The Black Hole

by Alan Dean Foster

  "Oh, don't get me wrong. Building and crewing the Cygnus was a helluva achievement, one of mankind's proudest moments. Also one of his most impractical. This ship, the Palomino, and her sister ships are proof of that.

  "But man must have his monuments, right, Alex? The Cygnus was the Great Pyramid of our time and Reinhardt its Cheops. He caused her to be built, staked his reputation on her. So once she existed, he was forced to succeed no matter the dictates of logic or reason, no matter the consequences. So he refused to admit failure of his mission and ignored the orders recalling her to Earth."

  "We don't know that for a fact, Harry," Durant shot back. "Not yet we don't. No one ever had to communicate across a distance like that, from Earth to the Cygnus. Maybe the recall order never got through."

  Unnoticed now, McCrae was standing by the port, staring out into the emptiness that had swallowed her father and the rest of the crew of the Cygnus. On the edge of nearby oblivion hovered the answer to one of man's greatest modern mysteries, the silent disappearance of that ship.

  She wished she could act more the detached observer, more like the professional she was trained to be. Despite her best efforts, though, all she could think about, all she could consider, was the seemingly absurd but minutely possible chance that her father was still alive.

  "I'm going forward," she muttered. Still busily debating the merits of Dr. Hans Reinhardt and the Cygnus, Durant and Booth took no notice of her departure.

  Pizer was making no attempt to restrain his own excitement. It stemmed from a similar yet different source than Durant's.

  "I've read about the Cygnus since I was a kid, Dan," he was telling Holland, rambling on as disjointedly as the adolescent to whom he had just referred. "She's sort of the Flying Dutchman of space, the dream ship every explorer imagines himself finding. And we've found her!"

  Holland permitted himself a slight smile. "Get us close enough," Pizer continued, "and Vincent and I can go aboard her on tethers."

  Surprisingly, the anticipated admonition came not from the man but from the machine. "To quote Cicero," Vincent began, "rashness is the characteristic of youth, prudence that of mellowed age, and discretion the better part of valor." The robot regarded the first officer. "It would be best not to rush headlong into possible danger until we have a better idea of what happened."

  "Yeah. Sure. Of course." Pizer suddenly frowned, looked up from the control console. "Cicero who?"

  Vincent made a noise that passed for mechanical choking. Pizer was rescued from the robot's response by the appearance of McCrae and the sound of Booth speaking through the intercom system.

  "We have to go in, Captain," the reporter was saying. "No sense leaving the story of a lifetime untold. I'm more afraid of that black hole, that distortion of normal, healthy space, than any of you. But I'd go into Hell itself in search of grist for a story for my listeners."

  "If we get caught by that gravitational field, Harry," Holland replied, "that's all we'll be. Grist. Superdense grist. So I happen to think there is a reason for leaving the story of a lifetime untold. It's looking right at us, and vice versa. I'm not going into Hell after a story, nor is anyone else on this ship."

  "But, Captain . . ."

  Holland flipped him off, turned to his first officer. "Picking up anything on the sensors, Charlie? Any response yet to Vincent's calls?"

  Pizer stared glumly at his readouts. "Negative, but with all that electromagnetic turbulence out there, the signal might not be getting through. Or it's possible someone on the Cygnus is receiving and their reply isn't reaching us. Their signal might be weak if their own broadcast circuitry isn't operating at full efficiency. It could be diluted or scattered by the stuff around us beyond our ability to sort it out. The ether's alive from ten to the twenty-first hertz all the way down through radio. One thing we can assume, though. We have to."

  "What's that?"

  "That their radiation shielding's intact. Otherwise anyone left aboard alive would've been cooked as soon as they entered this region, just by the gamma radiation alone."

  "My God," McCrae finally murmured, breaking her silence and staring at the screen, "all these years of waiting and wondering, of the authorities being able to do no more than shrug when asked about the fate of the Cygnus and her people . . . and there she is. The answer to all those mysteries and rumors." She looked from the screen to Holland. "Dan . . .?"

