“Thanks.” Hope turned and looked with curiosity at Russell. “So this is Harris!”
“Yes, I have received final approval from supreme command,” Morrow said.
“I think ...” Russell began, but Hope ignored him.
“I assume you are taking the necessary precautions, and he won’t be able to wreak the same kind of havoc as he did in Nevada.”
“Don’t worry. Harris is under permanent guard whenever he leaves his cell.”
Russell didn’t like it when people talked about him in his presence. “General Morrow made me an offer which involves helping you in some way. Before I make a decision I want to know what it’s all about.”
Hope’s eyes flashed behind the thick lenses of his glasses. “We don’t quite know ourselves yet.” He turned back to Morrow. “How much have you told him already?”
“Nothing at all——you’d better start from the beginning. With which I mean our arrival on Venus.”
“OK.” The physicist cleared his throat. “The initial work was carried out by half-autonomous robots. Humans only came to Venus once construction of the base was completed. The underground cave was hewn out of the rock with an atomic bomb, and the sphere brought inside with the help of robots. Over there you can see a channel leading outside. Over the next two years we created the underground facilities——also using robots. You can guess how much it cost and whom we have to thank for it.”
Russell didn’t respond and the physicist continued. “After a miserable month in a tin can called USS Obama, we finally made it here and put the facility into operation. Thanks to the findings of the first transporter project in Nevada, some specialists managed to make contact with the artificial intelligence in the inner sphere. We carried out the first transport with a volunteer who unfortunately died, because we misinterpreted the data provided by the AI.”
“What happened to him?”
“That is irrelevant now. In any case, from that point on we made good progress. Military astronauts carried out the next missions to different destinations. Because all of the transporters in the galaxy are connected, we quickly found the planet that you call New California, and General Morrow prepared for the mission to storm your colony of mutineers.”
“Hold on a minute,” Russell interrupted him. He turned to the general. “There are many people living on New California who were stranded on Russell’s Planet. Those aren’t mutineers, but loyal soldiers and scientists, most of whom want to return to Earth.”
“The case is not yet settled,” Morrow said. “For now, we have occupied New California as a penal colony. We will be carrying out a precise inquiry into who is a traitor and who is not. Currently we do not have the time to do this, so it will have to wait. Then a decision will be made about who can perhaps return to Earth and who can’t. Continue, Dr. Hope!”
“Before the occupation of New California, we carried out an experimental procedure with the artificial intelligence. It’s probably easiest if I show you in the control room. Follow me.”
Russell, Morrow, and the two guards followed the scientist up the steps, and headed toward a young man working at one of the consoles. Like everybody else, he was wearing a lab coat. He had a gaunt face and a long nose. He looked tired and his eyes were tinged with sadness. He stood up to make room for his boss, but Hope declined. “Don’t get up, John. This is John Mitchell. He’s an engineering graduate from MIT——an interface specialist, to be more precise. John, explain your work to Harris and tell him what you’ve found out in the last few weeks.”
“That’s Russell Harris?” Mitchell eyed Russell with undisguised curiosity. At least his gaze wasn’t filled with hate.
“Go head, John,” Hope said.
“The transporter can be operated via two control columns: one in the outer sphere and one in the inner sphere. You enter a sequence of symbols, which dial the chosen destination. However, you don’t get any information about the planet and don’t know whether it has a hospitable environment or not.”
“I know all that,” Russell said. “Friends of mine died that way.”
“Right, well, there’s also the option of entering into a sort of thought exchange, like a mental dialogue, with the artificial intelligence. To do this, you have to get yourself into a trance-like state. It’s similar to——”
“Mr. Mitchell, you don’t have to tell him any of this,” General Morrow interrupted impatiently. “It was Mr. Harris who discovered that.”
John Mitchell fiddled with his pen. He obviously preferred working with his computers to talking. “OK. Well, this form of communication works via magnetic fields, which induce a legible electrical charge directly into the brain. I’ve constructed a device that can capture these magnetic fields and manipulate them. As a result, we now have an interface between the AI and our computers.”
“What for?” Russell asked.
“So we can control the transporter from our computers. Our first goal was to download the AI’s database——so to speak——and transfer it to our data storage system.”
“The database?” asked Russell. “What do you mean by database?”
“I’ll show you. Give me a sec.” Mitchell turned to his console and tapped something into a keyboard. “I’ve switched it to the main screen.”
Russell looked up at the big screen at the front of the room. He saw an enormous image of the Milky Way. The resolution was incredibly sharp.
“This graphic comes directly from the sphere’s intelligence. All solar systems containing at least one transporter are depicted here and are stored in our database. I can zoom in and select individual systems.”
The camera appeared to fly into the Milky Way and now showed a close-up of one of the spiral arms of the galaxy. It was teeming with stars, indicated by tiny white dots. One of them changed color to a rich yellow.
“That’s our sun——here.”
The screen turned black briefly, then a yellow orb representing the sun appeared in the center of the screen. A line circling around it presumably depicted the orbit of Venus.
