Майкл Бишоп - The Final Frontier - Stories of Exploring Space, Colonizing the Universe, and First Contact

Kane’s eyes, red with work, nonetheless sharpened. “Let me see the trajectory.”

“I transferred it to both your terminals.” Ordinarily ship’s data is kept separate, for my eyes only.

Kane brought up the display and whistled.

The probe is under the stresses, gravitational and radiational, that will eventually destroy it. We all know that. Our fleshy counterparts weren’t even sure the probe would survive to send one minicap of data, and I’m sure they were jubilant when we did. Probably they treated the minicap like a holy gift, and I can easily imagine how eager they are for more. Back on the ship, I—the other “I”—had been counting on data, like oil, to grease the frictions and tensions between Ajit and Kane. I hoped it had.

We uploads had fuel enough to move the probe twice. After that, and since our last move will be no more than one-fiftieth of a light-year from the black hole at the galactic core, the probe will eventually spiral down into Sag A*. Before that, however, it will have been ripped apart by the immense tidal forces of the hole. However, long before that final death plunge, we analogues will be gone.

The probe’s current drift, however, considerably farther away from the hole, was nonetheless much faster than projected. It was also slightly off course. We were being pulled in the general direction of Sag A*, but not on the gravitational trajectory that would bring us into its orbit at the time and place the computer had calculated. In fact, at our current rate of acceleration, there was a chance we’d miss the event horizon completely.

What was going on?

Kane said, “Maybe we better hold off moving the probe to the other side of Sag A West until we find out what’s pulling us.”

Ajit was studying the data over Kane’s shoulder. He said hesitantly, “No… wait… I think we should move.”

“Why?” Kane challenged.

“I don’t know. I just have… call it an intuition. We should move now.”

I held my breath. The only intuition Kane usually acknowledged was his own. But earlier things had subtly shifted. Kane had said, “Ajit’s right. That region is the source of whatever pull is distorting the gas infall.” Ajit had not changed expression, but I’d felt his pleasure, real as heat. That had given him the courage to now offer this unformed—“hairbaked” was Kane’s usual term—intuition.

Kane said thoughtfully, “Maybe you’re right. Maybe the—” Suddenly his eyes widened. “Oh my god.”

“What?” I said, despite myself. “What?”

Kane ignored me. “Ajit—run the sims for the gas orbits in correlation with the probe drift. I’ll do the young stars!”

“Why do—” Ajit began, and then he saw whatever had seized Kane’s mind. Ajit said something in Hindi; it might have been a curse, or a prayer. I didn’t know. Nor did I know anything about their idea, or about what was happening with the gas orbits and young stars outside the probe. However, I could see clearly what was happening within.

Ajit and Kane fell into frenzied work. They threw comments and orders to each other, transferred data, backed up sims and equation runs. They tilted their chairs toward each other and spouted incomprehensible jargon. Once Kane cried, “We need more data!” and Ajit laughed, freely and easily, then immediately plunged back into whatever he was doing. I watched them for a long time, then stole quietly up to the observation deck for a minute alone.

The show outside was more spectacular than ever, perhaps because we’d been pulled closer to it than planned. Clouds of whirling gases wrapped and oddly softened that heart of darkness, Sag A*. The fiery tail of the giant red star lit up that part of the sky. Stars glowed in a profusion unimaginable on my native Station J, stuck off in a remote arm of the galaxy. Directly in front of me glowed the glorious blue stars of the cluster IRS16.

I must have stayed on the observation deck longer than I’d planned, because Kane came looking for me. “Tirzah! Come on down! We want to show you where we’re moving and why!”

We.

I said severely, gladness bursting in my heart, “You don’t show me where we’re going, Kane, you ask me. I captain this ship.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, you’re a dragon lady. Come on!” He grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the ladder.

They both explained it, interrupting each other, fiercely correcting each other, having a wonderful time. I concentrated as hard as I could, trying to cut through the technicalities they couldn’t do without, any more than they could do without air. Eventually I thought I glimpsed the core of their excitement.

“Shadow matter,” I said, tasting the words on my tongue. It sounded too bizarre to take seriously, but Kane was insistent.

“The theory’s been around for centuries, but deGroot pretty much discredited it in 2086,” Kane said. “He—”

“If it’s been discredited, then why—” I began.

“I said ‘pretty much,’” Kane said. “There were always some mathematical anomalies with deGroot’s work. And we can see now where he was wrong . He—”

Kane and Ajit started to explain why deGroot was wrong, but I interrupted. “No, don’t digress so much! Let me just tell you what I think I understood from what you said.”

I was silent a moment, gathering words. Both men waited impatiently, Kane running his hand through his hair, Ajit smiling widely. I said, “You said there’s a theory that just after the Big Bang, gravity somehow decoupled from the other forces in the universe, just as matter decoupled from radiation. At the same time, you scientists have known for two centuries that there doesn’t seem to be enough matter in the universe to make all your equations work. So scientists posited a lot of ‘dark matter’ and a lot of black holes, but none of the figures added up right anyway.

“And right now, neither do the orbits of the infalling gas, or the probe’s drift, or the fact that massive young stars were forming that close to the black hole without being ripped apart by tidal forces. The forces acting on the huge clouds that have to condense to form stars that big.”

I took a breath, quick enough so that neither had time to break in and distract me with technicalities.

“But now you think that if gravity did decouple right after the Big Bang—”

“About 10 -43seconds after,” Ajit said helpfully. I ignored him.

“—then two types of matter were created, normal matter and ‘shadow matter.’ It’s sort of like matter and antimatter, only normal matter and shadow matter can’t interact except by gravity. No interaction through any other force, not radiation or strong or weak forces. Only gravity. That’s the only effect shadow matter has on our universe. Gravity.

“And a big chunk of this stuff is there on the other side of Sag A West. It’s exerting enough gravity to affect the path of the infalling gas. And to affect the probe’s drift. And even to affect the young stars because the shadow matter-thing’s exerting a counterpull on the massive star clouds, and that’s keeping them from being ripped apart by the hole as soon as they otherwise would be. So they have time to collapse into young stars.”

“Well, that’s sort of it, but you’ve left out some things that alter and validate the whole,” Kane said impatiently, scowling.

“Yes, Tirzah, dear heart, you don’t see the—you can’t just say that ‘counter-pull’—let me try once more.”

They were off again, but this time I didn’t listen. So maybe I hadn’t seen the theory whole, but only glimpsed its shadow. It was enough.

They had a viable theory. I had a viable expedition, with a goal, and cooperatively productive scientists, and a probability of success.