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  Reassured, Nikki moved closer and sat next to him on his bed.

  "I wouldn't ask you to. I only want to sleep with you… here… in your bed."

  "Nikki, you're a very beautiful woman and I'm tempted to take advantage of you."

  "I'm the one taking advantage of you, Frank. Let me be in your arms while I sleep, and if we make love, so much the better," she stood up and her silken nightgown glided past her lithe body, coalescing around her feet.

  Frank said nothing, but stared in wonderment, amazed at the boldness and exquisite beauty of this woman. Nikki crawled under the covers next to him and held him. He put his arm around her as she laid her head on his chest. He felt her warm suppleness against his body and knew that he would lose if he tried to resist her. They fell asleep that way and sometime during the night they made love, mixing their dreams with reality, peaking, and then subsiding.

  Frank awoke nine hours later at Dyna's call, somewhat rested. Nikki was up and sitting at his table eating breakfast.

  "Good morning, Frank," she said, "How are you feeling this morning? If you can tell when it's morning and when it's not." She sat there looking back and forth between him and her breakfast as she ate, waiting for an answer. She was wearing his shirt with nothing underneath.

  "As well as can be expected," he said groggily. "Breakfast, Dyna."

  "Coming up, Frank. You're on in an hour," Dyna said.

  "Never thought I'd be reporting back to work again," Frank muttered to himself as he crawled out of bed. As he clothed himself, a thought came to him. "Dyna, what do we have in the way of self defense weaponry?"

  "We have warbots, spybots and of course, speed."

  "Ah, not very much."

  "I don't know about that, Frank," Nikki interrupted, "From what I've seen of those warbots, I don't think we have much to fear from anyone."

  "Not from anyone we know. But we know nothing about other races, other civilizations and particularly, other starfaring races. I don't really expect any antagonism from them, but what if we were to run into a nasty bunch?"

  "I don't understand 'nasty bunch.' What does that mean?"

  "What I mean is, what if we run into other people, not like us, who are mean and want to hurt us? We have very little defense against those people, and the warbots, good as they are, simply aren't made for battles in space."

  "But Frank, we're peaceful. Dyna told me we don't make war."

  "True, Nikki. But peace and freedom only come to us at a price. And the price of peace and freedom is power, military power, enough power to show those who would take our freedom away from us that we can make it not worth their while. We don't want to be seen as helpless. We are, after all, very much on our own right now."

  "I see what you're saying, but what can we do?"

  "We can do anything. Anything you can imagine can be made. Dyna, how many warbots do we have?"

  "Ten, and three more are being built."

  "Let's expand that assembly line. I want to build ten each day."

  "Compliance, Frank. It'll take twenty days to complete a new assembly line to meet this need."

  "How are we on space? Is there enough space aboard the ship to start a few more labs and assembly lines?"

  "We have four hundred and fifty thousand square meters of space available, Frank."

  "In other words, plenty."

  "Affirmative."

  Nikki was finished eating when Frank finally sat down to start on his breakfast. She stayed at the table to keep him company and steal some of his bacon as he ate. After he finished eating he gave her a kiss and headed for the bridge. He met Heidi in the hallway on the way up.

  They arrived at the bridge ten minutes early to start their shift. Michelle and Anna were on the bridge staring into 3-D imagers when they arrived. After some greetings and settling, Michelle briefed Frank and Heidi on the latest goings on.

  "Dyna doesn't know what it is. She can only guess," Michelle explained.

  "What do you think it is?" Frank questioned.

  "I don't know, but the areas where we seem to experience it the worst are places where, according to Dyna, there's a lot of interstellar matter. It's almost as though every particle has a ghost in transpace. The particles exert a force against the forward motion of the ship. The faster we go, the worse it'll get. Right now, the forward fields are at full strength and nothing is getting through. But if the fields fail, we could become more interstellar matter. At some point, there'll be a limit to our transpace velocity."

