A few were in the Quicksilver Group. Others were among the colony worlds, especially on Jinx, trying to get the Institute of Knowledge to finance various projects, such as more expeditions to the collapsar in Cygnus.
«Are you still with the Institute, Doctor?»
Forward shook his head. «They stopped backing me. Not enough results. But I can continue to use this station, which is Institute property. One day they'll sell it, and we'll have to move.»
«I was wondering why they sent you here in the first place,» said Carlos. «Sirius has an adequate cometary belt.»
«But Sol is the only system with any kind of civilization this far from its sun. And I can count on better men to work with. Sol system has always had its fair share of cosmologists.»
«I thought you might have come to solve an old mystery. The Tunguska meteorite. You've heard of it, of course.»
Forward laughed. «Of course. Who hasn't? I don't think we'll ever know just what it was that hit Siberia that night. It may have been a chunk of antimatter. I'm told that there is antimatter in known space.»
«If it was, we'll never prove it,» Carlos admitted.
«Shall we discuss your problem?» Forward seemed to remember my existence. «Shaeffer, what does a professional pilot think when his hyperdrive motor disappears?»
«He gets very upset.»
«Any theories?»
I decided not to mention pirates. I wanted to see if Forward would mention them first. «Nobody seems to like my theory,» I said, and I sketched out the argument for monsters in hyperspace.
Forward heard me out politely. Then, «I'll give you this; it'd be hard to disprove. Do you buy it?»
«I'm afraid to. I almost got myself killed once, looking for space monsters when I should have been looking for natural causes.»
«Why would the hyperspace monsters eat only your motor?»
«Um … futz. I pass.»
«What do you think, Carlos? Natural phenomena or space monsters?»
«Pirates,» said Carlos.
«How are they going about it?»
«Well, this business of a hyperdrive motor disappearing and leaving the ship behind — that's brand new. I'd think it would take a sharp gravity gradient with a tidal effect as strong as that of a neutron star or a black hole.»
«You won't find anything like that anywhere in human space.»
«I know.» Carlos looked frustrated. That had to be faked. Earlier he'd behaved as if he already had an answer.
Forward said, «I don't think a black hole would have that anyway. If it did, you'd never know it, because the ship would disappear down the black hole.»
«What about a powerful gravity generator?»
«Hmmm.» Forward thought about it, then shook his massive head. «You're talking about a surface gravity in the millions. Any gravity generator I've ever heard of would collapse itself at that level. Let's see, with a frame supported by stasis fields … no. The frame would hold, and the rest of the machinery would flow like water.»
«You don't leave much of my theory.»
«Sorry.»
Carlos ended a short pause by asking, «How do you think the universe started?»
Forward looked puzzled at the change of subject.
And I began to get uneasy.
Given all that I don't know about cosmology, I do know attitudes and tones of voice. Carlos was giving out broad hints, trying to lead Forward to his own conclusion. Black holes, pirates, the Tunguska meteorite, the origin of the universe — he was offering them as clues. And Forward was not responding correctly.
He was saying, «Ask a priest. Me, I lean toward the big bang. The steady state always seemed so futile.»
«I like the big bang, too,» said Carlos.
There was something else to worry about. Those mining tugs: they almost had to belong to Forward Station. How would Ausfaller react when three familiar spacecraft came cruising into his space?
How did I want him to react? Forward Station would make a dandy pirate base. Permeated by laser-drilled corridors distributed almost at random … could there be two networks of corridors, connected only at the surface? How would we know?
Suddenly I didn't want to know. I wanted to go home. If only Carlos would stay off the touchy subjects –
But he was speculating about the ship eater again. «That ten billion metric tons of neutronium, now, that you were using for a test mass. That wouldn't be big enough or dense enough to give us enough of a gravity gradient.»
«It might, right near the surface.» Forward grinned and held his hands close together. «It was about that big.»
«And that's as dense as matter gets in this universe. Too bad.»
«True, but … have you ever heard of quantum black holes?»
«Yeah.»
Forward stood up briskly. «Wrong answer.»
I rolled out of my web chair, trying to brace myself for a jump, while my fingers fumbled for the third button on my jumper. It was no good. I hadn't practiced in this gravity.
Forward was in midleap. He slapped Carlos alongside the head as he went past. He caught me at the peak of his jump and took me with him via an iron grip on my wrist.
I had no leverage, but I kicked at him. He didn't even try to stop me. It was like fighting a mountain. He gathered my wrists in one hand and towed me away.
Forward was busy. He sat within the horseshoe of his control console, talking. The backs of three disembodied heads showed above the console's edge.
Evidently there was a laser phone in the console. I could hear parts of what Forward was saying. He was ordering the pilots of the dime mining tugs to destroy Hobo Kelly. He didn't seem to know about Ausfaller yet.
Forward was busy, but Angel was studying us thoughtfully, or unhappily, or both. Well he might. We could disappear, but what messages might we have sent earlier?
I couldn't do anything constructive with Angel watching me. And I couldn't count on Carlos.
I couldn't see Carlos. Forward and Angel had tied us to opposite sides of the central pillar, beneath the Grabber. Carlos hadn't made a sound since then. He might be dying from that tremendous slap across the head.
I tested the line around my wrists. Metal mesh of some kind, cool to the touch … and it was tight.
Forward turned a switch. The heads vanished. It was a moment before he spoke.
«You've put me in a very bad position.»
And Carlos answered. «I think you put yourself there.»
«That may be. You should not have let me guess what you knew.»
Carlos said, «Sorry, Bey.»
He sounded healthy. Good. «That's all right,» I said. «But what's all the excitement about? What has Forward got?»
«I think he's got the Tunguska meteorite.»
«No. That I do not.» Forward stood and faced us. «I will admit that I came here to search for the Tunguska meteorite. I spent several years trying to trace its trajectory after it left Earth. Perhaps it was a quantum black hole. Perhaps not. The Institute cut off my funds without warning just as I had found a real quantum black hole, the first in history.»
I said, «That doesn't tell me a lot.»
«Patience, Mr. Shaeffer. You know that a black hole may form from the collapse of a massive star? Good. And you know that it takes a body of at least five solar masses. It may mass as much as a galaxy — or as much as the universe. There is some evidence that the universe is an infalling black hole. But at less than five solar masses the collapse would stop at the neutron star stage.»
«I follow you.»
«In all the history of the universe there has been one moment at which smaller black holes might have formed. That moment was the explosion of the monoblock, the cosmic egg that once contained all the matter in the universe. In the ferocity of that explosion there must have been loci of unimaginable pressure. Black holes could have formed of mass down to two point two times ten to the minus fifth grams, one point six times ten to the minus twenty-fifth angstroms in radius.»