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with a ball of luminous metallic ice at its center.
Helion thought this made a fitting backdrop for his scion a landscape of
frozen antimaterial fire, endless energy held in rigid geometry, capable of
vast triumphs or vast destruction. Phaethon wore his gold-adamantium-and-black
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armor, helmet folded away. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back,
legs spread, eyes intent and bright; the pose of a youth patiently ready for
action.
Helion had dressed in the air lock, constructing a human body (modified for
the high solar gravity) and Victorian semiformal dress suit. (Day clothes, of
course. Helion long ago determined that no gentleman would sport evening wear
while in or near the sun.) He had also constructed a valid legal copy of the
receipts for Phaethon's debts, and the petition to the Bankruptcy Court to
remove the Phoenix Exultant from receivership. These he had formed to look
like golden parchment, stamped with the proper seals and red ribbon. He held
up this document, and extended it toward Phaethon.
Before he could say a word, however, Phaethon stepped forward, ignoring the
document, and threw his arms around his father. Helion, surprised, raised his
arms and embraced his son.
"I never thought I would see you again," said one of them.
"Nor I," said the other.
The document in Helion's hand was quite crumpled and mussed by the time they
stepped apart, and Helion dabbed bis joy-wet eyes with it, before he recalled
what it was, and extended it sheepishly to his son.
"Thank you, Father; this is the finest of presents," said Phaethon, accepting
the crumpled and tearstained mass with a grave and solemn expression. Phaethon
looked up. "And Daphne ... ?" Helion nodded at the air lock hatch behind him.
"She is still getting changed. You know how women are; she's picking skin
color and skeletal structures. I suppose she is trying to find a body which
will look as good in this gravity as a Martian's." (Martian women were
notoriously vain of the buoyant good looks then-low gravity imparted.)
Phaethon looked pensively at the air lock door. Helion, seeing that look,
smiled to himself.
Helion stepped to the rail. "What is the meaning of this intricate activity?"
he said, pointing upward.
"Mm?" Phaethon pulled his gaze reluctantly away from the air lock door. "Ah,
that. The Phoenix Exultant is installing her solar bathyspheric modifications.
There, ranged along the inner hull, are magnetic induction generators. This
will create a field along the hull which will act like the treads of a
burrowing vehicle, using magnetic current to force dense plasma to either side
of the ship, propelling her forward and downward." "Crawling your way into the
sun?" They both wore the same expression of ironic humor. "If you like,"
Phaethon nodded.
"Your refrigeration lasers, I trust, will be adequate to the task? The
geometry of your hull does not minimize surface area. Also, the increasing
heat of each successive layer as you approach the core exceeds the drive
combustion heat of, at least, my bathyspheric probes."
Phaeton pointed. "Can you see about forty kilometers aft of us? That is the
line of advancing workers clearing an insulation space of a half kilometer
inward of every hull surface, which I intend to flood with superconductive
liquid. This liquid will circulate heat to my port and starboard drive cores,
which I am using as heat sinks. The centerline drive core will be used as a
refrigeration laser, and can easily generate heat greater than the solar
core."
Helion did a few hundred calculations in his head, frowned at the answers he
got, and said, "So great a volume? With your hull, I would have thought your
reflective albedo would near one hundred per cent. Why are you taking in so
much heat?"
Phaethon pointed overhead and sent a signal into Helion's sense filter, to
show him exterior camera views of work being done outside the hull. "My
communication antennae and thought ports are being replaced by crystalline
adamantium optic fibers of a bore too large to allow the thought ports to
close. I will be taking in heat at these places."
Helions said slowly, "Why in the world are you entering combat with the Second
Oecumene Sophotech who, from what Atkins told me, excels at many forms of
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