Everyone else knew what they were seeing, but were too shocked to answer right away. Finally Adamarus spoke up. “Sir, what you are seeing is what remains of the Loud’s star…it is exploding.”
Frowning deeply, the President asked, “How big is the explosion?”
Adamarus tore his eyes from the viewer and looked at Wicker, “Every planet in their system has been vaporized.” The President’s mouth fell open and his eyes returned to the viewer.
Leewood spoke in a hushed voice, “How can this be possible? Their star was nowhere near its ending stage.” As soon as he said this, realization passed across his hard features, quickly followed by incredulity, “Are we to believe that the aliens who attacked somehow did this?”
No one had an answer.
The President was leaning forward now. Slowly and nervously his eyes turned back to Adamarus. “So, Captain Maximus, this is what the Loud wanted us to see.”
Adamarus’ face was pale now, “Actually…no…I’m afraid it is not.” Everyone turned from the screen and looked at Adamarus. “You see, as Bugs reminded me, in this sector of space, our star system is by far the ‘nosiest’ thing around. It’s our video and radio broadcasts that we’ve been sending out for…hundreds of years. We stick out like a sore thumb. This was why the Loud knew about us and came here.” Adamarus cleared his throat again. Everyone’s mouth was falling open as it dawned on each of them where this was going. “Bugs wanted us looking towards their home star in order to watch for…a ship.” The silence in the room was complete. “You see…it fears that…the alien will come here next.”
No one knew what to say and everyone was thinking the same thing—if this alien had destroyed the Loud who were a thousand years more advanced…then what chance did they have if this alien decided to attack them?
It was the President who first recovered enough to speak and he went right to the next logical line of inquiry. “Do we know why this alien species attacked the Loud?” His voice sounded hoarse.
Adamarus blinked. His brow furrowed. “No, the Loud had no idea why they were attacked.”
The President looked at him for a moment, then nodded slightly. “Well,” he said softly, “we need to know a whole lot more, Captain Maximus.” The President leaned forward. Slowly his right hand started doing that twirling thing with his pen that had become his trademark. “Yes,” he said almost to himself, “a whole lot more. And also…if the Loud were aware of this alien race before the attack, what do they know about it? Where do they come from?” The pen was twirling around a little faster now. “Can we negotiate with them? Also…when they attacked the Loud, how many ships did they have, what kind of weapons…and how did the Loud attempt to resist?” The President turned to Banner, “We will need you to keep a close eye out for any ships approaching us.”
“But that’s…crazy sir,” Banner blurted out. “Excuse me, but no one could see ships at this distance no matter how many or how large they might be!”
Adamarus turned to him, “Actually, Bugs was quite clear about it being only one ship. And, I said the same thing to Bugs. Bugs said that we’d have no problem seeing this ship and determining if it were headed this way.”
Banner shook his head confused, “Did the Loud say why we’d have no trouble seeing it?”
Adamarus shook his head, “I’m sorry, Bugs was not functioning too well and didn’t elaborate.”
The President looked at Adamarus and asked, “Is there anything else?” Adamarus shook his head and Wicker stopped twirling the pen and set it on the desk – his way of signaling that the meeting was coming to an end. “Adamarus, you need to talk to Bugs again as soon as possible and get more answers. In fact, Bugs needs to meet with all of us.”
---
The Loud were still not responding to hails. Not knowing what else to do, Adamarus went back to the listening chamber and waited, hoping his presence would be noticed and that Bugs would come out. However, after over an hour, he realized that this wasn’t working. As time went on he started getting angry.
Bugs comes out and tells them that an alien race has attacked its solar system and killed every Loud, then says this hostile alien race may be coming here, and then…he won’t say any more?
Adamarus looked around the room. He knew that the entire back wall opened somehow, but he could see no way to open it from inside the room. Even if he somehow got it open, the atmosphere in the dome was too thin and too cold—he’d have to have an environmental suit to survive.
The noise of the soundproof door opening interrupted his thoughts. Leewood peeked in. “No luck?”
Adamarus shook his head, “No.” Then Adamarus saw something in Leewood’s expression. “What?” he asked.
“Dr. Banner has found something with the tachyon scope,” Leewood said, “and it’s headed this way.”
Chapter Eleven – Event Horizon
“The Second Cosmic Law: If there is more than one state, then the number of states must be infinite.”
The Loud Named Bugs
Opening Speech, 23rd Amular Symposium on Quantum Physics
Source: The Archive
Every teleconferencing screen in the situation room was turned on and more screens had been brought in and set up. At least a half-dozen more people were teleconferencing in now. Adamarus recognized some of them as the President’s senior staff. Others were with the military. Everyone was looking at the green images displayed on the larger screen centered on the back wall – the live images from the orbital tachyon scope.
Banner’s image was now on a separate monitor so that he could be seen at the same time as the tachyon images. Seeing Leewood returning with Adamarus, Banner said, “Captain Maximus, I’m glad you’re back. We’ve…ah…found something.”
“So I heard. Show me,” Adamarus ordered.
