Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

the
green of this glove turn yellow, or blue?…’
    Pael sighed. ’No. Because the colour you see depends, not on the
wavelength of a photon, but on its energy. Conservation of energy
still applies, even where the Ghosts are tinkering. So each photon
carries as much energy as before - and evokes the same >colour<
in your eye. Since a photon’s energy is proportional to its
frequency, that means frequencies are left unchanged. But since
lightspeed is equal to frequency multiplied by wavelength, an
increase in wavelength implies - ’
    ’An increase in lightspeed,’ said Jeru.
    ’Yes.’
    I didn’t follow much of that. I turned and looked up at the light
that leaked around our Ghost-hide canopy. ’So we see the same
colours. The light of that star gets here a little faster. What
difference does it make?’
    Pael shook his head. ’Child, a fundamental constant like
lightspeed is embedded in the deep structure of our universe.
Lightspeed is part of the ratio known as the fine structure
constant.’ He started babbling about the charge on the electron.
    Jeru cut him off. ’Case, the fine structure constant is a measure
of the strength of an electric or magnetic force.’
    I could follow that much. ’And if you increase lightspeed - ’
    ’You reduce the strength of the force.’ Pael raised himself.
’Consider this. Human bodies are held together by molecular binding
energy - electromagnetic forces. But here, electrons are more loosely
bound to atoms; the atoms in a molecule are more loosely bound to
each other.’ He rapped on the cast on my arm. ’And so your bones are
more brittle, your skin more easy to pierce or chafe. Do you see? You
too are embedded in spacetime, my young friend. You too are affected
by the Ghosts’ tinkering. And because lightspeed in this infernal
pocket continues to increase - as far as I can tell from these poor
experiments - you are becoming more fragile every second.’
    It was a strange, eerie thought, that something so basic in the
universe could be manipulated. I put my arms around my chest and
shuddered.
    ’Other effects,’ Pael went on bleakly. ’The density of matter is
dropping. Perhaps our bodies’ very structure will eventually begin to
crumble. And dissociation temperatures are reduced.’
    Jeru snapped, ’What does that mean?’
    ’Melting and boiling points are reduced. No wonder we are
overheating. It is intriguing that bio systems have proven rather
more robust than electromechanical ones. But if we don’t get out of
here soon, our blood will start to boil…’
    ’Enough,’ Jeru said. ’What of the star?’
    ’A star is a mass of gas with a tendency to collapse under its own
gravity. But heat, supplied by fusion reactions in the core, creates
gas and radiation pressures which push outwards, counteracting
gravity.’
    ’And if the fine structure constant changes?’
    ’Then the balance is lost. Commissary, as gravity begins to win
its ancient battle, the fortress star has become more luminous - it
is burning faster. That explains the observations we made from
outside the cordon. But this cannot last.’
    ’The novae,’ I said.
    ’Yes. The explosions, layers of the star blasted into space, are a
symptom of destabilised stars seeking a new balance. The rate at
which our star is approaching that catastrophic moment fits with the
lightspeed drift I have observed.’ He smiled and closed his eyes. ’A
single cause predicating so many effects. It is all rather pleasing,
in an aesthetic way.’
    Jeru said, ’At least we know how the ship was destroyed. Every
control system is mediated by finely tuned electromagnetic effects.
Everything must have gone crazy at once…’
    The Brief Life Burns Brightly had been a classic GUTship, of a
design that hasn’t changed in its essentials for thousands of years.
The lifedome, a tough translucent bubble, contained the crew of
twenty. The dome was connected by a spine a klick long to a GUTdrive
engine pod. When we crossed the cordon boundary - when all the bridge
lights failed - the control systems went down, and all the pod’s
superforce energy must have tried to escape at once. The spine of the
ship had thrust itself up into the lifedome, like a nail rammed into
a skull.
    Pael said dreamily, ’If lightspeed were a tad faster, throughout
the universe, then hydrogen could not fuse to helium. There would
only be hydrogen: no fusion to power stars, no chemistry. Conversely
if lightspeed were a little lower,