The Black Sun

by Jack Williamson

  “I can try.” Alt shrugged rather wryly and paused for a moment to find the words. “Though there is no way to estimate the risks. And we don’t make the rules. They come out of physics. Relativity. Fractals. Chaos theory. Quantum science.”

  She swung her holocam to scan the shimmering hull, and he waited for the lens to return.

  “Thanks.” An ironic snort. “Go on.”

  “Taking off, the ships flash and vanish because they have become virtual waves, moving at the speed of light—”

  “What’s a virtual wave?”

  “I’ll try.” He shrugged again. “Though the science gets abstract. Briefly, quantum mechanics gives every particle certain aspects of a wave. Taking off, the ship may be regarded as a virtual quantum particle converted into a virtual quantum wave. As a wave packet, it has no definable parameters. No measurable mass or velocity or position. Reconverted to a virtual particle at the point of destination, it recovers the aspects of momentum and location.

  “If you get that.”

  “I don’t.” She swung her holocam to sweep the faces around her, most of them frowning. “Who does?”

  “The paradoxes can seem confusing.” He nodded sympathetically, trying to restrain a grin. “We do prove the theory, however, with every takeoff. Though they may seem contrary to common sense, the relativistic paradoxes make wave flight feasible. Tune slows as speed increases. It stops at the velocity of light. A flight may last a thousand years, as we on Earth perceive the time. Perhaps a million years. Only an instant, however, on the ship itself.”

  “How do you know?” Her voice sharpened. “If they never get back?”

  “They can’t return.” His grin turned quizzical. “Because the reconversion has to happen somewhere in the future. Probably in the very distant future. Perhaps a billion years from now. Maybe ten billion, when you think of the odds. We’ll never know, because time runs only one way.”

  “Thank you, Captain.” Her tone ironic, she swept her lens from him to the ship. “That suggests another question. If time stands still and they’re frozen on the ship, how do they steer it?”

  “They can’t,” he said. “Or stop it either. If you recall the paradox, they can’t even know where they are. Literally they’re nowhere. The ship is a waveform that moves on until it encounters a gravity field strong enough to reverse the launch conversion.”

  “A planet?”

  “More likely a star. Nothing else has the concentrated mass.”

  “So they land on a star? Like our sun?”

  “I hope not.” He shrugged at her mocking tone. “We have auxiliary nuclear rockets. Once out of quantum mode, we can move under rocket thrust within a planetary system. With luck, we have a chance to reach some Earth-like planet where we can land and live.”

  “Suppose you don’t hit a star?” Eyes narrowed, she lowered the holocam. “Or anything big enough?”

  “That probably happens. Often, I imagine. One strong reason we’re launching a hundred ships.”

  “What becomes of those that don’t get stopped?”

  “Nothing nice.” He made a wry grimace. “Ultimately, I suppose, interference from cosmic dust and debris would degrade the waveform. Scatter it, finally, into a burst of gamma radiation.”

  “You’re welcome to your flight.” Lips tight, she lowered the lens and shook her head. “I’ll stay home.”

  A jet had come down on the nearby airstrip. Now a Jeep came roaring to the ramp in a cloud of yellow dust, horn howling. Holocams swung to pick up Mission Director Herman Stecker as he tumbled out of it and came striding to the platform, another Mission man trotting behind him. Alt turned to greet them.

  Younger than the captain, Stecker made a dapper figure in stylish crimson mods, his golden hair waved and long. His companion was more rumpled than modish. Wearing a black beret and black sunglasses, he prowled around the edge of the group till he found a vacant chair. Sliding into it, he sat watching Stecker with a sardonic grin.

  Stecker sprang to the platform. Ignoring Alt’s extended hand, he stepped forward and posed like a model for the lenses before he turned to the lectern. With a gesture for silence, he let his well-practiced voice roll out into the flash-blackened desert.

  “Fellow citizens of the universe …” He shook a gold-nailed finger to reprove a reporter’s grin. “That’s who we are, we in StarSeed. More than just Americans or Asians, Latins or Russians, we have become the champions of our species, striving against ultimate extinction.”

