Read Mindbridge for Free Online Page B
Authors: Joe Haldeman
much longer, Tania said they might as well give it up; continue with the survey. Perhaps their presence had frightened the creatures away or, as Vivian suggested, the one that Ch’ing caught had sent out a telepathic warning to the others.
They asked Ch’ing his opinion and got no answer.
While they were scrambling out of the water, Tania called for a readout from Ch’ing’s biometrics system. Everything seemed normal except for brain waves: a slight wiggle in theta; no activity at any other level.
Before they reached him, an alarm went off and the following information was projected on her viewplate:
EMERGENCY
ALL VITAL FUNCTIONS HAVE CEASED IN
GPEM 2 EMERGENCY MEASURES IN EFFECT
UNDIAGNOSED GPEM MALFUNCTION
NO RESPONSE 21:33:00
NO RESPONSE 21:33:05
NO RESPONSE 21:33:10
NO RESPONSE 21:33:15
NO RESPONSE 21:33:20
NO RESPONSE 21:33:25
NO RESPONSE 21:33:30
DEATH DUE TO CARDIAC ARREST
DEATH PRECEDED BY ABRUPT CESSATION OF MENTAL ACTIVITY
DEATH DUE TO UNDIAGNOSED GPEM MALFUNCTION
13 - Insurance Manual
(From Salesman’s Quick Reference to Occupations, Hartford Insurance Company, Inc., Hartford, CT, 2060:)
Occupation: Tamer
Recommendations:
No new policies to be issued. Outstanding policies, contracted for previous to current employment, not to be extended.
Spouse of Tamer also poor risk due to extreme nervous tension. Death to be investigated carefully for possibility of suicide.
(Actual mortality rates for Tamers are classified information. Informal studies indicate that fewer than 50% survive a tour of duty.)
14 - The Slingshot Effect
Excerpt from an interview with Dr. Jaime Barnett, Research Director, Agency for Extraterrestrial Development, Colorado Springs, at the dedication of the new 120-cm. LMT crystal, 28 October 2044.)
NBC: -now this is something I’ve never understood. They all come back at the same instant, with no expenditure of power...
JB: (laughs) Welcome to the club. Nobody understands it. It’s obvious that what’s at work here is some kind of a, what scientists call, a conservation law-
NBC: I understand.
JB: -but it’s not clear exactly what is being conserved. Matter and energy and space-time are all involved.... Let me stress this. We can describe the Levant-Meyer Translation, we can describe it mathematically to ten significant figures. But it’s all empirical; we can’t pretend to understand why it works.
The Slingshot Effect is itself a good illustration of this. When a group of people is translated to another planet, one of them carries a homing device-what we call their “black box.” When their time is up on the planet, everything sufficiently close to the black box will automatically return to Earth.
NBC: How close is “sufficiently close”?
JB: It duplicates exactly the configuration of the original LMT field. In the case of our new crystal here, that will be a cylinder 120 centimeters in diameter by some five meters high.
At any rate, there isn’t any theoretical reason for the wiring in this black box to work. Scientists cobbled it together by trial and error, starting from the wiring that was present in the electron microscope that was involved in Levant’s original, uh, accidental experiment.
NBC: But only one person can carry this black box.
JB: Of course. The Los Alamos disaster proved that.
NBC: And they can bring back anything they want from the planet, so long as it fits inside the cylindrical field.
JB: That’s right, uh, Fred. But as you know, the samples they bring back only stay on earth for as long as the people were on the other planet. Then they disappear.
NBC: They also slingshot back? To their home planet?
JB: That would seem logical. Symmetrical. But we don’t know; we’ve never traced a sample.
NBC: And what happens to a person, on the other planet, if he’s caught outside the cylindrical field when time runs out?
JB: That’s happened twice. We sent rescue missions both times, but no one was
They asked Ch’ing his opinion and got no answer.
While they were scrambling out of the water, Tania called for a readout from Ch’ing’s biometrics system. Everything seemed normal except for brain waves: a slight wiggle in theta; no activity at any other level.
Before they reached him, an alarm went off and the following information was projected on her viewplate:
EMERGENCY
ALL VITAL FUNCTIONS HAVE CEASED IN
GPEM 2 EMERGENCY MEASURES IN EFFECT
UNDIAGNOSED GPEM MALFUNCTION
NO RESPONSE 21:33:00
NO RESPONSE 21:33:05
NO RESPONSE 21:33:10
NO RESPONSE 21:33:15
NO RESPONSE 21:33:20
NO RESPONSE 21:33:25
NO RESPONSE 21:33:30
DEATH DUE TO CARDIAC ARREST
DEATH PRECEDED BY ABRUPT CESSATION OF MENTAL ACTIVITY
DEATH DUE TO UNDIAGNOSED GPEM MALFUNCTION
13 - Insurance Manual
(From Salesman’s Quick Reference to Occupations, Hartford Insurance Company, Inc., Hartford, CT, 2060:)
Occupation: Tamer
Recommendations:
No new policies to be issued. Outstanding policies, contracted for previous to current employment, not to be extended.
Spouse of Tamer also poor risk due to extreme nervous tension. Death to be investigated carefully for possibility of suicide.
(Actual mortality rates for Tamers are classified information. Informal studies indicate that fewer than 50% survive a tour of duty.)
14 - The Slingshot Effect
Excerpt from an interview with Dr. Jaime Barnett, Research Director, Agency for Extraterrestrial Development, Colorado Springs, at the dedication of the new 120-cm. LMT crystal, 28 October 2044.)
NBC: -now this is something I’ve never understood. They all come back at the same instant, with no expenditure of power...
JB: (laughs) Welcome to the club. Nobody understands it. It’s obvious that what’s at work here is some kind of a, what scientists call, a conservation law-
NBC: I understand.
JB: -but it’s not clear exactly what is being conserved. Matter and energy and space-time are all involved.... Let me stress this. We can describe the Levant-Meyer Translation, we can describe it mathematically to ten significant figures. But it’s all empirical; we can’t pretend to understand why it works.
The Slingshot Effect is itself a good illustration of this. When a group of people is translated to another planet, one of them carries a homing device-what we call their “black box.” When their time is up on the planet, everything sufficiently close to the black box will automatically return to Earth.
NBC: How close is “sufficiently close”?
JB: It duplicates exactly the configuration of the original LMT field. In the case of our new crystal here, that will be a cylinder 120 centimeters in diameter by some five meters high.
At any rate, there isn’t any theoretical reason for the wiring in this black box to work. Scientists cobbled it together by trial and error, starting from the wiring that was present in the electron microscope that was involved in Levant’s original, uh, accidental experiment.
NBC: But only one person can carry this black box.
JB: Of course. The Los Alamos disaster proved that.
NBC: And they can bring back anything they want from the planet, so long as it fits inside the cylindrical field.
JB: That’s right, uh, Fred. But as you know, the samples they bring back only stay on earth for as long as the people were on the other planet. Then they disappear.
NBC: They also slingshot back? To their home planet?
JB: That would seem logical. Symmetrical. But we don’t know; we’ve never traced a sample.
NBC: And what happens to a person, on the other planet, if he’s caught outside the cylindrical field when time runs out?
JB: That’s happened twice. We sent rescue missions both times, but no one was
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