For Love and Glory Read online

He shook himself, straightened where he sat, and clipped, “Very well. Thank you, Dr. Harolsson. If you haven’t already, please put your data and conclusions in proper form for transmission. We’ve got to notify headquarters. What we’ve learned thus far mustn’t be lost with us. Besides, I’ll be interested in the exact information, the actual numbers, too.” His smile was crooked. “Personally interested.”

  [115] Lissa saw doubt on Elif; Noel swallowed; Tessa laughed aloud. They foreknew. It was Orichalc who said, “Thereafter, do you intend that we shall see the event?”

  Valen’s head lifted. “What else? On Asborg, they’d never outfit and scramble another ship in time.”

  “Humans won’t get another chance,” Esker agreed, “and I doubt the Susaians will share what they learn.”

  Lissa paid him no heed. She caught Valen’s arm. “Yes, certainly,” rang from her. “It’s up to us. That’s how you were bound to think, Gerward.”

  The glee drained out of Esker, as if somehow gravity had reached from the lightless masses yonder. Sexual frustration, Lissa thought. We shouldn’t flaunt what we have, that he can’t.

  XX

  A hyperbeam bypassed light years, carrying the findings made aboard Dagmar. Lissa wished she could talk with her father when they were done, but haste forbade. The instruments gathered information at rates hugely greater than the transmitter could send it. Conveying all they had took several irrecoverable hours. For the same reason, the expedition would dispatch nothing but the new data from each stop along its course henceforward—and nothing whatsoever, once it was close to the black holes, until it was outward bound again.

  Esker spent the waiting period in the electronics shop. Lissa supposed he tinkered with something in hopes that it would ease his tension and ... unhappiness? Or did the magnificence ahead of him drive out mortal wishes?

  Noel monitored the reporting. Valen studied the facts, with Tessa and Elif on hand to answer questions. In the saloon, Lissa and Orichalc played round upon round of Integer until, at length, they fell into conversation. It turned to private hopes, fears, loves. You could confide to a sympathetic alien what you could not to any of your own species. “I look forward to your Freydis colony,” Lissa said finally, sincerely.

  The summons resounded. Crew took their posts. Countdown. Jump. A light-year from their destination, they poised.

  Words reached Lissa in her globe as if from across an equal gulf. She had instantly established that no other vessel was in the neighborhood. Absurd to imagine that any would be, those few score motes strewn through the abyss. Why, for starters, consider that the light-year is a human unit, a memory of Old Earth like [117] the standard year and day, the meter, the gram, the gee. Nobody else uses them. ... The view was, as always, glorious with stars. One outshone all the rest, a dazzling brilliance. Wonderstruck, she asked what that might be. The ship replied that it was a type B giant, about four and a half parsecs off, passing through this vicinity at this time. She dropped it out of sight and mind as she set the console viewscreen to the predicted coordinates of the search object. Her fingers trembled a little. She turned up the optics.

  The breath caught in her throat. Magnified, amplified, two comets flamed before her. From their shining brows, flattened blue-white manes streamed toward each other, shading through fierce gold to a red like newly spilled blood. Where they met, they roiled, and she imagined the turbulence within, great waves and tides, lightning-like discharges, atoms ripped into plasma, roaring to their doom.

  The gas was thin, she knew; on Asborg it would have seemed well-nigh a vacuum. But the totality was monstrous, drawn out of the interstellar medium as the black holes hurtled through, spinning down into them with a blaze of radiation. And now, when they had drawn close, their pulls coacted to redouble that infall. The accretion discs had just begun to interact. The shock was mostly generating visible light. Later it would shift—it had shifted—toward X-rays, harder and harder.

  “Next jump,” Esker called.

  “Already?” Valen asked.

  The reply screeched. “Chaos take you, we haven’t got a second to waste! Nothing registers here that we can’t account for in principle. I’ve programmed everything for maximum data input and processing. Make use of it, you clotbrain!”

  Hoy, that’s far too strong, Esker, thought Lissa, half dismayed. Gerward has every right to put you in confinement. Are you off your beam? Now, in these last, supreme days?

