Beyond the Fall of Night

by Arthur C. Clarke

  "Fully?"

  "All components knit together."

  "I caught something about that from the Captain." She frowned, troubled, eyes distant. "Sheets of fine copper wire wrapping around blue flames . . ."

  "Where?"

  "Somewhere further out from here. Where it's cold, dark. There was a feeling of the Mad Mind spreading over whole stars. Suns . . . like campfires."

  "It is expanding." Seeker clashed its claws together, a gesture of sly menace which somehow made it look professorial.

  She told Seeker what she had glimpsed. Much of it was a tapestry of rediscovered history.

  The Mad Mind had been confined to the warped space-time near a huge Black Hole. Only the restraining curvature there could hold the Mind in place for long. This had been done eons ago, a feat accomplished by humanity in collaboration with elements and beings she could not begin to describe. Around the Black Hole orbited a disk made of infalling matter, flattened into a thin plate, spinning endlessly. The inner edge of the disk was gnawed into incandescent ferocity by the compressive clawing of the Black Hole's great tidal gradients. There the Mad Mind had been held by the swirl and knots of vexed space-time. Matter perpetually entered the disk at its outer rim, as dust clouds and even stars were drawn inward by friction and the shredding effects of the Black Hole's grip.

  The Mad Mind had been forced to perpetually swim upstream against this flux of matter in the disk. If it relented, the Mind would have been carried by the flow to the very inner edge of the disk. There it would have been sucked further in, spiraling down into the hole.

  That had been the prison and torture of the Mad Mind. It had been able to spare nothing in its struggle to survive. And that is all that had saved the rest of the galaxy from its strange wrath.

  "But it escaped," Seeker said.

  "It... diffused." The odd word popped into her head, summoned by the fading images from the Captain. "It is made of magnetic fields, and they diffused across the conducting disk. That took a very long time, but the Mind managed it."

  "Where was the Black Hole?" Seeker asked.

  "It was the biggest humanity could find—the hole at the center of the galaxy."

  They both looked out through the transparent pressure membrane. The vibrant glow of a million suns wreathed the center of the galaxy in beeswarm majesty. Yet at the center of all that glare dwelt an utter darkness, they knew. Ten billion years of galactic progression had fed the Black Hole. Stars which swooped too close to it were stripped and sucked in. Each dying sun added to the compact darkness, the dynamical center about which a hundred billion stars rotated in the gavotte of the galaxy.

  Cley whispered, "Then moving the solar system here, near the galactic center, was part of the scheme to trap the Mad Mind?"

  Seeker said, "It must have been."

  "Wouldn't it be safer to get as far away as possible?"

  "Yes. But not responsible."

  "So humanity brought the sun and planets here as a kind of guard?"

  "That is one possibility. Our star may have been moved here to challenge the Mad Mind when it emerged."

  "How can we?"

  "With difficulty."

  "That's one possibility, you said. What's another?"

  "That we were placed here as a sentinel, to warn others."

  "Who?"

  "I do not know."

  "Hard to warn somebody when you don't know who that might be."

  "There is yet one more possibility."

  "What?"

  "That we are here as a sacrifice."

  Cley said nothing. Seeker went on. "Perhaps if the Mad Mind finds and destroys its imprisoners, it will be content."

  The casual way Seeker said this chilled Cley. "What's all this about?'"

  "Perhaps the Supras know."

  "Well then, let them fight the Mind. I want out of it."

  "There is no way out."

  "Well, moving further from the sun sure doesn't seem so smart. That's where the Mind is accumulating itself."

  Seeker studied the stars, bright holes punched in the pervading night. "Your talent made you too easy to find on Earth. Here you blend into the many mind-voices."

  Cley opened her mouth to disagree and stopped, feeling a light, keening note sound through her thoughts. She blinked. It was a hunting call, a flavor that eons had not erased, as though from some quick bird swooping down through velvet air, eyes intent on scampering prey below.

  She glanced back at the smoldering glow of the galactic center. Against it were black shapes, angular and swift, growing. Not metal, like Supra ships, but green and brown and gray.

  "Call the Captain!" she said.

  "I have," Seeker said.

