Today the black hole was only playing a supporting role. But it was the main reason for their haste, because the ship had to use enormous amounts of fuel just to stay near it. Their actual destination was PSR J1745-2900, a neutron star measuring only 20 kilometers across. It must be somewhere around here. She switched on the radio detector and immediately recognized a bright sphere.
Marie activated the thruster that was built into the legs of the ultra-light body. They had given a lot of thought to how they would withstand the super-high gravity of the Paroli neutron star. But they kept coming back to the same factor, the only one gravity was interested in—mass. Today Marie weighed not seventy kilograms, as she did in their shared body, but three grams. Her entire body consisted of individual nanomachines that clung together. She wasn’t even visible to the naked eye because she was made of threads much finer than a human hair.
Building this machine had been a collaborative stroke of mastery. Marie was gratified by such moments. They proved to her that sharing her life with Pierre was worthwhile. She had spent a long period alone, before she’d met Pierre Curie. Then, as soon as they had merged, their exponential growth had begun. Where would it lead them? They didn’t know. But their plans reached far into the future, further than any other life form could imagine, and toward circumstances that no one but themselves could conceive of. It was because they fit together perfectly—their thoughts, feelings, and desires. Marie had never experienced that before.
She floated through space, which was sharply bent here. The threads that made up her body didn’t feel it, they simply followed the curve, which was natural for them. But Marie’s consciousness, resting in a tiny chip, knew what space really looked like. It knew more than that—it knew the future of the universe. Their mission on PSR J1745-2900 would actively set this future in motion.
Marie landed. The thruster gave everything it had, but it couldn’t withstand the power of the neutron star. That wasn’t a problem, it was part of the plan. The fine hairs of her body lay like spider legs, flattened above the degenerate surface of this former star. The nanomachines began their work. A few of them formed an antenna next to the chip containing her consciousness. That would be the emergency exit.
The range was limited, so Pierre had to hold the ship steady, close by. All the other nanomachines fulfilled their particular tasks. They altered the surface structure of the neutron star. They imprinted it with information that was everlasting, or at least longer-lasting than the material PSR J1745-2900 was made of. If the neutron star were swallowed by the black hole at some point, the information would remain on its event horizon. It would combine with other information that Marie had transferred to other objects, and it would bring about the end effect around which their entire plan was based.
The plan was ingenious. It only had two drawbacks, which still didn’t make it any less worthwhile. They only had one shot at it, because it was so elaborate, and they would only find out if everything had worked once it was too late to alter the plan. But wasn’t that the fundamental principle of life? It would be stupid to reject the plan for those reasons.
Even here on PSR J1745-2900, Marie didn’t know if the nanomachines had successfully done their job. A feedback mechanism would have been too extravagant. The passage of time was altered by the enormous gravity. She had the feeling of having only just landed and of staring into a static sky. But for Pierre, she had been out there for almost two hours and was being flung around rapidly by their host, the neutron star. They had to construct a special antenna to be sure they could completely capture all the frequency-displaced fragments of her consciousness.
The antenna next to the chip was ready. That was the only indication that their work here was done. It was time to return to Pierre. Marie activated the antenna and transferred the bits of her consciousness back to the ninety-niner via radio.
“Nice to have you back,” Pierre greeted her.
Marie followed his thoughts, which were activating the ninety-niner’s propulsion system. They were beautiful, proud thoughts. Marie truly loved her husband.
Cycle ZB2.8, unknown system
He had taken his first step on the dark side, and he already missed the day. Couldn’t Zhenyi have crashed on the other side of the planet? It was so cold here that he had to wear his spacesuit. By the third step he had to close the helmet because his nose was threatening to freeze off, and by the fifth he had to turn up the heating. This wasn’t going to be easy.
They were near the concavity in the magnetic field. Kepler still had quite a distance to travel. A maximum of fifty kilometers, the butler had promised. Unfortunately, the coordinates of the destination couldn’t be calculated more precisely than that. He sighed. The ground here was very different from that under perpetual sunlight. Rocks of various sizes lay all around him. He had to be constantly alert so he didn’t stumble. At least that prevented him from slipping back into his ruminations.
Ouch! A stone rolled away under his foot. He just managed to keep his balance. At least the area was free of ice. Crashing such a large ship must have released a considerable amount of heat. It had probably melted the ice. Or maybe the air was too dry for thick layers of ice to form here. To be sure, they knew too little about this planet.
Kepler directed the flashlight ahead of himself. He thought he’d seen stems swaying in the breeze on the edge of the circle of light. Okay, now he was completely losing it. Stems like the ones he’d seen on the other side of the planet wouldn’t survive here due to the lack of light.
And what if they supported and supplied each other using underground networks across the whole planet? He had no evidence of that. There weren’t any stems here—at least not where he pointed his lamp. Were they hiding from him? Perhaps they were the exact opposite of the stems on the other side, these creatures of the night? Maybe they couldn’t tolerate light and were retreating from it back into the soil? No, that didn’t make evolutionary sense. He was just imagining things.
