Mangled Meat Read Free Page B

became obsessed, but then everyone else was too— obsessed with their particular mission assignments. This was history, this was it. And we were all a working part.
    But for my part—failure.
    Section lasers, nuke-picks, impact-bezels, the sub-cabundum band-saw, the ectine torch? All of them failed. Whatever material it was that the VO’s suit was constructed of, none of these tools touched it. I couldn’t dent it, couldn’t melt it, couldn’t even scratch it. Detcord failed too, and so did beta-fluoric acid. Nothing. The most invasive and corrosive substances and tools known to man did nothing to the VO’s suit.
    In the meantime, though, I learned from the OAC updates that the rest of the crew were having the same bad luck trying to take the victor apart. Every single testing and analysis method available could determine absolutely nothing about the composition, structure, or engineering of the craft. And since no propulsion system could be detected, God knew how this thing got to the Zuby system. Where was it coming from? Where was it going?
    Eventually, though, a half-answer blipped over our HUDs. Since no engine, fuel, or propulsion structures were discovered on the victor, the OAC, after almost three earth days of computations half a trillion cycles per second, told us this:
    :-cALCULATIONS fOUNDED iN aLL kNOWN qUANTUM pOSTULATION eSTIMATES tHAT fOREIGN vICTOR mAY bE pROPELLED bY sOME dESIGN oF rELATIVISTIC mOMENTUM-eNERGY rELATION bASED oN pRPOSED 20 th -cENTURY tHEORY. E = pc aND mo [momentum] = 0. iF a pHOTON cEASES tO mOVE aT tHE sPEED oF lIGHT, iT cEASES tO eXIST. tHEREFORE, tHERE iS a hIGH pROBABLILITY tHAT tHE vICTOR iS pROPELLED bY pHOTONIC wAVELENGTH eQUALIZATION. hIGH bERYLLIUM vAPOR-pHASE tHROUGH tRACKED pROXIMITY oF zUBY sTAR sYSTEM wOULD dISABLE sUCH a pOWERPLANT-:
    So there is was. The most off-the-wall theory of motion and yet the simplest. All of a sudden it made sense. And so did the fluke. Evidence of gaseous beryllium in space was almost ziltch, but gaseous beryllium would be the only elemental substance that could shut down such an engine. Beryllium deflects photons. Like an old prop plane from the 1900s suddenly entering a vacuum.
    Beryllium would shut down the engine. One chance in a hundred million. And that chance happened.
    An accident.
    The grunts and the techs and the swabbies pulled their hair out over the victor just like I pulled mine out over the VO. Both were puzzles that couldn’t be solved. All we had was the OAC watching over us. In all it’s calculative power, it could not make a single suggestion on how to analyze the victor or how to remove the suit.
    But on the third day...
    ***
     
    Particle beams can be focused into ancipital-shaped fields. Two edges joining to a point on a plane one electron wide. It was a theory of my own (not even the OAC came up with it) whereby random particle projections could be agitated with cyclically fluctuating laser streams. In theory, it would produce a pinpoint of heat maxing out at 180,000 degrees. If I could just put one pinhole in that suit....
    I might be able to get a foothold to cutting it all off.
    I didn’t know what I expected, even if it worked. I wasn’t thinking about it. None of us were. We were only thinking about the present task, one step at a time. And in three days, nobody on the plat had even made a hair’s width of headway. Even if I got the suit off...what would be waiting inside? After over twenty centuries?
    Just bones? Dust? Karyolitic rot? But the suit, by all evidence, was hermetically sealed. So maybe the body inside was perfectly intact. But once exposed to air pressure, would it implode? Dissolve? I didn’t know the answer to any of these questions. But it wasn’t my job to ask, it was my job to do.
    I put on an oxygen recharge and a full EUD hazmat suit on. If I did punch a hole in this stuff, I didn’t want toxic gas or alien liquefaction squirting in my face. When I began to upcharge the particle