  "I know how you must feel, Kate, but that ship's hanging on the edge of a whirlpool to nothingness. We can't take the chance. We can't risk—"

  "At least check with Alex." She was pleading, knowing that the physicist's opinion would carry more weight than her own, which Holland was rightly bound to regard as hostage to emotion.

  "All right." He spoke into the com pickup. "Alex, you've been listening in?"

  "Haven't missed a word, Dan," came the prompt reply.

  "Tell me something that'll convince me it's safe for us to take a closer look. Give me a good, solid, non-humanitarian reason for doing so."

  Durant had been busy integrating information from the Palomino's long-range scanners. "I can do it with one observation, Dan. According to our instrumentation, the Cygnus hasn't moved an iota since we first detected it."

  "You're positive?"

  "Absolutely. Its position relative to the nearby star is unvarying. It's not in orbit around either the star or the collapsar. She's just sitting there."

  Holland considered. "That's crazy, Alex. If it's not orbiting the star and its drive isn't functioning—and I can tell that it's not from our readouts up here—then the ship should be reacting at least marginally to the effect of the gravity well. You sure she hasn't been put in a functional orbit around it?"

  "Sorry, Dan." Durant sounded apologetic. "She's not orbiting anything. Might as well not be a black hole there, for all the effect it seems to be having on her. Or not having on her. It's almost as if she's somehow managed to anchor herself to a point in space. Or found some way to negate gravitational forces other than by pushing against them with her drive.

  "If it's safe for the Cygnus, we can assume until shown otherwise that it's safe for the Palomino"

  "You're stretching supposition, Alex."

  "Maybe. But I don't have any explanation for her stability. Just the fact that she is."

  "How could a lifeless derelict," Booth put in, "defy that kind of steady gravitational pull? If her engines aren't functioning, she ought to be sliding down into the well."

  "I don't know how she's doing it, but that's reason enough for investigating her." Durant directed his voice back to the pickup. "That's my main reason for advising a closer look, Dan. If the Cygnus can somehow negate gravity waves without using a drive, it's incumbent on us to try to find out how she's doing it. And, Harry, we don't know that she's lifeless. Not showing her lights or a drive isn't sufficient evidence of lifelessness."

  "Well, she looks lifeless," Booth harrumphed.

  "It could be a natural phenomenon, Alex," said Holland.

  "I know that. That's equally worthy of investigation."

  "No, no. You're missing my point, Alex." The captain stared indecisively at his instruments. "The Cygnus may not be frozen in space voluntarily. With a sun on one side of her and a massive black hole on the other, there's enough electromagnetic perturbations running through here to do funny things to the fabric of space."

  "Space isn't nylon, Dan." Durant sounded impatient.

  "You know what I'm getting at. If it is a natural phenomenon, we might find ourselves unable to break free of its influence. The Cygnus may be sitting where she is because she has no choice. Pull alongside her and the same effect might trap us out here also."

  Durant knew he couldn't just ignore Holland's hypothesis. "All right, let's do this: as scientific leader of this mission, I formally advise carrying out a closer inspection. We'll have all our standard grav-wave instrumentation primed to alert us the instant any kind of gravitational abnormality is detected, and I'll program cor
ollary scanners for backup. At the first hint that anything bizarre is affecting us, we'll maximize the drive and move clear."

  Holland's thoughts were still on the side of caution. "I don't know." It came down to the fact that ship and crew were his responsibility, even though at such moments he was supposed to follow Durant's and McCrae's directives. "It might be an instantaneous effect. We might not be able to break free no matter how quickly we detect something out of the ordinary."

  "Now you're trying to overrule me on the basis of an implied dangerous effect for which we have no supporting hard evidence, Dan.

  "We're preparing to return home. Let's take this one last risk, and then it'll all be over except for collecting our back pay. We've been gifted with the chance to answer an awful lot of old questions—about the Cygnus, about her mission, and about inconsistencies in gravity-field theory that have plagued physicists since Einstein. There's no telling when another ship might get out this way, and by that time the Cygnus may be swallowed up."

