"The Collapsium" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mccarthy Wil)

between themЧopposition, they call it?Чthen network signals have to be sent
around via satellite. There's a time delay associated with the extra distance,
and this implies a cost."
"Yes," Bruno agreed in a knowing tone. He'd laid the foundations for the
collapsiter grid himselfЧbesting previous network bandwidths by six orders of
magnitudeЧand he understood a thing or two about how the system worked.
Tamra looked up at him but declined to glare. "Some of our people have worked
out a fix, Declarant, by putting an annulus of collapsium around the sun. The
'Ring Collapsiter,' as Declarant Sykes has named it."
"Ah!" Bruno said, grasping the idea at once. The speed of light was much higher
in the Casimir supervacuum of a collapsium lattice than in the half-filled
energy states of normal space. A ring of collapsium encircling the sun could
admit signals at one side, expel them at the other, and reduce the time not only
of the trip around, but of the trip through as well. Like a highway bypass where
the speed limit was a trillion times higher than in the crowded streets of
downtown. Why crawl through when you could blaze the long way around in half an
instant, cutting light-minutes off your journey? "Very elegant, very impressive.
Very enormously expensive, I'd imagine."
Tamra shrugged. "The cost ladies say it'll pay for itself in a century, through
increased efficiency. It's actually just the first piece of a whole new kind of
network our componeers envision: a spiderweb of collapsium threads stretching to
every corner of the Queendom."
That metaphor had been stretched a few times too many, Bruno judged. A
"spiderweb" would twist apart in hours, each rung of it orbiting the sun at
different levels, different velocities. UnlessЕ
"Good Lord. This ring of yours. It's static?"
Tamra quirked her head, not understanding.
"It's stationary?" he tried. "Does it orbit the sun, or is it suspended above by
some other means?"
"Oh," she said, nodding. "Static, yes. I'm told it needs to be, to function
properly. You'd have to ask Declarant Sykes' people for the details."
Bruno marveled. A static ring completely encircling the sun? The mother of all
collapsiters, not orbiting but hanging above its parent star like a gossamer
suspension bridge? Unthinkable! Life in the Queendom certainly had changed in
his absence. He found his mouth overflowing with questions.
"What holds it up? Good Lord, what holds it together? You'd have standing waves
at multiples of the gravitic frequency. Around the ring, that's fine, but across
it I don't see how the phases would match. You'd get shearing forces that would
tend to pull the collapsium out ofЧ"
He caught himself; Her Majesty's expression showed nothing more than polite
incomprehension. Sol was fortunate to have a queen so sharp, so quick, but it
had trained her in more superficial pursuits, made a kind of glorified video
star of her. No scientist, she.
"Forgive me," he said, bowing his head, exposing his hair's grayed roots to her
inspection. "I'll stop interrupting. What problem brings you here? To me, of all
people?"
She frowned, the troubled creases deepening across her face. "Bruno, I need you
to come back with me. Really, I'm not kidding. Fax yourself downsystem; have a
look at this thing; tell us what we can do. I wouldn't have come all the way out
here if it weren't important."