by G. H. Holmes
He closed his flickering eyes and saw the fronds of the palm trees around his pond in Harrow's Dale against the clear blue sky of Terra Gemina. He heard the barking of his faithful dog in the distance. The dog had been history for many years. Daniel had brought the puppy over one day, some twenty-nine years ago, because Ben needed some companionship and wouldn't receive it from humans. The dog had been a faithful chum and Ben missed him sometimes, but hadn't in a long while.
Had he dreamed the dog up, too?
And Daniel von Schwarz?
Suddenly he remembered something!
Daniel had mentioned the fact that for a while a traveler was present in two locations at the same time when he was going via quantum wind—and Ben had found it to be so just a few days ago.
By a desperate act of his will, Ben pulled himself together. He steadied himself in the bucket seat and imagined himself back in the Western Sun—
—and sat in its captain's seat.
With all the willpower that was in him, he stared at the computerized tabletop, careful not to think of his old craft from Neo-Ba. His eyes were bulging.
The coordinates of Cherry's crash caught his eye.
Immediately he touched them; the nav system chirped and locked onto them. The QW-drive indicator went from orange to green and Ben's hand came down hard on the engage-button.
"I'm not going back!" Ben shouted as the billion lights swallowed him up like a flame and transferred him and the Western Sun to a position on the virtual pylon road.
Wide-eyed, Harrow sat motionless and waited, expecting the worst. He dared not to breathe. But he didn't return to the silence of the craft from Neo-Ba. The soothing background hum of his new ship never went away. He stayed where he was.
After a few minutes Ben finally exhaled.
What had that been?
How had his old craft gotten to that position? Hadn't the folks from Terra G shipped it back to Neo at some point in time, when it was clear that he wouldn't go back?
Was Deep Space pulling a trick on him?
Doubting his mind, his gaze went back to the tabletop, where he checked the coordinates for his last jump spot. He zoomed in on it and saw that the sensors of the Western Sun had recorded the position and image of his ancient craft in its vicinity.
He hadn't been dreaming.
Somebody had actually set up a trap for him. A brilliant trap. A trap that had almost robbed him of his sanity.
If Daniel von Schwarz hadn't notified him of the fact of the double presence during a quantum wind leap, he'd be stuck out in the void once again.
Irretrievable.
Lost.
But who was able to pull this off?
Who had possession of his old spacecraft—and of a quantum wind device that could pull him into his old craft once he got close to it? The mind that had accomplished these things was superior even to the minds of Cho and Guofeng on Bagong Lupa. It was awesome.
Somebody was making war on him.
It was an insidious kind of war, because Ben had no idea who the enemy was. Somebody was playing with him, while he was blindfolded. Helpless. He wasn't fighting at all. He was merely reacting.
Mighty as he was, Ben felt humbled.
Then Harrow remembered why he was out here. He was looking for little lost Charity Jones, Daniel's niece.
Had his nemesis already found Lieutenant Jones?
Somebody who was able to hide his very own ancient fighter jet for him to find in deep space was also able to retrieve pilot Jones, Ben figured. In that case she'd be a prisoner of war.
And he'd be wasting his time.
But Ben couldn't get himself to give up just yet. Nobody knew better how she was feeling right now than he did, if she was still out there. Somebody had searched for him in his hour of despair out in the void. And that somebody had found him, too. Ben felt an obligation. He owed her to search on. The fact that they shared a common fate exerted a powerful influence on him.
He was prepared to spend a full week out here, looking for her. Three days had passed so far. Of course, the discovery of his old jet from Neo-Ba had introduced a slew of new questions; he'd have to be on his guard. But he'd be looking for her some more. He just had to do her that favor.
Chapter 27
Not far from the pylon road, Ben found her.
He'd been looking in the wrong direction. He discovered her craft in the other half of the sphere he'd been scouring. The Westerns Sun's cameras locked on to her damaged x-jet, which appeared on the big screen and grew as he got closer. This time, Harrow wasn't half as excited as he'd been when he discovered his experimental jet from Neo-Ba. Instead, he was wary.
