"Evacuation of orbit zone continuing...

Voices-of-Central-Energy acknowledge the Word-of-Crisis. We have priority flow in all channels."

"Praise to a sane bureaucrat. Thermal grade on receptor arrays?"

"Nothing is melting yet and that's all that can be said."

"And how are the Uprights doing?"

"As well as we are, I must presume. I detect a slightstructural flux from their end, but so far the channel holds open." She looked across at Tarrischall. "I speak as Voice-of-Physics. The wisdom is to cast loose and abandon the channel. There is great danger here and I can see no resolution."

"No! This fish hasn't escaped yet!"

"Tarrischall-of-the-Crystal-Springs," Narisara's voice softened, speaking as herself and not the Voice-of-Physics. "What avails catching the fish if one drowns doing it?"

He looked up from the display for a moment meeting her polished jet gaze. "I know, Black Fur, but I will not cast loose while there is a chance. I will not let the People go back to being alone in this Universe."

"Yes, she's stable and holding!" Rocardo yelled in tri-umph. "We have ambience on the power flow!"

"Reserve levels remaining?" "Five percent!"

"Systems stability?"

"Power receptors and cooling systems are operating at about three hundred percent overload, but they are holding!"

Marta covered her face with her hands and exhaled, pushing aside the shutdown command that had been about to cross her lips.

They were holding. The system wasn't supposed to operate this way, but it was. Almost the full load of the great ces-Lunar power grid had been diverted into the Worm Gate receptors, the ma.s.sed output ofthe mighty hydrogen III fusion reactors poring up through the microwave beams from the Moon's surface.

Deprived of their power, the low-gee manufacturing complexes and ma.s.s driver catapults that propelled the Moon's industrial economy had been forced into a crash shutdown and even the urban habitation centers were reduced to operating on solar backup for basic life support. The screams of protest would already be starting.

But they had time now. At least a little bit to find some kind of solution.

Marta Lane allowed herself another deep breath before speaking.

"Get the backup team in here to cover the stations.

All primary team members stand down for a ten-minute break, then report to the conference room for a crisis a.s.sessment group. I'll be wanting ideas, people, any flavor you can come up with."

Tarrischall looked on as his watchmates drifted aimlessly or hung anch.o.r.ed to the soft, padded walls of the rest and discussion chamber. Beyond the hiss of the pa.s.sage-of-air grilles the chamber was ominously quiet.

"Very well, he said, "we have agreement that Marrun's plan to b.u.mp the raft out of the channel with a pusher unit will not work. What will? What can affect an object in trans-state that we can manipulate?""Very little," Narisara swayed limberly in free fall, holding herself moored to the chamber wall with the extended claws of a single rear paw. "It is hard for us to even visualize what we are dealing with within the channel. We can describe trans-state in mathematical terms, but our minds are not made to ever understand it."

"Slime and stinking water, Narisara, I don't want to understand it! I just want to fiddle with it! The raft is transstate. Situation acknowledged. What effects transstate matter? I require simplicity!"

She muttered something about simple minds and flipped inverted, reseating her grip on the wall padding. "The various field effects are valid to a degree within the channel. The ultimotular forces, gravity, magnetism, all of these things can affect transstate matter."

"That's the birth of our problem," Varess added shyly. "The perimeter grids at either end of the channel generate very strong magnetoelectric fields.

The magnetically valid metals in the raft's structure are caught between them."

"Even with all the light-seasons of distance between Life-Waters and Terra? We are being affected by their gate fields?" Marrun questioned.

"Indeed," Narisara replied to the Voice-of-Pusher-Guidance. "The area within our perimeter grid coexists with the area within that of the Upright's when the channel is open. The two areas one with the distance between rendered invalid within the Universe structure."

She waved a depreciatory mid-paw. "As I said, one can describe it and understand it mathematically, but our three-dimensional minds can't create a true visualization."

"No, but then that really isn't important... is it?"

Tarrischall shoved off from the chamber wall, an odd glint in his eyes. "As I said, Black Fur, simplification. Reject quantum physics for now."

His forepaws gestured out the problem. "Imagine the channel as a simple, three-dimensional structure.

We would have a perimeter grid producing a magnetic field here and another one here with a tunnel in between and the raft held stuck in the tunnel by the two balanced field effects. Correct?"

The Voice-of-Physics negated with a glance away.

"That's a pup's model."

"I speak applied simplicity, Voice-of-Physics. Is this not a valid model?"

She tossed her head, "It is valid... vaguely."

"Very well. And cannot the magnetoelectric field levels be modulated to a degree within the perimeter grids without losing the channel?"

"They can."

"Very well again. So if magnetic fields indeed can affect the raft in the tunnel, theoretically, by varying those field effects, we should be able to shift the position of the raft inside, drawing it toward orpushing it away from the grids. Correct?"

The Voice-of-Physics eyes narrowed. "That's not truly what would be happening."

"Simplicity, Black Fur, simplicity!"

"Yes, very well, agreed," Narisara yielded. "At least that's what might seem to occur. But to what end? We could not push or pull the raft completely to either channel mouth against the resistance of the other grid field and that other grid field can't be shut down or have its polarity inverted without cutting loose the channel."

"True, but this humble Voice-of-Decision recalls that ultimotes maintain momentum in trans-state.

The raft could not clear the channel this time because it lacked enough momentum to pierce the grid fields. What if we could rebuild the raft's momentum inside the channel by shoving it to-and-fro between the grid fields until it has regained enough energy to break out?"

"Like rocking a mired land carrier out of a mud hole," Marrun suggested.

"Precisely, Gray-laker. If we can manage the shifts properly, I'll challenge we can pop her out of there like a robug out of a hollow reed. Speak, Voice-of-Physics. Valid or no?"

