When the Sun Turns to Darkness

by Mr. David R. Dorrycott

Chapter Thirteen

Rebecca woke to an insistent buzz. "Go way" she muttered, striking out at the clock on her table. She missed, in fact there was no table, and there was a weight on her that kept her from moving much further. "Sandy?" she asked, confused. Bringing her free hand up to her sleep encrusted eyes she started rubbing them clear. "Hon, I gotta get to work or they'll fire me" she complained as she cleared her eyes of sleep. Painfully she opened them, the buzzing still sharp in her ears. "Gah, where'd you hide the damn thing this

time" she complained, opening her eyes to search for the offending clock.

It wasn't Sandy's little trailer. She looked up into a half sleeping face, red hair spilled over features she remembered with a shock. It wasn't Sandy, it would never be raven tressed Sandy again. This wasn't even Earth anymore. Everything came back in a rush. The announcement, Sandy's breakdown... Getting drunk in that 'Gentleman's' club she and Sandy frequented.... She remembered bringing home the stranger to her empty home, a move of desperation caused by loneliness and pain. Then the letter and everything else.

She started crying, something she had managed to avoid so far.

Kathleen finally opened her eyes fully, slapping out with one hand to still the alarms insistent scream. She found herself nearly nose to nose with her love. Rebecca's dark eyes were spilling tears like a broken damn. Lifting herself up on one elbow Kathleen brushed at the tears. "Finally got through that granite wall you call a soul, didn't it" she whispered softly. There was no answer other than Rebecca's arms wrapping around her, pulling back down to crush the smaller woman's body deeper into their shared mattress. Wisely Kathleen let Rebecca cry herself out, clear her soul of the pain she'd hidden since they'd met. At least now she knew the name of Rebecca's last lover, the one who'd abandoned her as she escaped into a world of madness.

"Shhh my darling" she whispered to Rebecca. "I'm here, right hear. I won't ever leave you." She continued making soothing noises, brushing the exotically shaped features of Rebecca's face gently with her fingers. It was the first crack in her chosen partners stone walled facade she's seen and it made her seem the more human. More desirable to be with. Finally the black haired woman cried herself out. Her body racked as she tried to calm herself, massive shudders of reaction traveling down her body one by one until finally she calmed.

"There all gonna die" she whispered, everyone. Even us." Kathleen's lips met her's in answer, stilling any more words. She tried to fight the automatic reaction, tried to push Kathleen's heavier body away but hours of compression during sleep had weakened her muscles just enough that she finally realized she had no option. She surrendered.

"What do you mean we are dead?" Kathleen asked later, much later. She twirled her fingers in Rebecca's shiny hair, still holding her down with her own weight even in the little gravity that their ships spin gave them. It was a comfortable position she'd discovered, one she liked a lot.

"That reporter tried to blow up this ship from the inside" Rebecca answered. "And so far we've been lucky she failed, but luck it won't last if another one slipped past security." She moved her lips aside, causing Kathleen's kiss to graze her cheek. "Stop that, please?" A soft mummer of laughter answered her, more felt that head. "Look, we are a sitting duck up here. A stable orbit, known range, known period. Unless we can break orbit and damn soon someone's gonna lob a missile up here. It'll be all over in a flash of vaporized everything."

Kathleen levered herself off Rebecca, letting the smaller woman breath freely for the first time since she'd returned to bed. "What about the sun? I really don't understand that anyway. You’re the space cadet. Why can't we just stay up here until its over, then go back down? In fact, why would it bother Earth anyway? The sun's awful far away you know."

Rebecca drew in several deep breaths, feeling her body waken fully with enough oxygen. "I don't know exactly Kath, but... From what I understand its like this. Our sun might capture that black hole, that's actually a singularity. A point where gravity is so massive nothing, not even light can escape. Think of it as the mother of all vacuum cleaners. It’s a maybe because apparently the impacts not near dead on. Still, gravity is gonna play hob with our solar system. Its gonna be messy. Just like the dinosaurs.”

"The dinosaurs?" Kathleen asked.

"Maybe, a singularity passing through to Oort.. Comet Belt would cause all kinds of havoc. It'd send a hurricane of stuff towards the sun, and anything in the way.."

"Why won’t the sun just burn it up?"

Rebecca laughed, at the same time twining her leg with Kathleen's. "You don't burn up a black hole hon. It's Darth Vader and you’re a simple citizen. All you can do is run when one comes to town. That's what we're doing, running. We hope. Its in a super long period orbit with our sun. Millions an millions of years. Why didn't someone see it before now? Probable a few or your Dinosaurs did see its first pass, but they neglected to leave a note about it for us. If they did, its dead certain that tha post awful lost it. Goddess Kath, Science wasn't even advanced enough to detect it until around 1890. Even in 1960 people wouldn't have believed it. Black Holes were still Science Fiction."

"So somehow someone noticed, then somehow someone important enough believed them and we end up with Explorer. What about Earth? What's going to happen to Earth? Will it explode or get sucked in?"

