Debatable Space

Flanagan

Brandon appears on the bridge, pale and sweaty. “Hello,” I say to him, quietly and gently.

“Hello,” he smiles back, timidly. It’s almost four months since he has spoken to any of us. In that time, the rest of us have partied, trained together, discussed literature and art and life and gossiped about long ago lost loves. But Brandon has kept away from us, locked in his cabin cell. But we don’t mind. It’s his way.

Now I need him, and his navigational and cosmological skills. “Have we reached our destination?” he asks. I nod. He looks relieved. “And are we doing that thing we, um, do?” he mutters. I nod again. He looks even more relieved.

He sits, and takes the controls. “Steady as she goes,” I say. Brandon jerks the ship sharply to port, then sharply to starboard. We veer and lurch from side to side and eventually resume our forward direction. His little joke. It never palls.

Well, not much.

We look at the display on our vidscreen and see all around us the weirdness of a black hole nestling in warped space. This… thing used to be a Type C sun, until it supernovaed and reached critical mass. Gravitational forces pulled the sun in on itself until it shrunk to a point of almost infinite density. Now, this star is so massive that light itself cannot escape.

Jamie has researched all this; he’s a black hole nut. He actually gives them nicknames. (This one is the Cosmic Crusher.) Jamie is one of the band of thinkers who believe that each black hole is the gateway to another Universe. But there’s no way of proving that, because anyone or anything that passes through a black hole ends up, basically, squashed and dead.

With Brandon at the helm, we are now playing a game of chicken with the black hole. As our speed drops, our plan is to skim the surface of the gravity field, and slingshot ourselves out at our top speed once more into space. One slight miscalculation and we will be sucked into the gravity field and destroyed.

Fun, or what?

Close by the black hole is a cluster of neutron stars and mini-black holes locked in a synchronous orbit. These are the dreaded Black Rapids. The only way to proceed through this part of space is fast and skilfully. The complex pattern of gravitational pulls make this whole area of space a ripped and bleeding reef.

In we go: straight at the singularity, then tilting, tilting, the whole ship relativistically distorted, our huge mass makes us a dreadnought, we are extended to the size of a galaxy and yet at the same time we are a tiny plankton hurtling into the mouth of a whale, then attempting to creep out again.

Bish.

Bosh.

Whiish.

We are out again, on the other side of the Black Rapids. Safe.

On our screen we can see the pursuing warships on the wrong side of the Rapids slow, and then stop. A dozen of them peel away and choose to follow us through the Black Rapids. They are, I feel confident, not volunteers.

We watch as one of them is caught in a gravitational undertow. It surges through with a burst of energy and runs straight into a rock the size of a walnut, which contains a mini-singularity. The warship suddenly shakes, and flickers, then shatters into a million pieces.

A second warship tacks carefully away from the black hole, but is promptly sucked into a neutron star.

All twelve ships try, and fail, and die. Several of them attempt to emulate our slingshot method. It is a knack not easily acquired. They all get sucked into the black hole’s deadly embrace.

Whoosh. Gone. Crushed to nothingness or less.

We are safe.

I realise that for several hours, I have been hearing a buzzing sound in my ears. It is the alarm buzzer for the prisoner’s cell.

“Go and see what she wants,” I tell Harry. “I’m going to”

I’m asleep on my feet. Brandon catches me before I fall. He sits me down.

“I’ll just have,” I say, drowsily, “a little…”