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

entered, and was captured, that with the aid of the topside generators, the Gate machinery had enough to do one thing— punch again. And again. And again.
    Regulating itself and keeping the Point open longer than humans back on Titan would have dared, it sucked the energy from that other universe into itself, fed itself, and began to hold the Point open longer and longer, so that it built up excess capacity. Within an hour all umbilicals connecting the external batteries to the internal machinery were disengaged.
    Still, it took more than two months before sufficient rhythm had been built up, and sufficient power bled in, so that the internal computers could report they were in fact totally self-sufficient. There were many minor component failures, but none in the early, critical stages, both a matter of luck and a testament to the thoroughness of computer checks both on the Titan and project end of things. By this point the computers and their extensions could analyze failures almost instantly, direct Flux to those points, and by transmutation use Flux to recreate the original part from designs in memory and replace defects. The self-maintenance was complete.
    By now, at the vacuum-chamber end of the Gate. Flux was coming in at a steady rate. Held there, and now affected by rotation, revolution, and gravity, it began a swirling motion, a great spiral mass of Flux at maximum density. As the other Gates were similarly opened and tested. Flux began to be bled off from that swirl and allowed to escape, both through tubes drilled through solid rock to the surface and out the feed tube itself.
    By the end of the first year sufficient Flux had been introduced to literally enshroud the planet, but the density was so thin that it was useless for any work and in fact not apparent unless viewed through the superhuman devices of the computers themselves. Still, a dramatic change had already taken place on the little world.
    It was inhabited.
    The barren piece of rock was crawling with tiny metallic creatures whose origins were in the imaginations of men and women who had never seen or dreamed of this place and in the vast computers those people used. There, too, were the ghosts of a tiny crude ashtray now taken to the infinite power.
    Inside the computers who supervised the project were the digitized programs that, when put together and pressed in a concentration of Flux by forces also fueled by Flux, became the first generation of life on the new world. The project was already self-generating; it was creating what it required out of its own memories and needs and out of Flux itself.
    To convert even Flux energy into matter took three times the energy that would go into making up the result, but they now had that energy to spare. Soon there were thousands of creeping, crawling, rolling, walking creatures working on areas of the world, creatures who needed only a trip to their blood banks, the Gates, and the Flux storage areas now and then to be independent of all other needs.
    Below the orbiting master computers, on the dark surface, blasting, drilling, smoothing, boring, and a thousand other tasks were under way.
    Four Gates were equidistantly placed around the equator; two were placed north of the equator, one east and one west of the agreed-upon zero-degree meridian, and one south, centered on the zero line. This gave a northerly tilt to the life zone, but this was decided upon because of a rougher southern hemisphere terrain.
    By the end of the second year an outside observer could observe a noticeable haze around the world that might be mistaken for a true atmosphere, thickest around the zero-zero area, where meridian met parallel. By this time sufficient Flux had been introduced to extend power lines, cables, and connectors from the Gates to the areas under development. These were strung in channels burned deep into the bedrock and then covered with rock melted by laser, and stretched out for over eighteen hundred kilometers from