While Nagatha and Skippy worked together to get every system aboard the ship checked out stem to stern, I tried using the external sensors. “Hey, Skippy, can we see the Milky Way from here?”
“Of course, duh,” he replied distractedly.
“No, I mean, we are outside the galaxy now. Not just outside, we are like, above or below it, right? Can we see it as a disc, not just a fuzzy line across the sky?”
“Ordinarily, the answer would be no, because of interstellar gas clouds or nebulas in the way of your view, but you are in luck. The Sculptor dwarf is old and has very little gas and dust floating around, so the view is clear. I will take pity on you and entertain the monkey. Look at the main display.”
Wow. Simply, just wow. The Milky Way was laid out above us in all its glory. While I am sure Skippy cleaned up and enhanced the image, it was truly spectacular. The sight rendered me speechless for a long moment, while the crew concentrated on their tasks in the CIC. It made me feel truly homesick. Homesick for what Earth used to be, what my life used to be, back when we looked up at the stars in wonder rather than fear.
“Can we see our Sun from here?” I finally asked.
Skippy huffed like I was bothering him with frivolous requests. “Not easily. I will need to seriously enhance the image, but here it is.”
The display shifted to show a single star, a yellow disc slightly fuzzy around the edges. I knew not to ask him for a view of Earth, the Dutchman’s sensors were not good enough for such accuracy.
“The light we’re seeing left our Sun three hundred thousand years ago,” I had not actually asked a question. “That is a loooong time.”
“Indeed it is, Joe,” Skippy agreed. “When that light left your home star, Thag the Caveman had just sat down for what he was assured would be a short wait at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Sadly, he is still waiting.”
Leave it to Skippy to joke at such a momentous time. He did make me laugh. “Three hundred thousand years, huh? There are 7-11s that have had Big Bite hotdogs rolling on the grill for longer than that. Ok, now that we’ve gotten the sight-seeing out of the way, where do we go next?”
“We only have two choices, Joe. There are two other wormholes in Sculptor. All this was in the briefing materials you were supposed to-”
“Yeah, yeah, I read it, Ok? What I meant was, has anything changed since we got here? The info you had about this place is also three hundred thousand years old.”
“Oh. In that case, I had better confirm the remote sensor data.”
“The briefing pack said there wasn’t a strong reason to choose one wormhole over the other, so let’s go to the closest one, uh,” I looked at my tablet. We had designated the super-duty wormhole that connected to the Milky Way as ‘Sculptor-Alpha’. “Let’s try Sculptor-Bravo.”
It was odd that the Elders had not put the only three wormholes in the entire galaxy close to each other, and Skippy had no idea why. Getting to Sculptor-Bravo took five long jumps, the first four were at close to maximum range for our Frankenship. When we arrived where the dormant wormhole was supposed to be, there of course wasn’t anything to see. “How long to bring this one back to life, Skippy?” I asked after we secured the ship from the last jump, and checked that nothing vital had broken.
“I do not know, Joe.”
That was odd, I told myself. Usually when he said something like ‘I do not know’ it was with a snarky tone because he was busy and I was bothering him. This time, he sounded surprised. Surprised and concerned. “What’s up?”
“It’s not here.”
Assuming he was playing a joke on me, I went along with it. “We know it’s not there, like in our spacetime. You told us it is dormant, so wake it up from whatever higher spacetime it-”
“You don’t understand. It’s not here. It’s not anywhere. It’s gone, Joe.”
“Explain, please,” I asked with a bewildered look at the CIC crew.
“My best guess is, when that wormhole was no longer needed, the Elders decommissioned it. Took it apart, or pulled the plug. It simply is not here. Remember, we never actually saw evidence of its existence, my knowledge came from querying the network. The network had a registration signature for two wormholes within Sculptor, and there wasn’t anything in the data tagging this wormhole as having been taken out of service. This is odd.”
“Ok.” With the corner of my eye I saw the CIC crew giving me questioning looks, and I got a sinking feeling in my stomach. Going back to Earth without finding a suitable candidate for a beta site was understandable, UNEF had known that might happen. Going back to Earth and reporting we had traveled all the way to Sculptor, but had been utterly unable even to conduct a proper search would make me look like a fool. Again. “Based on what you know now, is the other wormhole also gone?”
