Hunted Earth - The Ring Of Charon Part 14

She stood up, as carefully as she could, and tried to think. When she had gone to sleep, her hab shed had been bolted to the side of asteroid AC125DN1RA45, a tiny hunk of rock less than half a kilometer across, far too small to generate any gravity field worth mentioning. Maybe a ten-thousandth of a gee, tops. Now, suddenly, she was in a gee field hundreds of times stronger than that. What the h.e.l.l was going on? Had someone moved her hab shelter for some reason?

Her shelter was a cylinder about fifteen meters long. Or, now, fifteen meters tall, with Coyote standing on the bottom looking up. At its midsection was an airlock system. There were two viewports at the midsection as well, one set into the airlock and the other set into the bulkhead opposite. One port afforded a view of the asteroid's surface, the other a view s.p.a.ceward. What she couldn't see through the ports she ought to be able to see using the remote-control exterior camera.

The camera's controls were set into the wall by the airlock.

It took her two or three tries, and two or three crashes, before she managed to jump precisely enough to grab a handhold by the airlock and clip herself into place with the restraint belts intended for holding small pieces of cargo. She looked through the rockside port first and breathed a sigh of relief. RA45's dark bulk was still there. She recognized not only the rumpled landscape, but her own mining gear. And there was the drill pit down into the rock's interior.

Then she looked out the s.p.a.ceward viewport and discovered something was missing after all. Not on the rock. In the sky.

In a horrifying flash she realized what she wasn't seeing. Her s.h.i.+p. The Vegas Girl was gone.No, wait a second. There it was, a tiny blinking dot of light far to sternward, the Girl's tracking strobe.

How the h.e.l.l could this have happened? She had left the Vegas Girl in a perfectly matched orbit relative to RA45. There was no way she could have drifted that far while Coyote was asleep.

Unless she had been sleeping for one h.e.l.l of a long time. She checked her watch and compared it to the time display on the hab shed's chronometer. She even checked the date, just to be sure she hadn't slept around the clock. But no, she had been out only a few hours. How far had her s.h.i.+p drifted?

Coyote grabbed the radar range-and-rate gun out of its rack and aimed it through the s.p.a.ceward viewport, lining up the sights on the Girl. It was a low-power portable unit, not really meant to work at long range. Normally she used it to establish distance from and velocity toward an asteroid, but it could track her s.h.i.+p just as handily. She got the blinking strobe in the sights and pulled the trigger.

The gun pinged cheerfully twice to indicate it had gotten a good range and rate on its target.

Coyote checked the gun's tracking data display.

And her heart nearly stopped. The Vegas Girl was over one hundred kilometers astern, and the s.h.i.+p was moving away at over three hundred meters a second.

But wait a moment. The tracker just showed relative velocity, not which object was doing the moving. She peered out the port again, and spotted the triple-blink beacon she had left on RA46, the last rock she had worked. She swore silently. RA46 was in the wrong part of the sky. She fired a ranging pulse at it and got back virtually the same velocity value. The Girl was stationary relative to RA46. So it wasn't the s.h.i.+p moving. It was this rock. It was moving at nearly twelve hundred kilometers an hour relative to the s.h.i.+p! But how theh.e.l.l- Good Golly G.o.d. She wasn't in a gravity field-that was a one-twentieth-gee acceleration she was feeling. But for how long? Coyote knew that velocity could acc.u.mulate at a h.e.l.lacious rate under even modest acceleration.

Even so, she was startled by the results when she ran the problem. a.s.suming one-twentieth gee, that meant the rock had been accelerating for only ten or eleven minutes. Somehow, the numbers were the most frightening thing.

But how the devil could a dumb rock accelerate that fast? Or even at all? Coyote sure as h.e.l.l would have noticed if someone had landed on RA45 and rigged it for acceleration. The fusion engines required would have been twice the size of her hab shelter. Even if it had happened under her local horizon, it would have been a ma.s.sive engineering job and she would have felt the vibration of the work rattling RA45. But even the high-end miners who routinely maneuvered their rocks into more convenient orbits never got their boost up over one or two percent of a gee. Asteroids were just too ma.s.sive to make any better headway than that.

