Raft

Hollerbach smiled ruefully. "That young woman is rather forceful."

"Hollerbach, what do you expect to see down there anyway? I guess a close view of a black hole is going to be spectacular enough…"

A flush of animation touched Hollerbach's papery cheeks. "Far more than that. Have I ever discussed with you my ideas on gravitic chemistry? I have?" Hollerbach looked disappointed at the curtailing of his lecture, but Rees encouraged him to continue; for a few minutes, he realized gratefully, he could return to his apprenticeship, when Hollerbach and the rest would lecture him each shift on the mysteries of the many universes.

"You will recall my speculation on a new type of 'atom,' " Hollerbach began. "Its component particles — perhaps singularities themselves — will be bonded by gravity rather than the other fundamental forces. Given the right conditions, the right temperature and pressure, the right gravitational gradients, a new 'gravitic chemistry' will be possible."

"In the Core," Rees said.

"Yes!" Hollerbach declared. "As we skirt the Core we will observe a new realm, my friend, a new phase of creation in which—"

Over Hollerbach's shoulder there loomed a wide, bloodstained face. Rees frowned. "What do you want, Roch?"

The huge miner gri

Rees turned. At first he could see nothing unusual — and then, squinting, he made out a faint patch of dull brown amid the upward shower of stars. It was too far away to make out any detail, but memory supplied the rest; and he saw again a surface of skin streched over bone, white faces turning to a distant speck in the air—

"The Boneys," he said.

Roch opened his corrupt mouth and laughed; Hollerbach flinched, disgusted. "Your home from home, Rees," Roch said coarsely. "Don't you feel like dropping in and visiting old friends?"

"Roch, get back to your work."

Roch did so, still laughing.

Rees stayed for some minutes at the hull, watching until the Boneys' worldlet was lost in the haze far above. Yet another piece of his life gone, beyond recall…

With a shudder he turned from the window and, with Hollerbach, immersed himself once more in the bustle and warmth of the Bridge.

Almost powerless, its soft human cargo swarming through its interior, the battered old ship plunged toward the black hole.

The sky outside darkened and filled up with the fantastic, twisted star sculptures observed by Rees on his first journey to these depths. The Scientists left the hull transparent; Rees gambled that this would distract the helpless passengers from their steadily worsening plight. And so it turned out; as the shifts passed a growing number spent time at the great windows, and the mood of the ship became one of calm, almost of awe.

Now, with closest approach to the Core barely a shift away, the Bridge was approaching a school of whales; and the windows were coated with human faces. Rees discreetly made room for Hollerbach; side by side they stared out.

At this depth each whale was a slender missile, its deflated flesh an aerodynamic casing around its internal organs. Even the great eyes had closed now, so that the whales plummeted blind into the Core — and there were row upon row of them, above, below and all around the Bridge, so many that at infinity the air was a wall of pale flesh.

Rees murmured, "If I'd known it would be as spectacular as this I wouldn't have got off last time,"

"You'd never have survived," Hollerbach said. "Look closely." He pointed at the nearest whale. "See how it glows?"

Rees made out a pinkish glow around the whale's leading end. "Air resistance?"

"Obviously." Hollerbach said impatiently. "The atmosphere is like soup at these depths. Now, keep watching."

Rees kept his eyes fixed on the whale's nose — and was rewarded with the sight of a six-foot patch of whale skin flaring into flame and tumbling away from the speeding animal. Rees looked around the school with new eyes; throughout the hail of motion he could see similar tiny flares of burning flesh, sparks of discarded fire. "It looks as if the whales are disintegrating, as if air resistance is too great… Perhaps they have misjudged their path around the Core; maybe our presence has disturbed them—"

Hollerbach snorted in disgust. "Sentimental tosh. Rees, those whales know what they're doing far better than we do."

"Then why the burning?"

"I'm surprised at you, boy; you should have worked it out as soon as you climbed aboard that whale and studied its spongy outer flesh."

"At the time I was more interested in finding out whether I could eat it," Rees said drily. "But…" He thought it through. "You're saying the purpose of the outer flesh is ablation?"

"Precisely. The outer layer burns up and falls away. One of the simplest but most efficient ways of dispersing the heat generated by excessive air resistance… a method used on man's earliest spacecraft, as I recall from the Ship's records — records which are, of course, now lost forever—"

Suddenly fire blazed over the hull's exterior; the watching passengers recoiled from a sheet of flame mere inches from their faces.

As soon as it had begun it was over.

"Well, that was no pla

"Ah." Hollerbach nodded slowly, his brow furrowed. "That's rather earlier than I expected. I had entertained hopes of retaining some control even at closest approach — when, of course, the ship's trajectory may most easily be modified."

"I'm afraid we're stuck with what we've got, from this point in. We're flying without smoke, as Pallis might say… We just have to hope we're on an acceptable course. Come on; let's talk to the navigators. But keep your voice down. Whatever the verdict there's no point in starting a panic.»

The members of the navigation team responded to Rees's questions according to their inclinations. Raft Scientists pored over diagrams which showed orbits sprouting from the Core like unruly hair, while the Boneys threw bits of shaped metal into the air and watched how they drifted.

After some minutes of this, Rees snapped, "Well?"

Quid turned to him and shrugged cheerfully. "We're still too far out. Who knows? We'll have to wait and see."

Jaen scratched her head, a pen tucked behind her ear. "Rees, we're in an almost chaotic situation here. Because of the distance at which we lost control, our final trajectory remains indeterminately sensitive to initial conditions…"

"In other words," Rees said, irritated, "we have to wait and see. Terrific."

Jaen made to protest, then thought better of it.

Quid slapped his shoulder. "Look, there's not a bloody thing we can do. You've done your best… and if nothing else you've given old Quid a damn interesting ride."

Hollerbach said briskly, "And you're not alone in those sentiments, my Boney friend. Jaen! I presume your use of the Telescope is now at an end?"

Jaen gri

It took thirty minutes to adjust the instrument's orientation and focus. At last Rees, Jaen, Hollerbach and Nead crowded around the small monitor plate.

At first Rees was disappointed; the screen filled with the thick black cloud of star debris which surrounded the Core itself, images familiar from observations from the Raft. But as the minutes passed and the Bridge entered the outermost layers of the material, the sombre cloud parted before them and the debris began to show a depth and structure. A pale, pinkish light shone upwards at them. Soon veils of shattered star stuff were arching over the hull, making the Bridge seem a fragile container indeed.

Then, abruptly, the clouds cleared; and they were sailing over the Core itself.

"My god," Jaen breathed. "It's… it's like a planet…"