“Is it all precious metal?”
“Sorry — got excited. No, it’s seventy percent iron, and the rest mostly oxygen and silicon. The heavy stuff just leaped out at me. But there is a lot of it, compared to what we’re used to, and the proportion is bound to increase with depth. Mighty solid lithosphere. But then, it has to be. As I make it, something like two-thirds the mass of this planet has to be in the core — and the core’s no larger than our Earth. My God — I didn’t think! This core — it has to be ten, eleven times the average density of Earth, to make that mass. Nothing’s that solid.”
“Going down,” Ivo said.
It was that solid. The multiple heavy elements on the core-ball’s “surface” were floating there because the interior was several times their density.
It was composed of partially collapsed matter: the refuse, possibly, of an extinct dwarf star. Protons and neutrons were jammed together with only imperfect electron layers holding them apart.
“It seems,” Groton remarked, “that half our job has been done for us.”
Ivo nodded, satisfied.
Ivo began to explain their intent to the women.
“The idea is to utilize the principle of gravitational collapse. We have obtained schematics for a rather sophisticated variant of the gravity focuser, though this resembles what we have here on Triton about the way a hydrogen bomb resembles a matchstick. Assembly of the generators alone will take months, even with a full crew of waldoes, and the related safeguards—”
“What do you mean by ‘gravitational collapse’?” Afra interjected.
“Oh. Well, simplified, it is the effect gravitational attraction has on matter when taken to the extreme. Any object of sufficient mass tends to compress itself by its own gravity, and the more dense it is the stronger this force becomes. Actually the other forces, electromagnetic and nuclear, are far stronger on a unit basis than—”
“May I?” Groton put in. “I think I can simplify this for the benefit of those who haven’t been exposed to a galactic education.” Suddenly Ivo realized that “those” meant Beatryx. He had become used to Afra’s almost instant comprehension, and tended to forget that the other woman was slower, though as vitally concerned. He had forgotten, also, that he was now talking in a manner he would not have comprehended himself, not so long ago; despite his care not to fathom galactic meanings too deeply, he had picked up a considerable amount.
And of course that was the reason Afra had asked her question. She knew astronomy and physics far better than he did, and was aware that the other woman was being left behind.
“You see,” Groton said, “Triton is smaller than Earth, so we weigh less there — I mean here — or did, before we started changing things. Schön is smaller yet, so on it we hardly weigh anything at all. But it isn’t just size that counts. If Schön were made of osmium instead of ice, it would have about twenty-five times its present mass, and therefore more gravity. We would then weigh more there than we do, though still very little.”
Beatryx nodded. Ivo was impressed; he had not really appreciated what a real talent teaching was. Comprehension was one thing; converting one’s knowledge into a clear explanation for others was another.
“But a planet isn’t just pulling at us,” Groton continued. “It is pulling at itself, too. It is much more tightly packed in the center than at the edge, because of its own gravity. And if we squeezed Triton down into a little ball about the size of Schön, and stood on that we’d weigh more than we do now, just because it was so dense and because we were so much closer to its center.
“And if we squeezed it down into a ball the size of a pea — why then the gravity would be very strong indeed. It might even begin to squeeze itself down farther, because its own attraction was so powerful. That’s what’s known as the gravitational radius — the point at which an object begins to collapse in upon itself as though it were a leaking tire. Once that happens, it’s too late; nothing can stop it from going all the way.”
“But what happens to it?” Beatryx demanded, alarmed.
“That’s what we’d very much like to know. Ivo seems to have an answer from the macroscope, however.”
“It seems that matter can’t just collapse into singularity — that is, nothing,” Ivo said, doing his best to emulate Groton’s style. “That would violate fundamental laws of — well, it’s no go. So instead it punches through to another spot in the universe, following the line of least resistance.”
“Punches through…” Afra murmured, putting items together. “That’s how you mean to—”
“To jump to the galactic reaches. Yes. But there are some problems.”
“I should say so! You’re playing with the molecular, the atomic collapse of matter! Assuming that you have a process to force this, which for the sake of conjecture I’ll assume you do, exactly what happens to people compressed to pinhead size?”
“Worse than that,” Ivo said. “A two-hundred-pound man would have to squeeze down to one ten-billionth the size of—”
“One ten-billionth!”
“ — of the nucleus of an atom. That’s if he were to go it alone, of course; not so small if accompanied by other mass.”
“That’s very small, isn’t it,” Beatryx said.
“Very small,” Ivo agreed. “But a mass the size of, say, the sun would not have to reduce by the same ratio. The greater the mass, the easier it is. But about people, now — this entire program is taken from the major extragalactic station. It is the only one that carries anything of the sort, for some reason. Actually, it doesn’t carry anything but the technology related to such travel; its area of information is smaller than I thought at first. The melting is part of the preparation for it. This station says that animate flesh can survive the transformation, provided it is properly prepared.”
“And it was right before,” Groton said.
“Let’s have the worst,” Afra said grimly.
“Well, first the liquefication we’re already familiar with. Then isolation of the individual cells, and a kind of gasification.”
“The gaseous state rebounds better after compression,” Groton put in helpfully. “Once molecular structure is reestablished.”
“And the field — that’s a simplified description — maintains an exact ratio during compression,” Ivo said. “That is, it fastens every atom in place and stabilizes things so that the entire field collapses evenly, and nothing is jostled or mixed up in the irregular currents of collapse. Much the same as spots on a full balloon will shrink in place when it is deflated, but not if it pops. After the — jump — the field maintains the ratios for the expansion, and only lets go when everything is as it was before. The machinery can take it all right; the extra flexibility for living things is required — because they are living. You can’t turn life off and turn it on again. Not in the normal course.”
“You say the larger the accompanying mass, the easier the procedure,” Afra said, becoming seriously interested. Large concepts came more readily, after the success of the melting and the Triton colony machinery. “Does that mean you’re going to try to fasten onto — well, Schön, — and compress us with it?”
“You have the idea, but we have larger masses at hand, and the equipment will be geared for them. The larger the mass, the less sophisticated the necessary technology, because of the smaller compression ratio. So—”
“Triton itself? That may be simple, but it is ambitious.”
“Neptune.”
She seemed beyond surprise. “Do you know where we’ll emerge?”