The antimatter in their downwash cut straight through flux tubes. Claire’s gloved hands cut arcs in the space before her, carving with her antimatter jet. It sliced through, freeing field lines that still snared the worm. The ship rose farther, dragging the worm upward. It’s not too heavy, Rachel thought. That Scientific Officer said wormholes could come in any size at all. This one is just about right for a small ship to slip through—to where?

You have remaining 11.34 minutes cooling time—

“Here’s your hat”—Claire swept the jet wash over a last, large flux tube, which glistened as annihilation energies burst forth like scarlet bonfires. The glare raged in a place already hot beyond imagination. Magnetic knots snarled, exploded—“what’s your hurry?”

Their ship rumbled in long bass notes.

The entire solar coronal arch burst open.

Rachel had sensed these potential energies locked in the peak of the arch. There was a rubbery tingle in the ship, as magnetic fields swept through it.

For Claire, there must have been an intuition that came through her hands, from long work with the mag-gloves. Craftswoman’s knowledge: Find the stressed flux lines. Turn the key.

Then all hell broke loose.

The acceleration slammed Rachel down hard, despite the water. Below, she saw the vast vault of energy stored in the arch blow out and up, directly below them.

You have made a solar flare!

“And you thought I didn’t have a plan.” Claire started to laugh. Slamming into her couch cut that off. She would have broken a shoulder, but the couch was waterlogged and soft.

Now the worm was an asset. The up-jetting plume blew around it, and so around Silver Metal Lugger above it. Free of the flux tubes’ grip, the wormhole helped them accelerate away from the sun.

All very helpful, Rachel reflected, but she couldn’t enjoy the spectacle—the rattling, surging deck was trying to bounce her off the furniture.

5.

What saved them in the end was their magnetic grapple. Simple, sure, but powerful. It deflected most of the solar flare protons around the ship. Pushed out by big plasma clumps moving at five hundred kilometers per second, they still barely survived baking. But they had the worm.

Still, the Scientific Officer was not pleased. He came aboard to make this quite clear. His face alone would have been enough.

“You’re surely not going to demand money for that?” He scowled and nodded toward a screen, where Silver Metal Lugger’s fields still hung on to the wormhole. Claire had to run a sea-blue plasma discharge behind it so they could see it at all. They were orbiting Mercury, negotiating. Recuperating. While physicists designed experiments to do on the Mouth, as Fraq called it.

Earthside, panels of experts were arguing with each other. Rachel had heard plenty of their gabble on tightbeam. A negative-mass wormhole would not fall, so it couldn’t knife through the Earth’s mantle and devour the core. But a thin ship could fly straight into it, overcoming its gravitational repulsion—through—and come out… where? Nobody knew.