McBride gave the signal, and the three rings began to rotate; the fore and aft rings going clockwise and the center ring moving in the opposite direction.
Then, fifteen minutes later, when the rings had gained their orbital velocity, Carlson resumed his post.
For ten minutes he sat stiffly in the chair, his eyes closed and his every nerve straining to catch imperfections in the thickness of the gravitic warps. He was the key to success, and he had no equal. For the strength of the pseudo-gravities and the power of the magnetic field that coupled with the fore element prevented any of the more intricate machinery from functioning. Only man, whose nervous system was not interrupted by magnetic fields, and whose chemistry and physical attributes were not overly disturbed by electronic charges, could have established the correction of the lens.
Carlson and Dr. Caldwell sat out in the center of a magneto-gravitic field that would have destroyed the finest of balance-mechanism, and above an electro-gravitic field that would have prevented the operation of an instrument sensitive enough to detect imperfections in gravitic alignment.
Always there would be men with Carlson's gift of super-perfect balance, and they would find their life work in maintaining the life-giving lenticular warp in space.
Carlson slumped wearily in his chair and smiled tiredly. "O.K.," he said. Caldwell started the crude drive and the surface flitter started to cross the lens to Station 1.
On Pluto, the first sign of renewed life was a flash of light in the sky. It started as an expanding pinpoint and burst out over a quarter of the sky before it diminished to a safe value. The scintillating fingers that darted from the twelve-scalloped sun were still. Then, as the magneto-gravitic warp was established, the color of the sun changed slightly, as the compounded lens removed harmful radiations by controlled chromatic aberration. The size of pseudo-sol expanded and contracted, and then settled down to a familiar size. The long fingers of light, that were leakages through the interstices between the stations, began to change as the stations took up their orbital movement. Then the streamers began to spread outward from the sun, detaching themselves as they reached maximum length and dying as their inner ends crept out to meet the far extension of the streamer. Between them, other streamers started to grow.
The pattern became familiar, and the men and women of Pluto ceased to look at the wonder of their returned sun.
Then they returned to their everyday lives.