The Black Hole

by Alan Dean Foster

  "A ghost ship of robots and computers," Durant went on, "with this thing in charge."

  Surprisingly, the colossus reacted to his statement The head swiveled on the shoulders to stare at the speaker and the nervous reporter next to him.

  "Not quite, Dr. Durant. A logical supposition, given your present situation and lack of true knowledge about what has occurred here."

  "It talks after all," Booth mumbled.

  "No." Holland was peering around the hovering mechanical. "I'm sure that voice didn't come from this machine."

  "Maximillian and my robots run this ship only the way I wish it run," the voice went on. Holland walked around the monster, which did not move to intercept him. The others followed. "They possess little in the way of programmed initiative beyond what I choose to bestow on them. Only I command the Cygnus."

  The source of the voice was a darkened section of the chamber. Something, a large circular console, rotated to face them. A figure sat inside it, cloaked in shadow.

  Durant squinted at it. "How do you know my name?"

  "You have been constantly monitored ever since the Cygnus's sensors first detected your approach from deep space. Though we were hardly expecting visitors, I make it a point always to be prepared for them."

  "You could take that one of two ways," Booth whispered to Durant. The scientist hardly heard him now. His full attention was on the mysterious figure.

  "Isolation leads inevitably to caution," the voice was saying. "No doubt you regarded the Cygnus with equal uncertainty. You must excuse my perhaps extremity of manners in greeting you. But remember that, though tiny, your ship is of a type unknown to me. I had no idea whether you were human or otherwise. When your origin became clear, I could not know what fanatical cults might have infected the politics of Earth since my departure. It behooved me to be careful. I have much entrusted to my keeping. I safeguard it to the best of my abilities.

  "If I erred in welcoming you so brusquely, do remember that this vessel is ultimately my responsibility." The figure rose, moved out of the shadows into the light.

  "Welcome aboard the Cygnus, gentlemen, lady and machine. Please excuse Maximillian." The tall, bearded figure gestured at the robot that still confronted them. It moved aside, well away but still close enough to make its intimidating presence felt. A fact which the speaker, Holland thought, surely realized.

  "He is most solicitous of my health. Perhaps overly so. But diplomacy has not been needed out here, and so I have not programmed it into him."

  It was Booth who verbally identified the figure they had by now all recognized. "Dr. Hans Reinhardt," he murmured. "He always did have a flair for theatrical entrances."

  If he's alive, McCrae was telling herself frantically, then it was still possible . . .

  "And for you a pen dipped in poison, Mr. Booth." Reinhardt regarded the reporter. "I remember reading your articles well before the Cygnus left Earth orbit. I trust your faculties have not dimmed since then? They say that the potency of certain acids increases with age."

  "I can still turn a phrase here and there, Doctor."

  "Your phrases were often sharp, Mr. Booth. For a surgeon who employed words, you many times cut with surprising clumsiness, sir. You caused many of the subjects of your vivisecting articles to bleed rather profusely."

  "If I was doing any cutting," Booth gave back, "it was only out of a desire to expose the unhealthy or the dangerous. I left actual excision to others."

  Reinhardt only grunted at that. They could see him clearly now as he walked toward them. Booth and he were contemporaries. That was the only visible similarity between them.

  Reinhardt was taller, with the build of an athlete. He had the look of a man fanatical about the care of both body and mind. Isolation had not bent him. He approached them groomed as faultlessly as he had been the day he had addressed the international vision audience prior to the Cygnus's departure some twenty years ago.

  Save for the preponderance of gray in beard and hair and the additional lines in the long face, he appeared little different from the way he had those many years ago. McCrae had her own memories of that day and of that farewell speech. She had romanticized Reinhardt then, for he had looked as much soldier as scientist, the epitome of the dashing, adventurous explorer, yet with intellect to match boldness.

