1
Back on Earth, my small stature had made me the go-to medic for confined space rescues. If there was a collapsed building, a kid stuck in a well, or miners trapped underground, I’d get the call. It was inherently dangerous work, and so we’d had a ton of specialized gear and even more precautions to avoid adding ourselves to the body count. Rule Number One was “don’t fall down the hole.”
That’s of particular importance when it comes to black holes.
Visually, they’re mesmerizing. Great, glowing whirlpools of superheated gas and dust trapped in an eternal spiral around a singularity—that is, the hole in space where a star once burned before exhausting its fuel and collapsing, compressing all of its mass into an infinitely small point which even light can’t escape. Stray too close, and you’re toast. Toast, stretched by the extreme gravity into a miles-long trail of crumbs before being shredded down to the last atom and sucked into oblivion. The only remaining hints of their existence were the jets of x-rays shooting from the poles of the maelstrom.
We really didn’t want to add ourselves to their number.
Such were the thoughts in my head as we drew uncomfortably close to one of those cosmic monsters, searching for an emergency beacon which had lit up our comms. We’d been on our way back to home base in the Galactic Union capital, looking forward to some time off after a long-haul patient transport job. But when a distress call comes, whoever’s in range has to answer.
As we drew in closer—slowly, I should add—the stricken ship came into view. It was a Reticulan saucer belonging to one of the Grays, the classic bug-eyed space aliens from human folklore. Except of course it’s not exactly folklore. In fact, one of them was piloting our transport at that moment. Another was working in back as my partner.
“How close can we get, Needa?”
I am not yet certain, Melanie. The vehicle appears to be trapped in orbit along the innermost edge of the accretion disk. It is dangerously close to the event horizon.
“Any contact with the crew?”
Negative. Manifest shows a single pilot.
Needa was stressed; she always reverted to her native telepathy when things got dicey. That’s how Reticulans prefer to communicate, though the ones I’d worked with typically showed me the courtesy of using spoken language. That wasn’t easy for them; their voices tended to have a raspy quality thanks to long-neglected vocal cords and narrow slits for mouths. Grays could look frightening to uninitiated humans, but at their core they were decent folks. The Midwesterners of the galaxy. Maybe that’s why I had such an affinity for them.
I was about to ask if she could make telepathic contact with the pilot when my partner laid a hand on my arm. “It is best that we do not ask too much of her right now,” Karrak said calmly. “We must be extremely careful. Needa has to determine whether she can make a safe approach before we can assess the scene.”
I stared at the plasma cyclone outside and the black maw at its center, wondering how we were going to pull this off. Not knowing anything of our patient’s condition, or how we were going to get to him, all I could do was collect my gear and be ready for whatever came next. “Any suggestions for how we do this? This is my first run to a black hole.” And hopefully my last.
Karrak knew what I was thinking. “I have assiduously avoided them myself.” He swiped at the holographic screen, zooming in on the image as much as he could without blurring it. “There is hull damage, particularly around the drive field emitters.” He pointed to the saucer’s outer edge. It was ragged around one side, as if the little ship had been dragged across a galactic cheese grater. He seemed especially interested in an odd bulge that filled a quarter of the saucer’s disk, on the side facing the black hole’s center. “Curious. I have yet to see one of our craft that is anything but perfectly symmetrical.” His elongated fingers danced across the image as he filtered out signal noise. “I cannot deduce its purpose from the energy signature. Particle emissions are being drowned out by radiation from the accretion disk.”
“Any chance of a contamination threat?” Or something about to explode, for that matter.
“Impossible to tell from here.”
Great. We’d have to be on scene before we could figure out if it was secure.
The image grew larger but stayed in focus. The hairs on my neck stood on end. Needa was taking us in, and I did not want to get any closer to this thing. “I trust she knows what she’s doing.”
“As do I.”
