by Rupert Segar
The voyageurs, as they dubbed themselves, were getting kitted up in a newly built changing area. The Captain had chosen carefully: as well as enlisting a wide range of talented officers from an astrophysicist to a biologist and a geologist, she had made sure all the explorers were fit and single. The only exception was Mojo Blanc.
The Chief Engineer entered the changing room with his wife and four year old daughter. The voyageurs and the attendant technicians spontaneously applauded him. Mojo looked at the team wearing their light weight environment suits and heavy weight backpacks and smiled going red in the face. The Chief Engineer had insisted he return to the domain of doorways. Mojo had quite surprised himself for he had never regarded himself as a natural hero. He had already been lauded by the crew and the Métis for his accidental foray into the doorway network and now he was being applauded for his willingness to return. Mojo knelt down and spoke to his daughter who looked confused and worried.
“I will return,” he said to her. “And I will bring back Uncle Phillip and Tante Yvette.”
Mojo embraced his wife. She gave him a firm embrace and then took their daughter by the hand and left.
The eight voyagers queued up the ramp. The bouncy rubberized surface made the explorers’ gait somewhat undignified. One by one, they stepped into the doorway. The gateway seemed to expand to envelop each voyager: they would be half way through the doorway when the oval would return to a blank grey nothing again. In turn, all eight voyagers disappeared.
Captain Isoko landed on what they had rather unimaginatively called “Planet A” and moved smartly out of the way for her lieutenant Ross Cowl, who had been next in the line. There seemed to be a delay and then Chief Engineer Mojo Blanc emerged from the grey oval landing heavily on both feet.
“Where’s Ross, he was just behind me?” asked the captain.
“I don’t know, “said Mojo, as he made room for the next expected voyageur.. “He jumped before me. He should be here.”
Then, after a pause, Dylan Moran and Louise Grant emerged from the doorway one after the other but the rest failed to appear.
Louise, a stellar-cartographer, set up a small folding radio telescope and Dylan, an astronomer, began taking spectrum readings of the new sun. Captain Isoko continued her investigation into the missing voyageurs. Quickly, she established that every alternate jumper in the queue had arrived on Planet A. Captain Isoko had leapt first, Chief Engineer Mojo Blanc had gone third, Dylan was fifth and Louise seventh. All the even numbered voyagers had failed to arrive.
“But I saw them disappear into the doorway,” said Louise “Well, anyway I saw Lieutenant Cowl, Bernie Bizet and Sandra Bird make their jumps. Big Hank was behind me.”
“So, if they are not here,” asked Captain Isoko. “Where are they?”
“I hate to say this, Captain, but shouldn’t we be asking where are we are, eh?” said Mojo. He paused as they all looked at him with growing alarm. “I don’t think this is Planet A: the world I jumped to was different.”
“OK, I remember, you said the first world you arrived at had two moons,” said Louise looking into the moonless sky. “Couldn’t it just be that the moons haven’t risen yet?”
“Maybe,” replied Mojo. “But the landscape is wrong. My planet looked a bit like the Rift Valley in Africa. This is too flat, with no trees, just shrub.”
“So, are the doorways acting randomly or is there a pattern?” asked Captain Isoko. “After all half of us have ended up here, on this new planet. There has to be some logic.”
“Could the doorway be flipping: first one way then another?” asked Dylan, the astronomer, looking up from his small spectrometer. “Mojo you said the doorways worked in reverse after you reached Eden, the world with two separate doors.”
“Yes, they all worked backwards the second time I used them,” agreed Mojo. “I was retracing my path through the planets. So those doors seemed to work two ways. Maybe the fact I had used the portal caused it to flip, like you say. But then the pattern changed when one door sent me somewhere new. It must have been a loop because I eventually got back to Dakota?”
“O.K., say we’ve got three types of doorways, maybe more,” said Dylan, quickly putting together a provisional theory. “Ordinary doorways take you from one world to the next or back to the one before, they flip every time we use them; there’s the dual doorway like the pair of ovals you found on Eden, which put you into reverse; and, there’s the tricky one that sent you off on a loop.”
