Chapter 7: Two Deaths

In an instant I was up the gangway to the bridge, shouting the very first thought that entered my mind:

"Evasive actions, Mr. Turnbuckle!"

I barely felt the ship swerve away as the helmsman followed orders swiftly, and was only barely aware of Mr. Arrow's voice shouting something about lifelines. I was immediately atop the bridge, gaining a place beside the Doctor, who was watching the star. I looked hurriedly at the control panel near the helm for damage. None yet.

The fiery tidal wave of the explosion, carrying with it fragments of blazing matter, soon gave chase to us. The wave overtook us in no time, blasting the Legacy with its excruciating heat, and ripping through her sails with its fire. I again glanced at the controls. Damage began to increase with rapidity: thrust was lost in the Main topgallant and the Fore topgallant sails as the blazing rock tore through them once, then again. "Mr. Arrow!" I shouted over the quick crescendo of the roar of the star.

Damage to the Mizzen staysail, once. Again.

"Secure those sails!"

Mr. Arrow shouted at the hands. The roaring star was deafening in its death, and its heat was nearly unbearable, despite the Legacy's protective shield. I couldn't understand it. Supernova stars weren't usually so powerful so soon after destruction.

But I had little time to ponder. I eventually felt dangerously vulnerable; the solar winds were fierce, laced with flames, and it was taking all of me to keep my footing. A lifeline would have secured me much better, had I taken the time to find one. Also, it occurred to me that the Doctor was not wearing his, either. I made to turn and shout at him, but I noticed before I could do so that the control panel read that we lost more than ten percent thrusting capacity from the Foresail. Whirling back to face the controls, I peered around to see Pigors and Greedy leap from the shrouds in a narrow escape from collision with a large mass of rock, which carried on it almost the entire Foresail. "Blast!" I roared, and called through the communicator to the mechanic below, "Mr. Meltdown! Report to the bridge—immediately!"

Meltdown sprouted up from below deck and I sent him to controls at the cannon; he would destroy any rock that may come hurtling toward the ship. It worked for a time; thrusting capacity decreased less and less as the sails were taken in by the hands; damage to the hull, for the time simple dents and minor collisions, were controlled as best we could with Meltdown at the cannon. However, we were not prepared for what was yet to come.

From somewhere deep within the belly of the star a massive wave erupted, allowing the escape of an enormous molten rock, perhaps ten times the size of the Legacy, which came careening toward us faster than we could make our retreat. I heard the helmsman begin to shout frantically, with extravagant facial contortions to emphasize his panic, that the thing was coming on too quickly, and adding, a little dramatically, that we were all going to die. I couldn't help wondering how close to the truth his conclusion was.

On deck, I could see the men scatter and point, screaming and crying in their uncontrollable panic. I could hear Onus shout from the crows' nest to the crew that they were facing their last hour; they must all say their prayers.

Agitated, I wiped my hair from my face and eyes, preparing to shout another desperate order to Mr. Arrow, when the Legacy reared to the right and the giant boulder paused before us. There was a hideous sound that rose up from the collapsed star that sounded almost as though a last sigh. Then, immediately after, the star began to inhale.

And we began to move as though in reverse: the boulder, the fire, the wind, and the R.L.S Legacy tipped in the opposite direction and went flying back toward the star. There was a wretched moment in which the hands paused and thought themselves saved; then Onus, high overhead, shouted in awe, his voice getting pulled into the perishing star's opening jaws:

"Captain…! The star!"

I closed my mouth tightly as the Doctor rushed to the railing of the bridge beside me and murmured, his voice rising for every word he uttered, "It's… devolving into a… a black hole!"

The helmsman Turnbuckle began to struggle for his life at the helm against the star's gravitational pull. I could feel my hair whip about and pursue the opposite direction; the wind had changed its course.

The ship fell uncontrollably toward the gaping chasm that had taken form before us. I searched my mind for the solution to this problem. I felt there had to be something. I sensed more than I saw Mr. Arrow hesitating frantically below me. It was as if the entire crew had stopped breathing.

And then Turnbuckle was shouting. The wind and the roar and the black hole drowned his voice and made it seem very far away, but I perceived in his inflection sheer panic—and then the last two words of his sentence rattled my ears: "Pulled in!"

With that he went flying, the helm and the gravitational pull having overpowered him. He skidded across the bridge floor and took a terrific blow to the head that knocked him cold. Involuntarily I ran for the helm and gripped it, turning it with all my strength, determined to escape the gaping black mouth that was summoning us into it.