Ben circled the x-jet. One of its four wings had got bent, but only insignificantly so, and the structure itself seemed to be intact. Ben made his ship to hover above Cherry's jet and looked in through the vitrum panes of her cockpit. Shining a strong light at it, the recognized the helmeted shape of a female pilot.
He'd truly found her: Snow White in her coffin.
Ben's fingers walked over the icons on the tabletop as he fixed her coordinates and fed them into the quantum wind device.
And then he realized that he could try and talk to her.
He had his comm system figure out her frequency and when it was established he said, "Lieutenant Jones? Can you hear me?
All he got was silence.
He tried again. "Charity Jones, are you there? This is General Harrow of the Gemina Space Marines. I've come to rescue you."
Tense seconds went by.
A faint groan emanated from the speakers of Ben's command bridge.
Thank God, she wasn't dead.
Suddenly nervous, Ben said, "Lieutenant Jones, I'm going to retrieve you now. A billion points of light will explode around you in a moment. That doesn't mean that you have died, it just means that you are coming over to my side. We will leave your vehicle where it is. Did you hear me?"
All he got was another groan, but that was enough for Ben. He immediately engaged the QW-unit and looked over to the shower-stall-sized cubicle that was the entry point for individual travelers on the quantum wind.
Ben got excited when the cubicle lit up. The light got so bright that he had to avert his eyes. As soon as the light subsided, he squinted at it and discerned the form of a female pilot, helmet and all. Quickly he rushed over and when she was about to fall down, he caught her. He carried her aft in his arms and laid her on the bunk in the nurse's station. Her blonde hair appeared as he eased her helmet off and put it away. Next, he propped a pillow under her head and gave her a once-over.
Not that it mattered right now, but he hadn't realized in the past how attractive Lieutenant Jones was. The stress of the last three days had not destroyed her youthful flower.
Ben leaned closer. "Lieutenant, do you register?"
Her hands were white like alabaster. Harrow touched them and realized how cold they were. He stood up and stared into the air for a second. Immune to it himself, he had overlooked that she might suffer from hypothermia. On top, she was probably very hungry and thirsty.
Harrow immediately walked off to the ship's kitchenette, where he retrieved a half-liter bottle of liquifood from the fridge and brought it to her. Ben slung his arm around her and helped her sit up. At first he held the bottle to her lips, but after a few drafts, she grabbed the bottle with both hands and drank deeply.
"Don't drink all of it," he advised her. "It's not good to drink a lot after you haven't had anything in a while. We don't want you to blow up on the inside now that we have you back in one piece."
Cherry finished drinking. With eyes still closed, she wiped her mouth and sank back into Ben's arm. The water had been cold. She shivered.
He laid her back down. "I'll get you a blanket."
Charity felt abnormally good. She was sure that she suffered from the euphoria which set in shortly before death. It was nice though that Ben Harrow seemed so real to her in her last moments. He looked different in a Marine uniform, but he
was still unmistakably the same person that she met on the glade in Harrow's Dale after she fell from the sky. Older perhaps, but still the same.
Thank you, God, that you let me see him again.
He was now even lowering a blanket over her and spoke to her in soothing tones.
Cherry didn't understand a word he said.
Instead, she laid back, and when she got finally warm, she fell fast asleep.
He'd found her.
Deeply satisfied, Ben reclined in his captain's chair. His search hadn't been in vain. He was glad that he hadn't aborted it after the incident with his old experimental jet. His nemesis obviously hadn't found Charity, but had known that he was searching for her. Now he wondered whether his nemesis was in possession of another quantum-wind device or whether his old jet had been made to fly off the pylon road and his adversary had only ordinary technology to work with.
How did his nemesis find out that he was searching for Lieutenant Jones? Ben tried to narrow the pool of possible traitors down as far as he could. Only Daniel von Schwarz, the officers of the MARDET and the Council around Governor Alighieri had known of his plans. Of these, Daniel was beyond reproach. He had no motive to betray Ben.
