We all thought about this for a moment.
“Tuesday,” added Joffy in a quiet voice, “just how close are we to success with the Anti-Smite Defense Shield?”
Everyone looked at Tuesday. This, we knew, was pretty much the reason Joffy and Miles were here—to see whether she could overcome the many technological hurdles in time to avert Swindon’s partial destruction.
Tuesday pulled a face. “We’re having a few . . . teething troubles,” she said, “but it’s mostly of a mathematical nature. I simply need to find the upper and lower limits of the constant Uc.”
“Is there an easier way for you to explain it?” asked Miles. “It’s kind of important. If we can’t get the defense shield up, we’re going to have to reluctantly agree to a backup plan.”
“Okay,” said Tuesday. Like many scientists, she had become obsessed with the science itself and not its intended purpose. She took a deep breath, got up and with a felt pen drew a schematic of an anti-smite tower on the wall.
“Field research has indicated that a Wrath-Inflicted Deity Groundburst is a five-or six-second burst of high-energy particles concentrated on a circular pattern with a blast radius of about half a mile. The high-energy particles arrive so fast and with such force that there is no material we know of that can withstand the bombardment. A defense shield made of tungsten, steel, concrete—useless. Which is why we must meet energy with mass.”
“We get that bit,” said Joffy, since all this had been repeated on Toad News Network Science Channel quite a lot over the past year, “but how does your system actually work?”
Tuesday smiled. “I got the idea from a ninja movie.”
I looked at Landen. “Have you been letting Tuesday watch ninja movies?”
“One or two,” he replied sheepishly. “After she did her homework.”
“Hmph,” I replied.
“In the movie,” continued Tuesday enthusiastically, “there was a ninja who could move so fast he could run though a rainstorm without getting wet. And I got to thinking that if a ninja could do that, thenconversely he could just as easily move though the same rainstorm and get absolutely sodden—and if there were several ninjas, they might be able to stop all the raindrops from actually reaching the ground.”
“Okay,” I said slowly, “I’m getting the analogy.”
“Right. So what I have to do is to meet each charged particle with the ultradense nucleus of a lead-187 atom. The particle is halted and drained off as thermal energy to be turned to electrical energy using a steam turbine. Part of this energy is used to power the shield, and the rest is fed back into the national grid. The feed-in tariff is so good these days that we hope to be able to recoup all our production costs within about twenty-three smitings. Joffy, do you think you can convince the Almighty to schedule His cleansings to coincide with peak demands of power? Everyone pops on the kettle at halftime during the SuperHoop.”