The Black Hole

by Alan Dean Foster

  "The . . . non-mechanical mind. Have you learned enough to surmise whether it's human or not?"

  "Insufficient data thus far to proffer a reasoned opinion, Dr. Kate."

  Holland had his communicator out, was speaking into the tiny grid. "Charlie, this is Dan. Do you read?"

  "Loud and clear," came Pizer's response. "Something on the Cygnus together with the ship's bulk is screening out the majority of the noise around us. You sound like you're standing behind me."

  "I'm beginning to wish I were."

  Pizer's concern was immediate. "Trouble?"

  "Weapons destroyed by laser fire, but no injuries. The intent was clearly just to disarm us, not to injure."

  "I'll be there in—"

  "Hold your position."

  "But what about the—"

  "No!" Holland interrupted him more sharply this time. "I told you, we're okay. I don't want to tempt whoever's monitoring us into incapacitating the Palomino by a further display of arms. Maybe they're just nervous. Such a reception-area weapons system conforms with what we know about this ship. It may operate independently of other functions, to prevent possible belligerents from coming aboard armed."

  "All right. But watch yourselves." Pizer clicked off.

  Booth leaned over to whisper something to Durant. "So much for the friendship theory. I'd say describing the condition of whoever's got eyes on us as nervous is understating it some."

  "Holland's right, though," the scientist argued. "They could already have killed us, if that was their intent. Or simply denied us entry to the ship. They may want us aboard defenseless, but it's indisputable that they want us aboard."

  "Yeah, well, I can't say I care for their taste in hors d'oeuvres. Or for their manners." Booth was staring uncomfortably at the walls. The weapons which had just destroyed their own pistols were still hidden behind them. No doubt they were primed to fire at any time. He could imagine a half-dozen stubby, high-intensity generators aimed straight at his belly.

  A door slid aside at the far end of the reception room. They headed for it, striving to appear confident, succeeding only in looking tense.

  A high corridor stretched nearly a kilometer into the distance. It was impressively wide. Holland didn't try to conceal his reaction at the sight; he was awed once again. Intricate yet slim arches of metal supported the ceiling. The corridor was silent and bare, quite sterile-looking after the homey atmosphere of the reception chamber.

  This time he was expecting it when the door closed behind them, locking them in the corridor. There was still no reason to panic, though it did place one more barrier between them and the safety of the Palomino.

  A second, smaller door moved aside on their right. An internal transport vehicle waited there, humming like a stoned dragonfly.

  "Looks like we're not expected to walk." McCrae moved to the air car. "Maybe someone's suddenly remembered his manners."

  She might not have voiced the thought if she could have seen the ranks of unbeautiful but formidable-looking mechanicals that now filed into the sealed-off reception room. They emerged from behind wall panels, assembling with a silence broken only by the scrape of metal on metal. It did not take an education in cybernetics to see at a glance that the function of these machines was not to comfort but to disassemble. Urgently, if need be. Without a word passing between them, verbal or electronic, they began to move in unison toward the now open umbilical leading to the Palomino.

  The air car sped the group silently along the cylindrical passageway. The walls were largely transparent, giving them a spectacular view of surrounding space. It was easy to imagine they were traveling outside the Cygnus, tunneling through the void, instead of speeding down a fully pressurized tube of plastic and metal.

  To one side was a vast, swirling whirlpool of energy, the visual dying gasps of matter being drawn down into the collapsar. Elsewhere the distant pricks of light that were other suns blended into the body of light that was the Cygnus. They reached the far end of the tube. Their vehicle slowed, came to a halt. A doorway ahead was closed, but opened for them when the air car reached a complete stop.

  Holland stepped out of the car, looked around. Behind them stretched the long, empty transport tube they had just traversed. The tube itself showed no other egress. Even if there had been a hatch, it would have opened directly into empty space. They could only continue on ahead, as someone clearly intended they should.

  "I'm getting tired of being bounced around like a ball in a box," Booth murmured irritably.

  "Calm down, Harry." Holland grinned. "Just think of the story this is leading up to."

  "I'm looking forward to it." Booth relaxed a little, smiled back at him. "Just impatient at the delays, that's all."

  "I don't think any of us will have much longer to wait," McCrae said, walking toward the now open door before them. It led into another empty, though much smaller, corridor.

  "Slow up, Kate." Holland hurried to join her and she waited for the others to catch up. She was staring upward, toward a wide, illuminated port set high in the side of the command tower, whose base they had reached.

  "I know I shouldn't get my hopes up, but it's hard not to," she told Holland.

  He put a hand on her shoulder, pressed gently. It was a pitifully inadequate gesture under the circumstances, considering what the Cygnus itself and now the nearby tower represented to her, but it was the best he could think of. He was better with a ship.

  "I know, Kate. We're all hoping along with you."

  She glanced at his face, then down at the floor, then back up at him. "It helps . . . some."

  The personnel corridor was short. Eventually they reached a section which widened considerably. In the middle of the floor a thick cylinder rose into the ceiling. Several doors were set into its sides. One was open and waiting, the green light above it shining steadily.

