by Dom Testa
Merit only laughed again.
Hannah turned back to Gap. “You’ve got to believe me, we are not a couple. He’s just saying that to get back at you, to hurt you. Don’t you understand? It’s not like that at all.”
“Oh, really?”
“I meant what I told you. This … this isn’t…” She stopped and let out a long breath.
Gap shook his head again. “I’ll leave you two alone.”
“Gap, no…”
He had barely started to turn, and out of the corner of his eye could see Hannah reaching for him, when suddenly a violent bang rocked the ship. Gap and Hannah were thrown against the far wall, slamming into it with enough force that it knocked the wind out of them. Merit landed in a pile a few feet away, crumpling to the floor at a bad angle, and Gap heard the snap of a bone.
All of the lights went out, and they were plunged into absolute darkness.
23
If he’d blacked out, Gap figured it couldn’t have been for more than a few seconds. He tried to roll over, but Hannah was sprawled across his legs. He could hear her groan and begin to stir, and after a few moments she sat up. He rolled into a sitting position and took stock of his condition.
A lump was already bulging on his forehead, and he could taste blood from undoubtedly biting his lip. His right wrist ached from bracing for the impact with the wall. On top of that he felt slightly nauseated, but that appeared to be the extent of his wounds.
He began to fumble with his hands to locate Hannah when the lights flicked back on at what seemed half power. Hannah sat against the wall, a small trail of blood stretching from beside her right eye to just below the jawline. She was grasping her right elbow and wincing. She blinked to adjust to the light, then looked over at Gap with wide eyes.
“Was that … what I think it was?” she said.
Gap didn’t answer. He stood up gingerly, wringing his hand to work the kinks out of his wrist, then looked over at Merit, who was lying facedown, his arm twisted unnaturally beneath him. He wasn’t moving.
Gap heard Hannah say something about getting help, then she was gone, limping around the bend to the nearest intercom. He knelt beside the fallen figure and saw that Merit was breathing but unconscious. There was no visible blood. Until trained medical help arrived, Gap thought it unwise to move him.
He was anxious to get up to the Control Room and was grateful when Hannah hurried back.
“Manu said they’re swamped with calls right now,” she told him. “He said someone will be down in just a few minutes.”
“I’ve gotta go,” Gap said. “Stay here until they arrive, and check in with me later.” He threw a quick glance down at Merit, and then back to Hannah. Her face had a pleading look.
“Gap, believe me—”
He cut her off. “We can talk later.” Without another word he turned and rushed towards the lift.
Ascending to the top level, he summoned the ship’s computer. “Roc, do you have a damage report yet?”
“Just filtering everything now. The radiation shield dropped again, as you might expect, and when it stayed down for five seconds I automatically diverted power from the ion drive, as you proposed. It seems to have done the trick … for now. The shield is back up, but I can’t promise for how long.”
Gap burst out of the lift on Galahad’s upper level and immediately saw crew members assisting others towards Sick House. Most of the injured were either cradling an arm or holding a compress of sorts over a bleeding wound. None appeared too serious, but Gap wondered what the final casualty list would look like.
The Control Room buzzed with activity. Gap logged into his Engineering work station and surveyed the data. As he did so, the ship’s lights came back to full power.
“Shield still holding?” he asked Roc.
“Yes,” the computer said. “I took it upon myself to clip one percent of power from the drive. I’m sure you understand the significance of that amount.”
Despite the nausea, Gap managed a thin smile. During the initial encounter with the Cassini, the alien presence had attempted to “improve” the starship that was rocketing through their neighborhood by boosting the ion drive. Although their intentions were good, the ship’s engines were not designed to handle the stress, and ultimately the maneuver came dangerously close to destroying the ship. In the end, Bon was able to communicate with the Cassini and prevent the disaster. And yet, for reasons unknown, the ship managed to escape with a fractional increase in power.
“Our little one-percent gift from the Cassini,” Gap muttered. “Knowing how much you care about them, I’m sure it pained you to siphon that away.”
“If your sarcastic comment is meant to imply that I somehow derive joy by regifting their contribution, nothing could be further from the truth. It merely seemed a practical solution.”
“Uh-huh,” Gap said. “I have to say, Roc, your snippy attitude about the Cassini is quite immature.”
“Me? Immature?” Roc said. “You can’t see it, but I’m virtually sticking my tongue out at you. Back to business: other than the shield, the ship’s primary systems check out okay; Lita and Manu are treating approximately twenty crew members so far in Sick House, mostly scrapes and bruises; and the lump on your forehead gives you a somewhat Quasimodo-like appearance. Very rugged looking, something you normally don’t pull off too well.”
Gap lightly brushed his forehead with his fingers, then cringed. “Well, obviously we need to talk about the shock wave. Probably no big mystery about what caused that. Would I be correct in assuming that we are now graced with the opening of another wormhole nearby?”
“Much closer, in fact, than the others we experienced,” Roc said. “That explains the extremely violent concussion. Almost like it was tracking us through space better than last time, and placed itself in the perfect position to intercept us. A perfect pass, you might say.”
“What’s your calculation for contact?”