  Relief washed through her when Valen rapped, “Watch your language. The next offense, I will penalize.”

  [118] She had a sense of deliverance when she heard his grudging “Sorry, ... Captain. May we proceed?”

  Dagmar knew how she was to approach. “Ten,” she sang. Valen must have given her a signal, not quite trusting himself to speak. “Nine. Eight. Seven—

  At half a light-year, the comets burned naked-eye bright. Optics showed a diamond pattern in the shock front, and intricate strands that looped around as if seeking forward to the hungry furnaces of the comas. Elif ‘s voice was full of awe and puzzlement: “Sir, that looks almighty strange, doesn’t it? I can’t think how you’d get curvatures like that in the gas, at this stage of things.”

  “Nor can I,” Esker admitted eagerly. Rapture had eclipsed wrath. “The cosmos is running an experiment like none we’ve ever seen before or likely ever will again. I’d guess that mutual attraction is—was—appreciably distorting the event horizons. That’d be bound to affect magnetic fields and charge distributions. But we need more information.”

  Not that it would soon reveal the truth, Lissa realized. Understanding must wait upon months or years of analysis, hypothesis, tests in laboratories and observatory ships and brains, back at Asborg and no doubt elsewhere. The task here set Esker’s genius was to decide what sorts of data, out of the impossibly many his team might try for, would likely bear such fruit. “The polarizing synchrometer should—” The conversation over the intercom went out of Lissa’s reach.

  She tuned it low and made a direct connection with Orichalc in the saloon. Her yearning was for Valen’s words, since she could not have his presence. The skipper shouldn’t be distracted, though, nor should the others be given grounds to suspect he was. Besides, she felt sorry for the Susaian, become functionless, restricted to whatever view Dagmar got a chance to project on a rec screen for him.

  “How’re you doing?” she inquired softly.

  “We fare among splendors,” she heard. “Is this not worth an island?”

  [119] “Yes, oh, yes.” A thought she had not wanted to think pushed to the forefront. “Will your—will the Dominator ships really let us carry it home?”

  “We have considered this, before, honored one. The vessels on which I served were unarmed. The Dominators have no cause to expect us. The fleet come for the climax may include a few naval units of models suitable for rescue and salvage operations, should those prove necessary; but they are probably not formidable.”

  “I know. I remember. However, it’s occurred to me—it didn’t before, because on Asborg we don’t think that way—in a number of human societies, the military would insist on having a big presence, if only for the prestige.”

  “They do not think like that in the Confederacy either, honored one. There is no distinction between organizations serving the Dominance; they are simply specialized branches of the same growth. This means that commanders can act decisively, without having to consult high officials first. You see, their intelligence and emotional stability have been verified beforehand. I warned your father that I do not know what the doctrine is with respect to preserving this secret. But I doubt that orders read ‘at all costs.’ Additional combat vessels will scarcely be sent from afar, under any but desperate circumstances. That would mean leakage of the truth, from crewfolk not predisciplined to closeness about it. Besides, the Confederacy is as desirous of maintaining stability as any other nation is.” Orichalc hesitated. “I do counsel that we avoid undue provocation.”

  “Wel
l, you can advise the captain. Can’t you?”

  “I can try. Perhaps I shall bring you into conference, if possible. Your rapport with both him and me may enable you to make ourselves clear to one another.”

  It thrilled in her. “I can’t imagine any better service. Thank you, old dear, thank you.”

  Jump went the ship in a while. And again, presently, jump. And hour after hour, jump, to a different point of view, to a new distance, but always nearer, jump, jump, jump.

  XXI

  JUMP.

  At one light-hour, the incandescence around the black holes made them even brighter than the giant star. You could have read by that livid radiance. Their closeness was deceptive; Dagmar had emerged well off any normal to their paths. Yet even as Lissa watched, her unaided eyes saw them creep nearer. Chill went through her, marrow-deep. Second by second, those colossal accelerations were mounting.