Needa finally “spoke” again, which I hoped meant she was a lot more confident in our situation. But she was still thinking at us, so maybe we weren’t out of the woods yet.
I’ve established an orbit at minimum safe distance based on the measured gravity gradient. We dare not go any closer.
I traded a look with Karrak. “We’re not going to argue.” I moved up to stand behind Needa at the pilot’s station, where another holographic situation display floated in front of her. The projection of our orbit traced a curve just outside of a bright red arc, the minimum safe distance she’d calculated. The saucer was moving right along that line, each orbit bringing it closer to the event horizon. A few more revolutions and it would disappear from our reality into God knows what. “Will we be able to lock on to it?”
She pointed to the saucer, far ahead and still pulling away. I have tested the field projector and made positive contact with their hull. I do not know if we will be able to maintain the attraction field for long enough.
“But it’s moving away from us. How do we intercept if we can’t get any closer?”
The gravity gradient at this range is too powerful for us to overtake them directly. We will maintain our radius from the singularity until the saucer’s lower orbit brings it back around to come up behind us. When our velocity vectors are parallel, I will activate the attraction field.
It all made sense when Needa ran the projection ahead in time to illustrate what that would look like. It’s a lot easier to hook up a trailer hitch when the thing you’re towing is pointed in the same general direction.
This super-advanced collective of alien civilizations isn’t like the movies, meaning that transporters aren’t a thing. My life in the Union had been a crash course in bleeding-edge technology. I’ve learned enough to grasp that quantum superpositions and Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle (though credited to someone else in the Union whose name is utterly unpronounceable without a second pair of vocal cords) dictate that you can’t just dissociate somebody’s molecules in one location and zap them into another. There’d be no beaming our patient aboard.
Tractor beams, however, are definitely a thing. Just don’t ask me to explain how they work any better than I could tell you how your phone works. Operationally, though, I know that the question would be whether we had enough juice to pull it off without getting sucked in ourselves.
Needa did something I’d never seen her do before: she activated the shoulder and lap restraints embedded in her seat. I must shut down the inertial dampers to conserve power. Please get into your protective garments, and remain in your acceleration couches until I give the all-clear.
Used to be conserving power wasn’t a big deal, but there’d been a drastic shortage of a key component of our drive systems ever since one of the Union’s largest refineries had blown up. And by “refinery,” I mean the entire planet.
Losing a third of its Element 115 supply in the Tanaan disaster had put a serious cramp in the Union’s style. The stable isotopes in our gravity drives had to be regularly replaced, which forced us to be a lot more judicious with them. Interstellar travel had in turn become much less commonplace. Priority in obtaining the isotopes went to the Med Corps, Constabulary, and the Thuban border defense fleet; the rest was rationed out based on need. And if you couldn’t demonstrate need, refined 115 got a lot more expensive.
In our case it didn’t help that we were going to be dragging a broken saucer out of a black hole’s accretion disk. The 115 spheres manipulate gravity, and there was a hell of a lot of gravity here to manipulate.
I turned back to the cabin, where Karrak was already pulling our skin-tight inertia suits from a locker in back. Without a thought toward each other’s privacy, we stripped and slipped on the magic underwear that would keep our organs from turning to jelly once Needa started doing her pilot shit. I was about to settle into my gel couch when he handed me another garment, one which I’d really hoped we wouldn’t need. It was my vacuum suit.
“I anticipate we will have to go outside to retrieve the patient. The vehicle’s structural integrity is questionable.”
I unfolded the suit, snatched its bubble helmet from the shelf behind him, and nodded at the churning whirlpool of superheated gas outside. “It won’t get any better after we pull it out of that mess.”
Karrak shook his head, reading my mind. Literally. “It will not.” There’d be no nice, clean docking to get inside the saucer. I just hoped our tractor beam didn’t tear it apart.
