The Black Hole (21 page)

"Other activities?" Durant's brows drew together. "What are you talking about, Dan?"

Reinhardt waited expectantly, watching the doorway opposite. The probe ship, now docked, rested nearby.

The door leading from the umbilical passageway opened. Quietly, the humanoid pilot of the probe joined them. Reinhardt looked him over, then said impassively, "Maximillian will take you to debriefing. I want to check out personally your ship's instrumentation and the information you recorded."

He stepped past the pilot. The pilot did not acknowledge the movement. He waited somnolently until Maximillian closed the door leading to the ship. Together, the two machines began the passage by cylinder.

The two destroyed sentries could not be seen from the upper end of the corridor, Vincent noted with relief. His careful snipping of circuitry and module links had rendered their communications systems inoperative, should they somehow regain mechanical consciousness. Bob now carried their weapons.

"How long before they start searching for those two?"

Bob considered. "That depends on their duty schedule. They function round the clock save for one fifteen-minute maintenance checkup per day."

"What about periodic reporting in to some central security station?"

"I don't know." Bob sounded helpless. "That's not the sort of information provided to a clerical robot. If they do send such reports, they could be due any time."

"Then we have to move fast. I'd rather not risk provoking any more sentries, but we can't take the time to be diplomatic." He gestured back at the bulky desk concealing the incapacitated robots. "Those two may already have been missed."

". . . and so if he neglected his duty to the bureaucracy, it was to perform a higher duty," Durant was arguing strenuously. "I ask you once more, do you have any facts to support your macabre speculations? Granted the man's an eccentric as well as a genius, but he's not the mad scientist of some second-rate horror play. He's willing and eager to share his knowledge with us."

"So?" Holland continued to worry about Durant. His defense and praise of Reinhardt had turned from lavish to slavish.

"So I won't allow you to rush us off this ship, Dan."

"And I won't give you any more time to see the light, Alex. We're leaving. All of us, together."

Durant stared back at him. "That's really up to Dr. Reinhardt, isn't it?"

No one had noticed McCrae. She was standing more than silently off to one side of the table. She was not withdrawn, nor was she daydreaming. She was working. The others continued to debate with facts, to argue without knowledge.

"
Dan . . .
"

Holland barely heard the ethereal murmur, but he recognized that tone of voice instantly. Recognized also the faraway look on her face. So did Pizer, and Booth, and Durant. Conversation ceased.

"What is it, Kate?"

"Vincent wants you to meet him in the reception lounge near the
Palomino
right away. Also Mr. Pizer."

Holland was already heading for the dining-room door. To his relief, he found it unlocked. "Let's go, Charlie."

Downing the last sip of wine in his goblet, Booth rose from his seat. "I think I'll tag along, if you don't mind."

They located the elevator leading downward. As he emerged into a familiar corridor, Holland put out a restraining arm, then edged back into the elevator cab to join his colleagues.

"What's the trouble?" Pizer whispered. By way of reply, Holland gestured with a nod down the corridor. At the far end, they could see Maximillian and the probe pilot disappearing around a far bend.

Booth took a step in their direction, but Holland moved out to block his path. "Now now, Harry. That's not our party."

"But the probe pilot," Booth protested. "If he's been to the event horizon and succeeded in returning, it means—"

"To us it means nothing. Not now. Let's move." Booth hesitated an instant, then nodded. They hurried toward the cylindrical tubeway and the air cars that could carry them quickly to the
Palomino
.

Vincent was acutely aware of the weight of the laser weapons in his hands, but he kept them down. The sentry robots searching the nearby rooms were now moving away instead of toward him.

"Let's hope they continue searching in the wrong direction," he said to old Bob. Both robots moved out of the concealing alcove and jetted up the corridor.

Most of his audience had departed, but Durant was still full of words and arguments. McCrae had to bear the force of them alone.

