by Larry Niven
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At the Core
by Larry Niven
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Science Fiction
* * *
Fictionwise, Inc.
www.fictionwise.com
Copyright ©1966 by Larry Niven
First published in IF, November 1966
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* * *
I
I couldn't decide whether to call it a painting, a relief mural, a sculpture, or a hash; but it was the prize exhibit in the Art Section of the Institute of Knowledge on Jinx. The Kdatlyno must have strange eyes, I thought. My own were watering. The longer I looked at “FTLSPACE,” the more blurred it got.
I'd tentatively decided that it was supposed to look blurred when a set of toothy jaws clamped gently on my arm. I jumped a foot in the air. A soft, thrilling contralto voice said, “Beowulf Shaeffer, you are a spendthrift."
That voice would have made a singer's fortune. And I thought I recognized it—but it couldn't be; that one was on We Made It, light-years distant. I turned.
The puppeteer had released my arm. It went on: “And what do you think of Hrodenu?"
“He's ruining my eyes."
“The Kdatlyno are blind to all but radar. ‘FTLSPACE’ is not meant to be seen but to be touched. Run your tongue over it."
“My tongue? No, thanks.” I tried running my hand over it. If you want to know what it felt like, hop a ship for Jinx; the thing's still there.
The puppeteer cocked its head dubiously. “I'm sure your tongue is more sensitive. No guards are nearby."
“Forget it. You know, you sound just like the regional president of General Products on We Made It."
“It was he who sent me your dossier, Beowulf Shaeffer. No doubt we had the same English teacher. I am the regional president on Jinx, as you no doubt recognized from my mane."
Well, not quite. The auburn mop over the brain case between the two necks is supposed to show caste once you learn to discount variations of mere style. To do that, you have to be a puppeteer. Instead of admitting my ignorance, I asked, “Did that dossier say I was a spendthrift?"
“You have spent more than a million stars in the past four years."
“And loved it."
“Yes. You will shortly be in debt again. Have you thought of doing more writing? I admired your article on the neutron star BVS-1. ‘The pointy bottom of a gravity well ...’ ‘Blue starlight fell on me like intangible sleet ...’ Lovely."
“Thanks. It paid well, too. But I'm mainly a spaceship pilot."
“It is fortunate, our meeting here. I had thought of having you found. Do you wish a job?"
That was a loaded question. The last and only time I took a job from a puppeteer, the puppeteer blackmailed me into it, knowing it would probably kill me. It almost did. I didn't hold that against the regional president of We Made It, but to let them have another crack at me—? “I'll give you a conditional ‘Maybe.’ Do you have the idea I'm a professional suicide pilot?"
“Not at all. If I show details, do you agree that the information shall be confidential?"
“I do,” I said formally, knowing it would commit me. A verbal contract is as binding as the tape it's recorded on.
“Good. Come.” He pranced toward a transfer booth.
* * * *
The transfer booth let us out somewhere in Jinx's vacuum regions. It was night. High in the sky, Sirius B was a painfully bright pinpoint casting vivid blue moonlight on a ragged lunar landscape. I looked up and didn't see Binary, Jinx's bloated orange companion planet, so we must have been in the Farside End.
But there was something hanging over us.
A No. 4 General Products hull is a transparent sphere a thousand-odd feet in diameter. No bigger ship has been built anywhere in the known galaxy. It takes a government to buy one, and they are used for colonization projects only. But this one could never have been so used; it was all machinery. Our transfer booth stood between two of the landing legs, so that the swelling flank of the ship looked down on us as an owl looks down at a mouse. An access tube ran through vacuum from the booth to the airlock.
I said, “Does General Products build complete spacecraft nowadays?"
“We are thinking of branching out. But there are problems."
From the viewpoint of the puppeteer-owned company, it must have seemed high time. General Products makes the hulls for ninety-five percent of all ships in space, mainly because nobody else knows how to build an indestructible hull. But they'd made a bad start with this ship. The only room I could see for crew, cargo, or passengers was a few cubic yards of empty space right at the bottom, just above the airlock, and just big enough for a pilot.
“You'd have a hard time selling that,” I said.
“True. Do you notice anything else?"
“Well...” The hardware that filled the transparent hull was very tightly packed. The effect was as if a race of ten-mile-tall giants had striven to achieve miniaturization. I saw no sign of access tubes; hence there could be no in-space repairs. Four reaction motors poked their appropriately huge nostrils through the hull, angled outward from the bottom. No small attitude jets; hence, oversized gyros inside. Otherwise ... “Most of it looks like hyperdrive motors. But that's silly. Unless you've thought of a good reason for moving moons around?"
“At one time you were a commercial pilot for Nakamura Lines. How long was the run from Jinx to We Made It?"
“Twelve days if nothing broke down.” Just long enough to get to know the prettiest passenger aboard, while the autopilot did everything for me but wear my uniform.
“Sirius to Procyon is a distance of four light-years. Our ship would make the trip in five minutes."
“You've lost your mind."
