The Long Sunset Read online

  And I found exactly what I was looking for. There was a trajectory that, if followed by a massive object, would have dragged the marker stars into the positions they now occupy. The process would have begun about 8,000 years ago. So it was already happening while we were watching from the University of Pennsylvania.

  The massive object might have been a black hole.

  But where is Calliope? The answer to that is painfully obvious. The damned thing got swallowed.

  At some point in the next thousand years or so, observers at home should be able to watch the event, from start to finish.

  What a mad universe we live in.

  —Wednesday, April 2, 2256

  15.

  O time! The beautifier of the dead,

  Adorner of the ruin, comforter

  And only healer when the heart hath bled—

  Time! The corrector where our judgments err,

  The test of truth, love, sole philosopher.

  —Lord Byron, Childe Harold IV, 1818

  Hutch, Derek, and Ken sat staring at the display, which, for a change, showed a geometric pattern of slowly moving lights. “I cannot disagree,” said Barry. “An object of appropriate mass, following the trajectory you propose, would have destroyed Calliope and caused precisely the changes we have seen in the surrounding stars.”

  “Brilliant,” said Ken.

  Derek was picturing people all over the world centuries in the future watching the event unfold on their home displays through whatever supertelescopes would be available. “We probably won’t be around to see it,” he said.

  Hutch knew what he was thinking.

  “So, they’re gone,” he said. “After all these years, we actually locate a high-tech civilization, and they get taken down before we can get to them.”

  “Thousands of years before,” said Ken. “Whoever thought it could happen like this?”

  Derek tried to rearrange himself in the chair, which, though flexible, was probably still a bit uncomfortable for him. “I just don’t believe it.”

  “It’s not a friendly universe,” said Hutch.

  “So, what,” asked Ken, “was the waterfall all about?”

  “A high-tech civilization,” said Derek, “in the Calliope system would have known for centuries what was coming. My guess is that we saw something that was part of an evacuation effort. If we got the details right, the transmission originated a thousand years before the black hole took out their sun. What we saw, probably, was just a routine transmission from a ship, somebody reporting home about a landscape they’d seen somewhere else. Maybe it was from a planet that was serving as the point of evacuation. A signal designed to encourage everyone.”

  “If they knew for thousands of years,” said Hutch, “that the thing was coming, why would they have waited so long to start clearing out?”

  Ken’s eyes grew thoughtful. “Imagine how we’d react if we got word that Earth would be destroyed in the fifth or sixth millennium.”

  “You’re right,” said Derek. “We’d talk about it, but I doubt anyone would act until it got close. Until it got to a point where our grandkids were going to be in trouble.”

  “It was a directed transmission,” said Hutch, “and the Van Entel just happened to be in the line of sight. For a few minutes. Pity we couldn’t have gotten more of it.”

  “So what do we do now?” said Beth. “Go home?”

  Derek’s smile indicated that he was not nearly ready to pack it in. “We know where the object is. It’s probably a black hole. What I’d like to do is go take a look. Confirm what happened.”

  Beth literally laughed out loud. “We just got back from a star that’s ready to go supernova. Now we want to go take a look at a black hole?”

  “We’ll be okay as long as we don’t try poking it,” said Ken.

  Derek smiled. “It shouldn’t be far.”

  • • •

  With a black hole in the mix, it was a good idea to opt for caution. Hutch didn’t want to depend on the mass detector to keep them out of trouble if she jumped into normal space anywhere near the monster. The device came with a guarantee that stipulated whatever degree of mass existed in the area, it would block the transdimensional interface and keep the ship in hyperspace. The detector was also designed to react the same way if it picked up dangerous levels of radiation, which could be expected near a black hole. But those were engineering claims, and if the system failed, there’d be no one to make the report. A few interstellars had been lost without explanation.

  Derek’s numbers would have taken them within a range of a hundred million kilometers. Hutch added another hundred million and gave the numbers to Barry. That would surely provide a safe zone.

  Derek sighed when she informed him about her precautionary measures. He obviously thought she worried too much, but he understood. There was nothing wrong with caution when you were dealing with a black hole.

  When they emerged from the first jump, they looked at a sky full of stars but saw nothing unusual. “But you wouldn’t, right?” said Beth. “A black hole is black, so naturally, we’re not going to see much.”

  Hutch knew Beth was in for a surprise.

  “How close are we going?” Ken asked.

  • • •

  When they surfaced a second time and looked out at the night, it began to move. The stars themselves began to move. The entire sky looked as if it was being disrupted, wrapping itself around a black disk. A thousand stars were in motion, swirling in various directions. “Is that it?” It was Beth’s voice, almost a squeal over the allcomm.

  Watching it on a large screen was simply not adequate, so everybody crowded onto the bridge to get the captain’s view. Derek for a long time remained quiet while everybody else commented on how crazy it was. Something was pulling the sky apart.

  “Incredible,” said Wally.

  Ken stared at it. “My God, how am I supposed to describe something like this?”

  “Is that really what it does?” said Wally. “I never heard of anything like that before.”

  Derek nodded. “Gravity distorts the light. And there’s a lot of gravity. The sky’s not really getting bent out of shape. It just looks that way.” He stopped to catch his breath. “It’s beautiful.”

