by Allen Steele
The irony wasn’t lost on me that, only this morning, I’d sworn that I’d never drink again. Nor did I have any illusions about why we were doing what we were doing. It was all too possible that, come tomorrow, we’d all die a horrible death, consumed by a monster black hole. But there was little we could do about that at the moment except celebrate what might be the last hours of our lives.
Eventually, though, there came the point when the jug was finally empty. By then, Ash’s voice was nothing more than a slur, his fingers clumsy upon the strings. I was seeing double and Rain had collapsed against my shoulder; it was plain that none of us would be able to stay awake much longer. Wincing against the dull throb in my head, I stumbled to my feet, pulling Rain with me. Ash was falling asleep in his hammock as we found our way to the door.
Half-carrying Rain, I hobbled down the corridor, heading for my cabin. Rain woke up a little as I opened the door. “Uhh…hold it, this’s where I get off,” she muttered. “Gotta go thataway…my room.”
“Sure, sure.” Yet I was reluctant to let her go. Perhaps I was stinking drunk; nonetheless, I was all too aware that there was a pretty girl draped across my shoulders. “But, y’know, y’know…I mean, y’know…”
That seemed to wake her up a little more. “Oh, no,” she said, gently prying herself away from me. “Don’t you start. Not th’…this’s not th’ time or th’…”
“Place,” I finished, and that gave her the giggles. “Whatever, sure, but…” I stopped and gazed at her. “If not now, then when…?”
“’Nuther time, maybe, but not…” She shook her head. This nearly caused her to lose her balance, so she grabbed my arm to steady herself. Somehow, my hands fell to her hips, and for a moment there was a look in her eyes that made it seem as if she was reconsidering my unspoken proposition. But then she pushed herself away from me again.
“Definitely not now,” she finished.
Despite all the booze I’d put away, I was still sober enough to remember the definition of the word no. “Yeah, s’okay…”
Rain leaned forward and, raising herself on tiptoes, gave me a kiss. Her mouth was soft and warm, and tasted of bearshine. “Get us through this,” she whispered, “and maybe we’ll see about it.”
And then she wheeled away from me. I watched her go, realizing that I’d just been given another reason to live.
( SEVENTEEN )
Eye of the monster…
a fine time…
nice place to visit, but et cetera…
root hog or die.
IV
Fourteen hours later, Rain and I were on our way to Kha-Zann.
By then, I’d sobered up enough to climb into Lucy’s cockpit. Knowing that he’d have a drunk aboard his ship, Ted had made sure that the med bay was stocked with plenty of morning-after pills, eye-drops, and antioxidant patches; finally I knew why Ash had been able to recover from his binges so quickly. Two each of the former and one of the latter, along with hot coffee and a cold sponge bath, and I was ready to fly.
Rain met me in the ready room. She didn’t mention the inebriated pass I’d made at her the night before, but I couldn’t help but notice the way she blushed when I suggested that we save time by suiting up together. She declined with the polite excuse that she wanted to double-check her gear before putting it on. I didn’t argue, but instead suited up by myself. I worried that I might have damaged our friendship, but there were more important matters to deal with just then.
Over the course of the last sixteen hours, Aerik had steadily grown larger. Through the starboard portholes, the superjovian appeared as an enormous blue shield, its upper atmosphere striated by thin white cirrus clouds. By the time I’d slugged down my third or fourth cup of coffee, Kha-Zann had become visible as a reddish brown orb in trojan orbit a little less than a million miles from its primary. We couldn’t make out Kasimasta just yet, though; it was still on the opposite side of Aerik from the Pride, and no one aboard would be able to see it until the ship initiated the maneuvers that would swing it around the planet’s far side.
Yet we were all too aware that the Annihilator was coming. I had just put on my headset when Ted informed me that the sensors had picked up a slight disturbance in Aerik’s gravity well, coming from an unseen source approximately twelve million miles away. That sounded too far away to worry about, until the skipper reminded me that Kasimasta was traveling at four hundred miles per second. According to Ali’s calculations, the black hole would reach Kha-Zann in about eight hours…which meant that Rain and I had precious little time to waste.