“I can retrieve the environmental conditions from the transporter’s artificial intelligence.” Numbers, symbols and letters appeared on the right-hand side of the screen: gravitation, atmospheric pressure, surface temperature and chemical values of rocks and atmosphere. “The values are given in units based on physical constants. Our computers just need to convert them.”
“I have to admit, I’m impressed,” Russell said. “But why can we only see Venus in our solar system?”
“The database only contains information on planets with a transporter. I have limited access to historical data.” More circles appeared on the screen. Russell could recognize Earth, Mars, and a few moons of Jupiter and Saturn. After a few seconds the screen reverted to showing the current data. A lonely Venus orbited the sun.
“I think we have you to thank for this,” Mitchell said. A hint of bitterness had entered his voice. Russell knew this young man would have preferred to work closer to home, and didn’t respond.
“So...” The image on the screen changed several times and went back to showing the whole galaxy. “... We have the data from over two-hundred billion systems in our database with a total of over a trillion planets, moons, and asteroids on which there are transporters.”
Russell whistled slowly through his teeth. The aliens had amassed a vast amount of knowledge. In the millions of years during which they had dispersed the transporters throughout the Milky Way, they had——almost as an aside—mapped and archived the entire galaxy. A priceless treasure. And with the transporter, humans could now get to any of these dots in the space of a minute, regardless of how many thousands of light years away they were. Humans were the heirs to this technology, because there were no other civilizations in the Milky Way. And Russell had tried to take this legacy away from them. But he had failed, and the future would show whether humanity would learn to handle the alien technology responsibly. Russell had his doubts.
“All of this data is current?” he asked.
“Yes, we have a permanent connection to the intelligence in the transporter. The data transmission rate is around fifty Mbit per second. On planets with changing weather patterns, you can see the atmospheric pressure values——like here, see?——changing all the time.”
“That means all transporters are constantly connected to each other, and there is no need to create a connection,” said Russell.
“Exactly,” Dr. Hope replied. “Every transporter is connected to precisely four others by microscopic wormholes. The system as a whole results in a galactic network. The transporters all communicate with one another according to a standardized set of rules——kind of like data transfer protocols on the Web.”
“Well then you’ll soon be able to build a few transporters on Earth,” Russell said sarcastically.
“I reckon that’ll take a long time. We’re still trying to understand the fundamentals. Just in terms of the math, it’ll probably be a tough nut to crack for generations of researchers. But a few applications are already in the practical development stage. For example, in the areas of energy generation and nanotechnology.”
“I guess it’s all top secret.”
“No, Harris,” Morrow said. “The existence of the transporter hasn’t been a military secret for a long time now. All findings are evaluated by a presidential committee, which then decides which research results will be made public. A lot of the information is of scientific importance. Several patents are already pending. But that’s beside the point. Continue, Mr. Mitchell.”
“Sure, OK.” Mitchell turned to Russell. “Do you notice anything unusual about the image?”
Russell’s gaze wandered across the screen. From the perspective of the virtual camera, he was looking down on——or maybe it was up at——their home galaxy. He had to remind himself that he wasn’t looking at a photo of the Milky Way, but at a computer image composed out of transporter coordinates. There were even stars between the spiral arms; the only thing that varied was the density. It reminded him of images from astronomy programs on TV that he had watched as a child. He didn’t notice anything unusual.
“Well, to be honest——”
Mitchell interrupted him. “Look more closely at the edge of the Milky Way.”
Russell stepped back. Now he noticed something about the shape. “Yeah, I see what you mean. There’s a bit missing. As if a giant had taken a bite out of the corner of the Milky Way.”
“And what do you make of it?” General Morrow asked.
Russell couldn’t imagine that there weren’t any stars in this area. Maybe it was an error in the database. But Morrow wouldn’t be making such a big deal about it he didn’t think there was something more sinister going on. “Maybe there aren’t any transporters there. Maybe they didn’t put any there deliberately.”
“Show him the data from two months ago,” Dr. Hope said. The empty corner was suddenly filled with stars.
“What?” Russell raised his eyebrows. “Are you trying to say that corner suddenly disappeared in the last few weeks?”
“Not suddenly,” Mitchell said. “Here you can see a time-lapse from the last six weeks.”
One after another, the dots disappeared from the edge of the Milky Way. It was a slow and continuous process up to the present.
“I’ll zoom in a bit.”
The camera zoomed in on the edge of the galaxy, where the points had disappeared. Russell could now make out individual stars. It looked as if the corner had been cleanly broken off, the edge was completely straight. As he stared at the image, a few more dots of light disappeared.
“We’re looking at current data again, right?” Russell asked.
“Yes we are,” Mitchell confirmed.
The transporters. They’re simply disappearing! He turned to Morrow. “I see your problem. Do you have an idea what it might be? Could it have to do with the database?”
“No,” Mitchell answered for the general. “We transfer the data from the transporter immediately. The network is losing nodal points. The disappearance means the connection to the respective transporters has been broken.”
