The silver-steel-hardened carbon-iron raised stone road hung across the deep pit like a thin black needle suspended over an ocean of liquid light.
Beneath the punched holes in metal grating of the walking deck, the central star-core roared in total, terrifying silence. There was no air in the surrounding void to transmit sound shakes. Because of that, the huge gravity churning of the star made no sound to mortal ears. Yet through the iron-shod soles of Lin Tao’s marching boots, the shaking was thick. A deep, rhythmic clockwork shudder that pulsed at exactly twenty-four beats per second.
Every forty-one point six seven split seconds, the surrounding starfields seemed to hitch. A tiny shudder of map point recalculation that revealed the underlying framework of the cosmos.
To Lin Tao’s left, three huge cooling pipes, each twenty paces in width and lagged with thick layers of frost-crusted dark rock heat padding, plunged downward toward the star-core’s magnetic choke ring. A faint, pale soft glow leaked through the spreading joints of the piping. Liquid helium-3 circulating at two degrees above total zero, absorbing the heat-powered waste heat generated by the nonstop math of reality’s physical laws.
Tie Shan walked half a pace behind Lin Tao’s left shoulder, his heavy boots ringing against the deck with steady, measured weight.
