Chapter nine
Captain Cook lay in her bed; the cushion under her did little to elevate the pain. She felt her fingertips tremble on the sheets. The sweat from her body soaked the bed in ways even her worst dreams never did. The tremor from her fingers shot up her hand and moved into her arm then her shoulder. Her entire body convulsed. Fran’s words echoed in her head, ‘I’m kind of surprised no one was killed. A powerful enough discharge could easily affect a person’s nervous system.’ The heavy gravity did nothing to prevent her back from arching up. Her teeth clinched shut, and her eyes had rolled into the back of her head. This was her second seizer since the attack.
After a few moments her back arched down and she felt her shoulders and arm rest. Muscles ached as if she had been working out for a few hours. Her breathing was erratic and her heart beat fast. The medicines the doctor had given her for the condition had stopped working. She had to get back to Earth as soon as she could.
The computer chirped in urgent, begging her to answer with its tone. She looked at it with weak eyes. She gave the Commander orders not to interrupt her rest unless it was important. She had no choice but to answer. “Yes!”
“Captain, our sensors are picking up a signal from Professor Ricter’s shuttle.”
It hurt her face to smirk, but she couldn’t stop it. Of course he’d find a way to contact us. We needed to be rescued, and it would fit him just fine to be the one who saves us. “What did he say?”
“He has some very important information he needs to share with us.”
“Can we get the shuttle into the ship?”
The Commander paused for a few seconds before answering. “No, not without lowering the force field and I wouldn’t recommend we do that. The Professor doesn’t seem to be in any danger, so he should stay there until we can figure something out.”
“I agree. Is there anything else?”
“He would like to set up a meeting. He claims to have found a way out of this and would like to discuss it.”
“Okay, set something up and meet me in the conference room in ten minutes.”
*****
Professor Ricter looked back at her from a monitor which hung from the ceiling in the main conference room. His face had a painful look on it as he strained against the pull of gravity. “The alien's hologram showed a giant core in the middle of the planet. I’m not sure why they showed it to me, but I believe it’s where we need to go.”
“I agree,” Commander Pippleton replied. “Doctor Lipton and I have been talking about it, and it all seems to point to the core. The ribbons aren’t preventing us from going down and now that the Professor has seen what it is I’m inclined to side with him on this argument.”
“Professor, I’m impressed with your bravery,” she said when they had all finished. “Never thought you had it in you.”
“Well, Captain, sometimes circumstances dictate how brave you are.”
“That’s true,” she replied with as much humor as she could muster. Her hand continued to shake. “It seems all my senior staff is in agreement; we should head down. Trying to leave proved almost fatal, heading to the core also seems like it will kill us but if the Professor, my second in Command and Doctor Lipton all agree, I don’t see how I can say no. But, let me just play some devil’s advocate here, what if we head down and we can’t get back? ”
“Captain,” Commander Pippleton said before anyone else could answer. “We are in a situation that we’ve both have been trained for, a situation where we don’t know the answer or how things will turn out. There is a very good chance we are in a no-win situation."
“Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.” Professor Ricter said.
“Rock and a hard place,” Doctor Lipton added with a smile on her face.
Marjorie raised her hand and laughed. “Okay, enough with the clichés, I get it.”
“All jokes aside,” Professor Ricter said, “I don’t see what other choice we have. Captain, you know me and I would not risk my life unless I thought there was a chance we’d survive. I’m betting my life on this choice.”
“I sure hope you’re right. Is there anything else we need to discuss?”
No one said anything and the meeting broke up. Before leaving, the Captain pulled Commander Pippleton aside. “Commander, how are you feeling?”
“I feel good,” he said. “This gravity doesn’t seem to affect me as much as the others.”
“I noticed that. I need to be candid with you. I’m not doing so well.”
Commander Pippleton nodded. “I don’t think anyone is.”
“But I’m the Captain. I need to know that if something happens to me, if I can’t go on, that you’ll be there to take over.”
“Of course, it’s my job.”
She placed her hand on his shoulder and smiled. “That's all I needed to hear, Commander.”
He shrugged his shoulders, happy. “Do you need help getting back to your room?”
“No, I’m heading to the bridge. I’ve been in my room long enough. It’s time I made myself visible again. Inspire by example, it’s the only way I know how.”
“I see. May I head to my office?”
“Go ahead. If I need you, I’ll give you a call.”
Chapter ten
Captain Cook sank into her command chair. Now was the time to put the Professor and Commander Pippleton’s plan into action. They were going to move toward the core in the hopes that there will be something that could save them. It was a great risk, one she felt she needed to take. She had total confidence in the Professor’s theories and trusted his instincts. “Communication, get me Professor Ricter.”
Within a few seconds, his face appeared on one of her screens. “Are you ready, Professor?”
“I’m as ready as I can be. I’ll lead the Arwen down with my shield configured to make me as streamline as possible. You’ll follow close behind with your shield configured the same way, within a few minutes we should reach the barrier.”
“At which point you will break off and let us try to break through.”
“I still don’t like that idea. I think I should go first this way if it fails then I’ll be the only one to lose my life.”