  As Cley watched the approaching sleek creatures she saw that they were larger than the usual spaceborne life she had known, and that it was far too late to avoid them, even if Leviathan could have readily turned its great bulk.

  Skysharks, Cley thought, the word leaping up from her buried vocabulary. The term fit, though she did not know its origin. They were elegantly molded for speed, with jets for venting gases. Solar sails gave added thrust, but the lead skyshark had reeled in its sails as it approached, retracting the silvery sheets into pouches in its side. Cupped parabolas fore and aft showed that it had evolved radar senses; these, too, collapsed moments before contact, saving themselves from the fray.

  The first of them came lancing into the Leviathan without attempting to brake. It slammed into the skin aft of the blister that held Seeker and Cley. They could see it gouge a great hole in the puckered skin.

  The skysharks were large, muscular, powerful. Cley watched the first few plow into the mottled hide of the Leviathan and wondered why they would risk such damage merely for food. But then her ears popped.

  "They're breaking the seals!"

  "Yes," Seeker said calmly, "such is their strategy."

  "But they'll kill everything aboard."

  "They penetrate inward a few layers. This lets the outrushing air bring to them the smaller animals."

  Cley watched a skyshark back away from the jagged wound it had made. A wind blew the backdrop of stars around, the only evidence of escaping air. Then flecks and motes came from the wound, a geyser of helpless wriggling prey. The skyshark caught each with its quick, wide mouth, seeming to inhale them.

  Cley had to remind herself that these gliding shapes and their cool, soundless, artful movements were actually a savage attack, remorseless and efficient. Vacuum gave even death a quality of silent grace. Yet the beauty of threat shone through, a quality shared alike by the grizzly, falcon and rattler.

  Her ears popped again. "If we lose all our air . . ."

  "We should not," Seeker said, though it was plainly worried, its coat running with swarthy spirals. "Membranes close to limit the loss."

  "Good," Cley said uncertainly. But as she spoke a wind rose, sucking dry leaves into a cyclone about them.

  "That should not happen," Seeker said stiffly.

  "Look."

  Outside two skysharks were wriggHng into older gouges. Air had ceased to stream from them, so the beasts could enter easily.

  Others withdrew from the rents they had torn after only a few vicious bites. They jetted along the broad sweep of skin, seeking other weak points. In their tails were nozzled and gimbled chambers. She saw a bright flame as hydrogen peroxide and catalase combined in these, puffs and streamers pushing them adroitly along the rumpled brown hide.

  From the gaping gashes where skysharks had entered came fresh puffs of air. Some carried animals tumbling in the thinning gale, and skysharks snapped these up eagerly.

  "The ones that went inside—they must be tearing up those membranes," Cley said. "Sucks out the protected areas."

  Seeker braced itself against the steadily gathering winds. "A modified tactic. Even if those inside perish, their fellows benefit from the added game. Good for the species overall, despite the sacrifice of a few."

  "Yeah, but what'll we do?�
�

  "Come."

  Seeker launched itself away and Cley followed. Between bounces off trunks and bowers. Seeker curled up into a ball to minimize the pull of the howling gale. Cley copied this, narrowing her eyes against the rain of leaves and bark and twigs that raked her.

  Seeker led her along a zigzag path just beneath the Leviathan's skin. Despite the whirling winds she heard the yelps and cries of animals. A catlike creature lost its grip on a tubular root and pin-wheeled away, A triangular mat with legs caroomed off Seeker and ricocheted from Cley before whirling into the madhouse mist.

  They came to a system like a heart, with veins and arteries stretching away in all directions. The wind moaned and gathered itself here with a promise of worse to come. The open wounds behind them were probably tearing further, she guessed, evacuating more and more of the Leviathan. For the first time it occurred to Cley that even this colossal creature could perhaps die, its fluids and air bled into space.

  She hurried after Seeker. A gray cloud streamed by them, headed toward the sighing breezes. Cley recognized this flight of thumb-sized flyers which had made up the Captain, now streaming to defend its ship. There might even be more than one Captain, or a crew of the anthology-beings. Or perhaps the distinction of individual entities was meaningless.