“While we were studying the tachyon images of the explosion, we noticed this.” He reached forward and adjusted something out of view. On the large monitor, a red square appeared, surrounding a tiny darker area near the center of the explosion. Then the outlined section expanded until it filled the screen.
Adamarus walked up to the screen and leaned forward for a better view. The dark area had resolved into an area whose edges were hard to define. It looked like something was distorting and sucking the background image of the explosion towards a central point.
“I’m going to apply a filter to clear up the image,” Banner said. After a moment, the image changed colors. The green background turned a deep blue, and what had been the darker circular smear now looked like a small lens, was distorting the tachyon image, pulling it inward towards a tiny black pinpoint at the center.
Harrington had arrived while Banner and Adamarus had been talking. She had managed to grab a shower and a change of clothes. She stepped up beside Adamarus looking at the object on the screen, “So this…distortion is the object that you say is headed toward us at light speed?”
“Yes…and no. Not exactly,” Banner said slowly. “First…nothing other than a couple of sub-atomic particles can travel ‘at’ the speed of light. But, this,” a black pointer had entered the screen and it pointed at the black pinpoint, “is traveling at roughly 99.999972% the speed of light and that’s about as close as you can get. Also, assuming this thing came from the Loud’s star system, how it managed to get up to that speed so quickly is a complete mystery.”
“And second?” Adamarus prompted.
“Second, what we’re seeing here is not really an object, but rather the effects of an object. The distortion is tachyons being pulled towards the black pinpoint. This pinpoint is called an ‘event horizon’ and it’s the point surrounding the actual object where all things are pulled back by the gravity from the object. The gravity is so strong that nothing can escape it…not even light…not even tachyons. Event horizons can only be generated by black holes.”
Adamarus cleared his throat, “So we’re looking at a black hole?”
“It has to be,” Banner answered.
<
br /> Adamarus looked at it thoughtfully. “As an object approaches the speed of light, its mass increases and approaches infinity. Could a ship get so close to light speed that the gravity from its increased mass would form an event horizon?”
Banner shook his head, “We discussed that. We’re pretty sure that the object would need to already have the event horizon – remember, the Loud ships travel almost as fast and we know from discussions with them that no event horizon forms around their ships.”
“So it’s not a ship,” Harrington said.
Banner rubbed his forehead with one hand. “Oh, it’s a ship alright. It’s headed right towards us at almost the speed of light, and what’s more is that it’s slowing and doing so on a very precise deceleration curve. No natural object could do that. So, it has to be a ship…and a black hole, too. Most likely a ship powered by a black hole.”
This statement sent ripples of conversation through the assembly. After a moment, Adamarus asked a question that quickly silenced the room. “Alright,” he said with great resignation, “how long until it gets here?”
Banner now brought his other hand up and rubbed his temples with both hands. “Data is still coming in, but our best estimate right now—based on that deceleration curve I mentioned – 200 years…give or take one or two months. Its current distance from us is 111.682 light years. All of these numbers could change, but probably not by very much.”
“The Loud ships make better time than that,” President Wicker noted. “Only takes them about 150 years to travel that distance, as I recall.”
Banner nodded but said, “Yes, but right now this object is traveling faster than the Loud’s interstellar Umbrella ship’s top speed. Also, the object must have climbed to that speed much faster than the Loud’s ships can…based on our current understanding of Loud ship capabilities anyway.” Banner was suddenly looking unsettled. He ran a hand through his hair. “Anyway, we think that the object ‘could’ get here much faster…if it wanted to. This deceleration curve we’re seeing…it is simply the most efficient way to get here. In fact, it is unbelievably perfect in that regard.” Banner stared at the object on the screen for a moment then said, “It, whatever it is and despite appearances, just doesn’t seem to be in any particular hurry.”
Adamarus stared at Banner. The way he was acting gave Adamarus a strange feeling. Clearly all of this was overwhelming and certainly severe enough to rattle anyone. Still Banner looked like he was spooked by something else. Hell, the man looked pale and he was sweating.
Adamarus looked back at the image from the tachyon scope…the almost invisible black pinpoint surrounded by a large area of distortion…behind it, extending off screen at this magnification, was the explosion tinted deep blue by the filter.
It came to him. Banner had said that nothing could be detected at this distance. “Dr. Banner, how large is this event horizon?”
Banner removed his glasses and turned and looked off screen. The assembly waited for an answer. The silence stretched on. Banner continued to look at something off to the side.
“Dr. Banner,” President Wicker said, “are you all right?”
Banner jumped a little and then turned to the President.
Suddenly the meeting, the screens with the faces on them, the tachyon display…it all seemed surreal to Adamarus. The way Banner was acting was deeply disturbing.
At last Banner took a deep breath and spoke. “Sorry. Our best estimate places the event horizon’s diameter at about…,” his mouth opened and closed a couple of times but…nothing came out. He cleared his throat, tried again, “a…a diameter of…ninety million miles.”
