hwrnmnbsol (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
hwrnmnbsol) wrote2011-09-01 11:55 pm
hwrnmnbsol) wrote2011-09-01 11:55 pm
Nuisance Removal
Business had been slow for a while when the message came through from XGHR Sector. The client had a problem, and a serious one. A small black hole had been detected approaching one of their star systems, and it was sure to cause problems. They were scared and time was short. We agreed on a fee; they were too desperate to try to argue me down, and they were even able to pay in heavy elements. Hot damn!
I rebooted GOGOR, my chief autofab. GOGOR grumbled and whined; it was several generations old, but still serviceable and trustworthy, and it knew the business of nuisance removal. GOGOR's been with me almost since I hatched, and I wouldn't replace it for the world. We assembled our junk fleet, fueled up our engines, and made the jump to XGHR through YBHB and XBHS.
I met with the resident sentients, who were descended from gas-bags. I hope you won't think me a bigot, but those sorts are always nervous nellies. They were certain that bad old hole was going to gobble them up any second.
"Now let's just take it easy," I advised them. "We're going to take care of that rogue star for you. Me and my crew are the best you'll ever find."
"Are you sure?" asked the lead sentient. "Because your robot over there seems to be building an orbital station where we didn't want to have one."
"GOGOR!" The autofab stopped working instantly. It's a quirk that GOGOR has; it builds randomly when it isn't put to work. I consider it one of its charms. GOGOR had spun about five kilometers of truss spans before he was caught. The mess was cleaned up in no time, and I was able to smooth things over. I had GOGOR make us a set of reaction-jet engines, and we gently pushed ourselves out to the edge of the system to scout out this runaway that was causing so much trouble.
"Now then," I mused, scanning the region's likely features, "I wonder what our little black hole likes to eat?"
Of course black holes are intelligent, but their size determines how smart they are. Any time you get a system that's highly organized, if the application of guiding intelligence could cause that system to thrive where dumber versions would die, it's a foregone conclusion that higher thinking will arise. Big black holes can be very smart, and as a general rule, those that have learned to communicate can be very well behaved. But the little ones aren't very clever as a rule. They know that they want to swallow more mass to fuel themselves and grow bigger, and they have some instincts for self-preservation, but that's about it.
"GOGOR," I said, looking around the neighborhood, "there's way too much mass even this far out. I don't think our little interloper is going to want to leave."
Outside our ship, GOGOR quickly fabricated a couple of automata. One was small and round, the other large, spiny and frightening. The big one chased the little one across the skin of the craft, and the little one mewled pitifully on the RF band.
"No, I don't think we can scare it off," I answered. "With this rich a food source, it'll want to come back. We don't want to be hanging around here forever." GOGOR let the spiny creation fall away astern and spun another object out of interstellar hydrogen. This was a large silver hammer, and it smashed the little dark sphere to pieces.
"I think that's a little extreme, don't you?" I chided. The hammer extruded a tongue that blew a raspberry at me.
"Well, same to you," I said. "No, I think we need to make a honey-pot and a tiger trap. Get to work. And no side projects!" The hammer's tongue flapped in an imaginary breeze as GOGOR's toys fell away.
GOGOR started by making a scoop and sifting through comet material for lithium, and then bombarding it with neutrons to knock loose tritium. Black holes love tritium; it's like candy to them – full of energy, but simple in structure and therefore easy to incorporate into themselves with a minimum of deconstruction first. GOGOR started making a pile of it.
Next GOGOR made the trap itself, a series of truss-frame superstructures holding graviton cannons. GOGOR made almost five hundred pieces to the trap – pieces that would start separated from each other, but would collapse into a Hoberman Sphere.
We plotted the course of the black hole. It was bumbling along noisily, giving off crude x-ray bursts at regular intervals, sniffing around the edges of the star system looking for something interesting to pounce upon. It was a hungry little star, but there plenty to feed on, and the black hole plainly wasn't in any great rush.
"Wonderful," I said. "GOGOR, bait the trap and let's get it into place."
