The Black Hole

by Alan Dean Foster

  "Isn't it possible," the scientist's voice intoned over the speaker, "that we might . . .?"

  "One pass, and that's it. I'll try to give you as much time as I can. Attend to your instruments, Alex. Let's make this one pass worth the effort."

  "Coming up on target and slowing, sir," Pizer announced.

  "Slow us a little more, Vincent," Holland ordered the robot. "We'll risk passing with a five-percent margin."

  "As you wish, sir. But if I may be allowed to say . . ."

  "You may not."

  "Yes, sir." The robot succeeded in conveying a distinct feeling of disapproval.

  "We'll pass below her, sir." Pizer was dividing his gaze between the foreport and several readouts.

  "Check. Ready on thrusters, Vincent."

  "Standing by, sir."

  A vast, dark bulk hove into view. It thoroughly dominated the Palomino. The long, roughly rectangular shape bulged at the stern. Each of her eight drive exhausts was large enough to swallow the Palomino. She wore her grid-work skeleton externally, like an insect.

  She was one of mankind's greatest technological triumphs. Even in the darkness Holland felt a shiver of excitement pass through him at the sight of the enormous vessel. What pilot wouldn't have given an eye to command such a behemoth!

  The Cygnus had been designed to carry out any imaginable scientific mission deep-space exploration might require. Its research capabilities far outstripped those of a dozen ships the size of the Palomino. That those extensive facilities, incorporated into the Cygnus's basic design, might never be used was something few gave thought to in the heady days of her planning and construction.

  She had been built to be completely self-supporting, able to recycle air and food and water for hundreds of years if necessary, able to travel the length of the galaxy as long as the children's children of her original crew retained the knowledge to man her.

  That was a last-scene scenario, however. Her creators expected her to return her original crew to Earth. The concept of a ship capable of carrying on from generation to generation was an appealingly romantic one that served a useful propagandistic purpose, helping to clear the way, come appropriations time, for vast expenditures of doubtful utility.

  She was armed, too—huge sums spent to satisfy an appeal to xenophobic fears that no longer haunted mankind. In Holland's subsequent searches through space, no intelligent aliens, friendly or otherwise, had been encountered. But such fears had existed at the time of the Cygnus's construction. So jingoistic elements had forced the installation on the great ship of the means of extermination as well as of revelation.

  Nothing like her had been built before. It was likely nothing like her would be built again. Not when smaller, less costly vessels like the Palomino and her sister ships could do the same work and cover far greater reaches of space for the same expenditure of time and personnel. Nonetheless, she remained a monument to man's mastery of physical engineering and ability. She awed even so stolid a man as Holland by her sheer size and presence.

  "Stand by with your scanners, Alex. We're going under her. I'll try to roll us after passage to give every instrument a chance to record, in case of any failures."

  Enormous metal members reached out toward the Palomino. They moved nearer, the little ship slipping toward silent supports weighing hundreds of tons on Earth, weighing nothing here . . . and something utterly unexpected happened.

  The turbulence ceased.

  That was absolutely the last thing Holland would have imagined. Gravitational effects had to have been affected or the Cygnus would not have been holding its position as it was. They were more than affected, they no longer were.

  He glanced incredulously over at his first officer. As he checked and rechecked the readouts on the console before him, Pizer displayed a dumbfounded look.

  "Zero gravity. Nothing. There's evidence of artificial gravity in use on the Cygnus, but nothing from the black hole. According to sensors, it's exerting less pull on us now than a toy globe."

  "That's impossible. What about the star?"

  "Same thing, meaning nothing," Pizer told him.

  "Reverse thrust." Vincent complied and the Palomino slowed to a comparative crawl. "Stand by. The phenomenon may be temporary."

  It was not. The Palomino sat driveless in space under the dark mass of the Cygnus like a chick huddled beneath its mother's protective wing. It was coasting now, drifting slowly forward.