Even then, the vibration was nearly enough to shake the rock apart.

Except this baby was cooking along at about three times that velocity without so much as a quiver. She hung in the restraint straps, staring at the range gun's tiny control panel, utterly baffled.

And starting to get very scared. This was a budget hab shelter. It had no radio powerful enough to call for help. No escape pod, either. And without a s.h.i.+p, she had no way off this rock.

Where in gambler's h.e.l.l was this rock going?

And who was taking it there?? ? ?

Larry sat alone in Control Room Four, staring at nothing.

The message from the Moon was perfectly straightforward: Earth had returned, in the form of a black hole.

A black hole. The shocks were coming too fast, too hard.

Larry felt like a fool, a Pollyanna who could not face bad news. How could the Earth vanish without leaving debris, he had demanded. Well, he had his answer now. Simple. All you do is crush the planet down into a black hole. And in some incredible way, his d.a.m.nable gravity wave had done just that.

Larry clenched his hands hard into the armrests of his chair. He should have seen this answer, should have predicted it. Instead, he and Webling had shouted it down when Sondra suggested a black hole. Because they could not face the truth.

Earth was not now merely missing, but destroyed. So much for his clutching at straws, saying that the planet had merely been moved in some mysterious way.

But his arguments had seemed so logical, his chain of reasoning so strong. Had he truly been rationalizing that hard?

It didn't matter now. However good or bad his theories had been, they didn't match the facts-they were wrong. The gravity beam had induced Earth to collapse into a black hole, period. The home planet was destroyed. Details not yet resolved, main fact undeniable.

No one at the station seemed able to respond to the news. Larry felt it himself-a numbness, a shock that seemed to freeze him to his seat. Well, how could they react? What possible way was there forany of them to respond? No one knew what to say or do.

Larry winced, and faced a deeper truth. His situation was a bit different from Sondra's or Dr.

Webling's. It had been his finger on the b.u.t.ton. It was he who had designed the experiment and set it in motion. Alone, among all humanity, he bore that responsibility. Intentional, accidental, that didn't matter. It was his action that doomed Earth, smashed it into a bottomless gravitational pit, crushed it down into a single point in s.p.a.ce, surrounded by an event horizon no larger than a pebble on the beach.

d.a.m.n it, how ! Larry felt some part of himself rebel at the thought. How could his gravity beam have done that? It was flat-out impossible. He shut his eyes and visualized the gravity-beam system, traced it through the Ring of Charon's circuitry, examined every step of the procedure. No, it was impossible. There was no room in its observed behavior, no mysterious unaccounted-for data, that would allow for the beam to touch off a gravity collapse into a black hole.

And how had the other planets escaped the same fate when the beam had touched them? How could his beam crush Earth and yet leave Venus unharmed?

And where had Earth's gravity field gone for those eight hours between the vanishment and Lucifer's crash? Naturally occurring gravity was a function of ma.s.s, pure and simple. It did not matter what form the ma.s.s was in. Earth, or a black hole of Earth's ma.s.s-or Earth's ma.s.s in Swiss cheese-would all produce the same gravity field. It wouldn't switch on and off as the matter switched from one state to another, or vanish for eight hours.

And why were there still gravity waves and that d.a.m.ned twenty-one-centimeter radio source coming from the Moon?And how the h.e.l.l had Earth gained five percent in additional ma.s.s during those missing eight hours?

Larry was willing to bet that an Earth-ma.s.s black hole couldn't absorb matter that fast. The ma.s.s wouldn't just dive straight in. It would form into an accretion disk, and then spiral inward from the disk. Lucifer's rubble had already been forming into a disk before the end came. Larry checked the data.

