Despite their spear-like posture, they still slow down considerably as they enter the 3.78 bars of atmosphere in the Doom Bell Hell layer. Its resistance also generates a lot of extra heat, and there’s way too much heat in here as it is. On top of that, the atmosphere is massively turbulent, shaking them to the core. So Na-Yeli scrambles to shape-shift the exoskin—now a triple layer of insulating materials interspersed with (flash)-cooling gasses and liquids—into an aerodynamic shape. Even as the triple-stage heat pump runs at full throttle, initially they receive more heat than they can pump out. To make matters, if not worse, then at least more interesting, the turbulence throws them around like a paper plane in a hurricane. Their inside temperature rises quickly, so fast Na-Yeli fears that they might be cooked before equilibrium sets in.
It doesn’t come to that. As her wings and aerodynamic bow form, their resistance lowers dramatically, and—lagging a few seconds—so does their heat intake. Their inner temperature equalizes at a sweltering forty-eight degrees Celsius, not enough to kill them outright but very dangerous in the long run. The internal shock absorbers have been automatically deployed, so while they’re experiencing a very rough ride, it is, at least, survivable.
Not letting her relief of leaving the Strange Hail behind get the better of her, Na-Yeli remains fiercely concentrated and slows them down, further reducing their resistance. Slowly—for a few minutes, Na-Yeli feared that she miscalculated the heat pump’s capacity—the heat pump dumps more heat than is getting in, and their inner temperature slowly drops. In the meantime, with her radar, sonar, and lidar running at full power, she scans the searing skies for solid objects. Given that the Doom Bell Hell temperature is well above the melting point of the metals they encountered here on the way in, she doesn’t expect any one-thousand-ton, spherical bronze bells, merely their melted remains. But you never know, stranger hail—scratch that, things—have happened.
She needn’t have worried, as there are no massive objects within radar, sonar, or lidar range. A number of small, ghostly reflections she gathers are small pools of liquid metal swirling through the turbulent atmosphere. As the temperature and violent vibrations slowly settle at bearable levels, Na-Yeli has to make a few choices.
First, she checks the Moiety Alien. Its orbital ratio has slightly increased to 24/176, which seems encouraging, and it manages a lackluster ‘OK’ nod when it notices Na-Yeli watching. It breaks Na-Yeli’s heart, but there’s nothing more she can do, apart from keeping it safe. At least the dangers in this layer can be experienced directly, which Na-Yeli counts as a definitive improvement.
Then—after a few final checks of the health statistics, showing that all three are above 90% and rising—she talks with the crew.
“Crew, how are we?” She says to everybody and nobody in particular.
—great, cap’n— the communication AI signals —you were awesome—
“You guys weren’t too bad, either,” Na-Yeli almost flushes from the compliment. “Hypersounders, report.”
—they report ‘shaken, not stirred,’ cap’n— the communication AI signals.
“Huh,” Na-Yeli says. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
—they’ve experienced some minor damage, nothing serious, and are feeling very well, indeed— the communication AI signals —you were so badass, i thought you’d get the reference—
Na-Yeli is still flummoxed and decides to let it go.
“Second selves, report,” Na-Yeli says, not expecting an answer.
‘Not bad,’ KillBitch snarls, ‘could’ve used more aggression.’
‘You’re too sharp for your own good,’ LateralSys signals, ‘are you trying to make us obsolete?’
This shocks Na-Yeli—the slow CEO—into a short silence. She doesn’t expect to be able to communicate directly with her other tri-schizoid selves. Although, from the depths of her memories, she recalls that her Earth doctor told her that ‘short bouts of direct contact might happen in times of either extreme stress or huge relief.’
Anyway. She does feel relieved like they’ve crossed an impossible, impassable barrier, a critical threshold. But she can’t become complacent, as that has almost gotten her killed before.
They’ve got choices to make.
First, trajectory. Since she has no clue what they might encounter here, any trajectory is good. She selects a longitude at random and heads north.
Second, flight speed. She can’t maintain orbital dynamics in this thick atmosphere, not only because it would generate too much heat but also because going at such speeds consumes too much energy. She’ll have to settle for a speed that minimizes resistance—limiting heat intake—while maximizing velocity—the shorter they are in this blistering inferno, the better.
Third, inner temperature setpoint. On the one hand, she’s tempted to lower the internal temperature to a chilly fifteen degrees Celsius (or even lower), not just to cool down but also to create a larger buffer. On the other hand, this will increase the energy expenditure of the heat pump remaining at that temperature, draining her batteries faster. While she is taking up electromagnetic energy from the naked singularity’s fast-rotating electromagnetic field again through the implementation of superconducting coils beneath their insulation, the amount of energy she harvests is limited to the size of her outer skin, which in its turn is limited by the resistance they are willing to experience.
Windows of optimization within windows of optimization, making calculations hellishly difficult. Ultimately, trying a few scenarios to see how they pan out is easier. Temperature-wise, the temperature gradient is so large—about one thousand degrees—that keeping their sanctuary chilled is not worth their while, so she settles for a balmy twenty-five degrees Celsius.
