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revelation.
    Nothing like her had been built before. It was likely nothing like her would be built again. Not when smaller, less costly vessels like the Palomino and her sister ships could do the same work and cover far greater reaches of space for the same expenditure of time and personnel. Nonetheless, she remained a monument to man's mastery of physical engineering and ability. She awed even so stolid a man as Holland by her sheer size and presence.
    "Stand by with your scanners, Alex. We're going under her. I'll try to roll us after passage to give every instrument a chance to record, in case of any failures."
    Enormous metal members reached out toward the Palomino . They moved nearer, the little ship slipping toward silent supports weighing hundreds of tons on Earth, weighing nothing here . . . and something utterly unexpected happened.
    The turbulence ceased.
    That was absolutely the last thing Holland would have imagined. Gravitational effects had to have been affected or the Cygnus would not have been holding its position as it was. They were more than affected, they no longer were.
    He glanced incredulously over at his first officer. As he checked and rechecked the readouts on the console before him, Pizer displayed a dumbfounded look.
    "Zero gravity. Nothing. There's evidence of artificial gravity in use on the Cygnus , but nothing from the black hole. According to sensors, it's exerting less pull on us now than a toy globe."
    "That's impossible. What about the star?"
    "Same thing, meaning nothing," Pizer told him.
    "Reverse thrust." Vincent complied and the Palomino slowed to a comparative crawl. "Stand by. The phenomenon may be temporary."
    It was not. The Palomino sat driveless in space under the dark mass of the Cygnus like a chick huddled beneath its mother's protective wing. It was coasting now, drifting slowly forward.
    "Easy on the thrusters now, Vincent. Take us around and upside her, Charlie." Man and machine moved to comply with the orders. Holland continued to examine his sensor readouts, still hardly believing what they told him.
    "Smooth as glass," he muttered softly. "Incredible." And frightening , he told himself. Anything that could so utterly eliminate the kind of attractive power they had just passed through hinted at knowledge that could prove dangerous as well as benign.
    Voices drifted out at him from the speaker. "It's like the eye of a hurricane." That was Kate's voice. "What's happened, Alex? I can't imagine what's causing it."
    "Neither can I," Durant confessed readily. "As we suspected, a natural phenomenon or something generated from the Cygnus . Not a clue which it is, so far. Look sharp." Holland could visualize Durant turning his full attention to the information that must be pouring into the lab from the external scanners and sensors.
    The Palomino drifted around the flank of the immense ship, curved up and started to arc around to pass over it. Everyone was busy at his or her station. They were trying to solve a pair of mysteries: one, the absence of pull from the black hole, and, two, the existence of the ghost ship itself.
    McCrae was overcome with personal frustration. She left the task of monitoring the incoming statistics to Durant. Slipping free of her chair, she moved to the port and found herself staring fixedly at the meters of metal sliding past behind them. Soon they would reach the end of their turn, come around to pass across the topside of the ship. Her attitude was not very professional just then; it was very human.
    Durant addressed the pickup. "Are you learning anything forward, Charlie? Nothing of a revealing nature has come in back here."
    "And nothing abnormal up here, Alex," came the first officer's reply. "Negative. Whatever's canceling out the gravitational pull hereabouts isn't interfering at all with the rest of the electromagnetic junk that's filling this section of space.
    "There are a hundred thousand 'natural' broadcasts flying around us. I can't punch