GOGOR froze the tritium into an ice-ball and planted it in a region of space directly on the black hole's path. Then it arrayed the pieces of the tiger trap around the bait. We settled in to wait. Unfortunately the star wasn't accommodating. It made an unexpected turn before it reached the site of the ambush, haring off after an extraplanetary object with a methane crust it must have found interesting.
"GOGOR, give me some chunks of the bait," I sighed. "I'm going to have to lead it in."
I jetted out to where the black hole was gorging itself on organics. I fired a chunk of the tritium directly into the black hole, exploded another a few AU away, and then left a trail of breadcrumbs back to the trap. I was counting on the black hole being stupid enough to be incapable of recognizing when it was being deliberately baited. It didn't disappoint; the black hole immediately left off devouring the dry, dusty bodies on the star system's periphery to chase off after its favorite food.
The globe of encapsulated tritium glimmered invitingly. GOGOR hit it with lasers at regular intervals to evaporate a bit of the bait, allowing the black hole to smell it from far away. The black hole accelerated towards the bait by perturbing the gravitational field of its event horizon, focusing an x-ray jet out the hole that allowed it to push towards the food.
It closed in on and then sucked up the tritium. As it did so, the pieces of the tiger trap fell inwards and assembled themselves. An enormous truss-built sphere, set well away from the event horizon, surrounded the black hole. GOGOR trained the graviton cannons on the hole in space and waited.
Presently the black hole digested its meal and attempted to move on, firing a jet of x-rays to squirt itself towards the system's primary sun. When it did so, the graviton cannon opposite the jet fired. This broke up the event horizon and caused a similar jet of material to flow out that end. The two jets cancelled each other, and the black hole remained in place.
Unaware of what had happened, the nuisance star tried again. Again its jet was countered by an outflow generated on its opposite side. Now the black hole, on some primitive level, realized it was in trouble. It opened a massive vortex on one side, attempting to power its way through by vomiting a great deal of mass out that end. All the graviton cannons on the far side opened fire, pricking the black hole in hundreds of places and slowing its escape.
Slowing, but not stopping. "GOGOR, match vectors," I instructed. The reaction jets on the tiger trap fired, giving the trap a course that kept the black hole at its center. The black hole coasted along freely on its new course, seeming to be testing the waters around it, thinking, however crudely, on its next move.
GOGOR synthesized a black sphere outside my ship's window. A dozen darts surrounded it, then pricked it with lasers until it dwindled in size. "No, GOGOR," I said. "Let's keep it on the line for a while. If we can tire it out, we'll be able to haul it away easier. But, yes: let's make the fish work a bit."
The trap fired at the black hole's leading edge, causing it to fire a jet and decelerate. The star must have realized at this point that it was at the mercy of something hostile, now, and attempted to jet away on a new course. A game of cat and mouse followed. If the black hole attempted to move gently, the graviton cannons blocked it. If it opened a vortex wide and tried to blast through, consuming a lot of its own mass and energy in the process, the trap matched course with the star.
We did this for a while until I perceived the black hole's event horizon was fluctuating. "It's lost enough mass that it's having to reorganize itself internally," I said. "It should be quiescent for now. Let's set a course for Sector XGHT; I think we can make a permanent arrangement for our baby there."
The trap opened up with a cluster of cannons on one side of the star, opening up pinprick jets of material in the black hole. As it began accelerating out of the system, the trap matched speeds. We were driving the star out of the sector, using its own reaction mass for fuel.
The transit from XGHR to XGHT was long and arduous. The black hole wasn't cunning, exactly, but it had survival instincts. It tried to lull us into a false sense of security, allowing itself to be led docilely for longer intervals, but would then attempt a surprise course change. Twice these efforts almost allowed it to break out of the trap. And then once it actually distorted itself into a spindle and was able to touch one of the cannons torturing it; the cannon and the trusses supporting it were destroyed instantly. But GOGOR had built the trap well, and the superstructure held together long enough for repairs to be made. The black hole, meanwhile, had consumed a substantial amount of its own energy in the attempt, and it did not make any more trouble for quite some time.
Sector XGHT was a quiet, out of the way place with little of interest for sentients. Perhaps that was why the great binary black hole had chosen to take up residence there, spinning around itself at an incredible rate of speed, generating a column of x-rays along its axis of rotation that flickered in a pattern that I found almost artistic.
