Sharn nodded.
‘Since you’re so smart, Billy, you’ve probably worked out that Bertha is a star – a big star … a star, that is, with an abnormally large mass. And I do mean abnormally – it’s got an unique chance to grow here. It has accumulated bulk from the nebula. Its mass must be something above twenty-five million times the mass of Sol.’
Dominguey whistled. ‘A pretty tall order! Though I see it is well placed for stellar growth processes. So you think it is just a gigantic accumulation of dead matter?’
‘Not at all. There’s no such thing as dead matter in that sense. Baron’s the scientist – he’d tell you if he wasn’t heading for catatonia. You get such a mass of material together and terrific pressures are set up. No, I’m saying Bertha is a tremendous live sun built from dead nebular matter.’
‘That’s all nonsense, though, Eddy. We don’t even see it properly except as a shimmering blackness. If your theory were correct, Bertha would be a white giant. We’d all be scorched out of existence, sitting here so close to it.’
‘No, you’re forgetting your elementary relativity. I’ve worked this out. This is no fool hypothesis. I said Bertha had twenty-five million times Sol’s mass for a good reason. Because if you have a sun that big, the force of gravity at its surface is so colossal that even light cannot escape off into space.’
Dominguey put his mescahale down and stared at the nearest bulkhead with his mouth open.
‘By the saints … Eddy, could that be so? What follows from that? I mean, is there any proof?’
‘There’s the visible distortion of distant starlight by Bertha’s bulk that gives you some idea of the gravitational forces involved. And the interferometer offers some guide. It’s still working. I used it out on the surface before I came back aboard. Why didn’t you try it? I suppose you and Baron panicked out there, as Malravin did? Bertha has an angular diameter of twenty-two degrees of arc. If the mass is as I say, then you can reckon its diameter in miles. Should be 346 times the sun’s, or about some 300 million miles. That’s presuming a lot, I know, but it gives us a rough guide. And from there a spot of trig will tell you how far we are from Bertha. I make it something less than one billion six hundred million miles. You know what that means – we’re as far from Bertha as Uranus is from Sol, which with a body of Bertha’s size means we’re very nearly on top of it!’
‘Now you’re beginning to frighten me,’ Dominguey said. He looked frightened, dark skin stretched over his cheekbones as he pressed his temples with his fingertips. Behind them, Baron and Malravin were quarrelling. Baron had tripped over the other’s foot as he lay with his head in the drive box, and they were having a swearing match. Neither Dominguey nor Sharn paid them any attention.
‘No, there’s one hole in your theory,’ Dominguey finally said.
‘Such as?’
‘Such as if Erewhon was as close as that to its primary, it could never hold its orbit. It would be drawn into Bertha.’
Sharn stared at the captain, mulling over his answer. Life was a misery, but there was always some pleasure to be wrung from the misery.
‘I got the answer to that when I was outside rolling on the sterile stinking rockface,’ he said. ‘The vapour came pouring over the ground at me. I knew Erewhon was too small to retain any atmosphere for any length of time. In fact it was diffusing into space fast. Therefore, not so long ago, that atmosphere was lying in hollows on the surface, liquid. Follow me?’
Dominguey swallowed and said, ‘Go on.’
‘You made the assumption that Erewhon bore a planetary relationship to Bertha, Dominguey. You were wrong. Erewhon is spinning in from a colder region. The rocks are heating up. We haven’t settled on a planetoid – we’re squatting on a hunk of rock spiralling rapidly into the sun.’
There came the sound of a blow, and Malravin grunted. He jumped at Baron and the two men clinched, pummelling each other’s backs rather foolishly. Dominguey and Sharn ran up and pulled them apart. Dead or not, Baron was giving a fair account of himself.
‘All right,’ Dominguey said angrily. ‘So we’ve run ourselves ragged. We need sleep. You three bunk down, give yourselves sedatives. I’ll get on fixing the cybo, Malravin. Set the alarm signal for nineteen hours fifty, G.M., so that we don’t miss calling Grandon and Brinkdale, and bunk down. We want to get out of here – and we all want to get out of here. Go on, move – you too, Eddy. Your theory has me convinced. We’re leaving as soon as possible, so I’m having peace while I work.’
In turn they all protested, but Dominguey was not to be over-ruled. He stood with his hands on his hips, his dark face unmoving as they climbed into their bunks. Then he shrugged, set the alarm on the communication panel, and crawled into the drive compartment.
It was not a matter of simple replacement. Fortunately they had spares for the little sinecells which studded the main spiral of the cyboscope that steered the ship. But the spiral itself had become warped by the extra strains placed on it during their penetration of the nebula. Malravin had drained its oil bath and removed its casing, but the business of setting it back into true was a slow precision job, not made easier by the awkward angle at which it had to be tackled.
Time passed. Dominguey was listening to the sound of his own heavy breathing when the alarm bell shrilled.
He crawled out into the cabin. Sharn and Malravin were already rousing and stretching.
‘That’s four hours’ hard grind I just put in,’ he said, pushing his words through a yawn. ‘Eddy, see if you can raise the other ships, will you? I must have a drink and get some shut eye. We’re nearly set to blast off.’
Then he pointed to Baron, his ashen face, the crimson stain over his chest. In two steps he was over to his bunk. Baron lay contorted on his left side, gripping a handful of blanket. He was dead with a knife in his ribs. Dominguey let out a cry that brought the other two down onto their feet.
‘He’s been murdered! Jim’s been murdered! One of you two. …’ He turned to Sharn. ‘Sharn, you did this. You’ve killed him with his own explorer’s knife. Why? Why?’
Sharn had gone as pale as Dominguey.
‘You’re lying, I never did it. I was in my bunk asleep! I had no quarrel with Baron. What about Malravin? He’d just had a fight with Jim. He did it, didn’t you, Malravin?’
The alarm was still shrilling away. They were all shouting. Malravin said, ‘Don’t you call me a murderer. I was fast asleep in my bunk, under sedation as ordered. One of you two did it. It was nothing to do with me.’
‘You’ve got a black eye coming on, Malravin,’ Dominguey said. ‘Jim Baron gave you that before you hit the sack. Did you stab him to even up the score?’
‘For God’s sake, man, let’s try and raise the other ships while we’ve the chance. You know I’d not do anything like that. You did it yourself, most likely. You were awake, we weren’t.’
‘I was stuck with my head in the drive all the time.’
‘Were you? How do we know?’
‘Yes, he has a point, Dominguey,’ Sharn said. ‘How do we know what you were up to? Didn’t you arrange for us all to get a bit of sleep on purpose, so that you could bring this off?’
‘So he did, the filthy murderer,’ Malravin shouted. ‘I wonder you didn’t finish us all while you were about it.’ Putting his hands up, he charged at Dominguey.
Dominguey ducked. He jumped to one side and hit Malravin as he lumbered