“Would it be so bad a thing to do?” Brent demanded. “Against the scientific ethic, no doubt. But wouldn’t it be better, more moral, to get us home alive, and soon, not after five more years in orbit around that hole into hell?”
The Tahirians had been conferring. Peter spoke for them. “(It scarcely seems feasible.)”
“(I cannot think of a way, either,)” Brent admitted. “(But we can give thought to it, among other approaches. Something may occur to us.)”
“P-persuasion,” Cleland said. “Maybe, whatever happens, we can … persuade the rest.”
“I doubt that. Christ knows we tried, back on Tahir.”
“Conditions, events, they, uh, they may make people change their minds.”
“Maybe.” Brent spoke to the Tahirians again. “(What about Simon?)” He did not use the human-bestowed name for the linguist who replaced an Indira too old to travel, but the Cambiante symbol set identifying en.
“(Simon is only mildly in favor of this venture,)” Ivan said.
Brent nodded. “Ha, yes, I know,” he muttered. “That must’ve been real sweet politicking they did, to get en aboard instead of another gung-ho dreamer.” He went on as if to himself, retracing a well-worn trail. “And Mam and Selim aren’t much for it. Nor Lajos, though now that Hanny’s got this new toy—” His throat thickened. “Maybe the toy will turn out not to be such fun,” he spat “Damn near didn’t, already.”
“We don’t know,” Cleland said. “We can’t foretell.”
“No, we can’t That’s why I want us to think what we can do, plan for every possibility we can imagine.”
Cleland winced. “We may find … when the reality comes along, we can’t d-do anything about it”
“I am not going to take that attitude,” Brent stated. “Nor should you. Men, real men and women, they don’t tamely whine, ‘Thy will be done.’ They fight back.”
After their many talks through the years, Cleland heard the implication. “Fight—literally?” cried horror. “Out of the question!”
“Quiet” Brent glowered at him. “I didn’t mean that. I certainly hope never. But I can imagine extreme emergencies, when nothing but quick action will save us. One thing we can do here and now is work out a drill for getting at the guns.”
“No!”
“I agree, it’d be a desperate act But you said it, we can’t foretell. Maybe we will suddenly find ourselves desperate, with no time for arguing with fools. Survival knows no law.”
Cleland’s fists clenched at his sides. “It does. It can be too dearly bought—”
Brent’s tone softened. The resolution within it did not. “Yours, maybe. Or mine, or any individual’s. But not everybody’s. Nor this whole ship and the treasures in her, what they’ll mean at home in the way of power. Tim, we’re responsible for the future of the human race.”
“That’s far-fetched—”
Brent gestured for silence. Cleland glanced back at the entrance. Nansen and Kilbirnie passed by, hand in hand.
“Damn,” Brent said low when they were gone. “I thought they were already in bed screwing.” He paused, made a thin smile, and went on in a normal voice, “Well, they don’t seem to have noticed us. I guess they wouldn’t Let’s continue our session while we can.”
Cleland’s face had blanched. “Yes,” he said. “Let’s.”
35.
The robot in its spacecraft plunged toward doomsday.
At slightly less than five thousand kilometers out, instruments perceived the black hole as a disk of total darkness, a third again the width of Luna above Earth. X-ray fires blazed around it, from it. To a human the inrushing gas was only luminous from afar, seen as a whole through its entire thickness. Here he would have sensed merely the death that it dealt him. But to the robot it was an incandescent storm, shot through with sudden savage riptides. Magnetic field lines writhed like snakes millions of kilometers long. Gusts of plasma raged by, alive with lightning. There was no sound, but receivers heard hiss and shriek so loud that they must tune themselves down lest the noise shatter their circuits. Every protection, armor, insulation, field, came under attack. Metal members began to bend. Tidal force had reached four Earth gravities and was mounting ever faster with every inward centimeter.
The robot was seeking a stable orbit. The path it had won to was excessively eccentric. It fought to circularize at an endurable distance. Flung through a circuit of thirty thousand kilometers in a pair of minutes, buffeted, blinded, the orbit more and more crazily precessing and nutating, it failed. Each swing brought it nearer, and metal groaned under the stresses.
