Neutron Star (short Story) - Plot Summary

Plot Summary

Beowulf Shaeffer, a native of the planet We Made It and unemployed for the last eight months due to a stock market crash, is contracted by a Pierson's Puppeteer, the Regional President of General Products on We Made It, to pilot a General Products-hulled starship, in a close approach about neutron star BVS-1. The Puppeteers want to determine why two previous researchers, Peter and Sonya Laskin, were killed during the previous attempt on a similar mission. Shaeffer has no intention of even attempting the dangerous mission, but agrees anyway – he has other plans. He has the Puppeteers construct what he dubs the Skydiver to his precise specifications, supposedly to ensure he survives to return with the relevant data: an advanced sensor package, a high-powered thruster – and a high-powered laser. It is thus the only warship ever constructed by the cowardly and paranoid alien race - a prize beyond value and a perfect means of escape. However, he is forced into compliance by an operative of the U.N.'s Bureau of Alien Affairs, Sigmund Ausfaller, who has had the Puppeteers install a bomb somewhere inside the Skydiver. Ausfaller informs Schaeffer that if he does not attempt the mission he will be sent to debtors prison, and that if he attempts to escape in the ship the bomb will be detonated within a week – well before he could even reach another planet, let alone find a buyer for the ship. Shaeffer, realizing he is trapped, agrees to fly the mission.

The Skydiver reaches the neutron star, and the ship’s autopilot puts the Skydiver into a hyperbolic orbit that will take 24 hours to reach periapsis with BVS-1, passing a mile above its surface. During the descent Schaeffer notices many unusual things: the stars ahead of him began to turn blue from Doppler shift as his speed increases enormously; the stars behind him, rather than being red-shifted, were blue too as their light accelerated with him into the gravity well of the neutron star. The nose of the ship is pulled towards the neutron star even when he tries to move the ship to view his surroundings.

As the mysterious pull exceeds one Earth gravity, Shaeffer accelerates the Skydiver to compensate for the unknown X-force until he is in free fall (though the accelerometer registers 1.2 gees). Shaeffer eventually realizes what the X-force is: the tidal force. The strong tidal pull of the neutron star is trying to force the ends of the ship (and Shaeffer himself) into two separate orbits. Shaeffer programs the autopilot in a thrust pattern that allows him to reach the center of mass of the ship in effective freefall, though he nearly fails to do so. The ship reaches perigee where tidal forces nearly pull Shaeffer apart anyway, but he manages to hold himself in the access space at the ship's center of mass and survives.

After returning to We Made It, Shaeffer is hospitalized (he has received a sunburn by starlight blue-shifted into the ultraviolet) for observation at the Puppeteer’s insistence. While explaining tidal forces to the Puppeteer, Schaeffer realizes the alien had no knowledge of tides, something that would be elementary for a sentient species living on a world with a moon. The Puppeteers are extremely cautious when dealing with other races, and keep all details about their homeworld secret. When Schaeffer mentions that he can tell reporters the fact that the Puppeteer's world has no moon, the Puppeteer agrees to give Shaeffer a million stars (a fortune in galactic currency) in return for his silence. Shaeffer asks the alien how he likes being blackmailed for a change.