65 million years ago, Victoria Wetlands, Earth
Nikola Tesla and Maria had barely slept the night before. They had held each other close, with so much to say.
After more than eighty years apart, their reunion felt all the more precious.
Breakfast with Abbott started late, and it was nearly noon by the time they finished. The three sat around the table, and Abbott said:
"I spent last night thinking about your plan to transform Earth. It makes a lot of sense. Now, tell me your plan for Mars."
Tesla pondered for a moment, then said, "Raising an 180,000-kilometer tower on Venus's equator and injecting it with Superluminal wave energy would cause the crust to bulge. We're doing the same thing on Earth to alter its terrain, but we can't do that on Mars."
Abbott nodded. "Right. Mars is the first landing site for the Venusians in your plan. The lessons from Venus have taught us that erecting a Superlight Wave Power Station on any planet's equator will trigger intense geological activity and greatly affect human habitation."
"Nicola, don't you have an external brain connected to the Lightning Ball? It could help you think things through."
"The Lightning Ball isn't omnipotent. It's based on big data from experience and logical reasoning. All it does is speed up my thinking and provide more options and possible solutions."
"The external brain connected to the Lightning Ball is more rational than a human brain. Most of the time, the conclusions it guides me toward are the best choices, but sometimes it makes my thoughts get stuck on a paragraph or even a single word."
Abbott asked urgently, "You mean the optimal design for the power station on Mars is stuck on a word?"
"Yes. That word is VESSEL. It means a container, but I can't figure out what a container has to do with building a power station on Mars."
"VESSEL doesn't just mean a container. I have some medical training, and in medical terminology, 'blood vessel' means a blood vessel. Doctors find it cumbersome to say the whole phrase, so VESSEL can refer to a blood vessel on its own. More precisely, though, it means the tubes in animals and plants that transport nutrients. They're also called vessels."
VESSEL—vessels? What did that have to do with a Superluminal Wave Power Station on Mars? Nikola Tesla and Abbott fell into thought, then shook their heads helplessly.
The weather was clear. The sun hung high in the sky like a bright white disc.
Suddenly, the moon's shadow intruded on the sun's disk. A total annular eclipse, a once-in-decades event, began.
"An eclipse? How come neither of you astronomers gave me any warning? Is it going to become a total solar eclipse?" Maria asked Tesla and Abbott.
The three looked up, and Abbott gave Maria a scholarly explanation.
By a coincidence in the relative distances and apparent sizes of the moon, Earth, and sun, the moon happened to obscure the sun when it passed between Earth and the sun, causing a solar eclipse.
During an eclipse, if the moon is close to Earth, it completely blocks the sun, creating a total solar eclipse. If it is farther away, the moon appears to sit inside a ring of sunlight, creating an annular eclipse.
Nikola Tesla had been silent all this time. As if struck by an idea, he said to Abbott out of the blue:
"I've got it. Enclose Mars inside an energy ring. That's the optimal design for the Superlight Wave Power Station on Mars."
Tesla offered no further explanation. He hurriedly said goodbye to Maria with a kiss, grabbed Abbott, and headed for the space elevator, speaking as they went:
"Abbott, let's go take a look at Mars right now."
In low Mars orbit, the spacecraft carrying Nikola Tesla and Abbott circled Mars at five kilometers per second.
"The lessons from Venus tell us not to build a power station directly on a planet's equatorial surface. If we call that a contact-type power station, then the optimal solution is a non-contact one: use a ring-shaped structure in space to enclose Mars without touching it."
As a top physicist, Abbott caught on at once. "Of course! We could build a closed ring above Mars's equator. If it's 180,000 kilometers in diameter, it could serve as a Superlight Wave Power Station. And the excess heat wouldn't be injected underground and trigger tectonic activity."
Nikola Tesla and Abbott eagerly discussed the idea. Building a closed ring structure in space around Mars—like assembling an extremely long space station—was indeed feasible with current engineering.
But if it were built like a space station, mainly out of metal, the amount of metal needed for a ring 180,000 kilometers in diameter would be astronomical. Was there a better way?
"Abbott, we could weave carbon nanotube fibers into hollow tubes, seal them into a ring, and fill them with water, like flexible fire hoses," Tesla said.
The closed ring-shaped tube, 180,000 kilometers in diameter, would be able to receive the full wavelength of the Superluminal waves. Heat generated inside the structure would drive water through the tubes, converting heat and kinetic energy into electricity and turning the ring into a Superlight Wave Power Station.
Nikola Tesla suddenly realized it. A tube—a tube that generated and transported energy—wasn't that the answer provided by the Lightning Ball external brain? VESSEL. A vessel.
