Hendricks advanced the power. The meters read up, and the anchoring tractors moved slightly in their gimbals and became immobile. The projectors forming the tripod of inflexible beams took up all the remaining slack in the beam system. Not one piece of unprotected matter was left to form a weak link. Beams of sheer energy, efficient to within a fraction of a percent of the ideal one hundred percent, linked the beams invisibly. A system of inflexible energy, driven and maintained by the energy output of a star—driven to rip the core out of the star itself.
The beams thickened as the automatic control advanced in timed steps. Evaporation from the lake of liquid helium increased as the superconductors warmed slightly from the terrible load.
A wrenching—feeling—came to them.
A meter indicated that one of the beams—the sphere beam clutching a five thousand mile sphere of stellar center—indicated a movement of point one seven four inches.
The automatic controller went up another stepless interval, and the wrenched—feeling—increased.
Through the viewport, the small flaming disk of VanMaanen's Star blazed at them. It looked as though it were quite ignorant of the cosmic forces that were tearing at its vitals. There was an air of saucy disregard in its placid, immobile brightness.
The pressure increased.
"At this point we jerked up a slab of Brimstone's hard crust," remarked Hendricks.
But Brimstone was not in the link. Brimstone was not even present. The inflexible tripod of energy would scorn to move with the planet. The control room and the main development housing connected to the high base of the projector network were depending upon the invisible tripod of energy, deep in space. Brimstone was a large moon, a gibbous last quarter, out through one side window.