"Doctor," the colonel continued, as if the doctor had not spoken at all, "if this was some intentional act by a race sophisticated enough to generate a wormhole where and when it desires, then why not have the probe land inside a scientific facility for study rather than out in an empty field?"
"Perhaps, Colonel, they feared we'd send a weapon."
"Perhaps that is their thinking because that is exactly what they are preparing to do."
"Or," Major Selina said, "they don't trust us any more then we trust them and they are just trying to get a feel for us?"
"Point is," the colonel continued, "you are going to report this to the IIEA and I am going to report to the President of the United States, both are going to ask for our recommendation. What will be your recommendation, Doctor?"
"Another probe of course, the next with the ability to communicate with whomever we may encounter on the other side. Would you suggest otherwise, Colonel?"
"No, Doctor, that is sensible. I would add that we take the precaution of setting up some defenses around the well. Missiles that will allow us to engage any hostile craft that might come through, like the one we saw in your photograph. I will also suggest a thermonuclear device that will give us the capability to close this door if we need to."
"Colonel," the doctor leaned on the table, his ears visibly reddening, "I see that as a massive over-reaction."
"Nevertheless, that will be my recommendation to the president. Doctor, your mission is science, mine is protection, your protection, Doctor. Now, unless you have something else?"
"I'm done."
"Thank you." The colonel looked to his XO and said, "Colonel Bruckner, convene the staff in my offices in one hour."
"Yes, sir."
○O○
Twenty-four hours later, they were still waiting for instructions. Cris, Major Selina, and Lieutenant Colonel Bruckner sat at a table in the XO's office with some coffee.
"Captain," the XO said, "I read your After Action Report. You state that your targeting computer went down as you approached the crater."
"Yes, sir, it came back up a few minutes later."
"When you no longer needed it?"
"That's correct, sir."
"Did you experience any other problems with another system on your vehicle?"
"No, sir."
"Sounds to me like the T-comp on your ship was purposefully and selectively disabled, would you concur?"
"Sir, I see no other alternative explanation. A diagnosis of the computer by maintenance didn't find an explanation for the failure."
"To my mind, that's proof of intelligent control of this phenomenon. I think we should proceed as if we are facing a hostile force."
"Sir, I disagree. Granted, this seems to indicate intent, but it still could have been a coincidence. Even if an intelligence disabled my T-comp, that action demonstrates restraint, with that kind of power, they no doubt could have destroyed me."
"Captain, they did destroy two of our Eagles."
"I still think that could have been an accident sir, perhaps they didn't know what effect their wormhole would have on our equipment. Most likely, they didn't even know the Eagles were there."
"The question remains, who are they, why did they create this wormhole, and what is their intent?"
"Hopefully," Major Selena said, "this next probe will resolve those questions."
The XO's COMde alerted him to an incoming text. He looked at the text message in his contact lens then returned to the others. "It's a go. We are to launch another probe ASAP. The lab coats will have it ready in three hours. Captain, you're being ordered to volunteer…again."
Chapter 5
With the Help of Vemde
Colonel Amar called Lieutenant Colonel Bruckner into his office. As the door closed, the colonel activated security measures that rendered his office soundproof.
"Alex," the colonel began, "we have authorization to go with the second probe. We have also been ordered to initiate option one Alpha three seven. Do you understand?"
"Yes, sir. I'll make it happen."
○O○
About six-and-a-half hours later, Cris was once again closing in on Hohmann crater.
"Eagle eight one, this is—"
"Yeah, Chuck, I know. Time critical event here, remember?"
"Okay, Cris, I show you twenty minutes out from Charlie Papa one."
"Roger."
It grew quiet. Cris was feeling nervous, more so than the first run, and he knew why: he was flying the exact same pattern as last time. In combat, that would get you killed. Of course, this was not combat—at least, he hoped it wasn't.
"So, Chuck, you married?"