Other than the helmet, our vacuum gear was nothing like the bulky spacesuits that human astronauts used back home. They’re form-fitting, counterpressure garments that essentially reinforce our own skin to keep all the liquids and gases inside of us from escaping and the radiation out. I don’t have a problem with spacewalking itself, it’s the idea that the only thing between me and instant death is a few millimeters of carbon fabric.
By the time we’d donned our suits and finished the function checks, Needa announced that the saucer was coming back around. Our ship thrummed with low-frequency vibrations as she dialed up the drive. The gravity distortion it created used to make my stomach flip and my head get fuzzy. Over time I’d acclimated, but when she turned off the inertial dampening field it was like my first day on the job. Even with the protective suit and the acceleration couch, I could feel us alternating between zero and who knew how many g’s as she moved us into position. When she lit up the tractor beam, our transport shuddered in protest.
We have positive lock.
No kidding. My stomach already knew as much. “Any word from the saucer?”
Negative. Stand by for acceleration.
We were pressed deeper into our seats as Needa stepped on the gas. Our ship groaned and rattled from the strain, but she kept pouring it on. Without the dampeners I could sense we were moving, but had no idea if it would be enough.
I was about to ask Needa if it was working and if the saucer was holding together, when Karrak caught my eye. “Do not distract her. We will know soon enough.”
The vibrations intensified as we pulled away. I couldn’t focus on any one thing for long; our ship rattled and shook as if we were in a paint mixer. A worrisome, guttural groan began swelling behind us. The field generators were howling like banshees and I wondered how much more they could take before something important gave way.
There was one final, wrenching jolt, and the shaking and howling subsided.
We are free of the accretion disk and in a stable orbit. The saucer appears intact.
Even telepathically, I could hear the relief in her voice. “Thank you, Needa. Great work. Are we clear to exit?”
As soon as I seal off the control station. For now, you are safe to leave your seats.
Needa would leave the artificial gravity off during our spacewalk. We floated out of our couches and waited in the cabin for the all-clear. She locked her own helmet in place and activated a force field that would seal off her compartment from the ambulance bay. Her last step before purging cabin air would be to turn on another force field that would shield us from outside radiation, of which there was enough to cook us like a pair of microwave burritos.
EM projectors are at nominal function. Depressurizing the cabin now.
“Standing by.” We fastened trauma bags to our suits and held onto the vacuum gurney as we waited for the outer hatch to light up. Soon an oval of white light glowed steadily around its rim, signaling that we were cleared to exit. “Okay, we’re on our way.”
The portal winked open to space. Without thinking, I grabbed an overhead railing and pulled myself outside, all in a hurry to get to our patient. After one look around, I was ready to fly back in and hide under a blanket.
The monster was still out there, a luminous vortex of destruction surrounding the deepest, darkest nothing I had ever seen. “Black” doesn’t do it justice; this was the utter absence of light. Sound doesn’t travel in space, but I could imagine the screech of matter being stretched and torn beyond all limits as it was dragged into the infinite black. Was it all just interstellar gas and dust, or had some of it been unlucky spacefarers who had wandered too close, like the Reticulan we were after?
Karrak came alongside and wrapped a gloved hand around my arm. “Focus on the ship, Melanie. If Needa says we are safe, then we are safe.” I searched his jet-black eyes behind his helmet, but his smooth gray face was a mask of calm. Reticulan body language could be hard to read, but their minds weren’t once you’d established a bond with them. He was just as scared as I was.
True, he said, projecting his thoughts. But we must go anyway.
He let go and activated a directional field which shot across the gulf between us and the saucer; essentially a smaller version of Needa’s tractor beam which would guide us to our target. “Transfer beam is locked,” he called back to her, using the comms for my benefit. “Proceeding.”
Understood. Be safe, friends.
“Always.”
I did as Karrak said, focusing on the battered saucer ahead of us and tuning out the black hole looming beyond. It did nothing to slow my heart rate, which I fought to get under control with deep breathing as the invisible beam pulled us along.