  He paused for effect, and shrugged in comic dismay when Captain Alt lost his balance and nearly fell on the steps in his retreat from the platform. With a murmur of assumed regret, he turned to lift his voice again, now above the rumble of a passing truck.

  “Here on the launch site, we kneel at the altar of a magnificent dream, our grand plan to sow the human species across the virgin worlds of other suns, even those in distant galaxies. If we succeed, our race may live forever. Ultimately, we may rule the universe! Our sacrifice has been enormous, in resources depleted, in herculean effort, in precious human lives. Through twenty years of devotion to that noble cause, we have offered almost a hundred of these splendid wavecraft and ten thousand daring volunteers.

  “If we fail …”

  His words were drowned by the roar of trucks lumbering off the site, loaded with salvaged steel from dismantled cranes and gantries. With a shrug of exasperation, he stood waiting for them to pass.

  “Alt just told us that,” Jane Blake murmured to the man beside her. “In plainer English.”

  Perhaps he heard her. Flushing, he concluded the briefing and climbed the ramp to follow Alt aboard Ninety-nine. The jet waited for him on the airstrip. The driver sat sweating in the Jeep, but Director Stecker never came off the ship.

  It was Captain Alt who finally emerged, tight-lipped and looking dazed. His shaking hand clutched a crumpled envelope. Without another word to anybody else, he had the driver take him to the jet.

  The media departed. Security closed the gates, cleared the area, and broadcast warnings of the takeoff flash. The Fairshare protesters piled their tents and sleeping bags into their ancient vans and drove away. Launch crews reported to their work stations in the underground bunkers. Sirens hooted, diesels droned, and the ship sank smoothly into the launch pit.

  Mort Nunin had called the launch complex a few hours before the scheduled takeoff, asking for Captain Alt. He gave no name; the matter was confidential. The operator told him that Alt was no longer available, and put him through to First Officer Glengarth.

  “I’m calling as a friend of the Mission,” he said. “I have information that a Fairshare agent is aboard Ninety-nine, planning mischief.”

  “Can you identify the agent?”

  “He’s employed by Aaron Zeeland. I didn’t learn the name. I’m informed, however, that Zeeland is planning a coup, something dramatic enough to finish the Mission forever.”

  Nunin hung up. Glengarth called the captain’s cabin and had to wait half a minute before he heard the rusty growl of Jake Hinch, the man who had come aboard with Stecker. Hinch listened, made him wait again, and finally snarled, “So what?”

  “A question for Captain Stecker,” he said. “You can tell him we’ve always had crank threats. There have been a few efforts at actual sabotage. We should not discount the danger, but we have several hours to search and secure the ship before our scheduled takeoff. We can postpone the takeoff until that’s complete. Or we can ignore the threat and continue the countdown. I’m waiting for a decision.”

  Waiting, he heard heated voices.

  “Stecker says it’s up to you,” Hinch rasped at last. “He doesn’t give a damn.”

  Four

  A board Ninety-nine, they found themselves in a room shaped like a generous slice of pie. Kip couldn’t help staring at the big black woman sitting at the desk. She wore Mission gold-and-green, and her head was shaved bare.

  “Welcome aboard, Dr. Virili.”

  She
stood up to open their bags and took Kip’s Game Box.

  “Why?” he protested. “It’s in my mass allowance. And it’s mine.”

  “But on the prohibited list.” She turned, explaining to Rima. “Electronic devices are possible hazards. They could create anomalous eddies in the conversion field.”

  She promised to return it after the flight and told them how to find their cabin.

  “Be there when we take off.” Her voice was deep for a woman, and she spoke louder to impress the command on Kip. “Get into your berths when you hear the countdown beginning. Secure your restraints. Watch the screen for information. You’ll probably hear a loud sound at takeoff, and see a bright flash. Afterward, you should feel a sudden loss of weight.”

  Uneasily, Day looked up at her mother. “Are we going far?”

  “Far.” The woman nodded when Rima appealed to her. “Very far.”

  “I had to leave Me Me.” Day’s chin trembled. “Can I come back for her?”

