The Black Hole (25 page)

"What a fool I was," McCrae muttered. "If I'd just done what Reinhardt wanted, you'd all be aboard and safely on your way."

"We're not all Harry Booths, Kate." Holland smiled thinly at her. "I'd still have come after you."

She smiled back, met his questioning stare.

Their reverie was interrupted by a shout of surprise from Pizer. "Look!" They turned from each other, temporarily putting aside but not forgetting, no, never forgetting, the unspoken bond that had formed between them. Time enough for elaboration of that nonverbal exchange later. Time enough . . . if they lived.

The
Palomino
had been climbing steadily away from the
Cygnus
. Now it was changing direction, no longer moving away. It had commenced to arc slowly back toward the
Cygnus
.

In the pilot's chair, Booth fought frantically with the stubborn controls. Steering a sophisticated craft like the
Palomino
was not like driving a personal transport, no matter how many automatics it possessed. Hasty, panicky reactions were apt to be more counterproductive than helpful. Everything Booth did only seemed to exacerbate the problem.

Reinhardt was equally aware of the smaller ship's troubles. It was coming dangerously near the
Cygnus
. "That ship's out of control. Blow it apart before it hits us. Fire! Quickly, now." He stared anxiously at the smaller vessel, not caring any longer who might be aboard it.

Laser cannon tracked the tumbling research vessel uncaringly. Silent orders activated automatic rangers. The
Palomino
intersected a predicted point in space. Several energy beams simultaneously struck that intersection. The
Palomino
disintegrated in a brilliant shower of molten metal and torn fragments of self.

One such large fragment was ejected at considerable speed toward the stern of the
Cygnus
. It happened to strike a particularly vulnerable section of the great ship, tearing through sensitive instrumentation. Internal doorlocks slammed shut, trying to isolate the region from which air was escaping. Former members of the
Cygnus
's crew who were caught in the sealed-off areas passed blissfully into death.

The fragment slashed through the port engine control station. Vast energies were left temporarily unbound. Automatic safeties locked down as fast as possible, but they could operate no faster than the electrons flowing through their circuitry.

There was a substantial explosion.

It rocked the whole structure of the
Cygnus
. In reception, everyone except the floating robots grabbed for something stable. Nothing met that requirement, but the ship soon steadied itself. Artificial gravity once again took firm hold of the ship's contents, including the now shipless crew of the vanished
Palomino
.

"Harry . . . oh, my God," McCrae murmured. She stared out the port at the rapidly dispersing particles of what had once been their ship—and Harry Booth.

"I should've known he was all talk and no guts and locked him up." Pizer was feeling somewhat less than regretful at the reporter's sudden, unexpected demise.

"Don't be too hard on him, Charlie." Holland was trying to concentrate on two matters at once. "He had reason to think we were the crazy ones, not him. He panicked. Harry reported science, but I don't think he ever really enjoyed or understood it.

"Anyway, he may have done us a favor. Reinhardt might have intended to blow us up all along. I'm certain he would have tried if we'd managed to get aboard with Kate. Thanks to Harry, we're still alive."

"And where there's life . . ." Vincent began.

Pizer cut him off bitterly. He was in no mood for the robot's humorous homilies. "He was trying to save his own skin, Dan. Don't make him out to be some sort of martyr."

"There's a saying, sir," the unflappable robot went on, "that you can't unscramble eggs."

"A penny's worth of philosophy won't buy us out of this."

"A good offense is the best defense."

"Vincent," Pizer said in utter exasperation, "maybe if you took your witticisms and . . ." He stopped, forced himself to consider seriously what the robot was saying. "You mean, go after Reinhardt and turn the ship around?" He shook his head. "We wouldn't have a chance. It's one thing to fight our way through corridors to here, but he'd never let us in the control tower. He'd seal himself in first. By the time we could try something extreme, like donning suits and breaking through the dome, it'd be too late."

"That was not what I had in mind, Mr. Pizer. There is an alternative."

"I don't follow you."