"I don't know what's going to happen on Earth" Rebecca admitted. "Depends on distance, angles, gravity, acceleration, deceleration and more cellerations than Carter has little liver pills. Probably it won't spiral in. Mercury... Yeah thats a given what with its approach this time. Venus is a maybe. Depends on where it is when close approach occurs. It'll be something like this, I think. If Sol captures this thing the sun will collapse into a spiral around the singularity. It'll probably take centuries to stabilize but... For a few months, even a year or two Earth won't get much heat, and damn little light. Probably twilight at best. That'll crash the vegetable kingdom, it'll snow in Hawaii I bet. Then there’s the shock wave."

"What shock wave?"

"Oh, They'll be a lot of material that just falls straight in, they'll be a rebound from the Blue Event Horizon.." She held a finger to Kathleen's lips as they opened. "Shhh.. This is Astronomy 101, not 105 and I don’t know everything I need to know. I’m just guessing some of this. Bear with me."

"I am.. Bare with you I mean" Kathleen giggled, electing a short laugh from Rebecca as well.

"Your hopeless" Rebecca laughed. "Okay look. Remember I’m self taught. I really don’t know anything about the real hard data. Worst case is everybody dies. The Event Horizon is a point where material is actually sucked into a singularity. At that point gravity increases so fast that a twelve inch ruler weighs a thousand times more at one end than the other. Its said time slows to a crawl there, but anything that crosses that point is lost. Anyway, mass going in is stripped of its electrons just at crossing. Most of this energy escapes from the singularities poles, but some bounces back through the death disk. That's going to do two things, one is heat that material even hotter than the sun's surface, the other is to strip a large amount of mass from the outer edge, throwing it outward. That'll cause a ring of material to exit the solar system at near light speeds. Even Pluto will be damaged."

"And Earth" Kathleen asked, her voice suddenly thin.

"Probably loose a lot of atmosphere" Rebecca answered. "But here I'm guessing. Depending on how hot the debris field gets Earth could get as much heat and light as it did before, more or less. Goddess Kath, in a

hundred years people would consider it normal, though I wouldn't want to be outside in high summer. Not say in Denver. Ultraviolet radiation will be intense. But this ship, when the shock wave hits this ship would be

vaporized. Nothing would remain, not even if we were in Pluto's orbit. At least, not unless we were hiding behind a big planet like say Jupiter. That is worst case."

"Your full of good news" Kathleen sighed. She rolled on her back, or tried too. Explorer's designers hadn't taken into consideration that two people might, just might want to share a bed. Kathleen's naked flesh struck the cold metal wall with a thump. In reaction she screamed and jerked, knocking Rebecca out of bed in a tumble of covers, pillows and flying limbs. "Sorry" Kathleen gasped, rolling to the edge of the bed.

"Very funny, now get me out of this" Rebecca answered.

Kathleen looked at her partner. Rebecca was wrapped from waist to neck in the single blanket and upper sheet, her arms pinned inside. "I thought you liked being tied up" she quipped.

A look of shock passed over Rebecca's features. "Who told... Look, I gotta get to work. I'm an hour late already."

"Okay okay" Kathleen laughed, standing. She bent down, taking a grip on one fold of blanket and sheet. Standing quickly she lifted. It had the desired results as Rebecca tumbled from her unrolling prison, to end up half way across the small room. Standing quickly she spun, throwing her hands out claw like with an accompanying bad impression of a cats hiss. Kathleen laughed, falling back on their bed with a thump. "Your crazy" she managed to say between giggles.

"Yeah, I married you" Becky snapped back. "And your one fish I intend to keep. You find something we can eat..." She held up one hand at Kathleen's sudden change in expression. "Food, breakfast, for our stomachs" she added. "I gotta check my messages and shower. I'm probably in a lot of trouble already." She walked over to the rooms small desk. It served as both writing desk and computer station. Turning on the LED monitor she quietly began running through menus until their shared mailbox popped up. "Lotta messages here for you" she commented. "Maybe I better split out another mailbox."

"You can do that?" Kathleen asked, setting a silver plastic bag next to Rebecca. "How?"

"Oh its easy. Watch." Quickly Rebecca created severial new directories, then told the program to filter messages. In seconds the screen cleared to her directories and a handful of apparently miss-routed mail. Those she returned to sender then deleted. "Okay Kath, to read your mail you touch your name, to read public announcements this one. When you've read a message you can either send it to the bit bucket.. uh.. trash, or save it. Try not to save too much mail, we're limited to five megs apiece."

"How'd you know all that?" Kathleen asked. "My computer at home doesn't, didn’t look anything like this."

"That's because this is Unix, Minix or Lynix. You had what? Windows 95?"

"98."

"Yeah, crashed a lot didn't it?"

"Couple times a day, why?"

Rebecca smiled, putting a hand over one of Kathleen's. "Love, our lives depend on this ship working. How long do you think we'd survive if the systems locked up even once a day?"

"Oh, what does that little laptop you brought with you run on?"

"Dos 7 remember? I stripped it out of a Windows 95 machine. Why?"

"Cause I couldn't understand it" Kathleen admitted

"Press the number of the program you want to run, then hit the enter key" Rebecca laughed. She picked up her 'breakfast.' "Oh my, ham and eggs. You did add water this time?"

Kathleen stuck out her tongue. "I'm hitting the shower first" she shot, vanishing.

Rebecca smiled, turning back to the screen. She selected her directory. There were fifty or more messages waiting. While Kathleen washed up Rebecca ate and read her mail.