The politicians did, of course.
But did they have the necessary technology? Even Daniel's Nolan class command ship had no permanent QW-device on board. When they brought Ben aboard a couple days ago, they'd been using a unit only suitable for individual travel. Daniel had been showing it off in the hope that it impressed Ben enough to become part of the scouting party going to Kasa Station.
Another possibility was that the scientists from Bagong Lupa were somehow in cahoots with the entity running Kasaganaan. But that was highly unlikely, too.
Ben's thoughts went back to the admiral's niece. She was sleeping now.
She'd gone through the same experience as he had, just that she hadn't been marooned for forty years but only for about four days.
He'd been able to rescue her.
For some reason Ben felt as if he'd saved the entire human race by snatching Charity Jones from the throes of the Void. He marveled at the depth of his emotion, because he was not given to flights of sentiment. Usually he was solidly on the stolid side.
Sharon had sometimes taunted him that even if their house would burn down, the car explode and she keel over dead, Ben still wouldn't worry. "What for?" Ben had replied. "Would be too late then."
Sharon only shook her head and laughed.
Charity Jones was not at all like his wife. She looked different, she had a different personality and she was younger than even Sharon had been when Ben had first met her. About the only thing the two women had in common was their yellow hair. Sharon had been the love of his life all the days she was around, but Ben had to admit that Cherry owned a small piece of his heart now, too.
He shook his head as if to shoo the thoughts away. You don't even know her. You've hardly talked to her.
But you want to talk to her, another voice in Ben's head alleged.
"Not necessarily," Ben said out loud.
Of course you do, the voice said. If you wanted to get rid of her, you would have flown her back to Terra Gemina by now. Instead, you sit around here and compare her to Sharon, you sentimental fool.
That still small voice in his head had a point.
Admit it to yourself, the voice said. There's nothing wrong for you to want to talk to a woman. Especially this one.
But Ben was a superior for Charity. He was the general while she was a lowly lieutenant, junior grade. Surely she was beholden to him now, what with him being her savior. She might be open to any kind of suggestion he had for her. To keep her in a position like this was not right. Ben acknowledged that he had to do the responsible thing: he had to get her into some doctor-supervised sick bay as soon as possible.
But he also wanted to talk to her for a little bit.
Was that okay?
"Request permission to enter the bridge, Sir?" a female voice by the door said.
Ben bolted and turned around. He hadn't heard the swish of the hatch, but it was open and Charity Jones stood in the round frame. She didn't look like somebody who just got up out of bed. At a second glance he noticed that she'd changed. She no longer wore her G-suit, but only her blue aviator uniform. All he could do was keep from swallowing. Lieutenant Jones was the picture of a young woman in her prime.
"Permission granted," Ben said. "Come in, Lieutenant."
Charity, hugging herself, stepped over the threshold and walked in. She glanced around, apparently amazed that they were alone.
"Sit down here in the navigator seat," Ben said. He gestured at the chair next to his. "How do you feel?"
Cherry looked at him with wide eyes as if she couldn't fathom that she was really by his side—in the flesh. She eased herself into the nav commander's chair, where she clasped her hands and stuck them between her knees.
She breathed deeply and said, "Request permission to ask a question, Sir."
Ben looked into her blue eyes and held her gaze—a moment too long. Miffed with himself, he looked away.
"Permission granted. Fire away, Lieutenant."
Charity averted her eyes, too. She stared at her pinched hands. Wrinkles appeared on her brow. "Can't fathom the darkness of outer space, Sir."
A lump grew in Ben's throat. He knew exactly how she was feeling. All he could do was suppress the urge to reach over and take her hand in his.
Cherry looked him in the eyes again. "Sir, I know from astronomy class that most of the universe is like that." Her hand swung towards the black main screen. "It's a miracle that anything exists at all."
