by Hank Davis
No. Don’t think such things. Loneliness and otherness can come near breaking you out here, without adding suspicion of your fellows.
If Eloise Waggoner was really human. She must be some kind of mutant at the very least. Whoever could communicate thought to thought with a living vortex had to be.
“What are you playing, anyhow?” Szili asked.
“Bach. The Third Brandenburg Concerto. He, Lucifer, he doesn’t care for the modem stuff. I don’t either.”
You wouldn’t, Szili decided. Aloud: “Listen, we jump in half an hour. No telling what we’ll emerge in. This is the first time anyone’s been close to a recent supernova. We can only be certain of so much hard radiation that we’ll be dead if the screenfields give way. Otherwise we’ve nothing to go on except theory. And a collapsing stellar core is so unlike anything anywhere else in the universe that I’m skeptical about how good the theory is. We can’t sit daydreaming. We have to prepare.”
“Yes, sir.” Whispering, her voice lost its usual harshness.
He stared past her, past the ophidian eyes of meters and controls, as if he could penetrate the steel beyond and look straight into space. There, he knew, floated Lucifer.
The image grew in him: a fireball twenty meters across, shimmering white, red, gold, royal blue, flames dancing like Medusa locks, cometary tail burning for a hundred meters behind, a shiningness, a glory, a piece of hell. Not the least of what troubled him was the thought of that which paced his ship.
He hugged scientific explanations to his breast, though they were little better than guesses. In the multiple star system of Epsilon Aurigae, in the gas and energy pervading the space around, things took place which no laboratory could imitate. Ball lightning on a planet was perhaps analogous, as the formation of simple organic compounds in a primordial ocean is analogous to the life which finally evolves. In Epsilon Aurigae, magnetohydrodynamics had done what chemistry did on Earth. Stable plasma vortices had appeared, had grown, had added complexity, until after millions of years they became something you must needs call an organism. It was a form of ions, nuclei and forcefields. It metabolized electrons, nucleons, X-rays; it maintained its configuration for a long lifetime; it reproduced; it thought.
But what did it think? The few telepaths who could communicate with the Aurigeans, who had first made humankind aware that the Aurigeans existed, never explained clearly. They were a queer lot themselves.
Wherefore Captain Szili said, “I want you to pass this on to him.”
“Yes, sir.” Eloise turned down the volume on her taper. Her eyes unfocused. Through her ears went words, and her brain (how efficient a transducer was it?) passed the meanings on out to him who loped alongside Raven on his own reaction drive.
“Listen, Lucifer. You have heard this often before, I know, but I want to be positive you understand in full. Your psychology must be very foreign to ours. Why did you agree to come with us? I don’t know. Technician Waggoner said you were curious and adventurous. Is that the whole truth?
“No matter. In half an hour we jump. We’ll come within five hundred million kilometers of the supernova. That’s where your work begins. You can go where we dare not, observe what we can’t, tell us more than our instruments would ever hint at. But first we have to verify we can stay in orbit around the star. This concerns you too. Dead men can’t transport you home again.
“So. In order to enclose you within the jumpfield, without disrupting your body, we have to switch off the shield screens. We’ll emerge in a lethal radiation zone. You must promptly retreat from the ship, because we’ll start the screen generator up sixty seconds after transit. Then you must investigate the vicinity. The hazards to look for—” Szili listed them. “Those are only what we can foresee. Perhaps we’ll hit other garbage we haven’t predicted. If anything seems like a menace, return at once, warn us, and prepare for a jump back to here. Do you have that? Repeat.”
Words jerked from Eloise. They were a correct recital; but how much was she leaving out?
“Very good.” Szili hesitated. “Proceed with your concert if you like. But break it off at zero minus ten minutes and stand by.”
“Yes, sir.” She didn’t look at him. She didn’t appear to be looking anywhere in particular.
His footsteps clacked down the corridor and were lost.
