The Black Hole (5 page)

"Gravity. Gravity report, Mr. Pizer!" Holland repeated sharply when his first officer failed to respond at once. "No time for daydreaming now."

"Sorry, sir." Pizer devoted full attention to the proper readouts, all thoughts of radical forms of equine displacement forgotten. "Twenty-point-nine-six and still climbing."

He wondered how long it would be before the gauge broke. Like the
Palomino
, it was designed to withstand considerable forces. The ship had performed surveys of several Jovian-type worlds, handling multiple gravities and methane storms with equal equanimity. The perversion of nature they were teasing now, however, was to the gravity of Jupiter as a pebble was to a mountain.

Holland continued to watch his instruments apprehensively. If they could count on a steady pull from the black hole, the ship's navigation computer would pull them through without difficulty. But, as the turbulence they continued to experience was proving, the region of space they were now passing through was subject to gravitational and electromagnetic variations outside the experiences programmed into the
Palomino
's brain. They might be forced to maneuver suddenly and radically, might have to take risks no machine—operating solely on logic and a predisposition based on prior navigational experience—would take.

It was, therefore, time to engage the ship's ultimate navigational programmer, the only one on board that could cope with the unexpected dangers the bizarre distortion of space outside might thrust on them.

"Switching to manual," Holland said matter-of-factly, touching buttons in sequence on the console in front of him. A metal arm decorated with switches and buttons popped out of the console. He felt unreasonably better now that he was personally in control of the ship's movements, a reaction common to all pilots of all vessels since the dawn of transportation.

"Captain?"

"Yes, Vincent?"

"Permit me to elucidate a concern, sir."

"Go ahead and elucidate."

"I'm not sure how long the engines will remain operable against this much attractive force when we turn outward again. They are quite capable of producing the thrust necessary to carry us clear. But it is their durability under such conditions that concerns me. Even a brief loss of power could prove disastrous, and we cannot engage the supralight drive this close to a sun, not to mention what it might do to the
Cygnus
."

"I know all that, Vincent."

"I merely reiterate it, sir, because of the thought that Dr. Alex and Dr. Kate will be displeased with anything short of a thorough inspection of the
Cygnus
and whatever strange force is holding it steady in its present location."

Holland nodded, glanced momentarily at a particular gauge. It read no more than he had expected it to, but he still shook a little inside at the sight of numbers he had never expected to see behind the transparent face of the readout.

"Holland here," he said toward the com pickup, "The gravity's close to the maximum we can cope with, Alex. I've tried to slow our speed at perihelion as much as possible. Vincent has just expressed concern about the reliability of the engines under this kind of stress. We can afford one pass, but then we have to get the hell out."

"Isn't it possible," the scientist's voice intoned over the speaker, "that we might . . .?"

"One pass, and that's it. I'll try to give you as much time as I can. Attend to your instruments, Alex. Let's make this one pass worth the effort."

"Coming up on target and slowing, sir," Pizer announced.

"Slow us a little more, Vincent," Holland ordered the robot. "We'll risk passing with a five-percent margin."

"As you wish, sir. But if I may be allowed to say . . ."

"You may not."

"Yes, sir." The robot succeeded in conveying a distinct feeling of disapproval.

"We'll pass below her, sir." Pizer was dividing his gaze between the foreport and several readouts.

"Check. Ready on thrusters, Vincent."

"Standing by, sir."

A vast, dark bulk hove into view. It thoroughly dominated the
Palomino
. The long, roughly rectangular shape bulged at the stern. Each of her eight drive exhausts was large enough to swallow the
Palomino
. She wore her grid-work skeleton externally, like an insect.

She was one of mankind's greatest technological triumphs. Even in the darkness Holland felt a shiver of excitement pass through him at the sight of the enormous vessel. What pilot wouldn't have given an eye to command such a behemoth!

The
Cygnus
had been designed to carry out any imaginable scientific mission deep-space exploration might require. Its research capabilities far outstripped those of a dozen ships the size of the
Palomino
. That those extensive facilities, incorporated into the
Cygnus
's basic design, might never be used was something few gave thought to in the heady days of her planning and construction.

She had been built to be completely self-supporting, able to recycle air and food and water for hundreds of years if necessary, able to travel the length of the galaxy as long as the children's children of her original crew retained the knowledge to man her.

That was a last-scene scenario, however. Her creators expected her to return her original crew to Earth. The concept of a ship capable of carrying on from generation to generation was an appealingly romantic one that served a useful propagandistic purpose, helping to clear the way, come appropriations time, for vast expenditures of doubtful utility.

She was armed, too—huge sums spent to satisfy an appeal to xenophobic fears that no longer haunted mankind. In Holland's subsequent searches through space, no intelligent aliens, friendly or otherwise, had been encountered. But such fears had existed at the time of the
Cygnus
's construction. So jingoistic elements had forced the installation on the great ship of the means of extermination as well as of revelation.

Nothing like her had been built before. It was likely nothing like her would be built again. Not when smaller, less costly vessels like the
Palomino
and her sister ships could do the same work and cover far greater reaches of space for the same expenditure of time and personnel. Nonetheless, she remained a monument to man's mastery of physical engineering and ability. She awed even so stolid a man as Holland by her sheer size and presence.

"Stand by with your scanners, Alex. We're going under her. I'll try to roll us after passage to give every instrument a chance to record, in case of any failures."

