by Larry Niven
Burnt out, a giant star collapses into a form so dense, infinitely dense at the core singularity, that light itself can no longer escape its grip. The minimum mass required is about three Sols. Today. In the first furious instants of creation, immediately after the Big Bang, immeasurably great forces were at play. Where they chanced to concentrate, they had the power to compress any amount of mass, however small, into the black hole state. It must have happened, over and over. Countless billions must have formed, a few large, most diminutive.
In the universe of later epochs, they are not stable. Quantum tunneling causes them to give off particles, matter and antimatter, which mutually annihilate. For a body of stellar size, the rate of evaporation is negligible. But it increases as the body shrinks. Ever faster and more fiercely does the radiation go, until in a final supernal eruption the remnant vanishes altogether. Nearly every black hole made in the beginning has thus, long since, departed.
This one had been just big enough to survive to the present day. Applying what theory the ship's database contained, Dorcas had made some estimates. Three or four billion years ago it was radiating with about half its current intensity. Its mass, equal to a minor asteroid's, was now packed inside an event horizon with a diameter less than that of an atomic nucleus. Another 50,000 years or so remained until the end.
Carita rallied. “A weapon?” she asked. “How could that be?”
“Your mind isn't as nasty as mine,” Saxtorph replied absently. His attention was on high lattices, surrounding a paraboloid (?), which grew out of the shell where he stood. Their half-familiarity chewed at him. Almost, almost, he knew them.
“What else could it be?” Dorcas said. “A power source for peaceful use? Awkward and unnecessary when you have fusion, let alone total conversion. As a weapon, though, the thing is hideous. Invulnerable. Open a port, and a beam shoots out that no screen can protect against. At a minimum, electronics are scrambled and personnel get a lethal dose. No missile can penetrate that defense; if it manages to approach, it will be vaporized before it strikes. Sail through an enemy fleet, with death in your wake. Pass near any fort and leave corpses manning armament in ruins. Cruise low around a planet and sterilize it at your leisure.”
“Then why didn't the tnuctipun win?”
“We'll never know. But they can only have had this one. That was scarcely decisive. And… the war exterminated both races. Perhaps the crew here heard they were last of their kind, and went elsewhere to die.”
Saxtorph caught Tyra's whisper: “While the black hole, the machine, drifted through space for billions of years—” The Wunderlander raised her voice: “I am sorry. I should not interrupt. But do you not overlook something?”
“What?” Dorcas sounded edgy. As well she might be after these many hours, Saxtorph told himself.
“How could the tnuctipun bring the weapon to bear?” Tyra asked. “The black hole was orbiting free in interstellar space, surely, light-years from anywhere. The mass is huge to accelerate.”
“They could have harnessed its own energy output to a polarizer system.”
“Really? Is that enough, to get it to a destination fast enough to be useful?”
Smart girl, Saxtorph thought. She hasn't got the figures at her fingertips, but those fingers have a good, firm, sensitive hold on reality.
“Through hyperspace,” Dorcas clipped.
“Forgive me,” Tyra said. “I do not mean to be a nuisance. You must know more about tnuctipun technology than I do. But I studied what I was able. Is it not true that their hyperdrive was crude? It would not work before the vessel was moving close to light speed. This genstand has ordinary velocity, in the middle of empty space.”
“That is a shrewd question,” Dorcas admitted.
“A real fox question,” Saxtorph said. He was coming out of his preoccupation, aware how tired he was but also exuberant, full of love for everybody. Well, for most beings. Especially his comrades. “It could stonker our whole notion. Except I believe I've found the answer. There is in fact a hyperdrive engine. It's not like anything we know or much like any of the hypothetical reconstructions I've seen of tnuctipun artifacts. But I believe I can identify it for what it is, or anyhow what it does. My guess is that, yes, they could take this black hole through hyperspace, emerging with a reasonable intrinsic velocity that a gravity drive could then change to whatever they needed for combat purposes.”
“How, when every ship must first move so fast?” Tyra wondered.
