Crashlander Read online

  “That’s pretty funny, all right. But we still don’t know who owns them.”

  “They may be honest Belters. They may not.”

  Hard on the heels of the first call came the data Carlos had asked for, playing directly into the shipboard computer. Carlos called up a list of names and phone numbers: Sol system’s preeminent students of gravity and its effects, listed in alphabetical order.

  An address caught my attention:

  Julian Forward, #1192326 Southworth Station.

  A hyperwave relay tag. He was out here, somewhere in the enormous gap between Neptune’s orbit and the cometary belt, out here where the hyperwave relay could function. I looked for more Southworth Station numbers. They were there:

  Launcelot Starkey, #1844719 Southworth Station.

  Jill Luciano, #1844719 Southworth Station.

  Mariana Wilton, #1844719 Southworth Station.

  “These people,” said Ausfaller. “You wish to discuss your theory with one of them?”

  “That’s right. Sigmund, isn’t 1844719 the tag for the Quicksilver Group?”

  “I think so. I also think that they are not within our reach now that our hyperdrive is gone. The Quicksilver Group was established in distant orbit around Antenora, which is now on the other side of the sun. Carlos, has it occurred to you that one of these people may have built the ship-eating device?”

  “What?…You’re right. It would take someone who knew something about gravity. But I’d say the Quicksilver Group was beyond suspicion. With upwards of ten thousand people at work, how could anyone hide anything?”

  “What about this Julian Forward?”

  “Forward. Yah. I’ve always wanted to meet him.”

  “You know of him? Who is he?”

  “He used to be with the Institute of Knowledge on Jinx. I haven’t heard of him in years. He did some work on the gravity waves from the galactic core…work that turned out to be wrong. Sigmund, let’s give him a call.”

  “And ask him what?”

  “Why…?” Then Carlos remembered the situation. “Oh. You think he might—Yah.”

  “How well do you know this man?”

  “I know him by reputation. He’s quite famous. I don’t see how such a man could go in for mass murder.”

  “Earlier you said that we were looking for a man skilled in the study of gravitational phenomena.”

  “Granted.”

  Ausfaller sucked at his lower lip. Then, “Perhaps we can do no more than talk to him. He could be on the other side of the sun and still head a pirate fleet.”

  “No. That he could not.”

  “Think again,” said Ausfaller. “We are outside the singularity of Sol. A pirate fleet would surely include hyperdrive ships.”

  “If Julian Forward is the ship eater, he’ll have to be nearby. The, uh, device won’t move in hyperspace.”

  I said, “Carlos, what we don’t know can kill us. Will you quit playing games.” But he was smiling, shaking his head. Futz. “All right, we can still check on Forward. Call him up and ask where he is! Is he likely to know you by reputation?”

  “Sure. I’m famous, too.”

  “Okay. If he’s close enough, we might even beg him for a ride home. The way things stand we’ll be at the mercy of any hyperdrive ship for as long as we’re out here.”

  “I hope we are attacked,” said Ausfaller. “We can outfight—”

  “But we can’t outrun. They can dodge; we can’t.”

  “Peace, you two. First things first.” Carlos sat down at the hyperwave controls and tapped out a number.

  Suddenly Ausfaller said, “Can you contrive to keep my name out of this exchange? If necessary you can be the ship’s owner.”

  Carlos looked around in surprise. Before he could answer, the screen lit. I saw ash-blond hair cut in a Belter crest over a lean white face and an impersonal smile.

  “Forward Station. Good evening.”

  “Good evening. This is Carlos Wu of Earth calling long distance. May I speak to Dr. Julian Forward, please?”

  “I’ll see if he’s available.” The screen went on HOLD.

  In the interval Carlos burst out: “What kind of game are you playing now? How can I explain owning an armed, disguised warship?”

  But I began to see what Ausfaller was getting at. I said, “You’d want to avoid explaining that, whatever the truth was. Maybe he won’t ask. I—” I shut up because we were facing Forward.

  Julian Forward was a Jinxian, short and wide, with arms as thick as legs and legs as thick as pillars. His skin was almost as black as his hair: a Sirius suntan, probably maintained by sunlights. He perched on the edge of a massage chair. “Carlos Wu!” he said with flattering enthusiasm. “Are you the same Carlos Wu who solved the Sealeyham Limits problem?”

