The Black Hole

by Alan Dean Foster

  The room and the lavish meal laid before them was shocking, not for their elaborateness, but because they gave the impression of being exactly the opposite. There was nothing to indicate that any special preparations had been made for them, beyond cooking more food than normal. Holland had the feeling that Reinhardt dined like this all the time. For a few seconds he found himself envying his counterpart.

  That instant of envy vanished quickly. Fresh asparagus was a poor substitute for human companionship, an orange no match for sympathy from a fellow creature. Despite the opulent display, Reinhardt was more to be pitied than envied.

  There was no reason he should stint on his meals, not with the resources of a vessel designed to feed hundreds devoted to satisfying his needs alone. Holland decided that Reinhardt was entitled to any compensations he could muster.

  But for some reason the setting still disturbed him.

  Bookcases leaned against other walls. Some held books made with real paper. Antique star maps decorated real wood paneling. The room was a mixture of the old and the new, traits which seemed more and more to characterize Reinhardt himself.

  The commander of the Cygnus had risen to greet them as they entered. He did not comment on the absence of Vincent, though Holland knew it had been noted. Instead, after greeting the newcomers, he turned his attention back to McCrae.

  "What a pleasant experience to dine once more with a lovely woman. That is an effect quite beyond the most elaborate programming."

  McCrae nodded ever so slightly. "Thank you."

  Reinhardt now looked back at Holland, who had moved to stand alongside Harry Booth. "A great many experiments are in progress aboard the Cygnus, gentlemen. Some of them are dangerous. In the interests of your own safety, I suggest that there are no more unescorted excursions for the duration of your stay."

  Holland thought the gentle admonition was intended for himself and Pizer. As yet he knew nothing of Booth's solitary exploration of numerous corridors, nor of his singular encounter with the peculiar robot in hydroponics. But since Reinhardt appeared willing to let the matter drop with the simple warning, he wasn't about to pursue it. Nor was Booth.

  Reinhardt indicated they should be seated, moved quickly to hold a chair for McCrae.

  "Please . . ."

  She accepted the seat. The physical proximity of the commander made her nervous for reasons she couldn't define. Durant took the chair opposite her, and Reinhardt, as expected, sat at the head of the table between them.

  Durant found himself eying the painting of the Cygnus that dominated one wall and wondering who had painted it. Reinhardt himself, or one of the since-departed crew? Or had it been on the Cygnus originally? Maybe one of Reinhardt's machines had executed the work. He inspected the crystal goblet on the table near his plate. It was a replica of nineteenth-century English. All the other table settings had been made by machines. Why not the painting also?

  Why did it disturb him to think that?

  "We begin with fresh mushroom soup. Prepared from my own personal garden." Several of the humanoid robots were already dispensing the thick potage. They moved and worked with a fluidity unmatched by the average mechanical.

  "Mushrooms grow especially well on the Cygnus," Reinhardt continued. "Considering the dark and cold of their immediate surroundings, it somehow seems appropriate that they should do so well."

  Pizer was already downing the soup from the silver bowl before him. "This is the kind of Christmas dinner I've been dreaming about for months." He spooned another mouthful, swallowed, his eyes closing from the sheer pleasure of it. "Delicious."

  "Thank you. I am afraid the spices, the white pepper and the butter substitute are from the Cygnus's store of preserved condiments, but the parsley you see is also fresh, as is the wine in the soup. I have enjoyed reprogramming and experimenting with the machines that do the cooking. I have had ample time to develop an interest in such hobbies without having to neglect my serious work."

  Booth had barely sampled his soup, was staring down at it with a peculiar expression. "I remember writing about the extensive hydroponics system back when everyone was doing features on the Cygnus's construction. Large enough to support the needs of the entire crew, wasn't it?"

  Reinhardt nodded agreeably. "These days it's tiny, only large enough to supply my personal needs. Most of the cultivated areas have been allowed to lie dormant."

