“How? You want me to go topside and fuckin’ wave? Wait … wait … I can see his latches engaging! THEY ENGAGED! WE’RE DOCKED! LOOKS SOLID!”
Gerald reined in his excitement. He scanned his gauges. The magnetic fields were all stable. The hole was not moving inside the sphere.
“Okay, guys,” Mullins gasped in relief. “Target looks stable in there. By God, it looks stable! Alpha, set your controls, climb out and go find out about Bravo. Then everybody run like bunnies!”
Gerald whipped off his seat belt and tore off his helmet. He slammed open the overhead hatch and scrambled out onto the top. Clark followed immediately. Before them rose the huge sphere formed from the two dish halves, a frozen vapor condensing on it. The sphere vibrated as if it caged a monster that struggled to escape, but it appeared to be holding … for now. Gerald peered beneath the sphere across to the other artillery carrier. No movement.
Then the hatch opened and he glimpsed Dacey pulling herself out, throwing off her helmet, and leaping lithely off the side. With a triumphant whoop, he jumped down from the carrier and they embraced as tightly as either of them ever had. Clark and Herndon followed, shaking hands and cursing jovially. The generators mounted on the vehicles hummed steadily, reassuringly. But they reminded the celebrants that one tiny glitch anywhere in the system and the beast would free itself and devour them and their vehicles. So, they quickly inspected the sphere, set up a monitoring video camera, checked the generators, and scrambled away over the wasteland that had once been Manitowoc, Wisconsin.
Gerald picked his way among the rubble that was once a town, stepping over a twisted steel girder and across a shattered brick wall. He carefully aimed the video camera as he went, transmitting his progress. He breathed heavily, even though the exertion wasn’t extreme. This was it. He would be the first to really see the hole. It seemed to draw him toward it as if he, too, were affected by magnetic fields. But he knew it was his curiosity that attracted him toward the deadly captive object.
He heard the drone of the diesel generators before he saw the two converted artillery carriers. He skirted a mound of shattered concrete bristling with rusted fingers of twisted steel rebar, and the carriers came into view. They sat amidst a broad, flat depression that had been scoured clean by the hellish gale created by the hole. The carriers held the Lexan sphere, its surface thick with a white crystalline frost. The ice sparkled in the sun, periodically sloughing off onto the ground, forming a rapidly melting pile of slush. It seemed almost a religious object, a shrine for some scientific pilgrims.
But the generators had only an hour’s worth of fuel left. So, he increased his pace, jogging toward the frosted sphere, tripping once on the stub of a street sign that had vanished into another universe.
The monitoring video camera had still showed the sphere holding firm against the vacuum. But it was Gerald’s job to decide whether the transfer could continue. He insisted on going in alone. Dacey had persuaded him that she would drive him in the army Humvee within a thousand yards, but he made her stop at a safe distance. If the hole escaped its magnetic trap and sliced through the sphere, no rescue was possible. Helicopters — military, police, and television network — circled in the distance like buzzing insects in the clear, blue sky. They could all see him well, so his death, if it happened would be carried live around the world. He didn’t let himself think of that. His job came first.
As he approached the carriers, he perceived another sound beneath the generators’ roar — the rich resonant hum of the confining magnetic fields. He brought up his camera, transmitting a second video picture of the capture sphere back to the control van, to be relayed to the world. He walked closer, setting the camera on the battered deck of one of the carriers and pointing it at the frosted sphere. He moved toward the sphere. He had to be the first to really see the wormhole.
He stepped close to the sphere and reached up. He smiled in amazement. His breathing grew more rapid. He felt its frost-covered surface vibrating fiercely beneath his hand — maybe from the magnetic coils, maybe some cosmic effect new to science. He figured that the sphere was so cold because heat was radiating through the hole into space on the other side.
The other side! Just feet away lay the cold vacuum of interstellar space, perhaps of another universe! Excitedly, he scraped away some of the frost and tried to see in. He could just make out a region of utter darkness wafting back and forth inside the sphere, but it was indistinct. Even the sphere’s supertough Lexan had been abraded by the vicious bombardment of debris streaming into the hole. He was disappointed. He would have to wait for a clear view until the hole was transferred to the large vacuum chamber in the desert.