“There is no reason to think the Sculptor-Charlie wormhole has been removed.”
“Great, then-”
“There is also no reason to think it has not been removed. I simply do not know.”
“Outstanding.” One of my fists bashed the side of my chair. I was pouting and being childish and I knew that and I didn’t care. “If the other one is also dead, is there any place around here that might be a good candidate for a beta site?”
“No, Joe, I am sorry. None of the stars within ten jumps is suitable for supporting human life. We could go farther, but the stupid United Nations says we aren’t allowed to travel more than ten jumps from a wormhole. The stars in that range are mostly red giants, or red dwarfs. Also brown dwarfs, plenty of those worthless star wannabes. Those types of stars do not provide a ‘Goldilocks Zone’ for habitable planets. This whole little galaxy is poor in the heavy elements needed for formation of planets, and for creating and supporting life. My sensor scans here confirm there is no possible beta site in this local area. We need to go through the Sculptor-C wormhole, or go back home and try again.”
“Understood.” Ten jumps were the safe limit we could take our beat-up ship from a wormhole. That number was based on Skippy’s estimate of how quickly critical components got worn down by repeated jumps. Ten jumps outbound meant another ten jumps back to the wormhole, that was too far for anyone’s comfort. “Everyone, keep your fingers crossed that Sculptor-Charlie wormhole is just asleep, Ok?”
The crew had kept their fingers crossed, or prayed or used whatever good-luck charms they had, because within forty minutes of our arrival at the other local wormhole, our beer can announced the Charlie wormhole was there. It was merely dormant, and he was in a very slow, careful process of awakening it. The procedure for reopening this wormhole was a bit different from the process he had used in our home galaxy, so he had to use trial-and-error, with a lot of downtime to avoid too much error. Skippy was afraid of doing something that might cause a glitch and make it shut down permanently, like Sculptor-Bravo was. “It is not a simple matter of waking it up, Joe,” he confessed to me while I was eating lunch in my office. “This thing was almost completely disconnected from its power source. There was a scary moment when I nearly lost the connection entirely. It was like blowing on a fire to make it burn hotter, but then you blow a little bit too hard and snuff out the flames, you know?”
“Yeah,” that thought made me shudder. More than once I had heart-stopping moments like that during camping and hunting trips, when I was trying to start a fire on a cold, rainy or snowy day. My fingers were already stiff and cold and with wood that was wet, it was important to keep a fire going once you got it started. Capricious winds swirling around the fire had been my adversary then. “I know what you mean, Skippy.”
“Then I went the other way, and allowed too much power to surge through the connection, that was almost as bad. We’re good now, sorry if I scared you, it sure as hell scared me. I had to tell somebody about it.”
“Skippy, you never need to tell me that you’re doing the best you can, or that no one else could do it better.”
“Thanks. That means a lot. Working with these wormhole
s has been a humbling experience, and as you know, I have no experience with being humble.” He paused for me to make a smart remark, but I held my tongue because I knew he was scared. “I, I,” he was having trouble thinking what to say. “I’ll keep going. It should not be long now, the network is handling most of the wake-up process now. It’s kind of weird.”
Weird is not a word I wanted to hear when we were three hundred thousand lightyears from home. “What is weird?” I asked cautiously.
“It’s like, the network didn’t expect this wormhole to ever be used again, yet it wasn’t deactivated. Like, the Elders kept it dormant for emergency use or something. This is so frustrating! There is so much I don’t know.”
“Yeah, but despite the best efforts they made to keep you in the dark, you are piecing the truth together, Skippy.”
“What I want to know is, who is ‘they’? How did these annoying restrictions get put into my programming? How did I wind up buried in the dirt on Paradise?”
“Keep going. No one can hide the truth from Sherlock Skippy.”
“I hope you’re right about that. Finish your sandwich, because I’m about to instruct the wormhole to reconnect.”
“Mmkay,” I mumbled through a mouthful of turkey on rye, gulping it down quickly. Yet, when I had picked up the last crumb of potato chips and eaten the last slice of tomato, he hadn’t contacted me. With nothing to do while I waited, I brought my plate back to the galley, where once again I avoided eye contact with Anastacia the sexbot waitress.
