Free IGMS Issue 11 by IGMS Page A

hole depended on its revolutions around Earth.
    The rumbling drone of the station's maneuvering rockets came to a sudden and unexpected halt. Nikolai looked over at Trevor in surprise, but Gretchen continued shouting out numbers at a frantic pace.
    "Retchin!" interrupted Trevor. She looked up from her monitor, her face a pale, oily mask of sweat.
    "Gretch, we're out of gas."
    Her shoulders drooped and she looked over at Nikolai's downcast expression. "Are we far enough away?"
    The Russian shrugged his shoulders. "We did leave a safety margin in our figuring."
    "Well," said Trevor, "there's not much point in worrying about it. Let's strap ourselves in."
    The two astronauts and the cosmonaut used nylon straps with carabineers to clip their pressure suits to the hull of the station. After cinching the straps tight, they donned their helmets and gloves and fastened them in place. They hoped the suits would protect them in case the control module depressurized.
    "Nikolai, how much time do we have?" asked Trevor.
    The Russian looked at his watch. "Couple of minutes," he said.
    "Remember," said Gretchen, "if we get crushed, you owe me five bucks."
    "Bet's off, I think we're too close."
    The burn from the station's rockets had left it in a slow spin. The control module had only one small window and they watched as the Earth rotated past it -- giant, pale, blue. Moments after the planet left the small field of the window, they could see ISBH-147. Close now, its event horizon appeared almost as large as the moon and to the crew of Space Station Alpha it was visible only as a peculiar absence of stars.
    The station had never been so quiet. Most of the electronics and machinery were powered off. The inside of the control module looked like a storage unit because any items that might be of use had been moved inside of it. The hatches at either end, as well as every other portal in the station, had been sealed. Nikolai was concerned that even if the maneuver was successful, the immense gravitational forces would rip the station to pieces. In close proximity to a black hole, the difference in gravitational pull between one side of the station and the other might be enough to tear it in half. For Gretchen and Trevor, the point was moot because they were both certain they were about to be crushed.
    As they sat in the revolving, weightless quiet -- the only sound their breaths against their facemasks -- they momentarily forgot all about the black hole. Instead, their minds spun clips from a hundred film reels -- episodes of life with family and friends and lovers and places long forgotten. The station turned to the black hole one final time and now it filled most of the window. It was a solid black disk, but in their momentary glimpse the crew felt that somehow the interior of it was textured, as if it was squirming with the turmoil of a primal furnace, pitch black fire burning in a pitch black stove. Gretchen clenched her fists into a death grip. "I love you," said Trevor, referring to Gretchen, and his wife, and his family and his friends and his planet and everything else except the reckless indifference of the thing that hurtled toward them.
    Trevor saw the edge of the earth come into view. He would never be sure if it was a thing real or imagined, but for the rest of his life he would have a memory of the Earth's surface beginning to deform in the very last instant. In his mind's eye, he would forever be able to see it bulging upward like a young child reaching for its mother.
    When it happened, it happened with the anticlimactic, punctuated crunch of a car crash. The sound of tearing metal accompanied a bone-rattling jolt. Gretchen's poly-laminate face shield cracked open on the corner of an instrument console. Trevor's violent lunge ripped the buckle from one of his safety straps and Nikolai smashed open his laptop with the back of his helmet. During the event, the three of them all had a terrible sensation as if they were falling