“I am only guessing, mind you. But think.” Despite physical exhaustion, Saxtorph's brain had seldom run like this. Talking to her was a burst of added stimulation. “Speed means kinetic energy, right? That's what the Slaver hyperdrive depended on, kinetic energy, not speed in itself. Well, here you've got a terrific energy concentration, so-and-so fantastically many joules per mean cubic centimeter. If the tnuctipun invented a way to feed it to their quantum jumper, they'd be in business.”
“I see. Yes. Robert, you are brilliant.”
“Naw. I may be dead wrong. The tech boys and girls will need months to warm over this gizmo before they can figure it out for sure. They better be careful. Considering how well preserved the apparatus is, in spite of everything that the black hole inside and the universe outside could do, I wouldn't be surprised but what that hyperdrive is still in working order.”
“More powerful than ever,” Dorcas breathed. “The black hole has been evolving.”
“Brrr!” Carita exclaimed. “Knock it off, will you? If the ratcats got hold of it—” She yelped. “But they were here! Weren't they? How much did they learn? How come they didn't whoop home to Alpha Centauri with this thing and scrub our fleet out of space?”
“Even taking its time, what a single expedition could find out would be limited, I should think,” Dorcas said. Her tone went metallic. “We, though, the human species, we'd better make certain.”
“Yah,” Saxtorph concurred. He shook himself in his armor. “Listen, I decree we're past the point of diminishing returns today. Let's head back, Carita, have a hot meal and a stiff drink, and sleep for ten or twelve hours. Then I have some ideas about our next move.”
“Wow-hoo!” his companion caroled, uneasiness shoved aside. “I thought you'd decided to homestead. Say, ever consider how lucky the tnuctip race was, not speaking English? Spell the name backwards—”
“Never mind,” Saxtorph sighed. “Compute your vectors and boost.”
Bound for Rover, he felt as if he were awakening from a dream. In the time lately past, he had experienced in full something that had rarely and barely touched him before, the excitement of the scientist. It had been a transcendence. How did that line or two of poetry go? “Some watcher of the skies, when a new planet swims into his ken.” Or a new star, small and strange, foredoomed, yet waxingly radiant; and the archeology of a civilization vast and vanished. Now he returned to his ordinary self.
He ached, his tongue was a block of wood, his eyelids were sandpaper, but he rejoiced. By God, he had seen Truth naked, and She took him by the hand and led him beyond himself, into Her own country! It wouldn't happen again, he supposed; and that was as well. He wasn't built for it. But this once it did happen.
When he and Carita completed airlock cycle, their shipmates were waiting for them. Dorcas embraced him. “Welcome, welcome,” she said tenderly.
“Thanks.” He looked past her shoulder. How bright was Tyra's hair against the bulkhead. His brain hadn't yet stopped leapfrogging. “We've got facts to go on,” he blurted. “Knowing what the kzinti found, we can make a pretty good guess at what they did. And where they are. With your dad.”
“O-o-oh—” the Wunderlander gasped. He disengaged. She sprang forward, seized and kissed him.
Chapter XI
When the kzinti again drew Peter Nordbo into time, his first clear thought was: Hulda, Tyra, Ib. More than twenty years now. Do you live? I almost wish not, I who come home after helping our masters arm themselves for the enslavement of all h
umanity. Forgive me, my darlings. I had no choice.
“Up,” growled the one that hulked above him. “The commander wants you. Why, I don't know.”
Nordbo blinked, bewildered. Through the gloom in the chamber he recognized the kzin. It wasn't the technician in charge of such tasks, it was one of the fire-control ratings. Their designation translated roughly as “Gunner.” What had gone on? A fight, a killing? The crew were disciplined and the discoveries at the black hole had kept them enthusiastic; nevertheless, after months in close quarters, tempers grew foul and quarrels flared.
Well he knew. He bore several scars from the claws of individuals who took anger out on him. They were punished, though no disabling injury was inflicted. Nor had torture left him crippled, being carefully administered. He was too useful to damage without cause. “Move!” Gunner hauled him from the box and flung him to the deck. There was mercy in the wave of physical pain that swept from the impact. For a moment it drowned every other awareness.