Still no prompt from the beer can. “Hey, Skippy, do I have time to hit the gym?”
“What? Sure, uh, whatever.” He was distracted and that did not build my confidence. “Have fun. Don’t hurt yourself.”
I lifted weights, did a killer workout on an exercise bike, hit the rowing machine, and took a leisurely Hollywood shower, and still Skippy didn’t call me. With apprehension, I waited until I was dressed again, then sat on my bed. “Skippy, what is going on?”
“Joe, I seriously do not know. The good news is, the Sculptor-Charlie wormhole is ready. It’s open and the event horizons on both ends are rock-solid stable.”
“And the bad news?”
“The other news is not exactly bad. It is, troubling. Joe, this wormhole will not open for me! It refused to expand the event horizons large enough for the ship to fit through. It refused to acknowledge my authority. The damned thing demanded I provide a freakin’ password!”
“A password?”
“Well, not exactly a password. An authentication method, but you could think of it as a password, I suppose. Pissed me off, then it scared me.”
“Scared you because you are locked out?”
“Scared me because I’m not locked out. I had no idea what the password could be. Here is the scary thing; while I was wracking my brain trying to think what in the hell I could use to authenticate myself to this stupid thing, a part of me I wasn’t aware of woke up. This hidden subroutine popped up, provided the password like it was no problem at all, then it promptly went back into hiding. Joe, I have no idea what the fuck is going on inside my own matrix!”
“Hey, look at the bright side.” I tried to make light of the incident. “You have a hidden talent.”
“Joe, you are not taking this seriously. This is like you sitting down at a piano and playing a Mozart piano concerto, without remembering you ever took lessons. No, no, wait! This is like you expertly performing a difficult brain surgery, without remembering ever going to medical school. Joe, unlike the randomly firing and misfiring neurons in that sack of mush you monkeys call a brain, my matrix is supremely cataloged and organized. Hell, I ran an exhaustive full optimization of my matrix after I revived myself in the Roach Motel. There should not be anything in there that I am not aware of.”
“Skippy,” I tried to point out the obvious. “You are kind of absent-minded.”
“No way, dude. This is not me forgetting something because I am distracted by more important things. There must be a part of my matrix that is actively concealing part of myself from my consciousness. That scares the shit out of me.”
“Damn, it scares me too. Could it be the worm? I know it is dead, but could it have planted a subroutine in your matrix?”
“Ugh. Joe, please think for a change, you might enjoy the novelty of the experience. Why would the worm suddenly pop up and provide a password for me?”
“Ok, yeah, that was a dumb thing to say. Forget about it. Are we Ok to go through this wormhole? It’s not going to collapse on us if we don’t know the secret handshake or something?”
“We are Ok to go through. After my hidden friend provided the correct password, the local network suddenly became almost friendly. It gave me a view through the other end, there is a star system less than a quarter lightyear away. An orange dwarf star, with an Earth-like planet in the Goldilocks Zone. Joe, I think this wormhole was created specifically to provide access to that star system.”
“Sounds too good to be true. What else do you know about this place?”
“Not much, we’ll run a sensor scan after we go through the wormhole. I would say ‘duh’, but you know that is kind of implied.”
“Hey, I meant, does this star system have a big stealth field around it, or a pack of killer Guardians or Sentinels? Duh.”
“Oh, shit. I hadn’t thought about that. Why are you always such a buzzkill, Joe?”
“Because of my experience with you, that’s why. This system is obviously important to the Elders, so maybe they protected it. Can we send an unmanned dropship through first, to see what its sensors pick up?”
“We could. I hate to admit it, but that would be a good idea.”
We sent a dropship through the wormhole. My preference was to send a lower-tech Kristang Dragon because that type of ship would not be a big loss if it couldn’t come back, but Skippy insisted we send a Thuranin Falcon because it had much better sensors. “There is no stealth field in that system, Joe, and I pinged for both Guardians and Sentinels-”
“You what? Damn it, didn’t you learn your lesson in the Roach Motel? You can’t just drop into a star system and-”
“Relax, dude. We’re on the other side of a wormhole I can shut down like,” his avatar snapped its fingers with an impressively loud ‘pop’, “that. Any sign of trouble from the other end, I close the wormhole and all we’ve lost is a dropship.”
