Hunting the MAlignment: MWW Clue's

George J. Smith wrote:From Torch of Freedom

"What we appear to have here, however, is a case of pure serendipity on someone's part. My team and I have looked very carefully at Torch, and we've determined that it really does have most of the 'fingerprints,' but they're extremely faint. In fact, it took several runs of computer enhancement before we were able to pick them out at all. That's not entirely surprising, given Torch's relative youth. Despite their mass, F-class stars are statistically less likely to possess termini at all, and when they do, the 'fingerprints' are almost invariably fainter than usual. That means nobody should have been looking for a terminus associated with this star in the first place, and, in the second place, that they shouldn't have been looking just sixty-four light-minutes from the primary. That's ridiculously close. In fact, our search of the literature indicates that it's the nearest any terminus associated with an F6 has ever been located relative to its associated primary. Coupled with how faint its Warshawski signature is, that suggests to us that whoever found it in the first place must have almost literally stubbed his toe on it. He sure shouldn't have been looking for it there, at any rate!"

My bold and underline

Would that suggest to someone that in fact the Torch Wormhole may have been found from the other end???

stewart wrote:From Crown of Slaves chap 18

"—we can see the whole thing. Through hyper-space, Congo's not more than three days travel from Erewhon. And now it's been discovered that Congo's system has a wormhole junction with no fewer than three termini. Since the wormhole was first found by Mesan interests only a short while ago, the presumption is that at least one of them connects to the Solarian League. But nobody really knows where its termini lead to, except the Mesans." He wiggled one of the knives to indicate that its actual line of connection was uncertain.


From Torch of Freedom chap 5, Jack and Zach McBryde discussed the Torch / Verdant Vista Wormhole

"Granted. Granted." It was Jack's turn to grimace. "I don't know what we can do about it, though. I'm pretty sure some rather more highly placed heads are considering that right now, you understand, but it's sort of one of those rock-and-a-hard-place things. On the one hand, we don't want anybody like the Manties poking around. On the other hand, we really don't want to be drawing anyone's attention any more strongly to that wormhole terminus—or suggesting it may be more important than other people think it is—than we can help."



One terminius is known but not where it leads to, other than the MA / RF

Do the MA / RF know of the other potential termini of Torch's junction ??

-- Stewart

runsforcelery wrote:There were three primary reasons for the decision to colonize Congo:

(1) The security of the wormhole had to be safeguarded at any cost, and that meant keeping anyone else from discovering and exploring it. Given the fact that it was in such close proximity to Erewhon, that it was a star system which was likely to have a life-bearing planet, that exploration would undoubtedly get around to checking that out as soon as Erewhon had the opportunity, and that it is now to check stars' gravitic profiles for possible wormholes, the only way to prevent someone else from exploring the wormhole was to secure ownership of the star system for themselves.

(2) Once they surveyed the system themselves, they recognized the pharmaceutical cornucopia that Congo/Verdant Vista represented. They also realized that anyone else who surveyed the system was likely to recognize the same thing, which meant that anyone else who surveyed the system (and somehow missed spotting the wormhole) was extremely likely to colonize/claim the planet because of its inherent value. By establishing their own claim to it ASAP, they preempted that outcome.

(3) By securing control of the system, they also secured the right to police and control all traffic into and out of the system. That put them in the strongest position to ensure (A) that no one had the opportunity to discover anything about wormholes that they weren't supposed to discover and (B) to manage the system's traffic control in a way which would preclude someone from "stumbling across" a Mesan Alignment ship transiting the wormhole.

They could have used a different front organization to seize control of the star system. They chose not to because every additional layer they worked through offered an additional opportunity for something to slip through the cracks and (more importantly) because Mesa was so repugnant to most of the galaxy and such a pariah that legitimate shipping was extremely unlikely to come anywhere near a Mesa-claimed star system. That was another major factor in controlling access to the wormhole junction and the possibility of a genuinely neutral observer seeing something he shouldn't see.

Now, it can certainly be argued that the decision worked out . . . poorly, but to be fair that was because of circumstances beyond the Alignment's control, including a rogue Havenite intelligence officer and a Manticoran aristocrat willing to kick over the traces and pursue a policy he could be pretty sure wasn't going to make his own government happy. And, of course, the turn the war took with the introduction of the MDM and (especially) Apollo hadn't happened yet when they made their decision about how to proceed in Verdant Vista's case.

George J. Smith, quoting Dr. Kare in Torch of Freedom wrote:Coupled with how faint its Warshawski signature is, that suggests to us that whoever found it in the first place must have almost literally stubbed his toe on it. He sure shouldn't have been looking for it there, at any rate!"

Would that suggest to someone that in fact the Torch Wormhole may have been found from the other end???

SharkHunter wrote:--snipping, relative to an "unmanned" courier ship being used to check out the neighborhood...

George J. Smith, quoting Dr. Kare in Torch of Freedom wrote:Coupled with how faint its Warshawski signature is, that suggests to us that whoever found it in the first place must have almost literally stubbed his toe on it. He sure shouldn't have been looking for it there, at any rate!"

Would that suggest to someone that in fact the Torch Wormhole may have been found from the other end???

That's more toward my thoughts than I'd realized prior to y'all posting it, and the "lane aspect" of the other end of the wormhole was something I hadn't thought about relative to an unmanned ship.

One of the troubling tidbits is that Erewhon knew about the wormhole and was worried about Manpower possessing the system that holds it. That would seem to imply that for whatever reason, they suspect the wormhole's discovery is less-than-serendipitous relative to who they THOUGHT the bad guys were.

That said, one of the links pointed to a comment from RFC himself where he basically implies "both ends of that wormhole are receiving lots of ka-boom capable attention", but that he's not telling us what yet. Which is kinda cool but has an aw-shucks, gotta wait growl in my throat aspect to the whole proposition.