It faded, Nordbo remembered anew, he crept to his feet and hobbled off.
The corridor stretched empty and silent. How utterly silent. The rustle of ventilators sounded loud. Dread sharpened in him and cut the last dullness away. A-shiver, he reached the observation turret and entered. Only the heavens illuminated it.
No suns of Alpha Centauri shone before him, no constellations whatsoever. Around a pit of lightlessness, blue stars clustered thinly. As he stared aft he saw more, whose colors changed through yellow to red; but behind the ship yawned another darkness rimmed with embers.
Aberration and Doppler effect, he recognized. We haven't slowed down yet, we're flying ballistic at half the speed of light. Why have they revived me early? They didn't expect to. I'd served my purpose. No, their purpose. I could merely pray that when their scientists on Wunderland finished interrogating me, I'd be released to take up any rags of my life that were left. Unless it makes more sense to pray for death.
Yiao-Captain poised athwart the stranger sky. Its radiances gleamed icy on eyeballs and fangs. His ears stood unfolded but his tail switched. “You are not where you think you are,” he rumbled. “Twenty-two years have passed,”—Nordbo's mind automatically rendered the timespan into human units— “and we are bound for our Father Sun.”
The shock was too great. It could not register at once. Nordbo heard himself say, “May I ask for an explanation?”
Did Yiao-Captain's curtness mask pain of his own? “We were about three years en route back to Alpha Centauri.” After half a year at the black hole. “A message came. It told of a fleet from Sol, invading the system and shattering our forces. Somehow the humans have gained a capability of traveling faster than light. No ship without it can win against the least of theirs. We must inevitably lose these planets. It must already have happened when Snapping Sherrek received the beam.
“When I was roused and informed, naturally I did not propose to continue there, bringing my great news to the enemy. I ordered our forward velocity quenched and the last of our delta v applied to send us home.”
At one-half C, a trip of nearly six decades. Nordbo's thought trickled vague and slow. Can't stop at the far end. Hurtle on till the last reserve mass has been converted, the screen fields go out, and the wind of our passage through the medium begins to crumble us. Unless first another ship matches speed and takes us off. I daresay they'll try, once they have an idea of what this crew can tell.
It jolted: Faster than light? We had no means, nothing but some mathematical hints in quantum theory and the knowledge that the thrintun could do it, billions of years ago—knowledge that led this expedition to conclude that the artifact is indeed a gigantic hyperdrive spacecraft powered by the black hole it surrounds. But how did the means come so suddenly to my race?
A thunderbolt: Wunderland is free! My folk have been free for eighteen years!
Nightfall: While I am captive on the Flying Dutchman among the demons that sail it.
Yiao-Captain's voice rolled on: “If the humans do not find what we did, and if we can inform the Patriarchy of it, victory may yet be ours. Not from the alien vessel alone, irresistible though it be, but from what our engineers will learn.”
Was he boasting, or trying to reassure himself? Certainly the words were unnecessary. Even without Nordbo's intellectual cooperation, the kzin known as Chief Physicist and his team had traced circuits, computed probable effects, inferred that the most plausible purpose was to achieve the relationship of wave functions which theory said might throw matter into a hypothetical hyperspace. They had actually identified an installation that appeared to be an activator of the entire system. Yiao-Captain had had to exert authority to keep three young members of the group from throwing what they thought was the main switch. Much more study was called for, a complete plan of the whole, before any such action was justifiable. Else they could well lose the whole treasure, construct and knowledge alike.
“We are continuously transmitting over and over, the entire set of data we did acquire, together with our ideas about it, on a beam directed forward,” the commander proceeded.
The merest fraction of what is there to discover, commented the remote part of Nordbo, yet an enormous load of information, words, numbers, equations, diagrams, pictures, everything we got at a cost of seven kzinti lives and the price I paid. But perhaps the beam, dopplered though its waves are, will register on someone's communicator.
