“Hmmm.” Forward thought about it, then shook his massive head. “You’re talking about a surface gravity in the millions. Any gravity generator I’ve ever heard of would collapse itself at that level. Let’s see, with a frame supported by stasis fields…no. The frame would hold, and the rest of the machinery would flow like water.”

“You don’t leave much of my theory.”

“Sorry.”

Carlos ended a short pause by asking, “How do you think the universe started?”

Forward looked puzzled at the change of subject.

And I began to get uneasy.

Given all that I don’t know about cosmology, I do know attitudes and tones of voice. Carlos was giving out broad hints, trying to lead Forward to his own conclusion. Black holes, pirates, the Tunguska meteorite, the origin of the universe—he was offering them as clues. And Forward was not responding correctly.

He was saying, “Ask a priest. Me, I lean toward the big bang. The steady state always seemed so futile.”

“I like the big bang, too,” said Carlos.

There was something else to worry about. Those mining tugs: they almost had to belong to Forward Station. How would Ausfaller react when three familiar spacecraft came cruising into his space?

How did I want him to react? Forward Station would make a dandy pirate base. Permeated by laser-drilled corridors distributed almost at random…could there be two networks of corridors, connected only at the surface? How would we know?

Suddenly I didn’t want to know. I wanted to go home. If only Carlos would stay off the touchy subjects—

But he was speculating about the ship eater again. “That ten billion metric tons of neutronium, now, that you were using for a test mass. That wouldn’t be big enough or dense enough to give us enough of a gravity gradient.”

“It might, right near the surface.” Forward grinned and held his hands close together. “It was about that big.”

“And that’s as dense as matter gets in this universe. Too bad.”

“True, but…have you ever heard of quantum black holes?”

“Yah.”

Forward stood up briskly. “Wrong answer.”

I rolled out of my web chair, trying to brace myself for a jump, while my fingers fumbled for the third button on my jumper. It was no good. I hadn’t practiced in this gravity.

Forward was in midleap. He slapped Carlos alongside the head as he went past. He caught me at the peak of his jump and took me with him via an iron grip on my wrist.

I had no leverage, but I kicked at him. He didn’t even try to stop me. It was like fighting a mountain. He gathered my wrists in one hand and towed me away.

Forward was busy. He sat within the horseshoe of his control console, talking. The backs of three disembodied heads showed above the console’s edge.