Terror, complete and undiluted, is a violent physical force.  Unless it can be channeled into action, it feeds on itself.  After that, it feeds on the person owning it.  And in a universe as infinite as ours, it will eventually feed on everything.

For Aren Fenstar, a space jockey looking to deliver her payloads and meet people from faraway places, it was acute. She suddenly found herself alone in the Black Swan's roaring flight pit.  In this small spectra and helium-powered freighter the only outlet for her terror was a bio-com feed for behind her ear and under her tongue; and when nobody answered, panic grew like a spreading fire.

Somehow she had to fly the Swan away from what was in front of her, away from the anomaly which grabbed her with such unspeakable force.  Dully she wondered about it.  Anyone her age and as inexperienced as she was would have done the same.  From what she remembered the freighters back home had basic flight controls, perhaps a few dozen instruments and a simple computer pod on the panel―and that was that.  Nowadays, however, things were different.  A modern cargo freighter like the Swan was leased and capable of operating in universal conditions.  It had its advanced equipment and gravity-beating systems equal to those carried by many multi-rocketed transports: dozens of major flight and engine controls, hundreds of major instruments to keep track of orbital symmetry and flight attitude, navigation, and hull and reactor performance.  Her copilot, Sam, said it was dual controls―before he hit his head and went unconscious. 

Now, frantically, she turned her head and looked at Sam.  He was still and pale in his elastic flight suit, breathing raggedly.  She found herself thinking in a vague way what might have happened between them in the future, but somehow the familiar questions―such as whether or not you were in love with someone―seemed utterly disconnected from reality.  Even the fact that she was a tomboy, coupled with the unfaced question of whether Sam would live or die, held no shock, no impact.  He was just…there, a part of the pulling and swallowing nightmare.

The Swan.  Come on, now―think about the ship.  Force yourself to think.

She gazed at the control panels―it was hopeless, impossible; the flight pit was a jungle of things she didn't even begin to understand.  Not by herself. 

She felt herself beginning to sob and buried her face in her hands, weeping.  She hadn't known it was possible to be so frightened; but the fear kept welling up, blotting out everything.  And in a minute someone would be talking to her.  Then she'd have to get a grip on herself.

She put the communication feed back under her tongue and waited patiently.  Then she took a deep breath and looked deliberately out the side window.  According to her instruments, millions of miles away, and still supermassive and too close for comfort, was a black hole consuming every small star, every uncharted moon, all solar mass and gaseous nebulae with an electromagnetic digestive tract and a density lighter than air.  Its gravitational force seemed almost supernatural.  In the center of the hole was a cold patchwork of nothingness.  Nestling in a fold in the patchwork was a vacuum, its neutrinos incredibly detailed on the Swan's computer cursors.  Wisps of radioactive gas floated luminously away from it, and a carousel of planetary debris made pinpoints of color around its hollow mouth.

Above the event horizon everything was endless and coldly blue with blazing strips of orange.  The black hole looked much bigger from where the Swan was situated, an overwhelming emptiness in which Aren was faced with certain oblivion.  The naked redshifted glare of the nearest galaxy's dwarf and the sparse high streaks of gas cloud seemed to emphasize the limitless expanse of nothing and her own demise.  The Swan's droning flight pit seemed very small and puny against the vast indifference of what awaited her outside. 

So much for being a competent pilot.

Aren looked down at her trembling hands.  Two fresh tears began to roll down her cheeks.  How long she screamed she had no way of knowing; it was actually about ten minutes, but to her it could have been ten seconds or ten hours.  In between screaming she slapped Sam's face hysterically, again and again, shouting half at him and half into her bio-com, imploring him to wake up.  He sat unheeding, eyes closed, head stiffly upright. 

Now the ship droned on smoothly, the autopiloting sequence holding it rock steady and in a calm trajectory.  In the end, Aren crumpled.  Crying wildly, she buried her face in her clenched fists, hitting every switch possible and trying to shut out the sight of the flight pit's windows and the terrifying vacuum all around.  No one was listening, no one was going to do anything.  The bio-com slipped out of her mouth, clunking softly onto the metal floor.  Immediately the speaker in the pit's roof crackled and a link was established.  It broke into slow, deliberate speech.

