Means of Escape (Spinward Book 1)

by Rupert Segar

  “They had a well-documented case, Aunt. After the Plague struck, they were visited by a spacefaring group who gave them power sources and food supplies. And they supposedly came from here, from the planet Dragon.”

  “What, the mysterious rescuers who never took off their atmospheric suits? What were they paranoid, smelly or just aliens?”

  “Hey, Aunt, you never know your luck, probably all three. Now, eat your soup.”

  +

  The early morning conference on board Explorer Spirit II always began with a period of bad tempered taciturnity. At 06:30 ship’s time, the crew would file in not saying a word to each other. Every one of them knew their duty and would, between sips of their favourite beverage, consult screens and jot down notes on their pads while making the occasional grunt or sigh. The meeting would not begin until Suxie hobbled in at about 06:55. She would look about the room beaming and plonk herself down into the chair next to the captain’s. This morning, Thistle tapping and sliding her fingers on her on her pad screen put the meeting’s agenda in order and began.

  “Duty officer, anything to report?”

  The medical officer, Bruce Dern, looked exhausted as he went through his notes. Suxie always wondered why Bruce, a doctor, found doing the occasional night shift so difficult. She would sometime offer to do his turn but he would not allow it.

  “So, in summary,” said Bruce, “there is nothing out of the ordinary to report. Sometimes I wonder why it is necessary …”

  “Thank you, Bruce,” said Thistle. “On our first night in orbit about a new planet, I think it is appropriate to have someone at hand to tackle any emergency. It certainly allows me to sleep more soundly.”

  “I could always do your night shifts for you,” said Suxie.

  “Aunty, you are one hundred and seven,” said the doctor, “Your job is staying alive.”

  Captain Thistle pressed her pad and a picture of the Dragon Planet flicked onto all the screens around the room. “Now, what have we gleaned overnight about our new find.”

  “Same as we found during our in system approach,” said Carol Parker, the petite ship’s engineer, “nothing: no EM spectrum out of the ordinary, no lights, no radio, no digital do dahs, diddily squat.”

  “Nothing from gravometrics either,” said Hans Christianson the tall, broad, brown haired astrophysicist who also served as the ship’s chef. “No sign of any transport using anti grav. Just a plain, old planet, spinning through space.”

  “No sign of any civilisation, then,” said Captain Thistle. “A wasted journey.”

  “I have something,” said Nigeal who was the ship’s navigator and second in command. “A flux anomaly.”

  “Every planet is a flux anomaly, bonehead” said Carol smiling at Nigeal with obvious affection. Everyone on board knew that she and Nigeal were sleeping together. They had just omitted to tell anyone. She continued in a teasing, little girl’s voice, “The gravity well produces a flux gradient. That’s how we recharge the ship.”

  “But not every planet produces a spike of flux mark six that reaches the surface,” said Nigeal with a serious demeanour. He tapped his pad and on all the screens around the room a schematic of the planet clicked on showing the flux gradient. The slowly spinning orb was translucent, pinkish white on the outside but redder the deeper you looked; the centre of the planet was purple. As the sphere turned, a narrow spike of purple came into view. The narrowing finger reached up to the surface. “It emerges at the equator, longitude 14.28, our designation,” said Nigeal who looked around the room. Everyone was engrossed with the display except Suxie, who reached over and patted his arm, smiling more broadly than ever.

  “OK, we will go into a low orbit covering the equatorial region,” ordered Thistle. “We’ll need geology, biology, atmospherics and meteorology. Launch some satellites. In addition, I want site maps and a few visuals of the anomaly and the surrounds. Dismissed.”

  +

  Explorer Spirit II was moored at the side of a wide river, 9 kilometres south west of the anomaly. Thistle was glad they had not found a closer landing site. The anomaly was not explained by any flux theory that she or Hans, the astrophysicist could find in the ship’s library. Also, intriguingly, there seemed to be something at the point of emergence. Low altitude vid snaps showed a greyish smudge about one meter in diameter although its size depended on the angle from which the picture was taken.

