Donald Moffitt - Genesis 02

other staffers in tree systems.”
    “Oh, Enyd? Don’t waste your time feeling sorry for her. She could be here if she wanted to. No sense of fun, that girl. She’s happier pushing her buttons. Sometimes I wonder if she’s really our granddaughter.” He clapped a hairy hand on Ang’s haunch. “What do you think, pet? Is she a case of mislabeled genes?”
    “Oh, Jao!” Ang exclaimed. “She’s just a little serious, that’s all.”
    “Here comes Smeth,” Trist said. “Rounding up votes, no doubt.”
    Bram looked across the torch-lit perimeter. Smeth’s gangling form could be discerned threading a route through the tables, lurching awkwardly across the tilted floor. A party of young constituents tried to detain him, but Smeth seemed distracted; he exchanged a few words, made a gesture declining an invitation to sit down, and kept coming.
    “Something on his mind,” Nen said. “And it isn’t votes.”
    “Now, Jao,” Ang said. “Remember you’re not on duty tonight. You said yourself that your deputy can handle anything that comes up.”
    Jao patted her hand. “Wild forces couldn’t drag me away.”
    Smeth stumbled the last few yards and loomed over the table.
    “Sit down, Smeth,” Orris said. “Have a drink.”
    “Uh, thanks, but I just wanted to have a word with Jao,” Smeth said.
    “I knew it!” Ang said.
    “Nothing wrong with the drive?” Jao said. “Everything working all right?”
    “The drive’s fine … uh … at least it’s coping with everything the core’s throwing at us.”
    “Oh?” Jao’s tufted eyebrows went up. He rose from his seat and steered Smeth by the elbow to a little distance away. Bram could see them talking earnestly, heads close together.
    Jao came back to the table while Smeth waited. “Look, I’m just going down to the remote bridge for a few minutes—we’ve got the one in this bough hooked up now. Never fear—I’ll be back in plenty of time for the turning. Marg, mix me up a libation.”
    “Do you want me to come with you?” Bram offered.
    “No … I’m just going to take some readings. Sit tight and enjoy the festivities. You too, Trist—no, don’t get up.”
    He rejoined the fidgeting Smeth, and the two of them left.
    Ang had begun a litany of complaint about Smeth. “… always dragging Jao off for some nonsense. Just because he lives for his work, he thinks everyone else does. I hope that when he gets young again, he’ll find some woman who’ll take him in hand.” Marg listened sympathetically.
    Mim asked Bram unobtrusively, “Why does Smeth look so worried? I know he’s a fusspot, tending his engines and guarding the sacred fusion flame like some kind of keeper of the mysteries, but he’s got Jao worried, too.”
    Bram told her about Jun Davd’s concern over the gas infall that had made the center of the galaxy a denser place than it ought to be. “Galactic cores are active places, but this one may be more active than most. More collisions between stars. More stars exploding or being ripped apart by tides and feeding the black hole. Smashed stars forming a soup that circles the hole at tremendous speeds, creating more turbulence, more friction, stronger magnetic fields.”
    Mim gave a shudder. “And we’re heading toward that? ”
    “We’re bending ourselves around it at a safe distance. Smeth may want Jao to alter our trajectory somewhat, based on what he can deduce from the junk falling into our scoop.”
    “Is that what he meant by coping with what the core’s throwing at us?”
    “Probably. We’ve run into the fringes of gas jets so far, and a couple of minor storms of relativistic electrons.”
    “Storms?”
    “Caused by shock waves in the plasma. They accelerate the stripped electrons. Gives the ramscoop quite a diet.”
    “Oh, dear, I don’t like the sound of that!”
    “Don’t worry. The more energy that’s thrown at us, the stronger our fields are. The chief effect is the spurts of extra acceleration it’s caused, before feedback can compensate. You’ve probably noticed times during these past weeks when you’ve felt heavier.”
    “I thought it was old age delaying its farewells.”
    He smiled. “No. There’ve been some episodes of minor accidents and breakage that no one paid attention to. Fortunately, outside travel isn’t allowed without a tether, for vehicles or people. Otherwise …”
    “Otherwise, what?”
    “Somebody could’ve gotten left behind. Traveling at almost the speed of light