  "Not much doubt where that goes." Booth spoke as he checked his recorders, making sure each of the disposable units was fully charged. "I think we're finally going to meet our hosts."

  "All of you remember one thing." Holland paused, blocking the elevator doorway. "The Cygnus seems stable, but it's too close to that black hole to take any chances. We've already learned that the field holding it motionless here against the gravity pull is subject to variation. We still don't know if the field is artificially generated or if it's a natural phenomenon. If natural, it could shift radically or even fail at any time.

  "We don't know how long the Cygnus has been stabilized here. It may have been defying the pull for a decade or more, or it could have become trapped here a day ago. My point is that we know practically nothing for certain about the forces in operation in this section of space. Not about those active around the black hole or those keeping the Cygnus clear of it. Ignorance is the most dangerous form of instability, and I don't care if you're talking personality or physics.

  "The sooner we repair the Palomino and leave here, the better for all of us." This last was spoken while he was staring directly at McCrae. She didn't argue with him and her expression remained unchanged. Good, he thought. Emotionally hyper as she was, she was still functioning realistically. He could still depend on her, if an emergency arose, to do that which was right rather than that which might be attractive.

  And what if her father is aboard, and alive? He pushed that possibility aside. Take events as they come.

  "Indeed, the sooner we are away the better I will like it." Vincent nudged his way into the elevator. "Several of my robotic colleagues were victims of black holes. I personally was acquainted with two. They were transferred to drone probes and trained, like myself, in human-machine esplink techniques. The theory was that they could then send messages back from beyond the return limits of the gravity wells of such objects as black holes. A grand experiment, the scientists thought. Sadly, it did not work."

  "Ancient history, Vincent," said the reporter.

  "Not to me, Mr. Booth. For one thing, the project designers had not cons
idered the effects that dissolution of their metallic partners under great stress would have on the human end of the esplinks. Several people collapsed mentally under the strain, much as their mechanical mind-partners did physically under pressure of a different kind.

  "For another, nothing is ancient that is so close. The heat generated in such regions would melt me before the pressure rendered me dysfunctional. I have sufficient imagination to convince me it is a process I will do all in my power to avoid experiencing."

  The elevator door slid quietly shut behind them. They rose in silence, casual conversation seeming suddenly indecent.

  Before long the lift stopped. All eyes were trained on the door. Thoughts and circulation raced. The door slid back. Some of the tenseness drained out of them when it became clear there was no one waiting there either to greet them or destroy them.

  Cautiously they moved out into the vast, domed upper chamber of the command tower. Bare floors made the place seem even larger than it was. The Palomino's compact control cockpit would have been lost here. Above the transparent dome and outside the floor-to-ceiling ports, the stars pressed close.

  Indicators of steady electronic heartbeats, lights winked on the ranks of instruments lining the walls. Two stories of uninterrupted, unrelieved instrumentation. Scopes for staring through or offering other varieties of long-range perception pierced the dome to bring closer the immensity beyond.

  Holland tried to imagine the great room as it must have been, filled with busy technicians and general crew, scientists conversing over the results of this or that research project, comparing notes and ideas and dreams while the Cygnus swam through the sea of darkness. Now the only sounds came from muffled relays and hidden servos.

  Above, a pair of spectrographic displays filled dissimilar screens, reducing stars and nebulae to coded colors and numbers. A larger screen showed a complex pattern of roughly concentric lines and colors, shifting even as he watched it. It had to be monitoring the black hole and the halo of destruction surrounding it, he guessed. Another huge screen showed the collapsar region in magnificent color and size.

  As did everything else about the Cygnus, the marvels of the tower impressed Holland. But he kept his perspective. Man's greatest machines could make mere numbers and equations of the Universe, but he had not yet discovered an equation to summarize its magnificence, nor a series of numbers denoting its beauty. Reductio ad absurdum.

  Some of his companions were less restrained in their reactions. "Stupendous!" Durant was repeating, wide-eyed as a kid locked in a candy store over a holiday. "Those scopes . . . bigger than anything we've got on the Palomino, bigger than those on non-mobile orbiting stations. And the detail on those screens . . . it's incredible!"

  "It ought to be," Booth commented dryly. "It cost the taxpayers enough."

  Durant turned on him. "You can't put a price on something like this, Harry. You can't evaluate the possibility of great discoveries in terms of credits."

  "I didn't say I could," replied the reporter, unmoved. "I said the taxpayers could. And they did. That's why there'll never be another ship like this one. We've already agreed that ships like the Palomino are nearly as efficient and much less costly."

  "Agreed." Durant's gaze was roving the banks of instrumentation. "As efficient, maybe. As meaningful, no."

  "That's a tough concept to try to sell the people who have to pay for such projects, Alex." But Durant's thoughts were now elsewhere. He had moved away and did not hear.

  McCrae had walked out into the room. Lights from the instruments and consoles illuminated dim shapes that seemed a part of the machinery across the chamber, yet were not.

  "Hello? Can you hear us?"

  The maybe-figures did not respond. If they were human, they must have been afflicted with universal deafness. Or else they were ignoring her with a studiousness that bordered on the maniacal.