“Tricky?” asked the captain. “What sort of term is that?”
“I get it,” said Louise who had been listening and thinking hard. “Before we set off, the only one to use the door was you, Mojo, when you accidentally fell into the portal. You caused the doorway to flip backwards. Hey, it’s not your fault, Chief Engineer. But, as a result, we’re the ones who jumped backwards. The others went forward to Planet A, the world with two moons. We travelled here instead. Let’s call it ‘Planet A minus.’”
“But what’s going to happen when we jump through the doorway here?” said Mojo.
“We’ve got a fifty-fifty chance that we will end up back on Dakota,” said Dylan. “Or we will move on to ‘planet B minus.’”
“Right team,” barked Captain Isoko. “I think we’ve done as much theorizing as we can without more information. We’ll need to jump again but first let’s get some readings. Louise, find me at least three pulsars. Dylan, I assume you’ve got the sun’s spectral type in the chip. Can you gauge the gravitational constant here as well? Mojo, we’re christening this ‘Planet A minus,’ so try to find something positive to say about the terrain, flora and fauna. We jump within the hour.”
A little over an hour later, the reduced team of four voyagers lined up. Captain Isoko took the lead. She tried to insist that Mojo jumped second and, thus, if their theories were correct, had a bigger chance of getting home to his family. Mojo refused and took the third place saying his experience would make him more valuable to the Captain. Dylan and Louise were about to join in the argument when a sharp look from Captain Isoko brought a halt to the discussion.
“Captain,” said Dylan pressing on smugly. “I’ll jump second but, if my idea about the doorways is correct, I’ll be joining you on ‘Planet B minus’ before too long.”
Captain Isoko raised one eyebrow and fixed Dylan with a steady stare.
“If you do end up back on Dakota, Mr Moran,” she said. “You are to report all your findings to the team at the base. Their understanding of how the doorways work is more important than any individual’s survival. Right, everyone, we jump at one minute intervals.”
One after the other, the four voyageurs disappeared into the grey oval hovering one metre above the ground on ‘Planet A minus.”
+
Captain Isoko fell out of the grey oval and landed with a loud thump onto the padded ramp on Dakota, followed two minutes later by an equally surprised Chief Engineer, Mojo Blanc.
“Seems like we have some bugs to iron out of our theory,” said the Captain. “As it’s not us, I guess we know who is on ‘Planet B minus, Dylan and Louise.”
“We’ve got another problem: time distortions,” said Mojo who had just been briefed by one of the technicians monitoring the interstellar doorway. “How long would you say we’ve been gone, Captain?”
“We left one hour twenty six minutes ago,” replied Captain Isoko looking at the comms link bracelet on her glove.”
“According to the timings here, we’ve been gone fifty one minutes,” said Mojo referring to a data pad handed to him by the technician. “What is more, I told you about my original trip to Eden and back, eh? Shame no-one thought to tell me I was missing for nearly two weeks. To me it was just two or three days at the most. How many of Einstein’s rules are we going to break today?
“I guess if we’re jumping interstellar distances in an instant and breaking the speed of light barrier,” exclaimed the Captain. “We may as well throw in time travel too.”
&n
bsp; +
Twelve minutes later, Louise Grant jumped onto the padded ramp and announced that Dylan Moran had sent her back but would be returning himself shortly.
“I know he’s arrogant, but I think he’s worked out how the doors are flipping,” said Louise almost begrudging her admiration for her fellow scientist. “When Dylan and I arrived on Planet B minus, he said he thought the doorways on Planet B minus and A minus would both be pointing home. So, he sent me back but said he was confident he could find a way back too. He says he wants to take some readings on Planets B, C and D minus.”
“How did he know about the doorway on Planet B minus?” asked Mojo sceptically. “The oval could have been pointing either way, eh?”
Louise paused then replied.
