You got a profile on the accretion disk yet?”

“Only first-order details so far,” the other told him, “but it’s looking pretty much like a normal asteroid belt. At least out this far; you start getting in too close and the radiation and gravitational effects start fouling things up good.” He turned to look at Ferrol. “I think you’re right, too, that it’s the lumpiness of this particular disk that’s the critical factor. At least two of the movements we’ve tracked so far definitely started out from the dark side of boulders. Probably helps to have a place to hide from the radiation when you’re built smaller than a space horse—less shielding mass, and all that.”

“Yeah,” Ferrol nodded. “Take a look at the black hole itself; get me some idea what exactly we’re dealing with.”

“Right.” Randall turned to his scanners, and Ferrol keyed for the cargo bay and lander. Speaking of space horses… “Wwis-khaa? You there?”

A Tampy face appeared on the screen, or what was visible of a face sandwiched between the amplifier helmet and a gold-blue neckerchief. “Ffe-rho?”

“Yes, Ppla-zu,” Ferrol acknowledged. “Wwis-khaa resting, I take it?”

“He is,” the Tampy replied. “He rests too much.”

“You all rest too much,” Demarco muttered.

Ferrol threw him a glare. “I know, Ppla-zu, and I’m sorry,” he said to the Tampy.

“I realize that what we’ve put Epilog through these last few days has been hard on the three of you, too. But it’s paid off. We’ve found what looks very much to be the space-creature community we’ve been looking for.”

“I know,” Ppla-zu said. “Epilonninni has already seen.”

Something that sounded like a snort of derision came from Demarco’s direction. “I see,” Ferrol growled, not even bothering with the glare this time. “Glad to hear it.

What else does Epilog tell you?”

“I do not understand.”

“I want to know what impressions Epilog has of this place,” Ferrol amplified.

“Does it feel uneasy or pained in any way by the black hole’s radiation, for instance? Or is it bothered by the fact that the gravitational fields even at this distance are slightly warped?” He glanced at the flashing circles on the display.

“More importantly, does it feel danger from any of the life-forms around us?”

“Epilonninni feels no danger,” Ppla-zu said promptly.

“Good. You tell me right away if that changes—you got that?”

“Your wishes are ours.”

“Yeah.” But just in case… Ferrol glanced around the bridge. “Kohlhase, as of right now your only job is to watch for anomalous movement heading toward or across a line directly in front of Epilog,” he instructed one of the crewers. “Randall?”

“The black hole weighs in at about a hundred solar masses,” the other reported.

“Only slightly charged, but it’s rotating pretty fast. Figure the event horizon at about 150 kilometers; we’re approximately three million kilometers out from that now.”

Ferrol nodded, trying to remember everything he’d ever read about black holes.

“We getting any relativistic effects yet?” he asked. “Frame dragging or other orbital anomalies?”

Randall shrugged. “Not at this distance, no.” He cocked an eyebrow. “ ‘Course, we’ll have to go a lot closer in if we want a real look at those beasties of yours.”

“Right,” Ferrol nodded. “And your job will be to make sure we don’t get carried away by the thrill of it all. Pay especially close attention to radiation levels and gravitational gradients; but if you see anything going on outside the ship that bothers you, I want to hear about it. Clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

And all was ready. Ferrol took a deep breath, shifted his gaze to the screen. Over twenty flashing circles marked anomalous motion now, the nearest of them twenty thousand kilometers further in toward the black hole. “Okay, Ppla-zu,” he said.

“Real slow and careful, now … take us in.”

Chapter 26

The asteroid was large and craggy, its edges sheathed in a pale and ghostly blue light from the distant black hole. A spot of white from the Scapa Flow’s searchlight swept slowly over it, lingering on a handful of shadows before moving on. Staring at the display, Ferrol shook his head. “Okay, I give up,” he said to no one in particular. “Where did the damn thing go?”

“To the left, I think,” Demarco said. “Over there by the—there it goes!”

A black shadow had detached itself from the asteroid and was skittering off through space, reaching the edge of the display before the tracking system caught up and centered it again. Roughly half a meter across, with a tendency to make right-angle turns in mid-course, it had early on been dubbed a butterfly… and in Ferrol’s opinion they’d learned just about all that twenty minutes of passive observation could teach them about it. “Let’s bring it in, Mai,” he said. “Whenever you’ve got a clear shot.”

“Right.” Demarco hissed gently between his teeth. “Here goes…”

The Scapa Flow jerked slightly as the net shot out. Ferrol held his breath… and at the last instant the butterfly swerved into a hairpin curve. Too late; the net swept around it and tightened—

In the pale blue light the brief flicker of coronal discharge from the net was clearly visible. The butterfly gave one last spasmodic twitch and went limp. “Townne: we’ve got it,” Ferrol called into his intercom. “Reel it in.”

“Right.”

On the display the netted butterfly began moving back toward the ship. Ferrol arched his shoulders, stretching muscles stiff with tension, and listened to the growing sense of bitter emptiness rumbling through his stomach. In four hours of drifting through the accretion disk they’d spotted, identified, and filmed no fewer than fifteen different variants of space-going creatures. Four—five, now—had been netted, electrically stunned or killed, and brought aboard for further study.

And in that whole damn menagerie, they hadn’t found a single solitary predator.

“Ffe-rho?”

With an effort, Ferrol shook the self-pity from his mind. “Yes, Wwis-khaa, what is it?”

“Is it your wish that we continue inward toward the black hole?”

Ferrol took a moment to check the external status readouts. He’d kept the ship moving with the general circular flow of the accretion disk since their arrival, moving only a few hundred kilometers further inward during that time. “Unless there’s a problem, yes,” he told Wwis-khaa. “Is the odd gravity bothering Epilog?”

“I do not know,” the Tampy said. “I know that it is a troublesome place for him; that is all.”

And a troubled space horse meant troubled and exhausted Handlers. A flash of anger flared up in the middle of Ferrol’s frustration, but he clamped his teeth against it. There was no point in snapping the Tampies’ heads off over this; for all their vaunted efficiency in hauling ships around, it was becoming painfully clear that space horses simply weren’t up to operating under prolonged stress. “Can you estimate how long it’ll be before we need to leave?” he asked Wwis-khaa. “Taking into account your own fatigue and that of the other Handlers?”

“I do not know,” the other said. “I know only that I will be able to Handle Epilonninni for two more hours, and that Bbri-hwoo will not be able to take my place then; that is all.”

Two hours… and they’d barely even scratched the surface of this system’s potential. “Understood,” he told the Tampy, a sour taste in his mouth. “All right, let’s try this: as soon as Ppla-zu takes over for you, we’ll find a nearby system to Jump to. Perhaps after you’ve all had a few days’ rest we’ll be able to come back.”

“Perhaps. I do not know.”

Ferrol looked up at Demarco. “Well,” he said. “Looks like this is—”

“Ffe-rho?”

Ferrol looked back at the intercom. “Yes, Wwis-khaa, what is it now?”

“Epilonninni is… troubled.” The alien eyes stared unblinking at Ferrol.