  "This is Katherine McCrae, of the S.S. Palomino. The ship that's just docked with you. Is . . . Officer Frank McCrae aboard? If he is aboard, how may I contact him?"

  Still no response. A metal shape moved to hover at her side.

  "They appear to be some form of robot, Dr. Kate." Vincent sounded puzzled. "They are unique to my experience. One would imagine at least one or two would have broadcast capability, yet I cannot contact any of them."

  "You've been trying?"

  "I have been attempting for several minutes now," the robot answered. "They do not respond to any of the standard mechanical languages, on any frequency. It is remotely possible this variety has absolutely no electronic communications capability beyond individual programming. That is difficult to believe, but not without precedent. I have heard tales of other machines similarly restricted in their ability to converse. But I never actually expected to encounter such inhibited mechanicals. It is a terrifying concept to a fully conversant machine such as myself."

  "You make them sound like mechanical cripples."

  "If so, it is unintentional. I presume their designers had their reasons for making them mute." But she could sense his continued disgust.

  Holland had passed them, heading toward the center of the tower. To the far side, large ports provided views not only of space outside but of the immense length of the Cygnus herself. He carefully skirted the charged generation projector set into the floor.

  Near the far end of the room was a series of large consoles that had to have functioned as the command station. Lights sparkled more intensely there than elsewhere. Additional dark forms operated the instruments on two levels, some standing, others seated. They remained oddly indistinct despite the bright lighting.

  Holland edged carefully around another projecting device, then called for his companion's attention.

  "Look over here. This is my guess as to where everything's run from."

  Durant hurried to join him, shaking his head in still unmoderated wonder. "I've never seen anything to equal this. Never."

  The shadowy figures working at the consoles continued to fascinate McCrae. This close, the humanness of their structure was intensified, but their awkward, stiff movements and lack of response to her questions belied that. And, too, Vincent seemed to think they were mechanicals.

  She started toward one with the intention of questioning him face to face, but found herself being held back by a hand on her arm.

  "Hold it, Kate."

  "What's wrong, Dan?"

  "I think . . . there's something else here."

  She turned, as did the others. Flashing rapidly, a new sequence of lights traveled across Vincent's front, the robotic equivalent of facial expression.

  "What is it?" Durant was straining to see what had alarmed Holland.

  The dim shapes working behind them did not pause, but rather continued at their work. They were not what had unnerved Holland.

  Turning ponderously, a section of the far instrumentation detached itself and began to move toward them. It drifted in uncanny silence for something so massive. It was a mechanical of a size and suggestive power Holland had seen at work only in heavy industry. None of those machines was equipped with more than rudimentary programming. Yet the way this one came toward them hinted at considerably more advanced mental abilities. Freely mobile robots of such obvious strength were forbidden on Earth. Response-time problems and inertial mechanics made them too dangerous to be allowed.

  Someone aboard the Cygnus had evidently chosen to ignore such laws. Despite his lack of knowledge about the makeup of the great ship, Holland knew that no machine of such power and mobility would have been included among its normal stores. There was no need. Robots of the V.I.N.CENT series were the largest free-floaters permitted on Earth. Someone on the Cygnus had gone far beyond those limits in the manufacture of the dark red thing trundling toward them.

  It had a single crescent optic slashing the tapered head. The visualizer glowed a deep red. It gave no indication of slowing its progression or of addressing them. Vincent appeared to be but a toy in comparison.
<
br />   Holland had his communicator out. "Charlie? We've got trouble here."

  There was no answer. Taking no notice of Holland's words or actions, the huge mechanical continued its now decidedly threatening progress toward them.

  They started to back away, moving for the elevator shaft near the center of the tower. If the lift refused to function for them, they would have to try to short the controls somehow.

  Meanwhile, Holland was frantically hunting for anything that could serve as a weapon. He found nothing, saw no tool locker or supply cabinet. Everything in the tower chamber was flush, sealed or functional. Seamed metal ran into the transparencies of the ports. Even the controls on the console were mostly smooth-mounted touch-sensors.

  "Do you read me?" he continued to call worriedly into the pickup. "Charlie, come in, Charlie . . ."

  A familiar barrel shape inserted itself between the slowly retreating humans and their armored tracker: Vincent. Barely a meter away from its much smaller counterpart, the massive red machine slowed, hovered motionless. It did not speak, but anyone could see that the behemoth was considering the implied challenge of its tiny cousin.

  Vincent did not move, his own armored upper casement sinking down into the cylindrical body to protect the optics. Since his own weapons had been incapacitated by the hidden lasers in the reception room, he was making a possibly fatal gesture. But he remained oblivious to any danger, daring the larger machine to attack or to continue its hitherto inexorable march onward.

  "Here's a story to end all stories, Harry," Durant whispered to the reporter. Booth held his recorder stiffly in front of him, like a cobra at arm's length. In a way, it was the weapon he was most comfortable with, though it was unlikely the maroon monster towering over them would be dissuaded from any bellicose gesture by the implied power of the press.