Neutron Star

Something gripped the ship through a General Products hull. A psychokinetic life-form stranded on a sun twelve miles in diameter? But how could anything alive stand such gravity?

Something might be stranded in orbit. There is life in space: outsiders and sailseeds and maybe others we haven’t found yet. For all I knew or cared, BVS-1 itself might be alive. It didn’t matter. I knew what the X-force was trying to do. It was trying to pull the ship apart.

There was no pull on my fingers. I pushed aft and landed on the back wall, on bent legs. I knelt over the door, looking aft/down. When free-fall came, I pulled myself through and was in the relaxation room looking down/forward into the nose.

Gravity was changing faster than I liked. The X-force was growing as zero hour approached, while the compensating rocket thrust dropped. The X-force tended to pull the ship apart; it was two gees forward at the nose, two gees backward at the tail, and diminished to zero at the center of mass. Or so I hoped. The pack and lighter had behaved as if the force pulling them had increased for every inch they had moved sternward.

The back wall was fifteen feet away. I had to jump it with gravity changing in midair. I hit on my hands, bounced away. I’d jumped too late. The region of free-fall was moving through the ship like a wave as the thrust dropped. It had left me behind. Now the back wall was “up” to me, and so was the access tube.

Under something less than half a gee, I jumped for the access tube. For one long moment I stared into the three-foot tu

The dictaphone was fifty feet below, utterly unreachable. If I had anything more to say to General Products, I’d have to say it in person. Maybe I’d get the chance. Because I knew what force was trying to tear the ship apart.

It was the tide.

The motor was off, and I was at the ship’s midpoint. My spread-eagled position was getting uncomfortable. It was four minutes to perihelion.

Something creaked in the cabin below me. I couldn’t see what it was, but I could clearly see a red point glaring among blue radial lines, like a lantern at the bottom of a well. To the sides, between the fusion tube and the tanks and other equipment the blue stars glared at me with a light that was almost violet. I was afraid to look too long. I actually thought they might blind me.

There must have been hundreds of gravities in the cabin. I could even feel the pressure change. The air was thin at this height, one hundred fifty feet above the control room.

And now, almost suddenly, the red dot was more than a dot. My time was up. A red disk leapt up at me; the ship swung around me; I gasped and shut my eyes tight. Giants’ hands gripped my arms and legs and head, gently but with great firmness, and tried to pull me in two. In that moment it came to me that Peter Laskin had died like this. He’d made the same guesses I had, and he’d tried to hide in the access tube. But he’d slipped . . . as I was slipping . . . From the control room came a multiple shriek of tearing metal. I tried to dig my feet into the hard tube walls. Somehow they held.

When I got my eyes open, the red dot was shrinking into nothing.

The puppeteer president insisted that I be put in a hospital for observation. I didn’t fight the idea. My face and hands were flaming red, with blisters rising, and I ached as though I’d been beaten. Rest and tender loving care; that was what I wanted.

I was floating between a pair of sleeping plates, hideously uncomfortable, when the nurse came to a

“What can get through a General Products hull?” I asked it.

“I hoped you would tell me.” The president rested on its single back leg, holding a stick that gave off green incense-smelling smoke.

“And so I will. Gravity.”

“Do not play with me, Beowulf Shaeffer. This matter is vital.”

“I’m not playing. Does your world have a moon?”

“That information is classified.” The puppeteers are cowards. Nobody knows where they come from, and nobody is likely to find out.

“Do you know what happens when a moon gets too close to its primary?”

“It falls apart.”

“Why?”

“I do not know.”

“Tides.”

“What is a tide?”

Oho, said I to myself, said I. “I’m going to try to tell you. The Earth’s moon is almost two thousand miles in diameter and does not rotate with respect to Earth. I want you to pick two rocks on the moon, one at the point nearest the Earth, one at the point farthest away.”

“Very well.”

“Now, isn’t it obvious that if those rocks were left to themselves, they’d fall away from each other? They’re in two different orbits, mind you, concentric orbits, one almost two thousand miles outside the other. Yet those rocks are forced to move at the same orbital speed.”

“The one outside is moving faster.”

“Good point. So there is a force trying to pull the moon apart. Gravity holds it together. Bring the moon close enough to Earth, and those two rocks would simply float away.”

“I see. Then this ‘tide’ tried to pull your ship apart. It was powerful enough in the lifesystem of the Institute ship to pull the acceleration chairs out of their mounts.”

“And to crush a human being. Picture it. The ship’s nose was just seven miles from the center of BVS-1. The tail was three hundred feet farther out. Left to themselves, they’d have gone in completely different orbits. My head and feet tried to do the same thing when I got close enough.”

“I see. Are you molting?”

“What?

“I notice you are losing your outer integument in spots.”

“Oh, that. I got a bad sunburn from exposure to starlight. It’s not important.”

Two heads stared at each other for an eye blink. A shrug? The puppeteer said, “We have deposited the residue of your pay with the Bank of We Made It. One Sigmund Ausfaller, human, has frozen the account until your taxes are computed.”

“Figures.”

“If you will talk to reporters now, explaining what happened to the Institute ship, we will pay you ten thousand stars. We will pay cash so that you may use it immediately. It is urgent. There have been rumors.”

“Bring ’em in.” As afterthought I added, “I can also tell them that your world is moonless. That should be good for a footnote somewhere.”

“I do not understand.” But two long necks had drawn back and the puppeteer was watching me like a pair of pythons.

“You’d know what a tide was if you had a moon. You couldn’t avoid it.”

“Would you be interested in—”

“A million stars? I’d be fascinated. I’ll even sign a contract if it states what we’re hiding. How do you like being blackmailed for a change?”

Footnotes