  "Has Dyna estimated that velocity?"

  "She has and she hasn't. Apparently, our velocity will be limited by the amount of space dust we encounter. As we approach the center of the galaxy, we'll see more and more of it. If we leave the galaxy, there's much less to deal with. But we only seem to find it in patches. Those patches, however, can be deadly. Fortunately, we saw the problem in time. When we started to strike the first few, we increadsed the field strength. The bad part is that we can't do anything to improve the fields without going to sublight velocity. Until we reach our destination, we're stuck with what we have."

  "So what's our plan now?"

  "Continue on course, watch and have care. If we have to stop, then we have to stop. We're a long way from anywhere. We'll compensate as best we can."

  "Dyna, is there danger of our running into a planet or star ghost?"

  "No, Frank. I've plotted a course that will take us around all of the known star systems. But if we find a velocity beyond which we cannot go, we won't be more than a few weeks away from a star system where we can settle in and make adjustments."

  "How badly are these 'dust ghosts' hitting us now?"

  "It's not very bad at all right now, but we're increasing our velocity every moment. The effect is very light. In fact you're not able detect it with your human senses. But eventually, there'll be a battering effect that will be disturbing and perhaps even dangerous. At our present acceleration, I estimate that you'll begin to notice an occasional vibration in about four days. We have nine days before turnaround for deceleration. If we can make it that far, there'll be no foreseeable delays."

  "Then I suppose we'll just have to live with it."

  Things went fairly well for the next four days, and just as Dyna had predicted, Frank and the other crewmembers began to notice occasional vibrations. Each day the vibrations got worse. By the eighth day after first discovering the problem, it had nearly grown to a battering affect, so Frank and the rest of the crew all agreed to stop accelerating. They agreed that the small delay this would cause would be worth it. About a day later they crossed turnaround and another day after that they began deceleration. This did not reduce the vibration immediately, but just knowing that there would be less each day was heartening for the crew. Getting a decent night's sleep had become difficult, and eating had become a crapshoot. Even so, the crew settled into a routine.

  The women had apparently set up a schedule for themselves, and each night gave Frank a new bed partner. There seemed to be no particular pattern for this. They apparently were trading off nights with one another. Frank did not interfere with this pattern, nor did he ask about it. He was satisfied with the arrangement and would not be the one to knock over the bucket. This did not imply that he had sex every night. It only meant that he never slept alone. Anything beyond that Frank left up to his consort for the night.

  He made no requests and he never coerced anyone.

  On the twenty-first day of the maiden voyage of the Butterworth, everyone gathered on the bridge for debreak as they approached the center of the galaxy. Suni was on shift as captain and Paddy was first mate.

  "Debreak in fifty-eight minutes," Dyna said. "Visual spheres are ready and power shutdown is underway on all non-essential subsystems."

  Talk was light and nervousness ran through the crew like electricity. Excitement and fear were the uniform of the day.

  "Fourteen minutes," Dyna called.

  "About time for the 'dazzle-sphere,"' Frank
said. "Keep us out of trouble, Suni."

  "Aye, Frank," she replied.

  Frank, Tia, Sandy and Maria decided to do the spheres, while the rest watched from the bridge. Once again, Frank found himself surrounded by the whiteness of transpace, engulfed in an unreasonable trap of furtive disquiet.

  "Eight minutes."

  Frank stared as the colorful stars against the white background of space visibly slowed down. "Are we slowing down that quickly?" he asked himself. During turnaround he had seen the forward viewscreen and nearby stars had been streaking by so quickly they'd almost been invisible.

  "One minute."

  Now the stars were slowing down even more. Soon, they were barely moving.

  "Thirty seconds."

  Now the red star dead ahead grew larger. Frank knew this was not really a star, but the effects of debreak. Soon they would enter the red star and be back into realspace.

  "Ten seconds."

