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get hotter. Dua realizes that this is where she keeps getting the something-bad feeling. Odeen admits that speeding up the nuclear fusion might make the suns in the other Universe explode. Dua is horrified this might kill the people in the other Universe. Odeen does not understand. They won't need the people in the other Universe to make the exchange, he says, because the explosion of their sun will create such a flood of energy that they can tap it directly; it will be enough to last a million lifetimes. |
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Hard Ones arrive at this moment to ask if one of the triad stole a food ball (a storage battery charged at the Positron Pump). Tritt confesses that he stole it to feed Dua, and now he has a baby Emotional growing inside him. Dua flees in anger, feeling that Tritt has tricked her into helping to create a baby Emotional, that Odeen connived with Tritt, and that now they will pass on. A bit later she thinks she learns that the Soft Ones are machines created by the Hard Ones and that when their usefulness is over they are destroyed by the Hard Ones. She also learns that communication with the other Universe is possible. Eventually, after hours spent hiding in the walls of the Hard Ones' caverns, she learns how to send messages herself, first "F-E-E-R" and then the message beginning: "PUMP NOT STOP NOT STOP WE NOT STOP PUMP. . . ." |
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Odeen and Tritt come to find her in the caverns that are the Hard Ones' laboratories, just as she has sent that message. She has used up almost her entire energy doing so. As they restore her from a battery, Odeen tells her she is partly right. The Hard Ones are the only living creatures in their world, but that is because the Soft Ones are the immature forms of the Hard Ones. When the Soft Ones melt, they become a Hard One for the period they do not remember. They must return to being Soft Ones while they keep developing. When the Rational realizes the true state of affairs, all three have developed sufficiently and the Rational can then guide a perfect melt that will form the Hard One forever. The Soft Ones cannot be told about this by the Hard Ones because then the development would be aborted, the time of the perfect melt could not be determined, and the Hard One would form imperfectly. |
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For generations the Hard Ones have been combining triads with great care to form particularly advanced Hard Ones. The triad of Odeen-Dua-Tritt was the best ever put together. And Dua was the most important addition to the triad. Losten, who brought Dua to Odeen and Tritt, was once the triad that gave birth to Dua; part of Losten was Dua's lost |
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