He walked up a hill. It couldn’t have been more than thirty meters, but when he reached the top he was out of breath. He should pay more attention to the fitness of his biological body. The nanomachines swirling around in his veins could obviously repair any damage, but they couldn’t grow new muscles, and they were no substitute for training.
Reaching the top, he directed the light down. The next hill wasn’t far away. The landscape looked the same as the other side, only without the grass. So, this side couldn’t have always been in the dark, or it would have weathered differently. Perhaps the planet had orbited in a non-bound rotation for a long time, and then slowed down until it finally became fettered to its sun.
Kepler had a sudden urge to sing. The first notes sounded off-key, but then his singing quickly improved. The darkness wasn’t so oppressive with a wanderer’s song on his lips. Luckily no one was listening. The next human was probably a hundred light-years or more away. Oh, no, he had forgotten Zhenyi—he hoped she was closer. She must be here somewhere.
He let the flashlight beam sweep across the ground, first ahead, then left, then back again, like he was scraping the surface that lay in front of him. But his short-term memory was terrible. He quickly forgot what he had seen in the flashlight beam, and was then surprised when he stepped on a big rock. So he had to keep performing the process over and over. He felt like a magus fighting against the darkness. Or like a primitive human, waving a burning branch at the dangerous world around him. Humans had achieved so much since then, and yet so little. What would remain of them? Nothing. They hadn’t procreated, so they had no offspring to be their heirs. Though they had voyaged across space, they hadn’t left anything of themselves behind.
There, was that something? Right at the edge of the flashlight beam, just as he moved it away? No, that was impossible. He was the only moving life form here. Kepler sang louder to dispel the strange feeling. How many hills were already behind him? Shouldn’t he be arriving somewhere soon? Or was the dent in the magnetic field a fa
lse lead?
He climbed up the next hill, waited until he was able to breathe normally again, and directed the flashlight to the front. He had expected to see another hill, but there was nothing. The bright beam of light penetrated the darkness, punctured it, and cut a piece of emptiness out of it that fell crashing to the ground. That’s how it seemed to him. There was no sound but the wind, which must have increased in the last few minutes. Kepler should have been glad about the change, but he was afraid. Why was the hilly landscape suddenly at an end?
It had nothing to do with him. Of course it didn’t. It must have looked like this for millions of years, and there had to be some explanation for it. Maybe an asteroid had hit here, and the crater had since filled with sand. Kepler walked on cautiously. At the foot of the hill there actually was a sandy area. But beyond that the ground became firm again. Very firm.
Kepler lit the way ahead. It looked like someone had combed the ground here. The sand was neatly distributed. He took a few steps forward and then turned around. He had left footprints, not very deep ones, but clearly visible. He scrubbed the darkness away with his flashlight and noticed a straight line that ran across the plain a few meters to his right. He approached the structure. It wasn’t so much a line as a kind of metal plate peeking out of the ground. He stamped his foot on it. The plate vibrated and gave off a dull sound. Kepler followed it. After about 25 meters he found a second plate running perpendicular to the first.
He jumped on the spot, which wasn’t so easy in a spacesuit, and listened. It made a dull noise where there should have been the sound of crunching sand. But it didn’t sound like sand, it thudded as though he was beating a huge drum.
“Puppy?”
“I can hear you, Johannes.”
“I’ve stumbled across something,” said Kepler.
“Something that’s making you sing and hop? I find that surprising.”
“No. Can you scan the plain in front of me please?”
“Already done. Slight deflections in the magnetic field, otherwise nothing.”
“That’s what it should look like to us, true. What about the gravity distribution? Is there anything remarkable there?”
“Nothing outside the expected deviation.”
“And inside the expected deviation?”
“But that won’t tell us anything, Johannes.”
“It will tell me something.”
“Okay. One moment... a few cushion-shaped anomalies, but only inside the—”
“—expected deviation, I know,” Kepler said in way of finishing the thought.
“And now?” asked the butler.
“I think we’ve found Zhenyi’s ship. She’s hidden it here in the ground.”
“I should have been able to see that on the scanner.”
“Maybe not, Puppy. The ship is covered in a thin layer of sand, which is camouflaging it. And Zhenyi has filled its interior so that the gravitational effect corresponds roughly to that of the crust here. Only she couldn’t do anything about the inductive effect of the metal in the hull, which explains the anomalies in the magnetic field.”
“That’s a nice theory, but how could she have managed that so successfully alone?”
Actually, the butler had hit on a weakness in his theory. “Maybe she had robots on board for that?” suggested Kepler.
“She didn’t when she left. It’s true she could have had them built on the way. But to do that, she would have to have planned it all in advance.”
“That’s possible, Puppy.”
“Hmm... yes.”
“The landing module, could you bring it to sweep above the plain for a few minutes?”
“You want to blow the sand away, Johannes?”
“That’s the idea.”
“That’s not entirely safe. You’d be on your own.”
“A couple of stems aren’t dangerous. I’ll take the risk.”