“No."
But that was almost a light-year per minute! I couldn't visualize it. Then suddenly I did visualize it, and my mouth fell open, for what I saw was the galaxy opening before me. We know so little beyond our own small neighborhood of the galaxy. But with a ship like that—!
“That's goddam fast."
“As you say. But the equipment is bulky, as you note. It cost seven billion stars to build that ship, discounting centuries of research, but it will only move one man. As is, the ship is a failure. Shall we go inside?"
II
The lifesystem was two circular rooms, one above the other, with a small airlock to one side. The lower room was the control room, with banks of switches and dials and blinking lights dominated by a huge spherical mass pointer. The upper room was bare walls, transparent, through which I could see air- and food-producing equipment.
“This will be the relaxroom,” said the puppeteer. “We decided to let the pilot decorate it himself."
“Why me?"
“Let me further explain the problem.” The puppeteer began to pace the floor. I hunkered down against the wall and watched. Watching a puppeteer move is a pleasure. Even in Jinx's gravity the deerlike body seemed weightless, the tiny hooves tapping the floor at random. “The human sphere of colonization is some thirty light-years across, is it not?"
“Maximum. It's not exactly a sphere—"
“The puppeteer region is much smaller. The Kdatlyno sphere is half the size of yours, and the Kzinti is fractionally larger. These are the important space-traveling species. We must discount the Outsiders since they do not use inner planets. Some spheres c
oincide, naturally. Travel from one sphere to another is nearly nil except for ourselves, since our sphere of influence extends to all who buy our hulls. But add all these regions, and you have a region sixty light-years across. This ship could cross it in seventy-five minutes. Allow six hours for takeoff and six for landing, assuming no traffic snarls near the world of destination, and we have a ship which can go anywhere in thirteen hours but nowhere in less than twelve, carrying one pilot and no cargo, costing seven billion stars."
“How about exploration?"
“We puppeteers have no taste for abstract knowledge. And how should we explore?” Meaning that whatever race flew the ship would gain the advantages thereby. A puppeteer wouldn't risk his necks by flying it himself. “What we need is a great deal of money and a gathering of intelligences, to design something which may go slower but must be less bulky. General Products does not wish to spend so much on something that may fail. We will require the best minds of each sentient species and the richest investors. Beowulf Shaeffer, we need to attract attention."
“A publicity stunt?"
“Yes. We wish to send a pilot to the center of the galaxy and back."
“Ye ... gods! Will it go that fast?"
“It would require some twenty-five days to reach the center and an equal time to return. You can see the reasoning behind—"
“It's perfect. You don't need to spell it out. Why me?"
“We wish you to make the trip and then write of it. I have a list of pilots who write. Those I have approached have been reluctant. They say that writing on the ground is safer than testing unknown ships. I follow their reasoning."
“Me too."
“Will you go?"
“What am I offered?"
“One hundred thousand stars for the trip. Fifty thousand to write the story, in addition to what you sell it for."
“Sold."
* * * *
From then on, my only worry was that my new boss would find out that someone had ghost-written that neutron star article.
Oh, I wondered at first why General Products was willing to trust me. The first time I worked for them I tried to steal their ship, for reasons which seemed good at the time. But the ship I now called Long Shot really wasn't worth stealing. Any potential buyer would know it was hot; and what good would it be to him? Long Shot could have explored a globular cluster; but her only other use was publicity.
Sending her to the Core was a masterpiece of promotion.
Look: It was twelve days from We Made It to Jinx by conventional craft, and twelve hours by Long Shot. What's the difference? You spent twelve years saving for the trip. But the Core! Ignoring refueling and reprovisioning problems, my old ship could have reached the galaxy's core in three hundred years. No known species had ever seen the Core! It hid behind layer on layer of tenuous gas and dust clouds. You can find libraries of literature on those central stars, but they all consist of generalities and educated guesses based on observation of other galaxies, like Andromeda.
Three centuries dropped to less than a month! There's something anyone can grasp. And with pictures!
The lifesystem was finished in a couple of weeks. I had them leave the control-room walls transparent and paint the relaxroom solid blue, no windows. When they finished, I had entertainment tapes and everything it takes to keep a man sane for seven weeks in a room the size of a large closet.
On the last day the puppeteer and I spoke the final version of my contract. I had four months to reach the galaxy's center and return. The outside cameras would run constantly; I was not to interfere with them. If the ship suffered a mechanical failure, I could return before reaching the center; otherwise, no. There were penalties. I took a copy of the tape to leave with a lawyer.
“There is a thing you should know,” the puppeteer said afterward. “The direction of thrust opposes the direction of hyperdrive."
“I don't get it."
The puppeteer groped for words. “If you turned on the reaction motors and the hyperdrive together, the flames would precede your ship through hyperspace."
I got the picture then. Ass backward into the unknown. With the control room at the ship's bottom, it made sense. To a puppeteer, it made sense.
III
And I was off.