  "Naturally. Be a waste of energy and material to maintain them for no reason at all." A robot refilled the reporter's wineglass. Booth was disappointed that his carefully phrased appraisal had failed to provoke some kind of reaction from Reinhardt.

  "Our spare parts and our wine are vintage, Captain. I hope they all prove satisfactory." Reinhardt savored the bouquet from his own glass, sipped delicately.

  "We're modifying a few of them, Doctor, but we should be able to make everything work." Holland chewed his food, swallowed and spoke while slicing another portion of meat. "The changes that have taken place in the past twenty years have been primarily in the fields of guidance and navigation, life-support maintenance and automatics.

  "Atmospheric regeneration systemology has remained fairly basic over that period. There's only so much you can do with air. The replacements you've provided us with were machined a little differently, and some of the alloys are different. Nothing that can't be adjusted to work on the Palomino. We'll be finished with our repairs by tomorrow, and ready to leave."

  Durant took immediate exception to that. "Speak for yourself, Dan. I, for one, still have a great deal to learn from Dr. Reinhardt."

  "Our mission's finished, Alex. It's time for us to start home. All of us."

  Durant opened his mouth to reply, but their attention was diverted by the sudden entry of Maximillian. The machine was a brutal reminder of the realities which held sway beyond the fairy-tale ambiance of the dining room. Reinhardt listened sagely to the rapid-paced spew of electronics from the robot, clearly understanding everything. Whatever the content of the message, it produced an immediate change in the commander's attitude. His mood turned from merely pleasant to downright buoyant.

  "Thank you, Maximillian. Inform me in time to congratulate him formally."

  A last series of beeps issued from the machine. Then it pivoted on its repeller units and departed. Reinhardt dwelled in some other dimension for an instant, then remembered his guests. Lifting his wineglass as he rose, he addressed them all. His particular attention was reserved for the expectant Durant.

  "A toast to you and your companions, Dr. Durant, on the occasion of your visit to the Cygnus. You are the only people of Earth to know of my continued existence, the only ones to know that I did not vanish with dreams unfulfilled."

  Durant lifted his own glass in reflexive response. "And to you, sir, and your magnificent achievements. May they multiply and increase."

  "So they shall, so they shall." Reinhardt sounded self-important. Not pompous. Never pompous. He was driven beyond that.

  "Tonight, my friends, we stand on the brink of a feat unparalleled in the history of spatial exploration."

  "And what might that be?" inquired the ever-skeptical Booth.

  Reinhardt glanced at him. "If the data on my returning probe ship matches my computerized calculations, it will mean I can proceed with the ultimate test of both the new energy source represented by the Cygnus Process and the null-g field generator. I will travel where no man has dared to go." He was staring past them now, out the port into space.

  Durant hesitated, disbelieving, but Reinhardt's gaze and manner could be indicative of only one possible destination. "Into the black hole . . .?"

  Stunned as they all were by the wonderful madness of such a thought, that was as much as any of them could say.

  Reinhardt continued to gaze past them, past the parameters of his ship. His was the look of a man whose dedication was coupled with disregard for anything but achieving a particular end. Such a gaze belonged only to true visionaries.

  Also true m
admen.

  "You strive to attain a most singular end, Doctor," an awed Durant finally added.

  Reinhardt replied without smiling. "No, Dr. Durant. To attain the end of a singularity."

  "That's crazy," Booth chimed in, not caring now whether he might provoke Reinhardt to anger or not. "Impossible! It's impossible to travel into a black hole, let alone through one!"

  It was not the aspersion Booth indirectly cast on Reinhardt's sanity that upset the commander of the Cygnus, but rather the reporter's scientific absolutism and negativity.

  "Impossible? 'Impossible' is a word found only in the dictionary of fools." He was barely holding his anger in check.

  Pizer glanced at Holland. Reinhardt noted the look, saw that at least the captain was giving the proposal serious consideration. It calmed him somewhat. Foolish to allow a popular demagogue like Booth to upset him!