Holland, who had also been devoting considerable thought to their seemingly hopeless situation, did.

"The probe ship! The one that's already returned from the event horizon! It's equipped with the same
Cygnus
Process drive and the same null-
g
field. Vincent, you're a genius!"

"Yes, sir," the robot acknowledged modestly. "It's part of my programming."

Holland turned to the other waiting mechanical. "Bob, what's the quickest way to the probe dock?"

"Internal air car," he replied instantly. "I can program one to carry us directly to the dock." He was already starting back up the corridor.

A gaping wound near her stern, the
Cygnus
plunged ahead, accelerating toward the lambent vortex of the black hole. Excited to fluorescence by the storm of radiation pouring out from the event horizon, glowing gases began to fill space around the ship. Angry auroras swarmed around the ports.

Reinhardt was studying the ship's progress when a buzzer demanded his attention. Switching to a rear-facing scanner, he studied the view thus presented in silence. Magnification was increased. A swarm of irregular-shaped objects was cutting the course of the ship. Hasty calculations indicated they would overtake the
Cygnus
.

"Meteorites overtaking us. I knew there'd be a lot of cosmic debris sucked in with us, but I'd hoped . . .
Maximillian! Bring up the output on the starboard power center. We still have partial power from two of the four engines on the port side. Double the output on the others. We have to increase our speed."

Lights flashed across the huge mechanical's chest in a sequence indicating uncertainty and advising caution.

"Do as I say. We must seize the moment, Maximillian." His eyes were wide, wild. "Hold our course. We will outrun the debris or ride out any impact."

Pursued by the soulless components of a planet that never was, the
Cygnus
thundered onward. But she did not gain enough velocity to outrace the tumbling matter that crossed her astern. One jagged chunk of nickel-iron plowed lazily into the crest of the ship, completely destroying what had been the reception area.

The impact jarred the entire ship. Holland stumbled, struggled to regain his footing. The
whoosh
of escaping air that had sounded momentarily, terrifyingly, in his ears was cut off as a lock door slammed tight behind them.

The air-car terminus was nearby. They followed Bob into the first of the little vehicles. Holland programmed it according to Bob's directions. All around the ship, meteorites disintegrated under the increasing gravitational forces, or succumbed to intense internal radiation, or collided with one another and silently exploded. Through the transparent walls of the air-car cylinder tube they could view the external destruction and the increasingly disturbed radiation that colored the vacuum.

Something singed Holland's hair. He looked ahead, to see another air car rushing directly for them. Still programmed to seek out and destroy the intruders, four sentry robots were firing across the rapidly shrinking distance between the two cars.

Under the increasing stress the cylinder itself began bucking and groaning. Holland recalled the flexibility of the null-
g
field, wondered if the damage to the ship's engines or the meteorite that had just impacted, or perhaps both, had done anything to reduce the field's stability. If so, the ship might come apart around them any second.

Vincent and Bob returned the fire of the approaching sentries. Seeing that the onrushing vehicle was not about to slow, Holland assumed manual control of their car. He sent them sliding up in a high bank onto the side of the transport tube without reducing speed. The startled sentries raced on past below them.

With a final, sorrowful groan the transport tube buckled, broke. An internal lock slammed down instantly, shutting the tube off from the vacuum outside. The car carrying the sentries continued forward, flying out into space with its occupants still turning to fire.

There was damage ahead as they once more found themselves traveling through the ship. Holland brought the air car to a halt, looked for a break.

"We can't go any farther over this," he decided. "We'll have to try walking the main corridor."

Bob led them away from the car. The main corridor and its catwalks were still intact, but by now walking itself was difficult. It was clear that the null-
g
field was oscillating dangerously. One moment the ship sailed calmly onward; the next, the
Cygnus
barely shook free of the increasing gravitational pull. The muffled rumble of distant collisions echoed through the passageway.