  The red star had grown large and began to consume the clean and dirty of white space. It grew larger and larger until it reached out to grab him. He jerked slightly from the impact, which never came, but found himself staring at blue. The red had properly shifted behind him.

  "Debreak is completed, sublight velocity is presently two hundred and seventy-five thousand KPS," Dyna announced.

  The stars flipped around as Frank found himself face-to-face with the wall of the sphere, and a slightly bloodied nose. The whole movement had occurred in a fraction of a second. He pushed himself back away from the wall and found himself weightless for a few moments. Staring at the sphere, he realized that Dyna was doing evasive maneuvers as something large, ugly and cold swept past his head, blocking off all of the stars behind it.

  "What the hell was that?" he yelled.

  "Black hole," Dyna responded. "Sorry about the rough ride. I responded as quickly as I knew we were headed directly towards it."

  Gravity returned and Frank touched the control on the arm of his chair and returned to the bridge, his nose dripping blood.

  Tia and Sandy came out of their spheres seemingly unscathed. Likewise on the bridge everyone was all right, albeit a little shaken.

  "Why am I the only one bleeding?" he asked.

  "You have the largest nose," Dyna answered. A couple of giggles came from the bridge crew. "I'm sorry, Frank, but it was a highly calculated maneuver. Any less and we would have collided with the dead star. I risked bumping your nose to save the ship."

  "Why didn't we see it in the first place?" he asked, as a small medbot came up and started nursing him, cleaning up the dripping blood.

  "We can't easily see a black hole from thirty-two thousand light-years away. This couldn't have been prevented without first charting and mapping these systems. I'm doing it now. If it's any consolation, we won't have a problem with this one again."

  "Great," he answered, and sat down. The main screen viewer had finally returned to the normal black of space with white or off-white stars of multiple colors.

  "Goodness, goodness me," Paddy said, as she stared at her 3-D imager.

  "What?" half of the crew said.

  She looked around, dumbfounded, and said, "I’m picking up subspace RF readings–radio!"

  "Can you translate?" Suni asked.

  "Which one?" Paddy responded.

  "Which one?? How many are there?"

  "Hundreds."

  Three

  "Can you get a fix on 'em?" Frank asked.

  "They're coming from all directions. I'll try to pick one up and translate," Paddy said.

  "Okay. Where's that black hole we almost killed ourselves on?"

  "It's behind us, now," Suni answered.

  "Don't you think we ought to check it out? There's a lot of matter there we can use—after we see what makes it tick," Frank said.

  "Sure Frank. Dyna, turn us around."

  "Coordinates computed… and locked in."

  "ETA?"

  "Fourteen minutes to orbit, Suni."

  "Thank you, Dyna."

  "Wow, look at the stars," Sandy interrupted.

  "So many!"

  "And so close!"

  "And so pretty!"

  The darkness of space was inundated with a sky full of light from stars, near and far.

  "Dyna, verify our location, please," Frank said.

  "Verifying, Frank."

  "How are you doing on the translation, Dyna?" Paddy asked.

  "Still working, Paddy. Everything seems to be encrypted."

  "Thank you."

  "Location verified, Frank, we're near the center of our galaxy, verification based on locations of known intergalactic patterns."

  "Thanks, Dyna."

  Everything quieted on the bridge as the starship approached the small spot in space where everything was just… missing. What light entered could not leave.

  It was black inside of black.

  "Any readings yet?" Frank asked.

  "I'm picking up high-energy emissions at the fringes. This is definitely a black hole."

  "Dyna, are we clear of the event horizon? I don't want to play around this thing for ten minutes and come out three thousand years later."

  "All clear, Frank. Event horizon is four-hundred kilometers below our orbit."

  "Lots of matter there, folks. It’d be nice if we could get it."

  "There may be a way," Michelle interjected. "The same way we make breaklight, only much more intensified. The gravity fields would have to be much stronger. The theory can be tested, and we may have to get much closer to the event horizon."

  "Or we could use a dronebot," Anna suggested.