“Cargo ship in trouble.  I have received your distress call,” it said. “Put down your feed and listen very carefully.  Do not do anything, and do not attempt to reply to me yet.  I repeat, do not attempt to reply to me yet.”

The voice caught Aren by surprise.  She jerked in her seat, shock making her shriek again.  Then she screamed and laughed all at once, unable to stop herself.  Her hands went to her ears to shut out the horrible sound of her own hysteria; finally, slowly, the screaming began to subside.  You've got to pull yourself together, she thought desperately.  You're a space jockey; you're supposed to be cool, sensible. 

The voice started speaking again. “Cargo ship in trouble, I say again.” The words were clearly pronounced, matter-of-fact. “Do not attempt to reply to me until I tell you.  Up to now you have been keeping your feed under your tongue.  This kind of communication link operates solely on your biological makeup, using the DNA from your saliva as a battery conductor.  When you do that you cannot hear me talking to you.  Now, in a moment I want you to place the feed behind your right ear and speak to me again.  But this time just press the feed switch on the speaker panel in front of you, say yes, and then release it so that I can talk some more.  I will press a button on my end so I can hear you more clearly.  I know it is an old-fashioned method, but if you understand that, say yes now; if you do not, then do not say anything, and I will explain it again.”

Where was the feed switch?

Aren looked wildly around the pit.  The mass of dials and switches and levers seemed to mock her helplessness, hiding the small black and gray panel among them.  If she didn't find it, the voice would go away.  If she didn't find it, all hope was lost.  She'd finally located the thing; it had practically been in front of her.

Then she saw the curly black wire the feed was supposed to be connected to when not on remote.  Her eyes followed the wire to the floor, and there it was.  The little black plug-in.  She grabbed the wire, pulled it up, and a second later she had a two-way comlink.  She put her lips to the speaker panel and pressed a button.

“Yes.  I have it!” Her words came out in a muted, terrified croak.  Several seconds passed before she remembered to let the button go.

“Good.  Now I want you to switch to neutral gravity, because this will buy us some time.  Then tell me calmly and clearly what has happened on your end, without speaking for too long, if you have a copilot, and remember to talk into the panel and sit absolutely still when I stop talking.  Got it?”

Aren took a deep breath, feeling her whole body shuddering.  However crazy, however incredible it was to be talking to a disembodied voice speaking into the panel out of thin air, she had to calm down, she had to answer.

“All right.  I mean, yes,” she said nervously. “I have a copilot.  But he's out cold! My name is Aren Fenstar.  I'm a flight messenger, and I deliver parcel.  We jettisoned some empty fuel bulbs yesterday and were thrown desperately off course.”

“I see.  Well, it's nice to meet you, Aren,” the voice said. “My name is Cal, and I'm going to try and help you.  Can you tell me the name of your ship?” he asked.

“The Black Swan,” she replied anxiously. “Sam, my training pilot and navigator, looks like he has a concussion.” The words sounded hollow, disconnected, as if somebody a universe away were saying them. “He hit his head and passed out suddenly, and now I can't make him get up.”

“Everything will be all right, I promise.  I see you on my monitor as we speak.  What's happened is you've wandered into a forbidden sector and crossed paths with a very nasty black hole.  You're in the Devil's Divide.”

Aren cringed. “If you see me that means I can disengage my airlocks and you can get us out of here.  Troubleshooting my cursor readings, I'm about 23.8 million miles in.”

“I know, but it's not that simple,” Cal voiced despairingly. “You're also another 57 million miles off course, and the light speed differentials surrounding you and that vacuum is constant.  You're temporarily stuck in the reentry phase of the event horizon, a sort of intermittent loop, which is why you can't escape its gravity.  Also, I'm nowhere near you where I can just magically whisk you away in some rescue ship.  You were lucky I picked up your signal when I did and at this great distance.  It's a miracle, really.  I'm in an emergency outpost over 300 million miles away.”

Aren leaned back, confused. “Emergency outpost?”

“Yes, a monitoring station in space.  I might as well be in a whole other universe.  Luckily, my outpost's communication satellite is light-year free so transmission comes instant.  Now what I'm going to try and do is guide you away from the event horizon.  Hopefully, you still have time to get out of its gravitational field.”

“But I'm not qualified enough,” she cried uncontrollably.

“Yes, you are,” he insisted. “You can do this.” 