“The likelihood of its being noticed, even when it reaches Kzin, is very small, of course,” Yiao-Captain said. “We send it because it does go faster than we, and may perchance convey our word, should we perish along the way. Otherwise, we shall surely be detected as we near the home planets, and receivers will be adjusted to hear what we then broadcast. Meanwhile we stand three-month watches in pairs. More would be intolerable, would lead to hatred and deadly clashes, over so long a voyage. It is again my turn. Gunner is poor company. That is best; we need not see each other much, as I would have to do where he of a rank entitled to courtesy. But the time grows wearisome. Finally I have had you wakened. Maybe we can talk. Certainly we can play chess.”
Realization was draining downward from Nordbo's forebrain, along the nerves, into blood and marrow.
He barely swallowed his vomit. It burned gullet and belly.
Almost, he screamed aloud: Yes, whistle your pet monkey to you. Get what amusement you can out of the sorry creature. In the end, after he begins to bore you, disembowel him with a swipe of claws and eat the fresh, dripping meat. Enjoy.
Did you enjoy watching me under the torture? Your eyes shone, ears lay back, tongue ran over lips. No, it was not for pleasure in itself. It was to make me recant my refusal to work anymore for you, after it became clear that what we were investigating was a monstrous weapon. You may have regretted it a little. But naturally the spectacle spoke to your instincts.
I cheated them, Yiao-Captain. I yielded within minutes. As for your contempt, inwardly I laughed. It was not the pain that changed my mind, nor the threat of mutilation and death. It was the hope of returning home, to stand once more between you and my Hulda, my children, my folk. Yes, also the crazy hope that somehow I might smuggle a warning off to Sol.
Afterward, yes, I worked for you again, but I told you of no more inspirations, insights, ideas worth trying. I did nothing, really, that a robot could not. What else can you expect from a slave, Yiao-Captain? Love?
The kzin's tone softened. “I know this is a stormwind upon you. You will need a while to regain balance. Go. Rest, think. Come back to me when you feel ready.”
Nordbo stumbled from him.
Grief welled up: I have lost you for always, my beloved.
Bleak joy: You are free. We can outpace light. Surely our fleets went on to defeat the kzinti everywhere and ram peace down their throats.
Despair: But no secret has ever stayed long under lock and key. Someday, somehow, they too will gain the knowledge. This ship bears news that may well help them to it. We did conclude that the ma
chine englobing the black hole is tnuctipun and is meant to pass it through hyperspace. We think we identified the activator. We could not puzzle out more than the likeliest-looking procedure for starting it up, and we have no idea how to set a course or stop a destination. But a later expedition, better equipped, with up-to-date physicists, ought to learn much more than we did.
Wrath: “We!” As if this were my band!
Shame: For a while it came near being so. I was captivated. In the work, I could forget my loss for hours at a time. But then I began to see what the thing must be.
Horror: A part of the arsenal that destroyed intelligent life throughout this galactic sector, those billions of years ago. Shall it fall into kzinti hands?
Logic: Oh, by itself it might not prove decisive, come (God take pity on us) the next war. But it would kill many. Worse, it would lead the kzinti to the hyperdrive; or, if they have that by now, it could well suggest improvements that make their ships irresistibly superior to ours. And who can be certain that that would be all it did?
Agony: And I am helpless, helpless.
Revelation: NO!
Through a time beyond time, Nordbo stood amidst lightnings. And the remnant were slain with the sword of him that sat upon the horse.
Apocalypse opened itself to metal, silence, and unseen stars; but the hand of the Lord was upon him. Somewhere a voice quavered that he had better take nourishment, sleep, recover his full strength, while watching for the best chance. He scorned it into extinction. He would never be stronger than now. Surprise, and a will that had given doubt no days or weeks to corrode it, were his only allies.
With long strides he made his way to the workshop. Every sense thrilled preternaturally keen. A bulkhead bore furrows where a kzin in a rage had scratched the facing. Air from the ventilators blew warm, a tinge of ozone cleansing a ratcat taint become slight. His feet thudded on the deck, the impacts went up through his bones. His mouth was no longer dry, but hunter-wet.