  She had never guessed how much soldier and scientist merged in the man's mind. Reinhardt regarded the mysteries of the Universe not as indifferent questions of physics or chemistry, but as implacable, malicious foes. They were to be assaulted with science, vanquished at any cost, forced to yield their treasure house of knowledge.

  That belief still drove him. It was there in his attitude and especially in those piercing, slightly wild eyes. His gaze had always seemed to see a little farther into the Universe than that of most men. It had fixed on reluctant bureaucrats and indecisive politicians and compelled them to appropriate the money to build and crew the Cygnus. Reinhardt had built the great ship. Other men had been his tools, and he had used them as roughly and mercilessly as he had used himself.

  Now those eyes focused on the helpless knot of visitors standing before him.

  Holland and McCrae examined him in turn. They did not identify with Reinhardt as thoroughly as Durant did. He was a fellow scientist, researcher, explorer of the unknown. But they did not have the same messianic zeal. Reinhardt's fanaticism set him apart from them. Apart from them and from the rest of mankind.

  It did not trouble Reinhardt to see the distrust in their faces. He had lived with it all his life and fully expected it to accompany him to his grave. People would regard even his distrust with uncertainty. That personal isolation was corollary to his dedication. Long before most of the people now with him in the chamber had been born, he had realized the necessity of living apart from his fellow man. He would accept it. He would do without close friends or family.

  In place of them he accepted admirers—and there were many. Sycophants had proved useful. He had used them as he had the bureaucrats, to further his personal ends. If no one volunteered to read the obituary on his passing, it would not distress him. He would settle for having his accomplishments chiseled into his headstone. He smiled at the thought, and those watching him misinterpreted the smile.

  He would require a very tall headstone.

  Of all those now assembled before this bearded vision from the past, Booth was the least impressed. Many times in his long career he had interviewed or watched the great and the mighty. Maybe others reacted differently; but he, Harry Booth, had always paid attention, and try as he might, not once had he ever seen air space between a great man's feet and the ground.

  Reinhardt walked like any man.

  "My network considered your Cygnus project," Booth said bluntly, gesturing to take in the dome and ship around them, "a waste of the taxpayers' money, Doctor. The Administrators of the territories of India, Southeast Asia and South Africa all lost their posts because they supported you."

  "So the jackals of the press hounded the heels of government until the farsighted among them were destroyed." Reinhardt's voice was now as cold as the space outside the tower, and as impersonal. He had heretofore been almost apologetically polite. Now he was seething.

  "The men you speak of will be enshrined by the citizens of the future for their bravery in the face of ignorance and barbarism. The memories of those who slaughtered their careers will become dust, less than footnotes in the pages of history. They are the shortsighted fools who are always blind to the fact that some things can't be measured in monetary terms. All such primitives will eventually pass the way of the Neanderthal, weeded out of mankind by sensible social selection, as were the racists of the dark centuries.

  "Fortunately, the Cygnus was on her way and out of the system before those idiots could think to call her back."

  "Dr. Reinhardt?" McCrae purposely made herself sound as helpless and childlike as possible. The man might be a blind visionary, but he was not insensitive. Procurin
g the funds for construction of the Cygnus had required understanding as well as force.

  Her approach worked. His manner changed with startling abruptness as he turned to face her. The smile he bestowed on her verged on the paternal.

  "My dear child, I know who you are, as I know the identities of your companions. I can foresee your question. I'm sorry to have to dash your hopes, but your father is dead."

  McCrae sagged despite her belief that she had prepared herself for that answer. Holland comforted her as best he could. To imagine that her father might be alive was one thing. No amount of preparation had actually readied her to hear his actual fate from the lips of the one man in a position to know.

  "Sorry, Kate." Durant wished there were more he could say. He was as inept with words as Holland. They left that department to Booth and to the rambunctiously glib Pizer.

  "A man to be proud of," Reinhardt continued, trying to console her. "It was a grave personal loss to me, though never as strong as it must be to you. He was a trusted and loyal friend."