  Holland weighed all the evidence and all the arguments. "My instincts are still against it, Alex."

  "Maybe, but that's hardly sound scientific grounds for not investigating more closely."

  "I know, I know." Holland grumbled a little, then flipped off the holographier, nudged other controls. "All right. You get your electronic eyes and ears tuned proper and we'll go in for a closer look. We'll have to go in at an angle or we'll chance being taken by the gravity well. Maybe the Cygnus isn't affected by it, but I have to assume the Palomino will be. We'll do a tight cometary and get out." He turned his full attention to the console in front of him, spoke to his first officer without turning.

  "Fix a coordinate approach, Charlie. We'll pass as slow as we can so Alex and Kate can take ample readings, but I want a reasonable margin of thrust programmed in. If we lose too much velocity in passing, we won't get a chance to make it up." He patted his stomach, grinned tightly. "I'd like to lose a few centimeters off my waistline, but not that way."

  "Right, sir." The captain's cautionary attitude hadn't dampened Pizer's enthusiasm for the investigation, but he was subdued by the seriousness of the attempt. He hadn't been recommended to be first officer of the Palomino solely on the basis of his infectiously cheerful personality.

  "Coordinate heading three-oh-five x, two-seven-five y, one-seven-seven z." Pizer's fingers danced over contact switches. "Computer verifies. That'll give us fifteen percent extra if we need it."

  "Adequate." Holland entered the coordinates into the navigation block, activated the necessary instrumentation for attitude adjustment. The Palomino shifted silently in space, pointing toward destruction instead of away from it.

  "Attitude set."

  "Engines ready," Pizer replied.

  "Vincent, give us full power on our sublights."

  "Yes, Captain." Connected by umbilical armature to the main console, the robot communicated instructions to Power. Useless above light-speed, the ship's powerful conventional thrusters engaged and she began to accelerate forward.

  Several minutes passed as they continued to gain speed. Then there was a jolt, expected but still a shock, a physical reminder of the unseen immensity they would have to flirt so carefully with.

  McCrae braced herself against the sides of the portal leading into the lab. Durant was adjusting the restraints on his lounge. "Better strap yourself in. The well will intensify as we near the Cygnus. Turbulence could get worse. Nothing's certain in there."

  Booth was already making certain his own restraints were secured. "I thought the pull would be steady. Growing constantly, and without variance."

  "It does." Durant explained while securing a last strap over his waist. "That isn't contradicted by the turbulence. Partly it derives from the huge quantity of gas, solar plasma and other material being drawn down into the hole. And there are likely to be other effects. Gravity around a black hole, like other things, doesn't act in a manner we're accustomed to." As if to support his comments, another jolt rocked the ship.

  "Think of us as a gnat trying to bell a cat," McCrae added. "We're safe from the irresistible strength of the cat, but its snores still affect us."

  "I see." Booth glanced speculatively out the nearby port. "The trick is to do the job and slip away without waking it up. Or else . . ."

  "We get swallowed," McCrae finished for him. "But the Cygnus hasn't been swallowed."

  Another unseen hand shoved at the Palomino, harder this time. The crew became introspective, each considering the overriding mystery posed by the Cygnus's seeming stability in the face of irresistible forces.

  Why hadn't the giant research ship vanished, crushed out of normal space by the strength of the black hole? They would have to employ the full power of the Palomino merely to skim the edge of the collapsar's area of influence. The gnat was defying the awakened cat's full strength. It made no sense, no sense at all. But they would somehow have to find the answer, make sense from the information the ship's scanners would provide as they raced past.

  Pizer studied the constantly shifting display on the main navigation screen. Lines changed patiently, twisting a cat's cradle around the central, growing image of the motionless Cygnus. "Range two-nine-five-one-six and closing. Thrusters operating smoothly. No problems."

  "What's your reading on the Cygnus's attitude, Vincent?" Holland tried to glance around so he could see the robot, but his chair restraints restricted his movement.

  "Still holding steady, sir."

  "Position relative to the star?"