Enormous metal members reached out toward the
Palomino
. They moved nearer, the little ship slipping toward silent supports weighing hundreds of tons on Earth, weighing nothing here . . . and something utterly unexpected happened.

The turbulence ceased.

That was absolutely the last thing Holland would have imagined. Gravitational effects had to have been affected or the
Cygnus
would not have been holding its position as it was. They were more than affected, they no longer were.

He glanced incredulously over at his first officer. As he checked and rechecked the readouts on the console before him, Pizer displayed a dumbfounded look.

"Zero gravity. Nothing. There's evidence of artificial gravity in use on the
Cygnus
, but nothing from the black hole. According to sensors, it's exerting less pull on us now than a toy globe."

"That's impossible. What about the star?"

"Same thing, meaning nothing," Pizer told him.

"Reverse thrust." Vincent complied and the
Palomino
slowed to a comparative crawl. "Stand by. The phenomenon may be temporary."

It was not. The
Palomino
sat driveless in space under the dark mass of the
Cygnus
like a chick huddled beneath its mother's protective wing. It was coasting now, drifting slowly forward.

"Easy on the thrusters now, Vincent. Take us around and upside her, Charlie." Man and machine moved to comply with the orders. Holland continued to examine his sensor readouts, still hardly believing what they told him.

"Smooth as glass," he muttered softly. "Incredible."
And frightening
, he told himself. Anything that could so utterly eliminate the kind of attractive power they had just passed through hinted at knowledge that could prove dangerous as well as benign.

Voices drifted out at him from the speaker. "It's like the eye of a hurricane." That was Kate's voice. "What's happened, Alex? I can't imagine what's causing it."

"Neither can I," Durant confessed readily. "As we suspected, a natural phenomenon or something generated from the
Cygnus
. Not a clue which it is, so far. Look sharp." Holland could visualize Durant turning his full attention to the information that must be pouring into the lab from the external scanners and sensors.

The
Palomino
drifted around the flank of the immense ship, curved up and started to arc around to pass over it. Everyone was busy at his or her station. They were trying to solve a pair of mysteries: one, the absence of pull from the black hole, and, two, the existence of the ghost ship itself.

McCrae was overcome with personal frustration. She left the task of monitoring the incoming statistics to Durant. Slipping free of her chair, she moved to the port and found herself staring fixedly at the meters of metal sliding past behind them. Soon they would reach the end of their turn, come around to pass across the topside of the ship. Her attitude was not very professional just then; it was very human.

Durant addressed the pickup. "Are you learning anything forward, Charlie? Nothing of a revealing nature has come in back here."

"And nothing abnormal up here, Alex," came the first officer's reply. "Negative. Whatever's canceling out the gravitational pull hereabouts isn't interfering at all with the rest of the electromagnetic junk that's filling this section of space.

"There are a hundred thousand 'natural' broadcasts flying around us. I can't punch anything through it, even this close. If there's anyone left on board capable of communicating, which I sincerely doubt, they've got the same problems if they're trying to reach us."

There has to be someone alive on board
, McCrae thought fiercely.
There has to be! It . . . it doesn't even have to be Dad. Just someone who can tell us what happened
. To have come this close, actually to have found the long-lost
Cygnus
, and not to learn what had happened to her would be intolerable.

She insisted to herself that the reasons for pursuing the investigation further were grounded soundly in science and not in personal emotions. But she knew it would be hard, if not impossible, to conceal her feelings from the rest of the crew—especially from Dan Holland. She wasn't at all sure she wanted to make the effort.

The
Palomino
had passed beyond the
Cygnus
, began to curve back toward her. "Bring us full around, Charlie. We'll try orbiting her forward, then we'll check out the engines."

"And after that?"

"After that, if there's still no sign of life aboard . . . we'll see."

"Yes, sir." Pizer concealed his impatience. "Bringing her around, sir."

The
Palomino
's attitude thrusters fired. A violent tremor ran through the length of the ship, like a sudden chill. Then they were tumbling out of control, away from the
Cygnus
.

A small gauge in front of Holland jumped instantly from zero to eleven, then twelve. It continued rising toward unthinkable levels with terrifying rapidity.

"Gravity approaching maximum, Dan!" Pizer shouted, fighting the panic in his guts.

"My God." Holland's gaze remained locked on the single, critical readout. "It's got us . . ."

"Full power on all thrusters. Give me a hundred percent additional on our roll quads." Holland was frantically jabbing at controls, eyes darting from one readout to the next. Each appeared more threatening than its neighbor. On the screen, the
Cygnus
remained peaceful and stable, receding behind them.

Malignant invisibilities smote the tiny vessel. Back near Power, several sensitive monitors ruptured, sending highly compressed gases whistling wildly down corridors and into unsealed rooms.

"What the hell happened?" Pizer demanded of silent fates. "What
happened?"

"The zone of null-
g
." Holland spoke rapidly, working at his console. "Its parameters are variable. I thought we had at least a couple of kilometers of quiet in which to turn, but the radius of the stable zone shifted while we were passing close to the
Cygnus
. It shrank inward.

"My fault," he was stammering through clenched teeth. "It was my fault. We should have been monitoring it somehow."

"Don't blame yourself." Pizer shifted power from one weakened thruster to another, balanced the propulsive system as best he could, given their wild course. "No one else thought of it. Besides, there's no way we could have monitored it. How can you monitor something you don't understand? We probably don't even have the instruments for it."