The Black Hole
Authors: Alan Dean Foster
THE GHOST SHIP
For five years the crew of the
Palomino
had ranged through deep space,
searching for evidence of alien life
—with no result. Then, their mission almost
at a end, they discovered a giant
collapsar—the largest black hole ever
encountered—and, drifting
perilously near it, was the long-lost
legendary starship
Cygnus
.
Incredibly, the ship was not a lifeless hulk.
Its commander, the genius who had
designed the
Cygnus
and planned its epic
voyage, still survived, served by a
horde of mechanical slaves. But Commander
Reinhardt had no desire to be rescued.
He had a rendezvous with the
incredibly hellish forces of the collapsar—
and he planned to take the
Palomino
's
crew along on his doomed adventure.
A Del Rey Book
Published by Ballantine Books
Copyright © 1979 Walt Disney Productions
Worldwide Rights Reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada, Limited, Toronto, Canada.
Manufactured in the United States of America
ISBN 0-345-28538-7
Cover art courtesy of Walt Disney Productions
For Unca Walt, who made it all possible,
For Joshua Meador, Bill Tytla and Carl Barks,
For Unca Scrooge, who made it square,
For the Junior Woodchucks of the World and their guidebook and reservoir of inexhaustible knowledge,
And for their most illustrious threesome: Huey, Dewey, and Louie, who could read microscopic print with the naked eye and who would have enjoyed this book . . .
"There are more things in Heaven and Earth,
Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philoosophy."
—Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
"Stars with trains of fire and dews of blood,
Disasters in the sun."
—Horatio, Soldier of Denmark
The universe bubbled and seethed to overflowing with paradoxes, Harry Booth knew. One of the most ironic was that the mere observation of its wonders made a man feel older than his time, when, instead, it should have made him feel young, filled with the desire for exploration.
Take himself, for example. He was an inhabitant of the years euphemistically called "middle age." Mentally the label meant nothing. His body felt as limber and healthy as when he had graduated from the university, though his mind had adopted the outlook of a wizened centenarian—a centenarian who had seen too much.
C'mon, Harry
, he admonished himself.
Cut it out. That's wishful thinking. You
want
to sound like the all-knowing old sage of space. Your problem is you still have the perception as well as the physical sense of well-being of a university student. Imagine yourself the inheritor of the skills of Swift and Voltaire, if you must, but you know darn well you'll never write anything that makes you worthy of sharpening the pencils of such giants. Be satisfied with what you are: a reasonably competent, very lucky journalist
.
Lucky indeed
, he reminded himself.
Half the reporters of Earth would have permanently relinquished use of their thirty favorite invectives for a chance to travel with one of the deep-space life-search ships. How you, Harry Booth, ended up on the
Palomino
when far better men and women languished behind merely to report its departure from Earth orbit is a mystery for the muses. Count your lucky stars
.
Glancing out the port of the laboratory cabin, he tried to do just that. But there were far too many, and none that could unequivocally be deemed lucky.
Although he had pleasant company in the room, he felt sad and lonely. Lonely because he had been away from home too long, sad because their mission had turned up nothing.
He forced himself to stand a little straighter.
So you consider yourself a fortunate man. So stop complaining and do what you're designed to do. Report
. He raised the tiny, pen-shaped recorder to his lips, continuing to stare out the port as he spoke.
"December twenty-four. Aboard the deep-space research vessel
Palomino
. Harry Booth reporting.
"Ship and personnel are tired and discouraged, but both are still functioning as planned. Man's long search for life in this section of our galaxy is drawing to a close."
Pausing, he glanced back into the lab to study his companions. A tense, slim man tapped a stylus nervously on a light-pad and looked back up at Booth. He wore an expression of perpetual uncertainty and looked much younger than the reporter, though they were not so different in age. The uncertainty and nervousness were mitigated by an occasionally elfin sense of humor, a wry outlook on the cosmos. The man executed a small, condescending bow toward Booth; the corners of his mouth turned up slightly.
