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Authors: Gene; John; Wolfe Cramer
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force over a long distance might just do the trick. Hell, maybe I can stop them! With new optimism he gritted his teeth and dug in the blade deeper, until he was straining with all his strength against an enormous force. He couldn't do this for long. Was it his imagination, or were they slowing down? He became more certain that they were slowing, that the drag on his arms and the pull of the rope on his waist were diminishing.
Maybe,
he thought,
may-be
. . . Then, quite unexpectedly, he stopped.
David looked back up the steep slope at his track. He had traveled about forty meters down the incline, his trail through the snow delineated by grooves from his boots and the jewel-edged black line cut by his axe blade. He looked up to where Paul was set and ready, face down in the snow, feet, knees and ice axe braced for the impact that now would not come. There was still a little slack in the rope.
David exhaled a laugh, jerked twice on the rope as a signal, and stood up shakily. Downslope, Rudi was still lying on his back, head downhill, his ice axe blade still pointing at the zenith. Farther down, George was getting slowly to his feet and cursing fluently in several languages as he combed snow and ice from his bushy beard.
The blood still singing in his ears, David inhaled deeply, brushed himself off, and looked around at the snowcapped peaks and the green valleys far below. It's wonderful to be alive, he thought. It wouldn't do to die just now, when things have been going so well at the lab. He grinned.
The computer made a beeping noise, signaling that it had found a steep descent trajectory. David shook himself. The view of the Cascades on the display screen shifted back to a representation of a mathematical surface.
The calculation was nearing completion. The program had found a deep minimum groove in the chi-squared surface and was sliding along a channel that headed downhill at an increasingly steep angle. Like a slide down a snow field, David thought. The search code raced along this 'creek bed' until it emptied into a broad green valley with a deep blue depression at one end. It targeted on the depression, dived into it, and settled, rocking back and forth at its very bottom. Then it registered success by playing a few bars from The Ride of the Valkyries,' a feature that Vickie in a moment of CalTechie exuberance had added. David smiled.
He moused the packet of final fit parameters that the search code had generated into the control program and configured it for a count-down-to-run of five seconds. He moused the cursor to thecontrol on the computer screen and clicked. The settings were fed to the driving circuits, and there was a brief wait while the static fields and power levels stabilized. Then the computer's synthesized 'voice' produced by the control program counted in the usual way:
'Five!
. . .
Four!
. . .
Three!
. . .
Two!
. . .
One!'
and finally,
'Activating!'
David was looking directly at the large stainless-steel sphere when it disappeared, accompanied by a loud hollow
pop!
Immediately wires and small metal parts cascaded to the floor and the auto-fill circuits of the helium and nitrogen supplies cut in, the severed feed lines spouting clear streams of the cryogenic liquids and gouts of steam as water vapor condensed from the chilled air. Cut water lines added to the mess. A glass vacuum gauge, now unsupported but still attached to its black cable, swung diagonally, colliding with the floor in a crash of shattering glass punctuated by blue-green flashes from its shorted electrodes. Its power supply gave a loud click as it responded to the overload condition.
'Jesus H. Christ!' said David Harrison, staring at the empty space where, just one second earlier, the culmination of ten months of hard work and a net expenditure of $47,362 from Allan Saxon's National Science Foundation grant had rested.
PART 2
Properly, there is no other knowledge than that which is got by working; the rest is yet all a
Maybe,
he thought,
may-be
. . . Then, quite unexpectedly, he stopped.
David looked back up the steep slope at his track. He had traveled about forty meters down the incline, his trail through the snow delineated by grooves from his boots and the jewel-edged black line cut by his axe blade. He looked up to where Paul was set and ready, face down in the snow, feet, knees and ice axe braced for the impact that now would not come. There was still a little slack in the rope.
David exhaled a laugh, jerked twice on the rope as a signal, and stood up shakily. Downslope, Rudi was still lying on his back, head downhill, his ice axe blade still pointing at the zenith. Farther down, George was getting slowly to his feet and cursing fluently in several languages as he combed snow and ice from his bushy beard.
The blood still singing in his ears, David inhaled deeply, brushed himself off, and looked around at the snowcapped peaks and the green valleys far below. It's wonderful to be alive, he thought. It wouldn't do to die just now, when things have been going so well at the lab. He grinned.
The computer made a beeping noise, signaling that it had found a steep descent trajectory. David shook himself. The view of the Cascades on the display screen shifted back to a representation of a mathematical surface.
The calculation was nearing completion. The program had found a deep minimum groove in the chi-squared surface and was sliding along a channel that headed downhill at an increasingly steep angle. Like a slide down a snow field, David thought. The search code raced along this 'creek bed' until it emptied into a broad green valley with a deep blue depression at one end. It targeted on the depression, dived into it, and settled, rocking back and forth at its very bottom. Then it registered success by playing a few bars from The Ride of the Valkyries,' a feature that Vickie in a moment of CalTechie exuberance had added. David smiled.
He moused the packet of final fit parameters that the search code had generated into the control program and configured it for a count-down-to-run of five seconds. He moused the cursor to thecontrol on the computer screen and clicked. The settings were fed to the driving circuits, and there was a brief wait while the static fields and power levels stabilized. Then the computer's synthesized 'voice' produced by the control program counted in the usual way:
'Five!
. . .
Four!
. . .
Three!
. . .
Two!
. . .
One!'
and finally,
'Activating!'
David was looking directly at the large stainless-steel sphere when it disappeared, accompanied by a loud hollow
pop!
Immediately wires and small metal parts cascaded to the floor and the auto-fill circuits of the helium and nitrogen supplies cut in, the severed feed lines spouting clear streams of the cryogenic liquids and gouts of steam as water vapor condensed from the chilled air. Cut water lines added to the mess. A glass vacuum gauge, now unsupported but still attached to its black cable, swung diagonally, colliding with the floor in a crash of shattering glass punctuated by blue-green flashes from its shorted electrodes. Its power supply gave a loud click as it responded to the overload condition.
'Jesus H. Christ!' said David Harrison, staring at the empty space where, just one second earlier, the culmination of ten months of hard work and a net expenditure of $47,362 from Allan Saxon's National Science Foundation grant had rested.
PART 2
Properly, there is no other knowledge than that which is got by working; the rest is yet all a
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