“Please, why don't I just disengage the airlocks? Then you send a ship and have another party get me out of here.” 

“There's no one in the vicinity.  You must calm down, Aren, and you must listen to me.  That isn't just any ordinary black hole.  You're in the path of an extremely bright and active young galaxy with an internal nucleus.  I can't explain how you wandered into its path, but that vacuum before you is part of a quasar!”

Once more, Aren looked through the side window.  No, it can't be a quasar, she thought to herself.  It was too small, too dark.  But the closer the Swan got to it, the bigger and brighter it became.  The electromagnetic force and luminous bands radiating from its center was stronger than a trillion suns―billions of times stronger than a supernova or a gamma-ray burst―and its mixed bag of intergalactic ingredients, now streaming perpetually inside its warped funnel, seemed ready to implode.

Above the massive celestial body was a compressed halo of matter, surrounding the central line and many newborn galaxies, eating up the old and filtering out the new.  Cursor readings aboard the ship registered energy release levels equivalent to the output of a hundred galaxies combined.  Still in awe, it was another moment before Aren took her thumb off the transmit button.  This time Cal seemed to be waiting for her. “All right,” he said. “Just relax, and we'll get this sorted out.  Now, first of all, do you happen to know if the freighter's on autopilot?”

For a moment Aren blinked―and then the memory came suddenly.  Of course it was.  Sam had sequenced it before the accident.  She felt the trickle of new tears on her face.  She had to stop being stupid; most of all, she had to stop being insecure.

“Come on, Aren.” There was a trace of urgency in Cal's voice now. “I need to know if your ship's on autopilot.”

Aren squeezed the bio-com behind her ear, returned to the transmit button on the panel and said hoarsely, “Yes.  Yes, it is.  Sam put it on before…before we got pulled in.” She looked at the still figure beside her.  Sam's face was deathly white and immobile.  Under his flight suit his turtleneck moved in slow, irregular jerks as he breathed.

“Good.” Cal's relieved tone was lost in the hiss of the 300 million mile nebulous transmission. “That, along with the neutral gravity shift, gives us some time then.  So first of all, I want you to sit back and relax, get a grip on yourself, and just listen.”

“Get a grip on yourself,” Aren laughed. “That's easy for you to say.  It's not like you've flown out of the path of a black hole before.”

“Perhaps I have.” Cal's voice was unruffled and masterful. “Just trust me.”

Aren looked down at the controls in silence.

Then she said, “All right.  I'm listening.  I only hope you know what you're doing.” She closed her eyes and leaned back in her seat, trying to still her fluttering muscles.  Just pretend it's a simple delivery run, she thought; calm down and think sensibly.  She pressed a quivering hand to her ear and reached out the other. “I'm…all right now.  Calmer than before.”

“That's good.” Cal's slow, disembodied voice seemed to fill the pit.  Its matter-of-factness was somehow steadying. “Next, have you tried to revive your copilot?”

“Yes.  I slapped his face and shook him.” Aren felt tears starting down her cheeks again. “But there was no reaction.”

“All right, Aren.” The voice was soothing, reassuring. “Forget that for the moment; we'll come back to it later on, when we've got you out of the Divide.  Now I've got one or two questions about the ship you're in.  Okay?”

Aren took a deep shuddering breath. “Yes.  Go on.”

“Right.  First, do you know if your rockets have a built-in light drive? -- Because you're going to need one.”

She tried to think. “I don't know.  He―I mean, Sam―said, but I don't remember.  The energizers process dark matter, I remember that, if that's any help…I've never been in a light drive ship before…” She trailed off hopelessly. “My parents drove very basic upper atmosphere vessels when I was a girl.”

“Okay, okay.  I'd rather got that impression.” Cal acted deliberately droll and unconcerned. “What you can tell me, though, is what class ship you're in.”

“G59… G59 star freighter.” She explained it.

“Fine.  And now, would you tell me where you took off from, how long ago it was, and where you're going?”

Aren tried to cast her mind back.  She hadn't noticed the time before they left, and like most messenger pilots, she didn't own a watch capable of light year measurement.  It was usually pick-up and deliver, and that was all. “We left from Titan some four months ago,” she finally said, guessing.  Then she said into the panel, “We were going to…er, Rodan.  Near Metabelis Point.”