A Vascular Superluminal Wave Power Station!
Abbott thought of another problem. "Nicola, even if the vascular power station is built and can generate a huge amount of electricity, how will we transmit it to the surface of Mars? If we can't get it to the surface, it'll be useless to the Venusians on Mars."
Nikola Tesla burst out laughing. "Don't forget, I invented AC power, and I was also the first to propose and demonstrate that electricity could be transmitted wirelessly."
Abbott immediately understood. It could work. He thought of the tens of thousands of artificial satellites still crowding low orbit around Venus. They were part of a wireless internet system covering the entire planet, provided by a Venusian commercial company and known as the Star Array Satellites.
Venusians anywhere on Venus could use their phones to connect to the Star Array Satellites and surf the internet freely. In the future, Venusians would be able to receive electricity wirelessly anywhere on Mars and charge their phones.
Abbott thought of another problem. A closed vascular ring 180,000 kilometers in diameter would float in space, but Mars's gravity would cause it to rotate around the planet.
Without a stable structural anchor, however, the ring and Mars would shift relative to each other and might even collide. It would be difficult to keep the ring stable.
Tesla didn't answer right away. Instead, he asked Abbott to look out through the spacecraft's porthole. A small white dot came into view: Mars's only moon, which the Venusians called the Fire Moon.
Abbott knew the astronomical data for every body in the Solar System. He couldn't help exclaiming:
"Nicola, you're a genius! The Fire Moon is 90,000 kilometers from Mars. Its orbital plane lies right along Mars's equator, and its eccentricity is practically zero. We can use it as an anchor point. Its orbit will form the closed vascular ring, and the Fire Moon's orbit is stable—it won't drift."
"Once the Vascular Superluminal Wave Power Station is built, Mars will have abundant, stable electricity. Nicola, you're a genius!" Abbott exclaimed.
"Abbott, do you remember my proposed experiment with the moon's Mass Tumor?" Tesla asked.
Abbott had long noticed that Mars's gravity was weaker than Venus's. Venusians would feel light and unsteady on the surface of Mars, making it difficult to adapt.
According to Nikola Tesla's theory of gravity, a celestial body was a radiation source, and the radiation temperature and energy intensity at its surface were relatively fixed. Its radiation flux and peak wavelength were therefore fixed as well.
Through mathematical derivation, Tesla had shown that gravity was proportional to the product of energy intensity and radiation flux, which was determined by the peak frequency.
On the surface of Mars, if the energy intensity remained unchanged but its peak radiation wavelength changed, the radiation flux it emitted would change accordingly. That was the purpose of Tesla's lunar "Mass Tumor" experiment.
The Vascular Superluminal Wave Power Station would emit intense, extremely low-frequency long-wave radiation. Once Mars absorbed it, the planet's peak radiation wavelength would shift dramatically toward longer wavelengths. Gravity at the surface of the equatorial band around Mars would increase substantially. The principle was the same as that of the lunar "Mass Tumor."
Could gravity be increased just by changing a planet's peak radiation wavelength, without increasing its mass?
Amid his doubts, Abbott suddenly remembered that in recent years, spacecraft the Venusians had sent to Earth had repeatedly experienced unexplained surges in gravity when passing close above Earth's equator. He thought that there was no point in arguing. They should wait for the results of the lunar "Mass Tumor" experiment to settle the matter.
Dean Abbott came back to himself and reviewed Nikola Tesla's plans for transforming Earth and Mars. He felt the trip had been worthwhile: the Venusians now had a clear direction for their migration's first landing site.
Another major problem still troubled Abbott. Transporting nearly six billion Venusians from Venus to their landing site on Mars would take enormous transport capacity and time. It was almost impossible.
Even with military assistance, the Venus Alliance government would face a huge challenge. How many people could they transport in total, and who would go first?
Nikola Tesla seemed to read Abbott's mind. He patted him on the shoulder and said:
"It's impossible to transport all six billion Venusians. When your plan hits a dead end, you can go to Maria. Perhaps she'll have a solution."
Abbott looked up in surprise and stared at Tesla.
"Maria? What could she possibly do?"
&
Poem from an ancient anthology:
Cloud pavilions and jade terraces grant a brief respite. —Song dynasty, Zhao Sicheng
Crimson pouches and crimson locks, jade rings linked together. —Song dynasty, Huang Tai
A white rainbow darts by, streaking like lightning. —Song dynasty, Pu Shoucheng
Ten thousand acres of silver waves, all in half an instant. —Song dynasty, Yang Wanli
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