The Deep Dark Well

by Doug Dandridge

  “Get out of there,” yelled Watcher’s voice over the com link. Pandi knew he had to be pumping a signal through the wormhole. But soon the wormhole would be anchored in a place from which no signal could come.

  Pandi pushed the detonator switch on her gauntlet, blasting open the holes behind her just a bit wider. With a thought her suit was accelerating backwards, away from the robots. Away from this chamber.

  “Stop her,” yelled the computer through the com link. A robot took aim, raising his weapon at her. Before it could make another move it rose from the floor and slowly moved toward the mirror in the center of the room. It built up velocity quickly as it was sucked into the surface. The other robots joined it, sucked from the floor in blurs of motion as the force of the pull built up.

  Pandi saw that her motion was slowing, even though the suit should have still been accelerating out of the station. She could feel the pull increase through the cells of her body. As the other mouth moved closer to the surface of the hole the pull would increase, until it entered the event horizon, at which time there would be no escape.

  Her hand reached up and pulled the emergency boost, kicking in a hundred gees of acceleration. She pulled away from the room in a blur, shooting through the station and out into space. The station receded as she sped away. The power of the inertial compensators suddenly faded, just long enough for her to black out for a moment.

  * * *

  The wormhole opened to contain the entire chamber. Walls of superstrong materials shuddered, vibrated and crumpled like thin foil, disappearing through the gate to the end of the known Universe, down the rabbit hole. The wormhole moved inward under the direction of the controller, expanding all the while. The computer barely had time for a couple of trillion operations, thinking about every possibility in that time to get away from advancing doom. A trillion operations were not enough, as the processor was pulled from its mounts and into the wormhole, collapsing into neutronium and beyond.

  The mouth of the wormhole ate into the computer core, sucking cubic kilometers into the hole, then tens of cubic kilometers, then hundreds, disappearing in seconds to a place of no return.

  As suddenly as it had been born the most terribly powerful tornado in the history of the Universe died. The mirror contracted into a microscopic hole, and then disappeared entirely, gone forever.

  Systems on the station shut down from lack of control. Local systems took over much of the job, but Watcher was kept busy for a while making the connections to the quantum system needed to keep everything running smoothly till he could do a thorough job.

  That done he was out of the ball and running toward the nearest lift to the ship bay. He still had a job to do. She had gotten away. He was sure of it. But he needed to find her, to pluck her out of space, before she fell into the gravity well behind the computer.

  Chapter 22

  May you live in interesting times.

  Ancient Chinese curse.

  Pandi came to as the oxygen flooded back into her brain. The suit was still under high boost, the readouts on her HUD showing a steady sixty gees. Well below emergency power, but above that of normal operations. Energy readouts well below an eighth. Time to get cracking and find out what was happening.

  First she killed all of her acceleration until she could figure out where she was. The system powered down smoothly, and energy use indicators swung down to minimal. But a check of her inertial navigation system showed that she was still accelerating. Some power was still working to increase her velocity toward some point in space.

  She still felt confused, as if she had been hit in the head. After all she had been through she would have wondered if she wasn’t confused. She maneuvered the suit around one hundred and eighty degrees, until she was facing where she was going. Immediately she wished she wasn’t, as the distortion of space to her front let her know where she was going. Straight to hell and out of the Universe, into the maw of the black hole.

  * * *

  Watcher powered up the ship as he ran swiftly down the preflight. Rescuer he had named it, and hoped it lived up to its name. So far he had not been able to activate the station sensors, to get a bearing on her. So he would have to find her on the fly.

  His fingers flew over the control pad. He had been created to be the ultimate pilot as well, and no other being could match his reflexes, or his touch. Rescuer turned on maximum power as he fed energy to the inertialess drive, sliding perfectly through the still opening bay doors. The ship boosted at full power as he activated its own sensor array and began to search the space around the station.

  “Pandi,” he called over the com link. “Pandi, come in.”

  If she would just answer he might be able to get a fix on her. Even near the distortion of the hole he could pinpoint her close enough to get within range of instantaneous transmission.

  “Pandi,” he called again. “Pandi. I’m coming to get you. Hang in there.”

  He set the quantum computer to search space using the most efficient pattern, while he moved the ship on instinct to where he hoped he would find her.

  * * *

  Her on-board computer had calculated her course, and the answer was not what she had wanted to hear. She was going straight into the hole. She wouldn’t hit the event horizon dead center. No, but the slight angle at which she would strike it would make no difference as far as her eventual fate was concerned. Compressed to a mathematical point among an unimaginable mass and density.

  “Is there any way to escape the pull of the hole?” she asked her on-board computer.

  Again a series of diagrams were projected onto her HUD, showing her present course. Figures fed in, acceleration and vector diagrams were placed over the schematic of her orbit. Her new orbit curved out, missing the event horizon by tens of kilometers, swinging her around the black hole and back into space. A near thing, but a possibility of survival, if someone came for her and found her. If she boosted now.