“He babbled on about a lot of stuff. He thought the system of doorways had an inbuilt default setting. After a certain period of time, certainly longer than the two weeks you took to come home, Mojo, the doorways flip back to their original position. That’s his theory anyway, but it sure worked for me,” said Louise beaming.
Within an hour, the geologist Bernie Bizet and Big Hank McDonald jumped back from ‘Planet A plus’ as the other three voyageurs were now calling it. Lieutenant Ross Cowl had taken command on the world with two moons. He and the exobiologist Sandra Bird had deduced how the grey doorways were working and had sent back a message.
“They used a rope, so they could jump together and retrace the Chief Engineer’s first journey. Bernie and I did the same to get back here” said Big Hank grinning and holding up his left wrist to show his end of the rope linking him to the geologist.
Shortly after, a triumphant Dylan Moran hopped out of the grey oval and landed square on the padded ramp. He looked self-satisfied, even smug. Dylan gazed round at the group of returned voyageurs and did his own head count.
“Two missing, that figures, but they’ll be back,” said Dylan.
+
Two months later, tied together by a short length of rope, Lieutenant Ross Cowl and biologist Sandra Bird returned to Dakota. They had retraced Chief Engineer Mojo Blanc’s original voyage to Eden and back. The pair of voyageurs had taken their time, methodically recording as much data as they could about each of the planets en route.
The two were debriefed by the rest of the voyagers in a conference room in the base. Water ran down the outside of the windows as the monsoon continued. The triple glazed plexglass almost completely cut out the howling and buffeting of the squalling winds. Sitting around a large banana shaped table, the explorers were warm and dry.
“Hey, Mojo, remember the camel with teeth?” said Sandra grinning. “You thought they were slavering over you.”
“Did you think I was going to stay around to find out, eh?” said the Chief Engineer.
“I don’t think they were interested in you, Chief,” retorted the elderly biologist. “They use their teeth to sift through the sand. The camels subsist on a diet of small worms that live just below the surface.”
“Yuck!” said Louise. “Maybe they thought Mojo would be a pleasant change on the menu.”
“Don’t dis the Chief,” said Dylan. “Remember he’s a hero.”
“Hey, I didn’t volunteer, eh” said Mojo reddening. “Sandra and Ross are the ones with question marks over their sanity: recklessly deciding to go it alone.”
“Yes, going it alone, together,” chipped in Bernie Bizet, the geologist with a suggestive wink. Lieutenant Ross Cowl, the Second Officer, and Sandra Bird, a biologist, were sitting side by side looking faintly embarrassed. Everyone on the team knew they had formed a very personal relationship during their two month long exploration. The fact that they had tried to keep their relationship secret after they returned had caused much hilarity among the voyageurs.
Captain Ewoma Isoko sat quietly, lolling back in her chair as the good humoured banter continued. They are a good team, she though. I’ve got colonists and crew working together. There is a lot of loyalty and mutual affection here. The Captain sat up straight. Ewoma knew her jet black skin, combined with her curly black hair and refined regal features, made her an authoritative figure. It was time to bring the meeting to order.
“Voyageurs,” said the captain, “what do we know about the doorways and what should we do next? Dylan, you seem to be the person with the answers.”
The young astronomer straightened his notepad in front of him. With a photographic memory and IQ of over 200, Dylan did not need to refer to his records. “There is a huge gulf between what we know and what we suspect about the network of doorways.”
“There’s no ‘we’ about it,” interrupted Louise Grant, the stellar cartographer. “It’s your own pet theory about little green men building a time machine.”
Dylan was peaked, “The time shifts are clear…”
“One thing at a time,” said Captain Isoko. “Our first priority is security. Dylan, do we know where the doorways go and, by implication, who might be using them.”
“Well, thanks to Louise, Ross and Sandra, recording the positions of pulsars on the various worlds, we know exactly where the doorways we have used so far are located.”
