Donald Moffitt - Genesis 02

“And intense radio emissions.”
    The superimposed contour maps writhed, grew brighter, pulsed faster and faster.
    “Now, watch closely,” Jun Davd said.
    The spiral arm closest to the encounter flared and turned blue as millions of new stars were born out of the clouds of disrupted gas. The Bonfire sailed past, now a blazing blob of light that had lost its spiral shape. The larger galaxy squeezed, then stretched, responding to the gravitational tug. The coils on the opposite side, now released, loosened and changed their pitch. The blue arm tried to follow the Bonfire, reaching after it and losing more stars in the process.
    “Now you know why Skybridge is blue,” Jun Davd said.
    “I can see that the passing of the Bonfire rejuvenated the nearer spiral arm as a steller nursery,” Bram said. “But what has that got to do with the interior of the galaxy?”
    “Keep looking at the radio and infrared maps,” Jun Davd said.
    Over an interval that must have represented a period of hundreds of millions of years after the encounter, the heat and the radio activity pulsed inward, like ripples from a stone seen in reverse. As the computer simulation neared the present, Bram could see the pattern of infrared intensity settle into the profile he was familiar with, growing stronger as it approached the central regions.
    But there was more to it than that—a winking of blue light in a shell that followed the wake of the wave and shrank toward the galactic hub.
    “It’s the infall of that peeled-off gas, touching off another era of star formation,” Jun Davd said. “By now, it’s in the core, feeding the black hole. Or maybe I should say overfeeding it.”
    “We can handle it even if it does turn out to be bigger than we expect. After all, even a black hole with a few billions of solar masses can’t have a diameter of more than a fraction of an astronomical unit, and when we swing around it, we’ll make sure to stay a safe distance from the accretion disk.”
    “You’re considering the black hole solely as a gravitational entity. I’m more concerned with what it might be doing in there.”
    “Such as?”
    Jun Davd added a couple of worried furrows to the fan of deep creases in his forehead. “You saw what our encounter with the Bonfire did to the outer geometry of the galaxy. I’m wondering if it stirred up things in the inner regions as well.”
    “That happened hundreds of millions of years ago.”
    “Exactly,” Jun Davd said, showing his perfect teeth in a mirthless grin. “Time enough for it to ripen.”
     
    “Jun Davd says it’s thick in there,” Bram said.
    “Don’t I know it.” Jao sighed. “We’re picking up gamma too fast. The ramscoop uses whatever falls into it, and I don’t dare monkey with the fields this close to the bend in our hyperbola.”
    “But we still haven’t reached the limits of our projected gamma for leaving the galaxy?”
    “No, but I’d hoped to make up most of the difference on the way out. We don’t want to be going too fast for the hypermass to grab us. And I don’t want to get too close to a thing like that.” He scratched his ribs reflectively. “Now I’m going to have to shave it finer than I like in there.”
    “Jun Davd says the black hole’s going to be a lot bigger than we expected.”
    Jao brightened. “That’ll be a help. Stronger gravity to swing us around. Stronger magnetic field to transfer rotational energy. Bigger radius to keep us from getting pulled apart by tidal effects.”
    “Now you’re doing what I did, according to Jun Davd— thinking of the black hole only as a gravitational resource and not paying enough attention to whatever mischief it might be causing among all those close-packed stars and dust clouds.”
    “Astronomers worry too much.”
    “The centers of galaxies are active places. And this one’s more active than most. I’m not just thinking about radiation, I’m thinking about material particles. Are we going to be in danger?”
    Jao sucked thoughtfully at his upper lip. The bushy gray mustache there was beginning to turn a faded orange. “Barring the chance of hitting a star or planet, our magnetic fields and our relativistic state of grace ought to do a pretty good job of protecting us. Do you have any idea of how much energy we’re carrying at this point? The universe is in more danger from us than we are from it!”
    Bram refrained from smiling. “What about a dust particle?”
    “Tear it apart. Whip