Part 54 (1/2)
”You may not be far off,” Kosta said grimly. ”Ronyon, do you know if they shut everything down on their way out?”I don't know, Ronyon signed. I didn't see them say anything about that.”Let's hope they didn't,” Kosta said. He was gazing into his tea, a haunted expression wrinkling the corners of his eyes. ”We're going to need that catapult.”
”You can't run that way, Jereko,” Ornina said gently. ”That catapult doesn't connect to anything but the Seraph hunters.h.i.+p net.”
”I'm not planning to run,” Kosta told her. ”And as for the hunters.h.i.+p net... Ronyon, what else did
they say about Angelma.s.s?”It's getting closer to the station, Ronyon signed. The one that looks like a big spider?”How much closer?” Chandris asked.Lots, Ronyon signed. I don't know any of the numbers. But it's really strange. They said it was weaving up and down and shooting at the station.
”Shooting at the station?” Hanan echoed, frowning, when Chandris had translated. ”What has it got to shoot?”
”He must be talking about more radiation surges,” Kosta said. ”Aimed at Angelma.s.s Central. It's already chased everyone off the station. Now it wants the station itself out of there.”
It wants. The words dripped into Chandris's brain like drops of water off the edge of a roof. It wants.
Up to now she hadn't truly believed Kosta's theory about an intelligent and malevolent black hole.
Not down deep, anyway.
Now, suddenly, with those two words, she did. Angelma.s.s was indeed alive and intelligent.
And it hated people. People on the station. Maybe the people on Seraph, too?
G.o.d help them all.
”Jereko, you said there was more to the course changes than just the surges,” Hanan said. ”Such as?””Such as brand-new physics,” Kosta said bluntly. ”I hate to fall back on mysterious forces mankind has never discovered; but in this case, I don't think we have a choice. Something is moving Angelma.s.s, and it's not any force we've ever come across.”
”Yes, but how could an entire force hide from us this long?” Hanan protested.
”How many black holes have we been up close and personal with?” Kosta countered. ”All sorts of odd things happen near the event horizon, from huge tidal forces to variations in time. Personally,
I'm voting on it having to do with gravity, either a polarization of the fields themselves or else something related to the time differential.”
”I didn't know physics had become a democracy,” Hanan murmured.
”It hasn't,” Kosta said. ”When I say I'm voting that way, I mean that's the theory I'm going to risk my
life on. Maybe all our lives.”
”Wait a minute, slow down,” Chandris said. ”Who's risking what here?”
”We can't just let Angelma.s.s move around the Seraph system at will,” Kosta told her. ”Right now it's
playing with gravity, figuring out how to use it. That's why it keeps bouncing up and down in its
orbit. But sooner or later, it's going to get really good at it.”
”If it hasn't already,” Ornina said, a s.h.i.+ver running through her. ”If it's attacking Central, it must be pretty confident.”
Hanan shook his head. ”A confident black hole,” he said. ”That sounds so strange.”
”So what do we do about it?” Chandris asked.
”The only thing we can do.” Kosta looked her straight in the eye. ”We get rid of it.”
She blinked. ”What?”
”We use Central's catapult to throw it somewhere else,” he said. ”Somewhere deep in interstellar
s.p.a.ce, where the only gravitational fields it has to play with are tiny ones.”
”How are you going to pull that off?” Hanan asked. ”Like Ornina said, the catapult there is linked to
the Seraph net.”
”Then we'll have to disable the Seraph net, that's all,” Kosta said. ”There must be a way to shut it down from Central. We just have to figure out the codes.”
”What if shutting down the Seraph net doesn't do it?” Hanan argued. ”What if it just makes the
catapult nonfunctional?”
”Then we're in big trouble,” Kosta conceded. ”But we have to risk it. I have to risk it, anyway.”
”Suppose it all works like you say,” Chandris said. ”What then? Angelma.s.s is a lot more ma.s.sive
than a hunters.h.i.+p.”