We returned to our research. We still had some time before the last collapse of the dark star.
It had cooled nearly to death. Now there was still some thermonuclear activity within that bizarre core, enough to keep the star too warm for an actual landing. It was radiating primarily in the optical band of the spectrum, and by stellar standards its temperature was nil, but for us it would be like prowling the heart of a live volcano.
Finding the star had been a chore. Its luminosity was so low that it could not be detected optically at a greater distance than a light-month or so; it had been spotted by a satellite-borne X-ray telescope that had detected the emanations of the degenerate neutron gas of the core. Now we gathered round and performed our functions of measurement. We recorded things like neutron drip and electron capture. We computed the time remaining before the final collapse. Where necessary, we collaborated; most of the time we went our separate ways. The tension aboard ship was nasty. Miranda went out of her way to provoke me. And, though I like to think I was beyond and above her beastliness, I have to confess thai I matched her, obstruction for obstruction. Our alien companion never made any overt attempt to annoy us; but indirect aggression can be maddening in close quarters, and the microcephalon’s benign indifference to us was as potent a force for dissonance as Miranda’s outright shrewishness or my own deliberately mulish responses.
The star hung in our viewscreen, bubbling with vitality that belied its dying state. The islands of slag, thousands of miles in diameter, broke free and drifted at random on the sea of inner flame. Now and then spouting eruptions of stripped particles came heaving up out of the core. Our figures showed that the final collapse was drawing near, and that meant that an awkward choice was upon us. Someone was going to have to monitor the last moments of the dark star. The risks were high. It could be fatal.
None of us mentioned the ultimate responsibility.
We moved toward the climax of our work. Miranda continued to annoy me in every way, sheerly for the devilish-ness of it. How I hated her! We had begun this voyage coolly, with nothing dividing us but professional jealousy. But the months of proximity had turned our quarrel into a personal feud. The mere sight of her maddened me, and I’m sure she reacted the same way. She devoted her energies to an immature attempt to trouble me. Lately she took to walking around the ship in the nude, I suspect trying to stir some spark of sexual feeling in me that she could douse with a blunt, mocking refusal. The trouble was that I could feel no desire whatever for a grotesque adapted creature like Miranda, a mound of muscle and bone twice my size. The sight of her massive udders and monumental buttocks stirred nothing in me but disgust.
The witch! Was it desire she was trying to kindle by exposing herself that way, or loathing? Either way, she had me. She must have known that.
In our third month in orbit around the dark star, the microcephalon announced, “The coordinates show an approach to the Schwarzschild radius. It is time to send our vehicle to the surface of the star.”
“Which one of us rides monitor?” I asked.
Miranda’s beefy hand shot out at me. “You do.”
“I think you’re better equipped to make the observations,” I told her sweetly.
“Thank you, no.”
“We must draw lots,” said the microcephalon.
“Unfair,” said Miranda. She glared at me. “Hell do something to rig the odds. I couldn’t trust him.”
“How else can we choose?” the alien asked.
“We can vote,” I suggested. “I nominate Miranda.”
“I nominate him,” she snapped.
The microcephalon put his ropy tentacles across the tiny nodule of skull between his shoulders. “Since I do not choose to nominate myself,” he said mildly, “it fells to me to make a deciding choice between the two of you. I refuse the responsibility. Another method must be found.”
We let the matter drop for the moment. We still had a few more days before the critical time was at hand.
With all my heart I wished Miranda into the monitor capsule. It would mean at best her death, at worst a sober muting of her abrasive personality, if she were the one who sat in vicariously on the throes of the dark star. I was willing to stop at nothing to give her that remarkable and demolishing experience.
What was going to happen to our star may sound strange to a layman; but the theory had been outlined by Einstein and Schwarzschild a thousand years ago, and had been confirmed many times, though never until our expedition had it been observed at close range. When matter reaches a sufficiently high density, it can force the local curvature of space to close around itself, forming a pocket isolated from the rest of the universe. A collapsing supernova core creates just such a Schwarzschild singularity. After it has cooled to near-zero temperature, a core of the proper Chandrasekhar mass undergoes a violent collapse to zero volume, simultaneously attaining an infinite density.
In a way, it swallows itself and vanishes from this universe—for how could the fabric of the continuum tolerate a point of infinite density and zero volume?
Such collapses are rare. Most stars come to a state of cold equilibrium and remain there. We were on the threshold of a singularity, and we were in a position to put an observer vehicle right on the surface of the cold star, sending back an exact description of the events up until the final moment when the collapsing core broke through the walls of the universe and disappeared.
Someone had to ride gain on the equipment, though. Which meant, in effect, vicariously participating in the death of the star. We had learned in other cases that it becomes difficult for the monitor to distinguish between reality and effect; he accepts the sensory percepts from the distant pickup as his own experience. A kind of psychic backlash results; often an unwary brain is burned out entirely.
What impact would the direct experience of being crushed out of existence in a singularity have on a monitoring observer?
I was eager to find out. But not with myself as the sacrificial victim.
I cast about for some way to get Miranda into that capsule. She, of course, was doing the same for me. It was she who made her move first by attempting to drug me into compliance.
What drug she used, I have no idea. Her people are fond of the nonaddictive hallucinogens, which help them break the monotony of their stark, oversized world. Somehow Miranda interfered with the programming of my food supply and introduced one of her pet alkaloids. I began to feel the effects an hour after I had eaten. I walked to the screen to study the surging mass of the dark star—much changed from its appearance of only a few months before—and as I looked, the image in the screen began to swirl and melt, and tongues of flame did an eerie dance along the horizons of the star.
I clung to the rail. Sweat broke from my pores. Was the ship liquefying? The floor heaved and buckled beneath me. I looked at the back of my hand and saw continents of ash set in a grouting of fiery magma.
Miranda stood behind me. “Come with me to the capsule,” she murmured. “The monitor’s ready for launching now. You’ll find it wonderful to see the last moments.”
Lurching after her, I padded through the strangely altered ship. Miranda’s adapted form was even more alien than usual; her musculature rippled and flowed, her golden hair held all the colors of the spectrum, her flesh was oddly puckered and cratered, with wiry filaments emerging from the skin. I felt quite calm about entering the capsule. She slid back the hatch, revealing the gleaming console of the panel within and I began to enter, and then suddenly the hallucination deepened and I saw in the darkness of the capsule a devil beyond all imagination.