We arrived at the saucer’s entry hatch, which would’ve been nearly impossible to spot if we hadn’t already known where to look. When closed up, the hatch blends seamlessly with the hull. Karrak waved his hand across the faint outline of its rim, causing a lightpad to appear. Each Union ship (the legally registered ones, at least) has an emergency access code for situations like this, which automatically attaches itself to any distress signal. I pulled up the saucer’s code on a terminal in the wrist of my suit and called out the sequence to Karrak.
The hatch winked open to reveal a depressurized airlock. We pulled ourselves inside and I swept my hand across the opening to seal it. There was a whisper of air as it began to fill the compartment, and soon I could feel the counterpressure suit release its grip on me. Karrak was already at the opposite end of the lock, checking another display beside the inner force field. “Pressure is equalized and the atmospheric mixture is compatible. No signs of contaminants. We are safe to remove our helmets.”
“Gladly.” I unlocked mine and pulled it away, letting it rest against my life support backpack. I took a deep breath. “Let’s go.”
He lifted the force field and we hurried inside. I’d been on Reticulan ships a few times, and this one wasn’t much different. Some equipment I didn’t recognize filled the passageway leading to the control cabin, but that was all. Karrak slowed a bit; whatever the stuff was it had gotten his attention as well.
The control cabin was small, in human terms maybe the size of a compact sedan. That made it spacious for a Reticulan, but for me it meant we’d be working in tight quarters.
Our patient was slumped in his seat at the pilot’s station; from what we could see he was the only occupant. That matched the manifest, but you could never be too sure. I was starting my assessment when Karrak announced he was going to look for any unreported passengers.
That was odd to me, but for now I had this in hand. Something about this run had piqued his curiosity, and I trusted his instincts. There wasn’t much room for more than one of us anyway. “Go for it. Just don’t be too long.”
The patient was young, not too far past adolescence in Reticulan terms, just emerging from the androgynous stage. To be honest, this one wasn’t fully male yet but that was the direction things were headed and I liked to keep things simple.
He was also unconscious. His black, almond eyes were unresponsive. They can be hard to see, but Reticulans do have irises which respond to light just like ours. Even thinking at him—an acquired skill after years of living among them—didn’t produce any results. This Gray was out cold, so I set a universal spinal collar in place before doing anything else. While the collar molded itself around his thin neck, I slipped on a diagnostic visor and pulled a transducer disc from my bag. I held the scanner to his chest and waited for vital signs to appear. Pulse was thready, breathing was shallow, blood pressure was low. He was going into torpor, the Gray’s natural response to severe trauma.
I pulled out a second disc and began moving both of them down opposite sides of his body, building a three-dimensional view of his insides.
The Med Corps’ transducers are awesome. Really, all of their gear is amazeballs but these little beauties are my favorite. About the size and shape of a hockey puck, just one of them is like having a stethoscope, vital signs monitor, and ultrasound in one package, all more sensitive than the best stuff on Earth. Two of them in unison is like having a handheld MRI with a fidelity that would make human doctors wet their pants.
Karrak came back and knelt behind me as the imagery began to compile in our visors. We didn’t like what we saw. Starting at the cranium, the swelling was readily apparent. “Cerebral edema,” I said, and kept moving the discs along his body. “Spinal damage, too.” It wasn’t as obvious as some fractured vertebrae. Everything was out of whack, like his spinal column had somehow been loosened.
As I kept moving, the extent of his injuries became more apparent, and more unusual. I’d seen a lot of weird stuff in this job, but to see this much trauma without an obvious cause was new to me. He was a mess of dislocations, radial fractures, and internal injuries. I didn’t need the magic scanner discs to tell me there was internal bleeding; his rock-hard abdomen had given that away. It was the fractures and dislocated joints that bugged me, because Reticulans have exceptionally dense bone structure. They don’t break easily.
I set the discs back in my bag. “This guy’s been put through the wringer.”
