Encounters 1: The Spiral Slayers (20 page)

“But how…” the President started but his words trailed off,
“My God… my God.” The President rubbed his temples as he tried to come to grips
with unbelievable news. Finally he said, “Well, of course the Loud are welcome
to remain here with us and…we’ll try to…”

Adamarus cut him off, “I’m afraid there’s more, sir.” Everyone
looked at him except for Woodworth who had guessed. His frown deepened and he
just closed his eyes waiting for what he feared. Adamarus went on, “I’m afraid
that remaining here may not do them much good.” Adamarus cleared his throat,
“Bugs went on to say that we should train the tachyon scope on the Loud’s star
system and…,” Adamarus let his sentence trail off. He looked over at the screen
with Dr. Banner’s image on it, “Could you…?”

Banner, gripped by the tragedy, was caught off guard but
recovered quickly, “Right away, sir,” and he went to work. After a few seconds
he said, “While the tachyon scope is being aligned, I’m switching over to show
you what our optical scope sees.” At this Banner vanished and stars appeared on
the screen. A red circle appeared around one of the dimmer stars and Banner’s
voice continued, “This is the Loud’s star. We are now seeing it as a regular
telescope would see it. We are seeing it as it was 112 years ago as that is how
long it takes for its light to reach us.” There was a pause, then, “Ok, I’m now
switching over to the tachyon scanner which will reveal things as they are
right now.”

The image on the screen changed. Everything was a little
blurred and tinted green. Now the Loud’s star dominated the screen in size and
brightness. There seemed to be a small ring around the grossly swollen star
which appeared to radiate outwards. There were a few gasps from the assembly as
they all stared at the image in disbelief. The President asked, “It looks quite
different. Can you explain what I’m looking at?”

Everyone else knew what they were seeing, but were too
shocked to answer right away. Finally Adamarus spoke up. “Sir, what you are
seeing is what remains of the Loud’s star…it is exploding.”

Frowning deeply, the President asked, “How big is the
explosion?”

Adamarus tore his eyes from the viewer and looked at Wicker,
“Every planet in their system has been vaporized.” The President’s mouth fell
open and his eyes returned to the viewer.

Leewood spoke in a hushed voice, “How can this be possible? Their
star was nowhere near its ending stage.” As soon as he said this, realization
passed across his hard features, quickly followed by incredulity, “Are we to
believe that the aliens who attacked somehow did this?”

No one had an answer.

The President was leaning forward now. Slowly and nervously
his eyes turned back to Adamarus. “So, Captain Maximus, this is what the Loud
wanted us to see.”

Adamarus’ face was pale now, “Actually…no…I’m afraid it is
not.” Everyone turned from the screen and looked at Adamarus. “You see, as Bugs
reminded me, in this sector of space, our star system is by far the ‘nosiest’ thing
around. It’s our video and radio broadcasts that we’ve been sending out
for…hundreds of years. We stick out like a sore thumb. This was why the Loud
knew about us and came here.” Adamarus cleared his throat again. Everyone’s
mouth was falling open as it dawned on each of them where this was going. “Bugs
wanted us looking towards their home star in order to watch for…a ship.” The
silence in the room was complete. “You see…it fears that…the alien will come
here next.”

No one knew what to say and everyone was thinking the same
thing—if this alien had destroyed the Loud who were a thousand years more
advanced…then what chance did they have if this alien decided to attack them?

It was the President who first recovered enough to speak and
he went right to the next logical line of inquiry. “Do we know why this alien
species attacked the Loud?” His voice sounded hoarse.

Adamarus blinked. His brow furrowed. “No, the Loud had no
idea why they were attacked.”

The President looked at him for a moment, then nodded
slightly. “Well,” he said softly, “we need to know a whole lot more, Captain
Maximus.” The President leaned forward. Slowly his right hand started doing
that twirling thing with his pen that had become his trademark. “Yes,” he said
almost to himself, “a whole lot more. And also…if the Loud were aware of this
alien race before the attack, what do they know about it? Where do they come
from?” The pen was twirling around a little faster now. “Can we negotiate with
them? Also…when they attacked the Loud, how many ships did they have, what kind
of weapons…and how did the Loud attempt to resist?” The President turned to
Banner, “We will need you to keep a close eye out for any ships approaching us.”

“But that’s…crazy sir,” Banner blurted out. “Excuse me, but
no one could see ships at this distance no matter how many or how large they
might be!”

Adamarus turned to him, “Actually, Bugs was quite clear about
it being only one ship. And, I said the same thing to Bugs. Bugs said that we’d
have no problem seeing this ship and determining if it were headed this way.”

Banner shook his head confused, “Did the Loud say why we’d
have no trouble seeing it?”

Adamarus shook his head, “I’m sorry, Bugs was not functioning
too well and didn’t elaborate.”