  It was not the descriptor Hutch would have chosen.

  “How big is it?” asked Ken.

  Derek smiled. “Hard to say. We don’t think of holes as being big. They contain a lot of mass. Take the sun and squeeze it down into a sphere about twenty kilometers wide, and you might be close.”

  “You’re kidding. That’s all?”

  “This keeps getting crazier,” said Beth.

  “See those?” Derek indicated a constellation of stars off to starboard, which formed an almost perfect box, with an extremely bright pair on one side. “And over here.” He pointed to his left, where a similar box, stretched a bit more, hung in the sky.

  “What the hell?” said Ken. “They look identical. Except the bright ones are on the other side.”

  “There’s only one constellation. In an area like this, the black hole bends and twists light. The sky wraps itself around it. If there was a ship out there coming in our direction, we might see it in two different places. Or maybe, depending on circumstances, we’d be able to see ourselves.”

  Beth just shook her head.

  “That’s a little unnerving,” said Wally.

  • • •

  “I am sorry to interrupt,” said Barry, “but I’m concerned about an abundance of asteroids in the area. There is a substantial number, and they are moving at exceedingly high rates.”

  “They’re in orbit,” said Derek.

  “Where do you think they came from?” asked Ken.

  “There wouldn’t be anything unusual about that. Black holes drag all kinds of stuff out of planetary systems.”

  Ken pointed a finger at him. “That’s what got you looking for this. The rogue world in that other system.”

  “Sure
. I should have realized right from the beginning, with the markers disrupted and Calliope missing, there was no other explanation, unless you had the worst equipment in the world gathering the data.”

  “I hate to break in,” said Hutch. “But everybody please get back in your seats and fasten belts. We’re going to clear out.” She should not have let them start walking around. Dumb. “Come on, people. Move.”

  Barry broke in. “There’s one asteroid now that I can make out. It’s almost the size of a small moon. It’s coming our way. Not a direct threat, but it impedes my view.”

  Everybody hurried back into the passenger cabin and belted in. The Locarno hadn’t completed recharging yet, so Hutch simply took the Eiferman to a less-crowded area.

  Beth’s voice came in over the allcomm. “I’m trying to imagine how the people, the inhabitants, on the Calliope world must have felt when they found out they were in the path of this thing. It’s so small. But it can do so much damage. That’s what blows my mind.”

  “It’s a machine, and that’s all it is,” Hutch said. “And it has some seriously weird mechanisms. Some places just get unlucky.”

  “That wouldn’t come as news to my aunt Sarah,” said Beth.

  “Why?” asked Hutch. “What happened to her?”

  “She was killed by lightning when I was a kid. I was with her when it happened.”

  It was approaching midnight, and nobody was going to sleep in the presence of that thing. Even Derek was affected by it. “I don’t care that we’re not at risk,” he told Hutch. “When we’re able, let’s get away from here.”

  The order surprised her. Just a few minutes before, he’d been delighted by what they saw.

  The Locarno had finished charging. “Barry, get us clear of the area. Take us out a billion kilometers.”

  “Before you jump—” said the AI.

  “What is it?”

  “I’ve got something.”

  “What?”

  “A planet. It’s probably of no significance, but you should be aware.”

  “Is it in orbit?”

  “Yes. About three hundred million kilometers out.”

  She thought about it. The smart thing to do would be simply to leave the area. But the sighting would be logged in, and eventually, she’d have to explain herself to Derek. “Where is it?”

  “We’re headed more or less toward it now. It will require only a minor course adjustment.”

  She informed Derek, who sounded as if he’d had enough of the black hole. But duty called. “We have safe passage?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right. Let’s go take a look.”

  • • •

  The planet was a gas giant, with a swirling atmosphere brightened by storms. “Is this thing actually orbiting the hole?” asked Ken.

  “Oh, yes,” said Derek.

  “That’s hard to believe.”

  Two moons were visible. There might have been others.

  “Its diameter is approximately fifty thousand kilometers,” said Barry.

  “Small for a gas giant,” said Derek. “Well, probably not, in an area like this. The black hole has probably sucked off some of the atmosphere.”

  Hutch couldn’t help thinking how much Charlie and Maureen would have liked to see all this.

  Derek retired to his cabin and spent most of the balance of the day collaborating with Barry, looking at telescopic images of the planet, and more frequently at the black hole, which was simply a distant flickering glow now. He commented that the lights resembled a weak storm brewing at sea. Hutch wasn’t sure what sort of connection he had with the sea, but it didn’t really matter.

  They named the planet Eve, for Derek’s daughter. Then, as they began talking again about going home, Barry announced that he’d found a second planet. “This one’s much smaller. It appears to be slightly larger than Earth.”

  • • •

  Barry aimed the scope at the world, and as they drew closer, everybody gathered in the passenger cabin to watch the images appear on the display. Vast fields of ice and rock glittered in the starlight. Oceans at one time, Hutch thought, if the climate had been sufficiently warm.

  The overall appearance could only be described as dismal. Mountains and broken crags rose out of the ice, and tall thin towers. Ken pointed at a pinnacle jutting out of an otherwise flat layer of ice. “It’s a building.”