  "Constant. Most remarkable."

  Holland's stomach seemed to drop half a meter as external gravity played havoc with the Palomino's internal system. "Yeah," he finally replied, regaining his visceral equilibrium, "most remarkable. I'll find time to admire the situation properly when, remarkably, we're in the clear again. Gravitational reading?"

  "Two-point-four-seven on the stress scale and rising. Rate of rise also increasing, sir."

  The restraints still gave Holland enough freedom of movement to shake his head; he was worried. "That's not good. With that much additional pull we'll go by too fast to do any good." He demanded information from the ship's computer, accepted it along with the machine's several suggestions.

  "Change course. Put us in an altered escape angle of a hundred seventy-five perpendicular to the axis of maximum attraction. Compensate by cutting thrust two-thirds. We'll still maintain original projected escape velocity at perihelion. But I want constant monitoring of our revised course. If we deviate too much, don't hit it just right, we're going to have a devil of a time breaking clear."

  The Palomino continued to arc in toward the amazingly stable Cygnus. Turbulence grew worse. The strain was reflected in the faces of the pilots; the buffeting of their ship was matched by emotional turbulence within.

  One particularly bad jolt shook them. Pizer felt the impression of his restraints all over his body. "She's bucking like a bronco," he mumbled, wishing he were back in Texas NAT dealing with more manageable varieties of turbulence. You could reason with a horse.

  "Gravity. Gravity report, Mr. Pizer!" Holland repeated sharply when his first officer failed to respond at once. "No time for daydreaming now."

  "Sorry, sir." Pizer devoted full attention to the proper readouts, all thoughts of radical forms of equine displacement forgotten. "Twenty-point-nine-six and still climbing."

  He wondered how long it would be before the gauge broke. Like the Palomino, it was designed to withstand considerable forces. The ship had performed surveys of several Jovian-type worlds, handling multiple gravities and methane storms with equal equanimity. The perversion of nature they were teasing now, however, was to the gravity of Jupiter as a pebble was to a mountain.

  Holland continued to watch his instruments apprehensively. If they could count on a steady pull from the black hole, the ship's navigation computer would pull them through without difficulty. But, as the turbulence they continued to experience was proving, the region of space
they were now passing through was subject to gravitational and electromagnetic variations outside the experiences programmed into the Palomino's brain. They might be forced to maneuver suddenly and radically, might have to take risks no machine—operating solely on logic and a predisposition based on prior navigational experience—would take.

  It was, therefore, time to engage the ship's ultimate navigational programmer, the only one on board that could cope with the unexpected dangers the bizarre distortion of space outside might thrust on them.

  "Switching to manual," Holland said matter-of-factly, touching buttons in sequence on the console in front of him. A metal arm decorated with switches and buttons popped out of the console. He felt unreasonably better now that he was personally in control of the ship's movements, a reaction common to all pilots of all vessels since the dawn of transportation.

  "Captain?"

  "Yes, Vincent?"

  "Permit me to elucidate a concern, sir."

  "Go ahead and elucidate."

  "I'm not sure how long the engines will remain operable against this much attractive force when we turn outward again. They are quite capable of producing the thrust necessary to carry us clear. But it is their durability under such conditions that concerns me. Even a brief loss of power could prove disastrous, and we cannot engage the supralight drive this close to a sun, not to mention what it might do to the Cygnus."

  "I know all that, Vincent."

  "I merely reiterate it, sir, because of the thought that Dr. Alex and Dr. Kate will be displeased with anything short of a thorough inspection of the Cygnus and whatever strange force is holding it steady in its present location."

  Holland nodded, glanced momentarily at a particular gauge. It read no more than he had expected it to, but he still shook a little inside at the sight of numbers he had never expected to see behind the transparent face of the readout.

  "Holland here," he said toward the com pickup, "The gravity's close to the maximum we can cope with, Alex. I've tried to slow our speed at perihelion as much as possible. Vincent has just expressed concern about the reliability of the engines under this kind of stress. We can afford one pass, but then we have to get the hell out."