65 million years ago, Venus
Back at his quarters, exhausted, Nikola Tesla washed up and climbed into bed. He soon fell asleep.
These past few days, he had been running back and forth between Earth, Venus, and Mars. He was utterly worn out. Still, at least he had come up with a preliminary plan to address the crisis on Venus. All that remained was to wait for the Alliance's approval.
The knock at the door jolted Nikola Tesla awake. Groggy, he opened his eyes and waved to turn on the lights, but nothing happened. The room remained dark. Had the power gone out?
Feeling his way to the door, he opened it. Abbott stood outside, shouting anxiously:
"Nikola, get dressed and come with me. Something terrible has happened around Saturn."
The hallway was pitch-black, as was the route to the Academy of Sciences. The power really had gone out—a widespread blackout.
More than eighty years ago, while Tesla was unconscious, Abbott had continued studying his Superluminal Wave Theory. To convince the skeptical mainstream scientists, Abbott planned to erect a device on Tower Island on Venus, 180,000 kilometers tall.
If Tesla's theory was correct, the device would be able to receive the full wavelength of the superluminal waves, becoming an inexhaustible source of clean energy—a Superlight Wave Power Station.
Abbott's proposal met with unanimous opposition from his peers. Even he wasn't sure what side effects the Superlight Wave Power Station might cause. After all, the Venusians knew far too little about the nature of superluminal waves.
And so the Saturn Power Station proposal, designed as an experiment, came into being. Saturn was very far from Venus, with Earth, Mars, and Jupiter in between. Even if the Saturn Power Station caused side effects, Venus would remain unaffected.
Jupiter was the largest planet in the Solar System and had the most moons. Saturn, by contrast, had only a few. Its largest moon was more than ten thousand kilometers in diameter, bigger than Mars. The Venusians had named it Sedna.
Sedna's semimajor axis was 380,000 kilometers, roughly the distance between Earth and the Moon.
With the Venus Alliance's support, Abbott's team spent more than a decade building a 380,000-kilometer-long flexible structure made of Carbon Fiber Tubes. It lay along Sedna's equator, on the side that always faced Saturn.
To stabilize the structure, they built a huge metal space station at its midpoint, about 190,000 kilometers along. It provided living quarters for the crew, as well as facilities for maintenance and monitoring.
At the far end of the structure was a giant metal sphere, suspended a few hundred kilometers above Saturn. The planet's immense gravity pulled the entire structure taut.
As the superluminal waves streamed in, the stations on Sedna's surface and at the midpoint converted their heat into electricity. The first Superluminal Wave Power Station in the Solar System, built by the Venusians, was successfully completed.
Because the Sedna station was experimental, and because its capacity was limited by transportation and construction costs, its output was far lower than that of the Tower Island station later built on Venus—only about one-millionth as much.
The Superluminal Wave Power Stations could not convert all the heat into electricity, causing Venus's interior to overheat. After the crisis began, the Venus Academy of Sciences evaluated the situation and shut down several stations on Venus.
But the Sedna station was far away and had very little output. To better study the nature of superluminal waves, they had left it running.
A few hours earlier, the excess heat from the superluminal waves that had built up inside Sedna, Saturn's largest moon, had finally erupted. The giant icy moon shattered.
Fragments spread all around Saturn's equator. Chaotic chunks of ice and rock collided and spun at high speed, stretching nearly a million kilometers across. Saturn became indistinct, shrouded by a vast cloud of ice and rubble.
Take the Sun, for example. Superluminal waves arrived from every direction. Because their wavelength was shorter than the Sun's diameter, their enormous energy was injected evenly throughout the star, triggering nuclear reactions and making it shine and burn as if it had been ignited.
Since Saturn's diameter was smaller than the wavelength of the superluminal waves, the waves from Saturn's direction diffracted around the planet. Where Saturn blocked them, the temperature of the Sun's surface dropped.
When other forms of obstruction further lowered the surface temperature in that region, sunspots formed. These, in turn, caused explosions in the hotter areas along their edges, known as solar flares.
Sedna's destruction had disrupted the balance. Saturn, accompanied by a cloud of shattered ice stretching over a million kilometers, now blocked the superluminal waves across a much wider area.
Sunspots in the corresponding region rapidly grew. The resulting solar flares sharply increased the Sun's very-low-frequency radiation output, which resonated at low frequencies with Venus's power grid and caused a widespread blackout.