One person whistled while a couple of others laughed nervously—others looked blank. Adamarus was expecting something extraordinary, but this figure caught him completely off guard. He felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. “That’s…not possible,” he heard himself say. His mind raced…that was unbelievably large. He tried to compare it to something…his mind quickly rejecting one thing after another…their system’s gas giants, their sun, other stars--red giants were that large. The distance to the sun…that was it. The average distance between Amular and its sun was eight - seven million miles…very close.
The human mind could not comprehend something that large. There was nothing in man’s direct experience to compare it to. It was like saying that their entire world would fit into the sun over a million times – although true, it simply could not be imagined. This thing made the sun look like a marble!
Adamarus noticed his hands were shaking and put them in his pockets. Yes, he thought, having something that big, traveling at almost the speed of light, coming directly at you…that was a bit overwhelming. He looked around the room and at the monitors – the expressions he saw were all the same…stunned…speechless.
Finally, Adamarus spoke, “Dr. Banner, that’s larger than the distance between Amular and the sun! Are you certain? Can you…recheck your figures?”
Banner made a helpless gesture, “Captain, we’ve been re-checking that figure continuously every five seconds. That makes the black hole almost as large as we believe the black hole at the center of our galaxy is.”
A small man wearing a military uniform raised his hand for attention and then asked in a lazy southern accent, “Well, let’s talk about the object itself, the thing hiding inside that…you called it an event horizon, yes? I mean…just how big a boy is it?”
The room erupted in nervous laughter at this. It was a bit too close to hysterical, but it was laughter all the same.
Banner cleared his throat again, there was even a slight smile on his face, “General Burnwall, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Well, what you’re talking about – the object inside a black hole– it’s called a singularity, and we’re not really sure since no one has ever seen one. Most theories say that a singularity, although it has infinite density, will have zero volume. Others believe…”
General Burnwall interrupted, “No volume you say? You mean it takes up…no space…has no size?”
“Exactly,” Banner answered. “However, other theories say that the singularity would have an electrical charge which would cause it to spin so fast that centrifugal force would stretch it into a donut shape. However, the donut, which could have the diameter of…perhaps our small moon, would be one-dimensional and therefore still have no volume. But understand, no one really knows for sure.”
“And this is the ship?” Burnwall asked.
Several seconds went by before Banner replied. “Probably not. But understand, we do not know how a ship could exist within an event horizon or how it could ever escape one.”
“These are questions we should ask the Loud,” someone else said.
Adamarus spoke up, “Regardless, the general has a point. There’s a ship in all of that somewhere and that’s what we need to worry about. And I don’t think it matters how big it is.” He looked back at the black sphere. “We need to talk to Bugs again.”
Chapter Twelve – Forced Entry
“...long ago we had medicine men and shamans. Later still, for both of us, came the alchemists who tried to change one metal into another. These were replaced by your present day scientists who gain knowledge through the scientific method. Eight hundred years ago, we too had our scientists…but in the fullness of time, our scientists were also replaced by...
The Loud Named Bugs
Opening Speech, 23rd Amular Symposium on Quantum Physics
Source: The Archive
Adamarus, Leewood and Harrington walked quickly towards the soundproof hatch of the listening chamber. Adamarus said in a shaky but determined voice, “We must bring Bugs out and get more information.”
Leewood looked over at Adamarus and shook his head, “Good luck. Before you agreed to meet with them, we had tried just about e
verything to get a response from that ship…” He glanced over at Harrington, “Harrington remembers…and I’ll tell you, some of it was pretty far outside the box—none of it worked.”
They reached the soundproof hatch – as always, two guards stood on either side of it. Adamarus turned to Leewood and Harrington, “I want to break into the dome and then break through the door that leads to their ship.”
Harrington and Leewood exchanged glances. “Well,” Harrington said, “we didn’t try that one.”
Adamarus continued, “I’ll need an e-suit and something to cut through the floor of the room and the door leading to their ship.”
Leewood added, “The environmental suit we can get, but we’ll also need some sort of airlock.”
The guards were listening and looking at each other, clearly getting nervous. They reported to a duty officer, and the duty officer reported to the section chief, and so on up the chain of command, but they did not know that Commander Leewood, his Presidential Authority increasing his effective rank, was at the top of that chain. They both moved their shotguns to the ready position, “Sir, I must advise you that any attempt to damage or…”
Leewood immediately tuned them out, backed away and reached for his communicator. Quickly he made a short call.
Seconds later the guard’s radio chirped and one of them answered it. After thirty seconds, the guard said, “Yes sir,” into the radio and turned it off. He lowered his shotgun. “Sir, how can we assist you?”
---
Adamarus lowered himself into the dome. The first thing he noticed was the reduced gravity – about fifty percent lower. He was suspended on a hoist attached to a rope that had been lowered through the round hole that they had cut into the floor. Inside the environmental suit, his breathing was loud and all he could hear.
He turned as far as he could and looked around. The side of the dome behind the room – the part which could never be seen from the window—held no surprises. It was the same as the rest. Above him the back of the room could not be seen, but he could just barely make out what looked like some kind of large protrusions sticking out. He figured these marked the existence of hinges or some other type of mechanism that opened the back of the room up.
Encounters 1: The Spiral Slayers Page 18