Sure enough, as long as Lucifer's rubble lasted, the black hole had absorbed Lucifer's ma.s.s at a fairly steady rate-and at a rate a hundred times slower than it would need to gobble up five percent in bonus ma.s.s in eight hours.

And what the h.e.l.l were those blue flashes, and the large ma.s.ses ejecting from them? The ma.s.ses seemed to be coming from inside the black hole, but that was impossible. Nothing could escape from a black hole, light included, except the hole's own decay products. So what were the flashes?

Larry stood up and left the room.

What the h.e.l.l could the blue flashes be, if not a worm-hole aperture opening and shutting?

The Ring was not merely an accelerator. In theory, it could be configured as a gravity-imaging system, a gravity telescope of enormous sensitivity.

Such a scope could do more than collect gravity waves. It could form images out of them. No one had ever tried it. Larry decided it was time to test the theory.

He needed an imaging sequence of the Moon and vicinity. The facilities on Venus, Ganymede and t.i.tan were all picking up strong gravity waves from the Moon, but their gear was not powerful or sensitive enough to resolve that data into a clear picture. The Lunar gravity sensors were, of course, completely swamped by the mystery gee waves. In short, none of the other gravity-sensor-equipped stations were able to form a useful image.

Nor did they have the benefit of Larry writingtheir imaging programs. Larry wasn't vain-not especially so-but he knew what he was good at.

Something had to be producing those ma.s.sive gravity waves emanating from the Moon. Larry needed to see whatever was forming those waves-and he needed to see the gravity fields around that d.a.m.nable black hole. Better still, he needed some sort of readings of all the hole's properties. Armed with those, he ought to be able to demonstrate that the hole could not possibly be Earth.

They already knew the black hole's ma.s.s was wrong. That was enough to convince Larry, but not the outside world. If Larry could demonstrate that the hole's other properties-direction of spin, electric charge, angular momentum, axis of rotation, or magnetic fields-did not match what a black hole made out of Earth would have, then that would be convincing proof that Earth had not been destroyed.

Or at least that the black hole the Moon now orbited was not the corpse of Earth.

He set to work reconfiguring the Ring. It took him two or three hours of simulation time even to confirm the idea was possible. It was hard work, complex calculation involving dozens of variables.

Larry was shocked to find that he was having fun working out the problem.

But he had always loved cracking a problem.

Maybe the human race would have been better off if he had stuck to jigsaw puzzles.

The sims confirmed that the job was doable-but then it occurred to Larry he had better get some authorization on this one. True, the director had offered complete access, but even so... He punched up the director's office on the intercom.

Raphael's voice boomed out of the speaker.

"Raphael here."

"Sir, Larry Chao down in Control Room Four. I'dlike to set up the Ring as a gravity detector and see what we can find out. It seems as if everyone else has canceled out their experiments anyway-"

"Do what you want, Chao. Do whatever in G.o.d's name you want. I can't see that it will make the slightest bit of difference."

The line went dead as Raphael cut the connection. Larry s.h.i.+vered to hear the defeat in the old man's voice. Raphael had given up, accepted the fact that Earth was destroyed, and surrendered himself to sorrow. Perhaps he was only being realistic. What possible point could there be to activity, to effort on this day?

But no. Larry wasn't made that way. Even if it was crazy to do so, he had to keep on trying. Better to be insane and fighting than sane and defeated.

He began laying in his configuration.

The Autocrat of Ceres sat in his very plain chair in the very plain compartment, and regarded the two very nervous people before him with regret. He was going to have to kill them.

"I'm very much afraid," he said, "that I don't have much choice in the matter. You were each expected to show cause why I should not put you to death. I have seen no such cause shown. Instead I have seen two people who have allowed a petty squabble over mining rights to degenerate into another useless rock war. It is your egos, and not the mining rights, that prevent justice in this case. And the Autocrat's Law requires me to remove all obstacles to justice.

Case closed." The Autocrat nodded toward his marshals, and they stepped forward.