The President looked at Adamarus and asked, “Is there
anything else?” Adamarus shook his head and Wicker stopped twirling the pen and
set it on the desk – his way of signaling that the meeting was coming to an end.
“Adamarus, you need to talk to Bugs again as soon as possible and get more
answers. In fact, Bugs needs to meet with all of us.”

---

The Loud were still not responding to hails. Not knowing what
else to do, Adamarus went back to the listening chamber and waited, hoping his
presence would be noticed and that Bugs would come out. However, after over an
hour, he realized that this wasn’t working. As time went on he started getting
angry.

Bugs comes out and tells them that an alien race has attacked
its solar system and killed every Loud, then says this hostile alien race may be
coming here, and then…he won’t say any more?

Adamarus looked around the room. He knew that the entire back
wall opened somehow, but he could see no way to open it from inside the room. Even
if he somehow got it open, the atmosphere in the dome was too thin and too
cold—he’d have to have an environmental suit to survive.

The noise of the soundproof door opening interrupted his
thoughts. Leewood peeked in. “No luck?”

Adamarus shook his head, “No.” Then Adamarus saw something in
Leewood’s expression. “What?” he asked.

“Dr. Banner has found something with the tachyon scope,”
Leewood said, “and it’s headed this way.”

Chapter Eleven –
Event Horizon

“The Second Cosmic Law:  If there is more than
one state, then the number of states must be infinite.”

The Loud Named Bugs

Opening Speech, 23
^rd
Amular
Symposium
on Quantum Physics

Source: The Archive

Every teleconferencing screen in the situation room was turned
on and more screens had been brought in and set up. At least a half-dozen more
people were teleconferencing in now. Adamarus recognized some of them as the
President’s senior staff. Others were with the military. Everyone was looking
at the green images displayed on the larger screen centered on the back wall –
the live images from the orbital tachyon scope.

Banner’s image was now on a separate monitor so that he could
be seen at the same time as the tachyon images. Seeing Leewood returning with Adamarus,
Banner said, “Captain Maximus, I’m glad you’re back. We’ve…ah…found something.”

“So I heard. Show me,” Adamarus ordered.

“While we were studying the tachyon images of the explosion,
we noticed this.” He reached forward and adjusted something out of view. On the
large monitor, a red square appeared, surrounding a tiny darker area near the
center of the explosion. Then the outlined section expanded until it filled the
screen.

Adamarus walked up to the screen and leaned forward for a
better view. The dark area had resolved into an area whose edges were hard to
define. It looked like something was distorting and sucking the background
image of the explosion towards a central point.

“I’m going to apply a filter to clear up the image,” Banner
said. After a moment, the image changed colors. The green background turned a
deep blue, and what had been the darker circular smear now looked like a small
lens, was distorting the tachyon image, pulling it inward towards a tiny black
pinpoint at the center.

Harrington had arrived while Banner and Adamarus had been
talking. She had managed to grab a shower and a change of clothes. She stepped
up beside Adamarus looking at the object on the screen, “So this…distortion is
the object that you say is headed toward us at light speed?”

“Yes…and no. Not exactly,” Banner said slowly. “First…nothing
other than a couple of sub-atomic particles can travel ‘at’ the speed of light.
But, this,” a black pointer had entered the screen and it pointed at the black pinpoint,
“is traveling at roughly 99.999972% the speed of light and that’s about as
close as you can get. Also, assuming this thing came from the Loud’s star
system, how it managed to get up to that speed so quickly is a complete
mystery.”

“And second?” Adamarus prompted.

“Second, what we’re seeing here is not really an object, but
rather the effects of an object. The distortion is tachyons being pulled
towards the black pinpoint. This pinpoint is called an ‘event horizon’ and it’s
the point surrounding the actual object where all things are pulled back by the
gravity from the object. The gravity is so strong that nothing can escape
it…not even light…not even tachyons. Event horizons can only be generated by
black holes.”

Adamarus cleared his throat, “So we’re looking at a black
hole?”

“It has to be,” Banner answered.

Adamarus looked at it thoughtfully. “As an object approaches
the speed of light, its mass increases and approaches infinity. Could a ship
get so close to light speed that the gravity from its increased mass would form
an event horizon?”

Banner shook his head, “We discussed that. We’re pretty sure
that the object would need to already have the event horizon – remember, the
Loud ships travel almost as fast and we know from discussions with them that no
event horizon forms around their ships.”

“So it’s not a ship,” Harrington said.

Banner rubbed his forehead with one hand. “Oh, it’s a ship
alright. It’s headed right towards us at almost the speed of light, and what’s
more is that it’s slowing and doing so on a very precise deceleration curve. No
natural object could do that. So, it has to be a ship…and a black hole, too. Most
likely a ship powered by a black hole.”

This statement sent ripples of conversation through the
assembly. After a moment, Adamarus asked a question that quickly silenced the
room. “Alright,” he said with great resignation, “how long until it gets here?”

Banner now brought his other hand up and rubbed his temples
with both hands. “Data is still coming in, but our best estimate right now—based
on that deceleration curve I mentioned – 200 years…give or take one or two
months. Its current distance from us is 111.682 light years. All of these
numbers could change, but probably not by very much.”