Inch by inch, he meticulously inspected the sphere’s surface, its latches and seals, and the magnetic coils surrounding it. It was holding firm, he decided; the transfer could take place. As he worked, he couldn’t resist touching the sphere again and again, feeling it shiver, feeling the numbing frigidity beneath his fingers.
He radioed the control van and within minutes, a bulldozer appeared, shoving its way through the rubble, clearing a path to the sphere. It departed and a flat-bed trailer truck appeared, fitted with a generator, a crane, and a steel-girder frame that would accept the sphere. The truck backed into the depression up to the sphere and Andy Mullins jumped down from the passenger side. Clark stayed in the driver’s seat, his hands gripping the steering wheel, in case a quick escape was necessary. The wide-body Humvee, driven by Cooper, careened into sight and swerved up close to the tractor-trailer. Dacey leaped out of the passenger seat, stopping reluctantly and making a frustrated face when Gerald held up his hand pleadingly for her to stay a safe distance.
“Okay, let’s set up for switchover.” The short, round Mullins grinned like a kid who’d just been handed the keys to Disneyland. He plugged computer and power cables from the trailer into the sphere’s magnets and tested them for a firm contact. Then Clark, Mullins, Gerald, and Dacey climbed into the Humvee.
“What’s it like? What’s it like?” Dacey demanded. Gerald shook his head and smiled at his inability to describe the sight. She smiled back in understanding as Cooper expertly gunned the vehicle through the cleared path a mile away to the control van. There, they crowded into the van and watched the swarthy, skinny Julio, who was Mullins’ chief technician, run tests of the connections to the sphere, and type in a final command to the computer.
“Okay, let’s see if we can switch over faster than this thing can react,” said Julio. His finger poised over a red button on the control panel. “Countdown to switchover five, four, three, two, one, zero!” He hit the button. They stared at the computer screen, which displayed a diagram of the magnetic fields, the sphere, and the hole.
“STILL GOT ’ER!” shouted Mullins, clapping his pudgy hand on Julio’s shoulder. Instantly, they clambered back into the Humvee and sped back to the site. As they neared, Cooper slowed the vehicle to give them a chance to make sure that the switchover had been complete.
“Sensors can lie,” he declared. “Nothing like first-hand observation.”
The sphere was intact.
Clark and Herndon arrived in a Humvee, and they all worked to attach the truck’s crane to the sphere, ever-so carefully hoist it into the trailer’s frame, and bolt it securely. Throughout, the sphere hummed like a huge hive of bees, vibrated fiercely, and shed clumps of white frost, as if it were struggling to free itself, seeking the smallest flaw in their trap.
After checking the status of the computers and power, Gerald gave Clark a thumbs up, and he revved the truck’s engine and eased slowly away. Gerald stood quietly and watched it go, hearing sirens rise in the distance. The truck would have a clear road along the entire freeway leading to the nearby airport, with a phalanx of Wisconsin state trooper squad cars leading the way. It would roll onto a C5-A cargo plane for the trip to Nevada. There, they would perform one more field switchover into the huge vacuum chamber, and their captive would be secure. Then they could begi
n to fathom its mystery.
• • •
“Damn, let’s just go on up there and see the thing for ourselves,” said Lambert, standing impatiently in the blockhouse in the Nevada desert, his arms folded, watching the wall-sized video screen. The sphere was being slowly lifted from the truck, which had backed up next to one of the giant vacuum chambers.
“No,” said Gerald with absolute finality. For once Lambert said nothing. This was Gerald’s show. Lambert knew that if it was successful, he could announce his triumph to the media. If not, it was Gerald’s failure. Still intent on the monitor, Gerald continued. “I put that vacuum chamber two miles out in the desert for a reason. Until we know how these things react, only a few people are going near them. You can watch it from here.”