  Thistle’s console bleeped and she switched to the live view from one of the eight satellites they had in low orbit. The shot panned up a valley and zoomed in on a group of three explorers. Nigeal was leading the way in front of a hobbling but definitely robust Aunt Suxie. Carol was accompanying the old lady, clearly looking after her. Her brother, Nigeal had been ecstatic when Thistle agreed to Carol, the engineer, coming with him. He was not so delighted when Thistle sent Suxie along too. She had not deliberately assigned her as a chaperone but the response from the secret lovers was amusing nonetheless. Thistle had actually sent Suxie along because the venerable old lady and explorer of eighty years’ service had asked to go.

  Thistle was relieved to see Carol at Suxie’s elbow as they climbed the last stony ridge separating them from the anomaly. They were making slow but steady progress despite Suxie’s reliance on an anti-grav belt and a stick. Nigeal was just ahead, continually turning round to make sure his ‘Aunt’ was alright.

  “You’re almost there, Nige,” said Thistle talking into her headset, “top and the crest and 30 metres.”

  “Yes, Sis, my inertials are working. Any change?”

  Thistle toggled the image and focused on the smudgy grey oval that stood impassively at the top of the invisible spike of flux. “None, the spike seems rock steady but make sure you have your radiation detectors on alert.”

  “Don’t worry, Sis, I can look after myself.”

  “It’s not you I worry about. It’s Aunty.”

  The satellite was now looking straight down from orbit and the grey object disappeared. It must be a trick of perspective, thought Thistle. The eastern end of the flat bottomed valley was surrounded by high cliffs one of which promptly cut off the satellite’s view of the site as it flew on in its low altitude orbit. Thistle consulted the ship’s computer. The next surveillance satellite would not be in position for over an hour. That’s not very efficient, thought Thistle, but there is bound to be the odd hole in the coverage even though we have eight satellites in various orbits.

  Just then, Nigeal sent back a locked off cam shot from the top of the ridge. The images lack of wobble meant he had the camera on a tripod mount. Her brother zoomed in to reveal a geometrical oval of grey smoke. Nigeal pushed the zoom further in until the oval covered the screen. To Thistle it seemed like a grey nothingness, then Nigeal expanded the image again and Thistle could see tight curls of what looked like smoke moving as if they were tiny worms.

  “Can you get any closer, Nige?” asked Thistle intrigued by the image playing on her screen.

  “I don’t think so, Sis. Look at these readings.” A bar chart display superimposed itself on the close up of the oval disc. “Flux ions, left handed flux ions,” continued Nigeal. “I may not have spotted these except for the fact that Aunt Suxie thought I should scan for every possibility.”

  “Are they dangerous?” asked Thistle.

  “I don’t know,” said Nigeal “I don’t even know where left handed flux ions come from normally.”

  “They come from black holes,” said Hans Christianson, the astrophysicist, his voice cutting across their communications.

  +

  A small encampment was set up in the lee of the small ridge in front of the anomaly. Nigeal reported that the flux ions could not penetrate the granite type rock. A gravity sledge had been assembled to make the run between the camp and the ship easier. Thistle and Nigeal were concerned about Suxie and had wanted her to return to Explorer Spirit II but the elderly lady was determined to stay.

  “Captain, this is why I became an explorer. OK,
I got a kick out of helping stranded interstellar communities shake off the shackles of ignorance and isolation, but real exploring is what excites me.”

  “And I always thought you were a kind humanitarian who worked ceaselessly for the benefit of others,” said Nigeal with a sarcastic smile on his face.

  “Don’t make me out to be a saint, young man,” laughed Suxie. “I was always in it for the thrills and spills.”

  Both Nigeal and Thistle had noticed how invigorated the elderly Explorer had become. She busied herself around the new camp setting up monitoring equipment and organising sleeping accommodation. No-one, particularly Nigeal and Carol, said anything when she allocated the young couple their own plastiform double tent. Suxie, herself, had a single tent a little away from the others just under the ridge separating the camp from the anomaly.