Fortunately, we didn’t have to cycle through the airlock on the way out. Doc was waiting for us at the shuttle airlock; he insisted on giving our suits a quick check-out, but I think he’d really come down from the bridge to wish us good luck. Just before I climbed through the hatch, he produced a rabbit’s foot on a keychain, which he claimed had been in his family for three generations. I really didn’t want the mangy thing, but Doc was adamant about me taking it along, so I let him clip it to the zipper of my left shoulder pocket. A solemn handshake for me, a kiss on the cheek for Rain, and then the chief pronounced us fit to travel.
Doc had just shut the hatch behind us when we heard the muffled clang of two bells. Ali was about to commence the rollover maneuver that would precede the deceleration burn. So Rain and I hustled into the cockpit; we’d just strapped ourselves into our seats when we felt the abrupt cessation of g-force, signaling that the main engine had been cut off. As I began to power up the shuttle, there was the swerving sensation of the Pride doing a one-eighty on its short axis. Emily’s voice came over the comlink; a quick run-through of the checklist, and when everything came up green, we went straight into a thirty-second countdown.
Loose Lucy detached from the docking collar, and for a few moments the Pride seemed to hang motionless just outside the cockpit windows. Then I fired the RCS to ease us away from the ship, and our respective velocities changed; in a blink of an eye, the big freighter was gone, with little more than a last glimpse of its forward deflector array. From the seat beside me, Rain sighed; a couple of tiny bubbles that might have been tears drifted away from the open faceplate of her helmet, but I didn’t say anything about them.
As soon as the Pride was gone, I used the pitch and yaw thrusters to turn Lucy around; once she was pointed in the right direction, I switched to autopilot and fired up the main engine. A muted rumble that pushed us back in our seats; a few seconds of that, then the engine cut off and we were on the road to Kha-Zann.
Rain and I had decided we’d remain on cabin pressure until just before we were ready to make touchdown, at which point we would close our helmets and void the cabin. That way we’d save a little more time by not having to cycle through the airlock once we were on the ground. We’d also been careful not to have any solid food for breakfast or lunch; our suits’ recycling systems would get a good workout, but at least our diapers would remain clean. And we’d stuffed our pockets with stim tabs and caffeine pills; maybe we’d be too wired to sleep once we returned to the Pride, but at least we wouldn’t doze off.
So she and I had thought of everything. Or at least so we believed. Even so, nothing could have prepared us for our first sight of Kasimasta.
I had just removed my helmet and was bending over to stow it beneath my seat when Rain gasped. Looking up, I noticed that she was staring past me out the windows. I turned my head, and for a moment all I saw was Aerik, which by then had swelled to almost fill the portside windows. Impressive, but…
Then I saw what she’d seen and felt my heart go cold. Coming into view from behind the limb of the planet was something that, at first glance, resembled an enormous eye. Red-rimmed, as if irritated by something caught in the cloudy white mass of its pupil, it wept a vast tear that seemed to fall away into space. Altogether, it resembled the baleful glare of an angry god.
So this was Kasimasta: a cyclops among the stars. Although still several million miles away, nonetheless i
t was awesome, and utterly terrifying. The black hole at its nucleus was invisible to us, surrounded by the ionized gas that made up its ergosphere, but we knew that it was there, just as we also knew that nothing could survive an encounter with the ring of dust and debris that swirled at sublight velocities around its outer event horizon.
As we watched, Kasimasta slowly moved toward the cockpit’s center window…and stayed there. Loose Lucy was taking us straight toward the moon that lay between us and it. I had an impulse to disengage the autopilot, turn the shuttle around, and flee for…well, anywhere but there. An insane notion; there was no way Lucy could catch up with the Pride, just as it would be impossible to outrun the monster before it caught up with us. Like it or not, we were committed.
For a minute or so, neither of us said anything. Then we found ourselves reaching out to take hold of each other’s hand. Despite the fact that I hadn’t wanted her to come along, I suddenly realized that I was glad Rain was there.
Yeah. I’d picked a fine time to fall in love.