They had started down the corridor when a violent shock forced them to halt, struggling just to remain upright. Refugee from some distant corner of space, a flaming ball of matter broke through the ceiling. Its velocity reduced by passage through the
Cygnus
's null-
g
field and several intervening decks, it did not continue its progress through the ship. Instead, it struck and bounced, tumbling at high speed toward the little group of temporarily paralyzed onlookers.

There being no place to hide, everyone dropped to the deck. Not that it mattered. The glowing metal flew by overhead, annihilated the section of catwalk they had already traversed, and vanished through a partition.

It was apparently intended by the fates that they should have no time in which to breathe freely before either escaping or perishing. Another laser beam passed close by Pizer. Exhausted, they turned to locate the new threat.

A single sentry was standing in a side corridor, firing at them while reporting into a wall communicator. Holland and the others concentrated their combined fire in its direction, and the mechanical was soon shattered. Before or after it had completed its report? Pizer wondered.

The reception on the screen was jumbled and indistinct, but clear enough for a furious Reinhardt to see that his guests were still mobile. The picture was so poor he was unable to tell how many of them were left, but the presence of even one antagonist running free aboard the ship during the next critical minutes was not to be tolerated.

"I want them finished this time, Maximillian!" He turned back to his readouts, cursing the accidental enounter that had reduced the
Cygnus
's power and rendered it vulnerable to the swarm of meteorites. But for them, even the loss of nearly half his power would not have been sufficient to threaten the great experiment.

If the ship suffered further damage to its engines, however, he would lose something far more important than mere speed. The null-
g
field would be weakened to the degree that it might no longer be able to protect the
Cygnus
from the immense gravitational strength of the black hole.

Several shards of interstellar flotsam narrowly missed striking the command tower itself. One deep-range sensor antenna was completely torn away. Others struck and damaged the corridors leading to the ship's stern. Another impacted close by the docked probe ship. It leaned precariously, almost breaking free of its co-joining umbilical.

Reinhardt resolutely kept his ship on its predetermined course. In free space the
Cygnus
could have avoided the meteorite swarm easily, by a sharp change of direction. But within the gravitational vortex surrounding the collapsar, that was not possible. Furthermore, the ship was continually being torn apart by the stress, the resultant fragments flying in unpredictable directions.

Holland and Bob led the way as they stumbled into one of the hydroponics stations. Gathering sentries followed close behind, exchanging fire with their tiring quarry.

Pizer heard a ripping sound. There was the sudden
whoosh
of escaping atmosphere. A tiny hole had appeared at the apex of the dome overhead, enough to suck vast quantities of air out into space. Automatic pressure sensors immediately sent fresh air pouring into the area, but the circuitry that should have slammed shut inner doors surrounding the station to seal in the damaged area failed to function. Air continued to scream out into space. Despite the valiant efforts of the temperature compensators, the dome turned dangerously cold.

With the drop in pressure, ice began to form in the room. Plates broke, sending frozen bits of plant and hydroponic tubing swirling through the dome, caught in the miniature hurricane pouring upward through the ceiling puncture.

Old Bob jetted over to McCrae. His repeller units fought to keep him from being drawn upward.

"Hang on to me!" he yelled. Letting go of the stanchion she was clinging to, she carefully transferred herself to the machine. With Bob battling the wind, they drifted across the now frozen surface of the deck toward the far doorway, still jammed open by failed circuits.

Holland and Pizer were also trying to fight their way across. They grabbed at anything still secured to the deck. Frozen missiles that had been alive and green seconds ago whizzed dangerously around them. Only Vincent's constant distracting of the pursuing robots enabled the two men to concentrate on making their way safely across the station.

It occurred to Vincent that it might be time to take some of his own advice concerning caution. He was battling the oncoming sentries alone, a confrontation that eventually had to prove fatal. Turning, he jetted toward the center of the dome. At least there he had more room to maneuver. The sentries single-mindedly continued their pursuit.

Dodging in random directions, Vincent was a difficult target to concentrate on. As he was the only one still offering steady resistance, the sentries directed the majority of their fire at him.