“Ah, so the drop-off was in the Hermes Nebula.” With that bit of information, Cal now understood what kind of fuel the Swan operated on, how much it ate up in the course of one interstellar trip, and what model light drive it used. “All right, not to worry.  Spectra.  That's good stuff.  Now, I want you to look on the computer panel to your right.  You'll find a touchpad with a visual clarification atlas of the nearest and safest solar system.  Every cargo ship has one.  Can you tell me where that system's largest dwarf is in relation to you? It may sound silly, but it'll tell which way you should be heading, you see.”

Dwarf? Did he mean…a sun? Aren reluctantly raised her eyes to the side window again.  The huge emptiness of the ever-swallowing void with its massive solar streaks brought on a new wave of fear. “System's in the west quadrant.  Computer cursors and atlas confirm it.”

“Good.  And now, lastly, it'll help if you can tell me if your ship has four rockets or six.  In other words, whether it's got half a dozen energizers or less, beneath the hull.  G59's are rented but well-equipped.”

“Just four.  Sam said it was dual controlled.  Two energizers and two thrusters per side.  Left and right.”

“That's fine.  You've done very well, Aren.” Cal hesitated, then carried on. “Now I'm going to leave you for a moment while I pull up some blueprints and gather my data.  I'll get back to you in a minute or two, so just sit tight.  And whatever you do, don't fiddle with the communication link we've established.  At this distance we may lose it permanently.  Okay?”

Aren nodded.  The idea of touching anything in the flight pit filled her with horror. “Yes, okay,” she said.

“Good.  All right, then, I'll leave you now for just a moment.  Just relax.”

Aren nodded for the second time.  With Cal's voice gone, she felt terribly alone again.  She clenched her teeth to stop their chattering and gripped her ear tightly with her right hand, as if the device there were something precious.  The Swan roared on, serene and steady, the event horizon drawing it closer with each passing minute.

While Cal was away, Aren tried to make Sam as comfortable as possible.  The realization that up to now she'd practically ignored him came as a shock.  Twisting in her copilot's chair, it made no visible difference: he went on breathing slowly and irregularly.  She pulled his medium-sized frame into the chair next to hers.  She tightened his seatbelt, her fingers shaking and clumsy, and undid her own belt to relieve the pressure on her abdomen.  Almost automatically she noticed that his neck was abnormally rigid.  But he was still breathing.

She sat back, trying to think what to do next.  Her mind was almost blank, every thought disjointed and spaced out.  She leaned over and picked up his right hand.  It was a large hand, very masculine and capable-looking―if only she, too, had been that capable―which somehow made its flaccidity all the more frightening.  His skin was cool under her fingers as she felt for the pulse on the wrist.  The beat was thin and erratic and seemed slow.  The head was still bruised.  She put the hand back in his lap and, reaching up to his face, raised his eyelids, first one and then the other.  The eyeballs were rolled upward, but the bottoms of the pupils were still visible.  Both were dilated.

That ought to add up to something, she thought.  Neck muscles in spasm, pupil dilation, irregular pulse.  She shook her head and whispered hopelessly, “Please be all right, Sam.” She took his still hand in hers. “I…I know I may never get the chance to say this to you again―hey, who knows, I'm probably not even your type―but I love you, Sam Walsh.  I really do.  I love you something awful.”

The ship wriggled violently for a moment and then settled, a tiny sunlit cell hanging rock steady at the top of the swirling cloud of nothingness.  Aren found herself crying again, the tears racing like before.  She made small animal noises of terror, as the Swan was pulled inward, deeper and deeper into the spiraling vacuum.  Her fear had reached its highest point; if the human brain is subjected to extreme fright for an extended period of time, it eventually reaches saturation.  Unable to cope any longer, Aren's conscious mind broke out into a state of extreme shock and confusion.

She knew the ship was going to be swallowed, knew it quite certainly.  But the odd thing was that she couldn't imagine what it was going to be like.  After all, no one had actually been swallowed by a black hole and lived just long enough to tell about it.  The flight pit was too warm and solid, compared to the cold suppleness of space, too sturdy to think of it shattering and crumpling in an instant of time.  Earlier on she'd been terrified of dying, of the Swan's power reserves going out on her and tumbling slingshot millions of miles per minute into the void―but now, now that it was really going to happen, she couldn't imagine it at all.  It was as if the horror had been used up, dulled by overexposure.  Death was just another word.