  And what when they met? Esker believed the masses would fuse. If nothing else could leave such a gravity well, how could the thing itself? But this was no simple, head-on crash, it would be a grazing blow. He said the case had been considered theoretically, centuries ago, but not as fully as it might have been, and had since lain obscure—probably in the archives of other races too—for nobody awaited it in reality. He spoke of problems with linear and angular momentum, potential fields, quantum tunneling by photons, leptons, baryons, gravitons. The event horizons should undergo convulsive changes of shape. Still more should the static limits, below which everything from outside was ineluctably hauled into orbit in the same sense as a black hole’s rotation. This pair had opposite spins with distinct orientations. What wavelike distortions might their meeting send out through the continuum? Already, space-time around each was warped. In a black hole’s own frame, the collapse to singularity was swift. To a safely distant observer, it took forever; what she saw was not a completed being but an eternal becoming. Yet if somehow the inside of it should be bared, however briefly, to her universe, there was no way even to guess what would follow.

  [121] “Emissions from spacecraft powerplant detected,” said Dagmar. “I estimate the nearest at fifteen million kilometers.”

  No surprise, here. Nevertheless Lissa knew guiltily that for a pulsebeat she had let her attention stray from her guns. Valen remained cool: “Any indications that they’ve noticed us?”

  “None. They may well fail to. The background is high because of emissions from the search objects, and the Susaians have no reason to be watchful for new arrivals.”

  “Uh-huh. Hard to see how they can think about anything but ... that.”

  Lissa allowed herself a magnified view. The optics must adjust brightness pixel by pixel before she could see any detail against the glare at either forefront. The comet tails had fused, while changeable light seethed in a ring around each flattened fire-globe. She thought she could make out fountains and geysers within it, brief saw-teeth on the rims. Dopplering shaded it clearly toward violet on the one edge, red on the other, a whirling rainbow.

  “Emissions indeed!” Esker shouted. “What readings!”

  Nothing dangerous to ship or crew. This puny radius, which would not have touched the Oort cloud of a typical planetary system, was still beyond mortal comprehension. You could give it a name and hang numbers on it; that was all.

  “Yes, event horizons distinctly deformed,” Esker crooned.

  Lissa knew that his instruments saw what she could not. The sight before her, like every such earlier, must in at least some part be illusion. Gravity sucked matter in from every direction, while its colliding atoms gave off radiation that grew the more furious the deeper it fell; but as it neared the static limit, bent space-time compelled it into the maelstrom. Yonder comas were no more than its last clotting and sparking before it entered the accretion disc; the ring was no more than the verge of an inward-rushing cataract. Esker’s devices looked past them, through the ergosphere, to the ultimate blindness itself. And they had not the eyes of gods wherewith to do this. They took spectra, traced particles, [122] measured mutable fields; from what they gathered, computers drew long mathematical chains of inference.

  That process would not end for years, perhaps not for rejuvenations. The readouts and graphics that Esker saw flash before him were the barest preliminary theorizing. They might be dead wrong. It was a powerful mind that could, regardless, immediately grasp something of what went on.

  Time went timelessly past, but in retrospect astonishingly short, until he said, “We’re clear to move on, Captain.”

  Praise him, Lissa thought. He needs it. He’s earned it. “Fast work,” she chimed in.

  His laugh rattled. “Oh, we could spend weeks here and not exhaust the material. But we haven’t got them.”

  No, she thought, we now have days to reap a share of the harvest for which the Susaians spent years or decades preparing.

  “Right,” Valen agreed. “I take it you want to go on to your next planned point?” Same distance, but directly confronting the impact to be.

  “No. I’ve changed my mind, on the basis of what I’ve learned in the last few stops. The latest input seems to confirm my ideas. We’re going straight in.”

  “What? Immediately? You know we’re close to the boundary for hyperjump, given masses like those.”

  Once inside it, we run strictly on plasma drive, till we’ve gotten remote enough again, Lissa knew. We’re committed.

  “Yes, yes, yes.” Lissa heard how Esker barely controlled his temper. “But you know, or should, contact will take place in a hundred and seventy-six hours. I want to be at the two hundred million kilometer radius I calculated was safe, before that happens, in time to set up experiments I’ve devised. How fast can you get us there, ship?”