V
For a moon on the verge of destruction, Kha-Zann was strangely beautiful. As Lucy closed in upon it, we looked down on a world that somewhat resembled a miniature version of Mars, save for a noticeable lack of polar ice caps. A reddish brown surface, streaked here and there with dark grey veins, whose cratered terrain was split and cracked by labyrinthine networks of crevices, fissures, and canyons. Early morning sunlight reflected off a thin, low-lying haze that quickly dissipated as the day grew longer, with shadows stretching out from crater rims and bumpy hills. Probably an interesting place to explore if one had time to do so.
But we weren’t there to take pictures and hunt for souvenirs. In fact, all I really wanted to do just then was drop in, drop off, and drop out. So once we were a couple of hundred miles away, I picked out what looked like a low-risk landing site near the daylight terminator—a broad, flat plain just north of the equator, away from any valleys and relatively clear of large craters—then switched off the autopilot and took control of my craft again.
By then, Rain and I had put on our helmets again; once we were breathing suit air, she vented the cabin. A final cinch of our harnesses to make sure that they were secure, then I turned the shuttle around and initiated the landing sequence. As we’d been told, Kha-Zann didn’t have much in the way of an atmosphere; there was some chop as Lucy began to make her descent, and an orange corona grew up from around the heat shield. But it quickly faded, and after a few seconds the turbulence ended and we had a smooth ride down.
Even so, my hands were moist within my gloves as I clutched the yoke. Sure, I had plenty of experience landing on the Moon and Mars, but never had I expected to touch down on a world ninety light-years from home. Even putting down on Coyote in a stolen lifeboat wasn’t as butt-clenching as this. Maybe it was because I was landing where no one—or at least no human—had ever gone before. Or maybe it was simply because I was all too aware that, if I screwed up, my life wouldn’t be the only one placed in jeopardy.
In any case, my attention never left the instrument panel, and I kept a sharp eye on the aft cams and the eight ball all the way down. Rain helped by reciting the altimeter readout, but it wasn’t until Lucy was six hundred feet above the ground and I was certain that there were no surprises waiting for us at the touchdown point that I lowered the landing gear and throttled up the engine for final descent.
We landed with little more than a hard thump, but I didn’t breathe easy until I’d safed the engine and put all systems on standby. Through the windows, the dust we’d kicked up was already beginning to settle, revealing a barren landscape beneath a dark purple sky. We’d landed in the last hour of the afternoon, on the side of Kha-Zann that still faced the sun; to the east, just beyond the short horizon, Aerik was beginning to rise. Kasimasta was nowhere to be seen, yet I knew that the Annihilator would soon make its appearance.
“Okay, no time for sightseeing.” I unbuckled my harness. “Let’s do this and get out of here.”
“Really? No kidding.” Rain was already out of her seat. “I sort of thought we could look for a nice place to build a house.”
If I’d been listening a little more carefully to what she’d just said, I might have given her a double take. Perhaps she was only being sarcastic, but it might have been a serious proposition. The only plans I had for us were no more than a couple of hours in the future, though, so my response was nothing more than a distracted grunt as I followed her from the cockpit.
In Earth-normal gravity, the probe probably weighed about two hundred pounds; on Kha-Zann, though, it was only one-fifth of that. The case was bulky, though, so it took both of us to load it aboard the elevator. Once it was securely lashed to the pallet, I opened the cargo hatch. The doors creaked softly as they parted, and a handful of red sand, caught upon an errant breeze, drifted into the hold. I used the elevator controls to rotate the T-bar of the overhead crane into position, then I turned to Rain.
“You know how to operate this, right?” I pointed to the joystick. “Up for up, down for down, and it stops in the middle. Take it easy when you lower me, though, because I don’t want to…”
“You’re not going down there.” She shook her head within her helmet. “I am. You’re staying here.”
“No, you’re not. This is my job. You’re…”
“Jules…”
“We don’t have time for this. One of us needs to stay behind to run the elevator. You’re the cargo master, so that’s you. End of discussion.” I paused. “If I get into any trouble down there, I’ll tell you…but I should be able to handle this by myself. Just do your job, and with any luck we’ll be out of here before the engines cool down. All right?”