  Carlos said he was. They went into a discussion of mathematics, a possible application of Carlos’s solution to another limits problem, I gathered. I glanced at Ausfaller—not obtrusively, because for Forward he wasn’t supposed to exist—and saw him pensively studying his side view of Forward.

  “Well,” Forward said, “what can I do for you?”

  “Julian Forward, meet Beowulf Shaeffer,” said Carlos. I bowed. “Bey was giving me a lift home when our hyperdrive motor disappeared.”

  “Disappeared?”

  I butted in for verisimilitude. “Disappeared, futzy right. The hyperdrive motor casing is empty. The motor supports are sheared off. We’re stuck out here with no hyperdrive and no idea how it happened.”

  “Almost true,” Carlos said happily. “Dr. Forward, I do have some ideas as to what happened here. I’d like to discuss them with you.”

  “Where are you now?”

  I pulled our position and velocity from the computer and flashed them to Forward Station. I wasn’t sure it was a good idea, but Ausfaller had time to stop me, and he didn’t.

  “Fine,” said Forward’s image. “It looks like you can get here a lot faster than you can get to Earth. Forward Station is ahead of you, within twenty a.u. of your position. You can wait here for the next ferry. Better than going on in a crippled ship.”

  “Good! We’ll work out a course and let you know when to expect us.”

  “I welcome the chance to meet Carlos Wu.” Forward gave us his own coordinates and rang off.

  Carlos turned. “All right, Bey. Now you own an armed and disguised warship. You figure out where you got it.”

  “We’ve got worse problems than that. Forward Station is exactly where the ship eater ought to be.”

  He nodded. But he was amused.

  “So what’s our next move? We can’t run from hyperdrive ships. Not now. Is Forward likely to try to kill us?”

  “If we don’t reach Forward Station on schedule, he might send ships after us. We know too much. We’ve told him so,” said Carlos. “The hyperdrive motor disappeared completely. I know half a dozen people who could figure out how it happened, knowing just that.” He smiled suddenly. “That’s assuming Forward’s the ship eater. We don’t know that. I think we have a splendid chance to find out one way or the other.”

  “How? Just walk in?”

  Ausfaller was nodding approvingly. “Dr. Forward expects you and Carlos to enter his web unsuspecting, leaving an empty ship. I think we can prepare a few surprises for him. For example, he may not have guessed that this is a General Products hull. And I will be aboard to fight.”

  True. Only antimatter could harm a GP hull…though things could go through it, like light and gravity and shock waves. “So you’ll be in the indestructible hull,” I said, “and we’ll be helpless in the base. Very clever. I’d rather run for it myself. But then, you have your career to consider.”

  “I will not deny it. But there are ways in which I can prepare you.”

  Behind Ausfaller’s cabin, behind what looked like an unbroken wall, was a room the size of a walk-in closet. Ausfaller seemed quite proud of it. He didn’t show us everything in there, but I saw enough to cost me w
hat remained of my first impression of Ausfaller. This man did not have the soul of a pudgy bureaucrat.

  Behind a glass panel he kept a couple of dozen special-purpose weapons. A row of four clamps held three identical hand weapons, disposable rocket launchers for a fat slug that Ausfaller billed as a tiny atomic bomb. The fourth clamp was empty. There were laser rifles and pistols, a shotgun of peculiar design with four inches of recoil shock absorber, throwing knives, an Olympic target pistol with a sculpted grip and room for just one .22 bullet.

  I wondered what he was doing with a hobbyist’s touch-sculpting setup. Maybe he could make sculptures to drive a human or an alien mad. Maybe something less subtle: maybe they’d explode at the touch of the right fingerprints.

  He had a compact automated tailor’s shop. “I’m going to make you some new suits,” he said. When Carlos asked why, he said, “You can keep secrets? So can I.”

  He asked us for our preference in styles. I played it straight, asking for a falling jumper in green and silver with lots of pockets. It wasn’t the best I’ve ever owned, but it fit.

  “I didn’t ask for buttons,” I told him.

  “I hope you don’t mind. Carlos, you will have buttons, too.”

  Carlos chose a fiery red tunic with a green and gold dragon coiling across the back. The buttons carried his family monogram. Ausfaller stood before us, examining us in our new finery, with approval.

  “Now, watch,” he said. “Here I stand before you, unarmed.”

  “Right.”

  “Sure you are.”

  Ausfaller grinned. He took the top and bottom buttons between his fingers and tugged hard. They came off. The material between them ripped open as if a thread had been strung between them.