"He stands to accomplish," her wide-eyed colleague was saying as he stared out the viewport at the black hole, "one of the final discoveries that has so far eluded mankind. Our knowledge of stellar physics has grown tremendously in the past couple of centuries, Kate. Yet we still know nothing about the processes at work inside the event horizon of a black hole. We know little more than the first discoverers of the phenomenon. Reinhardt stands to fill in that blank in our knowledge."

"Or die in the attempt," McCrae said dryly. She paused a moment, regarded her friend with a mixture of concern and contempt. "I'm beginning to think you really do want to go with him, Alex. Do you want to die that badly?"

"It's not a question of dying."

"That's what Reinhardt kept saying. Alex, I like to think I'm as professional and curious as the next scientist. But when curiosity swamps your natural sense of self-preservation, there's something addled in your mental clock."

Durant hardly seemed to hear her, enraptured as he was by the sight of the black hole and the vision of exploring its innermost secrets that Reinhardt had conjured up for them. "It could be the most fantastic achievement since the dawn of creation," he muttered, with fine lack of perspective. "Eric the Red, Columbus, Armstrong, Kinoyoshi . . . we could eclipse them all."

The door opened and he broke off as Reinhardt entered. The commander of the
Cygnus
quickly surveyed the room, then spoke to McCrae. "Where are the others?"

She saw no reason to lie. He might already know, and be testing her. "Called back to our ship."

For an instant Reinhardt seemed confused. "There was no means of communica—ah, yes. The esplink you share with the robot. Extraordinary. A technique which was developed after I left Earth. It was only a matter of time before biophysics matched the strides made by its inorganic counterparts. What seems to be wrong, for your companions to be called away from their meal?"

She shook her head. "Vincent didn't spell it out. Something having to do with the repairs, I'd guess. When you're working on something as sensitive as the atmospheric regeneration system, using makeshift spare parts, you've got to expect some trouble. It's the kind of repair work that ought to be done in an orbital yard, by qualified technicians. I'm not surprised they're having difficulties."

"Let's hope they're solved quickly," Reinhardt said. "We are almost ready to embark on mankind's greatest journey of exploration. I'd rather not be delayed."

Greatest, perhaps
, she thought.
Riskiest for certain
. She turned her gaze to the viewport.

Reinhardt noted the look. "The danger is incidental when measured against the possibility of being the first to possess the great truths of the unknown. To learn perhaps the secret of mankind's oldest dream."

"What truth are you pursuing inside the black hole, Doctor?" She frowned at him. "You seem to have something specific in mind. Does the bear actually have some idea of what he hopes to find on the other side of the mountain?"

He smiled back at her. "Beyond the mountains, my dear. Beyond is a new beginning . . . a Universe that may be suspended in time, where long-cherished laws of nature do not apply."

"You live by the laws of nature. What if these prove inhospitable?"

"I can learn to master new ones. I am prepared to cope with whatever I may discover. Especially if I find what I hope to find."

"Which is?" Durant asked expectantly.

"Eternal life. You know that time slows the nearer one travels to the core of a black hole, that seconds inside the event horizon can equal years on Earth?"

"I see where you're leading, Doctor." McCrae tried to give the fantastic theory dispassionate consideration. "True, you could live forty years in the hole while a millennium passes on Earth, but the forty years would still be only forty years . . . to you. They would not extend your real lifetime."

"That is near the center of the hole, my dear. Once through the hole, I believe I may emerge into a universe indifferent to what we call normal time, where those forty years will extend indefinitely. They may become four hundred years, or four thousand. There may be no upper limit if the aging process is effectively arrested. Life eternal."

"With no possibility of death?"

"Doesn't that interest you?"

"I find the prospect appalling."

Reinhardt chose not to reply to that and regarded her with what seemed a certain sadness.

Holland and his companions stood nervously in the reception room, listening while old Bob poured out a longer version of the tale of deception and murder he had earlier related to Vincent. Occasionally Pizer or Booth would interrupt the older machine's story with a question. For the most part, they listened in horrified silence. Vincent hovered nearby, his attention focused on the doorway leading back into the maze of corridors.

". . . and the officer the men trusted most was Frank McCrae, because he was a ship's officer as well as a scientist," Bob was saying.