  Pandi ordered emergency power, a full twenty seconds of the twenty-five she had left. The computer said twenty would do it, and nothing would allow her to escape the near brush with the event horizon. And she felt better knowing that she had some kind of reserve, so she could fight against death at the end, and not go passively toward it.

  “Pandi. Come in Pandi,” came the voice over her com link.

  “Watcher,” she called out. “Computer, increase signal to full power.”

  “Boost commencing in three, two, one,” the computer said. The suit started to boost away from the pull of the hole. She couldn’t tell if it was doing any good from where she sat. But the schematic of her orbit started to shift.

  “Pandi,” came Watcher’s voice. “Pandi, I have your signal. I’m coming for you. There is a transmission delay, so be patient.”

  “Computer,” she ordered. “Transmit my orbital and positional data to Watcher immediately. Maybe he can get me before I have to make the pass.”

  She waited for what seemed like minutes, though she knew it could only have been seconds within the confines of the station. The temporal distortion of the gravity well. The schematic of her orbit shifted, while the figures swam across the HUD. Until the lines stopped shifting. A few kilometers closer to the event horizon than the computer had calculated. The thought ran through her mind as to whether she should use some more boost now, or hold the reserve. She still felt better with the reserve.

  “Pandi,” came the voice over the link. “I won’t be able to reach you before your pass of the hole. But I should be able to catch you as you pull away. I’ll match velocities with you as soon as I can. Are you all right?”

  “Except for an arm that alternates between agony and numbness, and the fact that I’m falling into the deep dark well, I’m fine.”

  She waited a few seconds for the reply, though she wanted to keep talking. Anything to make the time go by faster. Though she didn’t want it to go by faster, as the faster time passed the sooner she would be skimming the horizon.

>   “You’ll make it,” he said. “I have faith in you. Just make sure that your suit is locked before you get too close. With your legs straight and your arms by your side.”

  “Why?” she asked, trying to think of the possible reasons she would want to trap herself in a rigid suit, unable to move until she made the pass.

  “Tidal forces,” came back the answer. “You’ll be in free fall, so the overall gravity of the hole won’t be a danger. But you’ll be close enough for the difference in gravity over a small distance to become deadly.”

  “How deadly?” Again the time delay made her curse the wait.

  “Not deadly over the width of your body, though you’ll probably feel some blood rush and pain. But if your arms or legs were pulled down to their furthest extent the tidal forces would tear them off.”

  Pandi looked ahead at the distortion in space. The edge of the hole was rimmed in bright light, the bent luminescence of the stars twisted around the massive gravity of the well. Hugely distorted globes of the nearer stars seemed to be flying toward her, threatening to engulf her in an illusionary inferno. Other stars, higher above the horizon, swept together and up and away.

  Fright vied with wonder in her mind. She was the first of her time to see such a phenomenon, one that had been predicted by physicists well before her era. She would have felt better though if she had been seeing this phenomenon through the cameras of an approaching probe than through her own eyes.

  The hole grew larger, a deep black nothingness that defied space and time, as the speeding light of the stars flew around the edge.

  “Pandi,” came a distorted voice over the com link. Highly energized, she thought, the signal strengthened by the gravitational pull, almost beyond the frequency of the com unit to receive. And her signal would crawl up to Watcher, still traveling at the speed of light, but lowered in energy to the point where it was unintelligible. Then the voice was gone, as she was too close to the dead star for the signal to stay in the receivable range.

  Pain swept through her. She felt her body press into the front of the suit. The material of the suit creaked as the gravity tried to pull her arms and legs lower. To rip them off if not for the strength of the superstrong materials. Materials that would rip like paper if she were to drop any closer on her pass.

  She checked the orbital schematic through blurring vision. It was going to be even closer than she had thought. The computer, for all its sophisticated power, could only approximate the orbit with so many variables to deal with. She ordered the last of her power to pull her back, and the suit shook as it tried to back away from the immense pull of the hole. She doubted if she had gained more than a few feet when the power ceased. But any distance between her and hell was appreciated.

  By then her vision had started to red out, a victim of the pull of blood to the front of her face. She knew black out would soon follow. It will be merciful, she thought. But she wanted to be awake, to meet her fate if it were the worst, to greet it if the best.

  Then her vision began to clear, as the pain started to recede from her limbs and body. The distortion of the stars around the hole began to lessen, and she knew she was beginning to move away from the grip of the point source.

  “Pandi. Can you hear me?”

  The signal was still somewhat distorted, but she could understand it.

  “I made it, Watcher,” she cried over the link. “I’m alive.”

  “You’re heading directly for the hull of the station,” he said. He's close, she thought. The signal delay was much less than before.

  And he was right, she saw. At her angle of flight she would hit a few kilometers inside the edge of the station. At her present velocity that would kill her instantly. She unlocked her suit, then noted with dismay that her power graphs were at the bottom.

  “I don’t have any power left,” she said. “I guess it was a good try. Unless you can get to me before then.”

