Crashlander

The theory of the black hole wasn't new to me, though the math was over my head. If a star is massive enough, then after it has burned its nuclear fuel and started to cool, no possible internal force can hold it from collapsing inward past its own Swartzchild radius. At that point the escape velocity from the star becomes greater than lightspeed, and beyond that deponent sayeth not, because nothing can leave the star, not information, not matter, not radiation. Nothing — except gravity.

Such a collapsed star can be expected to weigh five solar masses or more; otherwise its collapse would stop at the neutron star stage. Afterward it can only grow bigger and more massive.

There wasn't the slightest chance of finding anything that massive out here at the edge of the solar system. If such a thing were anywhere near, the sun would have been in orbit around it.

The Siberia meteorite must have been weird enough, to be remembered for nine hundred years. It had knocked down trees over thousands of square miles, yet trees near the touchdown point were left standing. No part of the meteorite itself had ever been found. Nobody had seen it hit. In 1908, Tunguska, Siberia, must have been as sparsely settled as the Earth's moon is today.

«Carlos, what does all this have to do with anything?»

«Does Holmes tell Watson?»

I had real trouble following the cosmology. Physics verged on philosophy here, or vice versa. Basically the big bang theory — which pictures the universe as exploding from a single point mass, like a titanic bomb — was in competition with the steady state universe, which has been going on forever and will continue to do so. The cyclic universe is a succession of big bangs followed by contractions. There are variants on all of them.

When the quasars were first discovered, they seemed to date from an earlier stage in the evolution of the universe, which, by the steady state hypothesis, would not be evolving at all. The steady state went out of fashion. Then, a century ago, Hilbury had solved the mystery of the quasars. Meanwhile one of the implications of the big bang had not panned out. That was where the math got beyond me.

There was some discussion of whether the universe was open or closed in four-space, but Carlos turned it off. «Okay,» he said with satisfaction.

«What?»

«I could be right. Insufficient data. I'll have to see what Forward thinks.»

«I hope you both choke. I'm going to sleep.»

* * *

Out here in the broad borderland between Sol system and interstellar space, Julian Forward had found a stony mass the size of a middling asteroid. From a distance it seemed untouched by technology: a lopsided spheroid, rough-surfaced and dirty white. Closer in, flecks of metal and bright paint showed like randomly placed jewels. Air locks, windows, projecting antennae, and things less identifiable. A lighted disk with something projecting from the center: a long metal arm with half a dozen ball joints in it and a cup on the end. I studied that one, trying to guess what it might be … and gave up.

I brought Hobo Kelly to rest a fair distance away. To Ausfaller I said, «You'll stay aboard?»

«Of course. I will do nothing to disabuse Dr. Forward of the notion that the ship is empty.»

We crossed to Forward Station on an open taxi: two seats, a fuel tank, and a rocket motor. Once I turned to ask Carlos something and asked instead, «Carlos? Are you all right?»

His face was white and strained. «I'll make it.»

«Did you try closing your eyes?»

«It was worse. Futz, I made it this far on hypnosis. Bey, it's so empty.»

«Hang on. We're almost there.»

The blond Belter was outside one of the air locks in a skintight suit and a bubble helmet. He used a flashlight to flag us down. We moored our taxi to a spur of rock — the gravity was almost nil — and went inside.

«I'm Harry Moskowitz,» the Belter said. «They call me Angel. Dr. Forward is waiting in the laboratory.»

The interior of the asteroid was a network of straight cylindrical corridors, laser-drilled, pressurized, and lined with cool blue light strips. We weighed a few pounds near the surface, less in the deep interior. Angel moved in a fashion new to me: a flat jump from the floor that took him far down the corridor to brush the ceiling, push back to the floor, and jump again. Three jumps and he'd wait, not hiding his amusement at our attempts to catch up.

«Doctor Forward asked me to give you a tour,» he told us.

I said, «You seem to have a lot more corridor than you need. Why didn't you cluster all the rooms together?»

«This rock was a mine once upon a time. The miners drilled these passages. They left big hollows wherever they found air-bearing rock or ice pockets. All we had to do was wall them off.»