  "Easy on the thrusters now, Vincent. Take us around and upside her, Charlie." Man and machine moved to comply with the orders. Holland continued to examine his sensor readouts, still hardly believing what they told him.

  "Smooth as glass," he muttered softly. "Incredible." And frightening, he told himself. Anything that could so utterly eliminate the kind of attractive power they had just passed through hinted at knowledge that could prove dangerous as well as benign.

  Voices drifted out at him from the speaker. "It's like the eye of a hurricane." That was Kate's voice. "What's happened, Alex? I can't imagine what's causing it."

  "Neither can I," Durant confessed readily. "As we suspected, a natural phenomenon or something generated from the Cygnus. Not a clue which it is, so far. Look sharp." Holland could visualize Durant turning his full attention to the information that must be pouring into the lab from the external scanners and sensors.

  The Palomino drifted around the flank of the immense ship, curved up and started to arc around to pass over it. Everyone was busy at his or her station. They were trying to solve a pair of mysteries: one, the absence of pull from the black hole, and, two, the existence of the ghost ship itself.

  McCrae was overcome with personal frustration. She left the task of monitoring the incoming statistics to Durant. Slipping free of her chair, she moved to the port and found herself staring fixedly at the meters of metal sliding past behind them. Soon they would reach the end of their turn, come around to pass across the topside of the ship. Her attitude was not very professional just then; it was very human.

  Durant addressed the pickup. "Are you learning anything forward, Charlie? Nothing of a revealing nature has come in back here."

  "And nothing abnormal up here, Alex," came the first officer's reply. "Negative. Whatever's canceling out the gravitational pull hereabouts isn't interfering at all with the rest of the electromagnetic junk that's filling this section of space.

  "There are a hundred thousand 'natural' broadcasts flying around us. I can't punch anything through it, even this close. If there's anyone left on board capable of communicating, which I sincerely doubt, they've got the same problems if they're trying to reach us."

  There has to be someone alive on board, McCrae thought fiercely. There has to be! It . . . it doesn't even have to be Dad. Just someone who can tell us what happened. To have come this close, actually to have found the long-lost Cygnus, and not to learn what had happened to her would be intolerable.

  She insisted to herself that the reasons for pursuing the investigation further were grounded soundly in science and not in personal emotions. But she knew it would be hard, if not impossible, to conceal her feelings from the rest of the crew—especially from Dan Holland. She wasn't at all sure she wanted to make the effort.

  The Palomino had passed beyond the Cygnus, began to curve back toward her. "Bring us full around, Charlie. We'll try orbiting her forward, then we'll check out the engines."

  "And after that?"

  "After that, if there's still no sign of life aboard . . . we'll see."

  "Yes, sir." Pizer concealed his impatience. "Bringing her around, sir."

  The Palomino's attitude thrusters fired. A violent tremor ran through the length of the ship, like a sudden chill. Then they were tumbling out of control, away from the Cygnus.

  A small gauge in front of Holland jumped instantly from zero to eleven, then twelve. It continued rising toward unthinkable levels with terrifying rapidity.

  "Gravity approaching maximum, Dan!" Pizer shouted, fighting the pa
nic in his guts.

  "My God." Holland's gaze remained locked on the single, critical readout. "It's got us . . ."

  "Full power on all thrusters. Give me a hundred percent additional on our roll quads." Holland was frantically jabbing at controls, eyes darting from one readout to the next. Each appeared more threatening than its neighbor. On the screen, the Cygnus remained peaceful and stable, receding behind them.

  Malignant invisibilities smote the tiny vessel. Back near Power, several sensitive monitors ruptured, sending highly compressed gases whistling wildly down corridors and into unsealed rooms.

  "What the hell happened?" Pizer demanded of silent fates. "What happened?"

  "The zone of null-g." Holland spoke rapidly, working at his console. "Its parameters are variable. I thought we had at least a couple of kilometers of quiet in which to turn, but the radius of the stable zone shifted while we were passing close to the Cygnus. It shrank inward.

