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dumping antimatter into the reaction chamber so fast, it didn't have time to find matching
particles. The hot jet spurting out below was a mixture of matter and its howling enemy,
its polar opposite. This, Claire directed down onto the flux tubes around the hole. Leggo,
damn it.
She knew an old trick, impossibly slow in ordinary free space. When you manage to
force two magnetic field lines close together, they can reconnect. That liberates some
field energy into heat and can even blow open a magnetic structure. The process is
slow unless you jab it with turbulent, rowdy plasma.
The antimatter in their downwash cut straight through flux tubes. Claire carved with
her jet, freeing field lines that still snared the worm. The ship rose further, dragging the
worm upward.
It's not too heavy, Claire thought. That science officer said they could come in any
size at all. This one is just about right for a small ship to slip through to where?
YOU HAVE REMAINING 11.34 MINUTES COOLING TIME
"Here's your hat " Claire swept the jet wash over a last, large flux tube. It glistened
as annihilation energies burst forth like bonfires, raging in a place already hot beyond
imagination. Magnetic knots snarled, exploded. " What's your hurry?"
The solar coronal arch burst open.
She had sensed these potential energies locked in the peak of the arch, an intuition
that came through her hands, from long work with the mag gloves. Craftswoman's
knowledge: Find the stressed flux lines. Turn the key.
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Then all hell broke loose.
The acceleration slammed her to the floor, despite the water. Below, she saw the vast
vault of energy stored in the arch blow out and up, directly below them.
YOU HAVE MADE A SOLAR FLARE!
"And you thought I didn't have a plan."
Claire started to laugh. Slamming into a couch cut it off. She would have broken a
shoulder, but the couch was water-logged and soft.
Now the worm was an asset. It repulsed matter, so the upjetting plume blew around it,
around Silver Metal Lugger. Free of the flux tubes' grip, the wormhole itself accelerated
away from the Sun. All very helpful, Claire reflected, but she couldn't enjoy'the
spectacle the rattling, surging deck was trying to bounce her off the furniture.
What saved them in the end was their magnetic grapple. It deflected most of the solar
flare protons around the ship. Pushed out at a speed of five hundred kilometers per
second, they still barely survived baking. But they had the worm.
Still, the scientific officer was not pleased. He came aboard to make this quite clear.
His face alone would have been enough.
"You're surely not going to demand money for that?" He scowled and nodded toward
where Silver Metal Lugger's fields still hung onto the wormhole. Claire had to run a sea-
blue plasma discharge behind it so she could see it at all. They were orbiting Mercury,
negotiating.
Earthside, panels of experts were arguing with each other; she had heard plenty of it
on tightbeam. A negative-mass wormhole would not fall, so it couldn't knife through the
Earth's mantle and devour the core.
But a thin ship could fly straight into it, overcoming its gravitational repulsion and
come out where? Nobody knew. The worm wasn't spewing mass, so its other end wasn't
buried in the middle of a star, or any place obviously dangerous. One of the half-dozen
new theories squirting out on tightbeam held that maybe this was a multiply-connected
wormhole, with many ends, of both positive and negative mass. In that case, plunging
down it could take you to different destinations. A subway system for a galaxy; or a
universe.
So: no threat, and plenty of possibilities. Interesting market prospects.
She shrugged. "Have your advocate talk to my advocate."
"It's a unique, natural resource "
"And it's mine." She grinned. He was lean and muscular and the best man she had
seen in weeks. Also the only man she had seen in weeks.
"I can have a team board you, y'know." He towered over her, using the usual ominous
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male thing.
"I don't think you're that fast."
"What's speed got to do with it?"
"I can always turn off my grapplers." She reached for a ;switch. "If it's not mine, then
I can just Jet everybody have it."
"Why would you no, don't!"
It wasn't the right switch, but he didn't know that. "If I release it, the worm takes
off antigravity, sort of"
He blinked. "We could catch it."
"You couldn't even find it. It's dead black." She tapped the switch, letting a malicious
smile play on her lips.
"Please don't."
"I need to hear a number. An offer."
His lips compressed until they paled. "The wormhole price, minus your fine?"
Her turn to blink. "What fine? I was on an approved flyby "
"That solar flare wouldn't have blown for a month. You did a real job on it the
whole magnetic arcade went up at once. People all the way out to the asteroids had to
scramble for shelter."
He looked at her steadily and she could not decide whether he was telling the truth.
"So their costs "
"Could run pretty high. Plus advocate fees."
"Exactly." He smiled, ever so slightly.
Erma was trying to tell her something but Claire turned the tiny voice far down, until
it buzzed like an irritated insect.
She had endured weeks of a female personality sim in a nasty mood. Quite enough.
She needed an antidote. This fellow had the wrong kind of politics, but to let that dictate
everything was as dumb as politics itself. Her ship's name was a joke, actually, about
long, lonely voyages as an ore hauler. She'd had enough of that, too. And he was tall and
muscular.
She smiled. "Touché. OK, it's a done deal."
He beamed. "I'll get my team to work "
"Still, I'd say you need to work on your negotiating skills. Too brassy."
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He frowned, but then gave her a grudging grin.
Subtlety had never been her strong suit. "Shall we discuss them over dinner?"
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