Still the spacecraft transmitted, sending the data it gathered on beams that could pierce the chaos. Null-one-null-null-one … forces, gradients, energies, densities, compositions, velocities, such stuff as reality is made on. It would report until the black hole destroyed and devoured it.
Abruptly the sendings changed. Responsive no more to their computer programs but to mind and will, electronics shuttled in new dances, weaving new signals—messages.
Nansen and Kilbirnie lay in his cabin, pillow-propped against the headboard. The bed was expanded to double width and the bedclothes rumpled. Odors of love lingered. On the bulkhead opposite them a screen played a view from Earth, of a summer sea rolling blue and green to lap around a great rock that Monet knew, beneath a summer sky where gulls and curlews winged. Mendelssohn’s “Violin Concerto in E Minor” was reaching its joyous conclusion.
They had shared a beer, and lapsed into companionable silence while the restfulness flowed out of them and a new tide flowed in. As often, his thoughts wandered widely.
“I wish—” he sighed at last. The words trailed off.
Kilbirnie turned her head toward him. “You wish what?” she asked. “Maybe I can oblige.”
“Nada. Nothing.”
She snapped her fingers. “Oh, foosh, I had hopes about your wish.”
“I didn’t mean—”
The narrow, vivid face laughed into his eyes. “I ken vurra well wha’ ye didna mean, laddie. And, truth, ye’ve no had a reasonable time to rest, yet.” She snuggled close. “What is it you wish?”
He looked away again, at the image without seeing it, a furrow between his brows. “I’ve said it before. I wish we were home”
“Already?”
“Yes, yes, everything we knew as home is gone. But Earth—or any planet fit for human beings, even Tahir—”
“Aye, Tahir has grand sentimental value,” Kilbirnie murmured reminiscently. “But Earth will be better. Whatever’s happened meanwhile, we’ll make our home there when we’re ready to settle down, and, by God, make it the way we want it to be. Children—and I’m not a bad cook, skipper. You’ll find I have as good an idea of breakfast as a Scotchwoman. Not surprising, that. But I’ll wean you from your miserable coffee and French roll in the morning, see if I don’t.”
He wanted to fall in with her mood, but could not. “Until then, however, you, locked in this metal shell for no one knows how long.”
She ruffled his hair. “Locked in wi’ you, wha’s wrong wi’ that?”
“And I with you—”
He ended the kiss.
“But you are a free spirit, Jean, querida,” he said unhappily.
“And you’re too serious, querido.”
“I was thoughtless. I should have foreseen. Now that we are here, in—in this everydayness, I worry about how you’ll come to feel, how much it will hurt you, being always idled and confined.” His fist doubled on the sheet.
“D’you suppose I gave the matter no beforehand thought myself?” she retorted. “I knew how badly you wanted to go—”
“Should I have wanted it? I could have swung the decision the other way.”
She laid her palm over his mouth. “And you know how I wanted it,” she finished. “Who says I’ll be idled? We’ve a whole system to explore.”
“No planets. If the star ever had any, it lost them when it blew up.”
; Passion leaped. “The beings, the life!”
He bit his lip. “I’m afraid the contact will be purely intellectual, if we make it.” Quickly: “Of course you’ll be as interested as everybody else, yes, and have suggestions for it. But is it enough for you, month after month, perhaps year after year?”
“Why, there’ll be missions to fly regardless,” she said. “You know that What robots can do is limited. For a beginning, we’ll put the command station in orbit. That will be a tricksy little devil!” Her tone and glance sparkled.
He sat straight and glared at her. “Wait! Not a job for you.”
She took it coolly. “Indeed? Why not?”
He had avoided bringing the subject quite out into the open. Soon he must. He might as well start now “It’s too hazardous,” he said as calmly as he could. “Ruszek is ready, willing, and able.”
“Me, too.”
“We can’t risk both our pilots. He will take that mission”
“You have spoken?” she purred.
He nodded stiffly. “I have.”
She smiled and fluttered her eyelashes. “Aweel, ’tis sweet o’ ye, if misguided. Maybe I can get ye to unspeak.”