“I understand but the Arwen has a better chance of returning than your shuttle. I’ll see you on the other side.”
While the crew around her prepared Marjorie closed her eyes to think. This could be the end of everything for her and the Arwen. There was no promise the ship, even with its shields, will survive the plunge to the bottom of this ocean. She’d been close to death's door many times. In the Gyssyc war she had accepted her death but, thanks to a fluke of timing, she survived her suicidal attack. That was different, her death would have meant something. If she were to die here no one would know what happened, the Arwen would just become another ship that had been lost to the hostility of space.
“Captain,” Commander Pippleton said, “everything is in order, we’re ready to go.”
“Thank you, Commander. Communications, give me the ship, I’d like to talk to them.”
“You have them.” The Communication officer said.
“Attention Arwen crew. We’re about ready to make our dive. Those who can strap yourselves in, those that can’t hold on tight. If all goes according to plan we’ll be in normal gravity soon. Captain Cook, out.” She motioned for the communications office to turn the feed off. “Helm, take us down.”
The Arwen tilted downward and the engines ignited. Captain Cook felt herself being pushed into the back of her chair which groaned from the added pressure. From somewhere close she heard several loud popping noises that she recognized as the seams which held the bulkheads together ripping away.
The ship started to shake as they moved further toward that core. Underwater ocean currents which had been calm in the upper layers were now trying to sweep the Arwen away. They were reaching the barrier, the place where the pressure compressed the water into a solid. They were moving toward it fast, passing
through several layers of ever increasing force, trying to slice through it. The water was getting more viscose slowing the Arwen down. Captain Cook worried they were be trapped like a fly in amber but she realized if they stopped the water would simply crush them.
“We’re about three kilometers from the core, shield holding strong.” The Commander said. “We’ll reach the barrier in three minutes.”
The murky view from outside slowly dimmed. The alien life-form, as sturdy as it was, couldn’t survive at these depths. Soon, there was total darkness, not even the ambient light from above made it down this far. She tried to switch views, tried to see what was in front of her from different wavelengths, but she saw nothing.
“Barrier boundary is one minute.” Commander Pippleton said. “Shield holding strong. Professor Ricter’s shuttle is doing fine.”
Marjorie looked at her shield configuration. It was shaped like a spear, a long point in the front that wrapped around the Arwen. She hoped to pierce the barrier and drive her ship through.
The Professor, as they planned, broke off and let the Arwen pass. Then, the Arwen hit the barrier. Everything shifted forward and she felt her safety belt straining to keep her in place. It was as if someone slammed on the breaks of a car while it was traveling at a high rate of speed. The bridge crew grunted in unison as their bodies pressed against the restraints.
“We’re making it through,” The Commander said, his voice didn’t sound stressed, could the Ulliam body be that powerful that these extremes didn’t bother it at all? “Shield is holding at 20 percent, engines at full power. We’re slowing down but still moving. The Professor is following in our wake.”
The Arwen pushed through. She saw nothing but black on her monitor, nothing in front of her and nothing behind her. The dark seemed to absorb all light, the lights from the engines, the lights from her ship, the glow from the strange ribbon aliens.
Then, she saw something. A dim glow. This was how the Professor described it, if they could keep moving they would be okay.
The Arwen sliced its way through the barrier and into a wide-open expanse of crystal-clear water. Right away she felt gravity, the gravity she and her crew have been fighting for the past day, disappear. A few drops of sweat from her forehead floated in a tiny sphere in front of her eyes; she was weightless, and it was the best feeling of her entire life.
She relaxed her arms and just let them float next to her. Any loose hair her tight bun didn’t catch drifted above her head. If she were in a more playful mood, she would have undone her hair and let it all float around. Commander Pippleton said, “Water pressure is at zero. We’re not detecting any of the ribbon life form.”
“We’ll do a full sweep later. Turn the gravity plates on and get a crew together to assess the damage.”
“The gravity plates are on.”
“Are they damaged?”
“I’ll have the Chief McFerren look into it.”
She looked at her monitor and saw something to make her cheer; the Professor’s shuttle had followed and was now maneuvering toward the Arwen.
“Captain,” her communication officer said, “The Professor would like to talk to you.”
“Of course.” She replied cheerfully.
His face appeared on the screen and he said, with a big smile, “Told you this was the right way to go.”
“I never had a doubt, Professor. Now, let’s see if we can’t get your shuttle over here so we can talk in person."
“Captain,” Commander Pippleton said, “Chief McFerren said the gravity plates are working fine.”
“Why don’t we have gravity?”
Professor Ricter said. “I don’t have gravity either. It’s possible were in some sort of gravity-free zone.”
“How is that possible?”
“I have no idea,” he replied. “Will I have time to study it while I’m on the ship?”
“Well, we need to repair some systems and sure up the hull then we need to figure out how to get out of here, and I’m going to need your help with that. You might have some time, but not much.”
“In other words, not amply time. I guess just knowing this is possible will have to be satisfactorily for now. I’m programming my shuttle to land. I hope to see you in a few minutes.”
“Captain,” Another bridge officer said. It was the communication officer. “I’m picking up something odd. It sounds like a beacon of some sort.”
