XXVI
SHROUDED in fire, the black holes sped to their destiny. Minute by minute, second by second, they swelled in sight, blazed more wildly brilliant, roared the louder throughout every spectrum of radiance. The discs were whirling storms, riven, aflare with eerie lightnings. Vast tatters broke off, exploded into flame, torrented back down or threw red spindrift across heaven before vanishing into vacuum. It was as if the stars, their light rays bent, scattered terrified from around those masses. Afloat in the captain’s globe, Lissa heard the blood thunder in her ears like the hoofs of galloping war horses. And yet this was only a shadow show. To have seen with your bare eyes would have been to be stricken blind, and afterward die.
She gripped Valen’s hand. It was cold. His breath went harsh. The sky had burned over Naia too; but not like this, not like this.
The black holes met.
Nobody in real time saw that. It was too swift. At one heartbeat they were well apart, at the next they blurred into streaks, and then light erupted. White it was at the center, raw sun-stuff; thence it became night-violet, dusk-violet, day-blue, steel-blue, gold-yellow, brass-yellow, blood-red, sunset-red. Outward and outward it bloomed. The fringes were streams, fountains, lace in a wind. They arced over and began to return in a million different, pure mathematical curves.
“I didn’t know it would be beautiful!” Lissa cried.
Force crammed her against her harness. Her head tossed. With no weight for protection, dizziness swept black across vision and mind. Another, opposite blow slammed, and another. The metal of the ship toned.
[142] “Graviton surges,” she dimly heard Valen gasp. “Predicted-uneven—hang on—”
The waves passed. He floated. The noise and giddy dark drained from her head. He, in his chair, strained toward her. “How are you, darling?” The words quavered. “Are you hurt?”
“No. No. I … came through … intact, I think. You?”
“Yes. If you hadn’t—” He mastered himself. “But you did. It was a, a wave of force. The physicists didn’t expect it’d be this strong, with this short a wavelength. Most of it was supposed to spread out in the orbital plane— Look. Look.”
The fire geysers rained back toward what had become a single fierce, flickery star. As they fell, their lovely chaos drew together and made rivers of many-hued splendor. The flows twisted, braided, formed flat spirals that rushed inward, trailing sparks. A new accretion disc was forming. Elsewhere, though, half a dozen blobs of dancing, spitting luridness fled from them.
The light played unrestful over Valen’s face, as if he were a hunter on ancient Earth, crouched above his campfire in a night where tigers and ghosts prowled. “Report,” he said at the general intercom. “Everybody. Dagmar?”
“All well,” the ship said. Her serenity was balm. “Minor damage, mostly due to a blast of lasered gamma rays that struck well aft. Nothing disabling or not soon repairable. Interior background count went high for half a second, but the dose was within safe limits and the count is down to a level acceptable for twenty watches.”
“We’ll be gone well before then,” Valen promised. “Uh, crew?”
The replies babbled, joyous, one (never mind whose) half hysterical. No harm sustained.
“How’d the observations go?” Valen asked tartly.
“We won’t know for weeks,” Esker answered. “That flood of input— But it seems like every system functioned. I do believe we … we have a scientific revolution at birth.”
[143] Lissa’s attention had stayed with the mystery. “It seems to be dimming,” she ventured.
“It’s receding fast,” Esker said. “The resultant momentum. But, I’m not sure yet, but I think the tensors aren’t quite what relativity would predict. Something we don’t understand came into play. Certainly that gravitational effect exceeded my top estimate by orders of magnitude. Captain, we will follow the star. Won’t we?”
“Of course,” Valen replied. “For as long as feasible. Taking due precautions. Positioning ourselves here, we took a bigger gamble than we knew. I don’t want to push our luck further.”
“Nor I, sir.” Esker laughed like a boy. “Not with everything we’ve got to carry home!”
They’ve forgotten their feud, Lissa thought. I have too. At least, it doesn’t matter anymore. Probably it will again, when we are again among human things. But today it’s of no importance whatsoever.