Narisara thought long, her eyes almost closed. All of the watch held their breaths as if on a deep dive.

"Yes," she said finally. "Possibly."

"Ha!"She cut off Tarrischall's bark of triumph with a lifted forepaw. "But such an action would have to be perfectly timed and coordinated with the Uprights at their end of things. I say once more, perfectly timed and coordinated in both interval and sequence.

Otherwise we could unbalance and lose the channel.

And we have no way of telling the Uprights what they must do."

a.s.sistant Director Rocardo tossed his work pad stylus down onto the tabletop. "That's it, the simulator team says it could work, but we'd have to do it in absolute lockstep with the Furrys, and we haven't any way to tell them what to do."

"d.a.m.n the d.a.m.n budgetary committee to h.e.l.l,"

Marta paced angrily beside the conference room. "I told them we needed to put more funding into communications R&D, but it's always 'next year, next year, we have to watch the profit margins'."

Rocardo shrugged pragmatically. "The laser link's always been adequate. No one ever visualized having to shove a photon beam past a ma.s.s of trans-state stuck in the hole before."

"It's not adequate now. And we certainly can't wait around for seven and a half years for a radio message to reach 359."

Rocardo glanced at his data pad. "We can't even wait another seven and a half hours. Ces-Lunar is screaming for their power back, Company Headquarters is demanding we come up with asolution and, most critically, our receptor and transformer systems are starting to degrade from the overload. We have to do something, Marta!"

"I know it, Estiban. I even know what we need to do. But we have to establish three factors with River-'Tween-Worlds to pull it off; an execution time, a duration for the field cycles and which gate initiates the cycling sequence."

She paused in her pacing. "Tarrischall and his crew are sharp, as good or better than we are. I'm willing to bet he must have come to the same conclusions we have and that he must be hunting for a way to establish a mutual operational baseline with us to make it work."

"How are we supposed to manage that without a communications link? By mind reading?"

"Exactly."

Tarrischall had returned to the observation dome at the planetside end of the skynest. With the Word-of-Crisis still in effect, the half bubble of Gla.s.s-like-Steel was empty save for himself. Floating limply, he juggled his inert sphere-of-communications between his fore and mid-paws in an unthinking pattern, his tiring mind focused on the looming problem.

How do you match thought processes with a semi-hairless, bipedal land dweller with a penchant for munching on vegetation? How could minds reach across the gap between stars?Talk with me, Marta-From-the-Place-Called-New-England. You must know the solution as well as I. How are we to do this thing?

If only they could have their last conversation back again. Just thirty or so heartbeats of the time they had spent casually discussing music and dance.

Idly, Tarrischall twisted the two halves of the sphere-of-communications, triggering the replay of the musical selections Marta had sent him. As the lissome alien tone patterns flowed around him, he wondered sadly if they were the last present he would ever receive from his distant friend of Earth.

Tarrischall's grip on the sphere tightened abruptly and he stared at the silver orb as if he had never seen it before.

"T minus ninety! All stations, stand by! We're doing this thing now! Gate Control?"

"Go!"

"Tug Control?"

"Go!"

"Power Control?"

"Systems are in overload but holding nominal."

"Traffic Control."

"L-2 Block is clear except for authorized emergency s.p.a.cecraft."

It had been a long, long night shift and now the eyes of all humanity were peering over Marta Lane's shoulder. The Ces-Lunar media nets were accessingGate Control's video feeds, streaming a second-by-second narration of the crisis around the worlds. No doubt the media newsies would have loved to be underfoot aboard the command station as well, but Marta's emergency prerogatives were still worth something.

Likewise she'd also cut off all communication with Transstellar's board of directors and semihysterical CEO. If this didn't work, there would be plenty of time to be fired later.

She glanced at the primary screen time hack.

Oh-seven hours, oh-four minutes, and forty seconds.

"Stand by to initiate magnetic field modulation program on my mark... three... two... one... mark!"

"Program engaged," Gate Control reported.

"Perimeter grid field intensity dropping to eighty-percent load. Two minutes and fifty-five seconds and counting to power up."

Somewhere within the control center a whisper of long-ago music played.

Uncountable trillions of miles away the first bar of the same tune issued from Tarrischall's sphere-of-communications.

"Flow increase!" he snarled with eyes narrowed and ears laid back.

"Flow increasing to perimeter grid.

Magnetoelectric field intensity growing to plus one fifth of standard." Narisara's voice rose excitedly.

"Magnetodynamic flux noted in the channel, but thequantum structures appear stable. They are doing it, Tarrischall! They understand! The Upright gate is reducing flow! They are cycling with us!"

"Yes! Yessss!

Marta-of-the-Place-Called-New-England thinks as one of the People! Four limbs or not, I'd put a pup in her come the next season!"

The otherworldly music ran on, trickling from the sphere.

"Director Lane, the switching arrays don't like this. We're throwing thermal spikes at each power shift and the cyclic rate we've set isn't giving us the time we need to cool them down."

"Blame Glenn Miller, not me, Mr. Desvergers.

Stay on the cycle and do the best you can."

"Marta, check your quantum structure readouts!"

"What is it, Estiban?"

"We are registering a shift! We have ma.s.s movement! She's starting to rock!"

A rising chorus of warning tones from the tasking displays sang a song of incipient disaster that threatened to drive out the twelfth replay of the Terran melody.

"Tarrischall, the raft was displaying a slow but definite lateral drift on that last emergence. If she angles off enough to collide with the grid..."

"Don't encourage the curse with your words, Black Fur, I saw it. Claws out, pups! This strike ends the chase. Marrun, maneuvering room be d.a.m.ned! Thistime grab her by the throat and hang on till your jaws crack!"