Her hand went under the covers and roved shamelessly.
“You realize,” Nansen said with difficulty, “you cannot change my mind.”
“Belike not. Ye’re a stubborn gowk.” Kilbirnie slid her free arm under his neck. “But I can have fun trying.”
In a room crammed with the disorder that gathers when concentration is complete, Sundaram and Simon stared at a screen.
Nothing moved there but dots and dashes, white on black. A screen alongside flickered through mutable figures as a computer program applied scheme after scheme—mathematical relationships, prime-number arrays, stochastic formulas, anything, anything that might give the binary inflow a pattern, the germ of a meaning.
Sundaram heard a whistle from the Tahirian. Unwashed, disheveled, he bent his head around and read on the parleur: “(Undoubtedly contact. The ancient databases record signals like these. Minds have taken over Probe Three and are calling to us.)”
“This early,” the human croaked.
“(It happened thus before, equally fragmentary. As you know, the ancestors never succeeded in extracting much intelligibility.)”
And so at length, for that reason among others, they gave up, Sundaram thought for the hundredth time. I don’t believe we will. This abstract kind of communication suits the human mind better than the Tahirian.
Half vision, half anguish: What might we do together, all we different thinking beings in the universe, if we could find the will to keep traveling until we have bridged the distances between, to learn from and inspire each other, to reach and achieve what none of us alone can imagine?
Chill struck. But perhaps every voyage endangers existence. Too many, and the senseless random accident will happen, the cosmos and its glories lose the energy that has upheld them and fall into an oblivion that annuls the very past. Can it be the act of a Providence that nowhere does starfaring go on for very long?
And then: But how can I be afraid at this moment, this triumph? When Simon and I proclaim the tidings, it will be as if Envoy herself rejoices.
The receiver screen blanked. The analyzer screen continued hunting.
“(I think the probe has come too close to the black hole, as we knew it would,)” the Tahirian observed—calmly?
Sundaram rose. Muscle by muscle, he flexed resilience back into his body. Hope blossomed. “We will send more,” he said in English. “And once the station is ready, in orbit, we will truly begin to learn.”
Dayan shared Ruszek’s cabin, but kept hers very much for herself. Nobody else was present when Kilbirnie came.
Here there were a few constancies, a family portrait, a picture of her parents’ home, a framed cloth hand-embroidered with the Star of David and “A good journey to you, Hanny, beloved” in Hebrew. Otherwise screens evoked images from the ship’s database, changed weekly or oftener. On this day watch an old man in a Hiroshige drawing looked across at a dynamic color abstraction, while an electron diffraction pattern, curving white on black like a surreal galaxy, glowed on the rear bulkhead of the room. She had made tea, and its aroma tinged the air, but as talk went on, both women had become unable to sit. Kilbirnie paced back and forth, Dayan stood warily by her desk.
“You can do it, Hanny,” the visitor said. “You can make him do it.”
The physicist frowned. “I don’t like the idea,” she answered, as she had already done.
Kilbirnie halted to face her. Hands spread out in appeal. “But for my sake, would you? A birthday present for me. My fortieth. You know what that means to a woman, Hanny.” Tears trembled in the blue eyes. The voice stumbled. “Let me take that flight and—and I can laugh at time.”
“Well—But is it fair to Lajos? He’s like a boy again, looking forward.”
“Och, he’ll have his chances later. You can make this up to him. He loves you. I think he never loved anybody the way he loves you.”
Dayan stared down at her feet.
“I’d not presume on our friendship,” Kilbirnie said unevenly. “But it has been close, and—if you could, if you would—”
After a while that lengthened, Dayan looked up. “Well, since it’s you, Jean—”
She got no opening to qualify or set conditions or say anything further at all. Immediately she was in Kilbirnie’s arms. “Thank you, thank you!” the pilot half laughed, half sobbed.
They flopped back into their chairs, wrung out. Dayan drained her cup of now cold tea, refilled from the pot, and mused, “A gift for you, on your day. Yes, he is chivalrous, in his fashion. I don’t like … using him.” Well-nigh under her breath: “More than I do.” Louder, raising her head: “However, I’ll try.”