  "Mr. Pizer," he told the first officer, "I was dreaming of this when you were still flying kites. If scientists habitually restricted their researches to what their colleagues considered possible, we would still be living in caves, or on the Eurasian land mass because of fear of sailing off the edge of the Earth, or restricted to the Earth alone because exploration of the cosmos might not seem financially feasible.

  "Such attitudes are characteristic of the Dark Ages. I am surprised that any of you," and he looked around the table, "would adhere to such deterministic nonsense."

  "Dreaming is one thing, the dangerous pursuit of dreams another," Holland argued. "People have dreamed for years about such an attempt, and have failed every time. Drone ships have managed to get close, but eventually all are trapped by the collapsar's gravity and they vanish beyond the event horizon."

  "You disappoint me, Captain Holland. I expected more empathy for such a journey from someone like yourself. Have you no desire, no curiosity, to know what may lie on the other side of a black hole?"

  "There is no other side," Booth insisted. "Anything that enters a black hole is smashed down to nothingness by the strength of the gravity."

  "That's one theory," Reinhardt readily admitted, unperturbed. "There are others."

  "The scientific consensus today says there's nothing on the other side," McCrae put in.

  "Yet if there is another side, which is where Mr. Booth and I disagree, then by definition there must be something there. As I've just pointed out, my dear, the scientific consensus once insisted the world was flat."

  "It's not possible." Holland still spoke thoughtfully, his voice devoid of ridicule. "Every leading scientist says it's not possible."

  "Except this one," Reinhardt said loftily.

  "Assuming the impossible for a moment," Holland finally hypothesized, "that your field functions as you believe it will and that you can also generate enough power to break through to this imaginary 'other side' . . . how do you propose to return?"

  Reinhardt surveyed him with the full pity the dedicated scientist reserves for the layman. "My dear Captain Holland, I do not expect to return."

  By now the pool table was surrounded by mechanical spectators, all viewing the action through optics operating on everything from infrared up through the ultraviolet. Mutters of amazement and admiration filled the air. As yet, Vincent's remarkable display of pool prowess had not engendered any apparent hostility, not even from the mechanical he was playing against.

  Making the usual ultrarapid calculations involving distance, mass and energy, Vincent lined up his next shot. Another ball tumbled neatly into a far pocket. Nearby, the old B.O.B. unit he had befriended looked on in astonishment. The tension-cue seemed to have become an extension of Vincent's mind as well as his body.

  Vincent noticed the flicker of lights on the older machine flashing the admiration sequence. "The only way to win. Never give the other fellow a shot. Run the table on him." He tilted himself sideways in the air, lined up a ridiculously difficult shot and banked it home. A chorus of incredulous buzzes and murmurs rose from the robotic audience he had attracted.

  "Are there any more like us on board?" Vincent set up his next shot, a tough three-ball combination. Bob shook its head no.

  But something had finally convinced the old machine to talk. "I'm the last. There were others, but our series was fairly new when the Cygnus was first outfitted. A lot of us revealed bugs. Every one except myself failed early in his journey." He turned prideful, tried to correct the list to his hover.

  "I must have been one of the first in the series to be properly composed. I'm still operative. These upstarts think I'm some old freak."

  Vincent made the shot easily, moved to follow up as the cue ball glided to a halt. "We're still the pride of the fleet back home." He fired another ball in. "There are units like you and me operating at every level of fleet command. Also in private commercial service. We're highly regarded and valued.

  "You could be fixed up easily enough. Install some of the latest reaction circuitry and logic capacitors and you'd be good as new. No . . . better than new. How would you like to go back with us?"

  The hum of conversation surrounding the table and players abruptly ceased. A couple of the machines near Bob flashed warning lights.

  Vincent appraised the scene and the attitude of the other robots. All were Reinhardt-made or modified. None appeared sympathetic to his casual offer. He decided he would find no allies among these mechanicals. With one possible exception.

  "I think you'd be wise to drop the subject," Bob advised him.

