Cygnus X-1: Book One- The Voyage
#1 of Cygnus X-1
With acknowledgement to the genius of Neil Peart, Alex Lifeson, and Geddy Lee.
Crazy as a fox might be a cliche but there was simply no other way to describe ace star pilot Gary Weinrib, the Solar Federation's greatest fighter. An old fox of 61, he had grown tired of wars and fighting and conquest. He simply no longer agreed with the Federation's imperialist policies and its continued exploitation of the conquered peoples who lived under the atmospheric domes, located on moons which surrounded the Outer Planets. He had fought well against both humans and other Zoomorphs but the questionable actions of his commanders during the raid on Ganymede against the Jovian Raiders in 2064 were something he was not proud of. Nevertheless, the Federation gave the Zoomorph leader a highly-advanced starship- the name of the ship had slipped the fox's mind after 30 years and he named it Rocinante, after the horse ridden by Don Quixote in Cervantes' works. The name would be so appropriate, considering what he was to do now. As a Zoomorph, he was entering his final years- an inoperable cancer common amongst Zoomorph canids would usually strike them around the age of 60 and Weinrib had but a few years to live.
For his entire life, Weinrib had wondered about black holes- all the leading physicists said that his entire body would be pushed by gravitational forces inward in a process called spaghettification. Death was inevitable said the physicists at the Martian Academy but Weinrib, as a Federation soldier feared nothing, not even death. Furthermore, he was a firm believer in the existence of the soul, and that even after he passed on, some remnant of him would remain. And crazy as it may seem, the vulpine space pilot wanted to feel the inward pushing of a black hole while still alive. He had already heard of several companies which solved the problem of graveyard overcrowding throughout the solar system by committing the deceased into the black hole of Cygnus X-1, the closest to Solaris (the sun.) Nearing the end of his life anyway, he bought food and supplies for a one Earth-year journey to the black hole. Staring out the window of the ship, he could see the black circle growing larger and larger as the black hole's irresistible force pulled him inward. Would he be pulled through the void, only to face annihilation or was there something more. He knew that his entire body would be turned into spaghetti then atomized before he could reach the high-gravity core of Cygnus X-1 but this was a journey he would take.alone.
The fox checked his astral charts- he knew well the course to find the black hole. He needed to go east across Lyra the Harp, north and west of Pegasus, to the constellation of Cygnus. The brightest star in the constellation is a white supergiant known as Deneb, which shines brighter than the sun by many times and would serve as Weinrib's guide to the black hole itself. Cygnus X-1 was a circular area where scientists postulated the existence of a black hole. The physical forces were too great for anything, not even light to escape a black hole and the pull on scientists was so great that the Solar Federation had spent great amounts of money into discovering what made these gravitational sinkholes act the way they do. But no one would be brave enough to actually commit suicide in the name of science. The fox had kept telepathic transmissions as the gravity became stronger and the black circle surrounding the ship became larger and larger.
In just a while, Weinrib would enter the point of no return, and there would be no going back at all. Even if he wanted to contact them, no sound can escape the black hole either. His only comfort came from looking at the Northern Cross with Deneb at its top, a cross so appropriate for one who was fated to die- he stared at these ultra-bright and beautiful stars until he lost his eyesight but he wouldn't need that anyway where he was going. If he were to see his doom, Weinrib might lose heart and die with regrets but he wasn't going to die that way. Instead, he would pass on with confidence that what he was doing would help science or personal redemption for the many other living things he had killed as a Federation soldier.
Soon, he could feel the gravitational pull becoming more powerful than it had ever been during his trip. Soon, the ship was spinning and descending down into Cygnus X-1- the captain was going down into the spiraling whirlpool of space which would destroy everything in its path. Weinrib thought of Shiva, the many-armed Hindu god of transformation who destroys life only to create new life into something greater and more glorious than before. Perhaps maybe Weinrib would be reincarnated on a different planet not as a Zoomorph or human, but as a regular fox, his natural form before the Federation experiments which turned this unassuming woodland creature into an abnormality of amoral science. The sucking sound was so intense that he lost he was soon blind-deaf and his senses could no longer betray him- as his body was stretched and atomized, his final thoughts turned to finding out the truth. It was time for Weinrib to die...