Crystals (standard:science fiction, 2412 words)
Author: GXD	Added: Aug 10 2007	Views/Reads: 3553/2439	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Working inside of giant crystals is a nonpareil experience, especially when they sing with you!

CRYSTALS 

Inside the emerald it was pale bluish-green.  The six facets were like
aquarium mirrors with iridescent fringes at each edge.  Fused silica, 
tasting of beryllium, was in the atmosphere.  Far away, at each end, 
the crystal terminated in a six-sided pyramid.  It wasn't sun-time, but 
I could feel the matrix trembling with anticipation, as the earliest 
ultraviolet light crept over the horizon.  This was their nourishment.  
With time and sunlight, the palest crystal would slowly grow dark 
green. 

Turning on the flaw detector, I swam slowly toward the apex, sweeping
the beam in search of inherent defects.  Here and there an original 
fusion-bubble showed up, but there were no fissures.  The sun rose 
across the Eastern facet, driving cosmic particles into the polished 
face, particles programmed to seek out the atoms of beryllium and rip 
off its oxide skin.  The sub-oxide of each remaining atom would then 
glow green.  This was a young one.  A few weeks ago it was only half 
the size, and water-white. 

The work was easy.  I only had to synchronize the harmonic oscillation
of my molecules with those of the crystal and -- inside!  Some of the 
older men remember when people couldn't do this, maybe fifty years ago. 
Today, it was a job, just like any other. 

Crystal farms dotted the land as far as eye could see, amid the fruit
farms and the alfalfa farms.  Over the mountain, there were no farms, 
but manufacturers and traders.  Crystals were a staple of their diet.  
In recent years, a few producers had found ways to grow much larger 
crystals but the problem was controlling their quality.  If only it 
were possible to let an inspector get inside.  And now, of course, it 
was. 

So there I was inside, swimming slowly toward the other apex, searching.
 This was really a clean one.  Usually you could sense a flaw 
immediately by the residual stress in the matrix.  It felt -- sort of 
"twitchy" in a way, as if the resonance with my molecular body were out 
of synch.  Clearly, the crystal had a while to grow in, yet.  One of 
the others would check it out on the next shift.  This one was a pretty 
hard cookie, and it wouldn't be easy to slice it into wafers.  On the 
other hand, if it were hard enough, you could cleave the crystal along 
natural planes with asynchronized transducers.   By creating molecular 
disharmony to generate heat across one crystal plane, that plane alone 
expands, causing the crystal to shear naturally -- right where it's 
supposed to. 

The last crystal I inspected was galena, one heavy son-of-a-bitch.  It
was a stack of slippery cubes almost as soft as graphite, the same 
lead- gray color.  There was enough sulfide to keep the lead saturated, 
but inside the crystal it really stank.  Putrid!  What a stench!  Whew! 
 There was enough loose hydrogen to float the Hindenburg!  It combined 
with the sulfur to eruct the most God-awful bloach of reeking feces.  
And swimming in its dense matrix was like navigating a morass of honey. 
Ugh! 

Here and there were the tarnished iridescent shards of bismuthinite.
Those acicular projections looked sharp and dangerous, but they were 
actually softer than the mother ore itself.  Each rhombic prism enjoyed 
a feathery pattern on its upper face, where strain-lines formed each 
time the giant crystal heaved or shifted.  There were some flaws, of 
course, but it was possible to fix a couple.  Screw dislocations, for 
example, which looked like spiral cracks in the platelets of the cube.  
All you had to do was locate the nuclear atom at one end and give it a 
smart tap.  That usually inverted the dislocation and allowed the 
matrix to reconstruct itself in perfect array.  Sometimes it wouldn't 
work.  There wasn't much danger of cracking the crystal -- the whole 
thing was built to absorb blows -- not like some of the fragile boron 
carbide crystals that grew over in the next county.  Boy!  Those things 
were as touchy as dynamite caps. 

Not that boron carbide was unstable, mind you. Nothing like that.  But
it was almost as hard as diamond.  The only thing holding it together 
was a precarious balance of stresses.  Break one bond and it would 
burst like a bomb.  I really become uneasy inside one of these.  These 
crystals are so vulnerable to cosmic debris -- one micrometeorite 


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