I keyed a greeting into the encoder. "Greetings," I said. The encoder spread the signal out into microwave bursts delivered at a rate that the black hole would find pleasant to receive. Then we waited. One must be patient to converse with stars.
"Star-love greets you," the message came back. "Why do you torment star-pain?"
We had to be very careful here. GOGOR and I were more than capable of handling a puny little runaway black hole, but a full formed adult binary could smash us to a pulp without thinking about it.
"We do not torment," I answered. "We offer. We offer star-love."
"Star-pain wanders?" asked the big black hole.
"Affirmative. Star-pain seeks. Star-love join star-pain?"
"Consideration," the big black hole said. GOGOR and I settled back to wait. GOGOR created castles made of crystalline tubes, and then graceful ships of the same stuff, and it fought imaginary battles between automated glimmering fleets. The shards of the casualties flew off in all directions, temporarily providing the glittering stars of the heavens with company.
Finally the adult black hole replied. "Affirmative," it said. "Star-love accepts. Star-unity."
"GOGOR, release the little one," I instructed. The pieces of the Hoberman Sphere decoupled and silently exploded away from the baby star, freeing it. The small star immediately formed a jet and attempted to scoot away, but a great vortex formed in the adult star, and a tongue of x-rays reached out to bathe the child-star. The small black hole was drawn into the larger one, whose event horizon then noticeably bulged outwards.
"Star-unity," the black hole sent.
"Is small star devoured?" I asked, curious.
"Negative," the black hole replied. "Assimilated. Part of star-love. Sentient word: FAMILY."
"Ah," I said. "Isn't that nice, GOGOR? They've adopted our child. Let's leave the happy family and be on our way."
We shed our reaction drives and went to jump back to XGHR to claim our pay. GOGOR created shapes for me outside the ship's window. There was a great trapezoid, something like GOGOR's own shape. Then a smaller trapezoid came out of it.
"Why, GOGOR," I said, surprised. "You want to make offspring?" The narrow sides of the two trapezoids touched.
"Well I never." I considered. "All right, by all means, you can have a baby," I said. "But I must warn you, parenting is a permanent responsibility. I will not allow you to make disposable children."
The smaller trapezoid extruded a long silver tongue which flapped at me rudely.
"Yes, yes," I said impatiently. "Same to you."
I rebooted GOGOR, my chief autofab. GOGOR grumbled and whined; it was several generations old, but still serviceable and trustworthy, and it knew the business of nuisance removal. GOGOR's been with me almost since I hatched, and I wouldn't replace it for the world. We assembled our junk fleet, fueled up our engines, and made the jump to XGHR through YBHB and XBHS.
I met with the resident sentients, who were descended from gas-bags. I hope you won't think me a bigot, but those sorts are always nervous nellies. They were certain that bad old hole was going to gobble them up any second.
"Now let's just take it easy," I advised them. "We're going to take care of that rogue star for you. Me and my crew are the best you'll ever find."
"Are you sure?" asked the lead sentient. "Because your robot over there seems to be building an orbital station where we didn't want to have one."
"GOGOR!" The autofab stopped working instantly. It's a quirk that GOGOR has; it builds randomly when it isn't put to work. I consider it one of its charms. GOGOR had spun about five kilometers of truss spans before he was caught. The mess was cleaned up in no time, and I was able to smooth things over. I had GOGOR make us a set of reaction-jet engines, and we gently pushed ourselves out to the edge of the system to scout out this runaway that was causing so much trouble.
"Now then," I mused, scanning the region's likely features, "I wonder what our little black hole likes to eat?"
Of course black holes are intelligent, but their size determines how smart they are. Any time you get a system that's highly organized, if the application of guiding intelligence could cause that system to thrive where dumber versions would die, it's a foregone conclusion that higher thinking will arise. Big black holes can be very smart, and as a general rule, those that have learned to communicate can be very well behaved. But the little ones aren't very clever as a rule. They know that they want to swallow more mass to fuel themselves and grow bigger, and they have some instincts for self-preservation, but that's about it.
"GOGOR," I said, looking around the neighborhood, "there's way too much mass even this far out. I don't think our little interloper is going to want to leave."
