Asimov's Science Fiction: September 2013 by Penny Publications

of no return."
    The com channel showed heavy traffic, as my passengers transmitted sense-data to their originals in the auditorium. Some of them had augmented their sensoriums to directly apprehend the storm of neutrinos, X-rays, and the rest of the blue-shifted torrent of electromagnetic radiation.
    My rival escapologists were not among the passengers, since the performers' code prevented them from creating disposable duplicates. Some might be watching from a distance. Others were, I knew, much closer. They waited nearby, lurking behind the curtain....
    The ship fell onward, accelerating to its demise. After passing through the purple fire of the accretion disc, we saw the distorted relativistic field of the black hole itself. A dark void lay before us—no light could escape the hole. But a bright ring encircled the nothingness, as gravitational lensing focused the glow from the accretion disc on the far side.
    "The event horizon approaches!" I declaimed. "Once we pass beyond, no signal can escape. Your originals back in the auditorium will feel the connection attenuate as we slide down.... Ten, nine, eight, seven... I shall return, but you shall not... Four, three, two, one..."
    I let the silence ring out for long moments. I held my breath, and unconsciously the audience all mirrored me. They were under my spell. Nothing stirred as we slid through the invisible border of the event horizon. The ship's gravity compensators would hold for a little while longer.
    Finally, I drew breath, and the audience also drew in a collective shuddering gasp, as though astonished to find themselves still alive.
    I glanced at the com channel. Everyone was still transmitting, but now that we'd entered the black hole, the information could not escape.
    "We have crossed the border into the undiscovered country, ladies and gentlemen. We're utterly disconnected from the outside universe. Your originals back home are no longer receiving the transmissions you send. Their experience of being cut off, as we disappeared into the black hole, has felt like the end of existence, like the truncation of life itself. I've given them the taste of Death that they crave."
    Actually, this was only the first taste—I had more planned, which I didn't mention. Half of showmanship lies in holding something back.
    I turned to Veronica, intending to ask how she felt. Before we could speak, something clattered into the ship with a jolt that almost shook me off my feet. The increasing concentration of debris within the black hole created its own perils. Yet I suspected that my rivals had set additional traps.
    The elite escapologists had a tradition of spicing up each other's stunts by adding a few extra hazards. It made our exploits more challenging. The danger escalated with every show, and the performers accrued ever more prestige from their death-defying feats.
    This was our private rivalry. We refrained from spoiling the show that the public saw. And so we conf ined our interference to the realm behind the curtain. Any escape act always contains a veiled moment, when the performer works his magic in secret. The audience never sees exactly how he does it. The stunt concludes when the curtain is opened and the illusionist reveals himself, demonstrating the success of his escape.
    The black hole's event horizon was the curtain that shielded me from the public's gaze. It also demarcated the territory in which my rivals could attack. Only when I emerged from the black hole, completing the performance, would I finally be safe.
    Another impact rocked the ship. The explosions weren't strong enough to jeopardize the hull's integrity. Not yet, anyway. Perhaps we'd merely been lucky so far. What lay out there? How far would my rivals go? I didn't bother peering at the sensors. Ever since we'd crossed the horizon, they'd showed nothing in front of the ship—they couldn't possibly show anything, because the gravity gradient was too steep for light to climb. We flew blindly