Nikola Tesla followed Abbott to the emergency command center in the Venus Academy of Sciences building. The backup generators were already running. Several sky-survey telescopes had been adjusted to focus on Saturn. Abbott pointed at the huge cloud of shattered ice on the screen and said:
"Nikola, repairing and restoring the power isn't our job. We need to assess as quickly as possible how Sedna's destruction will affect solar activity and even the entire Solar System."
Faced with the sudden disaster, Nikola Tesla wasn't sure where to begin. He sorted through his thoughts and said:
"The most obvious effects I can think of are sunspots and solar flares. This chaotic structure, spanning a million kilometers, is clearly unstable. Once it disperses and settles into some kind of stable form, solar activity may return to normal."
"Disperses? How long will that take? During that time, we Venusians will have to endure off-the-charts solar flares and solar winds." As Abbott spoke, he pressed Tesla into the specially designated chair. "I've loaded Sedna's data into your external brain. Connect to the Lightning Ball and think it through."
The answer Nikola Tesla got from the external brain connected through the Lightning Ball startled even him. He switched off the connection and slumped in his chair. When Abbott pressed him for an answer, Tesla spoke slowly:
"The external brain is a computer. It's different from us humans. Its answers are cold and represent the worst-case scenario. Every time Jupiter and Saturn align, they trigger stronger solar activity. So what will happen when Jupiter aligns with this enormous mass of ice around Saturn, Abbott?"
Abbott felt a chill run down his spine. He grabbed a tablet, found the planetary conjunction table, and murmured in despair:
"Saturn and Jupiter align about once every twenty years. We're unbelievably unlucky—the next conjunction is in three years."
Tesla's next words only made matters worse:
"What's even more unfortunate is that in three years, Saturn and Jupiter will align with the Sun and Regulus. The sunspots and solar flares they trigger will be the most intense in history."
"Three years. Will we Venusians even survive that long? Nikola, think of something!" Abbott said desperately.
"If that were all, I believe that even a widespread blackout, combined with exceptionally high temperatures every twenty years, wouldn't be enough to wipe out the Venusians. We're resilient." Tesla spoke firmly, as if to reassure Abbott, then added, "The good news is that when Sedna shattered, the station structure was on the far side of the Sun. It broke in two, crossed over itself, and spun away from the Solar System. It isn't coming toward us. And that chaotic mass of ice will be shaped by Saturn's gravity into beautiful rings."
Abbott couldn't help asking, "Then what's the bad news? I can't bring myself to care about the beautiful Saturn rings that will form in the future."
Watching Abbott's anxious face, Tesla hesitated. He stood up and clenched his hand into a fist.
"Don't wait for the Alliance's approval anymore. Get me a spaceship. I'm going to Earth right away to use space junk for the Moon's Mass Tumor experiment."
Abbott was bewildered. A sense of foreboding rose in his heart. "With the crisis at Saturn so urgent, why are you still thinking about doing that gravitational experiment with the Moon's Mass Tumor?"
Nikola Tesla looked at Abbott with a pained expression. He didn't know whether he should tell his poor old friend. Full of regret, he said:
"Abbott, I hate myself for coming up with this so-called Superluminal Wave Theory. You could say that the crises facing the Venusians are all my fault, the fault of a mad scientist."
Abbott grabbed Tesla by the arm and said:
"This isn't your fault. And this isn't the time to decide who's right or wrong. We must never give up hope or stop trying. Are you going to Earth to run the experiment because you've thought of a way to solve the crisis?"
Tesla couldn't hold back any longer. He replied with difficulty:
"I haven't thought of a good solution. I'm afraid my theory of gravity might also be correct. If it is, we'll face an even greater crisis."
Abbott was startled again. He asked:
"Are you saying the Venusians will be wiped out?"
Nikola Tesla hated the answer the external brain had given him through the Lightning Ball. Unable to restrain himself, he shouted:
"Not just the Venusians. The entire Solar System will be destroyed!"
A poem of lines gathered to close the chapter:
The wilderness stretches wide; cold stars meet the earth in profusion. —Zhang Xuan, Ming
Yet the solid ice could still set the remaining waves adrift. —Huang Ren, Qing
Regulus thinks little of the nameless traveler. —Dai Shulun, Tang
Even with a long rope, what can one do to stop the Sun? —Lin Yong, Song
Before you continue