Kepler retreated to the hill. Shortly afterward he heard a droning, then a tail of fire swept toward the plain from the right. The tail grew larger. Obviously the butler was lowering the landing module. The wind increased and grains of sand pelted his visor. To be safe he turned and faced the other way. The wind subsided. The landing module moved away to the south.
“Thank you, Puppy,” he said via the radio.
“Please be careful,” warned the butler. “Structures have been revealed under the sand that clearly resemble the top of the ship.”
“Ha! I was right!”
“Yes you were. The way to the airlock should now be displayed on your universal device. I expect it’s still functional.”
The soles of his boots boomed on the roof of the spaceship. It was a strange feeling. He expected spaceships to be noiseless, because he’d only ever walked on them in space. A ninety-niner landing on a planet, that had surely never happened before. Then another incredible fact occurred to him. Zhenyi must own two of these diabolical rides! She must really be unbelievably wealthy, he thought.
Kepler imagined the noise of his boots waking Zhenyi. She would recognize him by the rhythm of his footsteps, quickly put on a seductive dress, and be waiting for him at the airlock. He laughed. That wasn’t going to happen.
The beam of the flashlight fell on a curved recess. “I’m at the airlock,” he said.
“Just a moment, I’ll open it.”
Kepler wasn’t surprised the butler had the necessary codes. That would be part of his job. The eye in the middle of the recess opened. In the light it looked black and threatening and anything but inviting.
“You’re up, Johannes,” said the butler.
“I know. I’m just mentally preparing myself.”
He had to get over it. Slowly Kepler approached the eye. Then he pointed the flashlight directly down into it. It wasn’t so unfathomably deep after all, only about two meters. He knelt down, gripped the ladder and climbed down.
“I’m here,” he said.
“Okay, I’ll close the airlock. We may lose the connection when I do.”
“Can’t you leave it open?”
“Unfortunately not, Johannes. The inner door won’t open. Normally there’s a vacuum on the outside of the ship.”
“And what’s waiting for me inside?” he asked.
“Darkness, but you’ll be used to that by now.”
Wandering across the dark surface of the planet was one thing. But exploring the passageways of an unknown spaceship in complete darkness reminded him of some horror movie. ‘Don’t go in there,’ he’d always cry out to the hero, but they never cared.
“Couldn’t you activate the ship?”
“Best if I don’t, Johannes. Don’t forget, Zhenyi disguised it deliberately. We’ve already removed the protective layer of sand. It’s now recognizable from orbit if you don’t limit yourself to a telescope. But if I activate it, it would beam like a beacon out into space, and we might attract the wrong people.”
Kepler sighed. So, he’d actually have to search for Zhenyi in the spaceship’s dark passageways. He hadn’t anticipated that this adventure would be so exciting. But the butler was right. They didn’t know why Zhenyi had hidden her ship, so they couldn’t risk endangering her. “I wonder if we should make our own ship a bit less conspicuous,” he said.
“A good suggestion. I will switch the ship over to energy-saving mode. But then we won’t be ready for action as quickly as usual.”
“I’ll have to enter orbit with the landing module first anyway.”
A fine rain of sand pattered down over his spacesuit. The airlock was obviously not designed to be used on a planet. If he opened the inner door now, he would bring a heap of muck into the interior with him. For all he knew, Zhenyi might own valuable carpets from ancient times that would be permanently ruined.
First the door illuminated green, then it slid to the side. In front of him were three passages leading off in divergent directions. Right, things were happening and it was already time to make a decision.
“Puppy, can you he
ar me?”
But the butler didn’t reply. The ship was shielded, so he might just as well turn the lights on now. He actually found a button on the wall that may have been a light switch. But nothing happened. The butler was right, Zhenyi must have deactivated everything. He took off his helmet. He had only been wearing the spacesuit because of the cold. There was enough oxygen in here. The air smelled stale. The ship must have been sitting unventilated for a very long time.
Kepler oriented himself. The only thing he knew about the ship was that it was long and flat. Its rear section was reserved for the propulsion system and storage, and there were no passageways there. The airlock was in the outer hull. As long as he didn’t climb down any steps or ladders, he would be moving along the outer hull of the ship. That meant he should find the control room somewhere toward the front. He just had to choose the right passageway.
He closed his eyes and recalled the position of the airlock in the landscape. He should take the passageway perpendicular to it—that seemed like the best bet. If it came to a dead end soon, he’d know he was wrong.
Kepler set off. The passage continued. It was interrupted now and then by a bulkhead, but otherwise kept going in the same direction. When he got to a junction, he pointed his light in all directions. The passages branching off were mostly a lot smaller. Kepler examined the walls and ceiling. They all seemed to consist of the same material that was white as snow. That must have been expensive. He would have liked to scratch a bit off to analyze it.
How long had he been walking now? Following nothing but a beam of light in the dark was giving him a headache. He massaged his temples and closed his eyes tight. He opened them again, and at that moment he saw a white rabbit.
The Death of the Universe: Hard Science Fiction (Big Rip Book 1) Page 9