  "My fault," he was stammering through clenched teeth. "It was my fault. We should have been monitoring it somehow."

  "Don't blame yourself." Pizer shifted power from one weakened thruster to another, balanced the propulsive system as best he could, given their wild course. "No one else thought of it. Besides, there's no way we could have monitored it. How can you monitor something you don't understand? We probably don't even have the instruments for it."

  All right, Charlie. You're right. Time for fixing the blame later. A warning light began flashing for attention on the left of his console. Vincent noticed it an instant before Holland.

  "Air break amidships." The robot spoke calmly. "Losing storage pressure." He studied fresh information, correlated it with what the computer was trying to tell him. "Regeneration-system failure. Seals are forming in the system. Pressure is holding, sir, but cannot do so indefinitely."

  "Do what you can with it, Vincent. I haven't got time now. Charlie, give us a full burst at one-eighty degrees on my count on the roll quads. If we don't correct our tumble, we might as well turn off the engines."

  "Standing by." Pizer's fingers rested tensely on two separate contact switches.

  "Mark. Five, four, three, two, one . . ."

  Pizer impressed the switches. The Palomino stopped tumbling . . . violently.

  The unexpected jolt nearly threw Durant, McCrae and Booth from their positions. Overpressurized beyond design, the air lines running through the lab reacted to the abrupt cessation of spin and the corresponding shift in the ship's artificial gravity by releasing their pent-up force. Compressed air hissed into the room. The Palomino was tumbling again, less severely now and in the opposite direction.

  McCrae shouted toward the pickup. "Dan, we've got a line break back here too!"

  Durant was hastily examining the requisite gauges. "Readout shows primary and secondary carry lines ruptured. We'll be breathing soup pretty soon, and that for only a little while if we don't get them fixed."

  "Then get on it," was Holland's reply. "We've stabilized enough for you to move around, but watch yourselves. I'm not promising anything." Including living out the day, he told himself grimly.

  McCrae was first out of her chair. She hurried to help Booth unlock his restraints. Their problem now was not a lack of air but a surplus of it. If the pressure in the system dropped too low, the regenerators would fail. Emergency supplies would reprime the regenerators, but more than likely they were breathing some emergency atmosphere already.

  When that supply was gone, they would have only the old air circulating loosely through the ship to breathe. That would turn stale, then unbreathable, all too quickly. Before too long they would suffocate.

  All the regular crew had some training in ship maintenance, except Harry Booth. Such diversified expertise was necessary with so small a complement. Kate struggled to recall the schematics of the ship's atmosphere systemology, knowing their lives depended on it. On that, and on Dan and Charlie and Vincent halting their plunge.

  No use worrying about that possibility, she told herself firmly. If they failed to stop their fall, and soon, she would be flattened before she knew what was happening to her. Concentrate on the regeneration system and let the others worry about keeping us alive long enough to enjoy my repairs.

  Pizer adjusted the thrusters yet again, muttered, "Never rains . . ." The rest was not audible.

  "We're doing better, Charlie. But not enough better. Full power on attitude Quads A and B. We're going in at an angle now, but we're still going in."

  The first officer switched his own instrumentation over to manual control. "Mark . . . five, four, three, two, one . . ."

  Again the first officer activated selected external adjusters. Again the Palomino reacted. Not as violently this time, and with greater precision.

  "If we can just bring her around," Holland murmured nervously, "we'll have a fighting chance." He knew it had to be finished soon. If they fell much further into the grip of that unrelenting gravity, they would forever lose all chance of breaking free.

  Vincent's cautionary remark about the durability of the thrusters under such strain came back to him, but he pushed it from his mind. Either the units would continue to function or they would fail. He had to assume the former because it was fatal to consider the latter.

  For a few seconds he toyed with the idea of slamming on the supralight drive, which should be sufficient to pull them clear. Yeah, he thought. In pieces.