—Why did he say the same things over? asked Lucifer.
“He is afraid,” Eloise said.
—?—
“I guess you don’t know about fear,” she said.
—Can you show me? . . . No, do not. I sense it is hurtful. You must not be hurt.
“I can’t be afraid anyway, when your mind is holding mine.”
(Warmth filled her. Merriment was there, playing like little flames over the surface of Father-leading-her-by-the-hand-when-she-was-just-a-child-and-they-went-out-one-summer’s-day-to-pick-wildflowers; over strength and gentleness and Bach and God.) Lucifer swept around the hull in an exuberant curve. Sparks danced in his wake.
—Think flowers again. Please.
She tried.
—They are like (image, as nearly as a human brain could grasp, of fountains blossoming with gamma-ray colors in the middle of light, everywhere light). But so tiny. So brief a sweetness.
“I don’t understand how you can understand,” she whispered.
—You understand for me. I did not have that kind of thing to love, before you came.
“But you have so much else. I try to share it, but I’m not made to realize what a star is.”
—Nor I for planets. Yet ourselves may touch.
Her cheeks burned anew. The thought rolled on, interweaving its counterpoint to the marching music.
—That is why I came, do you know? For you. I am fire and air. I had not tasted the coolness of water, the patience of earth, until you showed me. You are moonlight on an ocean.
“No, don’t,” she said. “Please.”
Puzzlement:—Why not? Does joy hurt? Are you not used to it?
“I, I guess that’s right.” She flung her head back. “No! Be damned if I’ll feel sorry for myself!”
—Why should you? Have we not all reality to be in, and is it not full of suns and songs?
“Yes. To you. Teach me.”
—If you in turn will teach me—The thought broke off. A contact remained, unspeaking, such as she imagined must often prevail among lovers.
She glowered at Motilal Mazundar’s chocolate face, where the physicist stood in the doorway. “What do you want?”
He was surprised. “Only to see if everything is well with you, Miss Waggoner.”
She bit her lip. He had tried harder than most aboard to be kind to her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to bark at you. Nerves.”
“We are everyone on edge.” He smiled. “Exciting though this venture is, it will be good to come home, correct?”
Home, she thought: four walls of an apartment above a banging city street. Books and television. She might present a paper at the next scientific meeting, but no one would invite her to the parties afterward.
Am I that horrible? she wondered. I know I’m not anything to look at, but I try to be nice and interesting. Maybe I try too hard.
—You do not with me, Lucifer said.
“You’re different,” she told him.
Mazundar blinked. “Beg pardon?”
“Nothing,” she said in haste.
“I have wondered about an item,” Mazundar said in an effort at conversation. “Presumably Lucifer will go quite near the supernova. Can you still maintain contact with him? The time dilation effect, will that not change the frequency of his thoughts too much?”
“What time dilation?” She forced a chuckle. “I’m no physicist. Only a little librarian who turned out to have a wild talent.”
“You were not told? Why, I assumed everybody was. An intense gravitational field affects time just as a high velocity does. Roughly speaking, processes take place more slowly than they do in
clear space. That is why light from a massive star is somewhat reddened. And our supernova core retains almost three solar masses. Furthermore, it has acquired such a density that its attraction at the surface is, ah, incredibly high. Thus, by our clocks it will take infinite time to shrink to the Schwarzschild radius; but an observer on the star itself would experience this whole shrinkage in a fairly short period.”
“Schwarzschild radius? Be so good as to explain.” Eloise realized that Lucifer had spoken through her.
“If I can without mathematics. You see, this mass we are to study is so great and so concentrated that no force exceeds the gravitational. Nothing can counterbalance. Therefore, the process will continue until no energy can escape. The star will have vanished out of the universe. In fact, theoretically the contraction will proceed to zero volume. Of course, as I said, that will take forever as far as we are concerned. And the theory neglects quantum-mechanical considerations which come into play toward the end. Those are still not very well understood. I hope, from this expedition, to acquire more knowledge.” Mazundar shrugged. “At any rate, Miss Waggoner, I was wondering if the frequency shift involved would not prevent our friend from communicating with us when he is near the star.”