Outside our ship, GOGOR quickly fabricated a couple of automata. One was small and round, the other large, spiny and frightening. The big one chased the little one across the skin of the craft, and the little one mewled pitifully on the RF band.
"No, I don't think we can scare it off," I answered. "With this rich a food source, it'll want to come back. We don't want to be hanging around here forever." GOGOR let the spiny creation fall away astern and spun another object out of interstellar hydrogen. This was a large silver hammer, and it smashed the little dark sphere to pieces.
"I think that's a little extreme, don't you?" I chided. The hammer extruded a tongue that blew a raspberry at me.
"Well, same to you," I said. "No, I think we need to make a honey-pot and a tiger trap. Get to work. And no side projects!" The hammer's tongue flapped in an imaginary breeze as GOGOR's toys fell away.
GOGOR started by making a scoop and sifting through comet material for lithium, and then bombarding it with neutrons to knock loose tritium. Black holes love tritium; it's like candy to them – full of energy, but simple in structure and therefore easy to incorporate into themselves with a minimum of deconstruction first. GOGOR started making a pile of it.
Next GOGOR made the trap itself, a series of truss-frame superstructures holding graviton cannons. GOGOR made almost five hundred pieces to the trap – pieces that would start separated from each other, but would collapse into a Hoberman Sphere.
We plotted the course of the black hole. It was bumbling along noisily, giving off crude x-ray bursts at regular intervals, sniffing around the edges of the star system looking for something interesting to pounce upon. It was a hungry little star, but there plenty to feed on, and the black hole plainly wasn't in any great rush.
"Wonderful," I said. "GOGOR, bait the trap and let's get it into place."
GOGOR froze the tritium into an ice-ball and planted it in a region of space directly on the black hole's path. Then it arrayed the pieces of the tiger trap around the bait. We settled in to wait. Unfortunately the star wasn't accommodating. It made an unexpected turn before it reached the site of the ambush, haring off after an extraplanetary object with a methane crust it must have found interesting.
"GOGOR, give me some chunks of the bait," I sighed. "I'm going to have to lead it in."
I jetted out to where the black hole was gorging itself on organics. I fired a chunk of the tritium directly into the black hole, exploded another a few AU away, and then left a trail of breadcrumbs back to the trap. I was counting on the black hole being stupid enough to be incapable of recognizing when it was being deliberately baited. It didn't disappoint; the black hole immediately left off devouring the dry, dusty bodies on the star system's periphery to chase off after its favorite food.
The globe of encapsulated tritium glimmered invitingly. GOGOR hit it with lasers at regular intervals to evaporate a bit of the bait, allowing the black hole to smell it from far away. The black hole accelerated towards the bait by perturbing the gravitational field of its event horizon, focusing an x-ray jet out the hole that allowed it to push towards the food.
It closed in on and then sucked up the tritium. As it did so, the pieces of the tiger trap fell inwards and assembled themselves. An enormous truss-built sphere, set well away from the event horizon, surrounded the black hole. GOGOR trained the graviton cannons on the hole in space and waited.
Presently the black hole digested its meal and attempted to move on, firing a jet of x-rays to squirt itself towards the system's primary sun. When it did so, the graviton cannon opposite the jet fired. This broke up the event horizon and caused a similar jet of material to flow out that end. The two jets cancelled each other, and the black hole remained in place.
Unaware of what had happened, the nuisance star tried again. Again its jet was countered by an outflow generated on its opposite side. Now the black hole, on some primitive level, realized it was in trouble. It opened a massive vortex on one side, attempting to power its way through by vomiting a great deal of mass out that end. All the graviton cannons on the far side opened fire, pricking the black hole in hundreds of places and slowing its escape.
Slowing, but not stopping. "GOGOR, match vectors," I instructed. The reaction jets on the tiger trap fired, giving the trap a course that kept the black hole at its center. The black hole coasted along freely on its new course, seeming to be testing the waters around it, thinking, however crudely, on its next move.
GOGOR synthesized a black sphere outside my ship's window. A dozen darts surrounded it, then pricked it with lasers until it dwindled in size. "No, GOGOR," I said. "Let's keep it on the line for a while. If we can tire it out, we'll be able to haul it away easier. But, yes: let's make the fish work a bit."
