They Were Giants

         

Captain Williams shuffled before the review board like a ghost in chains, red eyed, unshaven, and set a small case on the table.

'Captain?' The chairman asked,alarmed.'You wish to present your report?'

'Yes.' He muttered. He groped blindly for his papers.

'I discovered something.'

'What was that?'

Williams raised red eyes.

'We weren't meant to be out there!'

'That's what I learned, gentlefolks of the committee. That's what it'll say in my report.

'You want an account of the incident in the Coalsack, the loss of the Glory Be, and what happened to Peter Lanyard? Here it is.

Double hull ship, Pioneer class, private contractors to the Centauri Exploration Consortium., my own 'Hope Springs' and the detachable scout, Lanyard's 'Glory.Be' . We were dropped off by a robot cargo juggernaut fifty miles long., whose Kawasaki engines glowed all across the spectrum as it emerged from hyperspace.

All around us, a cluster of fifty thousand suns glittered like the mother of all necklaces, calling our scout souls to prayer.

It was Taylor who found the Siren.He was a bald, runty,sickly man who wore old school spectacles. Like most espers, a neurotic sociopath, heartily disliked: but every ship carried one. Out in space, far from the psychic noise of mankind, their sensitive mental fields scanned where no machine could. The lives saved, the fortunes made, were worth the aggravation.

Taylor belonged to Lanyard, my exec. My own esper, Naginata, was a cold fish who spent his time meditating alone. Maybe that was why he's still-

But I get ahead of myself. Here's the ship's log., complete with my commentary.'

Captain's Log, 1200 hrs, 112-2850; Dathan Williams commanding.

We are cruising through what spacers call a Shambles, a thick soup of dust and young stars and half-born planets, using a bow-shield to deflect rubble from our path. . We're looking for anything really, resources, life., knowledge. In space, scientific and astronomical information was sometimes worth more than simple mineral wealth.

We use the 'Glory' to collect ore samples, bioscoops, plant specimens, for the cluster was rich in M class planets.

My own esper, Naginata, sits meditating all day, annoying me with his superior attitude. But he earns his keep. It was he who directed us into a chaotic system with an ice world rich in good old H2O. (In space, water is a very valuable resource ). A parsec or so distant was a strange swirly blackness resembling nothing so much as a storm shot through with lightning. Maybe it was the proximity of this thing that disrupted the ice-planet system. We had our pert astrophysicist Sandy Mantura hunched over a hot computer for hours, and thought no more about it until Taylor went crazy.

1400 hours, same day

The control room is always hot with the machines everywhere, and we don't have the luxury of AC like passenger craft,: yet Taylor was shivering., muttering to himself.Present were Jan Munro,navigator, and helmsman Henrecki,who never did give us a first name, and myself. Taylor worried me.How much of his behaviour was esper, how much insanity?

In the half-light of the red lit room., he reminded me of a ghost.

'Outside, the stars flare,' he muttered,'Like mourners conducting us to the pyre.' He cradled himself in his own arms. Then he wheeled suddenly and pointed,eyes blazing.'THERE!'

'What the hell-' Henrecki jumped several feet.'What's there?'

Taylor goggled at me, that strange double brightness still in his gaze.'Ghost voices.It calls.Something-go there!'

'Why?' I demanded.

He frowned at my skepticism.'Something big.' That was how he talked.

I raised Lanyard.in the Glory. 'Bill.. you heard?'

'Roger that. What do you think?'

'I think he's coo coo, but what do I know?'

'What's the plan?'

'Take Taylor in the Glory Be. Have a nose around. But watch yourself.'

*****************

. I turned to the Oriental-actually from their colony Tycho City on the Moon-and looked enquiringly at him.

'Anything?'

He sat quietly with that Zen Buddhist stare and looked at me.'No voices, but the whole area has a terrible power –you know how you can feel someone looking at you sometimes?'

I nodded.

'That's how it is. Someone-something-is looking. An awesomely big someone. Lanyard's right., Taylor is coocoo, but check it out anyway. Be careful.'

They checked it out. Sometime later, my surveyor, Tonson, whistled at the readings from the other ship..

'That black swirly cloud-'

'Don't get technical on me, Tim.'

'Heavy metals off the scale. That cloud's gotta be crumbled planets and squashed suns.Which would suggest-'

I nearly didn't get it. I so nearly didn't. The thought of mining a heavy metal cloud. But 'Squashed suns,' brought me out of it.

'Singularity!'I screamed. 'All engines reverse!'



