But no…a faint light appeared from far below. As he stared, barely able to breathe, it slowly brightened.
It was coming closer.
"Sir!" said Rafferty, his normally reserved voice tense.
Korolis glanced at him. "What is it?"
"They've stopped broadcasting their signals."
"You've regained full control?" Korolis asked.
"Yes, sir. Wireless and remote systems, as well. Sensors, too: ultrasound, radiation, magnetometer, everything."
Korolis turned back to the viewscreen. "They're showing themselves to us," he murmured.
The light was closer now. Korolis noticed that it was wavering slightly: not in the lazy, undulant way of the sentinels' silhouettes, but in a sharp, almost fierce pulsation. And it was a color he had never seen before: a kind of deep metallic sheen, like the glow of black light on a knife blade. It seemed he could taste it as much as see it. This was a strangely unsettling sensation. Something about it made the hairs on the nape of his neck stand up.
"Sir!" said Rafferty again. "I'm picking up radiation signatures from below."
"What kind of radiation, Dr. Rafferty?"
"Every kind, sir. Infrared, ultraviolet, gamma, radio. The sensors are going crazy. It's a spectrum I don't recognize."
"Analyze it, then."
"Very well, sir." The engineer turned to his station and began punching in data.
Korolis turned back to the viewscreen. The glowing object was still rising toward them out of the rich blackness. Its strange color deepened. It was shaped like a torus, its outline pulsating ever more brilliantly. As he stared, openmouthed, the lambent otherworldliness of it brought back a sudden memory of childhood, long forgotten. When he was eight, his parents had taken him to Italy, and they had attended a papal mass at St. Peter's basilica. When the pontiff had brought out the host and raised it toward the congregation, Korolis felt himself galvanized by something like an electric shock. Somehow, the richness of the baroque spectacle brought the true import of it home to his young consciousness for the first time. There, at the tabernacle, the pontiff was offering them the most wonderful gift in the universe: the sacred mystery of the consecrated host.
Of course, organized religion had long since lost its usefulness for Korolis. But, staring at the wondrous, shimmering thing, he felt the same blend of emotions. He was among the chosen. And here was the offering of a higher power, the most wondrous of gifts.
His mouth was dry, and the coppery taste had returned. "Either one of you want to take a look?" he asked huskily.
Rafferty was still hunched over his laptop. Dr. Flyte nodded, then slid his way across the cramped interior and took up a position at the view port. For a moment, the old man said nothing. Then his jaw worked briefly. "'No light; but rather darkness visible,'" he murmured.
Abruptly, Rafferty looked up from his laptop. "Commander!" he barked. "You need to see this, sir."
Korolis bent over the screen, which showed two images, each one a blizzard of narrow vertical lines.
"At first I couldn't identify the spectrum of electromagnetic radiation," Rafferty said. "It made no sense; it seemed impossible."
"Why?" Korolis found his glance stealing back toward the viewscreen.
"Because the spectra contained wavelengths of both matter and antimatter."
"But that can't be. Matter and antimatter can't exist together."
"Exactly. But that object you see on the screen? Sensors said it was composed of both. Then I separated the matter signature from the antimatter signature. And I got this." Rafferty waved toward the computer screen.
"What is it?"
"Hawking radiation, sir."
At this, Dr. Flyte turned from the viewscreen in surprise.
"Hawking radiation?" Korolis repeated.
Rafferty nodded. Sweat had appeared on his forehead, and there was a strange brightness to his eyes. "It's the thermal radiation that emanates from the edges of a black hole."
"You're joking."
The engineer shook his head. "The spectrum is instantly recognizable to any astrophysicist."
Korolis felt his growing sense of euphoria begin to dissipate into disbelief. "You're saying that object we're looking at is a black hole? Composed of both matter and antimatter? That just isn't possible."
Flyte had returned his gaze to the viewscreen. Now, he pushed himself back, blue eyes flashing in his pale face. "Ehui! I think I understand."
"Then explain, please, Dr. Flyte."
"Gentlemen, gentlemen. That torus-shaped object down there isn't a single black hole. It's two."
"Two?" Korolis repeated, his incredulity deepening.
"Two, yes! Imagine two black holes-they'd each be extremely small, perhaps the size of a marble-in very tight orbit around each other. They're orbiting at a furious rate, a thousand a second or more."
"Orbiting how?" Korolis asked.
"Not even I have all the answers, Commander Korolis. They must be held in that orbit by some force, some technology, we don't understand. To the naked eye, they appear to be a single body. And to Rafferty's instruments, they appear to be emitting Hawking radiation of both matter and antimatter."
"But in reality they are two separate entities," Korolis said.
"Of course," Rafferty breathed. "Just as the individual spectrum readings on my laptop indicate."
All of a sudden, Korolis understood. It was unimaginably powerful, and yet so elegant in its simplicity. His euphoria returned. "Two black holes," he said, more to himself than the others. "One matter, one antimatter. Locked together but not touching. And if the force that held them in orbit was removed…or, as it were, shut off…"
"The matter and antimatter would collide," Rafferty said grimly. "Utter and complete conversion of matter into energy. It would release more energy per unit mass than any other reaction known to science."
"Let me see that." Korolis replaced Dr. Flyte at the viewscreen. His heart was hammering in his chest, and his hands were slick on the control handles. He stared at the glowing, pulsating thing below him with new reverence.
When this descent had started, he'd had hopes of discovering some new and revelatory technology; something so awesome and overwhelming it would guarantee America's supremacy. Now he had succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.
"A bomb," he whispered. "The greatest bomb in the universe. And it fits in a matchbox."
"A bomb?" said Rafferty. There was a note of concern, even fear, in his voice. "Sir, as a weapon, what we're looking at is of no practical use."
"Why is that?" Korolis said, not taking his eyes from the viewscreen.
"Because it could never be used. If those two black holes ever collided, the resulting explosion would be staggering. It would destroy the solar system."
But Korolis was no longer listening. Because the dark infinitude in his viewscreen was now subtly changing.
Where before there had been inky blackness-broken only by the shimmering light of the single artifact-now a faint, even blush of light was suffusing the spaces below. It was like the light of predawn. And Korolis caught his breath at what it revealed. There was not one artifact, but hundreds-thousands-held in the clear matrix that spread out beneath him. The nearer ones glowed with their strange, alien light, while those farthest away were mere pinpricks, almost invisible to the eye. Between them all, sentinels prowled, tendrils rippling, ceaselessly vigilant.
It was a prize beyond all hope, beyond all imagining, beyond all measure.
Korolis leaned back, wiped the sweat from around his eyes with the back of a hand, leaned in again. "Return to your station," he told Flyte. "Ready the robot arm."
The cybernetics engineer blinked. "I beg your pardon?"