The Great Escape Chapter 23, Part 7 of 13

The Great Escape
Chapter 23, Part 7 of 13

"So, your hyperspace junctions impose forced moves on the Traveler. It's forced into an allocation band by its kinetic energy."

"Exactly!" Danielle exclaimed. "The mass of the Traveler is fixed. It's a 'rule of the game'. But its velocity is a variable, a 'tactic' in your analogy. We can make the kinetic energy into a 'forced move' by sending the Traveler into the Beacon at a precise velocity."

Danielle projected a map of the Beltway, with the distances in normal space between junctions.

"So, here's a test for you," she said. "Suppose a 50-ton Traveler enters the Beltway Junction near Capella Space Station at 10,000 mph, where will it exit the Beltway?"

The girls checked the formula against the map.

"On the Arcturus spur," said Wildchild.

"Quite right," Danielle confirmed. "And what if it enters at 45,000 mph?"

"Then it will come to Celetaris," said Yael.

"Correct. The Beltway has 1024 allocation bands between 5,000 and 500,000 mph, though not all are used."

"So why can't the same system work for the new technology?" Yael asked.

"This is a tricky part," Danielle warned. "Communication through the plume unravels the allocation bands when kinetic energy is the forced move. We need to build the allocation bands with a new forced move."

"Like electric charge?" said Yael.

"It won't work," Danielle said. "Nor will magnetic fields."

"Quantum spin," Yael now suggested.

"No."

"Parity," she attempted.

"Not party, either," said Danielle. "We can't scale quantum spin or parity up to the mass of a spaceship."

There was a pause because Yael was temporarily at a loss for ideas. Then Wildchild said:

"You told Roger that electromagnetism was a mathematical phenomenon."

"I did."

"So, how about temperature?"

"Very good," Danielle said. "Temperature is a statistical effect, the average energy of individual atoms. However, remember that the new technology requires a signal to be transmitted between the Beacon and the Traveler through the plum. The information will be washed out by a statistical average."

"What about frequency?" Yael asked.

"Frequency is also energy. How would you stop it getting washed out?"

"We can focus on it with your air suit technology," Wildchild ventured. "It keeps microwaves within a region of space."

"Excellent idea, Samatha, but it won't work. The frequency of the signal from Beacon stays in synch until the information is read, then it jumps bands randomly."

"Oh," said Wildchild.

"But it shows you're thinking along the right sides, both of you. You're right to say that the forced move to new technology must be a mathematical phenomenon, a statistical effect.

You've given me an idea. I will look at stochastic resonance to stop the signal getting scrambled."

After she explained stochastic resonance, Danielle went to work. Soon, she was lost in a relativistic universe filled with hyperspace plumes, lossless signals, and forced moves.

The girls settled down to study the equations. Despite being bewildered by the complex mathematics and the unfamiliar physical concepts, Wildchild and Yael remained alert and ambitious, grasping at any nugget of information that made sense to them. One thing was sure: they were hooked on physics. They would never give up trying to understand.

Danielle did not proceed with the problem that day or in the next few days, when other members of the Project Team became involved.

It was mid-afternoon on Friday, and the Science Institute closed early for the weekend before the summer exams, when there would be no more lessons.

Danielle had diligently racked her brain for two weeks, searching for the necessary adjustments that would make the Beltway Junctions compatible with the new technology.

Having failed, it was a good idea to let the problem lie fallow for a few days.

In her flat, Annela was playing with Freya on the floor. They'd been to the park so Freya could run around with Charlie the dog, as she did every day, while Annela had a pleasant chat with
Edgar Fanshaw, who'd quite perked up in his hundred-and-thirteenth year with the attention of his young friends from Samothea.

Ezra was dozing in an armchair, physically exhausted by Annela, who had no compunction about waking him up five or six times a night to make love.

Roger was home early from the library, preparing for his Friday evening video link to Madam Gloria and her advisory council on Samothea.

Ed and Rod had gone to Rod's family cabin to revise for their exams for the last time.

Hazel was sitting on the window seat, reading a geology textbook. Yael pressed affectionately against her with a physics book.

Danielle took her computer tablet and invited Wildchild to join her on the couch. She began a math program. Intrigued by Wildchild's abilities, Danielle wanted to properly test her young friend.

No one had any plans, other than to relax.

There was a knock at the front door, and Freya ran down the corridor to answer it. She ran excitedly back, crying: "It's Aunt Joan and Kelly."

Sure enough, Joan Mayfield and her daughter entered the living room.

"We're going shopping," Joan said. "Who wants to join us?"

"I do!" said Yael, jumping up. Hazel and Freya were also keen.

"Annela?" Joan invited.

"Thanks, Joan, but I've got a full day at the medical Center with Cassie tomorrow, so I need to be with Ezra tonight."

Annela enjoyed shopping but knew the shoppers would end up at a restaurant and be late home. She also felt that her sexual needs were getting stronger, rather than slowly abating, as they were supposed to do. If she were to spend an entire day as Doctor Leighton's guinea pig tomorrow, then she needed Ezra to give her an exceptionally good shagging tonight.

Joan hadn't expected either of the men to come shopping, but she hoped she could entice the math students on the couch.

"Danielle, Samothea?" she said. "How about you?"

"No thanks," they replied in unison.

"Jinx," said Yael.

"What do you mean?" Danielle asked.