"Divorced, like everybody else in the service. I do have two great kids, though. What about you?"
"Naw, came close once, though. I guess it's a good thing it didn't work, I'd have just ended up divorced, too."
"Ya never know—yours might have been among the percentage that makes it."
"No, Chuck, I'm reasonably certain you'd have had to share that boat with an astronaut who's better off married to a spacecraft."
"Cris, you're ten minutes from the check point."
"Roger, do you see your kids much?"
"Every night that I can, I vid link with them. They call me the Man in the Moon."
"How old are they?"
"Cristine is eight, Cynthia is six.”
"Two girls, wow. You're a lucky man."
"Yeah, my life could have turned out worse, or even ended in Oceania."
"Did you ever come close—to being killed, I mean?"
"Yeah, that day at Darwin. You?"
"Yeah, couple of times."
"When you get back, what say we get drunk and talk about it?"
"Chuck—I could never get that drunk."
"You're five minutes out, Cris."
"Roger."
Their transmissions ended for the moment. Cris was remembering, and he didn't want to remember, particularly not right now.
"Thirty seconds, Cris."
"Roger, Charlie Papa one in thirty. I'm switching to manual—now."
"Roger, I show you on manual. Computer says you'll hit Check Point One in twenty seconds do you concur?"
"Roger, fifteen seconds on my mark—mark."
Fifteen seconds later, Cris made his turn, and his targeting computer lined him up for the drop.
"Chuck, T-comp has me lined up, no malfunctions so far. I am making my approach now. I don't see anything, are you getting any readings?"
"Cris, we lost the satellite, remember?"
"Oh, yeah—I better get my head back in the game here. Hohmann looks quiet from here. I've slowed for the drop, about two klicks out now."
○O○
Inside the control room, Colonel Amar, Lieutenant Colonel Bruckner, and Major Selina stood behind Master Sergeant Alistair, all monitoring Cris's progress. Doctor Hatcher was in dome forty awaiting the probe's telemetry. All those in the control room could see the feed from Eagle eight one and hear Captain Salazar's voice.
"Chuck, T-comp has me lined up, no malfunctions so far. I am making my approach now. I don't see anything, are you getting any readings?"
"Cris, we lost the satellite, remember?"
With that comment, Colonel Amar asked, "Is he okay? Space sickness can cause lapses in memory."
"Oh, yeah," Cris went on, "I better get my head back in the game here. Hohmann looks quiet from here. I've slowed for the drop, about two klicks out now."
Cris's transmissions started to become garbled.
"Chuck, I can see a dim illumination inside the crater, it's—bright—looks white with—Probe will not release, I say again the—will not release."
Just then, they lost the video feed from the Eagle.
"Cris, say again, you're breaking up."
Cris's garbled voice came again over the speakers, "Chuck, I've lost forward—still, can't seem to—I am at full po—"
"Cris, say again. Cris, switch
to the alternate freq one."
Chuck was monitoring both frequencies, but when Cris's voice returned it was still on the initial, and still calm and professional.
"Chuck, I'm being dragged—backward—my nose is at thirty degrees—moving slowly—about eighty meters from the crater's rim now, and—"
Major Selena pushed her way past her two senior officers to stand next to Chuck. "Hatchling Three, this is Mother Bird, come in!" The anxiety was clear in her voice. There was no response, so she shouted, as if that would aid him hearing her. "Cris, dammit, you get your ass out of that hole and back here, do you read?"
Faint and broken, everyone heard Cris's response. "Mother Bird, sorry I lost you another Eag—Chuck, kiss the girls for me." The transmission ended.
"Cris—come in, Cris," Chuck continued to try. "Eagle eight-one, this is Hotel Sierra, acknowledge."
"What the hell just happened?" the XO asked.
Major Selina ignored him. "Sergeant Alistair, what strength is his signal?"
"There is none, ma'am."
"What about his transponder?"
"Ma'am—it's like he vanished."
