Crashlander

«True, but … have you ever heard of quantum black holes?»

«Yeah.»

Forward stood up briskly. «Wrong answer.»

I rolled out of my web chair, trying to brace myself for a jump, while my fingers fumbled for the third button on my jumper. It was no good. I hadn't practiced in this gravity.

Forward was in midleap. He slapped Carlos alongside the head as he went past. He caught me at the peak of his jump and took me with him via an iron grip on my wrist.

I had no leverage, but I kicked at him. He didn't even try to stop me. It was like fighting a mountain. He gathered my wrists in one hand and towed me away.

* * *

Forward was busy. He sat within the horseshoe of his control console, talking. The backs of three disembodied heads showed above the console's edge.

Evidently there was a laser phone in the console. I could hear parts of what Forward was saying. He was ordering the pilots of the dime mining tugs to destroy Hobo Kelly. He didn't seem to know about Ausfaller yet.

Forward was busy, but Angel was studying us thoughtfully, or unhappily, or both. Well he might. We could disappear, but what messages might we have sent earlier?

I couldn't do anything constructive with Angel watching me. And I couldn't count on Carlos.

I couldn't see Carlos. Forward and Angel had tied us to opposite sides of the central pillar, beneath the Grabber. Carlos hadn't made a sound since then. He might be dying from that tremendous slap across the head.

I tested the line around my wrists. Metal mesh of some kind, cool to the touch … and it was tight.

Forward turned a switch. The heads vanished. It was a moment before he spoke.

«You've put me in a very bad position.»

And Carlos answered. «I think you put yourself there.»

«That may be. You should not have let me guess what you knew.»

Carlos said, «Sorry, Bey.»

He sounded healthy. Good. «That's all right,» I said. «But what's all the excitement about? What has Forward got?»

«I think he's got the Tunguska meteorite.»

«No. That I do not.» Forward stood and faced us. «I will admit that I came here to search for the Tunguska meteorite. I spent several years trying to trace its trajectory after it left Earth. Perhaps it was a quantum black hole. Perhaps not. The Institute cut off my funds without warning just as I had found a real quantum black hole, the first in history.»

I said, «That doesn't tell me a lot.»

«Patience, Mr. Shaeffer. You know that a black hole may form from the collapse of a massive star? Good. And you know that it takes a body of at least five solar masses. It may mass as much as a galaxy — or as much as the universe. There is some evidence that the universe is an infalling black hole. But at less than five solar masses the collapse would stop at the neutron star stage.»

«I follow you.»

«In all the history of the universe there has been one moment at which smaller black holes might have formed. That moment was the explosion of the monoblock, the cosmic egg that once contained all the matter in the universe. In the ferocity of that explosion there must have been loci of unimaginable pressure. Black holes could have formed of mass down to two point two times ten to the minus fifth grams, one point six times ten to the minus twenty-fifth angstroms in radius.»

«Of course you'd never detect anything that small,» said Carlos. He seemed almost cheerful. I wondered why … and then I knew. He'd been right about the way the ships were disappearing. It must compensate him for being tied to a pillar.

«But,» said Forward, «black holes of all sizes could have formed in that explosion, and should have. In more than seven hundred years of searching no quantum black hole has ever been found. Most cosmologists have given up on them, and on the big bang, too.»

Carlos said, «Of course there was the Tunguska meteorite. It could have been a black hole of, oh, asteroidal mass —»

«— and roughly molecular size. But the tide would have pulled down trees as it went past —»

«— and the black hole would have gone right through the Earth and headed back into space a few tons heavier. Eight hundred years ago there was actually a search for the exit point. With that they could have charted a course —»

«Exactly. But I had to give up that approach,» said Forward. «I was using a new method when the Institute, ah, severed our relationship.»

They must both be mad, I thought. Carlos was tied to a pillar and Forward was about to kill him, yet they were both behaving like members of a very exclusive club … to which I did not belong.

Carlos was interested. «How'd you work it?»