Instead of replying, Lambert barked an order to his assistant, who sat in a rear observation gallery with four other Lambert men, to bring his plane around. “I’ll be leaving after I get a look,” he said. “If all I can do is watch television, I might as well be in Houston. Hell, I can see this on all the damned networks, anyway.”
George Voigt sensed Gerald’s frustration. “It’s a wise move, putting the chamber out there … limiting access,” he said reassuringly. The spare old doctor sat in a chair at the main data console, where he would monitor the vital signs of the first space-suited people who would enter the vacuum chamber to actually encounter the hole. “You have the firmest grasp of the theory,” George had told him. “You’ll be more effective watching the data come in; figuring out what’s happening. Let Brendan and K.C. do the reconnoitering. They can handle this sort of thing.” He’d also persuaded Gerald to keep Dacey, and the criminalists Cameron and Gaston, in the control room, much to their frustration.
Brendan Cooper and K.C. Wang had campaigned mightily to be the first ones to enter the chamber and attempt to traverse the hole.
“Whoever goes in there had goddamned better well have experience operating under pressure inside an isolation suit,” declared Cooper. “And there’s no bigger pucker factor than being inside an aluminum deep-dive Hardsuit at two thousand feet. Both K.C. and me have done that. You also better have a situational awareness from being inside a suit or you’ll be not only merely dead, but really most sincerely dead,” he said puckishly quoting from the Wizard of Oz.
Gerald had reluctantly agreed, and as Cooper and Wang prepared, Julio and the Deus technicians performed the perilous maneuver of moving the wormhole-containing sphere into the vacuum chamber. They had swung the massive steel doors shut, and evacuated to a safe distance. From the blockhouse, Mullins threw the switches to evacuate the chamber and open the sphere, unleashing the hole to float free inside, suspended only by the chamber’s magnetic fields.
“Oh, my God!” Dacey exclaimed at the first sight over the video monitors of the hole, floating free.
“Goodness,” said George. “Are those stars?”
“Yes,” said Gerald. His heart pounding, he steadied his hands by placing them on the console, as a wave of emotion swept over him. He felt tears welling in his eyes and glanced up to see lines of wetness on Dacey’s face. When he had begun this obsession, all had been cool mathematical theory. But then came the excitement and utter fear of the hunt and the capture. But throughout, even after its capture, the holes had been only vague shapes, whether devastating a city or trapped inside the sphere.
Now, floating before them on the screen was a wormhole in astonishing crystal-clarity. A shimmering sphere ten feet in diameter, it hovered in the middle of the chamber, with faint swirling auroras of glowing light playing about its edges. It drifted slowly back and forth, like some predator seeking an opening to attack.
From inside the sphere shone stars. Not the faint, twinkling stars seen from earth, but icy points of intense light set against absolute blackness. Gerald broke the stunned silence that had blanketed the room. He spoke softly, reverently. His words were pragmatic, but those who heard him knew that they marked a portentous beginning for humans, perhaps of destruction, perhaps of a new millennium.
“Let’s give it some time. Check the parameters. Then go in.”
“You got a good seal, Brendan?” Mullins spoke into the microphone, watching the bulky space-suited figure on the large video screen. It was bigger than life, the high-definition picture showing every detail. The wall of the control room held four such screens — one showing a distant view of the vacuum chamber hangar, and another the men in space suits outside the vacuum chamber airlock. The third screen, however, showed the most mesmerizing scene — the inside of the chamber, with the star-filled hole floating almost seductively in the middle. The fourth screen was dark, soon to display an image from Cooper’s hand-held camera.
“I’m okay,” said Cooper, checking a reading on his wrist. Mullins looked expectantly at George, who peered through the bottom of his bifocals at the instruments monitoring the men’s vital signs.
George shook his head slowly, a worried look on his face. “They’re frightened,” he said. “Heart rate’s up, blood pressure’s up, body temperature’s high, too.”
“Make sure they’re okay,” said Gerald, who sat between Mullins and George, his eyes scanning intently back and forth from one set of instruments to the other. “If they’re not okay, take them out.”
“C’mon guys, we know it’s tough in there,” said Mullins into the microphone. “Brendan? K.C.? Can you guys make it okay?”
