of Four. “Looks like a target,” Benjamin said. “A bull’s-eye.”
“An accretion disk,” Kingsley observed dryly, his expression showing his lifelong dislike of homey analogies for astrophysical objects. “The mass it has acquired is spiraling in. It collides, rubs, and gets warm. Hot enough and the matter emits radiation.” He nodded to Channing, who sat at the controls of one of their big-screen displays—a fresh compensation for their enforced collaboration with the U Agency, who had just installed higher-power computers and flat-screen displays of eye-opening quality. “Your working hypothesis is proved.”
“I’m that obvious?” Channing was slightly miffed at having her thunder stolen.
Benjamin called up from the massive Center computers his compilation of the radio telescope data. Using Channing’s discovery of the high magnetic fields, they had been able to take quick snapshot-like radio maps of the inner region.
“Here, I’ve made it into a film,” Benjamin said. “It even has a plot, sort of.”
The view opened far out in deep space, our sun a mere glimmering spark. In an overlay, Channing saw vast swarmsof rock and iceteroids orbiting. Suddenly a strange glowing disk like an uncoiling silvery snake plunged across the field of view. It struck an iceteroid with a brilliant flash. Gaudy luminous streamers clasped the doomed mile-wide chunk of ice.
“They were lucky enough to get a series of maps and optical images when it hit its latest victim,” Benjamin said to the darkened room. “I’ve blended them here.”
The snake coiled up and deformed, becoming all mouth. Blue-hot, it gnawed its way through the ice. Channing knew that at its speeds, these had to be images made in slices finer than a millisecond. The eerie beauty of it was captivating, the lapping strands of magnetic fields flickering among the flying fragments.
Then something luminous emerged like a wasp from a cocoon at the other side of an expanding ball of
A few days after the entrance of the U Agency, she noticed a small detail in the high-resolution pictures of the intruder’s spectacular collisions.
The hottest region had an extended magnetosphere, a glowing dot that kept expanding with each collision. She compared images from all available kinds of telescopes—starting with the radio’s spindly jet, up through an infrared blur of hot gas, on into the visible spectra that revealed sharp streamers of agitated atoms arcing like geysers from the core, and finally on into the X rays that showed a white-hot center of intense heat, a seething central furnace that grew larger with every collision.
The entire range of deep space telescopes now sent images to the Center, a gusher of data each time the intruder devoured another hapless chunk of matter in its path. One collision had decidedly different spectral signatures. Careful analysis showed emission lines from silicon, carbon, iron. Ithad struck an asteroid. With the same outcome—a jet of microwave-emitting electrons, hot gas, and plasma, trailing the intruder, a neon sign seen all the way across the solar system.
Overlaying all these results with some sophisticated graphics, she got a consistent picture.
The strong magnetic field was building in a huge active region, lighting up brilliantly, growing. She suggested some adroit observations, brought them to Kingsley’s attention, and soon enough the big-dish “ears” of Earth’s radio telescope net were mapping the moving magnetic region in intricate detail. They were the first to see a bull’s-eye disk, with circular lanes of varying luminosity centered on an unresolved blur.
So she took it into the Center and the Gang of Four. “Looks like a target,” Benjamin said. “A bull’s-eye.”
“An accretion disk,” Kingsley observed dryly, his expression showing his lifelong dislike of homey analogies for astrophysical objects. “The mass it has acquired is spiraling in. It collides, rubs, and gets warm. Hot enough and the matter emits radiation.” He nodded to Channing, who sat at the controls of one of their big-screen displays—a fresh compensation for their enforced collaboration with the U Agency, who had just installed higher-power computers and flat-screen displays of eye-opening quality. “Your working hypothesis is proved.”
“I’m that obvious?” Channing was slightly miffed at having her thunder stolen.
Benjamin called up from the massive Center computers his compilation of the radio telescope data. Using Channing’s discovery of the high magnetic fields, they had been able to take quick snapshot-like radio maps of the inner region.
“Here, I’ve made it into a film,” Benjamin said. “It even has a plot, sort of.”
The view opened far out in deep space, our sun a mere glimmering spark. In an overlay, Channing saw vast swarmsof rock and iceteroids orbiting. Suddenly a strange glowing disk like an uncoiling silvery snake plunged across the field of view. It struck an iceteroid with a brilliant flash. Gaudy luminous streamers clasped the doomed mile-wide chunk of ice.
“They were lucky enough to get a series of maps and optical images when it hit its latest victim,” Benjamin said to the darkened room. “I’ve blended them here.”
The snake coiled up and deformed, becoming all mouth. Blue-hot, it gnawed its way through the ice. Channing knew that at its speeds, these had to be images made in slices finer than a millisecond. The eerie beauty of it was captivating, the lapping strands of magnetic fields flickering among the flying fragments.
Then something luminous emerged like a wasp from a cocoon at the other side of an expanding ball of
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