“You’ll succeed,” Kilbirnie said with a flitting grin.
She grew serious. “But don’t you or he tell how it’s for that birthday of mine. We’ve never celebrated such aboard.” They were too reminding, more than holidays. “It would be bad to start playing favorites. He can explain how he’s thought the matter over, studied our two records, and decided I’m a wee bit better for this particular mission. Which is true, and will show how large-minded he is.”
Just in case, she had surreptitiously adjusted the personnel database. Launch date was nowhere near her birthday and she was two years shy of her fortieth. Nansen knew it.
“The skipper can’t override that!” she exulted.
Nansen’s door chimed. He lifted his gaze from the reader on his lap. The text was Elogio de la sombra. Those austere verses gave comfort, saying that neither his wishes nor his griefs were unique, alone in space-time. “Enter,” he said.
The door slid aside for Cleland and shut again behind him. He walked not quite steadily. His face was haggard, hair unkempt, eyes red, and he didn’t seem to have been out of his clothes for the past daycycle.
Nansen smiled as best he was able. “Sit down,” he invited: “What can I do for you?”
The planetologist came over to stand above him. “You can—can stop your … heartless … lunacy,” he rasped.
Nansen rose. Cleland’s breath stank. “What do you mean?” the captain asked, most softly.
“You know niggering well what.”
Nansen went expressionless. He had heard bawdiness from Cleland once in a while, but never before obscenity. The rage went on: “Sending Jean to the black hole!”
“And you know it wasn’t my idea and is not my desire,” Nansen said. “When Ruszek deferred—”
“If he’s lost his nerve, Colin can pilot!” Cleland yelled. “En’s going anyway!”
“Nonsense. You know, too, no Tahirian can handle a human craft with any real skill. And Ruszek isn’t afraid. This is his professional judgment, for the good of the mission. Couldn’t you hear, couldn’t you see how reluctant he was?” Nansen let his mask dissolve a little. “Do you suppose I’m glad? I had no choice.”
“You do! You can order him to go!”
“No. That would be interference for no other reason than my personal preference.”
“Then cancel the launch!”
“That would ruin our whole enterprise. We’ll never get clear communication without the proper equipment, closer in than we or any other robots we have can go. Not to mention research on the black hole itself.”
“Orbit the damn station by remote control.”
Nansen continued patiently repeating common knowledge. “Across thirty-three light-seconds, into that unpredictable inferno? We’d too likely lose it altogether. Then we’d have made the voyage here for nothing.”
“We should never’ve made it. Your cold craving—” Cleland gulped. “You don’t care about her. She’s been a—a convenience in your bed. Now she’s a convenience in your boat. The boat you’re too cowardly to fly.”
Nansen’s tone sharpened. “That will do, Cleland. You’re exhausted, overwrought, and drunk. You know perfectly well that none but she or Ruszek can cope with those conditions. And you know—you must know—” Agony broke through. “If I didn’t believe it was safe—reasonably safe, as far as we can tell—yes, I would terminate this and order a return … rather than—”
“If she comes to harm,” Cleland snarled, “I’ll kill you.”
Nansen grew rigid. “Enough hysterics,” he said. “Dismissed.”
“You son of a she-swine!” Cleland screamed.
His fist swung. Nansen blocked it with a forearm. At once the captain clapped hands on the other man’s tunic, wrists crossed, and pulled the fabric together. Cleland staggered in the choke hold. Nansen let go, hauled him around, yanked an arm of his around his back, and gripped at very nearly the angle to break it.
“Out,” he said. “I will keep silence about this if you conduct yourself properly from now on. If not, I will have you restrained and sequestered. Go.”
He released his prisoner. Cleland reeled toward the door. He sobbed and coughed.
36.
At the hour of departure, all but Yu, Brent, and Emil were gathered at the wheel exit. Those three were in launch control. The humans stood mute, avoiding one another’s eyes, Nansen almost at attention, Cleland apart from the rest. The Tahirians talked together in their own group, signals and attitudes and subdued buzz or trill.
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