The raging flames that were now churning within the throat of the hole bubbled over and spread with blinding rapidity, bringing upon the Legacy a blow so powerful it threw us a good fifty miles away from the jaws. The distance was quickly recovered. However, it knocked the Legacy's crew off their feet, and it took all of me to keep my balance. The Doctor was knocked off balance and he slid across the floor, followed by the lifeless body of Turnbuckle, and landed heavily against the control panel, gripping the edges of its platform and staring blindly at the display.

We were overcome by several excruciating waves, one after the other, successively, each throwing us a good fifty to seventy miles away, only to be pulled nearer to the black hole again. After the third or fourth blow of heat, I succumbed to my frustration and shouted loudly, "Blast these waves! They're so deucedly erratic!"

"No, Captain!" I heard the Doctor shout in reply. I turned to look at him, baffled. He continued hurriedly, and I noticed he had been examining the control panel, "They're not erratic at all! There'll be one more in precisely forty-seven-point-two seconds… followed by the biggest magilla of them all!"

My initial conclusion was that the expedition to Treasure Planet would end here, suddenly, in a little over forty-seven-point-two seconds. The wave, and then the magilla; we would all be too exposed to the heat to survive it, and even if we did, we were much too close now to the Event Horizon to remain alive. However, it occurred to me like a blow to the head that with black hole magillas, so too came solar light, which meant a surge of power. If only we could harness the light, we might be able to escape. The magilla's solar energy would provide more than enough power to rocket us out of there. It was a terrible gamble of every life aboard the Legacy; nevertheless, I found myself grinning.

"Of course! Brilliant, Doctor! We'll ride that last magilla out of here!"

"All sails secured, Captain!" Mr. Arrow shouted, his rocklike fingers pressed against his ebony tri-cornered hat in an urgent salute. I leaned over the helm and called loudly to my friend, "Good man! Now—release them immediately!"

Mr. Arrow paused, stunned, I believe, with his hand lingering at the tip of his hat. Then, gathering himself up, he shouted, "Aye, Captain!" and turned to command the hands.

I relaxed and tensed my grip around the helm, concentrating the majority of my attention on keeping the Legacy fighting to stay away from the jaws. I could hear the heat of the expiring star hiss and crack. "Damage to the Foresail, Captain!" I heard the Doctor shout over the roar.

The sails began to flare open and receive the damage I had initially been so bent on preventing. I couldn't help it now. We needed all the power we could consume.

Through my moving hair I perceived Jim Hawkins taking to the shrouds in preparation to comply my order. I called out to him loudly, over the wind and the hissing, and he turned round in the direction of my voice. I yelled at him, "Make sure all lifelines are secured good and tight!"

Jim saluted me as he dropped from the shrouds and called some sort of affirmation that I didn't catch. I grasped the helm as tightly as possible, and then, without provocation, the whole of me wished that the Doctor was not on the bridge with me.

"Blast it, Doctor!" I roared at him. "You don't have your lifeline on!"

"Neither do you, I regret!" he called back. "Damage to the Main topsail!"

I said nothing.

Jim circumnavigated the mainmast as hurriedly as I had hoped, tightening each lifeline knot as fast as he could. He called to me that all lifelines had been secured, and in the next instant a powerful blow to the Legacy's frame sent us hurtling the other way, prying me off my feet and from the helm. It was as though the mizzenmast had rammed into me, and not I into it, but nevertheless I found myself on my knees before the mast, having covered the full five or six feet between it and the helm without ever touching the floor. I could hear the Doctor cry out in a panic, and I struggled rapidly to my feet, calling back to him that I was fine, although as I regained my footing, I felt intuitively that something had changed.

I threw my weight against the helm as I retrieved it into my grasp, a dull aching in my back causing me to grit my teeth. The Doctor watched me with wide eyes, and when I glanced at him, he gestured crazily at the control panel. "The magillaWe've only got seventeen seconds!"

I flexed my grip upon the helm, the only outward sign of my agitation that I allowed myself. The men were scurrying from their perches on the spars high above, and I saw through the din that Silver caught sight of Jim Hawkins on deck and collected him. The hands made their way down and crowded each other in tight spaces, like ants trying to avoid a mounting flame.

"Captain!" I heard the Doctor's voice call behind the roaring of the chasm. "The last wavehere it comes!"

"Hold on to your lifelines, gents!" I called hoarsely to the crew, supplying an unbearably grim humor as I spoke. "It's gonna be a bumpy ride!"

At which point the Legacy lost her battle against the pull of the dying star and toppled, twisting us at a very steep angle, her starboard side tipping low into the jaws of the black hole. As we passed the Event Horizon, I threw the helm to the left, swinging the Legacy's bow in the same direction, to ensure that just in case this worked, we would shoot from the black hole nose first. The ridge of the hole passed us as we at first fell relatively slowly into the gaping mouth; then we were rifled down, deep within the throat of the star, where, for a time, my perception faded until it was almost fully erased. I could neither see nor feel anything, and was sickeningly unaware of whether we were still falling or had stopped dead in our descent.