○O○
The light in the well had become suddenly intense and projected high into the lunar sky. Cris attempted to release the probe, but his instruments indicated it had not been jettisoned.
Something wasn't right. Cris looked at his instruments, trying to figure out what exactly was wrong, when he noticed he was losing forward momentum. "What the—" Cris gave his MPE full forward power.
However, there was no noticeable effect on his motion; he was now backing through the sky. His reverse angle monitor showed he was being dragged toward the crater. He was standing on his tail now, nose pointing straight up.
Shortly, his nose was pulled below the level of the rim, and he lost all communications with Chuck.
Cris had exhausted all his options. His engines were straining uselessly against this unknown force and were starting to overheat. He slowly pulled back on the power, noticing that his rate of descent did not change. He shut his engines down completely, but interestingly, he did not fall. He continued to move downward, as if on an elevator.
In front of him, he watched as the field of stars, framed by the mouth of the crater, grew smaller and smaller. The deeper he went, the dimmer the light seemed to grow, until, at last, it was dark, and the circle of sky only a muted, distant glow. Cris looked at his instrument panel—it was going berserk. He gauged his descent at about ten meters a minute, now. He was not falling, he was being lowered.
When it happened, it was not a sudden burst of energy, a lightning flash or explosion. It started with a glow. Everything about him began to glow, even his own body. The power throughout the Eagle went out: no lights, no instruments, no environmental, just the odd, rather dim, glow. Cris checked his suit—it was without power, as well. He noted he was not panicking. Death seemed to be sitting in the next seat, but he had no fear. He had danced with death before—perhaps that was the reason for his calm. No, he knew what was in the back of his mind and it gave him hope for survival.
The glow began to increase in luminosity, brighter and brighter. It became so bright that he had to shut his eyes, and still the light penetrated his tightly closed lids to stimulate the rods and cones of his eyes. It was growing painful, when abruptly, it was gone. He opened his eyes only to find he was near blind from the intense light. He was in near total darkness, but could just barely make out some features of the cockpit.
The instrument panel sprang back to life first, followed by the lights, and then, environmental. He checked his suit and found it restored, as well. As his eyes acclimated to normal light levels, he began to see the stars beyond his canopy. He was no longer hovering above the Moon—he appeared to be in deep space.
But something was wrong. None of the familiar, ancient constellations that had guided man for millennia was present in the sky before him. Hard as he looked, he could not identify any constellations, or recognize a single star.
Cris noticed light falling upon the port side of his ship. He had maneuvering thrusters, so he rotated the Eagle slowly, and from behind him, the sun came into view. He looked about. The Earth and Moon had vanished from around him and the stars had been rearranged. Only the sun seemed the same.
With no engines, Cris's Eagle was at the whim of gravity. He noticed that the heavier portion of his ship, the stern, was slowly swinging him back to his original orientation. Was he in the gravitational pull of that sun? No, the sun was some eight degrees from being directly behind him. His monitors that showed below, out to the sides and behind his craft had not re-booted. He attempted to do so now, but without result. Once again, Cris fired his maneuvering thrusters and started to pivot around, this time in the other direction.
Swinging into view was a planet, a large blue-green, crescent, now to his direct front, so close it filled the sky. Once the wonder of it had worn off, he realized he was trapped in the gravitational well of the planet, and picking up speed.
Suddenly, his instrument panel indicated that his Main Propulsion Engines were back up. He didn't have the power in a vehicle designed to travel about the moon in one-sixth of the Earth's gravity to escape the pull of a planet this size. Nor was his ship designed for reentry; he was heading for the atmosphere at an alarming rate.
Cris's mind raced—options, there had to be some options. His MPE would not develop the thrust needed to enter into an orbit. He could turn the ship around and slow his speed, but that would only hasten his plummet into the atmosphere.
