by C H Duryea
“We’re aware of that, Zeke,” Narissa said.
“But what if there was another way?” Augie asked. “Another option for tapping power on a stellar scale?”
“What do you mean?”
Narissa punched up a new display—a mirror of the navigation tank—and zoomed in on the blinking black singularity icon.
“A black hole?” Zeke asked, studying the strings of numbers floating beside the icon. “It has almost no accretion disk to speak of. The Hawking radiation wouldn’t even register, and this event is too small for relativistic jets of any consequence.”
“Only a few dozen solar masses,” Harbinger said. “It’s small enough for us to approach without getting charred.”
“But why? It’s not a significant radiation source.”
“No, it’s not,” Narissa said, pulling up another display, this one showing rows upon rows of dizzyingly complicated mathematical equations. “But that tiny tweak in the conservation of energy law that Chuck noticed when we first got here. Well, I thought it wasn’t much more than a little random noise in my calculations, until I realized it was what allowed the Inverkethi magic to work. Once I put that together, I started to wonder what else in the local physics of these new universes might have escaped our initial observations. And I found something else the physics of our native universe doesn’t allow for.”
Zeke peered hard at the stats on the singularity and on the projection of Narissa’s calculations, then suddenly he saw it.
“Using gravity as a power source!”
“Exactly.”
“After a close enough fly-by,” Augie said, “these new supercapacitors will be charged with enough potential energy to give the Frogger the jolt it should need to align our translation coordinates.”
“It better,” Zeke said, “especially since we’ll also be fighting a time dilation from tracking so close the event horizon. So what’s the bad news?”
“Two issues,” Augie answered, “of a purely mechanical nature. The first goes back to the prototypical nature of the Frogger—and the theoretical status of our gravitational actuator. We built our unit to integrate with a velocity trigger. As such we never—”
“The Frogger’s not hard-coded for gravitational input,” Zeke finished.
“We tried every transformative medium we could think of,” Harbinger said. “Nothing we found was able to withstand the power levels needed for this particular operation.”
Zeke paused for a moment and let his mind settle over the new development.
“That’s one problem,” he said finally. “What’s the second?”
“Even if we manage to find an appropriate kinetic interface,” Narissa said, “the second problem could well render the first academic.”
“Pushing the Frogger this far outside its operational specs,” Augie explained as he brought up a schematic display, “will burn out relays one through three on the Tegmark buffer array. We’ll be able to get to Inverketh with certainty—but that’ll be it. No programmable translation capacity after that.”
“Blind jumps only,” Harbinger said—just in case Zeke had missed the point. He hadn’t.
“Can we fabricate replacements?” he asked.
“Sure,” Augie answered. “If the elements with the right decay rates existed here. Which they don’t.”
Zeke turned from the table, and slowly paced the length of the engineering bay, past the supercapacitor banks to the ventral viewport. Beyond the transparency, the outer deck of the landing bay stopped at the harsh glowing border of the magnetic field that pressurized the bay. Beyond that, the shimmering glow of the nebula, and past that, Zeke knew, was open space. Behind him, at the work table, he could hear Harbinger inoculating Augie and Narissa with the MindLink solution.
“Augie,” he heard Narissa say after they had presumably acclimated to the new communication mode. “You naughty boy!”
He stared into the billowing void, nervously flexing and unflexing his fists and weighing his options.
There was one way to return to Inverketh within a reasonable temporal-spatial margin—and his team had found it. But without the right interface between the supercapacitors and the Frogger, it would never work. And even if they did make it to Inverketh, even if they succeeded in taking on the Tozzk and rescuing Vibeke, they could be left wandering the multiverse indefinitely, without the technology to get them home.
A no-win scenario. Zeke had heard Harbinger use those words more than once, usually in the same breath as a Japanese phrase. Zeke didn’t understand the references then, but he suspected they were more of his maddening in-jokes. But now, the phrase rattled in his head. Kobiashi Maru.
His hands continued to open and close. He looked down at them, reaching out from the metallic vambraces he so often forgot were even there.
He turned to the others.
“Prep for launch,” he told them. “Lay in our course for the singularity.”
“Without a kinetic interface?” Narissa asked.
“You’re sure?” Harbinger added.
“There may be a price to pay,” Zeke declared, “but we punch space for Inverketh tomorrow.”
Twenty-Seven
The next day—even if such diurnal designations were problematic on the station—the Friendly Card lifted off from landing bay Alpha Zed Alpha. The ship moved slowly at first, carefully maneuvering through the dense gasses of the nebula, but once back out in the cold emptiness of open space, the Card spooled her brand new, upgraded super-light drive and streaked to ultra-relativistic velocity.
Zeke and Narissa sat at the controls on the flight deck as the stars stretched outside the viewport. Narissa made calibrations on the Frogger/navigation interface panel, stopping occasionally to manipulate some complex math in the air in front of her.
“Course plotted?” Zeke asked.
Narissa punched keys at her console. “Calibrating for galactic drift—and whatever passes for the Hubble Constant in this neck of the woods,” she said. “Course plotted and fed to the tank.”
Zeke unstrapped himself and stood.