  One of the new arrivals at the makeshift camp was Sven Peterson, the ship’s zoologist and computer specialist. He had switched his studies from the planet’s animal life to the effect on human tissue of exposure to left handed flux ions.

  “I’ve searched the database, Captain,” he said, “and there is no record case of ill health due to flux ions. These quixotic particles barely interact with anything in normal space.”

  “The sheer number of particles, though, must have an effect,” said Thistle on the monitor from the ship.

  “The ions are supposed to be associated with temporal shift,” said Hans. “In theory, if two black holes are twinned but are not aligned chronologically, surplus energies are bled off into the realm as pure flux. Flux ions are merely a by-product.”

  “Who says?” barked Thistle, “It all sounds pretty fantastic to me,”

  “The Einstein Institute on old Earth,” said Suxie breaking into the conversation. “And it’s not just a theory; they carried out real experiments near a real black hole. The Institute says they strongly suspected it was connected to another black hole in the past. Amazingly they sent a probe through and got signals back.”

  “What’s so unusual about that, Aunt Suxie, all rotating black holes allow the passage of data under certain conditions?”

  “The return signals were distorted but started coming back through before the probe was launched. The probe had travelled back in time and then released its messenger wave. The black hole was a doorway to the past. I think our anomaly could have similar characteristics.”

  “So now it’s a black hole, a doorway and a time machine,” said Thistle sounding slightly exasperated, “but is it safe to get anywhere near it?”

  Sven held up a cube. “I’ve exposed this sample of human genomes for the past 48 hours and there’s been no detectable deterioration.”

  “More tests,” said Thistle, “we need blood and tissue samples before I’m happy. Till then, only carry out remote experiments.”

  By convention, the main meridian line on a newly discovered planet is determined by ship’s time. Thus, the main meridian on Dragon was the north south line where the sun was at its highest at 12.00 on the day Explorer II entered orbit. The fact Dragon’s day was 24 hours and 5 minutes long and that the landing site was only about an hour west of the main meridian meant that Thistle could keep the crew on ship’s time. This was a relief to everyone as space lag was generally considered to be much worse than most forms of space motion sickness, with the exception of zero gravity, which had most astronauts throwing up.

  Before dawn, at 06.45 the following day, the morning conference was about to begin. Captain Thistle and Hans Christianson, the astrophysicist, were the only two on board Explorer II. The board room was split with a holograph of a part of the camp site projected into half of the room. At the image of a trestle table sat the image of a grumpy Dr Bruce Dern, who had just completed another night shift after Thistle decided it was better if the role was carried out at the encampment. Nigeal and Carol just joined him at the table and both looked tired and slightly sheepish.

  In the predawn light, rosy fingers played across high cirrus cloud in the sky above the encampment. Thistle was always surprised at the detail provided by the ship’s holograms. She took a sip of coffee, careful not to set off the annoying advert on the side of the cup. As usual they were waiting for Aunt Suxie, but Thistle did not mind. She felt the old lady deserved every indulgence.

  A shrill alarm sounded, both on board Explorer II and throughout the encampment. The lights in the ship’s board room came on and vid screens flickered on. The holo image was dimmed but Thistle could clearly see Nigeal as he looked up from his pad and locked eyes with her. “It’s Aunt Suxie,” he said as he pointed to his pad. He leaped up and ran off over the ridge behind him.

  On the other side of the board room table, Hans Christianson, was working his console. “Slaving Nig’s pad now!” he said to Thistle as the vid screens around the room flicked on. The view was of the anomaly. A robotic sentry on caterpillar wheels had been moved away from its position in front of the grey disc. Hans had constructed the robot on board and sent it to the site to continuously monitor the anomaly.

  “Hey, someone’s shifted the sentry. That’s why the alarm went off.” said Thistle. “Wind back the vid feed, replay, say, the last 100 seconds.”

  Hans keyed his console and the image flickered and changed. The sentinel robot stood directly in front of the grey disc but beside it was the slight figure of Aunt Suxie. The elderly explorer tapped the robot’s control panel and it moved backwards and sideways and stopped. Suxie then turned in the direction of the distant camera monitoring the anomaly. She bowed low with her hands clasped together and placed a pad on the ground. Standing again, she smiled and gave a childlike wave before turning towards the grey disc. Then, in a flicker, she was gone.

