Xeelee Redemption by Baxter Stephen

Author:Baxter, Stephen
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473217249
Publisher: Orion Publishing Group
Published: 2018-08-22T16:00:00+00:00

The black hole itself was the heart of a complex system. It sat in a sea of fire, centred on that great hemispherical dome of darkness. And that dome itself was rimmed by brilliant white-gold light, a pure arc. Like a distorted dawn, Jophiel thought.

‘That lake of fire. The accretion disc?’

Asher said, ‘We’ll make an astrophysicist of you yet, Jophiel. We are about five astronomical units from the event horizon. Meaning, about the orbit of Jupiter.’

‘The orbit of Jupiter,’ Nicola said. ‘Sounds an awfully long way. But in this strange system we’re falling awfully fast.’

‘Right. How long before—’

‘Forty-four minutes,’ Asher said. ‘Before the closest approach to the event horizon. Our velocity is over ninety per cent of lightspeed; our mission was to get here as fast as possible, so we didn’t decelerate. I unfolded the light aberration . . . I thought we deserved to see the view. We aren’t going to fall into the black hole itself. We won’t get that far. But—’

‘We know the plan,’ Jophiel said. ‘This probe was designed as a one-way mission. I designed it that way. At closest approach, or anyhow at closest safe approach, we’ll send a message back to the Cauchy. They’ll receive it in a year and a half – as they are one and a half light years out – and all the data we’ve retrieved, and the essences of us, will be returned. Reintegrated into the memories of our templates. We will be remembered. Everything we saw, felt – even this conversation, I guess. But we—’

‘We all knew the deal,’ Nicola said brutally. ‘You said it yourself, Poole, when we woke up. Your first words.’

‘I did?’

‘“Lucked out.”’

He forced a smile. ‘Should be on my gravestone.’

‘You’re not going to get a gravestone. Still less a statue.’

‘But what we have got,’ Asher said, ‘is work to do.’

They all shut up and focused.

And the fragile little missile, still tracking a stream of Xeelee caches like a cautious fish following a school of whales, fell steadily in towards the centre of everything.

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