The trap fired at the black hole's leading edge, causing it to fire a jet and decelerate. The star must have realized at this point that it was at the mercy of something hostile, now, and attempted to jet away on a new course. A game of cat and mouse followed. If the black hole attempted to move gently, the graviton cannons blocked it. If it opened a vortex wide and tried to blast through, consuming a lot of its own mass and energy in the process, the trap matched course with the star.
We did this for a while until I perceived the black hole's event horizon was fluctuating. "It's lost enough mass that it's having to reorganize itself internally," I said. "It should be quiescent for now. Let's set a course for Sector XGHT; I think we can make a permanent arrangement for our baby there."
The trap opened up with a cluster of cannons on one side of the star, opening up pinprick jets of material in the black hole. As it began accelerating out of the system, the trap matched speeds. We were driving the star out of the sector, using its own reaction mass for fuel.
The transit from XGHR to XGHT was long and arduous. The black hole wasn't cunning, exactly, but it had survival instincts. It tried to lull us into a false sense of security, allowing itself to be led docilely for longer intervals, but would then attempt a surprise course change. Twice these efforts almost allowed it to break out of the trap. And then once it actually distorted itself into a spindle and was able to touch one of the cannons torturing it; the cannon and the trusses supporting it were destroyed instantly. But GOGOR had built the trap well, and the superstructure held together long enough for repairs to be made. The black hole, meanwhile, had consumed a substantial amount of its own energy in the attempt, and it did not make any more trouble for quite some time.
Sector XGHT was a quiet, out of the way place with little of interest for sentients. Perhaps that was why the great binary black hole had chosen to take up residence there, spinning around itself at an incredible rate of speed, generating a column of x-rays along its axis of rotation that flickered in a pattern that I found almost artistic.
I keyed a greeting into the encoder. "Greetings," I said. The encoder spread the signal out into microwave bursts delivered at a rate that the black hole would find pleasant to receive. Then we waited. One must be patient to converse with stars.
"Star-love greets you," the message came back. "Why do you torment star-pain?"
We had to be very careful here. GOGOR and I were more than capable of handling a puny little runaway black hole, but a full formed adult binary could smash us to a pulp without thinking about it.
"We do not torment," I answered. "We offer. We offer star-love."
"Star-pain wanders?" asked the big black hole.
"Affirmative. Star-pain seeks. Star-love join star-pain?"
"Consideration," the big black hole said. GOGOR and I settled back to wait. GOGOR created castles made of crystalline tubes, and then graceful ships of the same stuff, and it fought imaginary battles between automated glimmering fleets. The shards of the casualties flew off in all directions, temporarily providing the glittering stars of the heavens with company.
Finally the adult black hole replied. "Affirmative," it said. "Star-love accepts. Star-unity."
"GOGOR, release the little one," I instructed. The pieces of the Hoberman Sphere decoupled and silently exploded away from the baby star, freeing it. The small star immediately formed a jet and attempted to scoot away, but a great vortex formed in the adult star, and a tongue of x-rays reached out to bathe the child-star. The small black hole was drawn into the larger one, whose event horizon then noticeably bulged outwards.
"Star-unity," the black hole sent.
"Is small star devoured?" I asked, curious.
"Negative," the black hole replied. "Assimilated. Part of star-love. Sentient word: FAMILY."
"Ah," I said. "Isn't that nice, GOGOR? They've adopted our child. Let's leave the happy family and be on our way."
We shed our reaction drives and went to jump back to XGHR to claim our pay. GOGOR created shapes for me outside the ship's window. There was a great trapezoid, something like GOGOR's own shape. Then a smaller trapezoid came out of it.
"Why, GOGOR," I said, surprised. "You want to make offspring?" The narrow sides of the two trapezoids touched.
"Well I never." I considered. "All right, by all means, you can have a baby," I said. "But I must warn you, parenting is a permanent responsibility. I will not allow you to make disposable children."
The smaller trapezoid extruded a long silver tongue which flapped at me rudely.
"Yes, yes," I said impatiently. "Same to you."