  He would leave that for a last resort and pray if he had to do it that the equations were all wrong. The supralight drive operated with wonderful efficiency in a massless environment. Around much mass it displayed a disconcerting tendency to push against the ship instead of against nothing. Under such circumstances it could push a ship apart—also the contents of said ship, which included any crew. Hence the need for powerful sublight engines to shove a starship out into the void, where it could function properly and harmlessly.

  A new warning light came on. Again it was Vincent who noticed it first. "Hull-breach indication, Captain."

  "Serious?"

  "Not immediately. The number four hatch cover just blew outward. The section has been sealed."

  "What's in number four bay?"

  A pause while the robot checked inventory, then, "Miscellaneous supplies, sir. Non-regenerable, some organics."

  "What kind? If it's survey equipment or samples, we can forget it."

  "I'm afraid not, sir. Manifest shows pharmaceuticals among the contents."

  "Damn. We can't risk losing that stuff, and we could do just that if we're jolted hard enough or if the artificial grav goes out. Be just about right for us to break free of this and then die on the way home for lack of the right medicine to treat some otherwise minor infection."

  "I agree, sir." Vincent removed his armature from the console socket and swiveled to depart from the cockpit. "I'll go outside and secure the hatch."

  "I don't like it, but . . . watch yourself. This is more pull than we've ever had to deal with. If you break loose you won't be sucked in much faster than the ship, but your thrusters might not be enough to boost you back to the hull, and there's no way we could maneuver to retrieve you."

  "Yes, sir. I am cognizant of the dangers, sir. Rest assured I will exercise utmost caution." Vincent floated from the cockpit, moving carefully but at high speed back through the corridors.

  Scanning the readouts, Holland's eyes fell again on the still winking lights which reminded him of the damage to their air system. "Alex, Harry," he called into the pickup, "you still okay back there?"

  "Rocky, but no injuries, Dan." Durant sounded tired. "We're still working on the lines that broke here in the lab."

  "Leave those for Kate. She's faster than either of you. Check out the damage farther back, where the initial interruption occurred."

  "Check." Durant started for the doorway. "Let's go, Harry. Good luck here, Kate."

  She was already running a diagnostic pen over the multiple tube fracture. "You fix the first headache, Alex, I'l
l handle this one." She waved the pen at him and he smiled back, each grin for the other's benefit and not an expression of humor. Not now.

  Apply sealer to the edge of the break, she told herself, trying to see the instruction tape, forcing it to unspool once more inside her head. Place sealant alloy between sealer and far end of break . . . She continued like that, working steadily if slowly, her body tense in expectancy of further jolts and shudders.

  Normally Vincent would not have bothered with a tether. His internal thrusters provided enough power for him to fly with confidence around any ship. But this was not normal space they were spinning through, and Vincent was programmed to be prudent. So he double-checked to make sure the high-strength metalweave cable was attached securely to himself and to the ship. Then he slid back the exterior hatch of the air lock and made his way outside.

  The black hole was a dark nothingness resting in the center of a glowing vortex of radiant gas and larger clumps of matter. It attracted his attention only briefly. He was also programmed to be curious, though less so than humans.

  So he ignored the mesmerizing view of the stellar maelstrom and turned his optics instead on the various projections extruding from the Palomino's hull. He had to make his way around them so that his extendible magnetic limbs would remain firmly in contact with the ship's skin.

  As he moved slowly across the hull back toward the free-floating hatch to be resecured, he was aware of a steady thunder reverberating around him. It was a thunder no human could have heard, a purely electronic thunder, the wail dying matter generated as it was crushed out of existence. It possessed also a certain poignancy no human could have appreciated, for in many ways Vincent was closer in structure to the meteoric material plunging past him to destruction than he was to the creature known as man.

  Indeed, he mused, I am the same stuff, differently formed and imbued with intelligence. I am cousin both to meteor and to man.

  Then his thoughts turned to more prosaic matters: a loose hatch and the possibility of uncertain footing. I do wonder why I was programmed to think in so many human metaphors, he thought. I have no feet; therefore, technically speaking, I am incapable of losing my "footing."