The Curve of The Earth by Simon Morden Page B

bits of high-energy matter. This goes out in all directions, and is called the solar wind. When the Sun’s atmosphere is quiet, there’s less wind. When it’s stormy, we get a lot. The Earth’s magnetic field deflects the solar wind to the polar regions. When the charged particles enter our atmosphere, they excite molecules high up and make them glow. These are the aurora, or Northern and Southern Lights. Stop me if you know this.”
    “I, uh, might have done once.”
    “If I were you, I’d be ashamed.” Petrovitch brought up the magnetic field lines, holding the Earth like a basket would an egg. “I get laughed at because I know the value of the gravitational constant, but somehow it’s social suicide not to know who Odysseus’s mother was.”
    “Anticlea.”
    “Shut up, Marcus. Anyway, this stuff is relevant for later.” Petrovitch drank more coffee. “The study of the interaction between the solar wind and the Earth’s magnetic field is a mix between geophysics and magnetohydrodynamics called auroralphysics. Lucy has a PhD in auroral physics, and she was collaborating with the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, testing out new sensing equipment. New equipment that she’d designed and built herself. The Northern Slope is a good place to test as it’s electromagnetically very quiet. I wanted her to go to Svalbard or Greenland instead, but Fairbanks got in first with their invitation.”
    Newcomen scratched at his eyelid behind his lenses. “She was invited?”
    “Yeah. And unless this is one big conspiracy, I have to assume it was genuine. Auroral research is a small community. Everyone knows everyone else, and Lucy’s one of the bright young things. They wouldn’t play with her life like that.” Petrovitch stopped and shifted in his seat. He had to be right about that aspect of the whole
pizdets
, because the alternative was unthinkable: he’d asked for, and received, assurances from everyone involved that his girl would be treated right. “Okay, this is where we get down to the detail.”
    He spun the Earth, and closed in on Alaska. “One more thing: remember I said the Sun gets stormy sometimes? That causes us problems, even one hundred and fifty million kilometres away. As all the Sun stuff hits us, it pinches the Earth’s magnetic field. The flow of energy is enough to cause power lines to fail, compasses to scramble, and to trash satellites. If you’re in a spaceship or a high-flying aircraft, you can get a year’s dose of radiation in a matter of minutes. Got that? Okay. Some twenty kilometres east of Deadhorse, the oil company town at Prudhoe Bay, is a research station: seventy degrees ten minutes thirty-two seconds north, one hundred and forty-eight degrees five minutes and fifty-seven seconds west. That’s where Lucy was, as of last Monday night.”
    The points on the map flashed as he said their names. They faded away, except for the location of the research post.
    “At nine twenty-three Universal Time, twenty-three minutes past midnight local, we lost contact with her.”
    Newcomen sat forward and tilted his head to one side, as if to understand the information better. “So her computer fails, or is taken off her, or she takes it off herself. I know you don’t want to discuss the possibility—”
    “You’re right. I don’t,” said Petrovitch. “She’s alive. See if you can think of something that’ll kill a Freezone-designed link without killing its wearer.”
    Newcomen pulled his glasses off and rubbed at his eyes with the ball of his hand. “I don’t know. You’ve done nothing but talk about it, so: solar wind?”
    “You’ll have to do better than just stumble across the right answers when we’re out in the field, Newcomen, but yeah. Same process we used to nuke your bugs and my visa. An intense electromagnetic pulse will melt the circuitry of a link. It’s hardened against e-m radiation, but a strong enough burst will kill it stone dead. We can discount a solar