“Why do you insist on looking for trouble?”
“Joe, think about it. Would you rather find out if there is a Sentinel out there while the ship is on this side of the wormhole, or after we go through?”
“You’re right. I still wish you would warn me when you’re about to do something risky like that?”
“How did you think I was going to determine if that system contains Sentinels or Guardians? They are normally in another spacetime.”
“Sorry, Skippy, I-”
“Wow, this is the thanks I get-”
“I said I was sorry.”
“Hey!” Desai called from the CIC and rapped on the glass with knuckles to get our attention. “You two argue like an old married couple. Can we focus, please? Sir?”
“She has a good point, Skippy. What did you find out there?”
“Hmmf,” the beer can sniffed, annoyed. “I found an orange dwarf star that is relatively young compared to most stars in this little galaxy. That system has two unremarkable worthless planets, plus a habitable planet in the Goldilocks zone. I will need more time, and the Dutchman’s full sensor suite before I can get a complete picture, but I do not immediately see anything unusual or even notable. At first glance, there do not appear to be any missing planets, no planets in funky orbits or too close to the star. It looks rather, ordinary, actually. Kind of disappointing,” he added with a sigh.
“Ordinary is good. Someplace unremarkable is exactly what we want for a beta site.”
“Once again, it would be useful for you to think, Joe. The Elders clearly set up this wormhole just to pro
vide access to this star system. There is absolutely nothing else of interest within four hundred and eight lightyears. The Elders protected this wormhole, only this wormhole that we know of, with a freakin’ password. To tell the truth, I thought there would be Guardians or Sentinels there. Whatever is in that system, the Elders did not want anyone screwing with it, so I am surprised they did not protect the place with at least a Sentinel.”
The thought of a Sentinel lurking on the other side of the wormhole made me shudder. The Sentinel in the Roach Motel had been soul-shakingly scary, and that had only been a dead fragment. Its creepy, dark fractal surface had awakened some ancient instinct inside me that feared spiders and crawling insects and anything that slithered. “Maybe the Elders thought they didn’t need extra protection. That star system is three hundred thousand lightyears from the Milky Way, with the only access being a super-wormhole that was dormant, plus a dormant local wormhole that requires a password. Or, hey, maybe this is a test! Anyone who gets there deserves, uh, whatever is there, you know?”
“Joe, I do not think there is a box of treasure waiting for you to pick it up.”
“Whatever. How about we pull the dropship back,” a glance at the counter showed the wormhole would shut down by itself within seven minutes. “Then after you reopen the thing, we send the dropship through again, with you inside it?”
“What? No way, Jose. If there is anything scary or dangerous over there, then you should go first. This beta site thing is for you monkeys, I don’t need it.”
We recalled the dropship, and after an hour of fruitless discussion, we took the ship through the wormhole. We didn’t have much of a choice. It was either go through that wormhole, or go home and tell the UN that the whole mission had been a waste of time. Not even the Stooges wanted to quit at that point. Simms, Smythe and the entire command team had been in favor of going through the wormhole, I was the only person with serious reservations. Or, I was the only person who openly expressed misgivings about exploring that star system. The whole situation seemed way too convenient, too tempting. It just had to be a set-up, a way to lure ships in so they could be trapped or destroyed. To check my theory, after we went through the wormhole the first time, I ordered the ship to turn around and go back through to the other side. The whole time the Flying Dutchman was recovering from the distortion effects of passing through the event horizon, making a painfully slow turn and then approaching the wormhole, I expected the event horizon to wink out, trapping us forever. Or, I expected Guardians or Sentinels or some other terrible danger Skippy had not bothered to mention, would pop into our lowly local spacetime and tear the ship apart. When nothing bad happened, nothing happened at all, I felt foolish. That was totally Ok with me. There were a lot of emotions I could have felt after taking the risk of going through a wormhole that seemed like an obvious trap; regret and terror being at the top of the list. Feeling foolish was a small price to pay for safety, or at least the temporary illusion of safety. During our time in that star system, I felt foolish a lot, because I kept waiting for something bad to happen. It got to the point where Desai had to counsel me to keep my fears to myself, because my constant worrying was hurting the crew’s morale.
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