  In disbelief, Thistle replayed and replayed the video feed. They magnified, slowed and enhanced the images. The grey disc seemed to behave like a snake’s mouth. The anomaly yawned open, stretching down almost to the ground and swallowed Aunt Suxie as she stepped into it. One moment the elderly explorer was framed by the enlarged grey disc. In the next instant she was gone and the anomaly was, once again, one metre wide and floating unperturbed above the ground. There was no transition. No image of Aunt Suxie half-way through. One instant she was there, in full view, stepping into the disc. The next instant she had gone. Nine long seconds later, Nigeal is seen rushing onto the scene, staring incomprehensively at the impassive anomaly.

  “Captain Thistle,” said Hans Christianson with awe in his voice, “those left handed flux ions, they’re now right handed flux ions.”

  Chapter 24: Heaven and Hell

  Art King, hyper flight pilot and fugitive from the Empire, walked among the tropical vines and bushes on a path that weaved between sprinkling fountains and waterfalls. Looking up at what appeared to be a turbulent sky full of purple and green clouds, he found it hard to believe he was aboard a spaceship. This was no ordinary vessel. He was on board Orion, the Emperor’s royal fleet flagship, possibly the largest spacefaring vessel ever constructed.

  Art passed a group of young women who all giggled and cast him sideways looks from under their hijabs. He remembered he had been told the Emperor’s wives, the concubines who constituted his harem, spent time in the tropical gardens. Art could not remember much else. He knew where he was, or at least he remembered he had been told he was on board the Emperor’s flagship, but he had no idea of how he had got there.

  He was following a small, simian figure scampering ahead of him. His guide was a crouching fellow with long arms and impossibly long fingers. Art’s gaze remained on the man’s hands until he realised what was wrong: he had no thumbs. In the back of his mind, Art knew this was significant but could not remember why.

  The creature went ahead through a force screen airlock. Art followed, pushing through the curtains of static energy, entering the temperate zone arena. Ahead a gravel path wandered through grassy pasture between clumps of oaks and stands of beech trees. Art followed the bent scampering figure around the end of a box hedge and foun
d himself in a paved area with raised flower beds, fountains, chairs and small tables. The simian creature had prostrated himself before a tall man with aquiline features and long, swept back, black and white hair. Art recognised the man from a lifetime of seeing clips on vid-casts and giant posters on public buildings. The Emperor, the Kargol king, ruler of a thousand planets, waved aside the simpering monkey man and turned his regal gaze on Art. The young pilot felt as if he should bow or scrape or at least look down in modesty but something made him return the stare. The Emperor smiled and held both of his hands forward palms upwards indicating a chair.

  “Pilot Art King, you must be tired after your long journey,” said the Kargol King. “Please, be seated and let some of my wives ease your weariness.”

  Art sat down and felt the sun shining on the back of his neck. As if from nowhere, a young girl appeared with a bowl of water and knelt beside him. The young pilot looked down and realised his feet were bare and grubby. Was I was walking barefoot? The young girl began washing his feet and Art felt aroused at the sight of her pert breasts visible in the shadows down the front of her dress. Another more matronly woman reached across him placing a plate of small sweetmeats on the table beside him. Art trembled as her fulsome figure brushed against him. She bent forward thrusting her ample bosom under his face and offered him a tiny cup of coffee. From between his knees, the young girl was looking up at him as she towelled his feet and calves. The top of her dress was now open and her small dusky coloured breasts were fully on show, her nipples brown and erect. She licked her pink tongue along her white teeth and upper lip. He looked to his left side to find his hand being pressed against the mature woman’s rump. Her skirt had ridden up to reveal firm muscular buttocks. She pouted as she rubbed his hand against her naked bottom. The younger woman was rubbing her hands on the inside of his thighs. Amid this sea of wanton sensuousness, Art felt powerless to move, his arms and legs were dead weights. Nevertheless there was an insistent movement, a stirring in his groin.