Lynda pressed the ‘down’ button.
Strangely, the elevator objected to the command to go down. The scrapping of steel against the guide rails and humming of the electrical motor echoed off the far walls. Although there was no deadly anti-matter up here, she was terrified that it might not be the case down there. Fearful that they might disappear, she looked at her hands. Vigilantly looking for the General, Whelan’s eyes were still focused on the cavernous lab below.
An uncharacteristic bump of the elevator indicated they had reached the floor. Like a hypnotist, the saucer held the Professor both stunned and spellbound. Although aware of the dangerous anti-matter splattering about, slow legs carried him toward it. Looking up at the mystery Lynda heard him mumble,
“It really exists. It can really be done.”
She was confused by his apparent enthrallment. For a man who believed in dimensional worlds why would he be awestruck by something as simple as a flying saucer? She asked
“Did you not believe in flying saucers before this Professor?”
As he shook his head, still staring in astonishment, he replied,
“No, not in this form.”
She added,
“After all the things you told me about dimensions and breaches I’m surprised. What is so hard to believe about a flying saucer coming here from another planet?”
“Another planet yes but this ship did not come here through the voids of space. It is correct to assume that the Babble Tower is a metaphor for separation of languages through distance. There is no way this came through the voids of space.”
Because Whelan thought it was a space ship, he was quick to jump in.
“Are you telling me this is not an alien ship?”
The Professor slowly replied,
“It is a ship yes and indeed very alien. However, it did not come from outer space.”
Whelan needed confirmation and again asked,
“But it is alien, right? It did come from another place other than here on Earth did it not?”
“Yes, from another place no doubt. Therein lays the problem. Something from another place has come here and due to your fiddling with what you do not understand something has gone terribly wrong.”
Turning to Lynda the Professor added,
“Do you remember the metaphor about the fish in the fish bowl? How they could hear things from another place, like tapping on the glass? Like you, those fish saw something drop into their world, something from another place. Because they did not know what it was, they fiddled with it. Unfortunately, it was their oxygen pump. After tampering with it they managed to turn it off, and now do not know how to fix it. In order to save their lives, somebody from outside the fishbowl has to come and fix it for them. What I am saying is that we are in the fishbowl and we do not know how to fix it. Whoever owns it will have to come and do that for us.”
As confused as Whelan looked, Lynda’s expression was one of understanding the metaphor.
Because time was of the essence, Whelan was not willing to ask for an explanation he would not understand anyway. This world or that world it meant no difference to him. Something was happening here in this world and it was here they should be directing their attention. He pointed to the large hole in the floor and said,
“Perhaps we can get into discussing goldfish later Professor but right now our time is limited.”
“Yes,” said the Professor, “let’s get to it shall we. Just to make sure it really is anti-matter, I will need to shine a light across the gap. Find a flashlight or anything that has a wide dispersal beam.”
As the Professor continued to stare at the hole from a safe distance, both scattered in search of a flashlight.
Lynda returned with two flashlights and asked,
“Will theses torches do?”
He was too focused on the flashlights to bother asking what she was talking about. Taking one, he said,
“Turn it on and stand beside me.”
He shone the beam across the hole at waist level, as she did. When the beam crossed the nine foot gap, she was so amazed she almost dropped her flashlight. Within the beam appeared a plethora of thunderstorms looking like a galaxy from a lost universe gone mad with explosions. She gasped and asked,
“What the hell is that?”
The Professor remained calm and slowly lowered his beam deep into the hole. She eventually caught on and did the same. On the wall of the hole were more miniature lightning bolts zapping back and forth. The Professor said,
“That is radiated molecular instability. You are looking at a war between anti-matter battling for dominance over positive-matter. It’s a fight our positive world will not win.”
He then said,
“Throw your flashlight across the hole.”
With an underhand toss, it sailed across the hole. At the midway point the flashlight suddenly exploded into mere atoms to join the universe wherever flashlight atoms disappear to. He said,
“Anti-matter will destroy positive-matter every time.”
He slowly raised his light to shine across the hole again. Once more, the lightening and conflict of anti-matter and positive-matter became visible. This time he raised the beam higher until it shone onto the belly of the ship just above them. Whelan, who had intensely followed the beam, was so startled that he took a quick defensive step backwards. It was clear that the outer lip of the ship was missing. The security officer touched the same spot before he was killed. Raining down from that spot was whatever material the ship was made of. It looked like a sugar cube melting in hot water and slowly dripping into the hole.