  Ahead was a zone of gauzy, translucent surfaces lit by phosphorescent streaks. Seeker grabbed a sheet of the waxy stuff^, which seemed to be a great membrane upon which pollen caught. Even in the chaos of drifting debris Cley could see that this was part of an enormous plant. They were at the tip of a great pistil. Seeker was wrenching off a slab of its sticky walls. Above this was a broad transparent dome which brought sunlight streaming into the leathery bud of the plant. Its inner bulb had mirrored surfaces which reflected the intense sunlight into bright blades, sending illumination deep into the inner recesses of the Leviathan.

  She took this in at a glance. Then Seeker yanked her into position on the bulb wall, where her feet caught in sticky goo. Seeker barked orders and Cley followed them, fashioning the tough sheet into a pyramidal shape. Seeker stuck the edges together with the wall adhesive. It turned down the last side, leaving them inside the pyramid. They drifted toward the transparent ceiling, moving on an eddy of the slowly building winds. Seeker crouched at an apex of the pyramid. It touched the ceiling and did something quickly to the wall—and they passed through, into naked space.

  "This will last for only a while," Seeker said.

  "Till we run out of air," Cley said.

  "If that long."

  The advantage of living construction material was that it grew together, encouraged by an adhesive, becoming tighter than any manufactured seal. Nature loved the smooth and seamless. Soon their pyramid held firm and snug.

  They drifted away from Leviathan. Cley hoped the skysharks would ignore them, and indeed the predators were nuzzling greedily at the raw wounds amidships. Around Leviathan was a swarm of debris. Into this cloud came spaceborne life of every description. Some were smaller predators who scavenged on whatever the skysharks left. Others spread great gossamer sheets to catch the air which poured forth from the Leviathan's wounds. Small creatures billowed into great gas bags, fat with rare wealth. Limpets crawled eagerly along the crusty hide toward the rents. When they arrived they caught streamers of fluid that spouted irregularly into the vacuum.

  This was a riotous harvest for some; Cley could see joy in the excited darting of thin-shelled beetles who snatched at the tumbling fragments of once-glorious ferns. The wounds created fountains that shot motley clouds of plant and animal life into a gathering crowd of eager consumers, their appetites quickened by the bounty of gushing air.

  "Hope they don't fancy our taste," Cley said.

  Her mouth was dry and she had long since passed the point of fear. Now she simply watched. Gargantuan forces had a way of rendering her pensive, reflective. This trait had been more eff"ective in the survival of Ur-humans than outright aggression or conspicuous gallantry and it did not fail her now. Visible fear would have attracted attention. They drifted among the myriad spaceborne forms, perhaps too strange a vessel to encourage ready attack; even hungry predators wisely select food they know.

  "Do you think they will kill Leviathan?" Cley asked.

  "Mountains do not fear ants," Seeker answered.

  "But they're gutting it!"

  "They cannot persist for long inside the mountain. For the space-borne, air in plenty is a quick poison."

  "Oxygen?"

  "It kindles the fires that animate us. Too much, and ..."

  Seeker pointed. Now curls of smoke trickled from the ragged wounds. The puffs of air had thinned but they carried black streamers.

  "The skysharks can forage inside until the air makes their innards burn." Seeker watched the spectacle with almost scholarly interest.

  "They die, so that others can eat the Leviathan?"

  "Apparently. Though I suspect this behavior has other purposes, as well."

  "All this pillaging? It's awful."

  "Yes. Many have died. But not those for whom this raid was intended."

  "Who's that?"

  "Us."

  32

  They waited out the attack. Wispy shreds of smoke thinned as the Leviathan healed its internal ruptures, damming the torrent of air. The remaining skysharks glided with easy menace over the Leviathan's skin, but did not rip and gouge it. They ignored the periodic rings of plant life around Leviathan's middle. Apparently these thick-skinned, ropy growths had developed poisons or other defenses, and were left to spread their leathery leaves to the sun, oblivious to the assault on Leviathan's body.

  The skysharks fed first on debris. Then they sensed Cley and Seeker and converged. 1 heir mouths gaped, showing spiky blue teeth. Clay felt ominous, silent presences in her mind, like the sudden press of chilled glass on her face. Seeker said, "Hate them."