  Diplomacy or no, Holland found he could no longer ignore the questions raised by the emptiness of the tower and the sections of the Cygnus they had already passed through.

  "And the rest of the crew?" He watched the scientist closely.

  "They didn't make it back, then?" Reinhardt appeared simultaneously hurt and surprised, as if he had expected Holland's words but had hoped not to hear them.

  "No. What do you mean, 'make it back?' What . . .?"

  "Pity. A good crew, good people all. Dedicated to their mission."

  "Wait a minute," said Booth sharply. "I'm missing something here. We know that the mission was eventually recalled to Earth. Yet you and the ship are here, and you say the crew is . . .?"

  "Expenses again. Yes," murmured Reinhardt.

  "What happened after the recall was issued? You did receive it?" Would Reinhardt, Booth wondered, have a reasonable explanation for the mystery that had teased the people of Earth for twenty years?

  The scientist took a deep breath, then began without looking at them. "I did as you would expect me to—argued, pleaded, even threatened. But an order like that could not be ignored, though I would have done so if I could.

  "But there were others aboard and I knew their sentiments. Also, we had been gone from Earth for many years. The feelings of many of the crew toward their mission had changed. Weakened, I would say, but they were all, after all, only human. The reaction was to be expected."

  He paused for a moment, waiting for comments. There were none.

  "We turned about and set course for Earth to comply with the orders. Despite all our precautions, we ran into difficulty. We encountered a phenomenon no one had expected, not those of us aboard ship nor the people who had designed the ship.

  "While traveling at supralight speeds, we passed through a vast field of a unique variety of heavy particles. We were through the field before its effects or even its presence could be predicted. There our drive was permanently disabled, despite the best efforts of our technical-repair staff. All our communications facilities were likewise damaged, beyond any hope of calling for aid.

  "There was one remaining option—abandoning the ship and utilizing two of our three auxiliary survey craft to return directly to Earth. As their drive systems had been quiescent during the particle-field storm, they proved to be undamaged."

  Booth started to say something, but Holland placed a restraining hand on his arm.

  Reinhardt nodded at the reporter, then continued his story. "I knew this was the choice the crew preferred," he said. "And so I made it easy for them by ordering them to abandon ship and return home as directed. I told them I would attempt to put the Cygnus on the same course to return . . . at sublight velocity." He smiled.

  "Everyone knew that traveling from our position at the time would take me some three hundred years to make Earth orbit. Perhaps it was another of what you term my theatrical gestures, Mr. Booth, but I chose to remain behind, aboard my ship." He gestured, a wide sweep that took in the interior of the tower and, by inference, the whole of the ship.

  "I fought too hard and too long for the Cygnus to leave her, certainly not to return to Earth and admit failure. I thought it proper to uphold the ancient tradition of the captain going down with his ship." His expression mocked them.

  "You have experienced the gravitational power of the wonderfully complex stellar object nearby and know that the Cygnus and I may yet pursue the analogy of the sinking ship with considerable fidelity." His tone softened as he again regarded McCrae.

  "Your father believed. He chose to remain with me. We never learned what happened to the others, those who left on the two survey craft. But when years passed and no rescue ship came to find us, we could guess. I am saddened to learn for certain that they did not make it home."

  Booth looked thoughtful. "Odd that two separate ships failed to make it back, or even to make contact with Earth or a navigation beacon," he ventured.

  "Not so," Reinhardt responded. "Neither vessel was equipped with the deep-ranging communications equipment of the Cygnus, nor with her highly sophisticated and complex navigation system. That both ships should be lost is, while sad, not unnatural or unexpected."

  "Then if the chances for them were so slim, why did everyone else except you and Frank McCrae choose to go?"

  Reinhardt stared pityingly at the reporter. "What would you have done, Mr. Booth? Taken the chance of making it back to Earth in a less efficient ship, or the chance of living the three hundred years necessary to make the journey at sublight speeds?"