“I doubt that.” Still Lucifer spoke, she was his instrument and never had she known had good it was to be used by one who cared. “Telepathy is not a wave phenomenon. Since it transmits instantaneously, it cannot be. Nor does it appear limited by distance. Rather, it is a resonance. Being attuned, we two may well be able to continue thus across the entire breadth of the cosmos; and I am not aware of any material phenomenon which could interfere.”
“I see.” Mazundar gave her a long look. “Thank you,” he said uncomfortably. “Ah . . . I must get to my own station. Good luck.” He bustled off without stopping for an answer.
Eloise didn’t notice. Her mind was become a torch and a song. “Lucifer!” she cried aloud. “Is that true?”
—I believe so. My entire people are telepaths, hence we have more knowledge of such matters than yours do. Our experience leads us to think there is no limit.
“You can always be with me? You always will?”
—If you so wish, I am gladdened.
The comet body curvetted and danced, the brain of fire laughed low.—Yes, Eloise, I would like very much to remain with you. No one else has ever—Joy. Joy. Joy.
They named you better than they knew, Lucifer, she wanted to say, and perhaps she did. They thought it was a joke; they thought by calling you after the devil they could make you safely small like themselves. But Lucifer isn’t the devil’s real name. It means only Light Bearer. One Latin prayer even addresses Christ as Lucifer. Forgive me, God, I can’t help remembering that. Do You mind? He isn’t Christian, but I think he doesn’t need to be, I think he must never have felt sin, Lucifer, Lucifer.
She sent the music soaring for as long as she was permitted.
The ship jumped. In one shift of world line parameters she crossed twenty-five light-years to destruction.
Each knew it in his own way, save for Eloise who also lived it with Lucifer.
She felt the shock and heard the outraged metal scream, she smelled the ozone and scorch and tumbled through the infinite falling that is weightlessness. Dazed, she fumbled at the intercom. Words crackled through: “. . . unit blown . . . back EMF surge . . . how should I know how to fix the blasted thing? . . . stand by, stand by . . .” Over all hooted the emergency siren.
Terror rose in her, until she gripped the crucifix around her neck and the mind of Lucifer. Then she laughed in the pride of his might.
He had whipped clear of the ship immediately on arrival. Now he floated in the same orbit. Everywhere around, the nebula filled space with unrestful rainbows. To him, Raven was not the metal cylinder which human eyes would have seen, but a lambence, the shield screen reflecting a whole spectrum. Ahead lay the supernova core, tiny at this remove but alight, alight.
—Have no fears (he caressed her). I comprehend. Turbulence is extensive, so soon after the detonation. We emerged in a region where the plasma is especially dense. Unprotected for the moment before the guardian field was reestablished, your main generator outside the hull was short-circuited. But you are safe. You can make repairs. And I, I am in an ocean of energy. Never was I so alive. Come, swim these tides with me.
Captain Szili’s voice yanked her back. “Waggoner! Tell that Aurigean to get busy. We’ve spotted a radiation source on an intercept orbit, and it may be too much for our screen.” He specified coordinates. “What is it?”
For the first time, Eloise felt alarm in Lucifer. He curved about and streaked from the ship.
Presently, his thought came to her, no less vivid. She lacked words for the terrible splendor she viewed with him: a million-kilometer ball of ionized gas where luminance blazed and electric discharges leaped, booming through the haze around the star’s exposed heart. The thing could not have made any sound, for space here was still almost a vacuum by Earth’s parochial standards; but she heard it thunder and felt the fury that spat from it.