  "You do?"

  "No, you hate them. That will protect us."

  ''Now. "

  She let go some of her bottled-in emotions, envisioning them as a sharp spear lanced directly at the nearest skyshark. This time she felt her transmission as a bright spark of virulent orange. The sky-shark wriggled, turned, fled.

  "Good. Do that whenever one approaches."

  "Why doesn't Leviathan keep them off this way?"

  "In packs they damp and defend against Leviathan thought patterns. But it taxes them greatly, for they are not very intelligent. When foraging among the helpless outgushed life, that defense mode is shut off."

  Already the skysharks were roaming further from the Leviathan, catching up with creatures and plant shreds blown away. Their angular bodies bulged, bellies still throbbing with the struggles of their ingested banquets. Fore and aft, appendages unfolded from their warty hides. Parabolic antennas blossomed and scanned with patient, metronomic vigilance. Cley suspected there were species which preyed on these sleek hunters, too, though to look at these mean, moving appetites, she could not imagine how they could be vulnerable.

  "So you think they're after us?"

  "They seldom assault a Leviathan; the losses are too heavy. Usually it is a tactic of desperation, when pickings elsewhere are lean."

  "Well, maybe it's been a bad year."

  "They were not thinned by hunger. No, they were directed to do this."

  "By the Mad Mind?"

  "It must be."

  Cley felt an icy apprehension. "Then it knows where I am."

  "I suspect it is probing, trying whatever idea occurs."

  "It killed a lot of creatures, doing this."

  "It cares nothing for that."

  Their jury-rigged bubble was clouding with moisture. Cley rubbed the surface to see better, forgetting the skysharks and beginning to wonder how they could survive for long out here. Mad Mind or no. Seeker seemed unbothered. It spread its hindquarters, assuming the posture which meant it intended to excrete, and Cley said, "Seeker! Not now."

  "But I must."

  "Look
, we're going to suffocate out here unless—"

  Seeker farted loudly and shat a thin stream directly onto the nearest wall. "Take a deep breath," it said.

  Cley caught just a taint of the smell—and then her ears popped. Seeker's excrement had eaten a small hole in their protection. Vacuum sucked the brown slime away.

  Cley grabbed for the nearest wall as a gathering breeze plucked at her hair. Sudden fear darted through her and she sucked in air greedily, finding it already thinner. In the far wall a small hole shrieked its banshee protest. The wall shot toward her. She struck it, rebounded in the sudden chill. Seeker's fur abruptly filled her face and she clutched a handful.

  She would have demanded an explanation but that would have taken air. Seeker surged, carrying her along with muscular agility. Her ears felt as though daggers were thrust into her eardrums. Seeker dug its claws into the walls, wedging the two of them into a corner. She struggled to see what was happening.

  Their draining air made a thin, screaming rocket, thrusting them back toward the Leviathan. They passed into its shadow.

  She saw a raw wound in the skin nearby. A pale pink membrane slid out from its edges. The gouge looked like a majestically closing eye, hurt and red-rimmed. They were headed nearly directly toward the slowly narrowing rent.

  Seeker lunged away. This momentarily altered the direction of the jetting air. Then Seeker slammed against the far wall and the jet swung again. This midcourse correction took them straight through the closing iris of the gouge.

  They struck a large, soft fern and bounced among a confused net of branches. The pink membrane sealed shut above them, puckering along the seam.

  Cley could hold her breath no longer. She exhaled, coughed, and sucked in thin but warm air. She breathed greedily, blinking.

  Around them small scurryings and slidings began. The Leviathan had already begun to secure and revive itself.

  "How . . . how'd you do that?"

  "A simple problem in dynamics." Seeker yawned.

  They lived for two days in the segmented chambers of this zone. Armies of small, insectlike workers thronged everywhere, patching and pruning. The pink membrane thickened just enough to keep in air securely, but allowed in beams of sunlight which hastened re-growth. Cley found food and rested, watching the crowds of hurrying workers. Through the transparent membrane she could see the spaceborne life outside, and at last understood their role.