Before she had a chance to argue any further, I stepped into the cage. I suppose I should have been impressed by Rain’s willingness to accept the risk, but the fact of the matter was that I was stronger than her, and it would take muscles to manhandle the crate from the elevator and haul it a safe distance from the shuttle. She pouted for another moment or so, but surrendered to the inevitable; once I’d grabbed hold of the handrails on either side of the cage, I gave her a nod, and Rain pushed the levers that raised the cage from its resting position and telescoped the T-bar through the hatch.
The breeze was a little stiffer than I’d expected. The cage gently rocked back and forth on its cables, and I held on tight and planted my boots firmly against the pallet. Once the crane was extended to its full length, I told Rain to lower away. The cage shuddered and jerked a bit on the way down, but I didn’t worry much about it; the elevator had a load capacity of one and a half tons. It was just the wind giving me a hassle.
It took only a couple of minutes to reach the ground. As soon as the cage touched down, I untied the crate and, taking hold of its handles, picked it up and carried it off the elevator. Even in the lesser gravity, the crate was just heavy enough to make it hard work; if I hadn’t been burdened with it, I might have been able to bunny-hop across the desert floor. As it was, though, I found it was just as easy to put the crate down, then pick up one end by its handle and drag it behind me.
“What’s it like down there?” Rain asked.
I stopped to look up at her. She was standing in the open hatch, watching me from above. “Like Kansas,” I replied, “only without cornfields. Ever been there?”
A short laugh. “You kidding? I’ve never even been to Earth.”
I’d forgotten that. “I’ll take you sometime. To Earth, I mean…believe me, you can skip Kansas.” I started to pick up the case again, then paused. “Hey, if you’re not doing anything, patch into the long-range com and see if you can reach the Pride. They might be back in range by now.”
“Wilco.” There was a click as she switched from one band to another. I didn’t wait for a response, but instead went back to work.
The terrain was rough, its coarse sand strewn with rocks the size of baseballs. Every so often I’d have to veer around boulders or haul the crat
e through small pits formed by micrometeorite impacts. Through my helmet, I could hear the faint moan of the wind; the atmosphere wasn’t dense enough to hold up a kite, but still, I had to use my free hand to clear silt from my faceplate.
It took about fifteen minutes for me to drag the crate about a hundred yards from the shuttle; I figured that was far enough to keep the probe from being damaged by Lucy’s exhaust flare once we lifted off again. I checked the chronometer on my heads-up display; we’d been on Kha-Zann for a little more than a half hour, so time was getting short. I opened the crate and tossed away the lid, then reached inside. The probe wasn’t hard to remove; a couple of hard tugs at its rungs, and it came straight out of its packing material.
“No word from the Pride yet,” Rain said, “but that’s probably because I’m getting a lot of static. How are you doing out there?”
“Almost done.” I grunted as I carried the sphere a few feet from the crate, then gently placed it on the ground. It rolled a couple of inches, forcing me to roll it back so that its top hexagon was positioned right side up. Once I was satisfied that it wasn’t going anywhere, I pressed the blue button on the control hex.
The button lit up, but nothing happened. I waited a second, uncertain whether or not the thing was working, then I pushed the red button. This time, the reaction was immediate; the panels surrounding the lower hemisphere sprang open, and small multijointed legs unfolded from within the sphere, their horseshoe-like pads firmly anchoring the probe against the ground.
I pushed the white button, and had to jump back quick to avoid the rest of the panels as they peeled apart to reveal a smaller sphere hidden inside. From the probe’s core, a narrow cylinder raised itself upon a stalk, then unfurled to become a dish antenna. The hyperlink transmitter, no doubt. As it swiveled around to point toward the sun, two more cylinders rose into view; judging from the lenses at their ends, I figured they were multispectrum cameras. One of them rotated toward me, and I took another step back. Realizing that it was looking straight at me, I restrained an impulse to wave at whoever might be watching. Or perhaps give them an obscene gesture.