  “You won’t—” The woman caught herself. “You need these.”

  She gave them each a black blindfold, a paper bag, a tiny envelope.

  “Ear plugs,” she said. “Insert them after the countdown begins. Cover your eyes. Keep the sick bags ready, just in case.” She asked Kip, “Understand?”

  “I won’t be sick,” he told her. “But I’ve got a question. If nobody ever came back, how do you know about the boom and the flash?”

  “We don’t. Not exactly.” She turned again to Rima. “What we do know is what we observe at every launch. Wave conversion does happen. We expect reconversion to occur when we enter an adequate gravity field.”

  Kip asked, “What’s a gravity field?”

  “The pull of some massive object. A sun like ours, if we’re lucky. We hope to be stopped a safe distance out, with a friendly planet in rocket range.”

  “Lucky?” He blinked at her. “You don’t know?”

  “Not for sure. That’s the thrill of it.” He wasn’t sure about the thrill. “We’ll probably come out in free fall, but of course we don’t really know how wave flight feels. Or even if there’s time in flight to feel anything.”

  “I see.” He nodded. “A risk we take.”

  “True.” She turned to Rima. “If you like, Dr. Virili, you can ask the medics for sedatives—”

  “No sedative,” Kip said. “Whatever happens, I want to be awake.”

  Wave conversion and reconversion were hard to understand, but he forgot them as they explored the ship. It was like a round tower with a fast elevator that ran up the center. The landings were small round rooms with many doors. One door on Deck G let them into Cabin G-9, which was theirs.

  It was shaped like a very stingy slice of pie. Berths and seats and a little table folded out of the walls. There was a bathroom across the wider end. The big holoscreen on the wall was like a window that kept moving to let them see the snow on the mountains and the trucks and cranes driving off the site and even the ship itself as it looked to a holocam in a bunker where the launch crew was waiting.

  “Hear this!” Something chimed and a sudden loud voice boomed from nowhere. “Now hear this!”

  The screen lit to show a round control room walled with gray-cased consoles and flickering monitors. A stern-faced man in a uniform cap looked out of the screen.

  “First Officer Glengarth speaking, to report a change of command. Captain Alt has been replaced by Captain Herman Stecker, who will address you now.”

  He stiffened to salute and vanished from the screen.

  “A most regrettable event.” Stecker had changed out of his crimson mods into official green-and-gold, and Kip heard no regret in his voice. “Captain Alt has been disabled by a sudden unexpected illness. He was rushed back to a Las Cruces hospital for examination.”

  “Gerald wasn’t sick at all,” Rima whispered. “Not when we saw him.”

  “No diagnosis has been reported, but our takeoff will not be delayed.” Stecker’s brisk voice lifted. “I’ve assumed command. Final preflight inspection is now complete. We’re entering takeoff mode. Wave conversion will take place as scheduled.”

  His image vanished.

  “Gerald Alt was my father’s best friend.” Rima sat staring at the empty screen. “He used to stay with us when he was home from the Moon.” Kip saw her face go hard. “I can’t believe he’s sick.”

  She said they should stay in the cabin, but takeoff was still hours away. Kip felt bored, longing to be with his friends beyond the Game Gate, Captain Cometeer and the Legion of the Lost, who fought alien enemies on the hostile worlds of the Purple Sun. When he begged, she said he might go out to look the ship over if he kept out of everybody’s way.

  He stayed in the elevator on the lower decks, where busy men were shouting orders or rushing to obey, strange machines were drumming, freight dollies rolling out of the service shaft, a drill whining somewhere, somebody hammering metal. The higher decks were almost silent. He looked into the galley and the dining room. Vacant now, they were all bright white porcelain and shining metal, no food in sight.

  The gym on the deck above stank faintly of cleaning chemicals and stale sweat It was a huge dim space where treadmills and squirrel cages loomed like the monsters of the worlds beyond the Gate. About to leave, he heard a crash and a jangle of falling glass, and saw a man opening a door under a red-glowing sign that said Escape.

  “Hola.” The man had seen him. “Qué tal?”

