Days are getting warmer, so my walk around the park’s lake is at dawn. I’m enjoying the view when my phone blares out <bomPAH-dadadadaDEEdah>. Of course, the caller‑ID display shows 710‑555‑1701. “Good morning, Ms Baird. Surprised to hear from you again so soon. How is Project Lonesome coming along?”

“It’s been saved, thanks to your knowledge of antique Physics.”

“Antique??!?”

“Lenz’s Law was already nearly 200 years old in your time, Mr Moire, and I’m another 200 years on. Our engineers have to learn exponentially more than yours do. Things get lost in the welter so we missed the magnetic squirt‑out stumbling block. Anyway, armed with your hint I was able raise the issue early enough in the design phase that we could adjust.”

“Repulsion between opposed magnetic fields is pretty basic Physics. How will your people get around that?”

“By going from ten anti‑matter factory sites to twelve.”

“Huh? Your original design had ten current‑carrying tractor/pressor beams arrayed around the equator of Planetoid Road. That was a problem because currents in the beams would induce their own magnetic fields. The combined field would be perpendicular to the equator. Lenz’s Law says induced fields are in opposition to the black hole’s external field. Field‑field pressure would squeeze Road right out of the system. Twelve beams around the equator would make an even stronger magnetic dipole. How would that solve the problem?”

“It wouldn’t, but that’s not the configuration we’re looking at. Do you know what a dodecahedron is?”

“One of the Platonic solids — twelve identical pentagonal faces, lots of symmetry.”

“Right. So we’re going to center each AM factory in its own face of a dodecahedron plotted onto Road’s surface.”

“Ah, the symmetry’s nearly spherical so the induced fields won’t combine as a dipole. Cute.”

“It’s better than that, Mr Moire. The currents are pulsed, remember, and we didn’t expect to have all the factories running full‑out all the time. By varying individual pulse rates or even shutting down one or two factories we can control the strength and direction of our combined magnetic field. We can tweak that vector relative to the black hole’s field lines as needed to stabilize our position. We could even steer the planetoid around the system if we have to. All with zero fuel expenditure. Wins all around!”

“What about the spaceport?”

“Spaceport?”

“You’re making a lot of AM product here, and you’re going to need to ship it out to wherever Star Fleet needs it. That means Road will need a port and docking facilities and everything that goes with that. I had assumed that’d be at one of the poles. Zero rotational speed up there would would make for easy landings and take‑offs. But the new configuration would have the worldlet tumbling arbitrarily. No fixed poles. Where will you put the docks? For that matter, how else could you build and staff the factories in the first place?”

“That we did think about. Not even the original design included on‑planetoid docking. Landing a ship at either magnetic field convergence point would have been too risky. That’s why we were originally going to site all the AM factories at the equator. Putting them somewhere else is no problem because each factory will be assembled in space. Space tugs can drop it into any position and then flit away. Every AM factory will be fully automated, including the robots that will repair whatever needs repairing, so no staffing required.”

“But how will you get the AM away from the planetoid?”

“The usual way. The AM will be magnetically suspended in massive gamma bixonate cannisters transmitted by industrial‑scale transporters. The bixonate blocks the black hole’s field. Transporter range is limited near Lonesome’s steep gravity well, but we can orbit a transshipment facility close enough to be useful but far enough to be safe.”

“What if a transporter malfunctions? You wouldn’t want AM spraying around the transshipment deck.”

“Reception transporters for AM cargoes work from the outside in so the cannister’s integrity is complete before the AM signal exits the buffer.”

“I sense a promotion in your future.”

~ Rich Olcott

• Thanks to Alex and Xander for keeping me on‑topic.