The plaintiff screamed, the defendant fainted.The marshals were good at what they did. Within seconds, both of the claimants were restrained, sedated, and being taken away, toward the Autocrat's very plain, very famous, very deadly airlock. The one where pressure suits were not allowed. The place to which human obstacles to justice were quite literally removed.

Justice, as with many other things in the Belt, was in short supply, and when available, was not of the best quality-too rough, too harsh and too rushed. To the Inner System dandies who visited now and again, the Autocrat's Law seemed barbaric, violent and vengeful. But to the Belters, who had no other source of justice, the Autocrat's Law represented civilization itself. In all the wide, wild, ungovernable vastness of the Asteroid Belt, they knew there was one place, one name, one law that all could trust. Only the Autocrat's Law could protect them against themselves. Harsh and final it might be, but so too was it impartial.

For the Belters knew the Belt was huge-ungovernably huge. There could be no law when law enforcement was impossible, and no conventional enforcement was possible when the population density was something less than one crotchety misanthropic old coot per million cubic kilometers. It was easy for other things besides law to get lost in the midst of all that vast expanse.

Things like sanity, order, trust, proportion.

Megalomania was an easy disease to catch when a man or a woman could have a world-albeit a very small one-for the effort of landing on it. And if your own world, why not your own law, your own empire? Why not declare the divine right of kings and expand outward, conquering your neighbors as you go?

The Belt had seen a thousand rock wars between independent states, many of which consisted of two rock-happy miners taking potshots at each other. If lunatics wanted to exterminate each other, that wastheir own affair, but there was a more serious and basic problem. Other people could get drawn in, or get caught in the cross fire. In all likelihood, the Autocrat had saved dozens of lives this day by blotting out the leaders in this pointless fight.

But, obvious as the case had been, the Autocrat had taken pause before rendering his decision. The present Autocrat of Ceres was a most careful person. But so was the previous holder of the post, and the one before that. No other sort of person would ever be appointed.

Not only Ceres, but the entire Belt Community as well depended on the Autocrat's authority to supply order, discipline, regimentation, at least to Ceres and its surrounding satellites and stations. Anarchy surrounded Ceres on all sides, but even the Belt's wildest anarchists knew they needed Ceres to be stable, orderly, predictable, to be a place where a trader could buy and sell in safety.

The rules might change elsewhere with every pa.s.sing day, but at Ceres the Law was always the same. Claims filed in the office of the Autocrat were honored everywhere-for they were backed not only by the Autocrat's Law and Justice, but his Vengeance.

Nothing but fair dealing was ever done in a Ceres warehouse. None but fair prices were ever paid. No one brought suit frivolously. For the Autocrat himself stood in judgment of all cases.

By the Law, the Autocrat was required, in every case from unlicensed gambling straight up to claim jumping and murder, to find cause why the death penalty should not be exacted against one-or both parties-to the case. If the Autocrat could not-or would not-find such cause, plaintiff and claimant, accuser and defendant died.

The Autocrat's Law had a long reach. Many defendants were tried in absentia, having chosen to flee rather than face a day in court. But as thesaying went, If the Autocrat finds you guilty, he will find you in the flesh. His bounty hunters-and his rewards-found the guilty everywhere. Very few places refused to honor his warrant-and none were places a sane man would flee towards.

Indeed, fear of the Autocrat's Justice prevented all but the most worthy claimants from coming forth to ask it, and prevented all but the most venal from risking its power. Calls for justice were few and far between when the sword was as sharp as it was double-edged.

Today, however, the Autocrat found himself besieged. Radio calls were coming in from all over the Belt reporting claim frauds. Claims beacons were being s.h.i.+fted, were even vanis.h.i.+ng. Legally beaconed asteroids, even a few with active mines, were being moved without the claimant's authority.

Having disposed of the last court case for the day, the Autocrat stood up from his courtroom and hurried toward his private operations room.