“And you’re good to fly solo?” he asked.
“I’m tempted to make a joke you’re not gonna get.”
“Then don’t. Can you thread this needle?”
“Piece of cake. I’m only surfing the gravity well of a black hole close enough to spit into the event horizon. How hard can it be?”
Zeke grabbed the rungs of the access ladder to engineering, then paused.
“What is it, boss?” Narissa asked.
“Back on Inverketh,” Zeke answered, “you hypothesized that we’d need to get close to a black hole to test your theory about the relationship between magic and gravity.”
“That wasn’t exactly a funding request.”
“Just keep us as close as possible,” he called as he started down, “without breaking us up!”
“Ay-ay, Cap’n!”
He climbed through the access way to the lower deck, where Augie and Harbinger were hard at work on installing some new fixtures to the interface that Zeke had requested the previous night. Harbinger was at his console, finishing the work of integrating the new AI into the Card’s existing cognitive matrix. Augie was between the banks of new inertial supercapacitors, working with several lengths of extremely high gauge cable connecting two new, big turbine-like gravimetric actuators and snaking across the deck to the Frogger’s interface panel. Between the actuators stood a thick-walled radiation-proof containment vessel of material so inert it made iridium look volatile in comparison. The vessel had a sliding door with a small window. Zeke slid the door open and inspected the interior. From each opposite wall, a large metal handle protruded, each tipped with a twenty-centimeter-long electrode made of superconductive alloy.
“I still don’t know what you’re thinking,” Augie said. “If you’ve got some plasma physics experiment in your head, get it out. The arc between these actuators would incinerate the whole ship—and anything else within
a few standard AUs.”
“You realize,” Harbinger said, “we’re talking about quintillions of mega-ergs on this little escapade. Just what do you plan to put in that containment vessel to convert that much energy into a form we can feed the Frogger with?”
“Hold that thought,” Zeke said as he excused himself to a utility compartment off the cargo bay.
Once inside, he slid open a storage unit and pulled out a number of boxes. He opened one and started pulling out the pieces of his new conduction armor. When he had the whole kit opened and lined up, he pulled off his flight suit and started changing.
As he was finishing with the last clasps, belts and hoses, he noticed a glimmer of dull metal in the bottom of one of the boxes. He reached down and picked up the old haptic blaster. He powered it up and saw that it remained armed with some experimental cyex projectiles Harbinger was playing with, in a mag-lock clip. It was hopelessly out of date compared to the technology he now wore, but he remembered how it had saved his life against Mica’s gnoll and, for motivations he could only classify as sentimental, he strapped it to his arm under the discharge leads.
When he emerged, Qaant Yke stood waiting for him with his usual sentinel-like stolidity.
“You remain committed to this course of action,” the alien said.
“Would you rather do it?” Zeke asked.
“I’d rather not be poached in my shell.”
“Me neither, pal. But we both know I’m the only one who can do this.”
“And presumably the only one who will.”
Zeke turned and headed back up the passage to engineering. Augie took one look at him and shook his head violently. “Oh, no.”
“Are you out of your mind?” Harbinger asked.
“I’ve got to field test this armor anyway,” Zeke said.
“So your idea of a field test is to run the gravitational force of an entire black hole through your body?”
Zeke stepped into the containment chamber and wrapped his hands around the superconducting electrodes.
“Are we going to do this or not?”
Augie and Harbinger exchanged a glance that was part alarm, part sheer amazement.
“Would be happy to oblige, boss,” Harbinger said, “if we weren’t still six hours from our ETA.”
Zeke allowed Augie and Harbinger to run diagnostics and several high-power tests during the remainder of the flight. When Narissa announced they were dropping to sublight, Augie still wasn’t satisfied.
“The first sign,” he said, “that anything—and I mean anything—is going sideways, I give the order for Narissa to break orbit.”
“Duly noted,” Zeke replied, tightening his grip on the electrodes. “Now let’s get on with it before I change my mind.”
As the Friendly Card closed in on the black hole, Zeke, Augie and Harbinger watched through the ventral viewport. A projection above Harbinger’s console mirrored the singularity’s coordinates from the nav tank, so they knew exactly where it was, but each of them wanted to see the approach with their own eyes. Not that they would be able to see it, but they knew the signs to watch for.
“Intercept in T minus fifteen,” Narissa said over the speakers.
And, slowly, the singularity made its presence apparent. The rippling corona of bent starlight around the circular void grew in the viewport, like a black air bubble rising in an ocean of tar. As they approached, Augie and Harbinger made the final adjustments to the equipment.
“Supercapacitors are online,” Augie announced as he watched the readouts from his console. “And drawing gravitational potential!”
“It’s not getting it from the singularity,” Harbinger added, “but from the ship itself. It’s drawing off the gravitational potential energy of the Friendly Card—counteracting the pull of the gravity well.”
“Narissa, it looks like your math is on target again!” Zeke called.
“All in a day’s work,” Narissa answered.
The singularity soon expanded beyond the frame of the viewport, leaving only an arced line of gravitational lensing, dividing the view between stars and starlessness, becoming straighter with each passing moment.
