Free 04. Birth of Flux and Anchor by Jack L. Chalker Page A

by other, smaller machines using only laser drillers, the tunnels becoming smooth as glass and far, far harder than diamond with the addition of selected compounds. Everything was checked and double-checked again and again, for there was absolutely no tolerance for error. They had learned that bitterly on Titan.
    At the end of the feed tunnel, now, was installed a massive, complex machine, actually a Borelli generator. It was designed to fit into the walls and practically surround the tunnel's end; anyone at this point would be literally within the Gate itself. Covered with the same compounds as the tunnel, it would be invisible, only an emergency control panel showing that there was anything there at all.
    The object was to begin the bleed from the strange alternate universe of energy as quickly as possible. Up to this point the machines were working with conventional technology and conventional energy; even the initial punches creating the Borelli Point in each of the seven feed tunnels would be done with massive conventional generators loaded up with Flux power from the orbiting Borelli Gate, the storage mechanism inside converting that energy into raw power.
    Only then would come the real test, the real question. A sample or short test burst was out of the question here; you either had it right the first time, or you didn't.
    Engineers on Titan liked to explain the process as analogous to jump-starting a dead engine. Now the great energy cells and the true Gate mechanism itself was inert, lifeless. It was designed to draw what power it needed from the Borelli Point itself and store it. If the punch into another universe was successful, the machines would start up and draw what they needed to come to full life and operation. If it failed, or if the regulatory mechanisms failed to hold, a number of things could happen. The Point could remain open, allowing Flux to ooze out in an uncontrolled stream indefinitely, and no one quite knew what the result of that would be. It was only hoped that if it did happen, this place was so far from Earth that it might be millions of years before humans found out the hard way.
    The opening might also be too small, in which case sufficient power would not flow from the initial punches into the installed machinery to keep the Point opening and closing at a regulated rate and thus charge the rest of the system. In that case, all of this had been for nothing.
    Finally ready, checked and double-checked, the master computers in orbit sent their signals to the first Gate, its dish filled with energy-storage modules—always called batteries, although they bore slight resemblance except in function to the devices which first bore that name—and at the precisely timed moment, the initial long punch was made.
    There were no humans to watch, no humans to bite their nails and cheer or cry; those were all still an infinitely long distance away across the galaxy, or perhaps even elsewhere in the universe.
    There was a bright, brilliant flash in the tunnel almost as if a new, tiny sun were born, then changing, collapsing in upon itself, becoming a microcosm of the fate of the universe. At a specific point, perhaps no larger than a pencil's diameter, all of this converged, pushed, and punched. The timing was exquisite; bare millionths of a second later, and the punch itself would have had such density that it would have fallen clear through the floor and down at least to the core of the tiny planet.
    At the end of the tunnel was a vacuum chamber maintained by electromagnetic force behind a transparent but diamond-hard membrane. It had flashed into light when the punch was made, but now, for a while, it was dark once more.
    The internal lighting came on. Flux had entered the chamber, but not in sufficient quantities to be useful. The great machines had only enough battery storage for three tries; then it worked or they had to start all over again.
    The second punch proved sufficient. Enough Flux energy