Behind him stood a softly beautiful woman whose face and figure were more graphically elfin than the man's sense of humor. Her mind, however, was as complex as the whorls in her hair. Both scientists were more serious than any Booth was used to working with, a touch too dedicated for his taste. He might never truly get to know them, but he had respected them from the first day out. They were cordial toward the lone layman in their midst, and he reciprocated as best he could.
She was feeding information into the lab computer. As always, the sight had an unnerving effect on Booth. It reminded him of a mother feeding her baby. Where Katherine McCrae was concerned, the analogy was not as bizarre as it might have been if applied to another woman. There was a particular reason why one would view her association with machines as unusually intimate.
Booth returned to his dictation. "Based upon five years of research involving stars holding planets
theoretically
likely to support life, by the fair-haired boy of the scientific world, Dr. Alex Durant"—the man who had bowed now grinned playfully back at him—"this expedition has concluded eighteen months of extensive exploration and netted, as with all previous expeditions of a similar nature and purpose, nothing. Not a single alien civilization, not a vertebrate, nothing higher than a few inconsequential and unremarkable microbes, plus evidence of a few peculiar chemical reactions on several scattered worlds."
Booth clicked off the recorder and continued staring at Durant. "That about sum it up, Alex?"
Repeated disappointment had purged Durant of the need to react defensively to such observations. "Unnecessarily flip, perhaps, but you know I can't argue with the facts, Harry."
"I'm never
unnecessarily
flip, Alex." Booth slipped the recorder back into a tunic pocket. "You know that I'm as disappointed in the results as you are. Probably more so. You can go back with the ship's banks full of valuable data on new worlds, new phenomena, stellar spectra and all kinds of info that'll have the research teams back on Earth singing hosannas to you for years." He looked glum.
"Sure, we've missed the big prize: finding substantial alien life. But you have your astrophysical esoterica to fall back on. For me and my news service, though, it's eighteen months down a transspatial drain. He thought a moment, then added, "December twenty-fourth. Not quite the way we'd expected to celebrate Christmas Eve, is it?" He turned again, looked back out the port.
"We need reindeer and a fat man in a red suit. That would do for a report on extraterrestrial life, wouldn't it?" He grunted. "Christmas Eve."
Durant forced a wider smile. "Beats fighting the mobs of last-minute shoppers. You couldn't order a thing about now. Order channels to the outlets would be saturated." Nearby, McCrae flipped a control on the computer panel, concluded her programming, then laughed.
"You can both hang your stockings back by the engines. Maybe Santa will leave you something unexpected."
Booth eyed her challengingly. "Can you fit an alien civilization into a sock?"
"I'd settle for anything non-terran with more backbone than a semi-permeable membrane." Durant's smile melted his melancholy. "Or some stick chocolate," he added cheerfully. "I never will understand why the galley can't synthesize decent chocolate."
"I'll threaten it." McCrae started toward the lab exit. "Maybe that'll produce results. I'm going back to Power."
"Be back by Christmas." Durant watched her depart, glanced down at the calculations he had been doodling with and spoke without looking across at Booth. "Wonder what Holland would say if I asked him to extend the mission another two months. By widening our return parabola, we could check out two additional systems, according to my figures."
"I don't think you'll get much sympathy for that idea from our pilot, Alex." Booth's gaze had returned to the stiff but always fascinating ocean of stars outside the port. "Privately, he'd probably enjoy spending another year exploring. But he wasn't picked to command this expedition because of a penchant to indulge himself in personal pleasures.
"Schedule says we return by such and such a date. He'll move heaven and earths to dock in terran orbit on or before that date. Pizer, now . . . he'd steer us through a star if you could guarantee him a fifty-fifty chance of making the run. But he's only first officer, not commander. He still smells of the audacity of youth. And the foolishness." Booth looked resigned.
"Life is ruled by such subtleties, Alex. Commander or first officer, experienced or brash and challenging. If there's one thing I've learned in three decades of reporting on developments in science, it's that the actions of people and subatomic particles aren't as different as most folks would think."