“A distress call?” She asked.
“None I’ve never heard before.”
“Okay, let me hear it.”
The sound from the speakers was a series of short clicks followed by a long, two second crackle. It cycled over again, repeating the same series of clicks and chirps. “Could it be interference from the string creatures?”
“I found it after I filtered any interference from them out.”
“Where is it coming from?”
“Down, toward the core.”
The core, everything seems to come from the core. “Navigation, how far down is it to the core?”
“A few kilometers.”
“Okay, once the Professor is on set course for the core. I want to check it out.”
Chapter eleven
The core was an enormous mass of silver that flowed with eddies and currents of lighter silver moving across its surface. It looked like a giant ball of mercury floating in a sea of gelatinous fluid. The Arwen, its own surface polished to a mirrored perfection, reflected its image off the core’s surface creating a refracting infinity loop of images.
Captain Cook, Professor Ricter, Doctor Fran Lipton and Commander Pippleton sat in the main conference room amazed at the images the props were showing them. “The core is about as large as the Earth,” Professor Ricter said. “In fact, it’s slightly larger and is generating enough gravity to hold all the water above us in place.”
“If it’s generating gravity why are we all still weightless?” Captain Cook asked.
“Somehow the core is also keeping this region no gravity zone. Gravity can’t exist here; it's almost like we’re in a place where the laws of the universe don’t apply.” His voice sounded flat, distracted.
“Professor, are you okay?”
“No, Captain, I’m not. This place should not exist. The fact it does goes against everything I’ve learned. I’m going to study and try to understand it, but it’ll be tough since I’m having a hard time even accepting this isn’t some sort of trick.”
“Do you think it’s a trick?”
“No,” he replied seriously. “It’s real. I just don’t know why or how.”
Marjorie took a deep breath to still her own worried heart. She had never seen him so rattled before and it worried her. “Okay, do we have any ideas how to get out of here?”
Commander Pippleton raised his hand. “We could use the magnet from the Particle Accelerator to create a magnetic field which might be strong enough to keep the ribbon forms off us. However, we’re not sure if we would have adequate power to get us out of the planet’s gravity field.”
“Okay, we’ll keep that one as plan C, what else?”
“We could check out what’s inside the sphere.” Doctor Lipton said. “It’s look's liquid so I’m sure a probe could easily get inside.”
“The probe I saw from the alien ship crashed on the surface.”
“How long ago was the probe launched?”
“About 2,000 years ago.”
“We should still send a probe inside the core to see what will happen.” Doctor Lipton said.
“Professor, do you see any reason not to try this?”
He pursed his lips, thinking hard. Then, with a wave of his hand said, “Captain, if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to head to my room now to think.”
“Go ahead, Professor.”
He pushed himself off his chair and floated to the ceiling. With very little grace, he pushed himself down again. His face was stoic, solid in defiance of the weightlessness. He nodded to the others then pushed off
the floor toward the open door and into the hallway.
“You talk about this and give me a solution. I need to talk to the Professor.”
They all nodded in agreement and Marjorie, the veteran of many weightless moments both in training and in combat, gracefully floated after the Professor. When she found him, his legs were drifting over his head and he was hanging onto the wall for dear life.
She skillfully grabbed his legs and pulled them down. “The trick is to not to let one part of your body get ahead of another,” she said trying to use a voice which wasn’t condescending. She didn’t want to upset or embarrass him any more than he was.
“I’ll have to remember that. Is the meeting over all ready?”
“Well, without you we can’t go on,” she said with a smile.
“Ah, trying to help my ego with compliments. You know me so well. Did you come here to rescue me or talk to me?”
“Talk to you. You seemed odd in there.”
“Yes, I need to deal with this.”
“I find it hard to believe there is something out here that surprises you. All we’ve seen, all we’ve learned from the Gyssyc-“
“This isn’t like that,” he said stopping her mid-sentence. “The Gyssyc technology was more advanced than ours, but we would have eventually figured it out. I estimate they were only about 50 years ahead of us. But this? This is beyond anything we can even imagine.”
“You sound more scared than awed.”
“I don’t get awed,” he replied coldly. “I don’t want to meet the race that created this. This planet, this zone, everything we’ve seen is not just a few hundred years ahead of us, it’s a few thousand years ahead of anything we can even theorize about.”
“From what we’ve seen there is no advanced life here so-“
“So what?” He interrupted again. Marjorie had seen this side of him before, he was rude, obnoxious and not a very good friend. However, she had accepted who he was and would let it slide, pointing out his fault was just another way to shut his thought process down, and she needed his full attention on the matter at hand. “The life here can’t do this, that’s true, but what if this was just a test planet, a proof of concept some advanced alien abandoned. What if it’s a scout planet, something placed here to entice other races to discover it so they can see who’s next on the list of races to invade or displace? No, I don’t trust this place and the sooner we get out of here the better I’ll feel. If we can do it stealthily even better. I don’t want an alien race this advance looking at the Earth, at least not until we’re able to compete.”
The Arwen Book two: Manifest Destiny Page 8