********************

Captain's Log 10:30 hrs 113-2850

The Glory came back to us of course, and together we settled into a parking orbit above the accretion disc. The black hole was small-no more than four solar masses- but plenty big enough to bite chunks out of all the surrounding systems. It looked like a huge spider impaled by a spear of star-stuff through its axis. The great shadow blotting out the stars cast more than physical darkness. Our souls seemed blighted somehow as we waited for the computers and automatic probes to do their stuff, mapping and sampling. People behaved oddly. When I asked Lanyard about his trip., he said,'Do you believe in God, Dathan?' in the oddest voice. Taylor began to laugh, his pale, sweaty face shaking, his fish-eyes bulging.

'What do you mean?'

'There's something there beyond our understanding. Maybe the greatest-' He stared at me.'I'll make up a report.' He and Taylor went off like buddies, leaving me suddenly afraid.

Days were like that. Surreal.

Nights were full of strange visions and murky impressions of fear and horror.

On the third day, I awoke from a screaming nightmare to find Naginata bending over me, his face distorted, his eyes dark and alien. 'Naginata?' my voice was soothing , but my hand groped for the shock pistol under the pillow.

He cocked his head..'Captain?'

The voice, deep, resonant,as if speaking in a large room. Not the human Naginata.

'Who the Hell are you?'

'I have been waiting a long time. A long time.' He flexed his hands.'I had forgotten about man. You were little more than vermin when I was locked in there.'

My skin crawled. I could have put the light on, but I didn’t want to see..

'Locked in there?'

'You have a legend-war in Heaven? All species do.'

I nodded dumbly.'There was war in Heaven:Michael fought and his angels, the Devil and his angels..'

'And the Devil was cast down..' The strange eyes glowed. He looked at me intently.'We were giants once. We bestrode the galaxies. And we reached beyond the stars. There was no end, no limit. Now- Now I have to seek companionship from such as you.'

Strangely, I felt a surge of pity, then stiffened as a sudden thought struck me.

Why was this creature chatting to me like this?

'What have you done with my crew? And what are you hiding there? Is that a hypo?'

He laughed at the gun.'Shoot Naginata if you wish. Taylor opened a link for me to take his mind. His job was to drug or lock up you and your crew. Lanyard and Taylor would then carry you to the scout ship for transport to my lovely home .Unfortunately you woke up too soon.'

He sat down as if having a nice chat.

'I wanted the cruiser outside the black hole for my escape, you see. I have some ideas about that. Sadly, the scout ship will be crushed.'

'Killing the crew.'

'Only physically. Their minds, souls will join me in the Pit, where I will feed on them until I can find new ksi to join me. Let me show you what I mean.'

**********

Williams paused the record.'Forgive me if I become emotional here. I still cannot shake off the awesome sense of that MIND swamping the whole crew, of a Face so appalling in its beauty and cruelty. Of Taylor's voice over the intercom, whispering, 'The Vast Countenance' over and over again,like a worshiper chanting.' He shuddered.'Resume log.'

*****************

'Call me Azazel,'the thing said.'Soon you shall call me your god.' and turned his back.

Then I shot him. The shock beam shut off Naginata's brain and telepathic sense, forcing Azazel instinctively to leap to Taylor's as I had guessed. I had perhaps a minute. I blew the emergency bolts linking the Glory to the main hull, using the captain's emergency control panel. A quick sedative injection for Naginata from his own hypodermic: then I ran like the Devil was at my back to the bridge. I set controls to back us out full drives, and threw the switch just as a gigantic face opened its mouth and roared every instinct of fear and worship at my subconscious mind. It was too much:blackness overwhelmed me.

Little remains to be said. I recovered consciousness an hour later. Naginata was in a coma, but I awoke the rest of the crew and scanned for the Glory. I found some wreckage. I like to think that Lanyard blew her up at the last. I left a warning beacon and headed home.

LOG ENDS

'If you gentle-beings still do not understand, let me spell it out.

Black holes are prisons. They contain beings too powerful for material bonds.

When Azazel spoke to me, he called us ksi, a symbol-word I could not then translate. I can now.

It means cattle.

They were giants, Titans that took worlds as their footstools. When Azazel showed me that Vast Countenance of his, it was not even his evil I feared, great though that was.

But he thought no more of me than a snack. I was a mouse, scurrying round his feet.

Yes, I won’t be going to space again, for fear of the Titans, yes, but there is more than that. Don’t you see it?

If such a monster could be defeated and trapped for aeons,what manner of beings could accomplish that? And how will puny man fare, when we meet Them out there in the Great Dark?'