Gregory Benford - Eater

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Eater

Gregory Benford

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products

of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed

as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons,

living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

EOS

An Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

10 East 53rd Street New York, New York 10022-5299

Formatted by Brrazo 03/2004

ISBN: 0-380-79056-4

www.eosbooks.com

manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief

quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address

Eos, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

First Eos paperback printing: May 2001

First Eos hardcover printing: May 2000

Eos Trademark Reg. U.S. Pat. Off. and in Other Countries,

Marca Registrada, Hecho en U.S.A.

HarperCollins is a trademark of HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

Printed in the U.S.A.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book

is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher,

and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this

"stripped book."

Mark Martin,

Jennifer Brehl,

Ralph Vicinanza

and

Vince Gerardis

…who all did their part.

Man is a small thing,

and the night is very large

and full of wonders

– LORD DUNSANY,

The Laughter of the Gods

PART ONE

——–——–——–——–——–——–——–

BURSTER

FEBRUARY

It began quietly. Amy Major came into

Benjamin's office and with studied care

placed a sheet in front of his tired eyes. "Got

a funny one for you."

Benjamin stared at the graph. In the middle of the

page, a sharp peak poked up to a high level, then fell

slowly to his right. He glanced at the bottom axis,

showing time, and said, "So it died away in a few

seconds. What's so odd?"

Amy gave him an angular grin that he knew she

thought made her look tough-minded and skeptical.

He had always read that expression as stubborn, but

then, she so often disagreed with him. "Here's the

second."

"Second?" Maybe her grin was deserved.

With a suppressed smile, she handed him another

sheet. Same sort of peak, subsiding into the

background noise in four seconds. "Ho hum." He

raised his eyebrows in question, a look he had

trained the staff to interpret as Why are you wasting

my time ?

"Could be any ordinary burster, right?"

"Yes." Amy liked to play the elephantine game

out in full.

"Only it's a repeater."

"Ah. How close?"

"In space, dead on. The prelim position is right on

top of the first one's." Dramatic pause. "In time,

13.45 hours."

"What?" Was this a joke? "Thirteen hours?"

"Yup."

Gamma-ray bursters were cosmological

explosions, the biggest Creation had ever devised.

They showed up in the highest energy spectrum of

all, the fat, powerful light that emerged when atomic

nuclei fell apart. The preferred model describing

bursters invoked a big black hole swallowing

something else quite substantial, like a massive star.

Bursters were the dyspeptic belch of a spectacularly

large astrophysical meal. Each one devastated a

seared region of the host galaxy.

Eaten once, a star could not be ingested again,

thirteen hours later.

On the off chance that this was still a joke, he said

with measured deliberation, "Now, that is

interesting." Always be positive at the beginning, or

else staff would not come to you at all. He smiled

wanly. "But the preliminary position is in a big box."

This was more than a judicious reservation. It was

almost certainly the true explanation. The two would

prove to come from different points in the sky.

They got from the discovering instrument a rough

location of the burster – a box drawn on the sky

map, with the source within it somewhere.

Sharpening that took other instruments specially

designed for the job. Same for the second burster.

Once they knew accurately where this second burst

was, he was sure it would turn out to be far from the

earlier burst, and the excitement would be over. Best

to let her down slowly, though. "Still, let's hope it's

something new."

"Uh, I thought it was worth mentioning, Dr.

Knowlton." Her rawboned face retreated into

defensive mode, mouth pursing up as if she had

drawn a string through both lips. She had been the

origin of the staff's private name for him, Dr. Know-

It-All-ton. That had hurt more than he had ever let

on.

"And it is, it is. You asked Space Array for a

quick location?"

"Sure, and sent out an alert to everybody on

Gamma Net."

"Great."

She let her skeptic-hardnose mask slip a little. "It's

a real repeater. I just know it."

"I hope you're right." He had been through dozens

of cases of mistaken identity and Amy had not. She

was a fine operations astronomer, skilled at

sampling the steady stream of data that flowed

through the High Energy Astrophysics Center,

though a bit too earnest for his taste.

"I know, nobody's ever seen a repeater this

delayed," she said.

"Minutes, yes. Hours, no."

"But the prelim spectra look similar."

"How many data points in the spectrum?"

"Uh, four."

"Not nearly enough to tell anything for sure."

"I've got a hunch."

"And I have a crowded schedule."

"I really think – "

"Hard for me to see what the rush is."

"We might want to alert some other 'scopes right

away, if this is important."

Patience, patience. "I see."

"I'm getting the first one's full spectrum any

minute," she went on, beginning to pace. He realized

that she had been holding herself in check until now.

He reminded himself that enthusiasm was always

good, though it needed guidance.

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12EaterGregoryBenford3Thisisaworkoffiction.Names,characters,places,andincidentsareproductsoftheauthor'simaginationorareusedfictitiouslyandarenottobeconstruedasreal.Anyresemblancetoactualevents,locales,organizations,orpersons,livingordead,isentirelycoincidental.EOSAnImprintofHarperCollinsPublishers10...

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Gregory Benford - Eater

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