Cooper put his gloved thumb up, his face barely visible behind the helmet faceplate. “Yeah. We’re jazzed. It’s like a deep ocean dive, except in space. Instead of starfish, we got stars, right K.C.?”
K.C. nodded as best he could and took a few tentative steps. “We’ve got a little balance problem, here, though.”
“Yeah,” said Mullins. “It’s different than floating around underwater. Just you be careful, okay?” Fortunately, the prototype suits loaned from NASA for planetary exploration were slimmer and more maneuverable than the suits made for EVAs in orbit. But still Mullins worried about the two oceanographers’ ability to precisely maneuver in a vacuum chamber with a lethal portal to outer space.
“Switch on my camera,” said Cooper, holding up his video camera.
Mullins touched a button and the fourth screen glowed to life, showing the camera’s bobbing view of the metal hangar. “You’re okay. Get ready to go in.”
Lambert paced behind them, watching the process and talking on his cell phone. He’d been unable to sit all morning. The sight of the hole had made him forget his plans to leave. George more than made up for Lambert’s edginess, sitting serenely, watching the instruments.
Mullins ran through checks of the magnetic field and the vacuum chamber. “Everything’s optimal,” he said.
“Okay, guys. You can enter the chamber,” said Gerald.
Cooper threw a switch, and the chamber’s airlock door opened. Both men stepped through and closed it behind them. The hand-held camera showed random, skewing views of helmets, gloves, airlock doors, and ceilings, as the men concentrated on operating the airlock controls.
“We got vacuum,” said Cooper finally. “We’re opening the inner door.”
Gerald touched a button to zoom back the view of the chamber’s fixed camera to a wide-angle. The screen showed the two men clumping awkwardly into the large vacuum chamber. Cooper aimed his camera at the hole. The control room fell dead silent. Lambert forgot his cell phone and stood transfixed.
Close-up, the wormhole was even more stunning. Its edges were absolutely sharp, and feathery curls of colored light swirled about its periphery. The hole maintained a perfect, elegant roundness. The stars showing through it were diamond-bright, glowing in subtly different colors of reddish, blue, and yellow. The space between the stars was of an utter blackness, but with small patches of pearly opalescence.
“Their heart rates are high,” said George, breaking the silence.
“Ain’t everybody’s,” said Dacey.
“Jesus!” breathed Cooper. “T
his is totally unbelievable!”
“We agree,” said Gerald. “Walk around it.”
The fixed camera showed Cooper begin to circle the hole with the camera. His camera showed the view through the hole shift as well. Multitudes of new stars rotated into view.
“Jesus, it’s like walking around a crystal ball,” said Cameron. “You can see in all directions.”
“It’s a sphere! Why is it a sphere?” asked Gaston.
“If you had universes in two dimensions … like sheets of paper … a hole punched from one to the other would be a circle, right?” said Gerald, his gaze still fixed on the screen.
“Yeah.”
“Well, this is a hole between three-dimensional universes. So it’s a three-dimensional circle … a sphere.”
“Gotcha,” said Cameron.
“Brendan, K.C., you okay to proceed?” asked Mullins.
“Fine,” said Cooper.
“Your body temperature’s down,” said George.
“It’s colder’n hell in here. But the suit heaters are compensating,” said Wang.
“Then let’s try the bar,” instructed Mullins.
“Roger,” said Wang.
With Cooper holding the camera on him, Wang stepped to the side of the chamber and bent with effort in the bulky suit to pick up a seven-foot steel bar. He hefted it under his arm like the jousting lance of a knight, holding it with both hands. He settled his grip.
“Ready,” he said.
“Okay, then, see what happens.” Gerald glanced at the others. “Let’s see if we can put matter into another universe and keep it in control.”
The hand-held camera bobbled a bit but steadied, showing a closeup of the steel bar advancing toward the hole. The bar’s end reached the hole and crossed an invisible membrane, faint swirls of light playing about it.
“We’re through! We’re through!” shouted Wang.
There was a collective sigh in the control room, as many of them realized they had been holding their breath yet again.
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