She said for him: “A mass of expelled material. It must have lost radial velocity to friction and static gradients, been drawn into a cometary orbit, held together for a while by internal potentials. As if this sun were trying yet to bring planets to birth—”
“It’ll strike us before we’re in shape to accelerate,” Szili said, “and overload our shield. If you know any prayers, use them.”
“Lucifer!” she called; for she did not want to die, when he must remain.
—I think I can deflect it enough, he told her with a grimness she had not hitherto met in him.—My own fields, to mesh with its; and free energy to drink; and an unstable configuration; yes, perhaps I can help you. But help me, Eloise. Fight by my side.
His brightness moved toward the juggernaut shape.
She felt how its chaotic electromagnetism clawed at his. She felt him tossed and torn. The pain was hers. He battled to keep his own cohesion, and the combat was hers. They locked together, Aurigean and gas cloud. The forces that shaped him grappled as arms might; he poured power from his core, hauling that vast tenuous mass with him down the magnetic torrent which streamed from the sun; he gulped atoms and thrust them backward until the jet splashed across heaven.
She sat in her cubicle, lending him what will to live and prevail she could, and beat her fists bloody on the desk.
The hours brawled past.
In the end, she could scarcely catch the message that flickered out of his exhaustion:—Victory.
“Yours,” she wept.
—Ours.
Through instruments, men saw the luminous death pass them by. A cheer lifted.
“Come back,” Eloise begged.
—I cannot. I am too spent. We are merged, the cloud and I, and are tumbling in toward the star. (Like a hurt hand reaching forth to comfort her:) Do not be afraid for me. As we get closer, I will draw fresh strength from its glow, fresh substance from the nebula. I will need a while to spiral out against that pull. But how can I fail to come back to you, Eloise? Wait for me. Rest. Sleep.
Her shipmates led her to sickbay. Lucifer sent her dreams of fire flowers and mirth and the suns that were his home.
But she woke at last, screaming. The medic had to put her under heavy sedation.
He had not really understood what it would mean to confront something so violent that space and time themselves were twisted thereby.
His speed increased appallingly. That was in his own measure; from Raven they saw him fall through several days.
The properties of matter were changed. He could not push hard enough or fast enough to escape.
Radiation, stripped nuclei, particles born and destroyed and born again, sleeted and shouted through him. His substance was peeled away, layer by layer. The supernova core was a white delirium before him. It shrank as he approached, ever smaller, denser, so brilliant that brilliance ceased to have meaning. Finally, the gravita
tional forces laid their full grip upon him.
—Eloise! he shrieked in the agony of his disintegration.—Oh, Eloise, help me!
The star swallowed him up. He was stretched infinitely long, compressed infinitely thin, and vanished with it from existence.
The ship prowled the farther reaches. Much might yet be learned.
Captain Szili visited Eloise in sickbay. Physically she was recovering.
“I’d call him a man,” he declared through the machine mumble, “except that’s not praise enough. We weren’t even his kin, and he died to save us.”
She regarded him from eyes more dry than seemed natural. He could just make out her answer. “He is a man. Doesn’t he have an immortal soul too?”
“Well, uh, yes, if you believe in souls, yes, I’d agree.”
She shook her head. “But why can’t he go to his rest?”
He glanced about for the medic and found they were alone in the narrow metal room. “What do you mean?” He made himself pat her hand. “I know, he was a good friend of yours. Still, his must have been a merciful death. Quick, clean; I wouldn’t mind going out like that.”
“For him . . . yes, I suppose so. It has to be. But—” She could not continue. Suddenly she covered her ears. “Stop! Please!”
Szili made soothing noises and left. In the corridor, he encountered Mazundar. “How is she?” the physicist asked.
The captain scowled. “Not good. I hope she doesn’t crack entirely before we can get her to a psychiatrist.”
“Why, what is wrong?”
“She thinks she can hear him.”
Mazundar smote fist into palm. “I hoped otherwise,” he breathed.
Szili braced himself and waited.
“She does,” Mazundar said. “Obviously she does.”