  “Not a chance,” he said sadly. “At your velocity I won’t be able to get to you for hours. What about your weapons?”

  My god, she thought. That just might work. She hadn’t had a chance to use any of the auxiliary weapons she had packed, and she had wondered during her trip why she had even bothered. She quickly unlimbered her accelerator rifle, switching it to maximum rate of fire at maximum velocity.

  Pandi looked ahead of her at the thin silver ribbon of the station. As long as it remained thin she was safe. As soon as it started to balloon out with proximity she would be only moments away from disaster. She couldn’t tell how fast she was traveling out here, and her HUD wasn’t working, but the low distortion of the stars ahead indicated a velocity less than half light. Less than half light, she laughed.

  Her mind snapped back to the here and now, as she fought the giddiness of the situation. That she was still sane amazed her. She aimed the rifle and pulled the trigger, feeling the slight bucking of the gun as it ran through its thousands of rounds of ammo. The chamber finally clicked on empty, and she released the rifle to space, knowing she would not be able to change the drum with one working hand. Looking up she could see that the ribbon was slightly larger, and her time was running out.

  She pulled the particle beam weapon from its sheath and set it to fire the antimatter at maximum velocity and output, hoping that the deadly substance wouldn’t hit something under sentient control further on down the line. She fired until the weapon was empty, then switched to negative matter and repeated the firing sequence.

  “I’ve given it all I’ve got,” she said. “How do I look?”

  “It’s going to be close,” said Watcher. “If we hadn’t shot this space so full of debris, and moved the station around, I would be able to get a more accurate reading.”

  “Pray for me, lover,” she said, as the ribbon of the station ballooned to her front. Watcher was silent except for his breathing, his way of showing he was with her through her ordeal. The three thousand kilometer width loomed enormous in space. She looked up and down the curve of the immense structure. How could I have even gotten involved in something this big? she thought. How could any being feel anything but microscopic in its unimportance against such a backdrop?

  Closer and closer she came to the station, and she could tell that she would either hit the edge of the width or barely miss it. Before she could make the final determination she was swiftly passing by the fifty-kilometer thickness of the station. The perspective changed so swiftly that she couldn’t even really tell how close she was. But that she was still alive showed that she had missed.

  “Now I will thank the gods,” said Watcher. “I’m coming after you. As soon as I can match velocities I’ll bring you aboard. Just hang in there.”

  “Don’t worry. If I could make it through what I’ve just been through I’ll make it through anything. Just stay on the com and talk to me.”

  And talk they did, until Rescuer was able to pick her up from the depths of space. Then, after Watcher had made sure that she was not severely damaged, they did things other than talk, as the ship made its way back to the station.

  Epilogue

  “This is Pandi to Watcher. Pandi to Watcher.”

  “This is Watcher, Pandi. Are you ready?”

  Pandi checked the control board on the vessel as she nodded her head. Everything checked out A-OK. A beautiful ship, she thought, the sister of Hellfire. Renamed the Starfire from Rescuer, a name she had lived up to. Now she would be used for exploration.

  “Ready to get going,” she said. She turned the ship in its bay as the doors opened in front of her. “Don’t worry Watcher. I’ll find those other folks, and we’ll get them up to speed.”

  “Just look out for that first group,” he cautioned yet again. “From what I could gather of them they were true fanatics. And don’t trust the other group too much either, until you get to know them better. We just want to put them on par with their opponents.”

  “I know, I know,” she said with a grin. They had gone over this many times. Wa
tcher didn’t really want her to go, but she had felt restless after her convalescence. There was a whole Universe out there to look into, and she wasn’t about to let the opportunity to go to waste. “I can always pop back to the station if things get too hot.”

  “Not just when they get too hot,” he cautioned. “You come back and see me every day, or I’ll come and get you. And don’t think a dedicated wormhole gate back to here makes you invulnerable. If the ship gets smashed before you can get into the gate, you get smashed with it.”

  “Yes, lover,” she said. “I’ll be a good little girl, until I get back to you, that is. But seriously, you need some eyes out there, and the station needs to be put back into shape, which is not something I am good at.”

  “No,” he said with a laugh. “You're very good at causing trouble though. And smashing things.”

  “Lucky for you,” she agreed as she nudged the ship out of the bay and set her course. The Sapphire System beckoned. That was the last known position of the second group of invaders, the ones that had behaved themselves and actually helped to mitigate much of the damage done by the fanatics of the first group. At least they weren’t xenophobes.

  “Handle this mission right and I just might be talked into giving you a starship.”

  “I’ll take that as a promise,” she said, as her ship started to accelerate away from the station. To her starboard passed one of the great graviton beam projectors, dwarfing her small ship, though dwarfed by the station. She was also to look out for environmental degradation of the terraforming of the inhabited worlds, and the great projectors might be called into action soon, making conditions more comfortable for inhabitants, if not saving the lives of their descendants. Watcher was determined to do his penance for the actions the computer had forced his other persona to accomplish. And since he had the control of the power to do so, and the will to be useful, why not, she thought.