Roc paused for a few seconds, then said: “One hour, four minutes. However, assuming Hannah’s theory is correct, we should experience a few of those delightful shock waves before that.”
Gap pulled his chair over and sat down. The nausea had subsided, but his head and wrist still throbbed. He looked up and nodded appreciation when one of the Control Room personnel handed him a cup of water.
His mind scrambled through the information Roc had provided. If another wormhole had ripped through the fabric of space, and with pinpoint accuracy in order to intercept the ship, it was quite obviously there for a reason. Could it be an attack on Galahad? Were the beings responsible for the vultures out to avenge their fallen soldier, perhaps by launching a fleet of the ominous dark creatures?
Or would the vultures’ caretakers be arriving to personally take matters into their own hands?
The next five minutes were spent diagnosing the rejuvenated radiation shield, the effect of the ion drive power shift, and the expanding injury update from Sick House. Lita reported that the toll had climbed to twenty-nine.
“Lots of bumps and bruises,” she said over the intercom. “Four people are going to be admitted to the hospital ward for a bit, though.”
Gap paused, staring at the console. “Uh … does that include Merit?”
“It does,” Lita said. “His arm is broken, and he cracked a couple of ribs. I’m about to run a scan for any internal damage.”
Gap felt his emotions twist. Less than an hour earlier it had taken everything in his power to keep from lashing out at Merit. What did it say about his character, he wondered, that news of Merit’s injuries caused him to feel a twinge of satisfaction? Did that make him a monster?
And if he felt those sinister feelings for Merit, why did he not feel the same way about Hannah? She had deceived him, and she had teamed up with Merit Simms. Merit Simms! Shouldn’t he, after all, have the same dark thoughts about her?
But he didn’t. Despite the blow to his heart, he knew that he still cared about her. What did it all mea
n?
He decided that it was not the time for a self-inspection of his soul. “What about Hannah?” he said to Lita. “She had some blood—”
“She’s fine. Might have a tiny scar to remember it all by, but otherwise she’s okay. Let’s talk about you.”
“I’m okay,” Gap said.
“That’s not what I heard. Hannah said that you slammed your extremely thick skull into the wall. Well, she said your head; I added the thick part. When can you stop in to let us at least check you out?”
Gap again dabbed at the lump. “I’m all right. Besides, we’ve got another wormhole coming up fast. I can’t leave right now.”
“I knew you’d say that,” Lita said. “Manu should be walking in your door any second. Don’t be stubborn, let him spend three minutes looking at you.”
“I didn’t know you guys made house calls,” Gap said. “Let me know how things are going later.” He ended the conversation as the door slid open, admitting Manu. True to Lita’s estimate, it took only a few minutes to pronounce Gap fit for duty.
“You’ll be sore for a day or two,” Manu said. “If you feel the need for a pain pill, let me know.” He gave Gap a wry smile. “In the meantime, you kinda look like that hunchback character. What’s his name? Quasimodo?”
“Ha ha ha!” Roc blurted from the speaker. “Do I know my classic literature, or what? Ring the bell, Gap, ring the bell!”
Gap shook his head and thanked Manu. “If I need a pill, it will be because of a completely separate headache.”
“Unappreciated, that’s what I am,” the computer said. “Steering the conversation back to the tiny matter at hand, namely our humble ship galloping towards a gaping gash in the universe…”
“Yes?”
“We’re about fifty-two minutes out. I’ve nudged the ship so that we’ll cruise past the opening rather than down the hatch. Even so, it’s much closer than before, and even with my dazzling intellect it’ll be hard to predict what effect that will have on the ship. If Hannah’s bruise theory is correct—and this will be a good test—we’re in for a bumpy ride.”
Gap imagined a water skier, bouncing over the wake of a boat, riding out the turbulence.
“Can you nudge us outward a little more, please?” he said. “Let’s try to give ourselves the biggest cushion we can.” He dropped back into his chair and began to calculate just how close they would be coming to the wormhole.
He realized that six o’clock had slipped past. The election results should have been announced by this point, but Roc, it seemed, had shuffled that bit of business down several notches. Gap was thankful; after what he’d stumbled across on the lower level, he couldn’t stand the idea that the team of Hannah and Merit might have defeated him. He opened his mouth to suggest that Roc hold the results until this latest emergency was over and done with, but held off. That was a decision for the entire Council.
Focus, he told himself. He bent back over the console and directed his energies to a new area: the radiation shield. If Galahad was minutes away from a furious storm, it might be time to divert even more energy to the shield.
As if on cue, the ship’s lights dimmed again, and within seconds a call came from Engineering. It was Julya.
“Let me guess,” Gap said. “What’s the status of the shield right now?”
“Well,” she said, “stable, I suppose. It dropped out for just over a second, then came back, then out for another second.”
“Roc,” Gap said, “I think it’s time for one of those executive decisions. Let’s drop another two percent into the shield. Can it handle that input?”
“If not, we’ll return it to the manufacturer with a very stern letter. Should take about three minutes.” The computer paused, and then added, “Uh-oh.”
Gap recognized the tone. Roc had only shifted to that tone on a few occasions, and it had always preceded bad news.