  He wondered if he should run, but the man wore a workman’s blue coveralls instead of a uniform, and he seemed more anxious than angry.

  “Bien.” He decided to try his Spanish. “Cóm’ está?”

  “My name is Carlos.” The man came halfway back across the room. His voice was quick and hushed. “I conceal myself because I wish to ride the ship. I do no harm. Except to break the glass.”

  “I’m Kip.”

  “Por favor!” The man spread his hands, and Kip saw that one was dripping blood. “Please! If you will not report me.” The man needed to shave and wash his face. The coveralls were soiled with grease and paint. Perhaps he ought to be reported. Yet he had nice eyes, and the wounded hand needed a bandage.

  “Okay,” Kip decided. “They say the flight is risky. If you don’t care, I won’t talk.”

  “Amigo mío!” The man put out his hand, saw the blood, and drew it back. “If you speak to nobody, gracias!”

  “Good luck!” Kip told him. “Buena suerte!”

  With a quick look around the gym, the man stooped to gather up the biggest pieces of glass and stepped back through the door. The space beyond was tiny, nearly filled with tanks marked oxygen and a yellow space suit. The door shut with a hollow thunk.

  Wondering about Carlos and hoping now that nobody found him, Kip went back to the elevator. It stopped outside a door marked COMPUTER AND COMMUNICATION. The door didn’t open. He went up to another deck and found an impatient man in Mission uniform scowling at him from a screen under a lens he hadn’t seen. The man advised him sharply to get back where he belonged. In their own cabin, he found Day asleep in her berth. His mother sat watching the holoscreen. She turned the volume down to ask if he was okay.

  “I guess.” He hesitated. “But if you think Mr. Stecker lied about Captain Alt—”

  He stopped when he saw the tightness on her face.

  “I don’t know.” Her voice dropped. “No matter how it happened, he’s the captain now. We have to respect him. But we don’t have to like him.”

  He wanted to talk about Carlos, but he had his promise to keep.

  “I don’t understand why we came.” He knew the words might hurt her, but he couldn’t stop wondering. “If we don’t know where the ship will go, or anything except that we can’t ever come back, the whole business seems—well, pretty risky.”

  “It is.” He saw her bite her lip. “But really, Kip, the way things were, I didn’t see much choice.”

  He waited, feeling sorry he had spoken, till she turned th
e holo off.

  “Your father.” She looked down to pat Day and sat for a moment staring at nothing before she went on. “I’ve never told you much about him. Maybe I can say more, now that we’re leaving Earth and all the past behind. If you want to know.”

  “Please.” The moment was suddenly important. “You did say he went out on Seventy-nine. I’ve always wondered why.”

  “For a long time I couldn’t bear to talk about him. Or even think about him.” Her voice was slow, and her face looked older than she was. “I loved him once. I never wanted you and Day to hate him. And I guess he did try to treat us right, at least almost till the end.”

  Day had made a little whimper in her sleep. Rima stopped to pull the sheet higher over her and then sat frowning at the blank holoscreen as if she had forgotten him.

  “My father?”

  “I’m sorry.” She shrugged to shake her sadness off. “We were both very young. New to the Mission. Planting mankind in far-off galaxies seemed a very noble thing. We planned to go out together, but I’d trained as a terraformer and bioengineer. He became chief of a launch crew. For a long time we were needed here. I worked with the engineers designing special gear that might be needed on different planets. Later, when those projects were finished and slots did open, you were four and Day was on the way. The medics said I should wait for her. Your father went out alone.”

  Still unhappy about it, she said no more till he asked, “Why?”

  She reached to smooth Day’s hair.

  “Another woman.” Her face went harder for a moment, but then she shrugged and looked past him, seeing the woman in her mind. “Holly Horn. Blond and very bright. A quantum technician. I’d roomed with her at Tech. We were friends. Or had been.” Her lip twisted and quivered. “Of course she said she was sorry. Your father said he felt terrible. Maybe he really did. They left what money they had in a trust fund to help with your support. I always tried to forgive them, but—”

  Her voice went sharp and stopped, but in a moment she went on more quietly.