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instantaneously become some higher order of infinity, that all the matter in
normal
space would coalesce with it in zero time; but Mentor had assured Kit that
operators
would come into effect to prevent such an occurrence, and that untoward events
would
be limited to a radius of ten or fifteen parsecs. Mentor could solve the
problem in detail;
but since the solution would require some two hundred Klovian years and the
event was
due to occur in two weeks . . .
"How about the big computer at Ultra Prime?" Kinnison had asked,
innocently.
"You know how fast that works."
"Roughly two thousand yearsùif it could take that kind of math, which it
can't,"
Kit had replied, and the subject had been dropped.
Finally it happened. What happened? Even after the fact none of the
observers
knew; nor did any except the L3's ever find out. The fuses of all the recorder
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and
analyzer circuits blew at once. Needles jumped instantly to maximum and
wrapped
themselves around their stops. Charts and ultra-photographic films showed only
straight
or curved lines running from the origin to and through the limits in zero
time. Floor and
everything around it disappeared in an utterly indescribable and completely
incomprehensible blast of pure, wild, raw, uncontrolled and uncontrollable
energy. The
infinitesimal fraction of that energy which was visible, heterodyned upon the
ultra as it
was and screened as it was, blazed so savagely upon the plates that it seared
the eyes.
And if the events caused by the planet aimed at Floor were indescribable,
what
can be said of those initiated by the one directed against Floor's sun?
When the heat generated in the interior of a sun becomes greater than its
effective surface is able to radiate, that surface expands. If the expansion
is not fast
enough, a more or less insignificant amount of the sun's material explodes,
thus
enlarging by force the radiant surface to whatever extent is necessary to
restore
equilibrium. Thus come into being the ordinary novae; suns which may for a few
days or
for a few weeks radiate energy at a rate a few hundreds of thousands of times
greater
than normal. Since ordinary novae can be produced at will by the collision of
a planet
with a sun, the scientists of the Patrol had long since completed their
studies of all the
phenomena involved.
The mechanisms of super-novae, however, remained obscure. No adequate
instrumentation had been developed to study conclusively the occasional
super-nova
which occurred naturally. No super-nova had ever been produced
artificiallyùwith all its
resources of mass, atomic energy, cosmic energy, and sunbeams, Civilization
could
neither assemble nor concentrate enough power.
At the impact of the second loose planet, accompanied by the excess
energy of
its impossible and unattainable intrinsic velocity, Floor's sun became a
super-nova. How
deeply the intruding thing penetrated, how much of the sun's mass exploded,
never was
and perhaps never will be determined. The violence of the explosion was such,
however, that Klovian astronomers reportedùa few years laterùthat it was
radiating
energy at the rate of some five hundred and fifty million suns.
Thus no attempt will be made to describe what happened when the planet
from
Nth space struck the Boskonians' sun. It was indescribability cubed.
CHAPTER 27: KINNISON TRAPPED
The Boskonian fleets defending floor were not all destroyed, of course.
The
vessels were inertialess. None of the phenomena accompanying the coming into
being
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of the super-nova were propagated at a velocity above that of light; a speed
which to
any space-ship is scarcely a crawl.
The survivors were, however, disorganized. They had lost their morale
when
Floor was wiped out in such a spectacularly nerve-shattering fashion. Also,
they had
lost practically all of their high command; for the bosses, instead of riding
the ether as
did the Patrol commanders, remained in their supposedly secure headquarters
and
directed matters from afar. Mentor and his fellows had removed from this plane
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