Karrak took a moment to make the connection. “Presuming you are not talking about an ancient laundry machine, you are not far off the mark, as you would say.” He shook his head sadly. “These injuries are consistent with exposure to extreme gravity gradients.”
“The kind you’d find near a black hole.” I looked at our patient in astonishment. “How does someone survive that?”
His black eyes darted around the cabin. “It may be hard for you to judge, but his ship has not fared much better. He must have flown very close to the event horizon indeed. He is fortunate to have escaped. I am curious as to why anyone would allow themselves to get so close.” His brow furrowed, which was a flamboyant show of concern for a Reticulan.
“Not much we can do here except immobilize him,” I said, and began prepping an intravenous line. “I’m pushing fluids with anticoagulants for now. Nothing else yet; I don’t want to risk something jarring him out of torpor. Let’s get him back to the bus first.”
“Agreed.” Karrak motioned for me to continue pushing the meds while he set up the vacuum gurney.
The transfer back to our ship went without a hitch, with our patient unconscious and sealed up tight in the pressurized gurney. It was after we were safely aboard and out of our suits when things got interesting. And I mean “interesting” in the way of the old Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times.”
The vital signs monitor embedded in the gurney began to tick up into more normal ranges; that is, normal for a Reticulan under severe trauma. They began rapidly edging up toward dangerously high values as our patient began to stir. I was about to start pushing sedatives through his IV when he grabbed me by the arm.
Where am I?
I could sense the pain through his thoughts. “You’re safe, aboard a Med Corps transport. We’re taking you to the trauma center at Delta Pavonis.”
And my ship?
“We pulled it away from the accretion disk,” I said, assuming he was aware he’d almost stumbled into a black hole. “It’s in a stable orbit with us for the time being. A Union tug will eventually come for it.” Which was going to be a long time given the 115 shortage. I imagined that a derelict orbiting a place nobody in their right mind would want to get close to would put it way down the GU’s priority list.
He tightened his grip on me and tried to sit up against the restraints before collapsing back onto the gurney; the pain was too much for him.
“Try not to move. You have internal bleeding and spinal column injuries.” I was about to push a bolus of sedatives when his thoughts crowded out mine. It was the Reticulan equivalent of shouting.
We must leave, now! Containment failure will be imminent. We must—
The words shot into my veins like ice water: Containment failure. Matter and antimatter, meeting in a violent, uncontrolled reaction. “Needa! Did you—”
I heard. Initiating emergency departure. Get to your couches!
So at least I wasn’t overreacting. I pushed the sedatives as calmly as possible, then ran for my seat as the deck seemed to rise up beneath me. Needa had just stepped on the gas, and it took Karrak’s firm hands to pull me the rest of the way into the gel couch.
Manipulating gravity to zip around at near lightspeed is a complicated business. It demands painstaking planning to make sure we don’t disturb any nearby systems or accidentally fly into something dangerous, say, a black hole. Emergency departures were a last-ditch contingency, warping local space to move at max velocity over a short distance to get clear of whatever bad thing was about to happen. “Short” in this case was over a million kilometers.
Not a moment too soon, either. Our screens lit up in a firestorm that filled the cabin, as if a new star had appeared outside. By the time the automatic filters could catch up and the spots in my eyes dissipated, the light had already begun to fade.
I kept a death grip on the rails of my seat and waited for the shock wave. It never came; my panicked monkey brain had forgotten that there’s no concussion in a vacuum. But if we’d been close, the heat would’ve vaporized us. Even at this range, the burst of gamma rays would’ve had us sprouting tumors like mushrooms if not for the radiation shields. All that from a kilogram or so of protons and antiprotons mixing it up.
Karrak and I traded a silent look, his wide eyes signaling we’d had a close call indeed. Needa’s relieved voice interrupted our thoughts:
We’re safe. Hull integrity is in tolerance. Proceeding to Delta Pavonis.