I went up under two standard gees because I like my comfort. For twelve hours I used only the reaction motors. It wouldn't do to be too deep in a gravity well when I used a hyperdrive, especially an experimental one. Pilots who do that never leave hyperspace. The relaxroom kept me entertained until the bell rang. I slipped down to the control room, netted myself down against free fall, turned off the motors, rubbed my hands briskly together, and turned on the hyperdrive.
It wasn't quite as I'd expected.
I couldn't see out, of course. When the hyperdrive goes on, it's like your blind spot expanding to take in all the windows. It's not just that you don't see anything; you forget that there's anything to see. If there's a window between the kitchen control bank and your print of Dali's “Spain,” your eye and mind will put the picture right next to the kitchen bank, obliterating the space between. It takes getting used to, in fact it has driven people insane, but that wasn't what bothered me. I've spent thousands of man-hours in hyperspace. I kept my eye on the mass pointer.
The mass pointer is a big transparent sphere with a number of blue lines radiating from the center. The direction of the line is the direction of a star; its length shows the star's mass. We wouldn't need pilots if the mass pointer could be hooked into an autopilot, but it can't. Dependable as it is, accurate as it is, the mass pointer is a psionic device. It needs a mind to work it. I'd been using mass pointers for so long that those lines were like real stars.
A star came toward me, and I dodged around it. I thought that another line that didn't point quite straight ahead was long enough to show dangerous mass, so I dodged. That put a blue dwarf right in front of me. I shifted fast and looked for a throttle. I wanted to slow down.
I wanted to slow down.
Of course there was no throttle. Part of the puppeteer research project would be designing a throttle. A long fuzzy line reached for me: a protosun....
Put it this way: Imagine one of Earth's freeways. You must have seen pictures of them from space, a tangle of twisting concrete ribbons, empty and abandoned but never torn down. Some lie broken; others are covered with houses. People use the later rubberized ones for horseback riding. Imagine the way one of these must have looked about six o'clock on a week night in, say, nineteen seventy. Groundcars from end to end.
Now, let's take all those cars and remove the brakes. Further, let's put governors on the accelerators, so that the maximum speeds are between sixty and seventy miles per hour, not all the same. Let something go wrong with all the governors at once, so that the maximum speed also becomes the minimum. You'll begin to see signs of panic.
Ready? Okay. Get a radar installed in your car, paint your windshield and windows jet black, and get out on that freeway.
It was like that.
* * * *
It didn't seem so bad at first. The stars kept coming at me, and I kept dodging, and after a while it settled down to a kind of routine. From experience I could tell at a glance whether a star was heavy enough and close enough to wreck me. But in Nakamura Lines I'd only had to take that glance every six hours or so. Here I didn't dare look away. As I grew tired, the near-misses came closer and closer. After three hours of it I had to drop out.
The stars had a subtly unfamiliar look. With a sudden jar I realized that I was entirely out of known space. Sirius, Antares—I'd never recognize them from here; I wasn't even sure they were visible. I shook it off and called home.
“Long Shot calling General Products, Long Shot calling—"
“Beowulf Shaeffer?"
“Have I ever told you what a lovely, sexy voice you have?"
“No. Is everything going well?"
“I'm afraid not. In fact, I'm not going to make it."
A pause. “Why not?"
“I can't keep dodging these stars forever. One of them's going to get me if I keep on much longer. The ship's just too goddam fast."
“Yes. We must design a slower ship."
“I hate to give up that good pay, but my eyes feel like peeled onions. I ache all over. I'm turning back."
“Shall I play your contract for you?"
“No. Why?"
“Your only legal reason for returning is a mechanical failure. Otherwise you forfeit twice your pay."
I said, “Mechanical failure?” There was a tool box somewhere in the ship, with a hammer in it....
“I did not mention it before, since it did not seem polite, but two of the cameras are in the lifesystem. We had thought to use films of you for purposes of publicity, but—"
“I see. Tell me one thing, just one thing. When the regional president of We Made It sent you my name, did he mention that I'd discovered your planet has no moon?"
“Yes, he did mention that matter. You accepted one million stars for your silence. He naturally has a recording of the bargain."
“I see.” So that's why they'd picked Beowulf Shaeffer, well-known author. “The trip'll take longer than I thought."
“You must pay a penalty for every extra day over four months. Two thousand stars per day late."
“Your voice has acquired an unpleasant grating sound. Good-bye."
* * * *
I went on in. Every hour I shifted to normal space for a ten-minute coffee break. I dropped out for meals, and I dropped out for sleep. Twelve hours per ship's day I spent traveling, and twelve trying to recover. It was a losing battle.
By the end of day two I knew I wasn't going to make the four-month limit. I might do it in six months, forfeiting one hundred and twenty thousand stars, leaving me almost where I started. Serve me right for trusting a puppeteer!
Stars were all around me, shining through the floor and between the banked instruments. I sucked coffee, trying not to think. The milky way shone ghostly pale between my feet. The stars were thick now; they'd get thicker as I approached the Core, until finally one got me.