  Holding the buttons as if to keep an invisible thread taut, he moved them to either side of a crudely done plastic touch sculpture. The sculpture fell apart.

  “Sinclair molecule chain. It will cut through any normal matter if you pull hard enough. You must be very careful. It will cut your fingers so easily that you will hardly notice they are gone. Notice that the buttons are large to give an easy grip.” He laid the buttons carefully on a table and set a heavy weight between them. “This third button down is a sonic grenade. Ten feet away it will kill. Thirty feet away it will stun.”

  I said, “Don’t demonstrate.”

  “You may want to practice throwing dummy buttons at a target. This second button is Power Pill, the commercial stimulant. Break the button and take half when you need it. The entire dose may stop your heart.”

  “I never heard of Power Pill. How does it work on crashlanders?”

  He was taken aback. “I don’t know. Perhaps you had better restrict yourself to a quarter dose.”

  “Or avoid it entirely,” I said.

  “There is one more thing I will not demonstrate. Feel the material of your garments. You feel three layers of material? The middle layer is a nearly perfect mirror. It will reflect even X rays. Now you can repel a laser blast for at least the first second. The collar unrolls to a hood.”

  Carlos was nodding in satisfaction.

  I guess it’s true: all flatlanders think that way.

  For a billion and a half years humanity’s ancestors had evolved to the conditions of one world: Earth. A flatlander grows up in an environment peculiarly suited to him. Instinctively he sees the whole universe the same way.

  We know better, we who were born on other worlds. On We Made It there are the hellish winds of summer and winter. On Jinx, the gravity. On Plateau, the all-encircling cliff edge and a drop of forty miles into unbearable heat and pressure. On Down, the red sunlight and plants that will not grow without help from ultraviolet lamps.

  But flatlanders think the universe was made for their benefit. To them, danger is unreal.

  “Earplugs,” said Ausfaller, holding up a handful of soft plastic cylinders.

  We inserted them. Ausfaller said, “Can you hear me?”

  “Sure.” “Yah.” They didn’t block our hearing at all.

  “Transmitter and hearing aid with sonic padding between. If you are blasted with sound, as by an explosion or a sonic stunner, the hearing aid will stop transmitting. If you go suddenly deaf, you will know you are under attack.”

  To me, Ausfaller’s elaborate precautions only spoke of what we might be walking into. I said nothing. If we ran for it, our chances were even worse.

  Back to the control room, where Ausfaller set up a relay to the Bureau of Alien Affairs on Earth. He gave them a condensed version of what had happened to us, plus some cautious speculation. He invited Carlos to read his theories into the record.

  Carlos declined. “I could still be wrong. Give me a chance to do some studying.”

  Ausfaller went grumpily to his bunk. He had been up too long, and it showed.

  Carlos shook his head as Ausfaller disappeared into his cabin. “Paranoia. In his job I guess he has to be paranoid.”

  “You could use some of that yourself.”

  He didn’t hear me. “Imagine suspecting an interstellar celebrity of being a space pirate!”

  “He’s in the right place at the right time.”

  “Hey, Bey, forget what I said. The, uh, ship-eating device has to be in the right place, but the pirates don’t. They can just leave it loose and use hyperdrive ships to commute to their base.”

  That was something to keep in mind. Compared to the inner system, this volume within the cometary halo was enormous, but to hyperdrive ships it was all one neighborhood. I said, “Then why are we visiting Forward?”

  “I still want to check my ideas with him. More than that: he probably knows the head ship eater without knowing it’s him. Probably we both know him. It took something of a cosmologist to find the device and recognize it. Whoever it is, he has to have made something of a name for himself.”

  “Find?”

  Carlos grinned at me. “Never mind. Have you thought of anyone you’d like to use that magic wire on?”

  “I’ve been making a list. You’re at the top.”

  “Well, watch it. Sigmund knows you’ve got it, even if nobody else does.”

  “He’s second.”

  “How long till we reach Forward Station?”

  I’d been rechecking our course. We were decelerating at thirty gravities and veering to one side. “Twenty hours and a few minutes,” I said.

  “Good. I’ll get a chance to do some studying.” He began calling up data from the computer.

  I asked permission to read over his shoulder. He gave it.

  Bastard. He reads twice as fast as I do. I tried to skim to get some idea of what he was after.

  Collapsars: three known. The nearest was one component of a double in Cygnus, more than a hundred light-years away. Expeditions had gone there to drop probes.

  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.”