Read Online Children of the Comet by Donald Moffitt - Free Book Online Page A

mean you’re with us?”
    â€œFather, I was never against you. And I still think Karn is a great man.”
    â€œA great physicist, maybe. As a leader of men, he has his deficiencies. Especially in the honesty department.”
    Alten was rummaging through Joorn’s kitchen alcove. “Have you got anything to eat around here? I don’t think the commissary’s going to be open for a while.”
    An invisible sea of Higgs bosons surrounded Time’s Beginning , stretching out to infinity. Matter/antimatter pairs winked in and out of existence—an illusion caused by their restless jiggling back and forth through the extra dimension at the intersection of the Universe with an adjoining brane. The Higgs field had detected the sea but had not yet begun to trap the antimatter particles before they could disappear. When that happened, there would be limitless fuel, stolen from the energy of the vacuum. It would violate the bookkeeping of the Universe, but that would be the problem of the adjacent cosmos.
    Joorn was standing in front of a bank of instruments, Alten beside him. Karn was standing well back, giving them space.
    Farther back, next to a bulkhead, Oliver had stationed himself with some of his young men. They didn’t seem to be the same contumelious types as the bullies who had rounded up the habitat dwellers, and none of them were wearing the infinity tabards. There were no titanium pipes visible. Instead they were wielding data pads and paying close attention. One skinny fellow with an intense manner was taking notes on paper, on a loose sheaf that kept getting away from him.
    Oliver was showing his impatience. “What are you waiting for? We’ve had the Higgs field focused on the decay products and ready to zap hadronic photons for at least five minutes now.”
    â€œShut up, Miles,” Karn said.
    â€œBut—”
    â€œDon’t distract the captain.”
    Oliver simmered silently, his narrow face darkening, but he subsided. The apprentices stopped tapping at their data pads, looking uneasy, then resumed after a moment.
    Joorn took his time, his eyes darting from one display to another, comparing streams of data, then, at measured intervals, punching in a command.
    â€œOkay, we’ve got our Higgs parent particles,” Joorn drawled, “and the Feynman diagrams say they’re decaying into two protons faster than you can blink. Now the trick is to freeze them before they can disappear and bat them one hundred and eighty degrees to bounce them off the mirror assembly. Voil à ! Hadronic photons! Photons with actual mass, billions of times heavier than they ought to be.”
    The skinny fellow with the pencil was scribbling as fast as he could. The others were peering earnestly at the blur of symbols streaming by on the displays.
    â€œThe God Particle,” Karn said with mock reverence. “That’s what they called it in the twenty-first century. And what Neocreationists like Brego are still calling it. Remember the old bull sessions in the dorm, Joorn?”
    â€œDon’t knock it, Delbert,” Joorn said. “Hawking didn’t.” He kept his eyes on the displays.
    â€œJackass,” Karn said. “Brego, I mean. He was still making threats even after we took the ship. As if he could possibly organize his dullard clods into an effective force and—”
    â€œAlten, start focusing the mirror assembly,” Joorn cut in.
    â€œRight,” Alten said. The skinny fellow stopped scribbling and stared worriedly at the screen that showed the patch of sky they had come from. Rebirth’s sun was just a star like any other now, a little brighter than most.
    â€œDon’t worry, Daniel,” Joorn said without taking his eyes off the screens. “We’re safely out of range.”
    His fingers moved over the keys like a pianist playing by ear. The floor gave a shudder, and then everyone’s weight, which had