Chapter Fifteen

     Ambassador Tampon looked with awe at the great vessels circling the black hole.  "All the ships are gathered now," the engineer was saying, "but in the deploy mode they go down towards the black hole's surface creating a null gravity shaft that protects them and the transport head.  Everything is precisely balanced."
      "It must take an incredible amount of power!" one of the Pulp engineers remarked.  "Where do you get it from?"
     "The very power acting against the gravity fields creates tremendous amounts of electrostatic energy.  It is drawn into the ships and used to power the anti gravity units.  The more gravity that acts against them, the more power that is produced.  So we have an endless supply!  It is what makes the whole project possible. Tapping that power was the key.  Without it we would never be able to generate fields to counter such gravity.  We will have a hole of bearable gravity right to the surface of the black hole."
     "Absolutely phenomenal!" the engineer continued.  "So you use a transport device to transport the material into the null gravity tube.  But what propels it out?"
     "The energy discharge created when the matter reforms.  We can calculate it down to a precise amount.  A hyper beam will be created that will propel the fragment across space.  We can predict precisely where it will give out, and where the fragment will reenter normal space without almost no motion!  We can put it in orbit around the desired solar system.  If a piece ever did go astray the hyper tube will not reach beyond the target system, so the matter will end up somewhere there.  Even if it did go on there's nothing between it and the edge of the galaxy.  That's why we've chosen this system to be the retrieval point."
     Another engineer spoke up.  "It looks incredibly safe!  But the only way we can actually know for sure is to see the system in operation."
     The Hume engineer looked to his superior.  "Is everything ready?" his superior asked. 
     "We think so!" the engineer answered.  "Just remember, this hasn't been tried before."
     "Start the descent!" the Speaker ordered.
     The engineer pressed a button and ships began to move towards the black hole.  "How will you know when you've hit it?" one of the Pulp engineers asked. 
     "When something transports," the Hume engineer answered.
     Agonizing minutes went by.  "Getting close!" the Hume engineer announced.  "We're about a hundred miles from center point.  Transmit!  Transmit!  Two transmissions, the head's withdrawn because it was overheating.  We've had two transmissions!  Did anybody get readings?"
     "First transmission," a voice came back, "was one-hundredth of the mass of solar one!"
     The engineer whistled.  "A chunk of something," he said,  "with the mass equal to one-hundredth of our native sun!  We should get the hyperwave signal that they arrived in orbit any time now.  Takes a few seconds.  First transmission...confirmed!  Second transmission...confirmed!  System is operational.  Second mass was only about half the size of the first.  Apparently we're going to have a problem.  The head heats up tremendously with the first transmission and shuts down during the second.  We may have to program only one transmission then wait for the head to cool before making another.  But we are operational!  We can produce the matter to create an even bigger system.  We have a limitless supply of heavy matter."

 Page 38

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