I'm a bit confused though, textev wise, has there been further clarification on the Torch system being part of a three terminus junction or just a single wormhole bridge? If three, I'd wonder if it was luck of the draw that Harvest Joy picked the one with an MSDF task group around it, or are there formations at every termini, etc.? Any notes from the long time forum members would be DEEPLY appreciated...

SharkHunter wrote:I'm a bit confused though, textev wise, has there been further clarification on the Torch system being part of a three terminus junction or just a single wormhole bridge? If three, I'd wonder if it was luck of the draw that Harvest Joy picked the one with an MSDF task group around it, or are there formations at every termini, etc.? Any notes from the long time forum members would be DEEPLY appreciated...

SharkHunter wrote:One of the troubling tidbits is that Erewhon knew about the wormhole and was worried about Manpower possessing the system that holds it. That would seem to imply that for whatever reason, they suspect the wormhole's discovery is less-than-serendipitous relative to who they THOUGHT the bad guys were.

SharkHunter wrote:Resurrecting a bit of an old thread, but it seemed to fit better here than elsewhere, tied into the "Laccoon" + Erewhon's concern that Mesa was like a thief's fence selling the backdoor's key combination to the highest bidder.

Knowing that the Harvest Joy was lost, yada yada yada, but the Torchese gov't wants to know what's on the other side of that wormhole, not for commercial purposes but out of sheer caution Obviously, they are not in the "send someone on a possible suicide mission to figure it out" mood, because the possible loss of those lives at gains them nothing.

So here's the thought... Could the GA program an unmanned dispatch/courier boat to go through the wormhole, Sarnow deployment style, basically to go through, reset it's hyper generator, immediately turn around and come back in X seconds with a sensor picture of whatever it could find. Obviously the Mannerheim forces are going to blow it away, but a couple of those attempts ought to up the paranoia factor a ways,enough or them to really put alot of protection in place, or if the MSDF kinda gets wise or thinks moree ships or coming through and the boat comes back and then they get REALLY protective.

yes/no maybe?

SWM wrote:The biggest problem is that Torch doesn't know the proper coordinates to use for the return trip. Recall the exploration of the Lynx terminus. After they passed through the wormhole, they said it would take extensive observations and at least a day's analysis before the wormhole physicists could determine the proper vectors for the return trip. They can't simply turn around and go back the way they came--the entering and exiting vectors are different.

Another variation people came up with was for the probe (manned or unmanned, both were suggested) to immediately jump into hyperspace and plot a course home the long way. David shot this down thoroughly. Here is the discussion--read the whole thing; the topic was thoroughly discussed and David posted at least 8 times: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3107&hilit=wormhole+torch

This Pearl also has some useful information:
http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... gton/279/1

fallsfromtrees wrote:The only mild clue I can recall from the books (and I admit this is with a great deal of behind the curtains sight), is that the Torch side of the wormhole was so very faint that the scientists on Harvest Joy found it difficult to believe that anyone had found it without knowing that it was there. This implies that just perhaps it was found (as indeed it was) by someone transiting the wormhole from the other side. This implies that it is not a death trap wormhole, but rather that fact that someone hostile is on the other side. The problem is that it takes a real stretch of the imagination to reach this conclusion without the secret background knowledge that the readers have been gifted with.

JohnRoth wrote:To enumerate:

1. The original information that there was a junction was incorrect. Who put it out there, and why?
2. Finding it on a general survey should have been almost impossible. This suggests it wasn't found from this side.
3. There was no evidence, once the rubble stopped bouncing, that anyone in the system knew there was a terminus. Maybe it got destroyed in the fighting, but maybe not.
4. The operation on Verdant Vista seemed to be ignoring sound management principles. Why?
5. If there is a wormhole there, why isn't Jessyk, Manpower or someone else exploiting it?
6. How did Admiral whoever's task group of the MSN get there all the way from Mesa? And why was it in the vicinity anyway?

All of this suggests that it's not what it seems, a point that's made explicitly in the stories. If it's not what it seems, what could it be hiding?

SWM wrote:

JohnRoth wrote:To enumerate:

1. The original information that there was a junction was incorrect. Who put it out there, and why?
2. Finding it on a general survey should have been almost impossible. This suggests it wasn't found from this side.
3. There was no evidence, once the rubble stopped bouncing, that anyone in the system knew there was a terminus. Maybe it got destroyed in the fighting, but maybe not.
4. The operation on Verdant Vista seemed to be ignoring sound management principles. Why?
5. If there is a wormhole there, why isn't Jessyk, Manpower or someone else exploiting it?
6. How did Admiral whoever's task group of the MSN get there all the way from Mesa? And why was it in the vicinity anyway?

All of this suggests that it's not what it seems, a point that's made explicitly in the stories. If it's not what it seems, what could it be hiding?

I won't argue that Torch couldn't have any suspicions, but I don't think it is nearly as clearcut as you do.

1) Valid, but since it was only a rumor to begin with, it could simply be a game of telephone rather than deliberate.
2) It could just as easily have been discovered just as easily be discovered by accident. Inconclusive.
3) I think they found evidence that they knew of the wormhole--what they didn't find was evidence of exploration of the wormhole. So point 3 and point 5 are actualy the identical, not separate points.
4) Valid question which they are already wondering about.
5) Valid question. On the other hand, it is also quite expensive and requires experts and complicated equipment to investigate a wormhole.
6) Torch doesn't know anything about the MSN task force. Those ships were on the other side of the wormhole. The only people who saw them there was the exploration ship, just before it got blown to very tiny bits.

You end up with some very odd questions, but it does not necessarily add up to "There are bad guys on the other side of the wormhole". A paranoid person might come to that conclusion, but it is not automatic.