“The capacitor banks will keep charging until we reach the peribothron—the breakaway point,” Augie said, pointing to a diagram on a holoscreen showing the Card’s projected path past the singularity. His finger hovered by a blinking dot where the arc of their projected flight path cut closest to the event horizon. “The second we start adding distance—and fighting that gravity—the capacitors will supercharge and hit threshold capacity very quickly. When that happens, Zeke, be ready.”
Zeke knew what was coming—but he didn’t have the first idea what being ready for something like this even meant.
“You’re sure the capacitors won’t rob us of our forward momentum?” Zeke asked.
“Nothing to worry about,” Harbinger said. “We calibrated them to ignore any acceleration along our x-axis.”
“Hear that, Narissa?” Zeke said. “Don’t turn!”
“We’re right on course,” Narissa shouted back through the intercom. “Five by five!”
“It’ll be just like Beggar’s Canyon back home,” Harbinger crowed.
“What in the flying hells are you talking about?” Zeke shouted.
“Capacitor levels at fifty percent,” Augie called. “Charge rate’ll be inversely proportional to our distance. It’s gonna climb fast!”
“Intercept T minus three minutes,” Narissa announced.
Harbinger hit a series of toggles. “Frogger online. Translation coordinates for Inverketh confirmed. Standing by for jump start.”
They looked at each other. All three knew, even if what they were about to do didn’t kill them, they would be left wandering the multiverse with no clear path to get home. They all knew the stakes, none more so than Zeke, who was about to fry the circuits of his life’s work. He nodded to his colleagues, and they closed the chamber, the maglock sealing with a resounding thrum.
Zeke toggled the auto-breather on his collar assembly and bit down on the regulator. Through the small window in the chamber door, he could still see the singularity beyond the viewport growing closer. The lensing along the event horizon lost its definition and now looked more like starlight stretched on a taffy puller.
Narissa counted down the last seconds of their approach as Augie called out the upward climb of the capacitor levels. Zeke tightened his grip on the electrodes and forced himself to slow his breathing.
“Almost there…” he mumbled. Why Harbinger started laughing at that moment, Zeke couldn’t guess.
Augie continued to watch the charging levels on the capacitors. “Approaching threshold!”
The ship shook, and somewhere a piece of the structure started to groan. The Friendly Card, even with all her new improvements could only stand a few minutes of this kind of punishment. They were as close as they could possibly get without breaking up under the singularity’s gargantuan tidal forces.
As Narissa closed in on the event horizon, Augie counted the capacitor levels up towards the discharge threshold. Zeke held his breath. This was it.
“Threshold achieved,” Augie announced.
“Peribothron intercept,” Narissa called. “Initiating escape bearing!”
“Hit it!” Zeke yelled.
“Initiating discharge,” Harbinger called as he threw a set of switches and the supercapacitors unleashed their stored gravitic energy--on Zeke.
He seized as torrents of unimaginable power raged through him. The whole universe burst a blinding white in Zeke’s head as the gravitic energy practically fused him to the platform, turning him into a human circuit linking the supercapacitors and the Frogger’s interface mechanism. Great areas of pure power lashed out from the points where his hands gripped the electrodes, washing the chamber in garish flashes of green and orange light. It should have incinerated him, like Augie had said—him, the ship, and everything within a few standard AUs. But it didn’t. I
t should have destroyed every atom in his body in a lethal release of hard radiation. But it didn’t do that either. He would have gone mad if he didn’t already think he was for even trying this.
He wasn’t mad. But the power surging through him stretched him to the limits of his lucidity. He had to concentrate. There was a reason he had to do this. He caught a glimpse of Augie and Harbinger outside the chamber, shielding their eyes from the violent flashes. He grit his teeth and forced himself to remember.
The Heisenberg corollary…
The chronospatial variable had to be brought as close to zero as possible. It was the only way to return to the right time, the right space. It was going to break the Frogger, but it was the only way to get back to Vibeke.
And if anyone was going to break the Frogger, it was damn well going to be him.
He focused on the energy building up in his body, and he threw the sum total of his will towards transforming it into a wavelength he knew better than anyone in this or any other universe. In his mind, he saw the power bending and the wave form modulating to forge a raging circle of cosmic fire between the supercapacitors and the Frogger. And when he closed the circuit in his mind, all those quintillions of mega-ergs flashed out of him and into the receiver interface.
And just before they translated, just before the stretchiness and the black, Zeke felt something crack inside the Frogger, like the popping of a lightbulb the size of a supernova.
Twenty-Eight
When Zeke came to he was surrounded in the blackness of the charred interior of the insulation chamber. After a violent coughing fit, he smudged some of the blackened residue from the window and saw Augie and Harbinger outside, trying to get their wits about them. After a minute, it occurred to Harbinger to punch the release on the maglock and let Zeke out.
He stumbled onto the deck, the gauntlets and the sleeves of his conduction suit still smoldering. He pulled off the gauntlets and noticed, a bit abstractly, that the operation had grafted his vambraces to his skin. He didn’t have time to process it; Augie shoved the auto breather back in Zeke’s mouth and sprayed him with the fire extinguisher.