Lowering the beam across the chasm again, the Professor stared at the temporal conflicts of anti-matter and seemed to be lost to thought. Without warning, he turned off the light and asked,
“When you first discovered it, how wide was the hole?”
She replied,
“When Professor Hatcher first came to me it was nothing more than a pin hole in his hand. The next day when I saw the lab and discovered the hole in the floor, it had doubled although still no more than the size of a fist. The next day, when the security officer touched the saucer, the hole had doubled in size.”
Casting a puzzled eye to the hole, she added,
“Now look at it.”
She saw he was thinking about something, but knowing the condition of his mind, had no idea what was going on in there. The Professor reached into his pocket and produced the muted bell. He handed Lynda his flashlight and said,
“Turn the light back on and shine it at the wall of the hole.”
Again, like magic, the thunderstorms of the opposing matter and anti-matter conflict came to light. As she was doing that, the Professor unraveled the tissue crammed into the bell preventing clanging. Very gently, he waved the bell to produce that annoying tinny sound she hated.
To Lynda’s great surprise, the vibrations of the bell somehow interacted with the battle between anti-matter and positive-matter. Clearly, both combatants hated the sound and reacted badly to it. He rang the bell again and lightning storms on the crater wall greatly intensified as did the plasma storm across the hole. To everybody’s surprise, suddenly the hole expanded by a foot. The Professor said,
“I have just taken one year off the life of this planet. What just happened is actually both good and bad news.”
Confused Whelan voiced the obvious.
“What the hell could the good news possibly be?”
Putting the bell back in his pocket the Professor explained,
“The good news is that because it can be intensified it can therefore also be controlled. If it can be controlled, it also means that it can be turned off.”
Whelan was quick to understand that bad news was also coming. With tribulation he asked,
“And the bad news?”
Pointing to one of the support legs holding up the saucer the Professor said,
“Do you see that? Within a day, the hole will expand enough to encompass tha
t support beam. At that point the whole saucer will tip over and fall into the hole.”
Whelan missed the point and said,
“Maybe that’s a good thing then. It could act like a back draft in a forest fire and eventually burn itself out.”
Shaking his head the Professor kept the gloomy situation alive by saying,
“No Sir. It will be more like tossing a match into a bucket of gasoline. By my guess, we have one day to figure out how to turn it off before that happens.”
He then turned to them and asked.
“Any ideas?”
There it was again. It echoed in Lynda’s head. ‘Turn it off’. Like a giant picture puzzle in her mind, the bigger pieces slowly came together.
Mentally calculating goodness knows what, the Professor seemed to go blank. Slowly he cast a wry eye up to the saucer and then back down to the hole in the floor. He eventually said,
“Well, here is more bad news. If the saucer were to fall into the hole now, we would be dead within seconds. Within minutes of that, this whole compound will be gone from the map. Projecting that further, I would guess that within one year this whole state could easily go missing. Excluding the structural damage to the planet and leaving alone how it would react to a hole clear through to the center of its core and out the other side. I could safely say that within, oh, forty years this whole planet will be gone.”
Both were astounded. How could that possibly happen from such a small breach? The Professor rambled on with his dire prediction.
“Of course that’s just the fate of the planet. Because we are a solar system of opposite matter, the destruction would not stop there. Perhaps within a thousand years there will no longer be a solar system either.”
With panic in her voice, Lynda pointed to the hole and interjected,
“But it’s just a small hole! Are you telling me this thing goes all the way through the planet and out the other side?”
Chapter 29
Akmar Zima and Allah’s Gate
At exactly the same time Lynda expressed astonishment that the hole could cut through the planet and come out the other side, something strange was happening in the Arabian Desert. Akmard Zima was determined that the murderer of his son would be brought before Allah for judgment. Having tracked his killer to the middle of the desert, his camel was parched and frothing at the mouth. It had been good to him through the years and would hate to lose it but he will not stop to rest the suffering beast. Especially now, knowing that he cannot be far behind the killer. Allah has also assisted in the chase by holding back the desert winds allowing him to better track his son’s killer through the dunes.
The camel had bowed legs and was shaking from fatigue. Akmard raised his hand to his eyes shading them from the glare of the intolerable sun. Although his eyes are old, they are still sharp enough to track the trail of his quest. Akmard knows that as tired and as low as his camel hangs his head, so it must also be for the killer’s camel. Three gold pieces. For the value of only money, his son was killed. He had seven sons but the loss of one can be the same as the loss of them all.
