Stephen Baxter - Raft

Hollerbach fell silent, but Rees’s mind raced on. Perhaps these creatures would build ships of their own which could travel to other hole-based “planets,” and meet with their unimaginable cousins. At present this strange biosphere was fueled by the influx of material from the Nebular debris cloud — a steady rain of star wrecks arcing on hyperbolic trajectories into the Core — and from within by the X-radiating accretion disc around the black hole, deep within the Core itself; but eventually the Nebula would be depleted and the gravitic world would be exposed, naked to space, fueled only by the heat of the Core and, ultimately, the slow evaporation of the black hole itself.

Long after all the nebulae had expired, he realized, the gravitic people would walk their roiling worlds. With a sense of dislocation he realized that these creatures were the true denizens of this cosmos; humans, soft, dirty and flabby, were mere transient interlopers.

Closest approach neared.

The Core world turned into a landscape; passengers screamed or sighed as the Bridge soared mere tens of miles above a boiling ocean. Whales drifted over the seas, pale and imperturbable as ghosts.

Something was tugging at Rees’s feet. Irritated, he grabbed a Telescope strut and hauled himself back to the monitor; but the pull increased remorselessly, at last growing uncomfortable…

He began to worry. The Bridge should be in virtual free fall. Was something impeding it? He peered around the transparent hull, half-expecting — what? That the Bridge had run into some glutinous cloud, some impossible spout from the strange seas below?

But there was nothing.

He returned his attention to the Telescope — to find that Hoilerbach was now upside down; arms outstretched he clung to the monitor and was gamely trying to haul his face level with the picture in the plate. Bizarrely, he and Rees seemed to be being pulled toward opposite ends of the ship. Nead and Jaen were similarly arrayed around the Telescope mount, clinging on in the presence of this strange new field.

Screams arose around the chamber. The flimsy structure of ropes and sheets began to collapse; clothes, cutlery, people went sliding toward the walls.

“What the hell’s happening, Hoilerbach?”

The old Scientist clenched and unclenched his hands. “Damn it, this isn’t helping my arthritis—”

“Hollerbach…!”

“It’s the tide!” Hollerbach snapped. “By the Bones, boy, didn’t you learn anything in my orbital dynamics classes? We’re so close to the Core that its gravity field is varying significantly on a scale of a few yards.”

“Damn it, Hollerbach, if you knew all about this why didn’t you warn us?”

Hollerbach refused to look abashed. “Because it was obvious, boy…! And any minute now we’ll get the really spectacular stuff. As soon as the gravitational gradient exceeds the moment imposed by air friction — ah, here we go…”

The image in the monitor blurred as the Telescope lost its lock. The churning ocean wheeled over Rees’s head. Now the shanty construction collapsed completely and bewildered passengers were hurled about; spatters of blood appeared on flesh, clothes, walls.

The ship was turning.

“Nose down!” Hollerbach, hands still clamped to the Telescope, screamed to make himself heard. “The ship will come to equilibrium nose down to the Core—”

The prow of the ship swung to the Core, ran past it, hauled itself back, as if the Bridge were a huge magnetized needle close to a lump of iron. With each swing the devastation within the Chamber worsened; now Rees could see limp bodies among the thrashing passengers. Absurdly, he was reminded of the dance he had watched in the Theater of Light; like dancers Bridge and Core were going through an aerial ballet, with the ship waltzing in the black hole’s arms of gravity.

At last the ship stabilized, its axis pointing at the Core. The passengers and their effects had been wadded into the ends of the cylindrical chamber, where the tidal effects were most strong; Rees and the other Scientists, still clinging to the Telescope mount, were close to the ship’s center of gravity, and were, Rees realized, escaping comparatively lightly.

Blood-red oceans swept past the windows.

“We must be near closest approach,” Rees shouted. “If we can just survive the next few minutes, if the ship holds together against this tide—”

Nead, arms twined around the shaft of the Telescope, was staring at the Core ocean. “I think we might have to survive more than that,” he said.

“What?”

“Look!” Nead pointed — and, his grip loosened, he slipped away from the Telescope. He scrabbled against the sheer surface of the instrument, hands trying to regain their purchase; then his grasp failed completely. Still staring at the window he fell thirty yards into the squirming mass of humanity crushed into one end of the cylindrical chamber.

He hit with a cracking sound, a cry of pain. Rees closed his eyes.

Hollerbach shouted urgently, “Rees. Look at what he was telling us.”

Rees turned.

The sea of blood continued to churn; but now, Rees saw, there was a distinct whirlpool, a tight knot gathered beneath the Bridge. Shadows moved in that maelstrom, vast and purposeful. And — the whirlpool was moving with the hurtling ship, tracking its progress…

The whirlpool burst like a blister and a disc a hundred yards wide came looming out of the ocean. Its jet black surface thrashed; with bewildering frequency vast limbs pulsed out, as if fists were straining through a sheet of rubber. The disc hovered for long seconds; then, its rotation slowing, it fell back into the pounding ocean.

Almost immediately the whirlpool began to collect once more.

The old Scientist’s face was gray. “That’s the second such eruption. Evidently not all the life here is as civilized as us.”

“It’s alive? But what does it want?”

“Damn it, boy, think for yourself!”

At the heart of this gale of noise Rees tried to concentrate. “How does it sense us? Compared to gravitic creatures we are things of gossamer, barely substantial. Why should it be interested in us…?”

“The supply machines!” Jaen shouted.

“What?”

“They’re powered by mini black holes… gravitic material. Perhaps that’s all the gravitic creature can see, as if we’re a ship of ghosts surrounding crumbs of…”

“Of food,” Hollerbach finished wearily.

Again the creature roared up from its ocean, scattering whales like leaves. This time a limb, a cable as thick as Rees’s waist, came close enough to make the ship shudder in its flight. Rees made out detail on the creature’s surface; it was like a sculpture rendered in black on black. Tiny forms — independent animals, like parasites? — raced with eye-bewildering speed across the pulsing surface, colliding, melding, rebounding.

Again the disc fell away, colliding with its spawning sea with a fantastic, slow-motion splash; and again the whirlpool began to gather.

“Hunger,” Hollerbach said. “The universal imperative. The damn thing will keep trying until it swallows us whole. And there’s nothing we can do about it.” He closed his rheumy eyes.

“We’re not dead yet,” Rees muttered. “If baby wants feeding, we’ll feed baby.” An angry determination flooded his thoughts. He hadn’t come so far, achieved so much, merely to see it brushed aside by some nameless horror… even if its very atoms were composed of black holes.

He scanned the chamber. The rope network had collapsed, leaving the interior of the chamber scoured clear of people; but some ropes still clung where they had been fixed to the walls and ceilings. One such led from the Telescope mount directly to the exit to the Bridge’s corridor. Rees eyed its track. It lay almost exclusively within feet of the ship’s waist, so that when he followed it he could stay close to the weightless zone.