  After studying his audience a moment longer, Vincent gave the equivalent of an electronic shrug. "Forget it. I was just joking. We wouldn't have room for additional machines anyway." Then he added as an idle afterthought, "One of those parts Maximillian drew for us doesn't work. I'll be needing a replacement for a regenerator boost, module number A-Thirty-four."

  He turned back to the game as if nothing had happened, lined up another ball.

  "That shot does not compute," insisted one of the again fully absorbed onlookers.

  "Don't bet on it," Vincent warned him. "I have not yet begun to compute." He made the shot, with extra English to spare. It catalyzed the expected flurry of electronic oohs and ahs.

  It also allowed old Bob to slip out of the recreation room without being noticed.

  Booth had his recorder out and activated. He set it next to his plate. Reinhardt either did not notice it or had no objection to the reporter's recording his statements. The latter was the more likely.

  Holland was the one currently talking. "According to what you've told us, Doctor, the surviving lifeboat-survey ship has been converted to accept both your matter-anti-matter energy system and the gravity field distortion unit. But you say it has only traveled to the event horizon, not past it into the black hole itself.

  "I admit that being able to pass that close to oblivion and return successfully is a tremendous achievement." Reinhardt didn't change his expression, accepting the compliment as his due. "But it's akin to sailing a ship atop an ocean, as opposed to diving to its bottom. When you begin traveling beneath the surface, you have to deal with radically different natural forces. It's the same when you pass the event horizon."

  He tapped his plate idly with a fork. "How do you expect the Cygnus to escape being crushed by the gravity in there? Most theories hold that the center of a black hole no longer contains anything we'd recognize as mass. It's simply a self-sustaining gravity field of incalculable strength."

  "I would assume," Durant interrupted, "that Dr. Reinhardt has sufficient confidence in his field's ability to bend the damaging effects around his ship, to drive a hole through what we might call, for lack of better terms, 'solid' gravity."

  "Indeed." Reinhardt was clearly delighted to have Durant's support. "I know that you're thinking that one slight error in navigation could be fatal, Captain. That is your field, and so I accept your criticism where that is concerned.

  "But I know exactly what I am doing and how I shall proceed. I have worked on the requisite calculations for nearly
two years. The course I've chosen will take the Cygnus into the Pit at the most acute angle possible. The incredible speed generated by the ship's engines will be augmented by the gradually increasing pull which will rise to a climax as we strike the event horizon.

  "The combination should permit me to slingshot through the dimensional warp I believe exists at the center of the singularity in an instant, long before the shielding null-g field enveloping the Cygnus can be collapsed. I have no intention of waiting around inside the event horizon to test the ultimate limits of that field. It will be sufficient if it protects the Cygnus for several seconds."

  "You're going to encounter all kinds of secondary effects before you ever reach that point." McCrae sounded as dubious as Holland. "What about the intense radiation, the heat generated by the collapsing matter entering the hole?"

  "My previous probings and all my studies have shown that if I remain exactly on course, the Cygnus will pass through unscathed. Furthermore, since the heat within the collapsar's accretion disk is gravity-related, much of it should be diverted around the Cygnus by the null-g field."

  "Fantastic!" Durant was completely overwhelmed by the proposal. "Both the notion itself and the physics involved were beyond my concepts of magnificence." He shook his head slowly. His thoughts were a confused mixture of awe and disbelief. They were mirrored in his expression.

  Having disposed of his last opponent, Vincent drifted away from the pool table. Most of the robots who had watched the contest remained there. Crowding around the table, they pushed and shoved one another for the chance to use the cues. With considerable frustration and little success, they were trying to imitate Vincent's techniques.

  The three-level pinball machine crackled and chimed satisfactorily as Vincent operated the dozen flippers within. His mind was not on the game. It appeared he moved randomly from one machine to the next. All the while he was edging closer to the exit. At last he allowed a final ball to find its own noisy way through the labyrinth of the last machine and slipped out into the corridor.