I don't know how long we stayed there. I had to struggle vainly to perceive anything at all, for I could not even tell whether or not I was still holding the helm, much less how much time had elapsed. For all that I know we might have been falling for days.

And then I could hear the fire ripping towards us, bellowing and rippling like a muffled engine, and we were hit brutally from underneath, blasting us from the throat and the jaws and the darkness of the dead star. The light was blinding, searing through the masts and the hull and the shrouds, trapped by the sails and converted to energy. We flew from the black hole with our sails alight, and in an instant had reached a cool, untouched sky.

I grew slowly aware of the crew gathered below the bridge, shouting, crying, singing, clapping, and celebrating. I inhaled somewhat shakily, and was again in control of myself. The crew rejoiced and I smiled, leaving the helm to find and regain our lost course. As I crossed the bridge, I passed the Doctor as he crawled from an entanglement within some coiled line, and as I found my sextant, he began to babble enthusiastically.

"Captain!" he gasped, "That was… oh my goodnessthat was absolutely…that was the most…"

I peered through my sextant. "Oh, tish-tosh," I abolished his chance to give me his scattered compliment. Then, feeling as though I owed my gratitude to the Doctor, I opened my mouth, nonchalantly putting away the instrument I was using, and informed him with a glance, "Actually, Doctor, your astronomical advice was most helpful."

And with that I left him, hearing but deciding to ignore his fumbled thanks as he began to sputter.

I made my way down the gangway to the deck while the crew's cheering and singing slowly subsided. I glanced up and noticed Jim Hawkins and Silver standing together a ways away to my left, and I remembered suddenly of Jim's cool-headed performance with the lifelines. Descending a step or two more, I began casually to speak, "Well, I must…" I paused, and cast my eyes not to the boy, but to Silver, who stood in a kind of slouch beside Mr. Hawkins, looking expectantly at me, "…congratulate you, Mr. Silver. It seems your cabin boy," and I glanced at Jim, "did a bang-up job with those lifelines."

This evoked from Silver a smug grunt of a chuckle, and he threw his open palm gently across his cabin boy's face; a sign of praise, I assumed. Jim responded to this with a friendly shove, and they occupied themselves with the unsaid congratulations back and forth, and I turned to the deck again, feeling a head-count was in order.

"All hands accounted for, Mr. Arrow?"

There was a strange silence that answered.

I waited nevertheless for his response. The pause lingered, and an eerie, cold feeling began to slip slowly along my limbs and nape. The quiet seemed to stretch on for eternity before I repeated, a little softer, "…Mr. Arrow?"

The rustling of a spider's steps stirred the crew apart. Scroop stood in front of the gangway, an ebony tri-cornered hat in one of his pincers.

"I'm afraid… Mr. Arrow has been lost."

Delicately the hat moved into my hands.

"His lifeline was not secured."

Jim Hawkins's blue, bright eyes shot up to meet mine and I realized I was looking at him.

"No…" he murmured quietly. "I checked them all."

There was a quiet stir as Jim pushed through the jumbled crewmen, reaching the base of the foremast and the pegs where the lines were tied. There was a rope missing. He stammered.

"I… I did… I checked them all… They were secure."

He turned around and insisted.

"I swear."

My eyes narrowed. I couldn't answer him.

There was an immediate, sharp tightening in my throat; a terrible throbbing that amassed itself into an insurmountable knot; and I felt as though it might strangle me. I found myself at a loss, and I gripped the rim of my friend's hat that still lingered in my hands as if to keep myself from falling. My mind wavered incomprehensively, and the cold that crawled along my skin grew icy.

I lifted my face to the crew, who stood in gloomy expectancy before the gangway. There was a silence during which I engaged in a small war inside myself. I then took a breath.

"…Mr. Arrow was… a…" I paused to clear my throat, in a weak attempt to evict the painful knot still tightening within it.

"…Fine spacer… Finer than most of us… could ever hope to be."

I dropped my arms to my side, still clinging to his hat in my right hand, struggling to keep my voice steady. The delivery of my words felt useless, dispassionate and hollow, despite the profound sincerity from which they stemmed. The insufferable feeling that there was nothing I could do or say or think that did any justice to my friend at all was suddenly my most dominant thought.

"But he knew the risks, as do we all. Resume your posts… We carry on."

My conclusion was hardened, thick and artificial in its brevity, and I choked on the sound of it, the implications of it. 'We carry on'. How? The whole of it left a synthetic taste in my mouth.

The Doctor was there on the bridge as I directed myself to my chambers. He spoke low to me, gently. I made no effort to respond to his sympathies, and retired to my stateroom, leaving him alone upon the bridge.