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covered by a kind of gridwork, like lines of longitude and latitude.
And the pattern faded and pulsed rhythmically.
Bud Tooke whistled. And this is the core of the sun? Our sun?
The damn thing s ringing like a bell.
Rose Delea folded her arms and pulled her face. Forgive a
mere geologist for being skeptical, but the core of a star is a pretty
massive bloody thing. How can it suddenly start to oscillate?
Now Eugene s rather terrifying glare was turned on her. But
that s trivial.
Trivial: among academics that word was a killer put-down.
Rose s face was a mask of hostility.
Siobhan said quickly, Take it step by step, Eugene.
He said, It goes back to the work of Cowling in the 1930s.
Cowling showed that the rate of nuclear energy generation in the
core is dependent on the fourth power of temperature. Which
makes conditions in the core of the sun extremely sensitive to tem-
perature changes . . .
He was right, Siobhan realized uneasily. That fourth-power
factor would lead to even small changes being magnified. Huge as
it was, the core wasn t necessarily stable at all, and any small pertur-
bation could disrupt it significantly.
S U N S T O R M " 7 9
Bud Tooke interrupted with a raised finger. I don t get it, Eu-
gene. So what? Even if the whole core explodes, it would take
megayears for the bang to work its way out to the surface.
Rose Delea grinned sourly. Don t tell me. The radiative layer
is screwed too, right?
She was correct; another of Eugene s images showed it. That
great tank of slow-propagating energy was flawed by a puckered
scar, like a wound stitched through flesh by a bullet. And so,
Siobhan realized uncomfortably, the million-year lagging around
the core wouldn t work as a protective layer: any energy released
in the core could be squirted straight out to space.
Eugene looked at Rose, puzzled. How did you know about
the flaw?
Because this is turning out to be that kind of day.
Eugene talked on about his models of the core oscillations, and
how he was hoping to run them back in time. I m intending to de-
velop models of the inciting event of this instability, which
Never mind the past for now, Siobhan interrupted. Look
forward. Show us what s to come.
Eugene seemed puzzled that the future should even be of inter-
est compared with the deep physical mystery of the origin of this
anomaly. But he obediently ran his graphic forward in time, at an
accelerated pace.
Siobhan could see that the wave propagation through and
around the core was complex, with multiple harmonics added to
the base oscillations, and waves that were nonlinear, as the special-
ists would say, with energy leaking from one mode into another.
But she immediately saw that there were patterns of interference,
of dissipation and, more ominously, of resonance, when the en-
ergy she could so clearly see flowing around the core of the sun
gathered into powerful peaks.
Eugene froze the image. Here s the most recent spike, the
June 9 event. One side of the core was flaring bright with false
color. The observational data confirms my preliminary modeling,
and validates my future projections . . . By observational data,
Siobhan thought ruefully, he meant a devastating storm that had
cost thousands of human lives.
8 0 " C L A R K E & B A X T E R
She asked, And what s to come?
He ran the model forward at a greater pace. The patterns of os-
cillation shifted and swam in Siobhan s vision, too rapid to follow in
detail.
Then, suddenly, the image flared bright, all over the core, al-
most bright enough to dazzle. People flinched, briefly shocked.
Eugene shut down his graphics. He said laconically, That s it.
Rose Delea said dangerously, What do you mean, that s it?
At this point the model breaks down. The oscillations become
so large that
Your damn model! Delea shouted. Is that all you can think
about?
Let s take it easy, Siobhan said, thinking fast. Eugene, we re
looking at another event here. Correct? Another June 9.
Yes.
But more energetic.
He looked at her, puzzled by her ignorance once more. That s
obvious.
Siobhan glanced around the table, at wide-eyed, uncomfortable
faces. Evidently Eugene hadn t shared these results with anybody
before, not even Mikhail.
Bud asked, How much more? And how will it manifest itself?
How will it hit us, Eugene?
Eugene tried to answer, but he descended quickly into techni-
calities.
Mikhail laid a hand on Bud s arm. I don t think he can say.
Not yet. I ll work with him on it. He went on thoughtfully, But
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