  "That would be best," Michelle agreed.

  "Okay. You two can work on that," Frank said.

  So, Michelle and Anna started to work on the dronebot that would be sent beneath the event horizon of the black hole. Suni and Paddy continued their watch and monitored the 'airwaves' while Dyna decoded the RF transmissions and made sure that the ship did not fall into the black hole they were orbiting. A day later, Paddy and Dyna finally began to unravel the coded RF transmissions.

  "It's the news," Paddy said, "and it appears to be the galactic news, the odd thing is, it's not today's news and not even yesterday's. It seems to be anywhere from one to a thousand years old!"

  "Hmmmm," Frank said, "I wonder what that means?"

  "It could mean two things; One, they can't send information faster than light speed, and two, galactic space is highly commercialized."

  "Yes… and that means something very important to us."

  "It does?"

  "Yes. It means that galactic civilization isn't as far along as we might've guessed. Or at least most of it isn’t."

  "They could be sending faster-than-light signals that we can't detect."

  "Perhaps. Where is it coming from?"

  "Shipping traffic. Apparently, there's an awful lot of trade between star systems, and as the starships pass one another in the shipping lanes, they send radio signals back and forth."

  "Good work, Paddy."

  "Thanks, Frank. Oh, there is one other thing."

  "Yes."

  "I think I know how fast their starships travel."

  "You do?"

  "Maybe."

  "Well?"

  "About two-hundred times the speed of light, maybe three-hundred."

  "That’s all?"

  "I'm not certain, but we did manage to plot the heading and velocity of what we thought was a single transport. And that was the speed we got from it."

  "Just one."

  "We only had recorded data to go on. We can't pick up much of anything right now, we're too close to that dead star."

  "I understand. Don't worry, we'll be moving away from it after we're finished figuring out whether we can get some of its matter. We can find out more later."

  Anna and Michelle were ready to test their drone after a week. Ship's business was to investigate, and more had been discovered about black holes in space by Frank and his crew in that
week than all of earth had been able to learn in a hundred years. In the mean time, at Frank's direction, Dyna began sending dronebots, one each week, back to earth, so that news could be kept up with there. If a disaster were to occur there, Frank had much to offer in the way of assistance. Now that he knew space was heavily populated, he worried that his home world might not go untouched by alien hands, after all, business is business.

  "Is this the only dronebot we have for the event horizon experiment, Michelle?"

  "Yes, Frank. But we have two more being constructed. This one is designed to go into the event horizon at well above c, so the breaklight fields will be operating, but we're going to try going in sublight with the next one."

  "How can we go in sublight?"

  "That's part of the experiment. We don't want to go into the black hole greater than c because we don't know what lies beyond the event horizon, but if we can find a way to approach it at a reduced velocity, perhaps we can take the entire ship inside."

  "The first part's okay, but do we really want to go into this thing?"

  "Frank, have you ever seen the inside of a star? Aren't you curious? I thought this was a scientific mission—a mission of discovery. We can't investigate a black hole if we can't see it."

  "It is a scientific mission. But let's tread lightly here until we know what we're dealing with."

  "Very well, but don't make up your mind until my experiment is complete. Wait… for me?" Michelle begged demurely.

  "Alright, since you put it that way, how can I refuse."

  "Mmph," she kissed him, "Thank you, darling."

  "The first drone is ready to launch," Anna said.

  "Good," Michelle said, "Dyna, launch the dronebot."

  Frank, Michelle and Anna watched a wide-screen 3-D imager as the little neutronium-encased dronebot raced away from the ship in a quickly decaying orbit that would take it down to touch the event horizon. If Michelle's experiment worked, it would make an orbital velocity that exceeded the speed of light, enter the event horizon, and return a few minutes later. If the experiment failed, the little drone would never be heard from again.

  "Radio link good?" Michelle asked.

  "Radio link verified," Dyna answered. "Drone velocity approaching breaklight."