  There were more. Spread around the planet. Ruins jutting out of frozen ground. “Let’s hope,” said Beth, “they really were evacuating and got everyone off.”

  Hutch eased the Eiferman into orbit.

  Most of the structures were simply wreckage. Broken buildings. Some had windows, or turrets, or ramparts. They saw a lone wall with a stairway that ended a hundred meters over a valley. And came across a tower that rose out of an otherwise empty field of ice. The remains of a statue stood atop the tower. The bottom half, the legs, if that’s what they were, were clothed in a gown.

  Eventually, Barry announced they’d completed circling the planet. “Do we want to continue?” he asked.

  “Yes,” said Derek. “Stay in orbit.”

  Hutch angled them slightly to starboard. “Most of what we’re seeing,” said Ken, “looks like what’s left of skyscrapers. You think that’s what’s buried in the ice?”

  “Probably,” said Derek. He turned to Hutch. “We need to go down and take a look. At least we might get a sense of who the inhabitants were.” He studied the icescape with mixed feelings. “What a disaster.”

  “Barry,” said Hutch. “What’s the radiation look like here?”

  “It’s too high for the Flickinger units. The lander will be safe, but if you’re planning to get out and walk around, you’ll need to wear standard pressure suits.”

  There were only four. “I guess nobody thought to make sure we had enough for everybody,” said Derek. He was blaming himself.

  Beth and Ken both wanted to go, and they needed Hutch, so Wally volunteered to stay behind. It was fairly evident he wasn’t unhappy with the situation. “It’s all right,” he said. “I’m not big into archeology.”

  Or ice, Hutch thought. She distributed commlinks. “Use these,” she said. “They have an automatic connection with Barry and Tasha and with each other. When you’re wearing a helmet, there’s an insert for it.”

  They pulled on the suits and air tanks and helmets while Wally watched. “Be careful,” he said. “Don’t let anything happen. I don’t want to go home alone.” He meant it as a joke, but no one laughed.

  “Don’t worry,” said Derek. “We’ll be fine.”

  When they were ready, Hutch led the way into the cargo bay, where they boarded the lander. She sat down at the controls and turned on the display to pick up the view from the cockpit. “Hello, Tasha,” she said. “Start the engine and open the launch doors.” Tasha was the lander’s AI. The doors rolled back, and she took them outside into the frozen sky and waited for Derek to select something of interest.

  “Over there,” he said, pointing at a building that was the only artificial construct in that entire flat landscape. The stars were bright, and there was no sign of the black hole. She took them down through a night sky that was crystal clear, while Derek gave occasional directions and also advised where she should land.

  Ken was checking his commlink. “These are going to be spectacular pictures,” he said. “Maybe the most compelling element in the book.”

  “You have a title for it yet, love?” asked Beth.

  “Maybe Down the Rabbit Hole?”

  The building did look like a structure out of Paris or New York. There were windows in horizontal and vertical lines, exactly like the buildings at home. The glass was all gone, of course. “Want to take us a little closer, Hutch?” said Derek. “I’d like to be able to shine a light in there.”

  There was no wind action of any kind, so she saw no reason to stay clear. She started by taking them across the rooftop, which was covered with ice and partially collapsed.
It was impossible to tell where the front of the building had been, so she simply picked a window at random, maneuvered close to it, and directed Tasha to aim the lander’s spotlight into it.

  The light illuminated a desk, a couple of chairs, a table topped by a mechanical device of some sort. Incredibly, there were plates or plaques on the walls. All frozen and indistinguishable from one another. “Looks like an office,” said Beth.

  Hutch moved them to a second window.

  There were more desks, chairs, sofas, tables, and lamps, and occasional plumbing as they moved down the face of the building and settled finally on a flat stretch of frozen ground. Time to go inside. They put on their helmets and ran a radio check. Then Derek and Hutch attached laser cutters to their belts. She depressurized the lander and opened the airlock, prompting a report from Tasha. “Gravity is approximately eighteen percent higher than standard. Caution is advised.” Especially since they were accustomed to the artificial gravity on the ship, which was only slightly over fifty percent of Earth normal.

  They went outside, climbed down onto the ice, and stood a few moments in overwhelming silence. “Spooky,” said Beth.

  No light. No hint of a breeze. No movement of any kind.

  • • •

  They stood in front of the building, taking pictures, walking from window to window and peering inside. They saw more furniture. And display screens and equipment they couldn’t identify. “Everything’s kind of large,” said Ken. “Whoever lived here, they were big.”

  Hutch frowned at the missing windows. They provided an easy entrance. But she didn’t like the idea. “Not sure we want to go in there. This thing’s probably a skyscraper. And this might be the twentieth floor. Something gives way and it could be a long way down.”

  “It’s all right.” Derek placed a hand on the frame. “I’ve got it.”

  “Be careful,” said Beth. “There may still be sharp fragments in the frame. Cut your suit and you’ll have a different problem.” The interior was full of ice.

  Derek brushed his gloved fingertips lightly along the rim of the window, decided it was safe, and sat down on it.