Crashlander

«We can't count on their having it. Who but the Outsiders would think to do their experimenting this far from a sun? If we want to reach beings who haven't dealt with the Outsiders, we'll have to use gravity waves once we know how.»

Angel offered us chairs and refreshments. By the time we were settled, I was already out of it; Forward and Carlos were talking plasma physics, metaphysics, and what are our old friends doing? I gathered that they had large numbers of mutual acquaintances. And Carlos was probing for the whereabouts of cosmologists specializing in gravity physics.

A few were in the Quicksilver Group. Others were among the colony worlds, especially on Jinx, trying to get the Institute of Knowledge to finance various projects, such as more expeditions to the collapsar in Cygnus.

«Are you still with the Institute, Doctor?»

Forward shook his head. «They stopped backing me. Not enough results. But I can continue to use this station, which is Institute property. One day they'll sell it, and we'll have to move.»

«I was wondering why they sent you here in the first place,» said Carlos. «Sirius has an adequate cometary belt.»

«But Sol is the only system with any kind of civilization this far from its sun. And I can count on better men to work with. Sol system has always had its fair share of cosmologists.»

«I thought you might have come to solve an old mystery. The Tunguska meteorite. You've heard of it, of course.»

Forward laughed. «Of course. Who hasn't? I don't think we'll ever know just what it was that hit Siberia that night. It may have been a chunk of antimatter. I'm told that there is antimatter in known space.»

«If it was, we'll never prove it,» Carlos admitted.

«Shall we discuss your problem?» Forward seemed to remember my existence. «Shaeffer, what does a professional pilot think when his hyperdrive motor disappears?»

«He gets very upset.»

«Any theories?»

I decided not to mention pirates. I wanted to see if Forward would mention them first. «Nobody seems to like my theory,» I said, and I sketched out the argument for monsters in hyperspace.

Forward heard me out politely. Then, «I'll give you this; it'd be hard to disprove. Do you buy it?»

«I'm afraid to. I almost got myself killed once, looking for space monsters when I should have been looking for natural causes.»

«Why would the hyperspace monsters eat only your motor?»

«Um … futz. I pass.»

«What do you think, Carlos? Natural phenomena or space monsters?»

«Pirates,» said Carlos.

«How are they going about it?»

«Well, this business of a hyperdrive motor disappearing and leaving the ship behind — that's brand new. I'd think it would take a sharp gravity gradient with a tidal effect as strong as that of a neutron star or a black hole.»

«You won't find anything like that anywhere in human space.»

«I know.» Carlos looked frustrated. That had to be faked. Earlier he'd behaved as if he already had an answer.

Forward said, «I don't think a black hole would have that anyway. If it did, you'd never know it, because the ship would disappear down the black hole.»

«What about a powerful gravity generator?»

«Hmmm.» Forward thought about it, then shook his massive head. «You're talking about a surface gravity in the millions. Any gravity generator I've ever heard of would collapse itself at that level. Let's see, with a frame supported by stasis fields … no. The frame would hold, and the rest of the machinery would flow like water.»

«You don't leave much of my theory.»

«Sorry.»

Carlos ended a short pause by asking, «How do you think the universe started?»

Forward looked puzzled at the change of subject.

And I began to get uneasy.

Given all that I don't know about cosmology, I do know attitudes and tones of voice. Carlos was giving out broad hints, trying to lead Forward to his own conclusion. Black holes, pirates, the Tunguska meteorite, the origin of the universe — he was offering them as clues. And Forward was not responding correctly.

He was saying, «Ask a priest. Me, I lean toward the big bang. The steady state always seemed so futile.»

«I like the big bang, too,» said Carlos.

There was something else to worry about. Those mining tugs: they almost had to belong to Forward Station. How would Ausfaller react when three familiar spacecraft came cruising into his space?

How did I want him to react? Forward Station would make a dandy pirate base. Permeated by laser-drilled corridors distributed almost at random … could there be two networks of corridors, connected only at the surface? How would we know?

Suddenly I didn't want to know. I wanted to go home. If only Carlos would stay off the touchy subjects –

But he was speculating about the ship eater again. «That ten billion metric tons of neutronium, now, that you were using for a test mass. That wouldn't be big enough or dense enough to give us enough of a gravity gradient.»

«It might, right near the surface.» Forward grinned and held his hands close together. «It was about that big.»

«And that's as dense as matter gets in this universe. Too bad.»