  Durant was more interested in the living legend addressing them than in people they could no longer help. "You've lived out here for all these years since the others left . . . by yourself?"

  "Not exactly by myself, Doctor. Until his death, I had the good company and companionship of a man of similar dedication, Frank McCrae. After his passing . . . I knew enough crude psychology to realize that even I needed some form of companionship if I was to remain sane. So I created companions . . . of a sort. There were the Cygnus's surviving mechanicals still aboard. With their aid, I repopulated the ship with tougher, less emotional assistants." He gestured at the rows of silent fibres manning the consoles behind them. "I made them as human as I possibly could."

  "But they don't seem able to talk," McCrae observed.

  "When I can make them sound as human as I, I will finish that aspect of their construction, dear lady."

  The elevator door opened suddenly. They turned.

  Charlie Pizer was standing framed in the doorway. He was surrounded by a cluster of efficient-looking mechanicals. The downcast Pizer immediately brightened at the sight of his companions. His normal insouciance returned.

  "Hi, folks." He indicated his escorts. "Have you met the goon squad yet?"

  "I am sorry for the humorlessness of your company, Mr. Pizer." Reinhardt retained his grin. "Again, my friends, I confess that manners are not the strong points of my machines. Please join us, Mr. Pizer."

  The first officer stepped out of the elevator, carefully watching the machines that had accompanied him. They did not follow.

  "Dismissed." Reinhardt spoke sharply to the guards. The elevator door closed in front of them. It was an indication of instant, unquestioning obedience, which Holland noted for future reference.

  "They reflect the manners of whoever programmed them." Pizer said, ignoring a warning look from Holland. "They took my pistol. I'd like it back."

  "What for? To shoot me, maybe?" Reinhardt expressed astonishment. "You were disarmed for your own safety. Maximillian and my other robots are programmed not only to react against aggression but to prevent it."

  "I assure you," said Durant hastily, "nothing of the sort was intended."

  "I still don't see why, once you saw who we were, you directed the automatic guards in reception to disarm us," Holland said.

  "Captain Holland, I have already explained that I saw what you were but not who you
were. Your state of mind could not be scanned. For all I knew, you were a punitive expedition sent out specifically on the word of surviving malcontents among the Cygnus's crew to kill me.

  "Nonetheless, I did not direct the sentry machines in reception to disarm you. You yourself just said they were automatic, and so they are. They responded, I believe, to your brandishing of weapons."

  "That's a normal reaction for a group entering a strange, non-communicative vessel."

  "And disarmament was the reception room's normal reaction to your display of guns. Both you and the reception-area brain reacted, if you'll pardon the analogy, to similar programming. I have often said that the differences between man and machine are superficial."

  "I'd still like my pistol back," Pizer repeated, unmollified.

  "Your property will be returned to you in good time, Mr. Pizer. Until then, I must insist for your own safety that it remain secured . . . lest you lose your apparently considerable temper and induce some slow-thinking mechanical to violence.

  "As to your boarding with weapons showing, were I a military man I would be most suspicious. However, I am a scientist, so I understand." He finished with an expansive smile. "Rest assured you are not prisoners. You're my guests, the first it has been my pleasure to entertain in quite a few years."

  As Reinhardt turned to speak to McCrae, Pizer moved next to Holland and leaned over to whisper to him. "There's a whole army of those things on board," he declared with a gesture back at the elevator, "and nobody told them we're guests."

  "Take it easy, Charlie. Everything Reinhardt's said about the way we've been treated so far is reasonable. Not nice, but reasonable. Let's give the old boy the benefit of the doubt until he gives us stronger reasons to believe he's something other than what he claims to be. Besides, we haven't any choice."

  Reinhardt was still talking mostly to McCrae when Holland interrupted him. "We won't impose on your hospitality, Doctor. Well require some minor spare parts. Our trouble's with our atmospheric regeneration system. If you can help us out, we can manage the repairs ourselves."