"Kate's father." Pizer was fuming,

"They turned to him when Dr. Reinhardt ignored the orders to return home. They were prepared to take control of the
Cygnus
. That was when Dr. Reinhardt unleashed his own carefully prepared takeover, using the reprogrammed robots. He rationalized his actions by accusing the rest of the crew of planning to mutiny. A mutiny against science, he called it, science and Reinhardt having become one and the same to his own mind.

"Dr. McCrae was killed early in the struggle. The sentry robots operating solely at Dr. Reinhardt's discretion quickly finished the others. The rebellion was soon over."

Holland stood quietly with the others for a while, then finally asked the question to which he was afraid he already knew the answer. "What became of the rest of the crew?"

"The survivors are still on board."

"Where?" Pizer wondered. "Are they being held prisoner somewhere? That funeral Dan saw . . ."

"No, Mr. Pizer. At least, their bodies are not imprisoned. You have seen them yourself, in the command tower, running the power centers . . ."

The first officer looked uncertain, unwilling to make the final mental connection.

"Robots, Mr. Pizer." Vincent spoke brusquely. "Humanoid robots."

"The most valuable thing in the Universe—intelligent life—means nothing to Dr. Reinhardt," Bob went on remorselessly. "To him, intelligence proves itself worthwhile only when it subordinates other interests to those of the greater good. By greater good, he came to believe it meant his personal interests and desires.

"The
Cygnus
contains an elaborate surgery. Once it served to repair . . . to cure sick humans. Now it has been modified to program human beings to act like robots. They actually retain less individuality than such mechanicals as Vincent and myself.

"Without their 'wills,' the crew became things Reinhardt could command. To me they are neither machine nor man any more, and less than either."

Pizer looked sick. Holland turned to face the attentive reporter. "That explains the funeral I barged into and the limping robot you saw. I was right about the object I watched being ejected from the ship. It was human. But so were the robot pallbearers."

"You mean there's a human body in those things?" Booth looked stunned. "I thought it was just that Reinhardt was trying to make his robots as human as possible. I didn't think, didn't imagine, it was the other way around."

"None of us did, Mr. Booth," said Vincent. "Yet old Bob is telling only the truth. I myself saw the surgery in operation."

Holland searched for something on which to vent his anger, something to break. He was frustrated by the sight of only seamless metal and unbreakable plastics.

"We can't just take off and leave those poor devils behind." He continued to eye the reporter. "It looks like we'll have to try your plan to take over the
Cygnus
after all, Harry."

It was comfortably cool in the reception area, but the reporter had suddenly begun to sweat. "And risk ending up like the crew? If they couldn't pull it off, what chance do we have?"

"What about our being
heroes
, Harry?" Pizer was taunting him. "Changed your mind mighty fast."

"Lay off, Charlie. I didn't think we'd have to fight a setup like this. I didn't know Reinhardt had managed to overcome the whole crew. I thought they'd abandoned ship, like he told us. Taking on one man and one robot, okay, but not a programmed army. Robots set to guard are one thing. Murder's another."

"Captain," Bob said gently, "you would not be doing them a favor by returning them to Earth. The damage to their minds is irreversible. From what I have been able to observe and comprehend of the surgical process, it is possible their ability to respond individually might be restored, but they would be as mindless as newborn infants. Death is their only release."

"For God's sake, Dan," Booth protested, "be sensible about this. We can't take on every robot on board. They already overcame a crew familiar with the ship. We wouldn't have a chance." He shuddered. "We might even be taken alive."

"Regardless of results," said Vincent, "events have been set in motion which require that we act quickly, no matter the course we finally decide upon."

"What events, Vincent?" Holland asked him.

"I was forced to destroy two of the sentry robots. They discovered us while we were inside the surgery. Their counterparts are possibly searching the ship now. If the two I destroyed are found . . . The humanoid surgeons did not react to our presence, but it seems unlikely they did not record our appearance. If it is learned that we, and therefore through us you, know of the surgery and its function—"