  “At one gravity acceleration, with turnover, considering our present velocity, that will require eighty-eight hours, plus maneuvering time,” Dagmar told him.

  Lissa visualized him shaking fists in air. “You can boost higher [123] than that. A lot higher! We’ve got medications against excess weight. We could even go into the flotation tank.”

  “Such a delta vee would seriously deplete our reserve. Does the captain order it?”

  “No,” Valen decided at once. “One gee it is. You can still observe as we go, Harolsson.”

  “But—” The physicist gasped in a breath. “Can’t you understand? We’ve got to be close in, and prepared, for the main event. I expect fluctuations in the metric, short-lived superparticles, polarized gravitons, superstrings— Aargh! Time’s grown so scant as is. If you hadn’t farted it away, everywhere else in space—”

  “Most of what we lost was because the people you chose turned out to require training,” Valen interrupted stiffly. “Prudence demands we don’t squander so much mass that we can’t get onto emergency trajectories.”

  “Yes, you’ll keep your hide safe, won’t you, whatever else may be sacrificed?”

  “That will do. If your considered judgment as a scientist is that we should head directly inward, I assume you don’t want to dawdle here arguing. Give the ship the coordinates you have in mind. Crew, stand by for boost at one gravity.”

  XXII

  LISSA and Valen were in his cabin when the message came. “To the captain,” Dagmar said. “Incoming audio signal on the fifth standard band. Radar touched us sixty seconds ago and is now locked on. Code: ‘Acknowledge and respond.’ Shall I?”

  Valen disentangled himself and rose from the bunk. “Do, and relay to me, with translation. Surely a Susaian.” To Lissa, wryly: “I knew this couldn’t last. We’re picking up more powerplant emissions every hour. Somebody was bound to notice ours, and wonder.”

  She needed a moment more to swim up from the sweet aftermath of lovemaking. The warmth and odor of him still lingered as she heard “Ship Amethyst, Dominator Ironbright commanding and speaking, to vessel accelerating through Sector Eighty-seven dash eighteen dash zero-one.” That must be Dagmar s best attempt to render the coordinate system established
for this locality, she thought. “You do not conform to the plan. Identify yourself.”

  “Captain Gerward Valen, from Asborg, Sunniva III, with crew on a scientific mission,” the man stated. “We intend no interference or other harm, and will be glad to cooperate in any reasonable way.”

  The last drowsiness fled from Lissa. She glanced at her watch. Silence murmured. She got up too. The deck felt sensuously resilient beneath her bare feet, but remote, no longer quite real.

  Twenty-eight seconds before response. If Ironbright hadn’t hesitated, his(?) craft was four million-plus kilometers away. “Your presence is inadmissable. This region is closed. Remove yourselves.”

  [125] Lissa bent over the intercom control and pushed for Orichalc’s cubicle. “We are not aware of any such interdiction,” Valen was saying. “By what right do you declare it? It seems to be in violation both of treaty agreements and general custom.”

  “Orichalc,” Lissa whispered. “They’re on to us. At least one ship. They command we turn back. Listen in, and tell us what you think.”

  “S-s-s,” the fugitive breathed.

  “The Dominance of the Great Confederacy has taken sovereignty,” Ironbright said. “Under its policy and in its name, I order you to return to clear space immediately and hyperjump hence. Else you are subject to detention and penalties. I warn you, we have weapons. If necessary, we will use them, with regret but without hesitation.”

  “I should hope no civilized being would make a threat like that, without even having discussed the matter first,” Valen answered. “Certainly we require more authority than yours. What are your reasons for this demand?”

  “He bluffs, I believe,” Orichalc murmured. Given his instinctive sensitivities to his own species, yes, he’d be able to hear that Ironbright, too, was currently in male phase. Valen also leaned close to hear, flank to flank with Lissa. She laid an arm around his waist. “Tell him that the Houses of Asborg would have known if any such claim were registered under the Covenant of Space.”