She twisted her head so she could see the other small celestial bodies through the side window.  Planets and moons floated alongside each other in semi-concentric circles, rising and falling gently.  She could even see a neutron star; funny to have something so parallel and bright talking to you in the middle of space.  There it was, so near yet so displaced, and it was just a remnant of something which had once been a thousand times larger.  She wanted to know more about such things.  And now she never would.

“Aren, are you still there? I have G59 blueprints up on my screen.” Cal's voice came back over the speaker with startling suddenness. “Hello there, Aren? You still with me?”

She took Sam's hand and looked dazedly at the panel in front of her.  For some reason the words echoing out seemed unimportant.  The spatial scene was changing with the sinking of the event horizon, as it began its tremendous collapse in on itself, taking on the electric blue and orange coldness of the birth of a whole new galaxy.

She had to go on trying.  Just until she knew that death was inevitable.  And if it were, she would not have regretted her final hours of life for a moment.  She had seen something no one else could possibly see. 

And she had Sam.

The communication feed blurted out again, “Come on now, Aren! Pull yourself together.  Will you please answer me?”

She gasped with shock, then fumbled with Sam's arm in her lap and put her right hand back to her ear.  She held the transmit button down on the panel with her left hand and put her mouth forward. “Yes.  Yes, I'm still here.”

“Good.  I'm glad you haven't given up hope yet.  Now just keep your voice nice and loud.  Okay?”

“All right.”

“Fine.  Now, I want you to start setting the light drive accelerator in front of you three settings above parsecs.  Can you do that, Aren? That's three settings.  It should be a silver panel with yellow and red numeric switches.”

“I've found it.  Accelerator set.”

“Good.  Now I want you to drop any excess weight you might be holding, from pods to crates.  Everything! The lighter you are, the easier it'll be for you to break free of the event horizon's intense gravitational shift and jump to the next system.  Also, having the Swan on neutral gravity contributes to the upkeep of this.”

Aren flipped a series of levers above her.  She heard the cargo doors in back of the ship open. “Cargo jettisoned,” she said.

“That's great, Aren.  Now I want you to set your quadrant bearings to 1.34486.  I'll say that again: 1.34486.  It should be a big square button just above the atmospheric longitude dial, just to the right of your velocity control motherboard.”

“Got it.”

“Excellent!” Cal spoke slowly and loudly, keeping the anxiety out of his voice; he, too, was admittedly nervous. “Now let's go to advanced rocket settings.  Tell me if there's any irregular or amplified energy buildup before you use the light drive.”

“Will do.”

“Good, Aren, very good.  Now I need to know, do you think you're ready to make the jump? Are you ready to leave the Divide?”

Aren glanced nervously at Sam.  His stillness suddenly frightened her more than ever. “Yes,” she said. “I…I'm ready.”

“Do you believe in yourself, Aren, believe that you'll manage this?” Cal asked. “Because this is it.  Once you make the jump, you won't be able to thank me.”

Closing her eyes and putting her hands firmly in front of her, she said, “Yes, I believe!” Part of her mind seemed to be curiously detached from her body, sitting somewhere behind her shoulder and watching the girl at the controls.  She felt contemptuous in a distant sort of way, because an hour earlier that same girl was reacting very stupidly.  Her body was rigid with tension when she should have been thinking calmly and clearly.  She ought to relax, this little one.

The speaker came to life. “That's great stuff, Aren.  You're in perfect formation.”

She could feel the sinking in the pit of her stomach as she initiated the light drive sequence.  The strange thing was that, with Cal and Sam by her side, there was no evidence of her failing.  The frosty void millions of miles before her still looked exactly the same, not coming up to meet her at all.  She quivered from head to toe during the initial countdown.  The Swan was in a side orbit, a sort of knife's edge, moving clean and fast.  The conflict in neutralized gravity created a weird floating sensation, the rumbling freighter just hanging there suspended in space, yet motionless in the vortex of universal creation itself.

The detached part of Aren's brain watched dispassionately.  The real her went on sitting upright, still grasping the controls.  Then, when the words “you're safe” sank in, she collapsed forward and buried her face in her hands.  The small, lonely sound of her sobbing was lost in the rumble of the Swan's graceful departure and triumphant escape.

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