Over the past five days tracking the killer, Akmard had steadily lost the men who had joined him in his pursuit. Two of his cousins went back when one of the camels broke its leg. One took the other back. Two days later, three others including one of his sons turned back when it became clear that continuing into the clutches of the dessert heat meant sure death. They argued that sand would serve justice to the killer.
Just two days ago, his eldest son was forced to stay in the oasis with his dead camel. Although his father promised to return for him at the end of the pursuit, the son saw little hope of ever seeing his father again. An insane rage seemed to have taken him over. Hot glaring sun had turned him mad with determination and revenge.
As he sat on his camel gazing out into the vastness of the steaming sand, a breeze ran through his great beard. With a slap of his crop, he urged his camel forward. With his head hung low, the camel did not budge. Again and this time slightly harder his trusted steed was urged forward and again, the camel’s feet remained dug steadfast into the shifting sand.
Knowing that the beast can at times be almost as stubborn as himself, he pulled hard on the reins snapping his head to one side at the same time again hitting him hard with the whip. Nothing happened and Akmard knew something was wrong. Just as that realization came to him, the camel collapsed to the ground in a heap and threw Akmard to the sand.
There was nothing to do now except retrieve his water, rifle, and continue on foot. There was no going back to the oasis. The distance was too far by foot and beyond the distance of his water supply. Flipping a corner of his robe over his face he took a deep breath and prepared for the only thing he could do, continue onward.
Hasid, the killer, sat atop his camel looking out into the vastness of the desert. He was looking for a high dune with a northerly side that the sun cannot touch. That is when he saw something strange in the distance.
At first, he thought it was a kinisk, a sand devil. Swirls of wind spin so fast that it picks up sand in a spiral and dances through the desert picking up more sand. Upon further scrutiny he realized that this sand was not spinning, it was shooting upward, as if something from the ground was blowing the sand to the heavens.
He was strangely compelled to approach and examine the phenomenon. However, his camel would not budge. After a prodding of the whip and kicking of the heels, Hasid realized that there was not another step left in the animal. Dismounting he approached the strange phenomenon and stopped a few paces from it. Looking hard he saw a strange hole in the sand. He knew this was out of place because if there was one thing the desert does not have, it is holes in the sand. The sands are too alive, too constantly moving for a hole to exist. Yet, there it was right in front of him.
It was about two paces across the opening. Around the lip of the hole, sand was falling into it like the sands through an hourglass. A killer is not a man who fears the justice of Allah but this time he felt a peculiarity about the hole and it put the fear of another power into him. Curiosity not only kills cats but humans as well. He simply had to look inside the hole. There might be gold in the bottom of the well.
Up on the dune where Hasid had first seen the strange gust of sand blown to the heavens now stood Akmard. Looking down into the far sands he finally saw his killer in the distance. Even from here, tired eyes saw that the killer had left his rifle strapped to the camel. Akmard decided to sneak up on him.
As Akmard approached the fatigued camel, he felt that his quest for justice and revenge was near an end. No more than ten paces in front of him was the man he had been pursuing. His back was to Akmard and he seemed infatuated with that strange hole by his feet. Akmard raised his rifle and was about to pull the trigger when something happened that he did not understand. It caused him to lower his rifle and stare with both eyes wide.
With his back still to Akmard, Hasid kneeled at the edge of the hole. Looking into it, he saw no hidden treasure. It seemed to be bottomless, so deep all he saw was darkness. Instead of it being a warning of danger, it prompted him to lean forward to get a better look at the bottom.
For a reason known only to Hasid, he slowly extended his arms out over the hole. Akmard did not know why the man suddenly started screaming. He watched as Hasid jumped up, turned and faced him. Instantly Akmard brought his rifle up and prepared to kill him. It was then that Akmard suddenly realized that the killer had no arms. The shear look of terror on the man’s face was accented by horrific screaming. As Hasid started to move toward Akmard his foot slipped in the loose sand around the hole and he started to fall backwards. Before he could disappear into the depths, he disappeared right in front of Akmard’s stunned eyes. It appeared that his body was made of sand and a gust of wind had come along to blow him into nothing.
Knowing that Allah works in mysterious ways, Akmard did not intend to question the strange justice. Turning to the camel who also witnessed the punishme
nt but with little concern or caring, Akmard pulled a blanket from it. He then turned back to the mysterious hole and walked toward it. He got no closer than three paces when he felt the evil emanating from within. ‘Odd,’ he thought, ‘that Allah’s home should feel so evil.’
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