Raft

Jaen simmering, made a visible effort to calm down. "Rees. Am I or am I not in charge of the Telescope?"

"That's my understanding."

"And my brief is to make sure that the Navigators — and their Boney so-called assistants — get all the data they need to guide our trajectory around the Core. And that has to be our number one priority. Right?"

Rees rubbed his nose doubtfully. "I can't argue with that…"

"Then tell Hollerbach to keep his damn hands off my equipment!"

Rees turned to Hollerbach, suppressing a smile. "What are you up to, Chief Scientist?"

"Rees…" The old man wrapped his long fingers together, pulling at the loose flesh. "We have left ourselves with only one significant scientific instrument. Now, I've no wish to revisit the arguments behind the loading of this ship. Of course the size of the gene pool must come first…" He thumped one fist into his palm. "Nevertheless it is at precisely this moment of blindness that we are approaching the greatest scientific mystery of this cosmos: the Core itself—"

"He wants to turn the Telescope on the Core," Jaen said. "Can you believe it?"

"The understanding to be acquired by even a superficial study is incalculable."

"Hollerbach, if we don't use that damn telescope to navigate with we might get a closer look at the Core than any of us have bargained for!" Jaen glared at Rees. "Well?"

"Well what?"

Hollerbach looked sadly at Rees. "Alas, lad, I suspect this little local difficulty is only the first impossible arbitration you will be called on to

make."

Rees felt confused, isolated. "But why me?"

Jaen snapped, "Because Decker is still on the Raft. And who else is there?"

"Who indeed?" Hollerbach murmured. "I'm sorry, Rees; I don't think you have very much choice…"

"Anyway, what about this bloody Telescope?"

Rees tried to focus. "All right. Look, Hollerbach, I have to agree that Jaen's work is a priority right now—"

Jaen whooped and punched the air.

"So your studies must fit in around that work. All right? But," he went on rapidly, "when we get close enough to the Core the steam jets will become ineffectual anyway. So navigation will become a waste of time… and the Telescope can be released, and Hollerbach can do his work. Maybe Jaen will even help." He puffed out his cheeks. "How's that for a compromise?"

Jaen grinned and punched him on the shoulder. "We'll make a Committee member of you yet." She turned and pulled her way back into the interior of the chamber.

Rees felt his shoulders slump. "Hollerbach, I'm too young to be a Captain. And I've no desire for the job."

Hollerbach smiled gently. "That last alone probably qualifies you as well as anyone. Rees, I fear you must face it; you're the only man on board with first-hand experience of the Belt, the Raft, the Bone world… and so you're the only leader figure remotely acceptable to all the ship's disparate factions. And after all it has been your drive, your determination, that has brought us so far. Now you're stuck with this responsibility, I fear.

"And there are some hard decisions ahead. Assuming we round the Core successfully we will face rationing, extremes of temperature in the unknown regions outside the Nebula — even boredom will be a life-threatening hazard! You will have to keep us functioning in extraordinary circumstances. If I can assist you in any way, of course, I will."

"Thanks. I don't much like the idea, but I guess you are right. And to help me you could start," he said sharply, "by sorting out your differences with Jaen yourself."

Hollerbach smiled ruefully. "That young woman is rather forceful."

"Hollerbach, what do you expect to see down there anyway? I guess a close view of a black hole is going to be spectacular enough…"

A flush of animation touched Hollerbach's papery cheeks. "Far more than that. Have I ever discussed with you my ideas on gravitic chemistry? I have?" Hollerbach looked disappointed at the curtailing of his lecture, but Rees encouraged him to continue; for a few minutes, he realized gratefully, he could return to his apprenticeship, when Hollerbach and the rest would lecture him each shift on the mysteries of the many universes.

"You will recall my speculation on a new type of 'atom,' " Hollerbach began. "Its component particles — perhaps singularities themselves — will be bonded by gravity rather than the other fundamental forces. Given the right conditions, the right temperature and pressure, the right gravitational gradients, a new 'gravitic chemistry' will be possible."

"In the Core," Rees said.

"Yes!" Hollerbach declared. "As we skirt the Core we will observe a new realm, my friend, a new phase of creation in which—"

Over Hollerbach's shoulder there loomed a wide, bloodstained face. Rees frowned. "What do you want, Roch?"

The huge miner grinned. "I only wanted to point out what you're missing. Look." He pointed.

Rees turned. At first he could see nothing unusual — and then, squinting, he made out a faint patch of dull brown amid the upward shower of stars. It was too far away to make out any detail, but memory supplied the rest; and he saw again a surface of skin streched over bone, white faces turning to a distant speck in the air—

"The Boneys," he said.

Roch opened his corrupt mouth and laughed; Hollerbach flinched, disgusted. "Your home from home, Rees," Roch said coarsely. "Don't you feel like dropping in and visiting old friends?"

"Roch, get back to your work."

Roch did so, still laughing.

Rees stayed for some minutes at the hull, watching until the Boneys' worldlet was lost in the haze far above. Yet another piece of his life gone, beyond recall…

With a shudder he turned from the window and, with Hollerbach, immersed himself once more in the bustle and warmth of the Bridge.

Almost powerless, its soft human cargo swarming through its interior, the battered old ship plunged toward the black hole.

The sky outside darkened and filled up with the fantastic, twisted star sculptures observed by Rees on his first journey to these depths. The Scientists left the hull transparent; Rees gambled that this would distract the helpless passengers from their steadily worsening plight. And so it turned out; as the shifts passed a growing number spent time at the great windows, and the mood of the ship became one of calm, almost of awe.

Now, with closest approach to the Core barely a shift away, the Bridge was approaching a school of whales; and the windows were coated with human faces. Rees discreetly made room for Hollerbach; side by side they stared out.

At this depth each whale was a slender missile, its deflated flesh an aerodynamic casing around its internal organs. Even the great eyes had closed now, so that the whales plummeted blind into the Core — and there were row upon row of them, above, below and all around the Bridge, so many that at infinity the air was a wall of pale flesh.

Rees murmured, "If I'd known it would be as spectacular as this I wouldn't have got off last time,"

"You'd never have survived," Hollerbach said. "Look closely." He pointed at the nearest whale. "See how it glows?"

Rees made out a pinkish glow around the whale's leading end. "Air resistance?"

"Obviously." Hollerbach said impatiently. "The atmosphere is like soup at these depths. Now, keep watching."

Rees kept his eyes fixed on the whale's nose — and was rewarded with the sight of a six-foot patch of whale skin flaring into flame and tumbling away from the speeding animal. Rees looked around the school with new eyes; throughout the hail of motion he could see similar tiny flares of burning flesh, sparks of discarded fire. "It looks as if the whales are disintegrating, as if air resistance is too great… Perhaps they have misjudged their path around the Core; maybe our presence has disturbed them—"