Timothy Zahn - Warhorse

Four more Jumps took them to the next system on the list: a far quieter one, this, with the black hole’s companion star too far away to lose such massive amounts of itself to the gravitational tugging and a correspondingly gentler flow of radiation.

They stayed longer here; but again, there was no trace of life.

Nor was there in the third system. Or in the fourth, or in the fifth.

In the sixth… they found it.

“I’ll be damned,” Demarco breathed. “I’ll be damned.”

Ferrol nodded absently, a tingling thrill of excitement flooding through him as he alternated his attention between visual, tactical, and scanner-composite screens.

Three flashing circles marked anomalous motion within the haze of gravel and rock that made up the black hole’s accretion disk; even as he watched, two more circles appeared. “It’s the rocks,” he said. “Got to be. It’s the only thing about this system that’s different.”

Demarco seemed to pull himself together. “Well, it’s not the only thing,” he countered. “The black hole itself is a hell of a lot quieter, radiation-wise, than any of the others we’ve seen. For starters.”

Ferrol gritted his teeth momentarily, the flash of reflex anger breaking the spell and bringing him joltingly back to the real world. “That’s true,” he agreed, forcing his voice to remain calm. The thrill of excitement wasn’t what was important right now; neither was the irritating—and possibly deliberate—habit Demarco had fallen into these past few days of challenging everything Ferrol said or did. What was important was that they not squabble this opportunity away… and what that meant was investigating the system and its life as carefully and thoroughly as possible.

With a maximum of care, and a minimum of interpersonal conflict. “I’m sure the lower radiation makes the environment a lot more stable,” he added. “Randall?

You got a profile on the accretion disk yet?”

“Only first-order details so far,” the other told him, “but it’s looking pretty much like a normal asteroid belt. At least out this far; you start getting in too close and the radiation and gravitational effects start fouling things up good.” He turned to look at Ferrol. “I think you’re right, too, that it’s the lumpiness of this particular disk that’s the critical factor. At least two of the movements we’ve tracked so far definitely started out from the dark side of boulders. Probably helps to have a place to hide from the radiation when you’re built smaller than a space horse—less shielding mass, and all that.”

“Yeah,” Ferrol nodded. “Take a look at the black hole itself; get me some idea what exactly we’re dealing with.”

“Right.” Randall turned to his scanners, and Ferrol keyed for the cargo bay and lander. Speaking of space horses… “Wwis-khaa? You there?”

A Tampy face appeared on the screen, or what was visible of a face sandwiched between the amplifier helmet and a gold-blue neckerchief. “Ffe-rho?”

“Yes, Ppla-zu,” Ferrol acknowledged. “Wwis-khaa resting, I take it?”

“He is,” the Tampy replied. “He rests too much.”

“You all rest too much,” Demarco muttered.

Ferrol threw him a glare. “I know, Ppla-zu, and I’m sorry,” he said to the Tampy.

“I realize that what we’ve put Epilog through these last few days has been hard on the three of you, too. But it’s paid off. We’ve found what looks very much to be the space-creature community we’ve been looking for.”

“I know,” Ppla-zu said. “Epilonninni has already seen.”

Something that sounded like a snort of derision came from Demarco’s direction. “I see,” Ferrol growled, not even bothering with the glare this time. “Glad to hear it.

What else does Epilog tell you?”

“I do not understand.”

“I want to know what impressions Epilog has of this place,” Ferrol amplified.

“Does it feel uneasy or pained in any way by the black hole’s radiation, for instance? Or is it bothered by the fact that the gravitational fields even at this distance are slightly warped?” He glanced at the flashing circles on the display.

“More importantly, does it feel danger from any of the life-forms around us?”

“Epilonninni feels no danger,” Ppla-zu said promptly.

“Good. You tell me right away if that changes—you got that?”

“Your wishes are ours.”

“Yeah.” But just in case… Ferrol glanced around the bridge. “Kohlhase, as of right now your only job is to watch for anomalous movement heading toward or across a line directly in front of Epilog,” he instructed one of the crewers. “Randall?”

“The black hole weighs in at about a hundred solar masses,” the other reported.

“Only slightly charged, but it’s rotating pretty fast. Figure the event horizon at about 150 kilometers; we’re approximately three million kilometers out from that now.”

Ferrol nodded, trying to remember everything he’d ever read about black holes.

“We getting any relativistic effects yet?” he asked. “Frame dragging or other orbital anomalies?”

Randall shrugged. “Not at this distance, no.” He cocked an eyebrow. “ ‘Course, we’ll have to go a lot closer in if we want a real look at those beasties of yours.”

“Right,” Ferrol nodded. “And your job will be to make sure we don’t get carried away by the thrill of it all. Pay especially close attention to radiation levels and gravitational gradients; but if you see anything going on outside the ship that bothers you, I want to hear about it. Clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

And all was ready. Ferrol took a deep breath, shifted his gaze to the screen. Over twenty flashing circles marked anomalous motion now, the nearest of them twenty thousand kilometers further in toward the black hole. “Okay, Ppla-zu,” he said.

“Real slow and careful, now … take us in.”

The asteroid was large and craggy, its edges sheathed in a pale and ghostly blue light from the distant black hole. A spot of white from the Scapa Flow’s searchlight swept slowly over it, lingering on a handful of shadows before moving on. Staring at the display, Ferrol shook his head. “Okay, I give up,” he said to no one in particular. “Where did the damn thing go?”

“To the left, I think,” Demarco said. “Over there by the—there it goes!”

A black shadow had detached itself from the asteroid and was skittering off through space, reaching the edge of the display before the tracking system caught up and centered it again. Roughly half a meter across, with a tendency to make right-angle turns in mid-course, it had early on been dubbed a butterfly… and in Ferrol’s opinion they’d learned just about all that twenty minutes of passive observation could teach them about it. “Let’s bring it in, Mai,” he said. “Whenever you’ve got a clear shot.”

“Right.” Demarco hissed gently between his teeth. “Here goes…”

The Scapa Flow jerked slightly as the net shot out. Ferrol held his breath… and at the last instant the butterfly swerved into a hairpin curve. Too late; the net swept around it and tightened—

In the pale blue light the brief flicker of coronal discharge from the net was clearly visible. The butterfly gave one last spasmodic twitch and went limp. “Townne: we’ve got it,” Ferrol called into his intercom. “Reel it in.”

“Right.”

On the display the netted butterfly began moving back toward the ship. Ferrol arched his shoulders, stretching muscles stiff with tension, and listened to the growing sense of bitter emptiness rumbling through his stomach. In four hours of drifting through the accretion disk they’d spotted, identified, and filmed no fewer than fifteen different variants of space-going creatures. Four—five, now—had been netted, electrically stunned or killed, and brought aboard for further study.