changed least.
Even allowing for his care, however, it seemed to him he was making too many strikes. The black hole, he thought, was more massive than he knew and would swallow up its prey from a larger distance. That made it more dangerous, but increased their chance of rescue.
He worked his way through the lock and back into the ship. He was bone-weary and his right shoulder hurt him.
Funarelli helped him off with the suit. "That was terrific. You were throwing rocks into the black hole."
Estes nodded. "Yes, and I'm hoping my suit has been stopping the X rays. I'd just as soon not die of radiation poisoning."
"They'll see this back on Earth, won't they?"
"I'm sure they will," said Estes, "but will they pay attention? They'll record it all and wonder about it. But what's going to make them come out here for a closer look? I've got to work out something that will make them come, after I have just a little time to rest."
An hour later, he lifted out another space suit. No time to wait for the recharge of the solar batteries in the first one. He said, "I hope I haven't lost the range."
He was out again, and it had become clear that even allowing a fairly wide spread of velocities and direction, the black hole would suck up the slowing rocks as they moved inward.
Estes gathered as many rocks as he could manage and placed them carefully on an indentation in the hull of the ship. They didn't stay there, but they drifted only exceedingly slowly, and even after Estes had collected all he could, those he had placed there first had spread out no more than billiard balls on a pool table.
Then he threw them, at first tensely, and then with growing confidence, and the black hole flashed-and flashed-and flashed.
It seemed to him that the target became steadily easier to hit and that the black hole was growing madly with each impact and that soon it would reach out and suck him and the ship into its never-sated maw.
It was his imagination, of course, and nothing more. Finally all the rocks were gone and he felt he could throw nothing more in any case. He had been out there, it seemed, for hours.
When he was within the ship again he said, as soon as Funarelli had helped him off with his helmet, "That's it. I can't do anything more."
"You had plenty of flashes there," said Funarelli.
"Plenty, and they should surely be recorded. We'll just have to wait now. They've got to come."
Funarelli helped him off with the rest of his suit as best his muscle-torn body would allow. Then he stood, grunting and gasping, and said, "Do you really think they'll come, Ben?"
"I think they've got to," said Estes, almost as though he were trying to force the event by the sheer power of wishing. "I think they've got to."
"Why do you think they've got to?" said Funarelli, sounding like a man who wanted to grasp at straws but didn't dare.
"Because I communicated," said Estes. "We're not only the first people to encounter a black hole, we're the first to use it to communicate; we're the first to use the ultimate communication system of the future, the one that might send messages from star to star and galaxy to galaxy, and that might be the ultimate energy source as well-" He was panting, and he sounded a little wild.
"What are you talking about?" said Funarelli.
"I threw those rocks in rhythm, Harv," said Estes, "and the X-ray bursts came in rhythm. It was flash-flash-flash-flash-flash-flash-flash-flash-flash, and so on."
"Yes?"
"It's old-fashioned; old-fashioned, but that's one thing everyone remembers from the days when people communicated by electric currents running through wires."
"You mean the photograph-phonograph-"
"The telegraph, Harv. Those flashes I produced will be recorded and the first time someone looks at that record, all hell will break loose. It's not just that they'll be spotting an X-ray source; it's not just that it will be an X-ray source moving very slowly against the stars so that it has to be within our Solar System. What it is, is that they'll be seeing an X-ray source going on and off and producing the signal sos-sos-And when an X-ray Source is shouting for help, you'll bet they'll come-as fast as they can-if only to see-what's-there-that-"
He was asleep.
- And five days later, a drone ship arrived.
***
Incidentally, it may occur to some of my Gentle Readers that there is a certain similarity between