Dylan tapped his pad and the room lights dimmed. Luminous grey light from distant lightning storms flickered outside. Then a hologram of the galaxy formed just above the table. “We are here,” said the astronomer as an arrow appeared at the edge of the galaxy, beyond the Perseus spiral arm. “Now here are the systems Mojo visited on his way to Eden. There were gasps from some of the voyagers and a whistle from Bernie the geologist as twenty three new blue arrows lit up at regular intervals around the fringe of the galaxy following the Outer Arm. “Mojo’s route goes one third of the way round,” said Dylan pausing to add dramatically, “that’s one hundred thousand light years, spinward.”
“I’m well-travelled, eh,” chirped in Mojo, breaking the silence.
“You went even further still,” said Dylan. “When Ross and Sandra retraced your journey, they also took the same diversion you made on the way back. Remember, you called it a loop.”
“Yeah, it must have been, eh?” said the Chief Engineer cheerily. “I got back to Dakota in the end.”
“This is where the loop began,” said Dylan getting out of his seat and walking round the projection. “Planet H plus, where the doorway sent you off in a new direction.” Dylan waved his hand above an arrow and a new series of red arrows popped up taking a straight line toward the core of the galaxy. The red markers almost reached the bulging central bar of the galaxy before retreating outwards again to rejoin the blue arrows running round the rim. “Round trip, you can add another ninety thousand light years to the record, Mojo.”
Geologist Bernie Bizet let out a long whistle. “Did you get frequent hyper flier miles, Mojo?”
As the tittering subsided, Dylan added another set of arrows, this time green, going anti-spinward from Dakota. “These are the planets A minus to F minus. As you can see, these systems, like Dokta’s are on the very edge of the galaxy and well away from any dense regions. The path is circular, by design. Going backwards, we seem to go back in time, only marginally, but there is a definite gap between subjective experience for the traveller and the time that elapsed here on Dakota.”
“Before we get onto time travel,” interrupted Captain Isoko, “can we consider any threats this poses to the colony here. Hank, what do you think?”
Big Hank McDonald sat up from his customary crouch. At 2 metres 10 he was head and shoulders taller than even the Captain. “The good news, Captain, is that there is no sign of anyone or anything using the doorways in a very long time. There is no trace of any activity at all.”
“And the bad news?” asked Captain Isoko, knowing the answer already but wanting her security officer to spell it out for the rest.
“The bad news is we have no way of stopping anything emerging out of the doorway down here: we’re very vulnerable. And if a ship comes out of the doorway in orbit, we are sitting ducks: it could be game over.”
Lieutenant Ross Cowl, Second Officer, scowled and leant forward, “We do have contingency planning: down here, two heavy calibre gun mounts pointed at each face of the doorway; plus, the option of burying the oval in thirty tons of plexglass concrete.” He then pointed his index finger skyward, “Up there we have two orbiting ion canon and a ten kiloton nuclear bomb.”
“Not much help if a fully screened naval warship comes through guns blazing,” said Louise.
“I think we may be inventing enemies,” said Dylan “As far as I remember, we haven’t declared war on anyone. All the worlds we’ve seen are uninhabited. No-one seems to be using the system of doorways at all: they are not being policed or monitored, as far as we can tell. Whoever built these doorways, and I think we are all agreed they are aliens, they are long gone.”
“Gone where?” asked Captain Isoko.
“Here comes the pet theory,” sniped Louise looking at Dylan, who ignored her.
“Not where, Captain, but when. I think the whole system was built to allow the aliens to travel to the future.”
+
On a uninhabited world, a quarter of the way round the galaxy, standing in front of a grey oval suspended about a metre above the ground, the master addressed his apprentice.
“Dylan the Devoted they called him,” said Anton unrolling his plastiflex map of the galaxy, “and he was right about the doors flipping, the time travel and the aliens.”
The old voyageur, had talked much of the morning but Pierre, his apprentice was not tired. He was inspired. Pierre had heard these stories many times before. The accounts of the first voyageurs were required study at school. His own academy had been named after Mayor Mojo White, the first democratically elected leader of Dakota. However, as Anton told the tales, under the sky of a distant alien world, the apprentice felt as if he was part of history too.