"You can't talk, Aunt Danielle," Freya remonstrated. "Yael, you judged yourself!"

"But I."

"You can't talk," Freya insisted. "Yael's got to say your name."

"If they agree to come shopping with us, I might say the name of my lovely hostess and the other girl," Yael kindly offered.

Danielle only smiled and shook her head while the other girl answered with a gesture in their sign language. Hazel laughed, but Yael replied in a prim and proper tone:

"That's very rude. I'm not sure I'll let you speak at all now. Come on, Freya, let's go."

As the women collected their bags and prepared to visit the mall to waste Joan Mayfield's money, Wildchild signaled to Yael again.

Hazel drew in her breath, and Yael stifled a laugh.

"Really!" she said, turning on her heel. "There's a child present."

As the shopping party reached the door, Yael said over her shoulder:

"Besides, it wouldn't fit!"

Wildchild's attempt to use profanity to get Yael to say her name didn't work, but it amused Danielle that Wildchild kept to the rules of the Jinx game.

She decided to try something. The girls from Samothea were not the only bright women there, gifted with good memories, curiosity, and alertness. Danielle had often observed the girls using hand signals to communicate with each other.

She began signaling to Wildchild, hoping that her gesture meant, "Let's talk in signs."

Wildchild was enchanted. She understood what Danielle tried to say well and took hold of her friend's hands to show her the correct signs. Luckily, they wanted to talk about math because they could write down equations and symbols that didn't exist in sign language.

Pretty soon, they were working through the math program, interrupted by occasional laughter from Wildchild when Danielle got a word hopelessly wrong. Finally, Danielle broke the jinx rules to say:

"Don't laugh at me just because I speak your sign language with an accent!"

The next day was Saturday, and everyone went their separate ways.

Annela visited the Medical Centre for a full day of tests under the supervision of Cassie Leighton.

Roger was researching in the library.

Ezra had a surprise for Hazel and refused to say what it was.

After staying overnight with Joan, Peter, and Kelly, Yael and Freya joined them on a family trip to a riding school. Kelly usually had riding lessons in Fanshaw Park, but as a special treat, they drove to stables about twenty miles north of Arts City, where there was wild countryside to hack around.

Danielle and Wildchild visited to continue the previous night's math lesson with the help of one of the galaxy's best mathematicians. Shortly after breakfast that morning, Danielle and Wildchild sat in Professors Dorothy and Max Martlebury's living room with cups of tea in their laps.

Dorothy Martlebury had hardly changed since she shared a platform with Danielle at Caltech.

At the Women in Science conference many years earlier, when she'd supported Danielle's anti-feminist argument. She was grey-haired, inclined to wear tweed suits, devoted to her husband and three adult sons, and had the sharpest intellect of anyone Danielle knew.

Her husband, Max, was also a mathematician. He was portly, jolly, and famously absent-minded, often looking for the glasses that he had pushed up to the top of his balding head, but friendly enough for someone who seemed not to have the faintest clue who Danielle was, though they had known each other for years. However, his concentration powers were very significant, so he didn't mind the chatter in the other room, as he worked at a lectern in a book-lined study.

"I've brought Samothea to see you, Dot, because I want your opinion on her mathematical abilities," Danielle said.

"Do you enjoy math, Samothea?" Dorothy asked.

"Yes, very much, Madam."

"Do you want to be a mathematician?"

"I don't know, Madam. I also like physics, but my bedmate and I plan to be Planetary Prospectors."

"You like danger and excitement?"

"Yes."

"There is little danger in math but much intellectual excitement. Do you think that would compensate?"

"I don't know, Madam. I don't know enough about the world or what there is to learn. I'm just starting."

"The girls of Samothea have little formal education," Danielle explained, "but they are efficient and all outstanding mental mathematicians."

"I understand," Dorothy said. "So, let's see how Samatha's mind works."

Professor Martlebury took her computer tablet and projected a fearsome equation onto a screen. It had numbers and symbols and seemed to have four parts. Danielle smiled and began trying to break it down in her head.

"What do you think this equation means, Samothea?" Dorothy asked.

"Please, Madam, tell me what this symbol is?"

"It's a function relating the real part of the equation to its imaginary part."

"And this symbol?"

"It's a measure of dimensionality."

Wildchild looked at the equation and frowned.

"Won't it be a fraction?"

"Exactly so. A fractional dimension or fractal."

"Oh! I need to think about that," Wildchild said.

With a short lesson on fractals and one on mathematical tricks with integration, the Wildchild gave her verdict.

"I look like a surface to me, or a funny kind of solid, but it undulates so much that you can't say what its shape is at any point."

"Very good, Samothea. Danielle, what do you say?"

"I see it as a pin-cushion graph and agree with Samothea that it has no slope."

"Also, good. My husband, Max, would say it is a series of number lines that cut each other at various points. Herman would look at it as a matrix, as I do. Young Rosa would agree with

Danielle and try to use calculus."

"So, it's a trick question?" Wildchild asked.

"It's a question I designed to have multiple revealing answers."

"What does it reveal, Madam?"

"It reveals how a mathematician thinks. Max is a pure number theorist. Rosa and Danielle try to see fields or waves everywhere, functions on which they can perform calculus. Herman and I want to think in discrete steps, dividing the world into particles or algorithmic sequences. And you, young lady, you're a topologist. You think in surfaces, solids, and dimensions."



To be continued