After some trial-and-error, she settles at a gliding speed of sixty kilometers per hour, which should get them to the Berserker Forest’s Diaphragm Gate at the North Pole in about half an hour, maybe thirty-five minutes when taking the turbulence into account. If they don’t run into anything.
She switches on the autopilot and turns her attention to the Moiety Alien, also enveloped in their insulating heat pump-canvas set-up, hanging on behind her like an asymmetric, eightfold balloon towed by a weird sort of hang-glider.
‘Healthy,’ she signals with a temporary pseudopod, then pointing at it.
‘Healthy,’ it signals, albeit weakly, in response, followed by the gesture that indicates ‘fifty/fifty’ or half/half.’
It’s probably putting up its bravest face, Na-Yeli thinks, as its orbitals are still far from symmetrical, although the ratio has increased to 32/168. She has no choice but to believe it’s slowly recovering and tries to inquire—however clumsily—if she can help in any way. Nevertheless, the Moiety Alien seems to say it’s OK; it doesn’t need help. Reluctantly, she switches off the autopilot and retakes command.
The wild ride, the turbulent shaking, almost feels good after their double encounter with the Strange Hail, as turbulence is a known entity, more like a willful friend than a wily foe. The repairs to their systems are almost complete, their inner temperature stable at twenty-five degrees Celsius, and the battery charge is still well over ninety percent.
—hypersounders like to know the situation, cap’n— the communication AI breaks the serene, if shaky, silence
“They what?” Na-Yeli’s too surprised to become irritated.
—updates if we got through the strange hail— the communication AI signals —you promised—
True, Na-Yeli thinks, I did. “How about I connect you to all our instruments,” she says, “so you can relay the readings—and their meanings, as far as possible—to the hypersounders? And do give them my sincere thanks; sorry not to say so sooner, but I am still very busy.”
—that’s fine, cap’n, thank you— it signals —but we wouldn’t mind a, how do we say, executive summary—
Oh well, why not? Na-Yeli thinks and takes a deep breath. “Right now, we’re traversing the second layer outside the Core, which I’ve baptized ‘Doom Bell Hell.’ There are four more layers outside of this one, and while your colleague the communication AI will update you with what we encountered in these when we went into the Enigmatic Object, it is impossible to say what they will be now, as we’ve shifted a huge amount in time through our two stays in the Core—which I often refer to as ‘the Relativity Prison’ for that very reason.”
She clears her throat.
“The pressure here is almost four times as high as your original environment, and the temperature is four times as hot, as well. We can take the pressure relatively easily; the stupendously high temperature is our biggest problem here,” she continues, almost adding ‘so far,’ “so we’ve set up a multi-layered insulation canvas around us, combined a triple-staged heat pump system. The insulation layers shelter us from the excessive heat, yet they are not perfect, meaning heat from outside will still find its way in. Therefore, to prevent us becoming overheated—literally cooked—we have to pump that incoming heat out.”
“That’s where our triple-staged heat pump comes in. It uses the principle that certain liquids can absorb heat when they evaporate. Since the temperature difference is so huge, we use three different liquids at different temperatures and pressures to achieve this. If only one of these stages fails, outside heat will come in and eventually cook us. How fast depends on which one is damaged and how much.”
“To remove the heat, though, the triple heat pump must also be driven. Its efficiency is well above one hundred percent because it is defined as the ratio between the energy we must use to drive the heat pump and the energy it pumps out. For every kilojoule we put into the heat pump, it pumps out one point five kilojoules. We have enough energy in our batteries to keep the heat pump going for at least twenty-four hours. If it fails, I estimate we will be cooked—that is, it will be above one hundred degrees Celsius in here—in about four minutes.”
“The outer diameter of the Doom Bell Hell layer is 30 kilometers, and the inner diameter is 17.5 kilometers. If we fly close to the inner barrier—keeping in mind, I do like to keep some safety margin in there—we need to go about thirty kilometers through this boiling hell before we reach the next Diaphragm Gate or about thirty minutes at our current speed. If our heat pump holds, we should get there with plenty of battery power to spare.”
“Finally, it may not be easy to enter the next layer, which used to be the Berserker Forest. When we got in, we needed to cut through several meters of ice—hypersounders, this is solidified water, as the communication AI will explain to you in a minute—before we got to the semi-permeable membrane of the Diaphragm Gate. So we may have to work our way in by making room through explosives and melting the ice. So I expect we will have to hang around the Berserker Forest diaphragm in a holding pattern until we can get in.”
“That is unless things have changed beyond recognition in there, too. Then all bets are off, and we may be screwed. Are you still happy I saved you? Don’t answer that; this is what we humans call sarcasm.”
So far, so good. If Na-Yeli has to fill the time with executive summaries like that, while nothing major happens, she’ll be a happy flyer. The communication AI is silent, probably very busy updating the hypersounders while trying to explain exotic—to them—principles. Which is fine with Na-Yeli, as they’ve got less than twenty minutes to go.
Author’s note: internet and work pressure permitting, I’ll try to return to regular posting. Thanks for sticking with me and I’ll promise things will become much better from August onwards (if all goes well). Many thanks for reading!