“The space around us has just become a bit more congested,” Roc said.
“Explain,” Gap said.
“We know that the wormholes are not used for decoration; they’re passageways. And it seems that a few things have spilled out of this passageway, right into our path.”
A knot instantly materialized in Gap’s stomach, and he felt an icy streak race through his veins. “How many things are we talking about?”
“Lots,” Roc said. “As in…” After a few seconds delay, he added, “Roughly two thousand.”
Gap not only felt a stab of fear himself, he swore that he could feel the collective fear roiling through the atmosphere of the Control Room as each crew member absorbed the news. Two thousand? His mind conjured up images of a vast squadron of pitch-black vultures, circling ahead, waiting to intercept and latch on to Galahad. He imagined that each person in the room had painted a similar picture.
He brought himself upright in his chair and injected as much composure into his voice as possible. He was still the commander of the ship. “Do you have enough data yet to determine the size and trajectory?”
“Scanning again,” Roc said. “No doubt that all but one of them are vultures.”
Gap gazed up at the room’s giant vidscreen, but saw only the blazing star field. “All but one?”
“Well, isn’t this interesting,” the computer said.
“Roc, tell me!”
“It would seem that we might be getting some of our property back. Besides the nasty critters, that’s our pod that just popped out of the wormhole. It’s back.”
24
The door to the Conference Room slid open and Lita rushed in. The other Council members were seated around the table, waiting for her. She had turned things over to Manu and the rest of the Sick House staff in order to squeeze in a few minutes for the emergency meeting. Gap began talking before she even took her seat.
“As you probably heard, or at least guessed, another wormhole has exploded onto the scene. This one seems to have practically tracked us. The ripple effect has once again struck our shields, and I’ve had Roc divert some power from the ion drive engines in order to provide us with at least a little more protection for the time being.
“At our current speed we should fly past the opening of the wormhole in about thirty-six minutes. However, before we reach that point we’ll come across a squadron of vultures which popped out and are now gradually plotting an intercept course to us. And this time there’s a lot of them. A couple thousand.”
Gap could see Channy visibly shiver. Lita’s face went pale; he’d known that the healing she’d been working on since Alexa’s death would take a hit with this news, and he felt for her.
“But there’s more,” he said, hoping to quickly divert the focus away from the sinister-looking vultures. “The pod is back.”
All three of his fellow Council members reacted at once. Lita let out a gasp; Channy’s eyes went wide and she threw both hands up around her face.
Bon’s mouth dropped open and he gripped the edge of the table with both hands. Gap had never seen the Swede react so dramatically to anything during their voyage. He stared down the table at Bon, trying to read what was spinning inside his head. Recovering at once, Bon stood and walked over to the water dispenser, keeping his back to Gap.
“So she’s back,” Channy said, breaking the spell.
“The pod is back,” Gap said. “As for what’s inside, we have no idea. We’ve tried making radio contact, but there’s been no response. I’m hopeful, of course, but unless we can get inside to look around…” He let his voice trail off.
Lita was staring at Bon’s back. She said, “Do we have any ideas on how these … wormhole people, whoever they might be, were able to find us?”
Gap shook his head. “Before, we figured that the vultures were communicating with them, giving them coordinates. Now, with no vultures around—at least none that we know of—we have no idea. But Roc has a theory that might clear up at least one mystery we’ve been dealing with. Roc, wanna share what you told me?”
“The first
thing I told Gap,” the computer said, “was to let someone help him color coordinate his clothes. After that we got down to business about this new wormhole, and the question of how they knew where to find us. Specifically, the flashes of light.”
Lita said nothing and kept her head lowered, staring at the table. Bon had walked slowly back to the table and, for a change, seemed very interested in a Council discussion.
“Wait,” Channy said. “They found us … with light?”
Roc said, “They found us using a method not unlike the way old-style computer programmers worked. The light was more than just light; it was a ping.”
Channy sighed. “I’m going to need some special tutoring on this.”
“At your service. In the early days of computers—long before you had such magnificent creations like me—computer techs would test connections between computers, or between computers and websites, by sending out what was known as a ping. They could identify an IP address and gauge the delay between the signal’s origination and its receipt. What the wormhole masters were doing, it would seem, is not much different; they were sending interstellar pings to locate us.”
Since Gap, Lita, and Bon remained silent, Channy spoke up again. “But how would they know where to even send this ping?”
“Still working on that,” Roc said. “But I can say, with strong confidence, that we’ve found yet another way that these creatures manipulate dark energy. Those mystery particles within the light flashes? I’m pretty sure that’s what they are. And if I’m right—and I usually am—they’re somehow able to send their dark energy pings across vast distances. Perhaps even infinite distances.”
The room was silent for a moment. Then Gap sat forward and said, “I would love to spend more time puzzling out their methods, but it’s not our most important issue right now. Before we worry about how they’ve found us, we need to concentrate on capturing the pod and getting it back into the Spider bay.” He glanced around the table. The last time they’d gone fishing for this same pod, some had questioned the wisdom of bringing it aboard. “I’m assuming that there’s no argument about doing that, right?”