“The Loud ships make better time than that,” President Wicker
noted. “Only takes them about 150 years to travel that distance, as I recall.”

Banner nodded but said, “Yes, but right now this object is
traveling faster than the Loud’s interstellar Umbrella ship’s top speed. Also,
the object must have climbed to that speed much faster than the Loud’s ships
can…based on our current understanding of Loud ship capabilities anyway.” Banner
was suddenly looking unsettled. He ran a hand through his hair. “Anyway, we
think that the object ‘could’ get here much faster…if it wanted to. This
deceleration curve we’re seeing…it is simply the most efficient way to get
here. In fact, it is unbelievably perfect in that regard.” Banner stared at the
object on the screen for a moment then said, “It, whatever it is and despite
appearances, just doesn’t seem to be in any particular hurry.”

Adamarus stared at Banner. The way he was acting gave Adamarus
a strange feeling. Clearly all of this was overwhelming and certainly severe
enough to rattle anyone. Still Banner looked like he was spooked by something
else. Hell, the man looked pale and he was sweating.

Adamarus looked back at the image from the tachyon scope…the almost
invisible black pinpoint surrounded by a large area of distortion…behind it,
extending off screen at this magnification, was the explosion tinted deep blue
by the filter.

It came to him. Banner had said that nothing could be
detected at this distance. “Dr. Banner, how large is this event horizon?”

Banner removed his glasses and turned and looked off screen. The
assembly waited for an answer. The silence stretched on. Banner continued to
look at something off to the side.

“Dr. Banner,” President Wicker said, “are you all right?”

Banner jumped a little and then turned to the President.

Suddenly the meeting, the screens with the faces on them, the
tachyon display…it all seemed surreal to Adamarus. The way Banner was acting
was deeply disturbing.

At last Banner took a deep breath and spoke. “Sorry. Our best
estimate places the event horizon’s diameter at about…,” his mouth opened and
closed a couple of times but…nothing came out. He cleared his throat, tried
again, “a…a diameter of…ninety million miles.”

One person whistled while a couple of others laughed
nervously—others looked blank. Adamarus was expecting something extraordinary,
but this figure caught him completely off guard. He felt the hairs on the back
of his neck stand on end. “That’s…not possible,” he heard himself say. His mind
raced…that was unbelievably large. He tried to compare it to something…his mind
quickly rejecting one thing after another…their system’s gas giants, their sun,
other stars--red giants were that large. The distance to the sun…that was it.
The average distance between Amular and its sun was eight - seven million
miles…very close.

The human mind could not comprehend something that large. There
was nothing in man’s direct experience to compare it to. It was like saying
that their entire world would fit into the sun over a million times – although
true, it simply could not be imagined. This thing made the sun look like a
marble!

Adamarus noticed his hands were shaking and put them in his
pockets. Yes, he thought, having something that big, traveling at almost the
speed of light, coming directly at you…that was a bit overwhelming. He looked
around the room and at the monitors – the expressions he saw were all the
same…stunned…speechless.

Finally, Adamarus spoke, “Dr. Banner, that’s larger than the
distance between Amular and the sun! Are you certain? Can you…recheck your
figures?”

Banner made a helpless gesture, “Captain, we’ve been
re-checking that figure continuously every five seconds. That makes the black
hole almost as large as we believe the black hole at the center of our galaxy
is.”

A small man wearing a military uniform raised his hand for
attention and then asked in a lazy southern accent, “Well, let’s talk about the
object itself, the thing hiding inside that…you called it an event horizon,
yes? I mean…just how big a boy is it?”

The room erupted in nervous laughter at this. It was a bit
too close to hysterical, but it was laughter all the same.

Banner cleared his throat again, there was even a slight
smile on his face, “General Burnwall, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Well, what you’re talking about – the object inside a black
hole– it’s called a singularity, and we’re not really sure since no one has
ever seen one. Most theories say that a singularity, although it has infinite
density, will have zero volume. Others believe…”

General Burnwall interrupted, “No volume you say? You mean it
takes up…no space…has no size?”

“Exactly,” Banner answered. “However, other theories say that
the singularity would have an electrical charge which would cause it to spin so
fast that centrifugal force would stretch it into a donut shape. However, the
donut, which could have the diameter of…perhaps our small moon, would be one-dimensional
and therefore still have no volume. But understand, no one really knows for
sure.”

“And this is the ship?” Burnwall asked.

Several seconds went by before Banner replied. “Probably not.
But understand, we do not know how a ship could exist within an event horizon
or how it could ever escape one.”

“These are questions we should ask the Loud,” someone else said.

Adamarus spoke up, “Regardless, the general has a point. There’s
a ship in all of that somewhere and that’s what we need to worry about. And I
don’t think it matters how big it is.” He looked back at the black sphere. “We
need to talk to Bugs again.”