One or two of his predecessors, the more self-important ones, would have been coldly furious at this a.s.sault on claims filed under the Autocrat's authority. Perhaps they would already be calling the marshals, preparing to broadcast attack orders, offering ma.s.sive bounties.

The Autocrat was tempted to do just that himself, but he hesitated. It was the duty of the Autocrat to think before acting. Who would dare wage such a wholesale a.s.sault on claims in the Belt?

Who had the sheer raw physical power to move whole fleets of asteroids? Who had that many of the ma.s.sive fusion engines required for the job? How had they made the complex preparations for the job without anyone noticing?

He reached his private ops room and felt himself relax a bit. The Autocrat was a solitary man. At times of crises he preferred to work by himself, alone with his own thoughts and reflections. He sat down at his desk.An alert notice was blinking in the center of his desktop controls. Something big had happened. The Autocrat pressed the playback control. A screen came to life and he read with mounting astonishment the words that scrolled past. The incoming reports were obviously garbled, confused, bizarre, contradictory. Most of it he flatly did not believe. But something remarkable had clearly taken place in the Earth-Moon system.

In the meantime, the Autocrat had his own worries. He powered up his holographic display system and set the controls to provide a schematic of the entire Belt, highlighting the various claim-jumping complaints. He leaned back in his chair and examined the glowing midair image carefully.

There were dozens of complaints, perhaps two or three hundred. More complaint lights were appearing in the tank even as he watched. The pattern reminded him of something, some other representation of the Belt. Almost on a whim, he called a display of the Belt's population density. The pattern matched the claim-jump display almost precisely. The more people in a given volume of s.p.a.ce, the more reports of claim jumping and rock s.h.i.+fting. How could there be so many? Where would anyone be taking all of these rocks? No way to know that yet, not enough time had pa.s.sed to establish any sort of vectors. But the Autocrat had a practiced eye for such things, and could tell the rocks weren't all headed toward the same place.

Wait a moment. The claim jumping matched the population-density display. Why would someone go to the trouble of moving only claimed rocks, when there were millions more left unclaimed? He was not seeing a display of all the rocks that were moving, but only of the rocks people saw and cared about.

What about the other rocks?

He activated the voice command system. "Giveme a radar track of the entire Ceres Sector," he said. "Track and display all claimed and unclaimed asteroids that are maneuvering without authorization. Add the results to the display in front of me now."

He leaned over the tank and watched the area around the dot of light representing Ceres. A whole forest of lights began to blaze around it. "Correlate this data with reports of unauthorized moves, a.s.sume similar numbers of maneuvering asteroids throughout the Belt, adjusting for population density in reporting moves, distribution of asteroids throughout the Belt and other standard interpretive factors, and display results."

Suddenly the whole Belt was gleaming with light.

"My G.o.d," the Autocrat said. "How many? What is your estimate?"

The answer appeared in bold numbers, floating in the center of the tank: 10,462.

The Autocrat slumped back in his chair. Ten thousand. Over ten thousand asteroids were on the move.

No one, no one could do that.

And no one who could do it would have any reason to fear the Autocrat's Justice.

How long without sleep? Larry asked himself, trying to think back far enough to get an answer. It must be going on twenty hours by now, he realized.Or was it thirty? It was hard enough to keep track of time, in this place of artificial day and night, even when you had a normal routine to rely on.

He rubbed his weary eyes. It had taken forever to lay in the detector-mode settings by hand. At least, if it worked, he could bring them up automatically next time. But it would still take the Ring a while to set itself into the new mode.

He watched the monitors track the progress of the Ring toward scope mode, and let his mind step back a little, away from the narrow technical problem to the bigger picture.

Time to face the facts square on. Hundreds of years of searching, hundreds of years of silence had convinced everyone that there was no source of life except Earth. It was a given, an a.s.sumed fact. But no matter how firm the belief against extraterrestrial intelligence was, there was only one possible explanation for what had happened to Earth. An alien invasion.

The words seemed crazy even as he thought them. How mad would they seem when he worked up the nerve to say them?