“And it is slowly spreading,” Russell added.
“Yes. Although slowly isn’t the right word. The zone is growing at around two-hundred-and-fifty light years per day across the whole breadth of the Milky Way. That means the connection to over three hundred transporters is being lost every second.”
Russell stared at the screen open-mouthed. “What’s happening? Do you have any idea?”
“We have a lot of ideas, but so far everything is pure speculation,” Hope said. “We need more facts.”
“What have you found out so far?”
General Morrow stepped forward. “We sent a two-man team to one of the planets which we knew was about to lose its connection.”
Great plan. “And?” Russell already knew the answer.
“The men have disappeared.”
“Have you tried to select the destination by hand using the console in the inner sphere of the transporter?”
“Yes, the console won’t accept the destination. The same as with the transporters you destroyed,” Hope said.
“And obviously your crack team didn’t manage to set the transport in motion from the other side, either.”
“Obviously not,” Morrow replied.
“Perhaps your men are currently sitting in front of an inactive transporter and wondering how they can get home.”
“No, the men are dead.”
“How do you know?”
“There was no water on the planet. Only desert. The men would have died of dehydration.”
Morrow’s voice was trembling. Although the general always tried to cover up his emotions, he seemed to be struggling with the fact he had sent his men to their deaths. Now Russell also knew why Morrow wanted to make a deal with him. It was easier for Morrow to deal with the deaths of “volunteers.”
“What are you planning?” he asked.
“We don’t really have an explanation yet. There are several mission profiles that we’d like to try out, and we’re coming up with new ideas every day. To start with, we want to repeat the recent mission. Perhaps my men overlooked something.”
“You want to send more men to their deaths?”
“No, shortly before the time the transporter is due to disconnect, you will be brought back.”
“Me?”
“Yes, I want you to be part of the first mission. I need an answer, Harris. My offer stands. You and some volunteers will help to solve this problem. You will go on every mission that I send you on, and after your work is done, you can go home. Otherwise you go back to your cell, where you will rot until the start of your trial.”
The ultimatum sounded familiar to Russell. This is how Morrow had got him on board for the first transporter project twenty years ago. The chances of survival had been slim and yet it had saved him from being executed for killing his wife’s murderer. He had survived. But it was very difficult to judge the chances of survival on this mission. On the other hand, did he have a choice? He didn’t want to wither away in his cell without the prospect of seeing his family ever again. Then he would rather die on this mission. “OK, General. I’m in.”
Morrow nodded. “Good. We’ll set off for New California right away to recruit the other volunteers.”
Russell hesitated. The general sure was in a hurry.
Morrow appeared to read his thoughts. “Harris. Time is of the essence. The zone is growing and before long it will reach Venus.”
“Can you calculate when that will be?” Russell asked.
“Yes, in about two months.”
“Then we have some time.”
“You are very much mistaken, Harris.” Morrow turned to Mitchell. “Show him the map!”
Russell looked at the big image of the Milky Way on the screen and wondered what the general was getting at.
“And now mark the position of
New California!”
Russell’s heart skipped a beat. A red dot appeared on the map, just half an inch away from the death zone.
Ellen! The children!
“If we don’t find an answer, we will lose contact with New California in two weeks,” the general said, and gave Russell a piercing look. “Perhaps forever.”
Chapter 10
“So you’re saying that in two weeks, contact between New California and Venus could be broken for good?” Marlene repeated.
Morrow nodded.
She leaned forward and gripped the table with both hands. “And why should we help you? Especially when I consider how you’ve treated us over the last three weeks!”
Four days had passed since her conversation with the major. Strangely, Palmer and has soldiers had withdrawn after this. Even the base around the transporter had been abandoned, as Albert found out on a reconnaissance mission to the forest. Marlene had been racking her brain trying to figure out what it all meant, while all around her the colonists’ anger was reaching boiling point. Many of them were demanding that the rest of the ammunition should be retrieved from the depot and that they should advance on Venus with the help of the transporter to free the prisoners.
A few hours ago, two jeeps had appeared from the west, and Marlene had feared the soldiers were returning to reassert their regime of terror. But sitting in the jeeps were General Morrow, Cookie Shanker, the other three prisoners——and Russell. Marlene could hardly believe her eyes. She hadn’t believed she would ever see him again. She had been convinced he had died weeks ago——executed by Morrow’s soldiers——or succumbed to his cancer. Instead, he actually looked better than she remembered.
She had immediately sent a message to Ellen and his children, who flung their arms around his neck in tears, while Marlene talked to the general. Afterwards they had all come together in the assembly hall. Marlene sat at the end of the long table, Russell had taken a seat next to her, although he had found it hard to separate himself from his family. Dr. Dressel, Dr. Lindwall, and Chris Holbrook were also present.
“So tell me again why we should volunteer to risk our lives on this mission even though you have lots of soldiers stationed on Venus,” Marlene demanded to know.
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