Ahead of him, he saw a glint of light, like sunlight off an airliner's wing, but this thing was way too high to be an airliner. After a few minutes, he could see it was a silver disk—no, it was an oval, and it was without a doubt a spacecraft. It meant that this planet was indeed peopled by an advanced race of beings capable not only of flight within their atmosphere, but space travel, as well!
The thing was massive, perhaps three hundred meters long and a hundred wide. Its top was slightly domed. As he got closer, he could see all manner of detail; the outer skin of the thing was far from smooth. It was covered in low rectangles, boxes, and pipes or conduit running all over the craft’s surface.
The edges became quite thin, and twenty meters up from the edge were countless rectangular windows, each six to ten meters tall and perhaps three meters wide. These windows circled the object completely.
Relative to his own approach, the thing was moving rather slowly.
The thought came to him in a flash: land on the back of this leviathan, or burn up in the atmosphere.
Quickly, Cris rotated a hundred-and-eighty and fired his MPEs to slow his approach. This did indeed increase the rate of his orbital decay, but he needed that, as well. This would be sort of like landing a VTOL on an aircraft carrier moving at close to seven kilometers a second.
He had to match the speed of the object, then gently set his Eagle down on it. He had to hope the hull of this thing had the structural integrity to support him.
He was approaching his target far too fast; regardless, he let the Eagle slide in a bit longer. He rotated back around and fired his forward-facing maneuvering thrusters at full power in a sustained burn that far exceeded design specifications. It was working, he was slowing, but it looked as if he had started his burn too late. Now, a warning sounded from his instrument panel, his thrusters were overheating.
"Hang in there, baby."
He was closing the distance between himself and the top of the object. Both his forward speed and his descent approach were too fast. Cris engaged his downward-facing lunar counter-gravity engines and slowed the speed of his fall. Then he brought his nose up and fired his LCGE in short bursts to slow his forward momentum.
An outside observer would have been amazed at the obvious skill of the pilot as the Eagle touched down light as a feather. Cris considered himself unimaginably lucky. The front of his Eagle was merely fifty meters from the leading edge of this thing, o
nly about thirty meters shy of the windows. Cris noted that his Eagle wasn’t sitting flat on the hull of his host.
So what? At least I’m still in one piece.
Now, Cris just sat tight. He had no idea if this thing was going to dock with a space station, rocket off to some other distant world, or land on the planet. Docking with a space station would be his best bet. No doubt, these people could get him inside somehow. Rocketing off would not be good, they might be engaging in a journey of several months, he had no food or water aboard, and his power wouldn't last. Landing would be the worst option, the heat of re-entry would incinerate him, more likely the tremendous wind as they entered the atmosphere would blow him off this thing, and then he would plummet to his death.
Cris spent the next hour recovering from the realization that he 'wasn't in Kansas anymore'. He had no clue where he was, but the planet below him was absolutely not Earth. For the next hour, he stared out his canopy, examining the alien world below him. He could see a great sea and a continent, but cloud cover prevented him from seeing the entire land mass.
Abruptly, Cris noticed, as he looked out his canopy, that the continent had not moved relative to the position of the ship upon which he sat. They had entered into a geosynchronous orbit. As he watched, it became apparent that the thing was losing altitude, it was simply lowering into the atmosphere. "What the hell are you doing?" Cris asked of the unseen pilot.
The descent through the atmosphere was measured, controlled, and entirely vertical. Soon Cris could make out the tops of snow-covered mountains, great forests, and massive rocks that themselves formed mountains.
As they drew nearer to the ground, Cris lamented not being able to see straight down. There must be something below them that this thing was aiming at, some landing pad or cleared area in the forest—something.
At about fifteen thousand feet off the surface, well into the planet's atmosphere, his ride began to move forward, then it began to turn toward the left in a wide spiral. The wind over the top increased dramatically and the ship canted to the left almost forty degrees. Cris re-secured his seat restraints. Soon, he felt his Eagle sliding backward and to his left.
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