As the waves rose to embrace him, the colors darkened, darkened, were gone. Hewas alone in a black place and without sensation. Had he actually penetrated theblack hole and survived, or was this but his final, drawn-out thought in atime-distorting field?

"The former," Nik said from a place that seemed nearby.

"Nik! You're here with me!"

"Indeed. I decided to follow you and give what assistance I could.

"As you entered did you see the image I left behind on the event horizon?"

"Sorry, I didn't look."

"Are we into the singularity?"

"Perhaps. I don't know. I've never been this way before. The process may be oneof infinite infall."

"But I thought that all information was destroyed once it entered a black hole."

"Well, there is more than one school of thought on that. Information isnecessarily bound up with energy, and one notion is that it might remaincoherent in here but simply become totally inaccessible to the outside world.The information cannot exist independently from the energy, and this way ofconsidering it has the advantage of preserving energy conservation."

"Then it must be so."

"On the other hand, when your body was destroyed as we entered here I was ableto mn you quickly through the process by which I became an immortal energybeing. Thought you might appreciate it."

"Immortal? You mean I might be an infinitely infalling consciousness here forthe effective life of the universe? I don't think I could bear it."

"Oh, you'd go mad before too long and it wouldn't make any difference."

"Shit!" Jeremy said.

There was a long silence, then a chuckle from Nik.

"I remember what that is," he finally said.

"And we're in it without paddles," Jeremy noted. III.

"There is another factor in our case," Nik said after an eternity or a fewminutes, whichever came first.