She breathed again. "Sir, why does anything exist? Why is there not nothing?"
Ben was pleased that she was asking such a profound question. It was one that had agitated scientists throughout the ages.
Why did anything exist?
"What do you think, Lieutenant?"
Cherry's gaze wandered around the cockpit. "In some colonies they believe that the universe has always been there. They think it has no beginning."
"But you know that this assumption is incorrect," Ben said.
"It sounds logical to me that everything that exists had a beginning. All things have a beginning and an end."
"If it had always been there," Ben said, "the light of all stars would be visible everywhere and the universe would be full of light."
Cherry nodded thoughtfully.
"But it isn't," she whispered, looking at him again. "It's still dark."
"Not to confuse you," Ben said, "but if it had really always existed, each and every star in it would have died long ago and it would be totally black."
Cherry looked startled. He'd just said the opposite of what he'd said before—and it sounded right, too.
Ben tried to avoid her eyes. "At the beginning of the space age, around the year 1965, some smart people discovered radiation left over from the beginning of the universe. They believed that it was a remainder of a big bang with which the universe supposedly began. So, it looks as if the universe had a beginning.
"By the way, the extreme values of this universal background radiation run like a plumb line through the ecliptic of the solar system of Terra Originalis."
Cherry stared at him, unsure. She'd always known that Earth was a special planet. But this?
"You have a question?" Harrow said.
She rubbed her forehead. "But that would mean that the Sol system is somehow the center of the universe, Sir?"
Ben smiled.
He went on, "Fifty years before people discovered this signature of the Big Bang, another physicist by the name of Einstein wrote up the general theory of relativity, which informs us that the universe is expanding and while it expands, it slows down. Now, an expanding universe has a starting point, which means it had a beginning. And everybody who knows his or her physics will tell you that this universe will also have an end at one point in time."
"
But that does not explain why anything exists," Cherry said. "Or why we exist."
Ben was surprised at the urgency in her voice. "Maybe you can figure it out yourself." With a blasé look on his face he stated, "The First Law of Thermodynamics says that nothing comes from nothing."
"But then, where does everything come from?"
Ben didn't answer.
Cherry's face was stark white. "Is the existence of nature against the laws of nature?"
Ben still didn't answer.
Instead, he said, "And the Second Law of Thermodynamics says that any physical system deteriorates as time wears on. An apple rots if nobody eats it. It doesn't get better with age. A snowball in a warm room melts. It never sucks the remaining coldness out of a warm room to make it warmer. Instead, the snowball melts and the room cools off. That's the law of entropy.
"We can measure the speed with which the universe moves and we have found that it expands and slows down at the same time. Matter of fact, it expands and slows down at the exact rate that guarantees that the universe will expand forever.
"For a while scientists believed that the universe would at some point contract again and shrink back into the tiny speck that it had been in the beginning, and then it would explode again and the process would be repeated. But the law of entropy is deadly to such thinking. Because, where should the energy for a new expansion come from? An apple left to itself in a fruit basket will not deteriorate and then mysteriously return to its perfect shape again. That's not how nature works."
"If all systems deteriorate," Cherry said, "and the universe deteriorates, too, doesn't that mean that the sun and the stars will cease to shine at some point in time?"
"That's what I said earlier," Ben said. He hoped he wasn’t confusing her when she needed rest. But then again: she'd started this.
"But if all matter in the universe has at one point been compressed into a single tiny speck, where did that speck come from?" Cherry wondered. "And who told it to blow up?"
"Quantum fluctuation," Ben said.
"What, Sir?" Cherry narrowed her eyes.
"I'm talking about the effect and not the cause," Harrow clarified. "Let me put it this way: that tiny speck exploded at exactly the right speed. If its mass would have spread faster, nothing would ever have found a place in the universe. On the other hand, if it had been too slow, the universe wouldn't have gotten into motion. As it is, the universe expanded at exactly the right speed, while the process slows down at the perfect rate to keep this going forever. It'll never collapse. That's brilliant.